“Une telle apathie est presque coupable”. How in Belgium’s Journal des tribunaux the interest for the Congo Free State sparked off (1885-1908)

When the Congo Free State (CFS) was established in 1885, King Leopold II ruled it as its personal territory. At first Belgian politicians and lawyers seemed not to care about the colonial ambitions of its sovereign. That changed during the 1890s, when the Leopoldian CFS was internationally accused of committing crimes against humanity. Belgium’s Parliament urged to find a solution in the annexation project during the first decade of the 20th century. How did Belgian lawyers perceive this issue ? Through means of legal periodicals, which reflect and shape opinions on certain topics, it is possible to reconstruct the annexation history of the CFS by Belgium in 1908. The Journal des tribunaux is the most relevant titles on this subject, as it is the primus inter pares of legal periodicals at that time and connected to all the relevant associations in the political, legal and colonial world.

STATE–BUILDING, CITIZENSHIP AND THE BANYARWANDA QUESTION IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Since achieving independence in June 1960, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been grappling with the question of the citizenship of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi-speaking populations settled on its territory at different historical periods, herein referred to as the Banyarwanda. While there is evidence of the presence of some Banyarwanda communities on current Congolese territory prior to the advent of Belgian colonisation in the area, the majority of the Banyarwanda currently living in the DRC are descendants of those brought into the country through colonial immigration and labour recruitment processes, political exile and refuge as well as clandestine migration. Using a historical perspective, this article analyses the manner in which the question of the citizenship of the Banyarwanda has been handled in the DRC since the establishment of the Congo Free State in 1885. The article locates the roots of the problem in the poorly designed colonial policies surrounding the relocation of these populations to the Kivu region. However, the article acknowledges that the sole shortcomings on the part of colonial authorities would have never had the current consequences if it was not for the inconsistencies of the different post-colonial governments that have ruled over the DRC. Instead of resolving the citizenship question in an effective and sustainable manner, all these governments have based their respective responses to the issue on short-term political expediencies as dictated by the balance of forces within the country, the Kivu area and the Great Lakes region at a particular juncture.

Africa and the Shaping of International Human Rights

Africa throughout its postcolonial history has been plagued by human rights abuses ranging from intolerance of political dissent to heinous crimes such as genocide. Some observers consequently have gone so far as to suggest that human rights are a concept alien to African cultures. The International Criminal Court (ICC)’s focus on Africa in recent years has reinforced the region’s reputation as a hotspot for human rights violations. But despite Africa’s notoriety concerning human rights, Africa and the Shaping of International Human Rights argues that the continent has been pivotal for helping shape contemporary human rights norms and practices. Challenging prevailing Eurocentric interpretations of human rights’ origins and evolution, it demonstrates that from the colonial era to the present Africa’s peoples have drawn attention to and prompted novel ways of thinking about human rights through their encounters with the world at large. Beginning with the depredations of King Leopold II in the Congo Free State in the 1880s and ending with the ICC’s current activities in Africa, it reveals how African events, personalities, groups, and nations have influenced the trajectory of human rights history in intriguing and critical ways, in the end enlarging and universalizing a major discourse of our time.

The Congo Free State, Atrocity Tales, and Human Rights History

Chapter One, which explores the colonial roots of human rights, suggests that ideas resembling modern human rights first emerged in the 1890s in response to atrocities in the Congo Free State. It shows that as reports of horrific abuses of Africans under Belgian King Leopold II’s rule circulated worldwide, a shocked international community, using language and concepts resembling contemporary human rights discourses, was stirred to challenge violations of Africans’ rights, propose ways to prevent future infractions, and demand punishments for perpetrators of mass atrocities. While these nineteenth-century visions of human rights did not immediately lead to an international system of human rights protection, the chapter suggests that they nonetheless represented an important precedent for contemporary human rights norms and institutions.

Competing Visions

Studies of the visual culture of the Congo Free State (CFS) have focused overwhelmingly yet narrowly on the “atrocity” photograph used to criticize Leopold II’s colonial misrule. This article presents a new picture of the visual culture of Leopold II’s Congo Free State by examining a broader, more heterogeneous range of fin de siècle images of varied provenance that comprised the visual culture of the CFS. These include architecture, paintings, African artwork, and public monuments, many of which were positive, pro-Leopoldian images emphasizing a favorable view of colonialism. The visual culture of the CFS was imbued with recurring themes of violence, European heroism, and anti-Arab sentiment, and emerged from a unique, transnational, back-and-forth process whereby Leopold and his critics instrumentalized images to counter each other and achieve their goals.

Congo-Kinshasa: The Military in the State-Building Process

The fundamental challenge facing social engineers is to project authority. State building is a process that establishes political order over time. As a top-down strategy, it emerges as an antidote to state collapse. The success of a state is in its capacity not only to provide national security while controlling the means of violence, but also to supply other public goods funded through direct taxes on citizens, who are supposed to make their rulers accountable. The absence of such state capacity perhaps explains the unending political crisis that plagues many post-colonial states, because they tend to control populations rather than territories. Although some efforts have been made toward state building, the state remains fragile in many post-colonial states. Territorial control is limited, and private taxation continues. Local tensions based on ethnic affinities rather than national allegiance remains intense. The analysis of Congo-Kinshasa illustrates these assertions by contrasting three successive periods: the Congo Free State (1885–1908), the Belgian Congo (1908–1959), and the post-colonial period (1960–2019). Of these three periods, only the second entity was able to professionalize the military for state-building purposes. The emphasis on this top down approach in state building overlooks other configurations that postcolonial state builders should contemplate. Societies have historically compensated for the failure or absence of statehood through a number of mechanisms that include, among others, councils of elders and secret societies that may not be difficult to reconcile with the demands of the modern state. The search for this bottom-up approach to state building perhaps explains so many internal conflicts in most post-colonial states as marginalized groups intend to insert themselves into the political system that has excluded them from power.

Neighbors Recognizing and Redefining Identities in the Belgian Congo, 1916–1935

Chapter 4 explains how the ministerial priorities of Althea Brown and Alonzo Edmiston developed through coordination with African villagers, students, and church members in the Belgian Congo. The missionaries’ descriptions of local life are analyzed through comparison with historical context and anthropological studies of the region. African theology produced in the three decades following decolonization is introduced as an interpretive lens for analyzing the perspectives of African people experiencing the first decades of transition from Congo Free State policies to the Belgian Congo government. The chapter closes by identifying the Edmistons’ sense of kinship with the Kuba kingdom as their link to specific rituals in African traditional religion.

Industrial Education and Symbolic Home Building in the Congo Free State, 1898–1907

Chapter 1 explains trends in the African American Protestant missions movement up to 1907 with a focus on William Henry Sheppard and the black staff of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission. The literary and musical accomplishments of Althea Brown are introduced in the context of her classical training at Fisk University. The role that Alonzo Edmiston played in developing industrial education at the Congo Mission is introduced through his childhood working on a Tennessee plantation and his education at Stillman Institute. The final section explains how both ministers applied their academic backgrounds and the lessons of previous black missionaries to rebuilding a mission station despite political turmoil in the region.