Congo Zoë Mattison 2/19/14

The Congo Free State was a large area in Central Africa that was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. In 1889, Leopold issued a new decree which said that Africans could only sell their harvested products (mostly ivory and rubber) to the state. Congo was known as Zaire from 1965 to 1997, in 1997 the name of the country was changed from Zaire to Congo.

From 1885 to 1908, it is estimated that the Congolese native population decreased by about ten million people. Historians identified a number of causes for this loss under Leopold’s reign—murder, starvation, exhaustion and exposure, disease, and plummeting birth rates. Leopold extracted ivory, rubber, and minerals in the upper Congo basin for sale on the world market, even though his nominal purpose in the region was to uplift the local people and develop the area.

In 1893, Leopold excised the most readily assessable portion of the Free Trade Zone and declared it to be the Domanie de la Couronne, literally, “Field of the Crown” and the large part of the land went to Leopold himself. Congo gains independence in 1960 from Belgium. Up until 1876, Belgium had no colonial presence in Africa. Up until that point, Africa was known as “the Dark Continent” because rapids on the Congo River had previously made exploration of this area impossible.