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International African Institute Problèmes structurels de l'économie congolaise by Fernand Bézy Review by: Phyllis Deane Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jul., 1958), p. 283 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1157988 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 18:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Cambridge University Press and International African Institute are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:55:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Problèmes structurels de l'économie congolaiseby Fernand Bézy

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Page 1: Problèmes structurels de l'économie congolaiseby Fernand Bézy

International African Institute

Problèmes structurels de l'économie congolaise by Fernand BézyReview by: Phyllis DeaneAfrica: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jul., 1958), p. 283Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1157988 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 18:55

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Cambridge University Press and International African Institute are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Africa: Journal of the International African Institute.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:55:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Problèmes structurels de l'économie congolaiseby Fernand Bézy

presented to the Commission Juridique. Most of these are concerned with aspects of the African land tenure problem and the solutions adopted or proposed in particular territories: but there are also papers on the indigenous legal system and on forced labour in the Belgian Congo, and on the absorption into l'Union Frangaise of three French island colonies.

In conclusion it may be said that the quality of the contributions is variable though usually high. The general papers tend to be rather condensed but also repetitive in ideas. The reports of the discussion are too abbreviated to yield much either of ideas or of information.

PHYLLIS DEANE

Problemes structurels de l'economie congolaise. PAR FERNAND BEZY. Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales. Editions E. Nauwelaerts, Louvain, 1957. Pp 8. 285. 00fr.

THIS is an ambitious but rather shapeless monograph in which there is more about economic problems than about structure. It must be admitted, however, that the author uses the term economic structure in an unusually extended sense and that he deliberately avoids a systematic description of the economy's shape and dimensions ' parce que les elements qui determinent la structure debordent le compartimentage de l'activite '. What he has set out to do, accord- ing to his introduction, is to describe the operation of economic laws (particularly the price laws) in the Belgian Congo, and to define their determinants in terms of the relation- ships between the economy's dimensions and its material and institutional circumstances.

The volume takes the form of a series of dissertations on five main topics-the demo- graphic situation, land and raw material resources, means of transport, the labour market, and the monetary and banking system. Under each head Professor Bezy analyses the main features of the economic problem in the Belgian Congo, compares it with a selection of other countries, and discusses the main policy implications. On all these topics he has some interesting and suggestive things to say. But his analyses are often inconclusive or superficial partly because he does not give enough of the factual evidence on which they are based and partly because he goes further in his conclusions than his evidence could justify.

This is particularly so of his comparisons with other African territories, which include some of his most stimulating and tantalizing passages. The frequent assumption that the Congo is in some measurable sense more prosperous or more economically progressive than other African territories is an irritating example. It is an assumption which one feels may well be justified in certain real and significant senses; but the author's refusal to think in any sort of accounting terms makes it difficult for the reader either to accept it or to check it. Perhaps one should discount it as being on the same level of analysis as the complacent statement in the introduction: 'Au moment ou s'effritent les empires d'outre-mer, la Belgique a la satisfaction de poursuivre dans la serenite sa mission civilisatrice au Congo.'

PHYLLIS DEANE

Afrikanski Etnograficheski Sbornik. Ed. J. J. POTEKHIN. Moscow: Akademia Nauk S.S.S.R., 1956. Pp. 286, illus., maps.

THIS collection contains four studies: S. P. Smirnov, 'The formation and development of a people of Northern-Sudan'; V. N. Vologdina, 'The Ewe'; P. N. Ismagilova, 'The peoples of Kenya under the colonial regime '; and M. V. Wright, 'Russian expeditions to Ethiopia in the middle of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries '.

To the English reader, the last is the most interesting since it contains material hitherto only briefly commented on by British writers, and lists the relevant archives. (Archive references have appeared in the last two years in most Soviet historical studies; ' open' dates seem to vary-in some cases including the years 1917-21, in others not.) Ethiopia was the only country on the African continent in which there was fairly sustained interest in

presented to the Commission Juridique. Most of these are concerned with aspects of the African land tenure problem and the solutions adopted or proposed in particular territories: but there are also papers on the indigenous legal system and on forced labour in the Belgian Congo, and on the absorption into l'Union Frangaise of three French island colonies.

In conclusion it may be said that the quality of the contributions is variable though usually high. The general papers tend to be rather condensed but also repetitive in ideas. The reports of the discussion are too abbreviated to yield much either of ideas or of information.

PHYLLIS DEANE

Problemes structurels de l'economie congolaise. PAR FERNAND BEZY. Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales. Editions E. Nauwelaerts, Louvain, 1957. Pp 8. 285. 00fr.

THIS is an ambitious but rather shapeless monograph in which there is more about economic problems than about structure. It must be admitted, however, that the author uses the term economic structure in an unusually extended sense and that he deliberately avoids a systematic description of the economy's shape and dimensions ' parce que les elements qui determinent la structure debordent le compartimentage de l'activite '. What he has set out to do, accord- ing to his introduction, is to describe the operation of economic laws (particularly the price laws) in the Belgian Congo, and to define their determinants in terms of the relation- ships between the economy's dimensions and its material and institutional circumstances.

The volume takes the form of a series of dissertations on five main topics-the demo- graphic situation, land and raw material resources, means of transport, the labour market, and the monetary and banking system. Under each head Professor Bezy analyses the main features of the economic problem in the Belgian Congo, compares it with a selection of other countries, and discusses the main policy implications. On all these topics he has some interesting and suggestive things to say. But his analyses are often inconclusive or superficial partly because he does not give enough of the factual evidence on which they are based and partly because he goes further in his conclusions than his evidence could justify.

This is particularly so of his comparisons with other African territories, which include some of his most stimulating and tantalizing passages. The frequent assumption that the Congo is in some measurable sense more prosperous or more economically progressive than other African territories is an irritating example. It is an assumption which one feels may well be justified in certain real and significant senses; but the author's refusal to think in any sort of accounting terms makes it difficult for the reader either to accept it or to check it. Perhaps one should discount it as being on the same level of analysis as the complacent statement in the introduction: 'Au moment ou s'effritent les empires d'outre-mer, la Belgique a la satisfaction de poursuivre dans la serenite sa mission civilisatrice au Congo.'

PHYLLIS DEANE

Afrikanski Etnograficheski Sbornik. Ed. J. J. POTEKHIN. Moscow: Akademia Nauk S.S.S.R., 1956. Pp. 286, illus., maps.

THIS collection contains four studies: S. P. Smirnov, 'The formation and development of a people of Northern-Sudan'; V. N. Vologdina, 'The Ewe'; P. N. Ismagilova, 'The peoples of Kenya under the colonial regime '; and M. V. Wright, 'Russian expeditions to Ethiopia in the middle of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries '.

To the English reader, the last is the most interesting since it contains material hitherto only briefly commented on by British writers, and lists the relevant archives. (Archive references have appeared in the last two years in most Soviet historical studies; ' open' dates seem to vary-in some cases including the years 1917-21, in others not.) Ethiopia was the only country on the African continent in which there was fairly sustained interest in

presented to the Commission Juridique. Most of these are concerned with aspects of the African land tenure problem and the solutions adopted or proposed in particular territories: but there are also papers on the indigenous legal system and on forced labour in the Belgian Congo, and on the absorption into l'Union Frangaise of three French island colonies.

In conclusion it may be said that the quality of the contributions is variable though usually high. The general papers tend to be rather condensed but also repetitive in ideas. The reports of the discussion are too abbreviated to yield much either of ideas or of information.

PHYLLIS DEANE

Problemes structurels de l'economie congolaise. PAR FERNAND BEZY. Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales. Editions E. Nauwelaerts, Louvain, 1957. Pp 8. 285. 00fr.

THIS is an ambitious but rather shapeless monograph in which there is more about economic problems than about structure. It must be admitted, however, that the author uses the term economic structure in an unusually extended sense and that he deliberately avoids a systematic description of the economy's shape and dimensions ' parce que les elements qui determinent la structure debordent le compartimentage de l'activite '. What he has set out to do, accord- ing to his introduction, is to describe the operation of economic laws (particularly the price laws) in the Belgian Congo, and to define their determinants in terms of the relation- ships between the economy's dimensions and its material and institutional circumstances.

The volume takes the form of a series of dissertations on five main topics-the demo- graphic situation, land and raw material resources, means of transport, the labour market, and the monetary and banking system. Under each head Professor Bezy analyses the main features of the economic problem in the Belgian Congo, compares it with a selection of other countries, and discusses the main policy implications. On all these topics he has some interesting and suggestive things to say. But his analyses are often inconclusive or superficial partly because he does not give enough of the factual evidence on which they are based and partly because he goes further in his conclusions than his evidence could justify.

This is particularly so of his comparisons with other African territories, which include some of his most stimulating and tantalizing passages. The frequent assumption that the Congo is in some measurable sense more prosperous or more economically progressive than other African territories is an irritating example. It is an assumption which one feels may well be justified in certain real and significant senses; but the author's refusal to think in any sort of accounting terms makes it difficult for the reader either to accept it or to check it. Perhaps one should discount it as being on the same level of analysis as the complacent statement in the introduction: 'Au moment ou s'effritent les empires d'outre-mer, la Belgique a la satisfaction de poursuivre dans la serenite sa mission civilisatrice au Congo.'

PHYLLIS DEANE

Afrikanski Etnograficheski Sbornik. Ed. J. J. POTEKHIN. Moscow: Akademia Nauk S.S.S.R., 1956. Pp. 286, illus., maps.

THIS collection contains four studies: S. P. Smirnov, 'The formation and development of a people of Northern-Sudan'; V. N. Vologdina, 'The Ewe'; P. N. Ismagilova, 'The peoples of Kenya under the colonial regime '; and M. V. Wright, 'Russian expeditions to Ethiopia in the middle of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries '.

To the English reader, the last is the most interesting since it contains material hitherto only briefly commented on by British writers, and lists the relevant archives. (Archive references have appeared in the last two years in most Soviet historical studies; ' open' dates seem to vary-in some cases including the years 1917-21, in others not.) Ethiopia was the only country on the African continent in which there was fairly sustained interest in

REVIEWS REVIEWS REVIEWS 283 283 283

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.54 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:55:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions