With the FORAGENCY project, professor of history Benoît Henriet is studying the ecological history of colonial Central Africa. He received an ERC Starting Grant of €1.5 million for his research in 2022 and he is now also the holder of the Casterman-Hamers chair.
How did you begin studying foraging, fishing and hunting in colonial Central Africa?
“As a historian, I specialise in colonialism in Central Africa. I previously studied the cultural and socio-economic history, so my focus was primarily on humans. However, historians are increasingly researching how animals, landscapes and plants can play a role in historical dynamics. These perspectives can be very enriching. I decided to use this relatively new approach to study the history of colonial Central Africa.”
“In those days, if you could provide for yourself, it meant you were less dependent on colonial wage labour for your livelihood”
Is that a popular approach in contemporary history?
“Research ‘beyond humans’ is becoming increasingly important in the humanities and social sciences. Environmental history has been around for about 60 years, but only in the last 10 to 15 years have we started to look at history in a less anthropocentric way. Anthropologists have taken the lead in this, and now more historians are starting to adopt this perspective.”
Part of your research looks at how foraging, fishing and hunting acted as a form of resistance against colonial structures for the indigenous population. Could you illustrate that?
“Resistance is perhaps too generalised; it was also about relieving or circumventing the colonial actors’ seizure of power. If you could hunt for your own food in those days, it meant you were less dependent on colonial wage labour to earn a living, for example. In other words, you could escape forced involvement in colonial capitalism.
“Hunting or foraging also required you to master certain techniques and skills that were passed down from generation to generation. That tradition escaped colonial control. At other times, foraging didn’t suit the colonial tastes. Take the trading of caterpillars as food, for example. That too fell outside the framework of what the colonisers controlled. In all these ways, something of a culture could be preserved.”
“We ask our witnesses for memories of their own childhoods, and what they learned from their parents and grandparents”
Benoît Henriet
You are studying these practices in four cities: Kisangani, Bujumbura, Brazzaville and Kinshasa. Why these places?
“These cities and the areas around them are part of various ecosystems and biotopes in equatorial Africa. This allows us to study the impact of a particular environment on the form that colonisation took on the ground. These cities were also divided between colonial structures and empires. Kinshasa and Brazzaville are not far apart, but the Congo River that separates them formed the border between Belgian and French colonial influence.
“Kisangani was in the middle of the rainforest, Bujumbura was a former outpost of German East Africa and later the capital of the mandate territory of Rwanda and Burundi, which was then called Ruanda-Urundi. In short, they were different ecosystems and different political constructions. The choice of cities also has to do with the fact that urban areas are better archived and therefore more data is available for the research.”
As well as archive research, you also carry out field research. How do you go about that?
“The officials and missionaries who documented the colonial past often didn’t consider the subjects we are studying today to be important. As a result, information is sometimes scarce. We try to gather additional information through interviews. We ask our witnesses for memories of their own childhoods, and what they learned from their parents and grandparents.
“We also have two anthropologists on our team, who remain in the field for extended periods. This is one way we try to become truly embedded in local communities. The cultural gap does sometimes play a role. Not only are we foreigners who don’t automatically know simple things like “what did they eat there 80 years ago”, there is also a socio-economic difference between us and our conversation partners. That makes the discussions more difficult.
“Fortunately, we have very good collaborations with universities there. For Burundi, the historians on the team have finished collecting the data, and it went very smoothly. Professors from the Université du Burundi put us in touch with the people we wanted to interview and played a crucial role as mediators. Without that close cooperation, we wouldn’t have been able to do this research.”
“In the period between the wars, locusts caused famines in Burundi and a lot of labour was needed to alleviate their impact”
It’s currently unsafe to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Do you have access to the archive to continue your research?
“That’s right. It’s extremely unfortunate that we can no longer go there in person, but we particularly regret the situation for the people who live there. For our project, there is no problem with the archive research. The lion’s share of the colonial archives were returned to Europe after the independence of the Central African colonies. We therefore have access to the archives, which isn’t the case for our African colleagues. It's also becoming increasingly difficult for them to obtain visas, so they are often unable to conduct research into their own country and culture.”
You’ve been working on FORAGENCY for several years. Are there any findings you can share?
“There are a few. I’m currently writing an article about locust infestations in Burundi during the interwar period. They were a huge problem, for the local population and the colonial administration. They caused famines and a lot of labour was needed to mitigate their impact. For me, it shows the enormous influence that non-humans, in this case locusts, can have on the historical dynamics in a society. It reinforces the idea that non-humans, even those without consciousness, also have a form of agency in history.”
“By including non-humans in the historical narrative, I hope to enrich and add nuance, and contribute to greater social awareness of the environment”
Do you expect your research to have an impact on existing narratives surrounding colonialism or on how we treat the environment?
“I do hope to enrich and nuance the story by bringing more actors into it, namely non-humans. And as far as the impact for today is concerned, more focus on ecological history can in time contribute to greater social awareness of the importance of the environment.”
Finally, what does this research chair mean to you?
“For an ambitious research project like FORAGENCY, I think it’s very important. It means we can continue to work on developing an exhibition and a series of lectures, workshops and film screenings in close collaboration with Crosstalks and the artist Gosie Vervloessem. It also allows us to appeal to artists and observers who, at first glance, have little interest in colonialism and Central Africa, but do have a stake in foraging in the broadest sense.”
Bio Benoît Henriet
Benoît Henriet has been a professor of history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel since 2018. He studies history from the ground up, with a particular focus on the micro-histories of colonial and post-colonial Central Africa. He is the principal investigator of FORAGENCY, a research project studying foraging, colonialism and agency beyond humans in colonial Central Africa. He received an ERC Starting Grant of €1.5 million for the project and holds the Casterman-Hamers chair.
