Belgian Colonial Rule

Central Africa’s long history witnessed growing connections to the wider world as a result of the Atlantic slave trade and then increasing activity by East African Swahili traders and Europeans in the 1800s. Strictly speaking, the official period of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo began in 1908 and lasted until 1960, when the Congo achieved its independence. But Belgian involvement began earlier. In 1885, the United States and European states—including Belgium—recognized King Leopold II of Belgium as the sovereign of a huge state roughly contiguous with the Congo River basin called the État Indépendant du Congo, or the EIC. (Leopold II’s colony is generally called the Congo Free State in English. One sees the French term État Libre du Congo and the Dutch terms Onafhankelijke Staat Congo and Onafhankelijke Kongostaat much less frequently.) Although Leopold’s rule (1885–1908) was in many ways an international endeavor, it became increasingly Belgian over time, as the white colonial population became majority Belgian. African populations in many areas of the EIC suffered atrocities at the hands of European and African colonial agents because of Leopold II’s approach of extracting natural resources by force. Missionary and other documentation of this suffering prompted a humanitarian campaign, foreign criticism, and finally Belgian reproaches. In an unfolding of events that was anything but inevitable, Leopold ceded his colony to Belgium in 1908, after which Belgium ruled it as a colony known as the Congo Belge (Belgian Congo) until 1960. As with all colonies in Africa (with the exception of quasi-independent Liberia, under heavy US influence), the Belgian Congo was a European creation, and its borders and indeed very existence did not reflect African interests nor native ethnic, linguistic, economic, or other groups. Belgians never completely ruled all of their huge colony, but over time they intensified their administration, enacted reforms, and introduced European medical practices, Christianity, the French language, and much else. After World War I, Belgians gained Ruanda-Urundi, which Belgium governed not as the League of Nations mandate that it was but rather like another colony. In 1960, Congolese realized their independence, creating the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was renamed Zaire during the period 1971–1997. (It is today increasingly common to drop the definite article “the” before “Congo,” as in “Democratic Republic of Congo.” This article generally retains the definite article, reflecting historical nomenclature.) The dividing of what follows into the Congo Free State period, the Belgian Congo period, and the postcolonial period is somewhat arbitrary: even though 1908 and 1960 were milestones, the situation changed primarily in a juridical fashion in those years, and in important ways there was more continuity than change.