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“From the Pit to the Port”. Navigating the Bong Mining Company site in Liberia through a children’s drawing

« Du puits au port ». Explorer le site de la compagnie minière de Bong au Libéria à travers un dessin d’enfants
Paul Sprute

Entrées d’index

Index by keyword:

Bong Mining Company

Index géographique :

Afrique, Liberia, Afrique de l’Ouest

Index chronologique :

XXe siècle
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Texte intégral

Acknowledgements: I would like to acknowledge and thank everyone who has supported our research in Bong Mines, especially former BMC staff, as well as Monika Motylinska and Johan Lagae for their editorial effort.

Figure 1: The children’s drawings from Bong Town published in the company magazine of August Thyssen-Hütte.

Figure 1: The children’s drawings from Bong Town published in the company magazine of August Thyssen-Hütte.

Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.

Figure 1a: The main children’s map from the pages of Unsere ATH.

Figure 1a: The main children’s map from the pages of Unsere ATH.

Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.

1A panoramic watercolor drawing, divided roughly into three parts, featuring lines that are primarily black, brown, and blue, depicts several built structures set in a lush green landscape. The lines connect a large black pit with what appear to be landing piers. The drawing seems to be some sort of a map–but exactly what we are looking at requires further explanation.

  • 1 “Schülerzeichnungen von Bong Town in Liberia,” Unsere ATH: Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen-Hütt (...)
  • 2 Quotes originally in German and translated by the author.

2The map was published in December 1969 as an illustration in the company magazine Unsere ATH (“Our ATH”) published by the German steel concern August Thyssen Hütte.1 On the same page, we see a compilation of another set of smaller drawings showing all kinds of scenes. Several depict children seen through window frames and looking at a passing car. At the same time, others show some built structures and cyclists but also conifer forests and different natural landscapes populated by people and animals. In the bottom left corner of the spread, a photo depicts several White children in a bright classroom together with a number of adults (one Black, several White). Some of them might well be their teachers, while others are perhaps their parents, invited to visit an exhibition of their children’s creative work. The article explains the context of this dense, multifaceted and, in its multitude, slightly chaotic arrangement to the reader as the drawings made in an art class at the expat school of ATH’s Bong Mining Company (BMC) iron ore mine in Liberia. It states that the “boys and girls of the German school branch” living in Bong with their parents working for the BMC “drew especially eagerly this year.”2 In the article, a German teacher in Bong dedicates particular attention to the elongated drawing of the map, providing a starting point for its interpretation:

“‘From the pit to the port’—that is the title of the image above, created as a collaborative work by several pupils. It shows the pupils' connectedness with the Bong Range industrial enterprise and their African environment. The ore path leads from the open pit through the crusher into the processing… The quartz crystal sits in the tailing pond, and the surplus water flows to Monrovia. The iron ore reaches Monrovia via the railway, where the ore ships wait in the port. The laterite road leads from Bong Town to Kakata where it joins the asphalt road to Monrovia.”

  • 3 The third-party funded project “Conquering (with) Concrete. German Construction Companies as Globa (...)

3The teacher reads the map in terms of connectedness between the BMC site and the port in Monrovia, describing the lines in the drawing as trajectories along which people and goods are on the move. While doing fieldwork in the area in April 2021, in the context of an ongoing research project entitled “Conquering with Concrete: German Construction Companies as Global Players in Local Contexts,”3 we could observe the continuity of this connectedness. In the past two decades, this teacher and a number of former pupils, from Germany and elsewhere in Europe, have travelled back to Liberia. They wanted to confront their memories of the iron ore mine and the surrounding settlement with what remained. Landing at Robertsfield International Airport, they drove to Kakata and then to Bong Mines. The road has been asphalted in the last decade by the Chinese company that, since 2009, has held the still active concession. In Bong Mines, the visitors confront the vestiges of the mining town, built over time by a joint venture of German, Italian, and American construction companies. Now partially hidden under lush vegetation, it borders on a lively Liberian farming town.

Figure 2: Center of the town Bong Mines in 2021 with the bus station and market hall built initially by the BMC.

Figure 2: Center of the town Bong Mines in 2021 with the bus station and market hall built initially by the BMC.

Source: Photo taken during research at site in April 2021.

  • 4 Tom Avermaete, “Excavating the Company Town. Small Moroccan mining cities in European archives,” i (...)
  • 5 Examples are Jeannette Sordi, Luis Valenzuela and Felipe Vera (eds.), The Camp and the City: Terri (...)
  • 6 There are some exceptions. One is the recent book by anthropologist Danny Hoffman, Monrovia Modern (...)

4In recent years, architectural historians working on Africa have started to engage more with the infrastructural side of the twentieth century’s built production on the continent, as it counts for a significant part of the post/colonial built legacy. The architecture of mining towns, for instance, has received some scholarly attention.4 Also, in the context of other geographies, researchers have engaged in mapping extraction sites to gain a better spatial understanding of mining’s crucial contribution to technological and industrial development.5 The BMC mining site in Liberia offers an interesting case in this respect (also given the minimal attention the architectural legacy in Liberia has received so far in architectural history).6

5I shall demonstrate that the children’s map drawing offers an apt entry point for developing a multilayered discussion of productive landscapes of post/colonial Africa. Various dimensions of the children’s painting can be juxtaposed with the planning of the settlement and the current functioning of the town. First, I present the drawn social-spatial (dis)connections in the center of the map. Second, I discuss how everyday life in the built environment of Bong becomes visible only through the context of the map. Third, I explore how this historical mental mapping, with its intertwined legacies in collective memories (perhaps as lieux de mémoire), relates to the currently prevailing representations of Bong. In conclusion, I reflect on how the history of the BMC in Liberia makes it possible to connect the built environment to the interactions of diverse actors across different layers of time.

  • 7 Arthur J. Knoll, “Firestone’s Labor Policy, 1924-1939,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, (...)
  • 8 e.g. Karl Bruno, “The Government’s Business? Swedish Foreign Policy and Commercial Mineral Interes (...)

6Such a reading of the spatial and material aspects of the BMC site complements the newly emerging scholarship on the presence, activities, and legacies of industrial companies in Africa, and Liberia in particular. In the past, studies of Liberia’s political economy, whether they focused on the dominant role of the Firestone rubber plantations or analyzed other international investments, strongly reflected Marxist perspectives.7 Historical studies on the BMC are missing altogether. However, the Swedish-American concern LAMCO has garnered some interest in international political and economic history.8

  • 9 Killian Doherty and Edward Lawrenson, Uppland (2018).
  • 10 Gregg Mitman, Empire of Rubber. Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia, New York, NY: (...)

7Currently, two perspectives on LAMCO and Firestone are particularly relevant to my interpretation of the children’s map. On the one hand, Killian Doherty’s documentary Uppland deals with the gap between the image of LAMCO’s mining town as a modernist settlement and the grievances of the Liberian population, protesting both the destructiveness of the mining operation and its eventual discontinuation.9 Meanwhile, Gregg Mitman analyzes the transformation processes in the environment of international investments. Mitman connects the Firestone plantation and the question of land as a central operative category for Liberians to understand Liberia’s environmental and social history, with a particular focus on matters of health and race. In so doing, he accounts for contestations and complicities (as well as the process of memory-making).10 The case study of the BMC links well to such work and highlights the influences and interactions shaping the footprints of transnational companies in the “Global South” more broadly.

(Building) The site of the Bong Mining Company

  • 11 Claus N. A. Siebel, Rainer Haus, Wolfgang Jacobs and Heinz Baur, Die Eisenerzbergbau-Gesellschaft (...)

8A German-directed European-Liberian consortium set up the Bong Mining Company concession under the unquestioned leadership of the August Thyssen Hütte in 1958. Located in the Bong mountain range in the Liberian hinterland, only around 90 km from Monrovia, the iron ore mine, the mining settlement, and the transport infrastructures were completed in 1965. Thanks to the German managers’ Wirtschaftswunder optimism, the mining operation was repeatedly expanded between the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among other things, a pelletizer plant was added. The structures were built by joint ventures of construction companies led by the German general contractors Grün&Bilfinger and Philipp Holzmann. Still, contracts were also handed to Italian partners, such as Imprese Italiane All’Estero or Baselli Bertani and to the US company Raymond International, which had operated in Liberia for decades. Scandinavian companies initially supplied the pre-fabricated parts for the houses in the mining settlement.11

9The mine was planned together with large settlements. Some of them were designed to house the exclusively Liberian “workers” (company terminology). They were located closer to the mine. Others were designed for the mostly international “employees” (again, company terminology) (figs. 3, 4, and 5). The company built spacious bungalows for its senior staff. Junior staff were housed in more modest family homes and single men in shared living units. Workers inhabited row houses. All of this reflected a multi-layered hierarchy of assumed entitlements and needs. For example, there was some question as to whether the kitchen should connect to the living room or to the outside. In any case, the BMC provided more generous workers’ housing than the Swedish-American LAMCO concession. Central institutions, such as the hospital, the school, and the Lutheran church, were located between the two settlements.

Figure 3: 1962 plan of the Bong Mining concession.

Figure 3: 1962 plan of the Bong Mining concession.

Plan of the Bong Mining concession, with the actual mining complex on the right side, the workers’ settlement on the upper left part, and the international colony in the lower left part. The hospital was eventually built opposite the church, between the two settlements.

Source: Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, A 31079.

Figure 4: Layout of a junior staff house with three bedrooms, here drawn in 1976 as part of the expansion of the mine.

Figure 4: Layout of a junior staff house with three bedrooms, here drawn in 1976 as part of the expansion of the mine.

Source: Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, Expl. 01022.

Figure 5: Layout of company provided workers’ housing, as part of the 1968 expansion of the mine.

Figure 5: Layout of company provided workers’ housing, as part of the 1968 expansion of the mine.

Source: Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, Expl. 01020.

  • 12 A mental map can be described as the drawing of a cognitive map. A foundational book was Kevin A. (...)
  • 13 Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, “Mental Maps. Die kognitive Kartierung des Kontinents als Forschungsgege (...)

10The 1969 children’s drawing contrasts with the historical and more conventional maps and architectural drawings described above, and differs from our fieldnote documentation on the site’s current spatial and architectural characteristics (including photographs and records of interviews). It offers not just an evocative depiction of the actual site, but also highlights the notions of “connectedness” and “environment” linked to it. As such, it can be analyzed as a “mental map” by the expat pupils of the mining complex.12 The study of mental maps in psychology and geography primarily investigates personal conceptions of immediate environments, like ways to school. Historical research into mental maps, on the other hand, is commonly more concerned with representations of social-spatial connections beyond the experiential borders of the individual.13 A perspective from architectural history is particularly well-suited to overcoming these disciplinary limitations and uncovering how immediate and broader subjectivities as described above connect through the built environment.

What appears on the map: Interlinkages

11Both on the mental map and in the remaining industrialized landscape of Bong Mines, the mining pit is a dominating element. In this extraction site, the idea conceived by the German steel tycoons in the early 1960s materialized, as the steel companies pursued the strategy of directly controlling their iron ore supplies. Liberia, following its “conservative road to development” and granting concession rights to international companies, seemed like a convenient partner that would not “intrude.”

  • 14 Compare James Fergusson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambia (...)
  • 15 Thomas Hendriks points out that multinational corporations still try to establish enclaves and the (...)

12Overall, the arguably late-colonial drive of the German managers to control an African resource base went hand in hand with neglect for, or even ignorance about, the interlinkages in which the mine was enmeshed. Since the town possessed all the necessary infrastructure, it needed no assistance from the Liberian state. Instead, it could function as an autonomous enclave.14 Moreover, the managers believed in the illusion of their mining concession as a social and political enclave. In their opinion, the mine could produce ore without acknowledging the Liberian social context and accommodating the Liberian government’s demands to take an active part in the operation. This became quite clear during the period following the oil crisis (especially after 1975) when Liberian political strife spilled over to the mine. Management struggled to navigate these crises that repeatedly interrupted production and transport. They were a threat to the mine’s viability long before the Liberian civil war led to the mine’s closure in 1990.15

13In contrast to the enclave perspective of the German managers, the children’s map of 1969 reflects a clear attention to the infrastructural connections between the mine in the hinterland and the coast. It exposes the mining operation to its Liberian surroundings. At the same time, the coastal city of Monrovia is absent from the map, and the emphasis is clearly on the company’s port and airport (fig. 6). Flights from Monrovia connected the BMC to the German company headquarters in Düsseldorf. At the same time, company-owned ships transported the ore to Rotterdam, where it was sent further to the Ruhr valley.

Figure 6: Detail of the children’s map showing the port and the airport.

Figure 6: Detail of the children’s map showing the port and the airport.

Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.

14In the view suggested in the children’s map, the mine pit itself is not the indisputable focus of the entire mining chain. Instead, transport lines and other links—or the absence of links—emerge as decisive. The port appears as a gravitational centre of equal importance, a counterpart, to the mine in the hinterland, while the immediate environment of the port in Monrovia moves into the background. The depiction of the port as a nodal point in this map ties in directly with my ongoing research on West African ports as major incisions of globalization, in which I examine the social-economic configurations to which these ports related in co-dependency.16

  • 17 In these instances, notably the Doe coup of 1980, the coup attempt of 1985 or strikes in December (...)

15Following this perspective, the port and the transport lines in the 1969 children’s map appear as useful inroads to study developments at the mine and try to understand how its local and global history were expressed in its connections. In fact, upholding these infrastructures was crucial to maintaining the mine, and the personal livelihood of the personnel. The connections acquired decisive importance on several occasions, for instance during coups d’état, curfews imposed by martial law, or strikes around the railroad and port.17 At the same time, these transport lines could not function without the daily work of operation and maintenance, of dredging the port or repairing bridges. These tasks deserve their own focus.

What emerges from the map: Living environments

16The depiction in the children’s drawing of the BMC site’s connectivity mainly through the airport and the port, can, of course, also be understood by the fact that they were the trajectories with which these expat pupils would have been most familiar from personal experience. The city of Monrovia would not have been part of their living environment. As a depiction of this living environment, their drawing represents the lived distance between Bong and the capital. Bong’s remoteness at the end of the laterite road, suggested by a thick, brown line, is overemphasized.

17Moreover, it is striking that the pupils’ map dedicated most attention to different mining connections, instead of taking a closer view on their immediate living environment. The BMC settlement itself is only indicated by a few detached or semi-detached houses close to the mining facilities. They might represent junior staff housing (fig. 4). The more spacious homes of the international colony and the manifold social and leisure facilities, such as the swimming pool, which shaped the pupils immediate and everyday living conditions, are not displayed. This becomes especially clear in the comparison with the map of the Bong site presented above. It shows how the international settlement to the south, with its many amenities, is set apart from the mining facilities.

  • 18 On hybrid housing typologies in the case of Guinea-Bissau see Geraldo Pina, “Popular Architecture (...)

18Remarkably, much attention is given in the children’s map to different clusters of dwellings,18 representing housing the Liberian workers built for themselves (fig. 7). However, the dwellings of Liberians outside the mining concession are also shown (fig. 8). One settlement depicted on the children’s map, in fact, stretches on both sides of the river around an island (fig. 8, lower left corner). This reflects the core of Liberian life along the St. Paul’s River in the region before the mining site was developed. As a senator’s residence, this community remained a center of Liberian decision-making. Another settlement on a side road lies next to rubber plantations (fig. 8, middle section), whereas the vegetation seems to be much richer elsewhere and dominated by palm oil trees.

Figure 7: Detail of the children’s map depicting the mining operation, alongside company-owned junior staff housing and independently built housing.

Figure 7: Detail of the children’s map depicting the mining operation, alongside company-owned junior staff housing and independently built housing.

Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.

Figure 8: Detail of the children’s map depicting African housing outside the mining concession.

Figure 8: Detail of the children’s map depicting African housing outside the mining concession.

Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.

Figure 9: Section of the early site plan of 1962.

Figure 9: Section of the early site plan of 1962.

The south-side settlement is the employees’, while the one to the north is where the workers resided. They are separated from each other by the church and the headquarters of the mine. Later, the hospital was built in the area between the settlements.

Source: Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, A 31079.

Figure 10: One of two large swimming pools surrounded by overgrown vegetation.

Figure 10: One of two large swimming pools surrounded by overgrown vegetation.

It is located next to the clubhouse and the sports playing fields indicated on the 1962 plan.

Source: Photo taken during research at site in April 2021.

19Central among the missing elements from the children’s everyday life in the 1969 map is also the school where the map was in fact painted. The international school, one of the biggest buildings in the compound, was located in the center of the staff settlement (see fig. 9). As an institution, the school in Bong was also the site of relatively strict division, still based on racial segregation. This binary structure in town life, divided between the African population and the international colony (often abbreviated as Liberian-German), was relative rather than absolute. It is mirrored by the two teachers in the photograph of the classroom included in the Unsere ATH magazine article (see fig. 1). More broadly, the Liberian-German character of the company as a whole is illustrated by the additional pupils’ paintings included in the spread. Some depict one of the frequent visits of the Liberian president to what he regarded as his prestige project, as the article notes. Lastly, other paintings also refer to different locations that were part of the children’s lives at the BMC site, like the movie theater.

  • 19 Ute Schneider, “Dimensions of remapping: Heinrich Schiffers and his mental map of Africa,” Journal (...)

20Altogether, it seems that the expat pupils omitted their own presence and their privileged living environment. At the same time, they considered Liberian surroundings in detail, including economic and living patterns. This viewpoint raises the question as to the degree to which the pupils reflected contemporarily prevalent mental perspectives on Africa.19 They represented Bong as a well-connected place, countering perceptions of remoteness. However, their depiction captures the extractive logic of the overall mining project, while the focus on the traditional forms of dwellings or the natural environment still echoes contemporarily common notions of the exotic Africa.

21The ambiguity of the children’s choices for this map-drawing assignment received from their teachers eventually leads us to wonder how much the pupils perceived themselves as actually part of life at the mine, even though many resided there throughout their childhood. They usually returned only with their parents or when they were sent to a boarding school in Germany as teenagers. For them, life in Bong then turned into a set of memories still under active renegotiation as will be highlighted below.

The map as an indicator of lieux de mémoire, or realms of memory

  • 20 The concept of lieux de mémoire was pioneered by Pierre Nora. Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de mémoire, P (...)

22One wonders how the local African pupils in the Liberian school branch in the workers’ settlement would have depicted the mining complex in their own mental mapping. Yet no such paintings are available. An alternative source provides insights into how the site was viewed and imagined by the African population: spatially fixed memory expressions of the mine. These are currently appearing as part of the ongoing act of mentally mapping Bong’s historical geography. While doing fieldwork, we were interested in what constituted “lieux de mémoire” for those currently inhabiting the site. At the same time, in our research, we are also interested to learn more about how former expats remember their lives there and whether these memories are anchored to specific spaces and buildings of the BMC site.20

  • 21 Aleida Assmann argues for the existence of collective memory through discourses marking boundary l (...)

23When were doing fieldwork in Bong and determining what stands at the center of the collective memory,21 spaces of education, including the possibilities of schooling and vocational training, were especially prominent. BMC focused on worker training in part because it would be cheaper for the company to run the mine with Liberian labor. Doing so would also satisfy requests from the Liberian government to “Liberianize” the workforce. A troubling element lost from sight, however, is how school education and vocational training during the heyday of the mining activities were linked to racial and social hierarchies. This racial and social discrimination could lead to conflicts between educated Liberian staff and German superiors with less formal education.

  • 22 See the series of books Mémoires lieux de savoir. Archives congolaises, edited by Donatien Dibwe d (...)

24For Liberians today, the structures of everyday life are the primary shapers of memories of Bong and the mine. Many of our Liberian respondents recalled the mine as a site of job security and material opportunity. Liberian former workers pointed to BMC’s well-stocked supermarket as a convenience they enjoyed. The memory of secure work at the mine, of their own housing, and the once-existent social infrastructure remain strong as well. This leads to a prevailing sense of nostalgia. The longing for the past feeds on the gap between depictions of the past and the hardships or unfulfilled hopes of life in the present; for example, the deficient state of the hospital. Capacity has been reduced sharply, and the hospital is in abysmal condition. Most of the equipment, often originally supplied by the BMC, is in a state of disrepair. The Liberian government is struggling to supply the hospital with basic goods, such as protective masks. All of this resonates strongly with the feelings revealed by memory work in similar mining environments, like the Congolese city of Lubumbashi. Researchers investigated what constitutes lieux de mémoire for the current inhabitants of that city, known as Lushois. They, too, experienced deindustrialization as a loss, and a social crisis provoking emotions like rage.22

  • 23 See the group “I lived in Bong Town (Bong Mine), Liberia West Africa” on Facebook. URL: https://ww (...)
  • 24 See for instance Thomas Hendriks’s work on a logging company in today’s DR Congo. Thomas Hendriks, (...)

25Bong became a lieu de mémoire of exotic experiences for the international community as well, a perspective that gained another layer with the abrupt end of mining in 1990. The members of the German community, many of whom grew up as pupils in Bong, frequently express their memories of leisure activities, be they fishing trips or hot afternoons at the pool.23 They mourn for their now completely overgrown bungalows as generous housing and therefore remember life in Liberia as materially richer than in Germany, again something that relates to forms of expat self-making at work in similar contexts.24 Social infrastructures or work security per se are not perceived as unique features of the time spent in Liberia, however.

  • 25 Thomas Hendriks also shows how landscapes embed different memory interpretations. See Ibid., p. 76

26Both groups have established their living environment around the BMC as a lieu de mémoire, joining a chorus but putting markedly different emphasis. The side-by-side of Liberians and Germans on dedicated social media platforms might be perceived as a shared experience. In fact, it is often quite disconnected and runs instead in parallel.25 During our field research, a young passerby volunteered to lead us to the remnants of one of the public swimming pools. They were by no means easily accessible or visible in the topography. The passerby’s ability shows how unusable vestiges of life with the BMC also become part of the mental maps of the younger generation in Bong Mines.

Conclusions: How to write a history of the Bong Mining Company

  • 26 For the resilient marks of infrastructure in the post-colonial built environment, see Ana Vaz Milh (...)
  • 27 Linda Shopes, “Oral History,” in Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (eds.), The SAGE Handbook (...)

27Reflections on blind spots of the presented sources and memory perspectives with regards to “local” Liberian environments and “global” connections of broader racial segregation and German mining interests can be a useful starting point for writing the history of the BMC. On the one hand, one has to ask which fundamental social, economic, and political structures shaped the history of the mining complex, as exemplified by what was “on the map.” On the other hand, this history should give room to the immediate living environments created by the mine and clarify which connections and separations appear regarding the lives of different communities involved.26 As I have demonstrated in this text, to start writing alternative histories, we might use less obvious sources, such as a children’s map. They can provide good entry points for a multilayered analysis of particular sites. While conventional maps are relevant to thinking spatially about places and can help us understand interlinkages, mobilities, borders, and frontiers at work, mental maps push us to assess them more profoundly. The focus on memory perspectives briefly discussed above underlined how Liberians and Germans have placed themselves differently within the built environment of Bong at different moments of the (former) mine’s long-term history until today, making changing mental maps of Bong explicit, beyond the children’s map presented. This attention to the spatial, be it physical or imagined, is intrinsic to maps, and it is essential to balance indispensable oral history accounts connecting past and present perspectives.27

  • 28 Gregg Mitman, Empire of Rubber, op. cit. (note 10).

28Following the suggestions drawn from these perspectives, it would be helpful to focus further on the question of how life trajectories in Bong, as well as its institutions and infrastructures, interacted in the built environment. One possibility would be to follow the Liberian and German pupils’ and teachers’ perspectives regarding the school as a central institution situated within the settlement, but outside the mining complex itself. Here Mitman’s takes on the health facilities and matters of land in the case of Firestone might inspire. Still, such an analysis would benefit from being more precise than Mitman in localizing a specific space in town life where individuals’ perspectives and larger structures overlap.28 The sharper focus would then account for the dynamic changes in Bong’s history and Liberian aspirations. As I have tried to highlight in this discussion of the BMC site, it might demonstrate how we can gain a profound and fundamental understanding of the ways the global and the local interact in space and time—even if the source material is a remote site and an easily overlooked source like a children’s drawing.

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Notes

1 “Schülerzeichnungen von Bong Town in Liberia,” Unsere ATH: Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen-Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.

2 Quotes originally in German and translated by the author.

3 The third-party funded project “Conquering (with) Concrete. German Construction Companies as Global Players in Local Contexts” (01/2020-12/2024), led by Monika Motylinska, funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung Freigeist Fellowship, is based at the research department Contemporary History and Archive of the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Erkner, Germany and associated with the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. URL: https://leibniz-irs.de/forschung/projekte/projekt/conquering-with-concrete-german-construction-companies-as-global-players-in-local-contexts. Accessed 14 October 2022.

4 Tom Avermaete, “Excavating the Company Town. Small Moroccan mining cities in European archives,” in Claudine Piaton, Ezio Godoli and David Peyceré (eds.), Building beyond the Mediterranean: Studying the Archives of European Businesses (1860-1970), Arles: Honoré Clair, 2012. URL: https://books.openedition.org/inha/12739?lang=en. Accessed 14 October 2022; Kim De Raedt, “New Town Fria (GN),” DASH: Delft Architectural Studies on Housing, no. 12/13, 2016, p. 173-184, accessible online: https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/dash/article/view/5019. Accessed 14 October 2022.

5 Examples are Jeannette Sordi, Luis Valenzuela and Felipe Vera (eds.), The Camp and the City: Territories of Extraction, Trento: LISt Lab, 2017; Pierre Bélanger, Landscape as infrastructure: a base primer, Abingdon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017.

6 There are some exceptions. One is the recent book by anthropologist Danny Hoffman, Monrovia Modern: Urban Form and Political Imagination in Liberia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Uppland, a 2018 documentary by Edward Lawrenson and Killian Doherty, explores the ruination of the mining town of Yekepa in the Nimba Mountains; Philipp Meuser and Adil Dalbai (eds.), Architectural Guide: Sub-Saharan Africa, Berlin: Dom Publishers, 2021, 7 vols., deals with the Liberian built heritage in a brief chapter, Elijah Karnley and Anthony Morgan (eds.) in volume 3: “Western Africa: Along the Atlantic Sea Coast”.

7 Arthur J. Knoll, “Firestone’s Labor Policy, 1924-1939,” Liberian Studies Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, 1991, p. 49-75; also see Robert Kappel and Werner Korte (eds.), Liberia: Underdevelopment and Political Rule in a Peripheral Society, Hamburg: Institut für Afrika-Kunde, 1986 (Arbeiten aus dem Institut für Afrika-Kunde, 50), and contemporary publications of the Liberia Working Group in Bremen.

8 e.g. Karl Bruno, “The Government’s Business? Swedish Foreign Policy and Commercial Mineral Interests in Liberia, 1955-1980,” Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 43, no. 5, 2018, p. 624-645.

9 Killian Doherty and Edward Lawrenson, Uppland (2018).

10 Gregg Mitman, Empire of Rubber. Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia, New York, NY: The New Press, 2021.

11 Claus N. A. Siebel, Rainer Haus, Wolfgang Jacobs and Heinz Baur, Die Eisenerzbergbau-Gesellschaft Bong Mining Company in Liberia, West Afrika, 1955-1990, Düsseldorf: Stahleisen, 2000. For the construction period see Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, A 31079, Quartalsabschluss der Bong Mining Company zum 30. September 1963.

12 A mental map can be described as the drawing of a cognitive map. A foundational book was Kevin A. Lynch, The Image of the City, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1960. Lynch used mental maps to identify nodes, paths or landmarks, and claimed that perceptions are partial, fragmentary and mixed with other concerns. For a recent introduction from a humanities perspective, see Norbert Götz and Janne Holmén (eds.), “Introduction to the theme issue,” Journal of Cultural Geography, vol. 35 no. 2, special issue Mental maps. Geographical and historical perspectives, 2018, p. 157-161. With respect to apparent processes of identity- and community-making, see the literature linked to the “Metromod: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile” research project, Munich 2022. URL: https://metromod.net/. Accessed 3 August 2021.

13 Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, “Mental Maps. Die kognitive Kartierung des Kontinents als Forschungsgegenstand der europäischen Geschichte,” Europäische Geschichte Online, 5 June 2013. URL: http://ieg-ego.eu/de/threads/theorien-und-methoden/mental-maps/frithjof-benjamin-schenk-mental-maps-die-kognitive-kartierung-des-kontinents-als-forschungsgegenstand-der-europaeischen-geschichte#section_2. Accessed 14 October 2022.

14 Compare James Fergusson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012 (Perspectives on Southern Africa, 57); Johannes Knierzinger, “Mining Towns as Portals of Globalization. The Arrival of the Global Aluminum Industry in West Africa,” Comparativ, vol. 27, no. 3-4, 2017, p. 94-110. URL: https://www.comparativ.net/v2/article/download/1671/1444/. Accessed 14 October 2022.

15 Thomas Hendriks points out that multinational corporations still try to establish enclaves and thereby detach from the regional dynamics in which they are operating. Thomas Hendriks, Rainforest Capitalism: Power and Masculinity in a Congolese Timber Concession, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022, p. 116-117.

16 See my PhD project in the “Conquering (with) Concrete” research project. URL: https://leibniz-irs.de/forschung/projekte/projekt/conquering-with-concrete-german-construction-companies-as-global-players-in-local-contexts. Accessed 14 October 2022.

17 In these instances, notably the Doe coup of 1980, the coup attempt of 1985 or strikes in December 1987 and October 1988, the “sticky entanglements” with local responsibilities and the “unfinished,” “partially failing” character of attempts to establish enclaves become especially clear. Thomas Hendriks, Rainforest Capitalism, op. cit. (note 15), p. 116-117. For the events mentioned, see Duisburg, ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, Expl. 0651, BMC Hafen, also see Claus N. A. Siebel, Rainer Haus, Wolfgang Jacobs and Heinz Baur, Die Eisenerzbergbau-Gesellschaft Bong Mining Company in Liberia, West Afrika, 1955-1990, op. cit. (note 11).

18 On hybrid housing typologies in the case of Guinea-Bissau see Geraldo Pina, “Popular Architecture between the Colonial and the Vernacular” in Philipp Meuser and Adil Dalbai (eds.), Architectural Guide Sub-Saharan Africa. 3. Western Africa: Along the Atlantic Coast, Berlin: Dom, 2021,” p. 24-31. Also see Iga Perzyna, Marie Morel, Berend van der Lans and Antoni Folkers, “Everyday Originals: Between Iconic and Vernacular Architecture,” in Philipp Meuser and Adil Dalbai (eds.), Theorising Architecture in Sub-Saharan Africa: Perspectives, Questions, and Concepts, Berlin: Dom, 2021 (Basics, 134), p. 172-175.

19 Ute Schneider, “Dimensions of remapping: Heinrich Schiffers and his mental map of Africa,” Journal of Cultural Geography, vol. 35, no. 2, 2018, p. 162-188. DOI: 10.1080/08873631.2018.1426951.

20 The concept of lieux de mémoire was pioneered by Pierre Nora. Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de mémoire, Paris: Gallimard,1984-1992 (Bibliothèque illustrée des histoires). Criticism of Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire as romantic, nostalgic, or nation-centered is actually mirrored in some of the memory perspectives that Bong Mines arouses. On lieux de mémoire, see Marc Crinson (ed.), “Urban Memory — an Introduction,” in Urban Memory: History and Amnesia in the Modern City, London; New York: Routledge 2005; Cornelia Siebeck, “Erinnerungsorte, Lieux de Mémoire,” Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 2 March 2017, URL: http://docupedia.de/zg/Siebeck_erinnerungsorte_v1_de_2017. Accessed 14 October 2022.

21 Aleida Assmann argues for the existence of collective memory through discourses marking boundary lines as well as exclusion and inclusion. Aleida Assmann, “Memory, Individual and Collective,” in Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science).

22 See the series of books Mémoires lieux de savoir. Archives congolaises, edited by Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu and Bogumil Jewsiwicki, in particular Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu and Bogumil Jewsiwicki, Le Travail hier et aujourd’hui. Mémoires de Lubumbashi, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004. Johannes Knierzinger’s work, largely based on interviews, shows how comparable experiences have recently been in the making, following a mine’s closure due to workers’ protests in Fria. Johannes Knierzinger, “Fria in Guinea: A Dismissed Bauxite Town,” Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien, vol. 16, 2016, p. 137-160. URL: https://stichproben.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_stichproben/Artikel/Nummer30/Stichproben_30_07_Knierzinger.pdf. Accessed 14 October 2022.

23 See the group “I lived in Bong Town (Bong Mine), Liberia West Africa” on Facebook. URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5098344805. Accessed 23 June 2022; For similar kinds of platforms where former colonials/expats share their memories, see Madalena Cunha Matos, Johan Lagae and Rachel Lee, “Digital lieux de mémoire: Connecting history and remembrance through the Internet,” ABE, no. 3, 2013, special issue Colonial Today, DOI: 10.4000/abe.568

24 See for instance Thomas Hendriks’s work on a logging company in today’s DR Congo. Thomas Hendriks, “A darker shade of white: expat self-making in a Congolese rainforest enclave,” Africa, vol. 87, no. 4, 2017, p. 683-701; Thomas Hendriks, Rainforest Capitalism, op cit. (note 15).

25 Thomas Hendriks also shows how landscapes embed different memory interpretations. See Ibid., p. 76.

26 For the resilient marks of infrastructure in the post-colonial built environment, see Ana Vaz Milheiro’s project, “Coast to Coast – Late Portuguese Infrastructural Development in Continental Africa (Angola and Mozambique): Critical and Historical Analysis and Postcolonial Assessment,” URL: https://www.dinamiacet.iscte-iul.pt/research-projects/Collective/Late-Portuguese-Infrastructural-Development-in-Continental-Africa-%28Angola-and-Mozambique%29%3A-Critical-and-Historical-Analysis-and-Postcolonial-Assessment. Accessed 14 October 2022.

27 Linda Shopes, “Oral History,” in Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2011, p. 452-455.

28 Gregg Mitman, Empire of Rubber, op. cit. (note 10).

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: The children’s drawings from Bong Town published in the company magazine of August Thyssen-Hütte.
Crédits Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 989k
Titre Figure 1a: The main children’s map from the pages of Unsere ATH.
Crédits Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,2M
Titre Figure 2: Center of the town Bong Mines in 2021 with the bus station and market hall built initially by the BMC.
Crédits Source: Photo taken during research at site in April 2021.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 319k
Titre Figure 3: 1962 plan of the Bong Mining concession.
Légende Plan of the Bong Mining concession, with the actual mining complex on the right side, the workers’ settlement on the upper left part, and the international colony in the lower left part. The hospital was eventually built opposite the church, between the two settlements.
Crédits Source: Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, A 31079.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 693k
Titre Figure 4: Layout of a junior staff house with three bedrooms, here drawn in 1976 as part of the expansion of the mine.
Crédits Source: Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, Expl. 01022.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 562k
Titre Figure 5: Layout of company provided workers’ housing, as part of the 1968 expansion of the mine.
Crédits Source: Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, Expl. 01020.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 711k
Titre Figure 6: Detail of the children’s map showing the port and the airport.
Crédits Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 369k
Titre Figure 7: Detail of the children’s map depicting the mining operation, alongside company-owned junior staff housing and independently built housing.
Crédits Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 572k
Titre Figure 8: Detail of the children’s map depicting African housing outside the mining concession.
Crédits Source: Unsere ATH, Werkzeitschrift der August Thyssen Hütte AG, December 1969, p. 24-25.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 584k
Titre Figure 9: Section of the early site plan of 1962.
Légende The south-side settlement is the employees’, while the one to the north is where the workers resided. They are separated from each other by the church and the headquarters of the mine. Later, the hospital was built in the area between the settlements.
Crédits Source: Duisburg (Germany), ThyssenKrupp Corporate Archives, A 31079.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 533k
Titre Figure 10: One of two large swimming pools surrounded by overgrown vegetation.
Légende It is located next to the clubhouse and the sports playing fields indicated on the 1962 plan.
Crédits Source: Photo taken during research at site in April 2021.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13347/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 595k
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Paul Sprute, « “From the Pit to the Port”. Navigating the Bong Mining Company site in Liberia through a children’s drawing »ABE Journal [En ligne], 20 | 2022, mis en ligne le 31 octobre 2022, consulté le 11 novembre 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/13347 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.13347

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Paul Sprute

Research Associate, Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS), Erkner, Germany Orcid ID: 0000-0001-6853-9924

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