Au Pays de Palmiers

Bruxelles: O. De Rycker. Softcover. very good-. Undated, ca. 1924. 8.25" x 5.5", [26] pp, with many half-tone photographs, in illustrated stapled wrappers. Light dust soiling, text block detached from wrappers, otherwise very good. A rare promotional booklet for Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB), a subsidiary of the British soap manufacturing company Lever Brothers. The French-language text describes the history of the company's involvement in the Belgian Congo, beginning in 1911 when it secured a concession from the Belgian government to construct factories and harvest palm trees (for their oil) within a 1.9 million acres of forest land.  One section describes the characteristics of the Elais or oil palm and explains how it is harvested ("It is a climb of 15 to 20 meters that would be frightening and very dangerous for a European. But the blacks are almost as agile as monkeys; their feet grip the bank like hands") by native workers. Another section explains how the company has developed plantations to raise more trees, and others describe their factories and transportation networks. This large and complex operation, we are told, employs 200 Europeans and nearly 12,000 Africans and has had a significant positive impact on the economic development of the colony. Left unmentioned is the company's heavy reliance on forced labor, which has been described by Jules Marchel in Lord Leverhulme's Ghosts, Colonial Exploitation in the Congo (2017).  Nonetheless, it provides an interesting and valuable record of how HBC presented itself and its role in the Congo to the wider world.  Not found in OCLC. .