The Belgian Congo (French: Congo Belge; Dutch:  Belgisch-Kongo) was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between King Leopold II’s formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.

Until the latter part of the 19th century, the Europeans had not yet ventured into the Congo. The rainforest, swamps and accompanying malaria, and other diseases, such as sleeping sickness, made it a difficult environment for European exploration and exploitation. In 1876, King Léopold II of the Belgians organized the International African Association with the cooperation of the leading African explorers and the support of several European governments for the promotion of African exploration and colonization. After Henry Morton Stanley explored the region, a journey that ended in 1878, Leopold courted the explorer and hired him to help establish Leopold’s interests in the region. While exploring the Congo, Stanley made contracts with native leaders. Few to none of these tribal leaders had a realistic idea of what they were signing. In essence these documents gave over all rights of their respective pieces of land to King Leopold II. What's more, many were forced at gunpoint to sign these treaties.  Léopold II had been keen to acquire a colony for Belgium even before he ascended to the throne in 1865. He was convinced that the acquisition of a colony would bestow international prestige on his relatively young and small home country and that it might provide a steady source of income. Belgium was not greatly interested in its monarch’s dreams of empire-building. Ambitious and stubborn, Léopold II decided to pursue the matter on his own account.
 
European rivalry in Central Africa led to diplomatic tensions, in particular with regard to the largely unclaimed Congo river basin. In November 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference (the Berlin Conference) where Africa was referred to as "the magnificent cake" by King Leopold II. To find a peaceful resolution to the Congo crisis. After three months of negotiation on 5 February 1885, the Berlin Conference reached agreement. While it did not formally approve or disapprove the territorial claims of the European powers in Central Africa, it did agree on a set of rules to ensure a conflict-free partitioning of the region. Key among those were the recognition of the Congo basin as a free-trade zone, and the general acceptance of the principle that any territorial claim needed to be backed up by evidence of actual and durable occupation of that territory. In reality, Léopold II emerged triumphant from the Berlin Conference. In a series of bilateral diplomatic agreements, France was given 666,000 km2 (257,000 sq mi) on the north bank of the Congo river (modern Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic), Portugal 909,000 km2 (351,000 sq mi) to the south (part of modern Angola), and Léopold’s wholly owned, single-shareholder “philanthropic” organization received the balance: 2,344,000 km2 (905,000 sq mi), to be constituted as the Congo Free State.
 
The Congo Free State was a corporate state privately controlled by Léopold II, King of the Belgians through a dummy non-governmental organization, the Association Internationale Africaine. Léopold was the sole shareholder and chairman. The state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo and existed from 1885 to 1908, when it was annexed by the government of Belgium. Initially, the occupation and exploration of the immense territory of the Congo Free State proved a heavy burden on the monarch’s purse. Twice, state bankruptcy was avoided by the Belgian state granting Léopold II emergency loans. In the 1890s, the tide turned dramatically. Through the forced exploitation of rubber, copper, and other minerals in the upper Lualaba River basin, together with the global rubber boom, huge surpluses were generated. Léopold II used part of this new wealth for the embellishment of his native country: the Royal Galleries in Ostend, the Palace of the Colonies in Tervuren, or the triumphal arch in Brussels were funded from the profits generated by the Congo. It soon became clear that these profits were generated on the back of brutal mistreatment of the local people and plunder of the Congo’s natural resources.
 
Thus, under Léopold II’s administration, the Congo Free State became the site of one of the worst man-made humanitarian disasters of the turn of the 20th century. The report of the British Consul Roger Casement, published in early 1904, was an irrefutable indictment of the “rubber system”: “... the drowsy, unsupervised machine of coercion which wore out the people and the land”. In the absence of a census (the first was made in 1924), it is difficult to quantify the population loss of the period, but it must have been very high. According to Roger Casement’s report, depopulation was caused mainly by four causes: “indiscriminate war”, starvation, reduction of births, and tropical diseases. Adam Hochschild argues that roughly 10 million perished. The human suffering inflicted by the rapacious exploitation of the colony was immense.
 
The European and American press exposed the conditions in the Congo Free State to the public in the early 1900s. In 1904, Léopold II was forced to allow an international parliamentary commission of inquiry entry to the Congo Free State. The report of the commission (1905) confirmed most of the charges formulated by Edmund Morel and Roger Casement, but also by Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic maneuvers led to the end of Léopold II’s rule and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo.

 
Belgian colony, 1908–1960
On 18 October 1908, the Belgian parliament voted in favor of annexing the Congo as a Belgian colony. This was only after King Léopold II had given up any hope to maintain a substantial part of the Congo Free State as separate crown property. The government of the Belgian Congo was arranged by the 1908 Colonial Charter. Executive power rested with the Belgian Minister of Colonial Affairs, assisted by a Colonial Council (Conseil Colonial). Both resided in Brussels. The Belgian parliament exercised legislative authority over the Belgian Congo. The highest-ranking representative of the colonial administration in the Congo was the Governor-general. From 1886 until 1926, the Governor-general and his administration were posted in Boma, near the Congo River estuary. From 1926, the colonial capital moved to Léopoldville, some 300 km further upstream in the interior. Initially, the Belgian Congo was administratively divided into four provinces: Léopoldville (or: Congo-Kasaï), Equateur, Orientale and Katanga, each presided by a vice-Governor-general. An administrative reform in 1932 increased the number of provinces to six, while “demoting” the Vice-governors-general to provincial Governors.
 
The territorial service was the true backbone of the colonial administration. Each province was divided into a number of districts (24 in all), and each district into territories (some 120 in all). A territory was managed by a territorial administrator, assisted by one or more assistants. The territories were further subdivided into numerous “chiefdoms” (chefferies), at the head of which the Belgian administration appointed “traditional chiefs” (chefs coutumiers). The territories administered by one territorial administrator and a handful of assistants were often larger than a few Belgian provinces taken together (the whole Belgian Congo was nearly 80 times larger than the whole of Belgium). Nevertheless, the territorial administrator was expected to inspect his territory and to file detailed annual reports with the provincial administration. In terms of jurisdiction, two systems co-existed: a system of European courts and one of indigenous courts (tribunaux indigènes). These indigenous courts were presided over by the traditional chiefs, but had only limited powers and remained under the firm control of the colonial administration. In 1936 it was recorded that there were 728 administrators controlling the Congo from Belgium. Belgians living in the Congo had no say in the government and the Congolese certainly did not either. No political activity was permitted in the Congo whatsoever.  Public order in the colony was maintained by the Force Publique, a locally recruited army under Belgian command. It was only in the 1950s that metropolitan troops—i.e., units of the regular Belgian army—were posted in the Belgian Congo (for instance in Kamina).
 
The colonial state—and in fact any authority exercised by whites in the Congo—was often referred to by the Congolese as bula matari. Bula matari (“break rocks”) was one of the names originally given to Stanley, because of the dynamite he used to crush rocks when paving his way through the lower-Congo region. The term bula matari came to signify the irresistible and compelling force of the colonial state.
 
When the Belgian government took over the administration from King Léopold II in 1908, the situation in the Congo improved in certain respects. The brutal exploitation and arbitrary use of violence, in which some of the concessionary companies had excelled, were curbed. The tragedy of “red rubber” was put to a stop. Article 3 of the new Colonial Charter of 18 October 1908 established that: “Nobody can be forced to work on behalf of and for the profit of companies or privates”. In reality, forced labour, in differing forms and degrees, would not disappear entirely until the end of the colonial period.
 
The transition from the Congo Free State to the Belgian Congo was a break, but it was also marked by a large degree of continuity. The last Governor-general of the Congo Free State, Baron Wahis, remained in office in the Belgian Congo, and the majority of Léopold II’s administration with him. Opening up the Congo and its natural and mineral riches for the Belgian economy remained the main motive for colonial expansion, but all the same other priorities, such as healthcare and basic education, slowly gained in importance.
 
The Belgian Congo was directly involved in the two world wars. During WWI, an initial stand-off between the Force Publique and the German colonial army in German East-Africa (Tanganyika) turned into open warfare with a joint Anglo-Belgian invasion of German colonial territory in 1916 and 1917 during the East African Campaign. The Force Publique gained a notable victory when it marched into Tabora in September 1916 under the command of general Charles Tombeur after heavy fighting.
 
After the war, Belgium was rewarded for the participation of the Force Publique in the East African campaign with a League of Nations mandate over the former German colony of Ruanda-Urundi. During WWII, the Belgian Congo was a crucial source of income for the Belgian government in exile in London. The Force Publique again participated in the Allied campaigns in Africa. Belgian Congolese forces under the command of Belgian officers notably fought against the Italian colonial army in Ethiopia in Asosa, Bortaï and Saïo under Major-general Auguste-Eduard Gilliaert during the second East African Campaign.

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