French Congo

Gabon, 1882–1906. Draft, not yet reviewed

The French Congo, also known as Middle Congo, was a French colony which at one time comprised the present-day area of the Republic of the Congo and parts of Gabon, and the Central African Republic. The French Congo began at Brazzaville on 10 September 1880 as a protectorate over the Bateke people along the north bank of the Congo River. The plan to develop the colony was to grant massive concessions to some thirty French companies. It formally added Gabon in 1891, was officially renamed Middle Congo in 1903, and was temporarily divorced from Gabon in 1906.

Seat of power: Libreville

No rulers documented for this era yet.

Culture

• Development was limited and amounted mostly to the extraction of ivory, rubber and timber, and these operations often involved great brutality and the near-enslavement of the locals.
• Most of the companies lost money, and only about ten earned profits.
• In 1887 the slave warehouses at Cape Lopez and Mayumba were formally closed by French officers.
• Fifty-two of the freed slaves from the Brazilian slave ship L'Elizia, captured in 1846, were resettled on the site of Libreville in 1849.

Picture

The French Congo was formally established on 30 November 1882, and was confirmed at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_France.svg, https://diffusion.shom.fr/pro/downloadable/download/sampl..., PD, file

Sources

• French Congo (Wikipedia)
• French Congo (Wikidata)
• About the picture (Wikipedia)

Text adapted from the Wikipedia articles listed as sources, CC BY-SA 4.0.