Belgian colonies

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The image of Belgian colonialists was shaped by the Congo horrors

The Belgian colonies were acquired relatively late compared to the possessions of the traditional European colonial powers . Although the actual Belgian state had existed since 1830, i.e. three to four decades before the other late colonial powers (Italy united since 1861, USA finally since 1865, German Empire since 1871), Belgium lacked the war fleet necessary to secure overseas colonial possessions and the the control of colonial sales markets necessary economic power. Regardless of this, the first King of the Belgians, Leopold I , founded the Compagnie Belge de Colonization in 1841 and tried to acquire colonial property until 1855. His successor, Leopold II, pursued colonial ambitions around the world from 1865 and after 1876 initially acquired a kind of private colony with the Congo Free State , which he had to cede to Belgium after the Congo atrocities in 1908. Belgian colonial rule over the Congo ended in 1960 ( 18 colonies in Africa gained independence that year ), the mandate over Rwanda-Urundi , which had existed since 1919, in 1962.

Beginnings

Spain's regent Maria Cristina had already offered France, Great Britain and Belgium in 1837 to buy Cuba for 30 million reals, including the Philippines for 40 million reals. While France and Great Britain held back, Belgium showed interest and asked Great Britain for credit. The British Foreign Minister Henry John Palmerston warned Belgium's Ambassador Sylvain van de Weyer that Belgium was too weak economically, militarily and technically in the navy to prevent Cuban independence movements or an occupation by the USA. Should Belgium succeed in doing this with French help, Cuba would then probably lose it to France, which Great Britain and the USA would not allow. Van de Weyer therefore suggested making King Leopold I head of state of an independent Cuba that was only linked to Belgium through a personal union. Ultimately, however, the plan failed due to Belgium's inability to raise even a significant part of the purchase price. Instead, Palmerston suggested that Belgium begin establishing small settlement colonies.

Earlier Belgian colonial plans

Letters and documents in the archives of the Belgian Foreign Ministry and Foreign Trade Ministry attest to more than 50 different colonial ambitions since Leopold I in Asia, Africa, America, Oceania and even in Europe.

Africa

In terms of maritime power, the Belgian Navy had only one brig and one schooner in the 1840s and 1850s. The schooner Louise Marie appeared in front of Santo Tomás in 1842 and intervened on the Rio Nunez in 1849 (picture)
  • Abyssinia
  • Algeria
  • Guinea ( Rio Nunez , 1844-1854)
  • Madagascar
  • Malindi (1875/77)
  • Mocambique (Portuguese East Africa, 1873)
  • St. Marie
  • South African Republic (1876)

South America

  • Argentina (La Plata, Villaguay 1882–1940, Patagonia)
  • Bolivia
  • Brazil (Compagnie Belge-brésilienne under Charles van Lede in Itajaí , Santa Catarina , 1841–1875)
  • French Guiana
  • Colombia
  • Dutch Guiana
  • Paraguay
  • Peru

Central America and the Caribbean

North America

Asia

  • China (Taiwan)
  • Dutch East Indies (Java, Sumatra)
  • India
  • Japan
  • Malaysia (1866, 1876, Sarawak, Singapore)
  • Nicobar Islands
  • Philippines (1840, 1869-1875)
  • Vietnam (Tongking)
  • Cyprus

Oceania

Europe

  • Aegean Islands (1876)
  • Faroe Islands
  • Crete
  • North beach

Purchase plans

In the absence of military and political power, all Belgian attempts to establish a protective rule over smaller states (disputed between other great powers) (Texas, Hawaii) or to protect the early Flemish overseas colonies failed. Therefore, most of the later Belgian colonial ambitions were again attempts to buy different areas from the colonial powers Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden (e.g. the Philippines, New Guinea and others). France and the Netherlands were linguistically obvious, Great Britain and Portugal had monarchs related to the king, Denmark and Sweden were tired of their distant colonies.

In fact, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Spain sold parts of their colonial possessions (e.g. Gold Coast , Nicobar Islands, Saint-Barthélemy, Pacific Islands) - not to the financially weak Belgium, but to the financially stronger Great Powers Great Britain, France and Germany.

“ Nor de Spanjaarden, nor de Portugezen, nor de Hollanders zijn prepared to copy. Ik ben van plan op discrete wijze ze zien of er in Afrika iets te doen valt. (Leopold II., 1875) "

Belgian Africa

Belgian colonial property until 1960

Belgium therefore only had colonies in the center of Africa :

Other branches

Concession areas in Tientsin, the Belgian sector is marked in yellow
  • After unsuccessful attempts to gain a foothold in China and despite an initial “unequal contract” as early as 1865, Belgium was unable to acquire a colony or lease area. In 1902, however, at least in Tientsin, a trading post was established in a specially Belgian-controlled part of the foreign concession area divided between eight nations (until 1931).
  • In 1880 and 1905 Belgium was a signatory to the Madrid Convention and the Algeciras Act on Morocco. Therefore, from 1925 to 1940 and from 1945 to 1956, Belgium was one of the eight and nine nations that administered the International Zone of Tangier . The last two administrators (1954–1956) were Belgians, Belgium was also subordinate to the customs and financial administration and the gendarmerie in Tangier.
  • Before the loss of the Congo, during the International Geophysical Year 1957 , a Belgian expedition set up a research station called King Baudouin Base in Queen Maud Land in Antarctica . This was given up again in 1961, but only a few hundred meters away the Belgians built the New King Baudouin Base in 1964 , which existed until 1967. In contrast to Norway, however, Belgium did not claim territorial claims on Queen Maud Land or other parts of Antarctica. (The Belgian Princess Elisabeth Station has also been located in Queen Maud Land since 2007 , and is designed for a service life of 25 years.)

Belgian colonialism

As in Santo Tomás , Flemish emigrants in particular established the first Belgian overseas colonies
Royal crown domain (red) and areas administered by concession companies in the Congo Free State (around 1890)

During the first phase of colonial ambitions from 1842 to 1855, Leopold I turned his attention to the creation of Belgian colonies. The early attempts to establish smaller colonies overseas ( Rio Nunez , Villaguay , Santa Catarina, Santo Tomás de Castilla ) initially gave Belgium the opportunity to get rid of domestic social problems (language dispute and poverty) by emigrating mainly Flemish farmers and overpopulation in underdeveloped rural Flanders). Most of the settlers shipped from Antwerp to America contributed to the development of agriculture on the east coast of Central America, in northern Argentina, in southern Brazil or in some US states, but ultimately did not open up the areas for the Belgian state.

Leopold II's Free State of the Congo was also initially private property, which was so ruthlessly and brutally exploited by Leopold and his American and British business partners that the population halved by 1908 (10 million dead). The horrors of the Congo caused such a scandal in Europe and the USA that the king was forced to bequeath his property to the Belgian state. However, they were not the actual reason, but only the ultimate reason for the handover: as early as 1890, in return for 25 million francs in financial support from the state in his private colony, the king had promised to hand over the Congo to Belgium after 10 years, and already in his will of 1889 Leopold bequeathed the Free State to Belgium in any case. Until 1908, Belgium granted the Congo state 2 million francs a year as a loan, King Leopold II a further million.

The "Leopoldine regime" of forced labor was tempered by state reforms from 1910 onwards. The administration of the huge country by various regional concession companies gave way to a central administration by colonial authorities subordinate to the mother country. Economically, however, the British influence in particular remained so strong that one spoke of a “Belgian-British condominium ”. Belgian and British capital also dominated the Portuguese colonies, especially in neighboring Angola. During the Second World War, Belgian Congo was occupied by US troops from 1942 onwards, and the colonial administrative apparatus was ruled by US "advisors". US financial groups acquired the right of first refusal for Congolese raw materials, the leading position in foreign trade and the majority of shares in major mining companies.

Colonial paternalism

In contrast to the British colonies ruled by " indirect rule " or the Belgian mandate of Rwanda-Urundi , but similar to the French and Portuguese colonies, the Congo was under direct Belgian administration.

" Was at the local level in Ruanda-Urundi [...] more than fall back into Congo to the local feudal and semi-feudal upper class-gentile ... The system of the [Congo] in an extreme way direct administration was the concept of the so-called paternalism based , to which the Belgian colonial rulers clung to after 1945 regardless of the changed conditions. It was about that covert racist theory of the allegedly childlike soul of the African, which needs upbringing; this was to justify the control of people's entire lives. Colonial administration, monopolies and ecclesiastical missions dedicated themselves to the unlimited implementation of this theory in daily life ... The position of the churches in the Congo [...] was considerably more stable than in other African colonial areas ... All political power lay in the hands of the Belgian Governor General ... King Baudoin announced economic and social reforms on his tour of the Congo in 1955 ... this included [a] ... "30-year plan for the political liberation of Belgian Africa" ​​... [ a] in the long term a UN-sanctioned trusteeship of Belgium over the Congo ... and that ... with the later goal of state independence, powers should be handed over step by step to the Congolese ... the official declaration that paternalism is considered obsolete , the fraternalism [ Léon Pétillon ] for fitting ..., followed in 1957 a small reform package ... "

If the Africans thus went from “children” to “brothers” (and in the French colonies even to citizens), the colonial rulers remained the “older brothers”. This view was reflected for a long time not only in the colonial authorities and mission stations in the Congo, but also in Belgium itself, among other things because of the comic Tim in the Congo, created in 1930 by the illustrator Hergé and hardly changed in 1946 .

Since neither the UN Decolonization Commission nor the Congolese themselves agreed to a 30-year transition period, the Belgian government decided in October 1959 to allow at least a four-year transition period. At the Congo Conference in February 1960, however, Belgian and Congolese politicians agreed on independence at the end of June 1960.

Citizenship enrollment

Similar to the principle of assimilation in the French and Portuguese colonies, the Belgian colonies were granted citizenship to Europeanized Africans based on an educational and property census, but ultimately there were significantly fewer of them than the already very few assimilados .

“ In the Belgian Congo, a distinction was made in the legal status of the Congolese between“ enrolled ”and“ non-enrolled ”. The matriculation was used when "steps towards the acceptance of European culture" were taken ... with the result that in 1955 a total of 116 Congolese were counted to the [matriculated] group ... [with] a population of 18 million (1957) .. . "

The failure to promote a bourgeois-democratic elite and a rushed decolonization by the colonial authorities finally led the Congo, which was thus unprepared for independence, into a civil war in 1960.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Brison D. Gooch: Belgium and the Prospective Sale of Cuba in 1837 . Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1960
  2. ↑ Robert Raymond Ansiaux: Early Belgian colonial efforts , page 3 f
  3. ^ Henk Wesseling: divide and rule , page 74ff ( Verdeel en heers. De deling van Afrika, 1880-1914 , 1991, Bert Bakker - Amsterdam, ISBN 90-351-2880-X (2012: ISBN 978-9035138957 ))
  4. ^ Golf Dornseif: When the Spaniards sold Micronesia to the Emperor. Berlin 2010. ( PDF, approx. 4 MB ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.golf-dornseif.de
  5. ↑ Jutta Bückendorf: "Black-white-red over East Africa!" , Page 113. Münster 1997
  6. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, second volume, page 731. Leipzig and Vienna 1897
  7. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 10, page 387. Leipzig and Vienna 1897
  8. ↑ a b c Christian Mährdel (ed.): History of Africa from the beginnings to the present , Part III (Africa from the Second World War to the collapse of the imperialist colonial system), Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1983, pp. 142–146.
  9. ↑ As early as 1873, Leopold II had suggested the establishment of a finance company that would gradually take over Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique)
  10. ↑ a b Heinrich Loth (Ed.): History of Africa from the Beginnings to the Present , Part II (Africa under imperialist colonial rule and the formation of the anti-colonial forces 1884–1945), pages 168 and 247f. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1976
  11. ^ A b Franz Ansprenger: History of Africa , pages 92 and 104.Beck Munich 2002
  12. ↑ Le Parisien of August 31, 2009: Nouvelle procédure à l'horizon contre "Tintin au Congo"
  13. ↑ Die Presse from August 31, 2009: Lawsuit against "racist" comics ( Memento from March 31, 2019 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Gustav Fochler-Hauke (Ed.): Der Fischer Weltalmanach 1961 , page 13. Frankfurt am Main 1960

literature

  • L. Kohnen: The Belgian colonies in Guatemala and Brazil . Cöln (Cologne) 1844
  • HL Wesseling: Divide and rule - the division of Africa 1880-1914. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, from page 74 .
  • Robert Raymond Ansiaux: Early Belgian colonial efforts - The long and fateful shadow of Leopold I. The University of Texas, Arlington 2006.
  • Martin Ewans: European atrocity, African catastrophe - Leopold II, the Congo Free State and its aftermath , page 20 . Routledge, London 2002
  • Brison D. Gooch: Belgium and the Prospective Sale of Cuba in 1837 . Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1960
  • Brison D. Gooch: Belgian Interest in Danish Possessions During the Reign of Leopold. In: L'Expansion belge sous Léopold 1er, 1831–1865; recueil d'études. Académie royale des sciences d'outre-mer, 199-215. Brussels 1965.

Web links

Commons : Belgian Colonialism  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Belgian colonization of Santo Tomás  - Collection of images, videos and audio files