Latest / The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History / The Man Who Tried to Save Congo: Pierre Ryckmans' Colonial Reforms
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the iron fists — the Force Publique, the chicotte, the brutal labor exploitation. But today I want to look at the man who tried to soften the blow from the top. Pierre Ryckmans, governor-general of the Belgian Congo from 1934 to 1946, often called the 'hermit of Boma' for his reclusive, bookish style. Luna: The hermit of Boma — that sounds like a nickname that tells its own story. Lucas: Exactly. Boma was the old capital, a steamy riverside port that felt like the edge of the world. Ryckmans chose to stay there, away from the settlers and the business lobby in Léopoldville, reading philosophy and drafting reforms. He was a lawyer from Antwerp who had written a thesis on colonial administration, and he came to power with a genuine belief that Belgium had a 'civilizing mission' — but he wanted to take that mission seriously. Lucas: His big idea was what he called 'the policy of the élite' — creating a small class of educated Africans who could gradually be integrated into the colonial system. He pushed for more schools, more room for évolués in the administration, and he fought against the worst abuses. For instance, in 1935 he finally managed to forbid the use of the chicotte — that whip made of dried hippopotamus hide that had been the symbol of colonial terror for decades. Luna: Wait, really? That was only banned in 1935? That long? Lucas: Yeah, decades after the Congo Free State had been turned into the Belgian Congo. And even then, it wasn't fully eradicated — the force publique quietly kept using it in some camps. But Ryckmans genuinely tried. He also ended the obligation for women to work on public works projects, and he pushed for the creation of native courts — tribunaux indigènes — that could handle local disputes under African customary law, rather than purely Belgian rules. Lucas: But here's the twist. Ryckmans was still a man of his time, and his reforms were framed within an unshakable belief in Belgian tutelage. He saw the évolués as future partners, yes, but partners who would remain under Belgian guidance for a long, long time. He wasn't preparing the Congo for independence — he was preparing it for a more enlightened form of dependency. Luna: So he was a reformer, but not a revolutionary. What did the settlers think of him? Lucas: They mostly hated him. The colons, the planters, the mining executives — they saw his policies as soft, even subversive. They wanted cheap labor, not educated Africans who might demand rights. Ryckmans clashed constantly with the big companies, especially Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, which ran the copper mines in the south. He once wrote that the company saw the population as nothing more than 'a reservoir of labor' — and he wanted to change that. Lucas: His problem was that he had power but not unlimited power. The governor-general answered to Brussels, and the Belgian government was full of men with ties to the colonial business lobby. And then came the war. When Belgium fell to the Germans in 1940, the Congo became a crucial ally to the Allies, producing uranium, copper, and rubber for the war effort. Ryckmans had to ramp up production, which meant forcing more labor out of the population — the very thing he'd been trying to reduce. Luna: That must have been a brutal contradiction for him. Lucas: It was. He wrote about it in his diary — the tension between his reformist ideals and the wartime demands. But he also understood that if the Congo didn't produce, the Allies would lose, and that would be worse. He rationalized it as a necessary evil. Still, he fought to keep some protections in place, like limiting the hours of forced labor and making sure wages were paid, even if they were pitifully low. Lucas: After the war, Ryckmans gave a farewell speech in Léopoldville that became famous — or infamous, depending on your view. He admitted that Belgium had not lived up to its own rhetoric. He said, 'We have too often confused our selfish interests with our civilizing mission, and we have not been sufficiently concerned with the dignity of the African.' It was a startling confession from the highest colonial official. Luna: Wow. That's a powerful thing to say in public. Did he face any backlash? Lucas: Not immediately, because he was leaving anyway. He went back to Belgium and ended up teaching at the colonial university in Antwerp, and he died a few years later, in 1948, just as the postwar reformist wave was gaining momentum. But his speech did spark debate among colonial administrators — some saw it as a betrayal, others as a breath of fresh air. Lucas: His successors, though, like Eugène Jungers, were much more conservative. Jungers was the first Belgian governor born in the Congo — he'd grown up as the son of a colonial officer — but he was no reformer. He reined in some of Ryckmans' projects, especially the ones that gave Africans more legal rights. The évolués who had hoped for gradual progress found themselves hitting a glass ceiling again. Luna: So the moment of promise just faded away after he left? Lucas: In many ways, yes. The reforms that did stick — like the native courts and the start of a school system — were real, but they were too little and too late. By the 1950s, the évolués were getting frustrated, and you saw that frustration explode in the 1957 municipal elections and the 1959 riots. Ryckmans' vision of a slow, guided evolution was overtaken by events. Lucas: But it's worth remembering that Ryckmans wasn't just a well-meaning bureaucrat. He wrote extensively, and his books on colonial ethics were studied for decades. He was one of the few colonial officials who genuinely questioned the system from within, even if he couldn't break out of it. He once compared Belgian rule to a 'tutor' who must eventually make himself unnecessary — but he never set a date for that disappearance. Luna: Sounds like a man with a conscience, but a conscience that was still trapped in the colonial mindset. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes him so fascinating. He's a reminder that even the 'good' colonialists were still colonialists. They could see the injustice, but they couldn't imagine a world without Belgian control. Ryckmans' reforms weren't altruistic — they were strategic. He believed that if you didn't give educated Africans some room, you'd have a revolution. And he was right. Lucas: And speaking of that strategic vision — you know, it's funny, in a way, that we can sit here and discuss these nuances because we're able to have these conversations ad-free, without any sponsor telling us to hurry up or sell you something. That's a deliberate choice we made for this podcast. Luna: It's a choice I appreciate every episode. No interruptions, just history. Lucas: And if you appreciate that too, and you want to help us keep it that way, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's the only way we keep the lights on, and it goes straight into research and production. No ads, no sponsors, just our conversations. Luna: Yeah, it's a simple way to keep this going. Lucas: So, back to Ryckmans. One of his last acts as governor was to push for a reform of the 'carte de mérite civique' — that certificate that some évolués could get, which gave them a few extra rights. He wanted to make it easier to obtain, and to attach more privileges to it. But his successor Jungers watered it down, and it remained a half-hearted gesture. Luna: So even the small steps were being blocked. Lucas: Right. And that's part of why the Belgian Congo ended so badly. By the time the 1960 Round Table came around, the Belgians had built a system that produced a tiny elite, but it had never integrated them. The évolués like Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasa-Vubu had been educated in Belgian schools, but they had no real power. And when the demand for independence came, Belgium simply couldn't handle it. Lucas: Ryckmans died in 1948, so he never saw the collapse. But his writings and his example haunted the post-war debate. Some colonial officials pointed to him as a model of what could have been. Others blamed him for giving Africans 'ideas' that were dangerous. In the end, he was a tragic figure — a man who saw the flaws in the system but couldn't fix them, and whose reforms were too little to save the colony from its own contradictions. Luna: It makes you wonder what would have happened if more people had listened to him. Lucas: Maybe we'd be having a very different conversation. But history isn't kind to 'what ifs.' What we can say is that Ryckmans stands as a reminder that even within the belly of the beast, there were people who struggled with their own conscience. That doesn't excuse the colonial system, but it helps us understand its complexity — and why it failed so spectacularly. Lucas: Next time, we might look at the other side of that coin — the African voices who were pushing for change from the grassroots, not just from the top. Like the 1959 Leopoldville riots, which we touched on in an earlier episode, but maybe we can go deeper into that. For now, I think we've given Ryckmans his due. Luna: Yeah, I feel like I have a better understanding of the colonial administration's internal debates. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Always a pleasure, Luna. See you next time.