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The following lists events that happened during 1909 in the Belgian Congo .
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| Decades: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The following lists events that happened during 1909 in the Belgian Congo .
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| April to August | Prince Albert of Belgium travels in the Belgian Congo. [1] |
| 8 May | American Museum Congo Expedition leaves New York. [2] |
| 17 December | Leopold II of Belgium dies |
Leopold II was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, and the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908.
The Congo Free State, also known as the Independent State of the Congo, was a large state and absolute monarchy in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908. It was privately owned by King Leopold II, the constitutional monarch of the Kingdom of Belgium. In legal terms, the two separate nations were in a "personal union". The Congo Free State was not a part of, nor did it belong to Belgium. Leopold was able to seize the region by convincing other European states at the Berlin Conference on Africa that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade. Via the International Association of the Congo, he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo Basin. On 29 May 1885, after the closure of the Berlin Conference, the king announced that he planned to name his possessions "the Congo Free State", an appellation which was not yet used at the Berlin Conference and which officially replaced "International Association of the Congo" on 1 August 1885. The Free State was privately controlled by Leopold from Brussels; he never went there.
Baron Adrien Victor Joseph de Gerlache de Gomery was a Belgian officer in the Belgian Royal Navy who led the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–99.
The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), communicating under the name AfricaMuseum since 2018, is an ethnography and natural history museum situated in Tervuren in Flemish Brabant, Belgium, just outside Brussels. It was originally built to showcase King Leopold II's Congo Free State in the International Exposition of 1897.
Boma is a port town on the Congo River, some 100 kilometres (62 mi) upstream from the Atlantic Ocean, in the Kongo Central Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), adjacent to the border with Angola. It had an estimated population of 162,521 in 2012.
Glover Morrill Allen was an American zoologist.
James Paul Chapin was an American ornithologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History.
Henry Shelton Sanford was a wealthy American diplomat and businessman from Connecticut who served as United States Minister to Belgium from 1861 to 1869. He is also known for founding the city of Sanford, Florida and for successfully lobbying the United States into recognizing King Leopold II's claim to the Congo region in central Africa, the area that would become Leopold's privately controlled Congo Free State.
Félix Alexandre Fuchs (1858–1928) was a Belgian colonial civil servant and lawyer who served as Governor-General of the Belgian Congo between 1912 and 1915.
Richard Dorsey Loraine Mohun was an American explorer, diplomat, mineral prospector and mercenary. Mohun worked for the United States government as a commercial agent in Angola and the Congo Free State. During his time as commercial agent, he volunteered to command a unit of Belgian artillery in a campaign to force Arab slavers from the colony.
Paul-Amédée Le Marinel (1858–1912) was an American-born officer in the Belgian army who became an explorer and administrator in the Congo Free State. He was best known for his expedition to Katanga in 1891.
Paul Panda Farnana M'Fumu was a Congolese agronomist and expatriate who lived in Europe in the first decades of the 1900s. He has been considered to be the first Congolese intellectual.
Mary Jobe Akeley was an American explorer, author, mountaineer, and photographer. She undertook expeditions in the Canadian Rockies and in the Belgian Congo. She worked at the American Museum of Natural History creating exhibits featuring taxidermy animals in realistic natural settings. She worked on behalf of conservation efforts, including being one of the first advocates for the creation of game preserves. She also founded Camp Mystic, an outdoor camp for girls.
Benoît Verhaegen (1929–2009) was a Belgian academic and Africanist who specialised in the political sociology and post-colonial history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Jean-Claude Willame is a Belgian professor emeritus specialised in the political history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He obtained his PhD in political science at the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. He was a professor at the Université nationale du Zaïre from 1971 to 1975. In 1989, he was the deputy director of the Centre d'études et de documentation africaines (CEDAF), which developed into the contemporary history section at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. He retired as a professor at the UCLouvain Faculty of Economic, Social and Political Sciences and Communication at the Université Catholique de Louvain. As an independent expert within the Coimbra Group, Willame went to Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville to study opportunities of cooperation between the European Union and ACP countries.
Democratic Republic of the Congo–Turkey relations are the bilateral relations between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Turkey. Turkey has an embassy in Kinshasa since 1974, and the DR Congo opened its embassy in Ankara in 2011.
The following lists events that happened during 1910 in the Belgian Congo.
The following lists events that happened during 1935 in the Belgian Congo.
Joseph Adipanga was a Congolese soldier for the Belgian Army during the First World War and civil servant at the Belgian Ministry of the Colonies.
Albert Kudjabo was a Congolese soldier for the Belgian Army during the First World War, and prisoner of war.
