More Than Red Rubber and Figures Alone: A Critical Appraisal of the Memory of the Congo Exhibition at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium*

The conquest of the earth,... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.1 A number of years ago a friend and I visited the Royal Museum for Central Africa at Tervuren in Belgium. Guards in ill-fitting blue uniforms, modeled on those of the Congo Free State with golden epaulets and piping, lounged and chatted in enormous halls where once many years ago Herge had gathered his ideas for Tintin in the Congo.2 What struck me at the time,...