So when the Congo was handed over from Leopold's personal control to the Belgian government what exactly changed in the colony? What improved, what didn't improve, etc?

Also how did the Belgians justify the takeover of the colony to their people? It seems like having your government step in because your monarch is being too homicidal would cause a bit of a scandal.

Would you say that Belgium's infamous treatment of the Congo natives is in a category by itself, or is it just an extreme form of the colonialism practiced by Britain, France, Germany, and so forth? Is there anything specific to Belgium that made its colonial experiences so infamous?

My first question is perhaps slightly outside the area of discussion- but interconnected nonetheless.

I've come across references to Belgium- or the government of King Leopold making an offer to Spain to buy the Philippines. I was curious if Belgium ever had any plans for colonial expansion beyond Africa, and how dearly were they willing to pay to achieve those ends? Were there ever any manifestos or declarations wherein a specifically Belgian imperial project was laid out?

Secondly, having done some research on the topic long ago, I wanted to ask about language policy. Was there an official language used to administer of the Congo- or was there any sort of language policy within the administration? Were particular any language(s) seen as more appropriate for African subjects to use in government or education? I'm certainly curious if you see any connections between language policies and a 'civilising mission' in the Congo.

Thanks for doing the AMA! As a historian who (semi)frequently engages on reddit and specifically askhistorians, I was delighted and excited to get an announcement of your AMA from h-net. Well done!

Hi Dr Stanard, greetings from Kinshasa.

In the WSj review, the author says this towards the end of his piece:

The home country's colonizing was too heavy on physical infrastructure—railways, skyscrapers, boulevards—and too light on the institutions of civil society.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement (referring to the period when the Belgian State, rather than King Leopold, ruled)? Did other colonial powers invest in "the institutions of civil society" more than the Belgians?

Thanks

Why the Congo? What was Belgium's connection to that region of Africa, or was the empire just part of the land-grab that was the Scramble for Africa?

How much native resistance and uprisings were there against the Belgians? And how did the Belgians deal with them?

Belgium is a bilingual nation, so what was the language of administration for its colonies?

My question is a little later in your era. In the wake of the First World War, and the takeover of the mandate territory of Ruanda-Urundi, I presume Belgium needed to make a case for having that territory, and used developmentalist rhetoric to do so. However, did they have any uniquely Belgian angle, and did that angle differ from the very interesting kinds of "civilizing mission" propaganda used between the wars in the Congo Basin? Given that Ruanda-Urundi was the site of identifiable kingdoms that had been given a certain racist (Tutsi) whitewashing, I've always been curious about how Belgians really saw their mission in the mandate.

(Other than that, I'm working in part on the Anglo-Belgian commission of 1906-1909--the one tasked with fixing the boundary with Uganda--so if you have any suggestions about using archives in Brussels relative to the more mundane geographical aspects of the Free State and early Colony era, I'd be grateful for them!)

How much richer did Belgium become because of its colonial activities? What were the material benefits to Belgium and to the Belgian people?

Hi Matthew, thanks for doing this AMA. How did Leopold justify the private seizure of a large area of central Africa? Other colonial regimes obviously used narratives of bringing enlightenment to Africa to justify what they did. Was this the case here? Other colonial regimes such as France and England at least constructed some semblance of official institutions in various forms (even if they were largely a smokescreen). Thanks!

Hello, thank you for coming, I have two questions:

• Regarding the propaganda, my understanding is that as late as 1900 many still viewed Leopold as a humanitarian. How was this possible if the abuses were so obvious? Would officials take visitors to Potemkin village style areas?

• I just finished Hoschild's King Leopold's Ghosts. How do you feel about the book? And did it have the impact on public perception that many reviews say it did?

Recent research has suggested that the causative virus of AIDS, HIV, may have crossed from chimpanzees into humans in the Congolese jungle during the very end of the Congo Free State period.

What conditions or practices of the time may have aided the spread of the disease from the jungle into Kinshasa? From Kinshasa to the rest of the world?

What characterizes the new wave of colonialism from the old wave? How is it different?

Why did the Congo belong directly to a King Leopold and not the Belgian government like with British and German colonies?

Roger Casement is a fascinating guy- What are your thoughts on the differences in his work in the Belgian Congo and then later as an Irish revolutionary?

What is the thing that baffled or amazed you the most in your studies?

What did the Congo have to offer for the Belgians? What made it unique? Was it more or less desirable than other parts of Africa?

How did the first Belgian colonialists go about claiming the land they received in the Congo-conference in Berlin? Did they negotiate with the local chiefs individually in the way Cecil Rhodes or Carl Peters would later go about it in Rhodesia and German East Africa?

Also, how important were missionary stations and schools in the early colonization?

How much of a role has Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad played in exposing the truth about the Belgian Congo?

What aspects of culture, economy and society in the DRC today still show signs of its Belgian imperial past?

Perhaps a strange question:

My grandfather was a (regional) governor in the Belgian Congo. Is there any way to find out if I still have relatives living over there? Like a central administration of some kind, or mid 20th-century records that are maybe being kept in some depot in Belgium somewhere?

Thanks!

I have heard of a conflict between the Congo Free State and Arab slave traders operating out of Zanzibar (under the command of Tipu Tip and later his son) in the region during 1880s. What exactly was this conflict like? What were the combatants like? What were the battles like? How was it finally resolved? Was there a treaty or did the Arab traders just realize that they could no longer participate in the East and Central African trade at the levels they were now that Europeans were rolling in (especially since the Europeans were supposed to be fighting the slave trade)?

Thank you for doing this AMA. What are your thoughts on David van Reybrouck's Congo, which was recently translated into English? (Assuming you've read it, off course)

I'm Belgian, but I know very little about Belgian Congo - it's not a subject that was covered in my education.

1. Given that Congo is relatively recent history, do we have any left overs from pro-colonial propaganda? Pamflets, newspapers, art? Was the spin mostly on "educating" or "civilizing" the Kongolese?

2. I've heard a few claims here and elsewhere, that the ethnic castes used by the Belgian regime were codifications of exiting tribal structures and ethnic oppression that was present in the region before European involvement in the Kongo. To what extent is this true, and how much of a change did the Belgian system bring?

3. I've heard anecdotal mention of the following story, and I'm wondering how much (if any) of it is true: during the negotiation of the borders of Kongo, the Belgians were supposed to not get any coastline. The British believed this would allow them a monopoly over exporting the Kongolese resources to Europe. However, the Belgian diplomatic delegation simply modified the treaty to include the mouth of the river, without informing the British, and the British only found out after the treaty was signed and ratified.

Hi Matthew, given the topic of your research is around pro-Empire propaganda, I am very interested in your thoughts about how Belgian's colonial propaganda output in the aftermath of the Second World War differed in any way from that of the other European imperial powers, particularly the UK and France. It is often said Belgium was slow to recognise the changing times which accounts for its chaotic decolonisation strategy. Did its propaganda output reflect a defiance not seen among other colonial powers?

Say I was a river pilot operating a trading company along the Congo around the mid 1920s. Would you happen to know what the primary goods were that river pilots would import and export? I'm assuming they'd export rubber and copper and import things to help sustain the mining operations, but is there anything else?

What are the logistics of the operation? Is my shipping business controlled by the Belgian government, do I work for one of the companies exploiting the Congo's resources, or am I a middleman allowed to operate my own private enterprise?

This might be a little more of a stretch, but if I'm able to work as a middleman, would you happen to know (in general) how much the goods I bought or sold would cost? Would you know what my profit margins would be? What was my standard of living?

Finally, what were the sort of dangers along the river? I'm assuming things like ambushes by angry natives and attacks by hungry jungle animals are movie inventions and not so much things that would happen in real life, but I'm assuming there were real dangers and that disease was rampant at the very least.

Thank you! These might seem like somewhat strange questions, but for my day job I pretend to be a merchant marine river pilot shipping goods down assorted rivers across the world (the Congo, the Irrawaddy, the Mekong, the Nile, and the Amazon), and I've been trying to research how my character would actually live. Since a lot of children come visit, we don't play it terribly straight, but I've always been curious about how the operation we pretend to run actually worked.

One of the justification given was fight against Arab slavers. How much was this pure propaganda (was there even a thread?), how much was it fighting a competitor, how much was it sincere but schizophrenic (the part of the administration dedicated to that doing its job while the part of administration dedicated to exploitation was doing its own job in the known way)?

Hi there and thank you for taking your time to answer these.

Now, I have a few questions about this subject as well.

• How much did king Leopold know about the atrocities happening the Congo?
• Did he know what resources could be found in that part of Africa before purchasing it?
• How well did the Congo "evolve" after he gave it to Belgium?
• This might be out of scope for you, but how would a Congolese who went thru all the regimes (before purchase, Leo2, Belgium, Mubutu and now feel about these different periods in time?

Many thanks in advance for your answers ;)

Did the Congo Free State use much in the way of indirect rule? How much continuity was there between the local leaders before the Belgians showed up and after?

What were the geopolitics of precolonial Africa?

How solid is our knowledge of the events in Central Africa during and just after de-colonization? I've been reading up a lot on the period, particularly in the Congo and Uganda, and it seems like all I can find are very loose summaries (or big-picture discussions that focus more on geopolitics and int'l diplomacy than actual events.) Are there major gaps in the record, or is it just not well-studied? (I'm specifically talking about regional and local events/conflicts/politics, especially during the first regimes following de-colonization).

This may be a little outside your specialty; if so, my apologies.

In public discourse, were there contemporary parallels drawn between Belgian colonialism and German subjugation of the Belgians in the 20th century? Who made these comparisons and to what effect?

How and by whom was the Belgian Congo administered during the World Wars?

Does Belgium today have a specific humanitarian mission active in the Congo as a direct or indirect result of its earlier colonial activities? How big a deal is it?

I have never heard of any large revolts in the Congo, nothing like the Herero Wars or the Maji Maji revolt. Where there large scale revolts against such a repressive system? If there were, why weren't they more successful in fighting back, and if there were not what do you think explains that?

To what degree did colonial states successfully control trade and migration between adjecent colonial posessions with different European masters. In particular, I am thinking of the Brazzaville-Kinshasa "conurbation".

How much did European empires really change the material standards of living of their colonial subjects, for better or worse?

David van Reybruck, in his book about Congo, considers the mass killings during the red rubber debacle to be caused by incompetence rather than planned killings. His argument goes like this:

Leopold thought of Congo as if it was Belgium, meaning a strictly regulated place where every place was owned and indexed by someone. So when he made the system to force people to fetch rubber, it didn't really fit the real conditions of the place. The system was based around punishing people who didn't deliver enough rubber, and as rubber got scarcer the punishments spiralled out of control, much more than he had wanted.

He claims further on that Leopold actually asked the Manchester university (or something...), a place specializing in tropical diseases, to aid local Congolese when he heard about outbreaks of the sleeping sickness (caused by his insane policies forcing people into infested places). A person who was killing millions wouldn't care about them getting sleeping sickness, would he?

I wonder what you think of this argument? Was the red rubber killings caused by absurd incompetence on the side of Leopold, or did he really mean to kill that many?

Have you visited the Royal Museum for Central Africa (currently being renovated) outside of Brussels? Do you feel it does enough to educate its audience about the more negative aspects of Belgian colonial rule? Do you believe those aspects of Belgium's colonial history should be addressed in its secondary education history classes?

First of all, thank you for taking the time to do this.

My question:

What was the role of the Congolese village put on display in both the 1885 and 1897 World's Fair? Was it to "sell the Congo" to the Belgian people, that is to say familiarize them with the distant colony? Or, because it was an international exposition, do you think the intended audience was broader?

Or was there another logic at play that did not concern itself so much with a particular "audience?"

Hi Matthew, I work with your cousin Beth, she says hi! Where is the best place you have ever traveled to?