Conclusions This book pursues two basic objectives, one methodological, the other epistemological or conceptual.

Methodologically, I show that the meanings of names given to explorers, missionaries, state officials, and agents of companies conveyed substantial information about colonial rule, local situations, and colonial material conditions created by colonialism. The hundreds of illustrations of names show that whether one interprets the meanings of colonial anthroponyms as objective observations or perceptions of colonialism, they provide unparalleled access to local ideas about the effects of colonial situations on the lives of Congolese. Although such conditions changed according to colonial projects and local response, colonial anthroponyms everywhere discussed the punishments, the repressive colonial intrusion into personal and collective life, the disruption of local economies and culture, and the ways in which colonialism set the rhythms of daily life in the village world. Many were explicit criticisms of practices of domination, oppression, and exploitation. They were commentaries about the effects of colonialism on the experiences of Congolese villagers from the time of European explorations in the 1870s to the end of colonization of the Congo on 30 June 1960. The seemingly disparate bits of testimonies woven into the meanings of names of colonial officials turned into collective memories and valuable local commentaries on colonial rule and the daily life of village people. This study shows that by adapting Central African naming conventions to colonial situations, Congolese recorded their concerns about colonialism and their everyday life and therefore transformed the names of Europeans into sources of their colonial experiences. Briefly, the meanings of names of colonial officials are important sources of history of Congolese colonial experiences once contextualized and subjected to the rules of evidence. Congolese villagers named colonial officials collectively and individually. Although collective names described mainly colonial situations that dominated an era and overwhelmed the totality of experiences of the community, individual names recorded the routines of colonial interactions that characterized colonialism at the village level, including the ways in which individual Europeans behaved and carried out colonial policies. Congolese villagers did not record every experience of daily life when naming explorers and colonial state officials, nor did the names narrate all the happenings in the village, the fields, and the workplaces. Still, the naming of colonial officials encompassed a variety of events, scenes, circumstances, conditions of work and everyday life, and mindsets, all of which formed the basic social structure shaping interactions between Congolese villagers and colonial officials. The names of colonial officials were therefore a repository of observations and perceptions of colonialism, stories, and memories of Belgian colonialism. An enormous advantage of names, among many, was the recording of the everyday happenings from which one can deduce an understanding of the conditions and structures that caused the events being observed and described. As a result, exploring names allowed centering the analysis on the interactions of concrete people with structures that shaped their lives. This is important for the writing of the histories of ordinary villagers who did not leave written records of their own and who recorded and expressed their concerns about colonial rule through names. By listening to the voices of Congolese, the book highlights the complexity in the ways Congolese thought of the

colonial world of political and economic limitations, violence, and fewer opportunities. The inside information shows that Congolese were more than just victims of European processes and turns the exploration of names into a way into the collective memories, ideologies, mindsets, and historical consciousness to show how Congolese understood large processes that affected and changed their everyday lives. In this regard, the book proves its claim to methodological innovation. The ability to name colonial officials testifies to the cultural autonomy against which Congolese evaluated their experiences of colonialism. Congolese agency was apparent in the messages of praise, protest, and satire against colonial officials, which yield ideas about Congolese minds. Because of the violence they faced daily, Congolese villagers free social space shrank, and many did not find in open resistance the best option to negotiate local matters. Since the 1870s, King Leopold II transformed what became successively the Congo Free State and Belgian Congo into a colonial space filled with increasing constraints, limitations, and lack of autonomy through the creation and use of the colonial army, the local police force, whipping, and prisons. 1 Although colonial power holders could never control everyday life in the colonial social aggregate, Congolese villagers were not heroic warriors fighting day and night. 2 The lack of freedom also affected state-appointed chiefs whose resistance led to their exile, removal from office, and deprivation of salaries. The naming of colonial officials became instrumental in constructing a political language to express dissatisfaction and negotiate aspects of colonialism villagers regarded as intolerable. 3 This way, Congolese kept some measure of cultural autonomy that accurately identified and gave a face to their oppressors and exploiters. Themes and topics that emerge from the names open up new areas of research as they enrich old ones. To be sure, the meanings of names show that names captured Congolese thoughts and perceptions of unfolding colonial events, colonial structural constraints, and ideologies, and all shaped the village world where, while Congolese experienced violence and few economic outlets, colonial officials constantly struggled to expand their challenged power. 4 Based on these data, the book argues that approaching histories of Congolese experiences of colonialism through names allowed the re-creation of everyday life in the village world under colonial rule. Many illustrations show that the history of naming explained the politics of negotiations in which Congolese and colonial officials were engaged as they endlessly adopted meanings and messages as weapons and as they struggled over the real and symbolic boundaries of power, domination, and exploitation. By focusing on the intersection of colonial rule and naming practices, the book captures the dynamics of power relations and illuminates the interconnections among colonialism, cultural forms and expressions, and social experiences. Congolese villagers wove into individual and collective names the accusations of injustice, exploitation, violence, sexual exploitation, and confiscation of cash, foodstuffs, and labor into symbols and metaphors of praise. 5 These accusations show the workings of local cultural forces and mindsets the ability of Congolese to create and disseminate forms of social consciousness under the watchful eyes of the state-appointed chiefs, elders, policemen, agricultural monitors, and messengers, the segment of Congolese included in the colonial administrative structure. The

coding of local voices challenges the passivity of Congolese villagers and buries once and for all the old imaginary view of Africa, which the notion of the invention of Africa has unwittingly resurrected. A seemingly contradictory political behavior motivated by the need to skirt retaliation and ensure safety, praise naming of the oppressors was a widespread response to colonial political domination and economic exploitation. 6 It represents the coding of messages and challenges the notion of the invention of Africa. The multidimensional messages of the meanings of names show that through praise naming, villagers cloaked ugly meanings and hostile messages in local symbols of authority, attributes of power, and colonial uniforms, most of which suggested kindness, peace, and beauty but which equally criticized colonial rule. It also shows the complexities and sophistication of Congolese in understanding broader processes that transformed their everyday lives and communities. Unlike some previous analyses that stressed the confiscation and transfer of resources to the colonial state and various sectors of capital to comprehend the political behavior of exploited peasants and workers, this study shows that cultural interpretations of unequal colonial relations shaped Congolese understandings of their plight as much as the confiscation of resources. 7 A history of colonialism based on the meanings of names thus expands prevailing paradigms as it shifts the exclusive focus from material exploitation once posited by historical materialism and those paradigms that either focused only on local notions of fairness or stressed only the pursuit of individual economic gains to explain African responses to colonialism. Although physical confrontations played a vital role in the struggles of Congolese against colonialism, Congolese villagers were not heroic tribal warriors engaged day and night in rebellions. Open rebellions were rare, but when they did break out, colonial troops killed rebels, burned houses, destroyed standing crops, and confiscated herds of goats and cattle and poultry yards. By undermining long-term social reproduction of the village world, scorched earth policies and harsh punishments compelled Congolese to realize the limits of confrontation and choose subtler forms of protest. Because colonial officials dismissed cultural messages as meaningless, praise naming generated duplicitous messages through which Congolese villagers talked about colonialism subversively without fear. In the broader local responses to colonialism, praise naming was the same as singing surreptitious songs, spreading sarcastic rumors, dancing obscene dances, and making wicked innuendoes about the colonizers, forms of protest colonial officials could hardly censor. 9 So this study amplifies the literature on the surreptitious forms of protest, shifting from an earlier focus in the 1960s and 1970s on rebellions, social banditry, and social movements. Despite the struggle of Congolese villagers to hide some categories of messages, the colonizers understood most messages embedded in their names. First, I quote excerpts and lists of names collected in the colonial archives. The accuracy of translations from local languages into French shows colonial officials comprehensive knowledge of naming and a deep understanding of the loaded messages of names. 11 Second, many names, even those that infuriated colonial officials and provoked retaliation, were in Lingala, Kiswahili, Kikongo, and Ciluba, the languages the colonial officials spoke and appropriated to run local administrations. With varying individual ability, colonial officials became competent in these languages and decoded some layers of deeper

meanings of messages. Third, Congolese villagers who worked for local administrations informed European officials about village life and provided information that enabled them to decipher much in the messages of names. Archives, oral testimonies, historical novels, and memoirs of former colonial officials show that Congolese house workers, agricultural monitors, interpreters, and messengers were valuable informants who sometimes played the role of spies. They revealed the village gossips who allowed officials to figure out shades of meaning in the names. The access to inside information allowed agronomists to arrest preventively Congolese villagers they suspected of making trouble even for minor disorderly conduct and verbal exchanges with officials during village community meetings and for referring to officials by derogatory names. 12 Colonial officials appropriated local representations of colonialism embedded in their names to either instill fear or mediate paternalistic dominance. When villagers named officials after experiences of violence, they wittingly or unwittingly gave to the proponents of violence the evidence that violence caused fear and submission two foundations of colonial authority. By masking their faces into menacing representations of colonialism, colonial officials sometimes transformed Congolese villagers into fearful commodity producers and tax payers. Names suggesting violence thus turned into weapons of terror. And although terror did not suppress opposition, it affected its forms and influenced its timing and frequency. The taking over of laudatory representations of colonialism tells a different story. Although colonial officials used it to hide the hardships of colonialism, it simultaneously showed that the actual power of individual colonial officials was thin. So the names of colonial officials as the voices of the community tell much about the workings of colonialism. The layers and shades of meaning of names show the many ways in which colonial officials carried out their mandate, the ways in which they negotiated micro-level concerns, and the contradictions created by their policies. This transpired in the ways they appropriated and tried to change their names. In reality, the search for laudatory identities by colonial officials seemed at odds with the acts and threats of violence, the twin instruments of colonial power in colonial Congo. The change of names by colonial officials was designed to alter the negative perceptions of colonialism held by the villagers. In summary, the understanding of colonialism through the names of colonial officials is a strategic approach to re-create the ways Congolese and colonial officials constructed and negotiated the boundaries of power, collaboration, and powerlessness. It shows the complexity in the ways Congolese dealt with a perplexing world of uncertainty, limitations, violence, and fewer opportunities, as well as the attempts by colonial officials to frustrate the autonomy suggested by Congolese naming. And the study of names provides insights into Congolese mindsets and the historical consciousness and expands our knowledge of Congolese villagers understanding of large processes that shaped everyday lives in the village world.