Belgian Empire: Colonial Ambitions and the Scramble for Africa

The late 19th century marked an era of feverish imperial expansion in Europe, a time when the continent’s great powers carved up vast territories across Africa in a race for resources, prestige, and control. Among the many actors in this turbulent reordering of the world stood an unlikely imperialist—Belgium, a young and comparatively small European nation with no prior tradition of overseas conquest. Yet, under the leadership of its ambitious monarch, King Leopold II, Belgium would come to dominate a vast expanse of Central Africa, leaving behind one of the most brutal and controversial colonial legacies in modern history.

Belgian Empire: Colonial Ambitions and the Scramble for Africa traces Belgium’s imperial journey from obscurity to infamy. This book begins by exploring the foundations of Belgian statehood and the monarchy's outsized role in shaping its early national identity. Leopold II, a king without a kingdom of his own, emerges as a pivotal figure—driven not only by personal ambition and a thirst for grandeur but also by a calculated understanding of the geopolitical moment. As the European powers met at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 to formalize their claims over African territory, Leopold positioned himself cleverly, managing to secure personal sovereignty over the Congo Free State under the guise of humanitarian and scientific advancement.

But the Congo Free State was no ordinary colony. It was, in effect, a corporate venture underwritten by a monarch, operated through a brutal system of forced labor, violent coercion, and extractive capitalism centered around ivory and rubber. The suffering inflicted upon the Congolese population would, in time, draw international condemnation and lead to the transfer of control from Leopold to the Belgian state in 1908.