Belgium

Although Belgium only became independent in 1830, its history reveals significant roots in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the colonization of Africa. The major Belgian port city of Antwerp operated as one of the leading sugar capitals of Europe, importing sugar cultivated by enslaved Africans in Brazil and serving as a hub for Portuguese traders to acquire the goods needed to buy enslaved people in West Africa. In 1885, during the Scramble for Africa, King Leopold II seized a large region in central Africa (modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) as his personal property, thereby establishing the Congo Free State. He ruled through a brutal regime of forced labor aimed at extracting natural resources such as rubber, minerals, and ivory and exporting them to European markets. Following strong condemnation of this violent regime, the territory officially became a colony of Belgium, the Belgian Congo, in 1908, and served as an important source of wealth for the Belgian government and European enterprises. From 1924 to 1962, Belgium also administered colonial rule in Ruanda-Urundi, a territory composed of modern-day Rwanda and Burundi.

Interviews conducted for The Unfinished Conversations Series feature histories of colonialism that intimately link Belgium and its African colonies. While the interviewees are currently based in Brussels and Ghent, several recall their early lives under Belgian colonial rule in Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. Participants also spoke plainly about the efforts of Belgian colonial administrators to control families and the forced removal to Belgium of so-called “mixed-race” children from their African parents. Their testimonies reveal how they grapple with the emotional turmoil of leaving their homeland while also casting light on the struggles of being Black in Europe today and the ways they embrace this identity as a form of reclamation.