This article discusses David van Reybrouck’s history of Congo. The focus is on violence and there is special attention for the period of the Congo Free State, 1885-1908, under king Leopold. A comparison is made between Van Reybrouck’s views and those of Adam Hochchild. It is concluded that the former passes a milder judgment on the actions of Leopold’s troops than the latter, while he also presents a more diversified account. Both authors, however, reject the label of genocide for Leopold’s ‘rubber terror’. The article concludes with some reflections on the concept of genocide, proposing to replace it with organized murder.

André Köbben’s academic career spans sixty years and he’s still going strong – just because he likes it so much. Doing research by himself, which took him for longer periods to Ivory Coast and Surinam apart from studying conflicts in the Netherlands, but also analysing research by others. He has always been interested in questions of ‘rule’ and ‘reality’: the discrepancy between what people say they do and what they actually are doing. He probed tribal disputes among the Agni, the Bete and the Djoeka, but also conflicting interests between managers ordering research and researchers producing unwelcome results. He is preparing a book on academic fraud.