When thinking about historical oppression, how does one weigh deaths in the tens of thousands? How do you compare that to hundreds of thousands or millions?

This question is important when considering all sorts of tragedies. There is a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin (one never knows the veracity of these things) that says: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” People know about the Holocaust (6 million dead). A lot of people even know some about the imperialist oppression in the Congo (an estimated 15 million dead) thanks to King Leopold’s Ghost. But this world history teacher knew nothing of the oppression just next door in Middle Congo, part of French Imperial Africa, until picking up J.P. Daughton’s new book.

In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism takes the reader into the world of the French colony of the 1920s and 1930s and describes in detail the horrific conditions that workers were exposed to in what is today the Republic of the Congo. In comparison, however, the deaths in the name of building the Congo-Océan railroad are estimated in the tens of thousands, not millions as Belgium’s King Leopold is responsible for. But does that mean that it deserves no mention in history classes?

Daughton has convinced me that the deaths of the Middle Congo are important for everyone to know about for a few reasons. First, our surveys of atrocities in world history cannot simply be decided by the number of people dead. That is what turns deaths into statistics, as Stalin is alleged to have said. Instead, the story behind the oppression, mistreatment, and murder is what is more important to teach. Because that will help us see how it happened and what needs to be changed.

In addition, the French get off easy a lot of times when it comes to imperialism. Everyone focuses on Great Britain because they were the most powerful and had the largest empire. Belgium gets lots of attention in the Congo because of King Leopold’s atrocities. France sometimes gets attention for Algeria because of the large and violent independence movement there, but that’s about it. Some focus on the events in Middle Congo could bring balance to the narrative of imperialism. Give France its due blame.

The most important facet of the story of the Congo-Océan railroad, however, is how it was covered up. Administrative officials obfuscated the truth, burying the oppression under loads of statistics and refusing to acknowledge what was truly going on. The power of statistics to shape a narrative cannot be overstated. And while we worship data (and have for at least a century), we forget that data has an origin. It is not the absolute truth. It can be mishandled, deliberately or accidentally, and shape itself into falsities. We will never fully know the number of deaths attributed to the building of the Congo-Océan railroad because the numbers don’t exist. Daughton explains:
A project spearheaded by administrators and company men, the Congo-Océan revealed the devastating potential of official reports, regulations, and spreadsheets to obscure and justify oppression, mistreatment, and even murder. While individuals and ideologies certainly colored the drama, the colonial state and its bureaucracy shaped the terms of debate about the railroad in important ways. Institutions, be they corporations, universities, or governments, try to craft their own narratives. They are equipped with protocols and hierarchies that ostensibly allow them to investigate and monitor their successes and failures, as well as the behavior of their personnel. They often pride themselves on adhering to concepts like “ethics” and “justice”; guarding supposed values and reputation is the paramount concern of most institutions. Self-preservation is too often a greater priority than admitting fault and self-improvement.

Does that sound like any 21st-century organizations you know of? I can’t help but see enormous parallels.

In our rush to measure everything, we miss things that can’t be measured. “The challenge, then,” Daughton writes, “is how to measure the regularity and severity of acts of cruelty.”

Daughton’s detailing of the working conditions, the administration that made them that way, and the tragedy of imperialism is top-shelf. In the Forest of No Joy is frank with its depictions, inclusive in its subjects, and unrelenting in its criticisms. If you want to learn more about imperialism, its causes, and its effects, there may be no better case study than the Congo-Océan railroad. While the reading is not easy, it is worth it.

I received a review copy of In the Forest of No Joy courtesy of W. W. Norton and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

“They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and call it by the lying name of 'empire'. They make a desolation and call it 'peace.’”

Tacitus put these words in the mouth of Calgacus of the Caledonian Confederacy, a minority leader facing a colonial enemy at the height of its power. Though nearly 2000 years separate this episode of Roman history from French Equatorial Africa, the quote could easily have come from this gripping, horrifying account of the construction of the Congo-Ocean railroad.

This account was gripping because J. P. Daughton’s scholarship and breadth of understanding were remarkable - preempting opposing arguments, unearthing the humanity of each actor, and conveying authority to the reader through thoroughness and thoughtfulness.

This account was horrifying because J. P. Daughton has resurrected the voices and experiences of the laborers who constructed the railroad, largely against their will. They were the victims of bureaucracy, mismanagement, and ineptitude, and their daily lives were marked by dehumanizing negligence.

It is shocking to think that these atrocities are so near. It’s convenient to distance oneself from troubling episodes by relegating them to “the past.” This book is a reminder that our world allowed horrendous violence to be perpetrated against whole people groups with impunity - less than 100 years ago! It causes me to think about entire nations differently, and to view modern nations with greater skepticism.

“There is something comforting believing that hateful madmen made empires violent. In fact, negligence, denial, and assertions of humanity in pursuit of ‘progress’ often proved far more cruel.”

Thank you to NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company for the advance copy of this compelling expose!

In the Forest of No Joy by J.P. Daughton tells the story of the construction of The Congo-Océan railroad. It’s a story that needs to be told just from a sheer human brutality perspective. It’s arguably on par with some of the worst colonial exploitations of a native population and I had never even heard of it. In a lot of ways, the story rings familiar. The colonizers start an ambitious building project and forcibly in many cases recruit native workers from throughout the country. They may or may not have worked with local tribal authorities as situations varied.

The working conditions were miserable. Tropical diseases were running wild and men were subject to brutal, back breaking work that broke down bodies and minds. Not helping the situation food rations were horrible. Trying to get more from workers administrators resorted to brutal tactics including beatings and whippings that even though technically illegal killed and injured scores of Africans. Then they were discarded because they were just Africans, and they were expendable.

The problem with In the Forest of No Joy is that we go no further than the French believed Africans were inferior and thus they could be treated like they were less than human, no matter what our rules and regulations say. The book just hammers at this idea over and over again for several hundred pages, which creates this vortex of disease, death, and human misery that the reader becomes unfortunately numb towards after a while.

An important story that needed to be told better.

This is an account of the Congo-Ocean railroad, made by enslaved Blacks in French-colonized Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. Author Daughton recounts the horrors inflicted on the people forced to work on the railroad, but does so repetitively and without clear organization, resulting in a book that circles and circles important topics but never provides readers with guideposts for understanding them more fully.