Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian Imperialism

1. The Inheritance: Leopold II and Propaganda about the Congo

The Kingdom of Belgium, independent in 1830, saw Leopold II ascend the throne to become its second king in 1865.1 He was an intelligent and ambitious dynast who became a colonial genius in 1885 when the European powers recognized his authority over the vast État Indépendant du Congo extending over Africa’s Congo River basin. The autocratic rule he instituted in the Congo reflected his aristocratic upbringing and an atavistic mindset. Nineteenth-century change posed problems for his Old Regime Weltanschauung, to which the colony proffered multiple solutions : it allowed him to escape what he felt was a stifling political and geographical situation as the constitutionally constrained sovereign of a tiny, neutral country where liberalism was ascendant and socialism threatened and where language divided both masses and elite.2 His colonial policies also were rooted in older models, especially the Dutch model of the Indies, meaning that the goal was not development or “civilization” but economic exploitation to enrich and strengthen the metropole. Ultimately, his vicious abuse of the Congo and Congolese brought his rule there under increasing scrutiny and criticism by the 1890s. Despite his aristocratic background, Leopold was not averse to working with “ordinary” Belgians who supported imperialism, or to producing propaganda to sway the masses and influence public The Inheritance Leopold II and Propaganda about the Congo One The Inheritance 28 opinion in order to salvage his personal rule in the Congo. Much research so far has examined Leopold II’s voluminous deceptive counterpropaganda. Yet if one takes a broader view to encompass not only disinformation but also pro-empire propaganda like cinema and individual events such as the 1897 colonial exposition , one obtains a better idea of imperialistic propaganda during the Leopoldian era as a whole and also how messages created from 1885 to 1908 served as a backdrop for the period that followed. To understand the propaganda the monarch and his collaborators produced, it is useful to begin with a survey of Leopold II’s imperial venture, its supporters, and the opposition it provoked. Imperial Reveries and Stark Realities Leopold II ascended the throne in 1865 with a full-fledged dream of acquiring a colony. Returning from a trip to Athens in 1860, he had presented Minister Frère-Orban with a block of marble from the Acropolis inscribed, “Il faut à la Belgique une Colonie [Belgium must have a colony].” The following year, he had asked a Belgian naval officer, “Do you know of an island in Oceania, the China Sea or the Indian Ocean that would be suitable for us?”3 His father, Leopold I, had launched small, unsuccessful colonial ventures to Central America and elsewhere, but Leopold II believed colonial expansion was crucial for his small state’s well-being. During his first decade in power, he explored many potential—and potentially profitable—colonial acquisitions , including a plan to lease the Philippines from Spain, all the while working within a mental framework shaped in part by the country’s geographical movement and its emphasis on economic geography.4 Yet Leopold II’s colonial future lay in central Africa, a region The Inheritance 29 to which he turned only after 1875; his ability to eventually secure a massive colony there reflected shrewd, determined, and secretive diplomatic maneuvers. In 1876 he convened a geographical conference in Brussels at which he assumed the leadership of the newly formed Association internationale africaine (International African Association, aia) to promote Belgian involvement in central Africa while disingenuously pleading altruistic motives to the delegates: “Do I have the need to say that in convening you in Brussels, I have not been guided by any egoistic views? No, Sirs, if Belgium is small, she is happy and satisfied with her sort; I have no other ambition other than to serve her well.”5 By 1878 he persuaded other powers to join him in financing a Comité d’études du Haut-Congo (Committee for Study of the Upper Congo), of which he covertly took control by 1882 and recast as the ostensibly international and neutral Association internationale du Congo (aic). Using the aic, Leopold funded explorers to central Africa who persuaded African leaders to sign treaties assigning political control to the association. Through a series of bilateral treaties at the time of the Berlin Conference (1884–85), the United States, Germany, Britain, and other powers (excluding the Ottoman Empire) recognized the...