French Congo
French colony
1880–1910
→
Flag
Capital Libreville
Language(s) French
Political structure Colony
History
- Established 1880
- Disestablished 1910
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2009)
French Congo was the original French colony established in the present-day area of the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and the Central African Republic. It began in 1880 as a protectorate, and its borders with Cabinda, Cameroons, and the Congo Free State were established by treaties over the next decade. The plan to develop the colony was to grant massive concessions to some thirty French companies. These were granted huge swaths of land on the promise they would be developed. This development was limited and amounted mostly to the extraction of ivory, rubber, and timber. These operations often involved great brutality and the near enslavement of the locals. See also List of concessionnaires of the French Congo for a list of these companies.
Even with these measures most of the companies lost money. Only about ten earned profits. Many of the companies vast holdings existed only on paper with virtually no presence on the ground in Africa.
French Congo was temporarily divided between Gabon and Middle Congo in 1906, before being reunited as French Equatorial Africa in 1910 in an attempt to copy the relative success of French West Africa.