How and by whom were the borders of the Belgian Congo established at the time?

Answer

The most important area demarcation took place during the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, and was based on hydrography: the AIC (renamed Congo Free State in August 1885) was given control of the Congo basin. Fourteen country delegations took part in that Conference, including Auguste Lambermont (B), Henry Sanford (US) and Henry Morton Stanley (as an independent expert) who defended Leopold II’s plans for a large territory in Central Africa. No precise boundaries were drawn at the Conference itself, this was often done in bilateral working groups just after it, but on the basis of the principles of the conference.

Yet the border demarcation cannot be reduced to one moment and a handful of authors in Berlin. One of the articles in the General Act, in addition to the reference to hydrography, concerns the ‘occupation effective’: one could prove in a relatively easy way that one had rights to a territory, provided there were treaties with the local population, or a minimal presence of a colonial administration. Stanley had been secretly making such treaties for the AIC since 1882, ostensibly establishing trading posts. In 1887, less than two years after the Berlin Conference, Stanley led a disastrous expedition that appeared to be aimed at relieving Emin Pasha, but in reality also aimed at territorial expansion into the Sudan and Uganda. In 1894 they managed to attach the ‘Lado enclave’ through an exchange (for a never built railway across Congolese territory). It was not a true exclave or enclave but an extension of territory giving access to the White Nile, which was returned in 1910.

In the South it was added to the territory much later, ‘la botte du Katanga’. Due to the lakes in that area, it was not always clear to which drainage basin a place belonged, Congo or Zambezi. The British and Belgians therefore tried to negotiate treaties in a bidding process. Umberto I, King of Italy, as arbitrator between the two parties, is said to have drawn a boundary from North to South at longitude 28° 35′ E, to settle the dispute in 1894. In 1911-1914 a mixed British-Belgian Border Commission corrected that border here and there, because they still gained insight into the hydrography of the area. Also in 1931 and in 1958, border commissions were organized for the area between Lake Mweru and Lake Tanganyika, a little more to the north. In that area, even the Zambian education minister was accidentally arrested by Katangese border guards for a day in 1965; they clearly didn’t know where the boundaries were…

Furthermore, during the Versailles talks in 1918-1919, there was an attempt to add a piece of northern Angola to the Belgian Congo, but it failed at the negotiating table. And even today there are still border disputes, Rukwanzi Island on Lake Albert is claimed by both the DRC and Uganda, and a military border conflict took place in 2007.

A question has already been published and answered here about the Belgian provincial borders and their origins.