Second frame of third page:

Next in the sequence of graphic novels about the mid-20th century life of Kathleen Van Overstraeten, a young Belgian woman who we last saw smiling in Sourire 58 (and previously surviving Nazi occupation in Bruxelles 43). She (along with most readers, including me) receives some vivid lessons about the sudden end of Belgian rule in the Congo, as seen by a flight attendant whose friend in Léopoldville has a Congolese boyfriend.

The move to independence happened very quickly. In January 1960, the white folks were confidently talking about a transition period of thirty years; but in fact Belgium handed over sovereignty only a few months later at the end of June. The winds of change, as MacMillan said, were blowing, and the Belgians faced a choice between a quick retreat with little dignity or a military defeat with even less, and wisely chose the former.

The success of the book is the vivid depiction of Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) itself by artists Baudouin Deville and Bérengère Marquebreucq. They’ve clearly put hours of research into the available archival material to show a time and a place that were about to change utterly.

Weber does his best to explore the complexities of race and power in late stage colonial Congo, but has chosen to tell the story largely from the perspective of the white folks whose lives were disrupted by change, which perhaps is not the most important of the stories that could be told. (It is striking that only one of the twelve people depicted on the front cover is African.) There is also a political subplot, which is a fairly standard thriller involving (of course) the Americans.

It was a big deal for Belgium at the time. Almost 35,000 people are known to have taken hastily arranged Sabena flights from Congo to Belgium in July 1960, rather than stay in the suddenly independent new state. The vicious exploitation of the country and its resources and people in the earlier period is not really mentioned, and we get hints of the coming troubles in Katanga but little more than that. So I was left admiring the art but feeling that the storytelling was incomplete.

You can get Léopoldville 60 here. Next up is Berlin 1961.