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1908–1960 Belgian colony in Central Africa
The Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. It is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Belgian Congo”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Belgian Congo (French: Congo belge, pronounced [kɔ̃ɡo bɛlʒ]; Dutch: Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. It is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition of the Congo Free State in 1885. By the end of the 19th century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908.
Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial trinity" (trinité coloniale) of state, missionary and private-company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo and that individual regions became specialised. On many occasions, the interests of the government and of private enterprise became closely linked, and the state helped companies to break strikes and to remove other barriers raised by the indigenous population. The colony was divided into hierarchically organised administrative subdivisions and run uniformly according to a set "native policy" (politique indigène). This approach differs with British indirect rule, which maintained pre-colonial political structures and chief autonomy under colonial supervision. In contrast, the Belgian system integrated chiefs into a centralized administrative framework that subordinated their power to direct state control. Although Belgian politique indigène was less centralized than the French assimilationist policy, it established administrative chiefdoms instead of preserving traditional ones.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the Belgian Congo experienced extensive urbanisation and the colonial administration began various development programmes aimed at making the territory into a "model colony". One result saw the development of a new middle-class of Europeanised African "évolués" in the cities. By the 1950s, the Congo had a wage labour force twice as large as that in any other African colony.
In 1960, as the result of a widespread and increasingly radical pro-independence movement, the Belgian Congo achieved independence, becoming the First Congolese Republic under Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and President Joseph Kasa-Vubu. Poor relations between political factions within the Congo, the continued involvement of Belgium in Congolese affairs, and the intervention by major parties (mainly the United States and the Soviet Union between the two world superpowers) during the Cold War led to a five-year-long period of war and political instability, known as the Congo Crisis, from 1960 to 1965. This ended with the seizure of power by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (later as "Mobutu Sese Seko" or simply "Mobutu") in November 1965. Mobutu established an authoritarian regime, later renaming the country, the Republic of Zaire in 1971. He ruled as a dictator for 32 years, establishing a highly centralised state with only one legal political party as the Popular Movement of the Revolution (MPR) until he was overthrown in May 1997 by the rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila during the First Congo War, following the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the conflict at the border.
Until the later part of the 19th century, few Europeans had ventured into the Congo Basin. The rainforest, swamps and accompanying tropical diseases, such as malaria and sleeping sickness, made it a difficult environment for European exploration. In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium organised the International African Association with the cooperation of the leading African explorers and the support of several European governments to promote of the exploration and colonisation of Africa. After Henry Morton Stanley had explored the region in a journey that ended in 1878, Leopold courted the explorer and hired him to help his interests in the region.
Leopold II had been keen to acquire a colony for Belgium even before he ascended to the throne in 1865. The Belgian civil government showed little interest in its monarch's dreams of empire-building. Ambitious and stubborn, Leopold decided to pursue the matter on his own account.
European rivalry in Central Africa led to diplomatic tensions, in particular with regard to the Congo Basin, which no European power had claimed. In November 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference (the Berlin Conference) to find a peaceful resolution to the Congo situation. Though the Berlin Conference did not formally approve the territorial claims of the European powers in Central Africa, it did agree on a set of rules to ensure a conflict-free partitioning of the region. The rules recognised (inter alia) the Congo Basin as a free-trade zone. But Leopold II emerged triumphant from the Berlin Conference and his single shareholder "philanthropic" organisation received a large share of territory (2,344,000 km2 (905,000 sq mi)) to be organised as the Congo Free State.
The Congo Free State operated as a corporate state, privately controlled by Leopold II through a non-governmental organisation, the International African Association. The state included the entire area of the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, and existed from 1885 until 1908, when the government of Belgium reluctantly annexed the area. Under Leopold II's administration, the Congo Free State became a humanitarian disaster.
The lack of accurate records makes it difficult to quantify the number of deaths caused by the ruthless exploitation and the lack of immunity to new diseases introduced by contact with European colonists – like the 1889–1890 influenza pandemic, which caused millions of deaths on the European continent, including Prince Baudouin of Belgium, who died in 1891. William Rubinstein wrote: "More basically, it appears almost certain that the population figures given by Hochschild are inaccurate. There is, of course, no way of ascertaining the population of the Congo before the twentieth century and estimates like 20 million are purely guesses. Most of the interior of the Congo was literally unexplored if not inaccessible." Leopold's Force Publique, a private army that terrorised natives to work as forced labour for resource extraction, disrupted local societies and killed and abused natives indiscriminately. The Force Publique also became involved in the Congo–Arab War against African and Arab slavers like Zanzibari/Swahili strongman Tippu Tip.
Following the 1904 Casement Report on misdeeds and conditions, European (British included) and US press exposed the conditions in the Congo Free State to the public in the early 1900s. In 1904 Leopold II was forced to allow an international parliamentary commission of inquiry entry to the Congo Free State. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic manoeuvres led to the end of Leopold II's personal rule and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the "Belgian Congo".
On 18 October 1908, the Belgian Parliament voted in favour of annexing the Congo as a Belgian colony. A majority of the socialists and the radicals firmly opposed this annexation and reaped electoral benefits from their anti-colonialist campaign, but some believed that the country should annex the Congo and play a humanitarian role to the Congolese population. Eventually, two Catholic MPs and half of the Liberal MPs joined the socialists in rejecting the Colonial Charter (forty-eight votes against) and nearly all the Catholics and the other half of the Liberal MP's approved the charter (ninety votes for and seven abstentions). This way, on 15 November 1908 the Belgian Congo became a colony of the Belgian Kingdom. This was after King Leopold II had given up any hope of excluding a vast region of the Congo from the government's control by attempting to maintain a substantial part of the Congo Free State as a separate crown property.
When the Belgian government took over the administration in 1908, the situation in the Congo improved in certain respects. The brutal exploitation and arbitrary use of violence, in which some of the concessionary companies had excelled, were curbed. The crime of "red rubber" was put to a stop. Article 3 of the new Colonial Charter of 18 October 1908 stated that: "Nobody can be forced to work on behalf of and for the profit of companies or privates", but this was not enforced, and the Belgian government continued to impose forced labour on the indigenous people of the area, albeit by less obvious methods.
The transition from the Congo Free State to the Belgian Congo was a turning point, but it was also marked by a considerable continuity. The last Governor-General of the Congo Free State, Baron Wahis, remained in office in the Belgian Congo, and the majority of Leopold II's administration with him. While conditions were improved somewhat relative to rule under King Leopold, reports by doctors such as Dr. Raingeard show the low importance the Belgian government placed on healthcare and basic education of the natives. Opening up the Congo and its natural and mineral riches for the Belgian economy remained the motive for colonial expansion.
The governance of the Belgian Congo was outlined in the 1908 Colonial Charter. Executive power rested with the Belgian Minister of Colonial Affairs, assisted by a Colonial Council (Conseil Colonial). Both resided in Brussels. The Belgian Parliament exercised legislative authority over the Belgian Congo.
The highest-ranking representative of the colonial administration residing in the Belgian Congo was the Governor-General. From 1886 until 1926, the Governor-General and his administration were posted in Boma, near the Congo River estuary. From 1923, the colonial capital moved to Léopoldville, some 300 km further upstream in the interior. Initially, the Belgian Congo was administratively divided into four provinces: Congo-Kasaï, Équateur, Orientale, and Katanga, each presided over by a Vice-Governor-General. An administrative reform in 1932 increased the number of provinces to six, while "demoting" the Vice-Governors-General to provincial Governors.
The territorial service was the true backbone of the colonial administration. The colony was divided into four provinces (six after the administrative reforms of 1933). Each province was in turn divided into a few districts (24 districts for the whole Congo) and each district into a handful of territories (some 130–150 territories in all; some territories were merged or split over time). A territory was managed by a territorial administrator, assisted by one or more assistants. The territories were further subdivided into numerous "chiefdoms" (chefferies), at the head of which the Belgian administration appointed "traditional chiefs" (chefs coutumiers). The territories administered by one territorial administrator and a handful of assistants were often larger than a few Belgian provinces taken together (the whole Belgian Congo was nearly 80 times larger than the whole of Belgium and was roughly twice the size of Germany and France combined). The territorial administrator was expected to inspect his territory and to file detailed annual reports with the provincial administration. The Belgian Parliament approved a transitional constitution for Belgian Congo which established a unitary constitutional monarchy with provinces having their own legislative assembly and running their own government.
In terms of the legal system, two systems co-existed: a system of European courts and one of indigenous courts (tribunaux indigènes). These indigenous courts were presided over by the traditional chiefs but had only limited powers and remained under the firm control of the colonial administration. In 1936 it was recorded that there were 728 administrators controlling the Congo from Belgium. Belgians living in the Congo had no say in the government and the Congolese did not either. No political activity was permitted in the Congo whatsoever. Public order in the colony was maintained by the Force Publique, a locally recruited army under Belgian command. It was only in the 1950s that metropolitan troops—i.e., units of the regular Belgian army—were posted in the Belgian Congo (for instance in Kamina).
The colonial state—and any authority exercised by whites in the Congo—was often referred to by the Congolese as bula matari ("break rocks"), one of the names originally given to Stanley. He had used dynamite to crush rocks when paving his way through the lower-Congo region. The term bula matari came to signify the irresistible and compelling force of the colonial state.
The Belgian Congo was directly involved in the two world wars. During World War I, an initial stand-off between the Force Publique and the German colonial army in German East Africa (Tanganyika) turned into open warfare with a joint Anglo-Belgian invasion of German colonial territory in 1916 and 1917 during the East African campaign. By 1916, the Belgian commander of the Force Publique, Lieutenant-General Charles Tombeur, had assembled an army of 15,000 men supported by local bearers – Reybrouck indicated that during the war no less than 260,000 native bearers were called upon – and advanced to Kigali (now the capital of Rwanda). Kigali was taken by 6 May 1916, and the army went on to take Tabora (now part of Tanzania) on 19 September after heavy fighting. In 1917, after Mahenge (now in Tanzania) had been conquered, the army of the Belgian Congo, by now 25,000 men, occupied one-third of German East Africa.
After World War I, under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany ceded control of the western section of the former German East Africa to Belgium, and Ruanda-Urundi would go on to become a League of Nations mandate territory, under Belgian administration. These areas did not become part of the Belgian Congo. Ruanda-Urundi would later become independent as the nations of Rwanda and Burundi, and the Belgian-controlled portions of German East Africa would join the nation of Tanganyika, followed by Tanzania.
During World War II, the Belgian Congo served as a crucial source of income for the Belgian government in exile in London after the occupation of Belgium by the Nazis. Following the occupation of Belgium by the Germans in May 1940, the Belgian Congo declared itself loyal to the Belgian government in exile in London. The Belgian Congo and the rest of the Free Belgian forces supported the war on the Allied side in the Battle of Britain with 28 pilots in the RAF (squadron 349) and in the Royal South African Air Force (350 Squadron) and in Africa. The Force Publique again participated in the Allied campaigns in Africa. Belgian Congolese forces (with Belgian officers) notably fought against the Italian colonial army in Italian East Africa, and were victorious in Asosa, Bortaï and in the Siege of Saïo under Major-general Auguste-Eduard Gilliaert during the second East African campaign of 1940–1941. On 3 July 1941, the Italian forces (under General Pietro Gazzera) surrendered when they were cut off by the Force Publique. A Congolese unit also served in the Far Eastern Theatre with the British army in the Burma campaign.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Belgian Congo”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.