This Week in History: The Founding of Leopoldville

The modern city of Kinshasa, now the largest in Africa and the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sits beside what is now known as Pool Malebo, the stretch of water that spans to the northern bank of the Congo River, upon which resides another great African city, Brazzaville. However, the former names of these places invite us to explore the traumatic colonial past of the former Leopoldville, located beside Stanley Pool in the Congo Free State. 

The tale of Leopoldville’s founding is one saturated not only with the prevailing European colonial attitudes of the time – mainly those of adventure, opportunity, and exploration – but is also infused with tales of corruption, suffering, and exploitation. The man who founded the city, Henry Morton Stanley, was the archetypical African explorer. He saw the continent as an ‘unpeopled country’ and made his name tracing a plethora of geographical marvels and relaying them back home to a ravenous media, eagerly reproducing his tales of ‘discovery’ and danger. Thus, for an aspiring colonial overlord like King Leopold II of Belgium, with his heart, and more importantly his wallet, set upon the recently opened-up interior of Africa, Stanley represented a useful ally. Leopold himself was disappointed in his own kingdom of Belgium, famously referring to it as a ‘small country, small people’. The recent explosion of the ivory trade presented him with not only a way of enriching his kingdom but also himself. Following Stanley’s tales of derring-do eagerly in The Times, Leopold knew Stanley would be the right man for the job. What is notably distinct about the Congo Free State, as it became known, is that it belonged to Leopold, not to Belgium; it persisted as his personal property until 1908. It is apt, then, that its first major European settlement since the Portuguese be called Leopoldville. 

Leopoldville is a city which marked the beginning of one of the most exploitative and vicious colonial regimes in history. Such a hyperbolic statement, I feel, is not unjustified, and whilst I unfortunately cannot detail the characteristics of such a regime in this short article, the founding of Leopoldville should still be remembered for the events which follow. Pursuit of profit and his own ingratiation motivated Leopold’s founding of the colony, and they would inform how it was run. 

Bibliography 

Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers, 1999).