Description: This book offers a historical anthropology of the Leverville concession, the largest palm oil exploitation in Belgian Congo, and one of Unilever's main plants outside of Europe, between 1911 and 1940. It provides new understandings of the joint ex
Brief description: Benoît Henriet, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.
Review Quotes:
"This is a major contribution to the historiography of colonial central Africa and the growing literature on the concessionary model used in many different colonial contexts." - Jeremy Rich, Professor of History, Marywood University
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"This compelling book unveils the importance of hubris and self-deception in the deployment of colonial capitalism. Henriet recreates Leverville as a capitalistic site and a matrix of emotions and affects, of virtuous excesses and moral failures. His concept of 'impotence, ' broadly conceptualized as a sexual, social, political, and economic formation, is an important addition to our knowledge of relations of power in the colony." - Florence Bernault, Centre d'histoire, Sciences Po (Paris)