Belgium proposes the neutralisation of the Congo Basin

On 9 August 1914 the government of Belgium put forward a proposal to neutralise the African free-trade zone, the so-called conventional basin of the Congo. The aim was to keep the war being fought in Europe from spreading to the colonies in Central Africa, including the Belgian Congo.

The Berlin Act

The proposal was based on the provisions of the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. The colonial powers had then established a vast free-trade zone in Central Africa, covering the Congo basin and neighbouring territories as far as the coast of the Indian Ocean. The conference’s General Act provided that, in the event of war, states with colonies there could agree on their neutrality so as not to carry the conflict into African territories.

Belgium had a particular reason to make use of this option. Its troops were fighting the German invasion in Europe, and the Congo, a huge colony taken over from King Leopold II, bordered German East Africa and Kamerun. War in Central Africa threatened destruction and revolts, and the weak colonial forces were not prepared for major operations.

No agreement

The proposal was not accepted. Great Britain did not want to limit its freedom of action in Africa, where it was counting on quickly seizing German colonies, wireless stations and ports used by German warships. France, which had also invoked the Berlin Act, withdrew its request when the Germans began hostilities against French and Belgian possessions in the zone. Germany, facing the loss of its colonies, proposed neutralisation later, in a note of 22 August passed on through the United States. By then, however, it was too late: fighting was already under way in Africa, and German vessels were shelling Belgian posts on Lake Tanganyika.

Significance

The failure of the Belgian initiative meant that the war engulfed the whole of Central Africa. The Belgian Congo became a party to the conflict, and its troops, the Force Publique, fought in the following years in Kamerun and in German East Africa. It showed that peacetime commitments, such as the neutrality laid down in the Berlin Act, like the neutrality of Belgium itself in Europe, could not withstand the test of a great war.