The African Wars by Chris Peers

Author:Chris Peers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / General
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2011-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

War with the Congo Free State

With the disappearance of the Arabs and their Mahdist successors, the only remaining threat to Azande independence came from the encroaching European powers – the British from the north, the French from the west, and the Congo Free State from the south. The latter was an anomaly in colonial Africa, because it did not belong to any of the imperial powers. King Leopold’s colonial ambitions were not shared by the Belgian government, and he pursued them instead under the name of the International African Association, ostensibly a philanthropic enterprise dedicated to free trade and the abolition of slavery. The king had already spent much of his personal wealth in trying unsuccessfully to establish a presence east of Lake Tanganyika. Thwarted there, he transferred his ambitions to the west, and on H M Stanley’s return from his famous trans-Africa expedition in 1877 he hired him to break trails and set up stations on the Lower Congo. By 1884, when the Congress of Berlin met to apportion spheres of interest in Africa, the Congo was becoming a problem which none of the European powers were eager to take on. The Arabs were rapidly overrunning the region from the east, but the rapids at the mouth of the great river made access from the west much more difficult, and despite the prospect of vast wealth (principally in ivory), it seemed that bringing ‘civilization’ to the region would be an extremely costly undertaking. Leopold’s potential rivals were therefore happy to give him a free hand in the region. However, the king had no intention of spending his own money on developing infrastructure or introducing any benefits for the natives of his Free State: behind the facade of the antislavery movement was an operation designed simply to enrich him personally, and based on nothing more than violence and extortion.

The armed force of the Congo was the ‘Force Publique’ – a title just as misleading as that of the ‘Free State’, as it was in reality King Leopold’s private army. Mercenaries had been hired on an ad hoc basis since Leopold began to establish stations on the Congo in 1879, but the force was not officially established by royal decree until October 1885. It was placed under the command of a Captain Roget of the Belgian Carabineers – who arrived in Africa with a staff of only twelve – and the first infantry companies were formally raised in 1888. At first there were eight companies, which rose to sixteen by 1893 and eventually to twenty-two by 1897. The establishment of each company varied widely. Originally each comprised between 100 and 150 men, plus around 50 labourers and porters. By the mid-1890s, however, companies reinforced for specific campaigns or to provide garrisons were often 200 or even 300 strong. There was no permanent organization above company level, but for large-scale campaigns they could be grouped into ad hoc battalions: at Stanleyville in 1896, for example, Commandant Dhanis had three battalions each of three companies, the whole force totalling 3,000 fighting men.

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