The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Introductory Note

During the 1884–85 Berlin Conference at which major European powers negotiated and formalised their claims to territory in Africa—a process generally known as the ‘scramble for Africa’—the territory now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was allotted to Leopold II, the Belgian King who earlier had sent several exploration missions to the basin of the Congo River and established the Comité d’Etudes du Congo to prepare for the exploitation of his Congolese domain. Despite the transformation of the Comité d’Etudes du Congo into the ‘International...