French Congo

The French Congo was a French colony in west-central Africa, on the north bank of the Congo River. It grew out of treaties made by the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza around 1880 and was formally created in 1882. At various times it took in present-day Gabon and parts of the Central African Republic; from 1903 its core was called Middle Congo (Moyen-Congo), and from 1910 it was one of the territories of French Equatorial Africa. Its borders closely match those of today's Republic of the Congo.

Before colonial rule the region was home to several African states, among them the Teke kingdom and Loango, with the Kingdom of Kongo to the south. Brazza, an Italian-born explorer who had taken French citizenship, explored the Ogooué River in an expedition lasting from 1875 to 1878. On a second mission, from 1879 to 1882, he crossed overland and reached the Congo River in 1880, partly to forestall Henry Morton Stanley, who was working for King Leopold II of Belgium. On 10 September 1880 Brazza signed a treaty with Makoko Iloo I, ruler of the Teke, placing his lands under French protection. Iloo I died the same year, but his queen, Ngalifourou, upheld the agreement. French rule on the river began at the site of Brazzaville.

The French Congo was formally established by France on 30 November 1882, and its claim was confirmed at the Berlin Conference of 1884–85. Over the next decade treaties fixed its borders with Portuguese Cabinda, the German Cameroons and the Congo Free State. Gabon was formally added in 1891, and the combined colony was sometimes called Gabon-Congo. Brazza headed the colony's administration until 1897, when he was dismissed amid complaints about its poor revenue.

To develop the territory cheaply, France handed vast areas to about thirty private companies in return for promises of investment. In practice they mostly extracted ivory, rubber and timber, often by brutal methods that amounted to forced labour. Even so, most lost money; only about ten made a profit, and many holdings existed largely on paper. In 1905 Brazza was sent back to investigate reports of abuse under governor Émile Gentil. His report was damning, but it was suppressed after it reached the French parliament, and Brazza died at Dakar on the way home that September. Twenty years later the American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois wrote: "In the depths of the French Congo one finds the same exploitation of black folk as in the Belgian Congo or British West Africa."

The colony was renamed Middle Congo in 1903, and Gabon was separated from it in 1906. In 1910 France grouped Gabon, Middle Congo, Ubangi-Shari and Chad into French Equatorial Africa, with its governor-general at Brazzaville. In 1911 the Morocco–Congo Treaty gave Germany a strip of territory reaching the Congo River, added to Kamerun as Neukamerun; France recovered it after the First World War. Middle Congo remained a territory of the federation, administered at times directly by the governor-general.

In the referendum of September 1958 the territories of French Equatorial Africa chose autonomy within the French Community, and the federation was dissolved. Middle Congo became the Republic of the Congo, which gained full independence in August 1960. Because it inherited the old colonial borders, it is regarded as the successor of the French Congo, distinct from its larger neighbour across the river, the former Belgian Congo.

Our 1938 map draws this territory with the label "Congo (France)". By then the French Congo as a separate colony had ended, and the outline shows Middle Congo as a territory within French Equatorial Africa, which earlier maps draw as a single unit.