Hydrography and Navigation on the Congo River: A Century of Visual History

The author, a Belgian Land Surveyor, has a lifelong, technical affiliation with rivers. First as a teenager cruising on the Dutch Waterways and later investigating and publishing about the post-war expansion of the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, his hometown. Even since living in Canada, he did not give up on his Low Countries roots. His first books concerned inundating large tracts of land to stop an invading army -- a very appropriate subject in today's geopolitical environment. His latest book told the story of a failed attempt to build the first hydropower dam in his adopted Canadian Province of Saskatchewan. With this new project, he returns to Belgium and its once colony, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He analyses a century of hydraulic research and navigation in Central Africa. With his knack for drafting, the story brims with custom-made maps and charts depicting the evolution of water transport in the Congo River basin. Along the way, he tells the forgotten story of howthe Congo almost became a land-locked country and, with his lifelong knowledge of Historic River Engineering, he even proposes a plan to vastly enhance the nautical access to this great and promising African country.

作者是一位比利時土地測量師，與河流有著終身的技術關聯。首先，他在青少年時期駕駛船隻遊覽荷蘭水道，後來則研究並發表有關安特衛普-布魯日港口戰後擴張的文章，這是他的故鄉。即使在加拿大生活，他也沒有放棄自己低地國家的根基。他的第一本書探討了淹沒大片土地以阻止入侵軍隊的主題——在當今的地緣政治環境中，這是一個非常合適的題材。他的最新著作講述了在他所採納的加拿大薩斯喀徹溫省建造第一座水力發電大壩的失敗嘗試。透過這個新項目，他回到了比利時及其曾經的殖民地，如今的剛果民主共和國。他分析了中非一個世紀以來的水利研究和航運。憑藉他出色的繪圖能力，故事中充滿了定制的地圖和圖表，描繪了剛果河流域水運的演變。在這個過程中，他講述了被遺忘的故事，說明了剛果如何差點成為一個內陸國家，並憑藉他對歷史河流工程的終身知識，他甚至提出了一個計劃，以大幅提升這個偉大而充滿希望的非洲國家的航運通道。