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Created the Hutsu and Tutsi Conflict.Government fell apart because there was no real education like a college degree.

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Congo and Africa's World War: Crash Course World History 221

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There was a huge war that gave Congo the nickname of Africas World War.

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Changed the name of Congo to Zaire.

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The country that began as a king's private domain (the Congo Free State), evolved into a colony (the Belgian Congo), became independent in 1960 (as the Republic of the Congo), and later underwent several name changes (to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then to Zaire, and back again to the Democratic Republic of the Congo) is the product of a complex pattern of historical forces. Some are traceable to the precolonial past, others to the era of colonial rule, and others still to the political convulsions that followed in the wake of independence. All, in one way or another, have left their imprint on Congolese societies.

Precolonial perspectives

Before experiencing radical transformations in the colonial era, Congolese societies had already experienced major disruptions. From the 15th to the 17th century several important state systems evolved in the southern savanna region. The most important were the Kongo kingdom in the west and the Luba-Lunda states in the east. They developed elaborate political institutions, buttressed by symbolic kingship and military force. Power emanated from the capital to outlying areas through appointed chiefs or local clan heads. Competition for the kingship often led to civil strife, however, and, with the rise of the slave trade, new sources of instability influenced regional politics. The history of the Kongo peoples in the 16th century, for example, is largely the story of how the Atlantic slave trade created powerful vested interests among provincial chiefs, which over time undermined the kingdom's capacity to resist encroachments by its neighbours. By the late 16th century the kingdom had all but succumbed to the attacks of the Imbangala (referred to as Jaga in contemporary sources), bands of fighters fleeing famine and drought in the east. Two centuries later fragmentation also undermined political institutions among the Lunda and the Luba, followed by attacks from interlopers eager to control trade in slaves and ivory.

In the tropical rainforest the radically different ecological conditions raised formidable obstacles to state formation. Small-scale societies, organized into village communities, were the rule. Corporate groups combining social and economic functions among small numbers of related and unrelated people formed the dominant mode of organization. Exchange took place through trade and gift-giving. Over time these social interactions fostered cultural homogeneity among otherwise distinctive communities, such as Bantu and Pygmy groups. Bantu communities absorbed and intermarried with their Pygmy clients, who brought their skills and crafts into the culture. This predominance of house and village organization stands in sharp contrast to the more centralized state structures characteristic of the savanna kingdoms, which were far more adept at acting in a concerted manner than the segmented societies in the tropical rainforest. The segmented nature of the tropical rainforest societies hindered their ability to resist a full-scale invasion by colonial forces.

In the savanna region, resistance to colonial forces was undermined by internecine raids and wars that followed the slave trade, by the increased devastation wrought on African kingdoms when those forces adopted the use of increasingly sophisticated firearms, and by the divisions between those who collaborated with outsiders and those who resisted. The relative ease with which these Congolese societies yielded to European conquest bears testimony to the magnitude of earlier upheavals.

King Leopold II of the Belgians set in motion the conquest of the huge domain that was to become his personal fiefdom. The king's attention was drawn to the region during British explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley's exploration of the Congo River in 1874-77. In November 1878 Leopold formed the Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo (Comité d'Études du Haut Congo, later renamed Association Internationale du Congo) to open up the African interior to European trade along the Congo River. Between 1879 and 1882, under the committee's auspices, Stanley established stations on the upper Congo and opened negotiations with local rulers. By 1884 the Association Internationale du Congo had signed treaties with 450 independent African entities and, on that basis, asserted its right to govern all the territory concerned as an independent state.

Leopold's thinly veiled colonial ambitions paved the way for the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-85), which set the rules for colonial conquest and sanctioned his control of the Congo River basin area to be known as the Congo Free State (1885-1908). Armed with a private mandate from the international community of the time, and under the guise of his African International Association's humanitarian mission of ending slavery and bringing religion and the benefits of modern life to the Congolese, Leopold created a coercive instrument of colonial hegemony.

The name Congo Free State is closely identified with the extraordinary hardships and atrocities visited upon the Congolese masses in the name of Leopold's "civilizing mission." "Without the railroad," said Stanley, "the Congo is not worth a penny." Without recourse to forced labour, however, the railroad could not be built, and the huge concessions that had been made to private European companies would not become profitable, nor could African resistance in the east be overcome without a massive recruitment of indigenous troops. The cruel logic of the revenue imperative led Leopold to transform his nascent administrative system into a machine designed to extract not only the maximum amount of natural resources from the land but also the maximum output of labour from the people. In order to secure the labour necessary to accomplish Leopold's goals, his agents employed such methods as kidnapping the families of Congolese men, who were forced to meet often unrealistic work quotas to secure their families' release. Those who tried to rebel were dealt with by Leopold's private army, the Force Publique-a band of African soldiers led by European officers-who burned the villages and slaughtered the families of rebels. The Force Publique troops were also known for cutting off the hands of the Congolese, including children; the mutilations served to further terrorize the Congolese into submission.

In the wake of intense international criticism prompted by exposés by the American writer Mark Twain, the English journalist E.D. Morel, and various missionaries, in 1908 the Belgian Parliament voted to annex the Congo Free State-essentially purchasing the area from King Leopold and thus placing what was once the king's personal holding under Belgian rule. Nevertheless, the destructive impact of the Congo Free State lasted well beyond its brief history. The widespread social disruption not only complicated the establishment of a viable system of administration; it also left a legacy of anti-Western sentiment on which subsequent generations of nationalists were able to capitalize.

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Democratic Republic of the Congo - Colonialism, Civil War, Conflict

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Democratic Republic of the Congo - Colonialism, Civil War, Conflict: The country that began as a king's private domain (the Congo Free State), evolved into a colony (the Belgian Congo), became independent in 1960 (as the Republic of the Congo), and later underwent several name changes (to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then to Zaire, and back again to the Democratic Republic of the Congo) is the product of a complex pattern of historical forces.

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King Leopold II of Belgium attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin.

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Belgian Colonial Education Policy:
A Poor Foundation for Stability
Jessica Achberger

Often African nations are described as unstable. There is a great deal of truth in this statement as almost all post-colonial African nations have experienced political violence and severe economic mismanagement during the mid and late twentieth century.

Of all African nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had an especially tumultuous post-colonial experience. Formerly a Belgian colony, the DRC still faces violence in the eastern portion of the country as well as political, economic, and social instability throughout.

There are many historical reasons for the DRC's instability but Belgian colonial education policies are a key cause of this instability.

In 1884-1885, the Berlin West Africa Conference effectively divided up the African continent amongst the Great Powers of Europe. Attended by the colonial powers of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Belgium, among others, the Conference created artificial state boundaries as well as a colonial system that was in effect for the next sixty years.

Among these territories, the Congo was a unique case. Granted to King Leopold II of Belgium, the Congo was a "personal" concession for the King, rather than a colony. The King, not the Belgian government, effectively owned and controlled the Congo. Leopold administered the Congo in a notoriously brutal manner, using it to augment his own personal wealth. The Congo's wealth, which included its numerous rubber trees, was brutally extracted using what was basically slave labor. This rubber was then exported to fuel the industrial growth of both nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe and America.

Despite his growing reliance on the wealth of the Congo, Leopold never visited this territory himself. By 1908, the territory was so poorly managed that an international furor condemning Leopold had erupted. That same year, in an attempt to stem this furor, the Congo was ceded to Belgium and placed under the control of the Belgian government, not its king. Belgium then administered the Congo as a colony until independence in 1960.

Unlike other early twentieth-century colonial powers in Africa, Belgium did not directly oversee the education of the Congo's indigenous population. Rather, it turned the responsibility for education over to missionaries.

In 1908, the Congo had 587 missionaries, mostly Catholic, who educated only 46,075 students, a very small fraction of the many residents. This small number of students stemmed from many factors. The number of missionaries was insufficient to educate a large population. But the missionary's educational agenda, which often undermined indigenous African culture and promoted colonial domination, also deterred many Africans from pursuing European educations.

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the primary role of the Church, both in religion and education, was to promote colonialism. Many Congolese villagers at first avoided the mission schools because they had a religious agenda that threatened to undermine their cultural values and beliefs.

Along with concerns about the type of education the Congolese should receive, the Church also believed that higher education should be reserved only for those entering the priesthood. As a result, most students who did attend school in the Congo received only a basic primary education. This practice was reinforced by the Belgian colonial administration, which discouraged higher education for Africans. It was only in 1954 that the first Congolese citizen was admitted to a university for purposes other than religious education.

Belgian colonial education policy stood in stark contrast to the colonial educational policies of Britain and France. While government policies that discouraged the educational and vocational promotion of African peoples were a characteristic of every early twentieth-century colonial system, both Britain and France sent numerous missionaries to their colonies. These missionaries often founded schools and created educational programs for the communities that they worked in. But the British and French governments, unlike Belgium, also took strong control over the education of their colonial subjects.

With the Congo, Belgium not only took a less active role in education, it also used Catholic missionaries as a form of civil servants who were paid by the government. Ironically, Belgium's hands-off policy toward education, which was characteristic of Belgian colonial policies overall, reflected the government's reluctance in being a colonial power; the government had only agreed to take over the Congo to save its king from the public humiliation and outcry of the international community which had been horrified by Leopold's brutal policies.

By the eve of Congolese independence in June 1960, the aspiring nation had only sixteen African university graduates out of a population of more than thirteen million. There were no Congolese engineers or physicians.

Perhaps most crucially, the lack of centralized education left the new nation in a stunted state of growth. Across the African continent, educated Africans had often played a key role in the independence movements and these leaders had then stepped in to govern the new nations which emerged in the 1960s. In many of these new African states, a uniform educational system had helped to promote national unity and identity---both of which were desperately needed as the colonial map had created artificially constructed nations that had numerous different and even competing ethnic groups.

In the Congo, educated Africans who could serve to unify the nation were basically non-existent. This was unfortunate because the Congo, as the third largest country in Africa, was home to many distinct ethnic groups and possessed incredible wealth in its natural resources. While post-colonial African nations needed to establish and create a national identity in the wake of colonialism and although all of these nations required an educated citizenry, the absence of these in the ethnically diverse Congo contributed greatly to its instability in the decades that followed.

No one single factor can be said to have caused the Congo's road to independence to be a rocky one but the lack of educational opportunities for the Congolese when they were the colonial subjects of Belgium was clearly a central factor in the new country's instability.

Jessica Achberger is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Her work focuses on the foreign policy and political and economic development of Zambia In addition to her academic writing, she contributes regularly to ChinAfrica magazine the Zambian Economist, among other publications. She is the website administrator for the Network for Historical Research in Zambia. She currently resides just outside Lusaka, Zambia.

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Often African nations are described as unstable. There is a great deal of truth in this statement as almost all post-colonial African nations have experienced political violence and severe economic mismanagement during the mid and late twentieth century. Of all African nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had an especially tumultuous post-colonial experience.

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King Leopold II of Belgium

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Most of Congo Free state was located in Central Africa in a large jungle.Owned by three major Empires: The Luba Empire, The Lunda Empire, and Kongo Empire.

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Videographic: A short, recent history of Congo

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An animated infographic mapping the war in Congo: mineral wealth, militias and an epic march Subscribe NOW to The Economist: http://econ.st/1Fsu2Vj Get more The Economist Follow us: https://twitter.com/TheEconomist Like us: https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomist View photos: https://instagram.com/theeconomist/ The Economist videos give authoritative insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science, technology and the connections between them.