Conversation at the Salon around a question: Colonization and independence, from Switzerland to the Congo via Geneva?

Photo J. Watts. Graphisme Nask

Conversation at the Salon around a question:

Colonization and independence, from Switzerland to the Congo via Geneva?

With Lisa N'Pango Zanetti and Fabio Rossinelli
The history of Swiss-Congolese relations rests on a significant involvement by Geneva. Through the Société de Géographie, Geneva's bourgeoisie embraced the exploration and colonization of Central Africa promoted by Leopold II, King of the Belgians, and drew the support of the Swiss ruling circles. Relations with the Independent State of the Congo (1885-1908) and the Belgian Congo (1908-1960) became official, setting the stage for the bilateral relations established at the time of Congolese independence. The federal government in Berne became an accomplice to Mobutu's dictatorship in Kinshasa.
What impact did these events have on Switzerland? How do they help us understand the country's role in the politics of global domination in the colonial and post-colonial eras?

Guest speakers
Lisa N'Pango Zanetti has a degree in political science, with a specialization in contemporary history. She has worked at the University of Lausanne and the University of Geneva. She is interested in Switzerland's involvement in European imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, and in the post-colonial dynamics influencing contemporary Swiss society. In her most recent contribution, published in the Geneva geography magazine Le Globe (2023), she analyzes Swiss asylum policy in the light of the country's economic interests in Mobutu's Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). More generally, her approach aims to shed light on history's marginalized actors, underlining the importance of an inclusive perspective in historical analysis.
Historian, Fabio Rossinelli completed his doctoral thesis in 2020 at the University of Lausanne, where he works as a researcher and teacher of Swiss colonial history. He also works at the University of Geneva in the Department of Geography. He is the author of Géographie et impérialisme. De la Suisse au Congo entre exploration géographique et conquête coloniale, published in 2022 by Éditions Alphil, and scientific co-editor of the collective work De la Conférence géographique de Bruxelles à l'État indépendant du Congo, 1876-1908, to be published in 2026 to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of European colonization in the Congo. Among other things, he contributed to the preparation of the exhibition "Mémoires. Genève dans le monde colonial" exhibition at the MEG.
The Conversations at the Salon is the lecture-meeting series for the temporary exhibition "Remembering. Geneva in the colonial world".
This cycle was conceived and organized by Fabio Rossinelli.
Entry to the temporary exhibition is free of charge in 2024.

Organisateur : Musée d'ethnographie de Genève (MEG)