CHANGING WAR AIMS: CENTRAL AFRICA'S ROLE, 1940–41, AS SEEN FROM LÉOPOLDVILLE

Abstract

CIRCUMSTANCES CHANGE more quickly in wartime than in times of peace. Military action can provoke transfers of territory thereby nullifying the postulates of earlier strategy. Economic assets, previously deemed marginal, can take on an unexpected importance. The eight months between May 1940 and January 1941 saw a series of military events which shook Central Africa not only for the duration of the war but for the entire period until independence. Reflecting on these crucial months, it is tempting to see design on the part of decision-makers where none existed, and economic motives which were feasible only in light of later developments unforseen at the time. One Belgian historian has recently written that 'the Belgian Congo was considered, above all by the British, as an inexhaustable source of goods which one could dispose of at will, using the war effort as a pretext', and that, 'from the beginning, the British based their Congolese strategy on the permanence of an Anglo-American common front against the Belgians . 1 By contrast, this essay proposes that economic developments which occurred later in the war were triggered, if not entirely determined, by military exigencies and that the British in 1940 were more concerned with minimizing their purchases from the Belgian empire than in obtaining hegemony over it. In order to show the changes in Allied planning for Central Africa, this essay will begin by outlining national objectives as of May 1940, when the Germans invaded Belgium. It will then explain how, in the next eight months, leaders on the spot with varying degrees of connection to their metropoles, were forced to establish an entirely new set of war aims, which were to have enormous effect on the local African population during the succeeding years of the war.