Declaration of Le Havre
- Category:
- Diplomacy
- Front:
- Africa
- Date:
- 29 April 1916
- Author:
- Natalia
- Tags:
- Belgium, Belgian Congo, France, Belgian neutrality
On 29 April 1916 the French minister to the Belgian government, Antoni Kłobukowski (PL), a diplomat of Polish origin and a former Governor-General of Indochina, handed the Belgian foreign minister, Baron Eugène Beyens, a declaration concerning the Belgian Congo. The Belgian government in exile had been based since the autumn of 1914 at Sainte-Adresse near Le Havre, hence the name of the document. In it the government of the French Republic declared that during the peace negotiations it would help Belgium to keep the Congo within its present borders and to obtain separate compensation for the colony for the damage it had suffered during the war.
Who signed
The British chronology of the war states that the declaration was signed by France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Russia. According to the text published by the French, things were somewhat different. The declaration was made by France. On the same day the British minister, Francis Villiers, and the Russian chargé d’affaires informed Beyens that their governments adhered to it. The Italian minister and the Japanese chargé d’affaires, on the other hand, stated only that their governments took note of it. It had been similar in February, when Italy and Japan merely supported the Declaration of Sainte-Adresse, because they were not among the guarantors of Belgian independence. Beyens thanked the Allied representatives for this “new testimony of friendship and solidarity”.
Why was it France that came forward first? The declaration invoked the Franco-Belgian agreements of 1884, 1895 and 1908. Under them France had a right of pre-emption in case the Congo should ever change hands. Paris was therefore particularly interested in the fate of the colony. The text also referred to the note of 19 September 1914, in which Britain and France guaranteed the integrity of the Belgian colonies, and to the February declaration of the guarantor powers.
Belgian fears
The Declaration of Sainte-Adresse spoke of the independence and restoration of Belgium but did not mention the colonies. The Belgians feared that at the peace conference the Congo would become a bargaining chip. In Germany, from the start of the war, there had been plans to create a German empire in Central Africa in which there would also be room for the Belgian colony. According to the American historian Sally Marks, King Albert I pressed for a new commitment partly because proposals were coming from America that the Congo should be sold to Germany and the money used for reparations for Belgium.
Belgium had, moreover, a strong argument: its soldiers were fighting in Africa alongside the Allies. The colonial troops of the Force Publique had taken part in the conquest of Kamerun, and in the last days of April 1916 Belgian columns set out from the Congo against Ruanda in German East Africa. At the beginning of May they took Kigali.
What came of it
The Declaration of Le Havre was treated as a supplement to the February Declaration of Sainte-Adresse. Together they became the basis of Belgium’s war aims. After the war Belgium kept the Congo within its borders intact and, in addition, received a League of Nations mandate over Ruanda-Urundi, former German territories that its troops had occupied in 1916.
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Related events
(04)The same battle, people or subject.
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