New Books In French Studies

J. P. Daughton's In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism (W. W. Norton, 2021) examines the complex and violent French construction of a line of railroad in Equatorial Africa from the coast inland. Begun in 1921, the Congo-Océan took 13 years to complete and resulted in the deaths of between 15,000 and 23,000 African lives. Daughton's book is a careful account of the brutality, harrowing labor conditions, and deprivation of these thousands of Africans whose very bodies were abused and destroyed in this iteration of the "civilizing mission" and "modernity" in empire. Working through a broad range of archives located in France, Switzerland, the U.S., and the Congo, the book's several chapters outline in visceral detail the individuals and structures involved in making the railroad a reality, from the forced enlistment of African labourers, through the challenges of resistant landscape, the suffering of those physically tasked with its conquest, to the justifying rh