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Belgo Congo Role

What we say about the past.

This page exists because the question will be asked. Better to answer it ourselves, plainly.

Historical responsibility

The Palace of Nations in Brussels, period photochrom

Belgium and the Congo share a long, documented and painful history. Belgo Congo Role does not dispute it, does not minimise it and does not stage it.

Our position has three parts. First: historical knowledge belongs to historians, and we intend to support their work rather than replace it. Second: acknowledging the past is a starting point, not a conclusion. Third: the most durable repair takes the form of universities that cooperate, companies that invest and young people who move.

We ask nobody to give up their memory. We ask that memory be put to use.

History

A hundred and forty years, five dates.

The relationship between Belgium and the Congo has a precise chronology, and ruptures nobody disputes. We set it down as it is. What follows is not a trial: it is the necessary starting point for everything BCR undertakes.

  1. Private property

    On 1 July, Leopold II proclaimed the Congo Free State, recognised four months earlier by the Berlin Conference. The territory covered 2,345,000 square kilometres, seventy-six times the size of Belgium. It did not belong to the Belgian state. It belonged to the king personally, and would for twenty-three years.

    Political map of the Congo Free State, period engraving

  2. Belgium takes over

    The international campaign over forced labour and rubber forced Leopold II to cede control. Passed by Parliament, the Colonial Charter was promulgated on 18 October 1908; on 15 November the Congo became a Belgian colony. Its Article 2 banned forced labour for private profit. It was never enforced.

    Proclamation announcing that Belgium assumes sovereignty over the Congo Free State from 15 November 1908

  3. Independence

    The Brussels Round Table sat from 20 January to 20 February and set the timetable. Independence was proclaimed on 30 June. Within six months came the secession of Katanga, the institutional crisis, and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in January 1961.

    Patrice Lumumba in Brussels in 1960, the year of independence

  4. A commission without a conclusion

    The Belgian Parliament's special commission on the colonial past, created in July 2020, heard almost three hundred people over two and a half years and drafted a hundred and twenty-eight recommendations. On 19 December 2022, at the vote, several members walked out of the session: no official apology was adopted.

    A sitting of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives

  5. What is left to do

    What states did not conclude, institutions, universities and companies can build. BCR replaces no government and demands reparation from no one. It intends to work across the eight fields where cooperation can produce measurable results.

    Young Belgian and Congolese participants working around a seminar table

Four periods, and what they left behind

What follows does not replace the work of historians; it summarises what is established and dated, so that nobody has to take us at our word.

1885 to 1908

The Congo Free State

The Berlin Conference, held from November 1884 to February 1885, recognised Leopold II's sovereignty over the Congo basin. The king proclaimed the Congo Free State on 1 July 1885. The name misleads: the territory, 2,345,000 square kilometres, was neither free nor Belgian. It was the sovereign's personal property, and remained so for twenty-three years.

The economy rested on ivory and then rubber, extracted under quotas imposed on villages. The report of the British consul Roger Casement, published in 1904, documented the mutilations and abuses; E. D. Morel's Congo Reform Association turned it into an international campaign. A commission of inquiry appointed by Leopold II himself confirmed the substance of the findings in 1905.

A trading steamer on the Upper Congo River, around 1890

1908 to 1960

The Belgian Congo

Under pressure, Leopold II ceded the territory to Belgium. Parliament passed the Colonial Charter in August and September 1908, and the king signed it on 18 October. Its Article 2 provided that no one could be compelled to work for the profit of individuals or companies. The provision existed; it was not enforced.

For fifty years the colony was presented as a model: a health network, wide primary schooling, a powerful mining industry around the Union minière du Haut-Katanga. Higher education, however, stayed closed almost to the end. On the eve of independence the country had a handful of Congolese university graduates and not one Congolese officer in its own army.

The Matadi-Léopoldville railway winding through the hills of the Bas-Congo, period print

1960 to 1965

Independence and crisis

The Brussels Round Table sat from 20 January to 20 February 1960 and set a five-month timetable. Independence was proclaimed on 30 June 1960. Patrice Lumumba's speech, delivered before King Baudouin, broke with the agreed protocol and became the most quoted text of that day.

What followed took six months: the mutiny of the Force publique, the secession of Katanga on 11 July, United Nations intervention, Lumumba's dismissal and arrest, and his assassination on 17 January 1961. Mobutu took power in 1965 and held it for thirty-two years.

Lovanium University students marching for independence, 30 June 1960

2001 to 2022

The age of memory

In November 2001 a Belgian parliamentary commission of inquiry concluded that Belgium bore a moral responsibility in the circumstances of Lumumba's death. It was the first official acknowledgement of its kind.

On 30 June 2020, sixty years to the day after independence, King Philippe wrote to President Tshisekedi expressing his “profound regrets” for the suffering inflicted. On 17 July 2020 the Chamber set up a special commission on the colonial past. On 8 June 2022, visiting Kinshasa, the king repeated those regrets and handed the National Museum a Suku kakuungu mask, on long-term loan from the museum in Tervuren.

The commission heard almost three hundred people, travelled to the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi, and drafted a hundred and twenty-eight recommendations. On 19 December 2022, as they came to a vote, several members walked out of the session. No official apology was adopted. Two and a half years of work ended without a conclusion.

The contemporary pavilion of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren

Where this comes from

  • Colonial Charter: Act of 18 October 1908 on the government of the Belgian Congo, passed by Parliament in August and September 1908.
  • Roger Casement's report (1904) and the report of the 1905 commission of inquiry.
  • Parliamentary commission of inquiry into the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, conclusions of November 2001.
  • Chamber special commission on the colonial past (July 2020 to December 2022), 128 recommendations.
  • Letter from King Philippe to President Tshisekedi, 30 June 2020, and the Kinshasa address, 8 June 2022.

What BCR intends to support

  1. Students working together in a study kiosk on a campus
    Status: Planned

    Meetings between Belgian and Congolese researchers, academics and practitioners.

  2. Three historians in gloves examining archival documents in a reading room
    Status: Planned

    Research on the shared history of both countries.

  3. The reading room of the KU Leuven university library
    Status: Planned

    Publications that make this work available to the public.

  4. Pupils tidying their classroom
    Status: Planned

    Educational activities on this shared history.

Work done together, not work done on one another.

Collaborative research and knowledge exchange between Belgian and Congolese researchers. BCR intends to support mixed teams and jointly conducted work, from fieldwork to publication. How that support will work is still to be defined.

Research
A group of African sculptures on display