fell from £3,300,000 in 1910 to £2,380,000 in 1914. It varied much during the World War, being £2,100,000 in 1915, not quite £5,000,000 in 1916, £3,200,000 in 1917 and £3,500,000 in 1918. Before the war 60 to 70% of the imports came from Belgium, which also took the bulk of the exports. During the war external trade was almost wholly with Great Britain; after 1918 Belgium recovered part of the trade, though that with Britain continued much above pre-war figures and was worth £2,000,000 in 1919.
Considerable energy was shown in railway construction and by the end of 1918 there were combined railway and steamer routes from the mouth of the Congo to Dar es Salaam and Cape Town. A railway 168 m. in length from Kabalo, on the Lualaba, along the Lukuga valley to Albertville on Lake Tanganyika was begun in 1911 and completed in 1915. The railway which connects at Sakania with the Rhodesian railways and runs through Katanga reached Elisabethville in Oct. 1910, Kambove, the mining centre, in 1913 and Bukama, at the head of navigation on the Lualaba in May 1918. The length of the Katanga line is 450 m. and it is of the standard South African gauge. From Chilongo, on the Katanga railway, the building of a line westward to the Angola frontier—about 400 m.—was in progress in 1921. This line is to link up with the Benguella railway and put Katanga in direct communication with Lobito Bay, thus reducing the distance to Europe, compared with the Beira route, by over 3,000 miles.
Progress was made in improving river and lake navigation. Kinshasa, on Stanley Pool, possessing better accommodation supplanted its neighbour Leopoldsville as chief river port in 1915. In 1911–3 a pipe-line was laid from Matadi, on the Congo estuary, to Stanley Pool to supply the river steamers with petroleum for fuel and reservoirs capable of holding 8,000 tons of oil were built. In 1921 a seaplane service was started along the Congo river from Stanley Pool to Stanley Falls.
Revenue.—Taxes on imports and exports, not exceeding the equivalent of 10% ad valorem, direct taxation of Europeans, and a poll tax on native adult males, a tax on ivory and the Government share in the exploitation of mines were the chief sources of revenue; the administrative services and interest on debt the largest items of expenditure. The abandonment of the trading monopolies of the old Congo Free State, and the taking over of its loans put a severe strain on the resources of the colony. Revenue increased from about £1,400,000 in 1909 to £2,320,000 in 1918. In each of those years expenditure was greater than receipts by sums varying from £400,000 to £1,500,000 and new loans had to be contracted. The public debt in 1919 was 349,000,000 francs. With the development of commerce, and especially of the Katanga mines—in which the colony had a two-thirds interest—the prospects of balancing the budget became good. A loan of 500,000,000 francs was raised in 1921 for public works.
History.—From the date of its annexation by Belgium (Nov. 15 1908) the country was placed under the control of a colonial minister responsible to the Belgian Parliament, which has modelled the administration much on the lines of a British Crown Colony. The abuses and misgovernments which were fostered by the Leopoldian régime were remedied as quickly as was possible. Most of the trade monopolies held by Leopold II. and his associates were abandoned and foreign traders encouraged. Care was taken that the natives enjoyed security of land tenure—though ownership remained with the State and the right to dispose of their own labour freely. Moreover in 1910 the natives were granted a measure of local autonomy; their chiefs were—for the first time—officially recognized and were entrusted with large powers. These powers had a tendency, however, to make the chiefs, at least those of minor importance, simply agents of the State.
Another step in decentralization was taken in 1912 by the subdivision of the former unwieldy territorial division and by the grant of wider initiative to the commissioners of the divisions. But it was found that the Government was still too highly centralized and, in 1914, the various divisions were grouped into four provinces over each of which a vice-governor-general presided, aided by a consultative council on which non-official Europeans had seats. This left the governor-general, and the council of government free to deal with matters affecting the colony as a whole, including the preparation of the budget. The governor-general had, however, practically no authority in the province of Katanga, which, in 1910, except that it had no separate budget, became a separate colony. Its vice-governor-general exercised all the executive functions of the governor-general and corresponded directly with Brussels. In general the new native policy was successful, though trouble arose from the difficulty, due to crippled finances, of securing an administrative personnel of the best type. Many of the old agents of the Congo State had to be retained. One of these officials in the Tanganyika region was in April 1912 sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for summarily executing 11 native prisoners, including 4 women and a child. But that the natives as a whole were satisfied was shown by their attitude during the World War. A column of about 600 men cooperated with French forces in the operations in Cameroon and other units aided in the defence of northern Rhodesia. An army of over 10,000 men was raised for service in the East African campaign. At the outset of the war Belgium had endeavoured unsuccessfully to preserve neutrality in her Congo colony, and the first act of hostility was committed by the Germans (see East African Campaigns). In the result the north-western part of German East Africa was conquered by the Belgian native troops (as described in the article on the campaign) and from Sept. 1916 to March 1921 a considerable area of that country was under Belgian administration. Of this area nearly all the province of Urundi and the greater part of Ruanda were permanently assigned to Belgium by an Anglo-Belgian agreement of Sept. 1919. This was a notable addition not so much to the area as to the resources and population of the Belgian Congo. Ruanda and Urundi are healthy, fertile, high-lying regions, thickly populated and great cattle-raising areas. The agreement made Kivu entirely a Belgian lake. By a previous Anglo-Belgian protocol (May 1910) the Congo-Uganda frontier had been modified so as to give Belgium the western shores of Albert Nyanza and in Feb. 1915 another agreement fixed the frontier between Albert Nyanza and the Congo-Nile watershed.
Baron Wahis, the first governor-general under Belgian administration, was succeeded in May 1912 by M. Fuchs. In 1916 M. Henry became governor-general. On his retirement the Belgian Cabinet departed from precedent by choosing, Jan. 1921, as the new governor-general a man without previous colonial experience M. Maurice Lippens, governor of East Flanders. M. Louis Franck, the Belgian Colonial Minister, paid a visit to the Congo in 1920. His visit coincided with a period of unrest both among the white civil servants and among the natives, due to the high cost of living. For some time the majority of the white officials were on strike, while certain native tribes rose in revolt.
See A Manual of Belgian Congo, a British Admiralty publication (1920); M. Halewyck, La Charte Coloniale (3 vols. 1910–9); A. J. Wauters, Histoire Politique du Congo Beige (1912); E. M. Jack, On the Congo Frontier (1914); H. Waltz, Das Konzessionwesen im Belgischen Kongo (1917); F. Fallen, L’Agriculture au Congo Belge (1918). (F. R. C.)
BELGIUM (see 3.668). On Dec. 17 1909, King Leopold II. of Belgium died at the castle of Laeken. He left behind him a Belgium richer and fuller of vitality than that to whose throne he had succeeded. His kingdom's immense economic development, which he had consistently aided and encouraged, had shown him the necessity for such a country, small but overpopulated, of ample foreign markets and colonies. Leopold I. had sought to foster the colonizing spirit in Belgium, but without success. Leopold II.'s eyes were opened by the great African discoveries of 1878 to the possibility of realizing an ambitious scheme for acquiring in his country's interests a vast territory in the centre of the Dark Continent. Amid general scepticism, and aided by a mere handful of men, mostly officers, he had built up the independent state of the Congo. From 1895 onward the Belgian Government had associated itself in his work by opening credits to him, although Parliament remained hostile to the King's bold and enterprising policy. Belgian finance, however, took an interest in affairs on the Congo; and little by little there developed a section of public opinion favourable to the taking over by Belgium of the immense African territory. After a violent agitation against the methods of colonial government in the Congo State, conducted in Germany, England, and America, and supported by certain Belgian politicians, the Congo was ceded to Belgium in 1908.
