Publication
Title
'Les pelerins de la saison seche': Colonial Tourism in the Belgian Congo, 1945-60
Author
Abstract
Belgium has often been labelled as a reluctant colonizer in the past. Yet, a meticulous analysis of tourist magazines, guidebooks, brochures, posters, and documentaries on colonial tourism in the Belgian Congo tells a different story. Travel literature was often teeming with pro-empire propaganda that emphasized the primitiveness of the Congo and underscored the civilizing mission. Tourism was, in this respect, not very different from the overtly positive framing of the Belgian colonial rule that was propagated by museums, monuments of colonial heroes, exhibitions, movies and schoolbooks. The aim of this article is to take the argument even further. Most research on colonial tourism is focused on the creation of pro-empire propaganda in tourist magazines and guidebooks, while the actual appropriation of this image by travellers of flesh and blood is often tacitly assumed or - even worse - taken for granted. Interviews with ex-colonials show that the reality was much more subtle, as the overly positive propaganda was not always swallowed hook, line and sinker.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Journal of contemporary history. - London, 1966, currens
Publication
London : 2019
ISSN
0022-0094 [print]
1461-7250 [online]
DOI
10.1177/0022009418761215
Volume/pages
54 :3 (2019) , p. 573-593
ISI
000473190700005
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 01.08.2019
Last edited 02.10.2024
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