Front organization
The
International African Association
(in full, "International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa"; in French
Association Internationale Africaine,
and in full
Association Internationale pour l'Exploration et la Civilisation de l'Afrique Centrale)
was a
front organization
established by the guests at the
Brussels Geographic Conference
of 1876, an event hosted by
King Leopold II
of
Belgium
. The Association was used by King Leopold ostensibly to further his purportedly
altruistic
and
humanitarian
projects in the area of
Central Africa
, the area that was to become Leopold's privately controlled
Congo Free State
. King Leopold volunteered space in
Brussels
for the International African Association's headquarters, and there were to be national committees of the association set up in all the participating countries, as well as an international committee. Leopold was elected by acclamation as the international committee's first chairman, but said that he would serve for one year only so that the chairmanship could rotate among people from different countries.
The new body was welcomed throughout Europe (contributions were sent by the
Rothschilds
and
Viscount Ferdinand de Lesseps
) and the national committees were to be headed by grand dukes, princes, and other royals, but most of them never got off the ground.
[1]
The international committee met once in the following year, reelected Leopold as chairman, despite his earlier pledge not to serve again, and then disintegrated. Nevertheless, thanks to the Association, Leopold succeeded in his goal of convincing the Belgian people and the
major powers
of Europe that his interest in Africa was purely altruistic and humanitarian-oriented. The Association was succeeded by the short-lived
Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo
, and the
International Association of the Congo
, which eventually dissolved when Leopold renamed the area the Congo Free State.
History
[
edit
]
Creation
[
edit
]
The organization was created at the 1876
Brussels Geographic Conference
to which Leopold invited nearly forty well-known experts, who were mainly schooled in the geographic sciences or were wealthy
philanthropists
. They hailed from a number of European countries. As a result, the Association was originally conceived as a multi-person, scientific, and humanitarian assembly but it quickly became dominated by Leopold and his economic interests in
Africa
. Originally, the stated goal of the group was to "discover" the largely unexplored Congo and 'civilize' its natives, whence it full name "International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa". In his novella
Heart of Darkness
, the author
Joseph Conrad
therefore sarcastically referred to the Association as "the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs".
[2]
The Association was intended to be a joint effort on the parts of all
European
countries present at the Conference, however, each nation formed its own national committee for exploration which would, in theory, share information with the whole of the Association, hence, a cooperative effort. However, national economic interests quickly took precedence over the group's supposedly philanthropic ideals. Each of these committees organized nationalized expeditions into the African interior and there was very little sharing of information, resulting in each nation claiming certain portions of African land for themselves.
Exploration of the Region
[
edit
]
From 1879 to 1884 famed explorer
Henry Morton Stanley
returned to the Congo, this time not as a reporter, but as an envoy from Leopold, and under the guise of the Belgian Committee, with the secret mission to organize a Congo state. At the same time, the French marine officer
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza
traveled into the western
Congo Basin
and raised the
French flag
over the newly founded
Brazzaville
in 1881. The
Kingdom of Portugal
, which also claimed the area due to old treaties with the native
Kongo Empire
, made a treaty with
Great Britain
on February 26, 1884, to block off the Congo Society's access to the
Atlantic
.
At the same time, various European countries tried to acquire a foothold in Africa.
France
occupied
Ottoman Tunisia
and colonized today's
Republic of the Congo
in 1881, followed by the
Rivieres du Sud
colony at the Gulf of Guinea in 1884. In 1882, Great Britain occupied the
Khedivate of Egypt
, an Ottoman vassal which ruled over much of present-day
Sudan
and parts of
Somalia
. In 1870 and 1882,
Kingdom of Italy
took possession of the first parts of
Eritrea
, while the
German Empire
declared
Togoland
,
German Cameroon
, and
South-West Africa
to be under its protection in 1884.
Disintegration
[
edit
]
The large number of competing interests caused the Association to fracture and disintegrate over each member state's national interests. The Association's break-up eventually forced the
Berlin Conference
of 1884?1885, effectively beginning what became known as the
Scramble for Africa
. Despite the failure of the initial committee, the Belgian Committee that the Association generated continued to sponsor "humanitarian" missions into the bush.
Formation of the International Association of the Congo
[
edit
]
In 1879, the
International Association of the Congo
was also formed, having more economic goals, but still closely related to the former society. Leopold secretly bought off the foreign investors in the Congo Society, which was turned to imperialistic goals, with the Association serving primarily as a philanthropic front. By these means, Leopold morphed the organization's "ideology from an international philanthropic association to that of a private commercial enterprise…[and] the change from a commercial plan to a political reality: the Congo Free State."
[3]
[4]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Hochschild, Adam (1999-09-03).
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p.
46
.
ISBN
0547525737
.
lesseps.
- ^
Stengers, Jean. "Sur l'aventure congolaise de Joseph Conrad".
In Quaghebeur, M. and Van Balberghe, E. (Eds.), Papier blanc, encre noire: Cent ans de culture francophone en Afrique centrale (Zaire, Rwanda et Burundi). 2 vols. pp. 15-34. Brussels: Labor
.
1
.
- ^
Wesseling, H. L.
; Pomerans, Arnold J. (1996).
Divide and Rule: The Partition of Africa, 1880?1914
.
Westport
,
Connecticut
:
Praeger Publishing
. p. 89.
ISBN
0-275-95137-5
.
- ^
Rivero, Michael (February 12, 2003).
"From Kongo to Congo: The History Of The Belgian Congo (To 1963)"
.
Heart of Darkness: The Hypertext Annotation
. Stockton College. Archived from
the original
on September 20, 2006.
Further reading
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|