Introduction: “Congo Atrocities!!!”

standardised means of palm oil production, engineered in public agronomic stations, did not reap their expected yields once implemented in Leverville. These three case studies show how attempts to make colonial and capitalist endeavours “ legal ” and “ rational ” could overlook local particularities. They illustrate how projects imagined to be enforced in a vacuum of undiscerned “ otherness ” bore the fruits of their own failures.