Latest / The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History / The Tervuren Museum and Belgium's Colonial Propaganda
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about the Congo's rubber, the uranium, the railway. But there's another side to Belgium's colonial story that often goes overlooked—the massive propaganda machine that sold the empire to the Belgian public. Luna: Propaganda? I guess I pictured posters and pamphlets, but you're probably talking about something bigger. Lucas: Much bigger. The centerpiece was the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, just outside Brussels. It's this grand, imposing building set in a sprawling park. But it wasn't originally a museum—it was built as the colonial exhibition of 1897, part of the World's Fair held in Brussels that year. Lucas: Leopold II wanted to showcase his Congo Free State as a model of benevolent colonialism. The exhibition featured Congolese artifacts, natural resources, and even live Congolese people in a 'human zoo'—a mock village where they were put on display. Luna: A human zoo. That's horrifying. How many people were brought over? Lucas: About 267 Congolese men, women, and children were transported to Tervuren for the fair. They were housed in replicas of Congolese huts and performed daily tasks—weaving, carving, dancing—while white visitors gawked. Many fell ill from the cold and damp Belgian climate. At least seven died during the exhibition. Lucas: The exhibition was a massive success. Over a million people visited. It cemented the idea in the Belgian mind that the Congo was a land of exotic riches and that Leopold was a great philanthropist. The museum itself was built to be permanent, a temple to colonial achievement. Luna: So the museum wasn't just a neutral collection; it was built to justify the entire colonial project. Lucas: Exactly. The architecture itself was propaganda. The building's design evokes a palace, with huge halls and grand staircases. Inside, the displays were carefully curated to tell a story of progress: Belgian engineers taming the Congo River, missionaries bringing Christianity, doctors fighting sleeping sickness. The violence of the rubber regime was completely absent. Lucas: One of the most striking exhibits was a series of dioramas showing the 'evolution' of the Congolese people. They showed supposedly primitive villages next to 'modern' mission stations—the message being that Belgium was lifting the Congo out of darkness. It's textbook colonial ideology. Luna: And the Congolese voices were completely silenced. They were just objects on display. Lucas: Precisely. The museum had a huge collection of ethnographic objects—masks, statues, weapons—but they were presented as exotic curiosities, not as art or as part of living cultures. It wasn't until much later that Congolese artists and scholars began to reclaim that narrative. Lucas: The propaganda wasn't limited to the museum. The colonial lobby—groups like the Société Belge de Propagande Coloniale—produced school textbooks, postcards, and films. Every Belgian schoolchild learned about the 'civilizing mission' in the Congo. Postcards showed smiling Congolese workers alongside European overseers, with captions like 'The happy native under Belgian rule.' Luna: So it was a total information ecosystem. What about the human zoos in other world fairs? Lucas: Belgium wasn't alone in that. Human zoos were common across Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But Belgium's were particularly tied to promoting the Congo. At the 1913 world fair in Ghent, a whole Congolese village was set up with over 200 people. And at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair—the first major fair after World War II—Belgium still had a 'Congolese village' as a tourist attraction. That was only 66 years ago. Luna: That's astonishing. And it shows how entrenched this colonial mindset was. Even as independence movements were growing, they were still putting people on display. Lucas: Exactly. The museum itself remained largely unchanged for decades. It wasn't until the 1990s that serious efforts began to reform it. In 2001, the museum officially changed its name from the Royal Museum for Central Belgium to the Royal Museum for Central Africa—a small shift, but significant. And in recent years, it has undergone a major renovation to reframe its collection. Lucas: The new permanent exhibition, opened in 2018, tries to present multiple perspectives. It includes critical panels about colonial violence, it features contemporary Congolese artists, and it even displays some of the human remains that were collected for racist 'scientific' studies. But it's a difficult balance—how do you transform a monument to colonialism into a space for decolonization? Luna: It sounds like an ongoing struggle. The building itself is still that grand palace Leopold built. Lucas: Right. And there are calls to return artifacts to the Congo. Belgium has begun the process of restitution, but it's slow. The museum holds about 180,000 objects, many taken without consent. In 2019, the Belgian government officially recognized the museum's colonial origins and committed to repatriating items. But so far, only a handful have been returned. Lucas: What's fascinating is that the museum's propaganda outlived the empire. For generations of Belgians, the Tervuren museum was their primary source of knowledge about the Congo. Even today, many older Belgians remember field trips there as children and came away with a positive view of the colonial past. Unlearning that is a slow process. Luna: So the museum is both a historical artifact and a living institution that's trying to change. That's a powerful tension. Lucas: It is. And it's a reminder that how we tell history matters. The Tervuren museum was built as a tool of empire, but it can also be a place to confront that empire's legacy. In a way, it's a microcosm of Belgium's own reckoning with its colonial past—slow, contested, and still very much in progress. Luna: I'll never see a museum the same way again. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Happy to help. And maybe next time you're in Brussels, you can visit Tervuren—but with a critical eye.