POLITICAL HISTORY, PAGE 15
The Belgian Congo boomed for a dozen years following World War I. The capital moved from Boma to Léopoldville in 1923. More railroads were built to open the center and south of the colony. Port towns blossomed at railheads along the rivers. The Belgian government offered incentives to investors and subsidized settlers who would bring their skills to this new frontier in Africa. With each boatload of immigrants, each new rail scheme, each factory or mine, came new demands for African labor. As if to confirm there would be no turning back from a European-style, production-based economy, the Belgian colonial administration imposed head taxes to be collected by the increasingly unpopular African chiefs. Voluntarily or otherwise, more and more men left village life to go to work for the mines and factories and construction gangs that would transform their land in a great binge of industrial exploitation. Ancient towns withered and new ones grew as the population adapted to the demands of foreign occupation.
French administrators in Brazzaville, capital of the new Federation of French Equatorial Africa, rivaled their Belgian counterparts when it came to corrupting the African way of life. Moyen-Congo attracted its share of investors and industrial concerns. Labor was coerced and taxes imposed. Men were forced from their villages to seek work in industrial towns. Marcel Sauvage, a Frenchman commenting on the colonials, observed that "most of their principles seem to melt away under the tropical heat and their courage goes no farther than what is required for making money or satisfying their vanity. And the Africans naturally bear the consequences."54 Africans in both Congos enjoyed some relief when the Great Depression gripped Europe and America, but as the 1930s came to an end, a new war among the world powers would soon weigh heavily on their backs.
In 1940 the foreign occupiers of both banks of the Congo River found themselves occupied. Belgium fell to the invading German army in May; the following month France surrendered. Whatever help these two could give to Britain, which now stood almost alone against the Nazis, would have to come from the colonies. Many of France's colonial administrators pledged loyalty to the new French government at Vichy, which was forced to co-operate with Germany. But in Chad, Governor Félix Eboué cast his lot with the Free French of Charles De Gaulle on the side of the British. (Eboué, from French Guiana and the first black governor in the French empire, no doubt found it difficult to agree with Hitler's racial doctrines.) Under threat of arms Cameroon and the rest of French Equatorial Africa fell into line behind De Gaulle (blood was shed in Gabon as the Gaullists won the battle of Frenchmen against Frenchmen). Brazzaville, capital of one of the most impoverished French colonies, suddenly became the capital of Free France.
Shades of 1914; Africans were recruited for the army of Free France and the zinc and lead mines of the Compagnie Minière du Congo Français. Men, women, and children mobilized for cultivation and harvest. Small factories sprang up to produce soap, shoes, cement, matches, and other essentials. The new Congo-Ocean railway rushed food crops, palm oil, lumber, cotton, and ore to allied ships that choked the harbor at Point Noire.
In Léopoldville the Belgians were quick to align their rich colony with Britain. African and European alike were enlisted for a Belgian army to fight alongside the other allies. Colonial administrators expanded the policy of compulsory cultivation. In Katanga, Union Minière's mining of tin, copper, and other strategic materials intensified. The rubber harvest—especially after Japan conquered the rubber-rich territories of Southeast Asia—was pushed to its limit. Manufacturing plants opened, and the railroads hummed with produce-laden freight cars. By 1944 the Belgian Congo boasted factories for the smelting of copper and production of textiles, sugar, and wood products for export. Other concerns manufactured consumer goods for local consumption. Between 1928 and 1943 cotton exports increased sixfold to nearly 43,000 tons; palm oil exports quadrupled; and rubber jumped from 1,000 tons in 1939 to 11,000 in 1944. "For five years, our populations were subjected to an extremely intense and varied war effort," wrote J. Van Wing, a missionary priest. "The whole black population was mobilized to produce as much as possible as fast as possible, in order to send the Allies what they needed and make good the loss of imports....Only coercion [of the Africans] enabled us to reach the end of the war without great damage."55
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