Shows / The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
Belgium: a patchwork of Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, a cobbled-together buffer state that punched far above its weight. In its short 1830s independence, it carved out a brutal African empire under King Leopold II—a personal colony that became a byword for atrocity in the Congo Free State (1885-1908). The show traces the arc from the Burgundian and Spanish Habsburg rule, through the Austrian Netherlands and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to the revolutionary…
Episodes
The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo HistoryThe 1892 Luluabourg Revolt: Railway Labor and Congo's First Strike
In 1892, the Congo Free State's railway project from Matadi to Léopoldville hit a crisis: workers at Luluabourg, forced into brutal labor, rose up in a…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1892 Luluabourg Revolt and the Birth of Congo's Railway
In 1892, the Congo Free State was consumed by a project that would reshape Central Africa: the railway from Matadi to Léopoldville. This episode follows the…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1908 Belgian Annexation of Congo Free State
In 1908, the Belgian state took over the Congo Free State from King Leopold II, ending one of history's most brutal personal fiefdoms. But what did…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Congo Independence Speech: Lumumba's Words
In Episode 212 of The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy, Lucas and Luna examine Patrice Lumumba's independence day speech…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1950 Belgo-Congolese Community: A Colonial Dream
In 1950, Belgium's colonial administration unveiled an ambitious plan to reshape the Belgian Congo: the Belgo-Congolese Community. It promised a shared…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1881 Boma Tax Revolt: How a Hut Tax Shook Congo
In 1881, the Congo Free State under Leopold II imposed a hut tax on the Bakongo people around Boma, its capital on the lower Congo River. The result was a…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Flight of the Belgians: Congo's Great Departure
In this episode of The History of Belgium, Lucas and Luna revisit the frantic summer of 1960, when some 80,000 Belgians fled the newly independent Congo in a…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Élisabethville Massacre: Congo's Forgotten Bloodbath
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the little-known massacre of Congolese civilians in Élisabethville in January 1960, a violent precursor to the turmoil…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Leopoldville Riots: A City on Fire
In January 1959, Leopoldville erupted. A banned ABAKO rally spiraled into three days of looting, arson, and gunfire, leaving dozens dead and shattering the…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The Leopard Society Murders: Congo's Occult Rebellion
In 1930, the Belgian Congo was shaken by a series of brutal killings in the Kasai region. Victims were found with wounds that looked like leopard attacks, but…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Flight of the Belgians: Congo's Great Departure
In the chaotic months after the Force Publique mutiny and the Katanga secession, hundreds of thousands of Belgian settlers and officials fled the Congo in a…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1958 World's Fair: Belgium's Modernist Mask
In 1958, Brussels hosted the first post-war World's Fair, a gleaming showcase of atomic-age optimism under the Atomium. But just steps from the pavilions…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The Sénat du Congo: Belgium's Upper House for a Colony
In 1960, as the Belgian Congo hurtled toward independence, Brussels hastily erected a parliamentary architecture meant to keep the newborn state stable and…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1958 Expo 58: Belgium's Modernist Fair That Hid Congo's Brutal Reality
When Brussels hosted Expo 58, the world marveled at the Atomium and the promise of progress. But behind the gleaming pavilions lay a two-faced propaganda…
- 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
Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans governed the Belgian Congo from 1934 to 1946 — a decade that turned the colony from a brutal extractive enterprise into a…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Belgian Congo Army Mutiny: The Belgian Perspective
In this special 200th episode, Lucas and Luna revisit the 1960 Force Publique mutiny from a fresh angle: the Belgian side of the story. While the mutiny itself…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Katanga Secession: Congo's Richest Province Splits
When the Belgian Congo gained independence on June 30, 1960, it lasted barely a week before Katanga's richest province declared its own independence. This…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1957 Evere Plane Crash and the Battle for Belgian Memory
In 1957, a brand-new DC-7 airliner crashed into the Brussels suburb of Evere, killing all on board, including a group of Belgian soldiers and civilians…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Force Publique Mutiny: How Congo's Army Turned on Belgium
In July 1960, just five days after Congo's independence, the Force Publique—the colonial army that had enforced Belgian rule for eighty years—mutinied…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1959 Leopoldville Riots: The Spark That Ended Belgian Rule
On January 4, 1959, a banned political rally in Leopoldville spiraled into three days of violence that left hundreds dead and irreversibly cracked…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Loi Fondamentale: Belgium's Legal Blueprint for Congo's Chaos
In this episode, we look at the Loi Fondamentale of 1960, the hastily drafted Belgian law that was supposed to guide the Democratic Republic of the Congo…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1960 Round Table: Belgium's Last Colonial Gambit
In January 1960, with Congo's independence movement surging, Belgium convened a round table conference in Brussels that would decide the colony's…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1946 Luluabourg Trial: Justice or Colonial Theater?
In the aftermath of the 1944 Luluabourg mutiny, the Belgian colonial administration staged a massive show trial. This episode unpacks the 1946 proceedings…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The Curse of the Kasai Diamond: A Belgian Colonial Fraud
In 1907, a Belgian mining engineer named Édouard De Bauw claimed to have discovered a colossal diamond in the Kasai region of the Congo Free State — a gem he…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1928 Matadi Strike: Congo's Port Workers Challenge Belgium
In 1928, amid rising global economic pressures and the Belgian Congo's booming export economy, the port workers of Matadi walked off the job. It was one…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1921 Nkoloso Solar Crash: A Forgotten Congo Mine Disaster
In this episode, Lucas and Luna dig into the 1921 Nkoloso mine collapse in the Belgian Congo — a disaster that killed at least 180 African miners and remains…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The Iron Road of Blood: Building the Congo Railway
In this episode of The History of Belgium, hosts Lucas and Luna explore the brutal construction of the Matadi-Kinshasa railway, a 400-kilometer lifeline that…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1957 Municipal Elections: Congo's First Vote
In 1957, the Belgian Congo held its first municipal elections, allowing a select group of évolués to vote for local councils. This episode explores how this…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The Battle of Tabora: Belgium's Forgotten Great War Victory
In 1914, King Albert I's Belgian army was pinned down in Flanders, but thousands of kilometers away, another Belgian force surged into German East Africa…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1897 Tervuren Exhibition: Belgium's Human Zoo
This episode takes you to the 1897 Brussels-Tervuren Exhibition, where Leopold II showcased his Congo 'Free State' to the world. We explore the…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
Simon Kimbangu and the Spiritual Resistance That Shook the Belgian Congo
In the early 1920s, as the Belgian Congo was being exploited for rubber and minerals, a Baptist preacher named Simon Kimbangu began healing the sick and…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The Conscience Africaine Manifesto of 1956
In June 1956, a group of Congolese intellectuals published a manifesto called Conscience Africaine, demanding gradual emancipation within the Belgian colonial…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The Battle of Saïo: Force Publique in WWII
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the often-overlooked role of the Belgian Congo's Force Publique in World War II. While Belgium itself was occupied…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
When Havana Met Kinshasa: The Birth of Congolese Rumba
Long before soukous swept across Africa, a new sound was brewing in the nightclubs of Léopoldville. This episode traces the improbable birth of Congolese rumba…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1908 Annexation: How Belgium Took Congo from Leopold II
In 1908, after years of international outrage over the Congo Free State's atrocities, the Belgian government annexed the vast territory from King Leopold…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1944 Luluabourg Mutiny: Congo's Soldiers Revolt
In 1944, Congolese soldiers of the Force Publique who had fought for Belgium in World War II returned home to find themselves still treated as second-class. At…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
Lovanium University: Congo's First Colonial College
In 1954, the first university in the Belgian Congo opened its doors near Léopoldville. Lovanium was a Catholic experiment in higher education—meant to produce…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The Congo Reform Association: How a British Campaign Toppled Leopold II
The beautiful Brussels Grand Place hides a dark secret—the rubber-stained fortune that built Belgium's capital. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1894 Luluabourg Trial: Congo's First Colonial Court
In 1894, the Congo Free State put a Congolese chief on trial in Luluabourg for rebellion against Belgian rule. This episode explores the trial of Mukamba Bena…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1922 Boma Prison Uprising: Congo's Forgotten Rebellion
In 1922, a little-known uprising erupted inside Boma's colonial prison, where Congolese detainees—many of them former Force Publique soldiers—seized…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1921 Kipushi Mining Disaster: Congo's Forgotten Tragedy
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1921 Kipushi mining disaster in the Belgian Congo, a catastrophic accident that killed scores of African workers in…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
Belgian Congo's Bula Matari: The Nickname That Defined Colonial Brutality
This episode explores the origins and legacy of 'Bula Matari' — the Lingala phrase meaning 'breaker of rocks' that became the nickname for…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1895 Tetela Revolt: When Congo's Own Soldiers Turned on Belgium
In 1895, the Force Publique—King Leopold II's colonial army—faced its gravest challenge yet, and it came from within its own ranks. This episode tells the…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
Évolués and the Struggle for Congo's Future
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the complicated history of the évolués — the Congolese elite who were granted limited rights under Belgian colonial…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1920 Katanga Railway Strike: Congo's Workers Rise Up
In February 1920, thousands of Congolese workers along the Katanga railway line laid down their tools and refused to work. It was one of the first mass strikes…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1893 Luluabourg Massacre: Belgium's Colonial War Crime
In 1893, the Congo Free State's Force Publique, under the command of Belgian officers, carried out a massacre in the village of Luluabourg in the Kasai…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1955 Léopoldville Mob: A Turning Point in Congo's Decolonization
In January 1959, Léopoldville exploded. What began as a peaceful political meeting spiraled into a three-day riot that left hundreds dead and marked the true…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1957 Brussels World's Fair: Congo's Last Colonial Spectacle
In 1957, Brussels hosted the World's Fair, a glittering showcase of postwar optimism and technological wonder. But at the heart of the fair stood the…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1959 Léopoldville Riots: Congo's Road to Independence
In January 1959, a peaceful political meeting in Léopoldville's African quarter turned into a violent uprising that would reshape Congo's future…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1946 Léopoldville Riots: When Congolese Soldiers Demanded Equality
In February 1946, a mutiny erupted among Congolese soldiers of the Force Publique in Léopoldville (modern-day Kinshasa). The veterans, fresh from fighting for…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1927 Tshisenge Affair: Land Dispossession in the Kasai
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1927 Tshisenge Affair, a pivotal moment of land dispossession and resistance in the Belgian Congo's Kasai…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1925 Boma Conference: Congo's First Colonial Congress
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1925 Boma Conference, the first major colonial congress held in the Belgian Congo itself. Unlike earlier…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1930s Flemish Clergy in Congo: Missionaries of Empire
In the 1930s, Catholic missionaries from Flanders poured into the Belgian Congo, building schools, clinics, and churches — but also enforcing a colonial…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
Panda Farnana: The Forgotten Congolese Intellectual at Brussels 1900
In this episode, Lucas and Luna step away from the rubber atrocities and military campaigns to focus on one extraordinary figure who stood at the intersection…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1892 Lualaba Campaign: Belgium's Conquest of the Congo's Heart
Lucas and Luna delve into the 1892 Lualaba Campaign, the decisive military campaign that broke the Arab-Swahili slave and ivory trading network in the eastern…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1931 Katanga Mining Explosion: Congo's Deadliest Industrial Disaster
In 1931, a catastrophic explosion ripped through a Union Minière du Haut-Katanga copper mine in Élisabethville, killing hundreds of African miners in what…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1931 Katanga Mining Explosion: Congo's Deadliest Industrial Disaster
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore a largely forgotten catastrophe: the 1931 gas explosion at the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga mines in Élisabethville…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1944 Luluabourg Mutiny: Congo's Wartime Revolt Against Belgian Colonial Rule
In February 1944, soldiers of the Force Publique stationed at Luluabourg in the Belgian Congo rose up against their Belgian officers, sparking a mutiny that…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1892 Lualaba Campaign: Belgium's Conquest of the Congo's Heart
In 1892, Belgian commander Francis Dhanis led a brutal military campaign along the Lualaba River, crushing Arab-Swahili slaving states and expanding Leopold…
- The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1908 Annexation: How Belgium Inherited Leopold's Congo
In 1908, after decades of international outrage over atrocities in the Congo Free State, King Leopold II was forced to surrender his personal colony to the…