The National Union of Angolan Workers (UNTA) is a national Trade union centre of Angola .
166-565: The UNTA was organized first in the Belgian Congo , in the 1960, and moved to Angola after independence in 1975. It is led by Manuel Viage as general secretary. The UNTA is closely linked to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). This Angola -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to an African trade union
332-600: A "Belgo-Congolese community", his ideas were met with indifference from Brussels and often with open hostility from some of the Belgians in the Congo, who feared for their privileges. It became increasingly evident that the Belgian government lacked a strategic long-term vision in relation to the Congo. 'Colonial affairs' did not generate much interest or political debate in Belgium, so long as
498-767: A German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948, the US, Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in April 1949. The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October. Media in the Eastern Bloc was an organ of the state , completely reliant on and subservient to
664-545: A benevolent and conflict-free administration and of the Belgian Congo as a true model colony. Only in the 1950s did this paternalistic attitude begin to change. In the 1950s the most blatant discriminatory measures directed at the Congolese were gradually withdrawn (among these: corporal punishment by means of the feared chicote —Portuguese word for whip). From 1953, and even more so after the triumphant visit of King Baudouin to
830-570: A colony of the Belgian Kingdom. This was after King Leopold II had given up any hope of excluding a vast region of the Congo from the government's control by attempting to maintain a substantial part of the Congo Free State as a separate crown property . When the Belgian government took over the administration in 1908, the situation in the Congo improved in certain respects. The brutal exploitation and arbitrary use of violence, in which some of
996-527: A direct rail line to the sea at Beira . World War I increased demand for copper, and production soared from 997 tons in 1911 to 27,462 tons in 1917, then fell off to 19,000 tons in 1920. Smelters operated at Lubumbashi . Before the war the copper was sold to Germany; but the British purchased all the wartime output, with the revenues going to the Belgian government in exile . Diamond- and gold-mining also expanded during
1162-429: A few thousand Congolese who had successfully obtained the civil merit diploma or been granted "immatriculation". The supposed benefits attached to it—including equal legal status with the white population—proved often more theory than reality and led to open frustration with the évolués . When Governor-General Pétillon began to speak about granting the native people more civil rights, even suffrage, to create what he termed
1328-656: A key argument the civilizing influence of the European culture. The civilizing mission in the Congo went hand-in-hand with the economic and educational development. Conversion to Catholicism , basic Western-style education, and improved health-care were objectives in their own right, but at the same time helped to transform what Europeans regarded as a primitive society into the Western capitalist model, in which workers who were disciplined and healthy, and who had learned to read and write, could be assimilated into labour market . Some of
1494-626: A major player—, attracted the majority of private investments (copper and cobalt in Katanga, diamonds in Kasai, gold in Ituri). This allowed, in particular, the Belgian Société Générale to build up an economic empire in the Belgian Congo. Huge profits were generated by the private companies and for a large part siphoned off to European and other international shareholders in the form of dividends. During
1660-510: A major propaganda effort began in 1949 was Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , dedicated to bringing about the peaceful demise of the communist system in the Eastern Bloc. Radio Free Europe attempted to achieve these goals by serving as a surrogate home radio station, an alternative to the controlled and party-dominated domestic press in the Soviet Bloc. Radio Free Europe was a product of some of
1826-626: A neutral Germany to prevent West Germany's incorporation into NATO, but his attempts were cut short after he was executed several months later during a Soviet power struggle. The events led to the establishment of the Bundeswehr , the West German military, in 1955. In 1949, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong 's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek 's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China. The KMT-controlled territory
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#17328835131071992-655: A new war". On 6 September 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the Morgenthau Plan (a proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely. As Byrnes stated a month later, "The nub of our program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds ..." In December,
2158-683: A plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods and infrastructure already taken by the Soviets. In June 1947, in accordance with the Truman Doctrine , the United States enacted the Marshall Plan , a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union. Under the plan, which President Harry S. Truman signed on 3 April 1948,
2324-401: A proof of "civil merit", or, one step up, 'immatriculation' (registration), i.e., official evidence of their assimilation with European civilisation. To acquire this status, the applicant had to fulfill strict conditions (monogamous matrimony, evidence of good behaviour, etc.) and submit to stringent controls (including house visits). This policy was a failure. By the mid-1950s, there were at best
2490-613: A secret 1950 document, the National Security Council proposed reinforcing pro-Western alliance systems and quadrupling spending on defense. Truman, under the influence of advisor Paul Nitze , saw containment as implying complete rollback of Soviet influence in all its forms. United States officials moved to expand this version of containment into Asia , Africa , and Latin America , in order to counter revolutionary nationalist movements, often led by communist parties financed by
2656-477: A source of intelligence. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the KGB perfected its use of espionage to sway and distort diplomacy. Active measures were "clandestine operations designed to further Soviet foreign policy goals," consisting of disinformation, forgeries, leaks to foreign media, and the channeling of aid to militant groups. Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin , former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for
2822-530: A unified and neutral Germany was undesirable, with Walter Bedell Smith telling General Eisenhower "in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification on any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seem to meet most of our requirements." Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade (June 1948 – May 1949), one of the first major crises of
2988-574: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo ( French : Congo belge , pronounced [kɔ̃ɡo bɛlʒ] ; Dutch : Belgisch-Congo ) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville) . The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of
3154-551: The Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic ". A week later, on 13 March, Stalin responded vigorously to the speech, saying Churchill could be compared to Adolf Hitler insofar as he advocated the racial superiority of English-speaking nations so that they could satisfy their hunger for world domination, and that such a declaration was "a call for war on the USSR." The Soviet leader also dismissed
3320-806: The Berlin Wall to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from fleeing to West Berlin , at the time part of United States-allied West Germany . Major crises of this phase included the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949, the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1945–1949, the Korean War of 1950–1953, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Suez Crisis of that same year, the Berlin Crisis of 1961 ,
3486-527: The Congo Basin . The rainforest , swamps and accompanying malaria and other tropical diseases, such as sleeping sickness , made it a difficult environment for European exploration and exploitation. In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium organized the International African Association with the cooperation of the leading African explorers and the support of several European governments for
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#17328835131073652-619: The Congo Free State in 1885. By the turn of the century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908. Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial trinity" ( trinité coloniale ) of state , missionary and private-company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into
3818-417: The Congo Free State . The Congo Free State operated as a corporate state, privately controlled by Leopold II through a non-governmental organization, the International African Association . The state included the entire area of the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo , and existed from 1885 until 1908, when the government of Belgium reluctantly annexed the area. Under Leopold II's administration,
3984-457: The Congo–Arab War against African and Arab slavers like Zanzibari / Swahili strongman Tippu Tip . Following the 1904 Casement Report on misdeeds and conditions, European (British included) and American press exposed the conditions in the Congo Free State to the public in the early 1900s. In 1904 Leopold II was forced to allow an international parliamentary commission of inquiry entry to
4150-852: The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the Vietnam War of 1964–1975. Both superpowers competed for influence in Latin America and the Middle East , and the decolonising states of Africa , Asia , and Oceania . Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, this phase of the Cold War saw the Sino-Soviet split . Between China and the Soviet Union's complicated relations within the Communist sphere, leading to
4316-787: The Eastern Bloc . Cominform faced an embarrassing setback the following June, when the Tito–Stalin split obliged its members to expel Yugoslavia, which remained communist but adopted a non-aligned position and began accepting financial aid from the US. Besides Berlin, the status of the city of Trieste was at issue. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. In addition to capitalism and communism, Italians and Slovenes, monarchists and republicans as well as war winners and losers often faced each other irreconcilably. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste , founded in 1947 with
4482-569: The Force Publique —over more local (but also more ancient) indigenous languages such as Lomongo and others. In 1940 the schooling rates of children between 6 and 14 years old was 12%, reaching 37% in 1954, one of the highest rates in sub-Saharan Africa . Secondary and higher education for the indigenous population were not developed until relatively late in the colonial period. Black children, in small numbers, began to be admitted to European secondary schools from 1950 onward. The first university in
4648-503: The KGB and involved in its intelligence operations, adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of the consensus policy came from anti-Vietnam War activists , the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament , and the anti-nuclear movement . In early 1947, France, Britain and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for
4814-506: The Kingdom of Greece in its civil war against Communist-led insurgents. In the same month, Stalin conducted the rigged 1947 Polish legislative election which constituted an open breach of the Yalta Agreement . The US government responded to this announcement by adopting a policy of containment , with the goal of stopping the spread of communism . Truman delivered a speech calling for
4980-717: The Marshall Plan in 1948 to assist in Western Europe's economic recovery, and founded the NATO military alliance in 1949 (which was matched by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact in 1955). The Berlin Blockade took place, and Germany's occupation zones solidified into East and West Germany in 1949. The USSR tested its first nuclear weapon in August 1949, four years after the U.S.'s first test , thus starting an arms race. A major proxy war
5146-465: The Second World and was also tied to a network of authoritarian states. The Soviet Union had a command economy and installed similarly communist regimes its in satellites. United States involvement in regime change during the Cold War included support for anti-communist and right-wing dictatorships , governments, and uprisings across the world, while Soviet involvement in regime change included
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5312-556: The Sino-Soviet border conflict , while France, a Western Bloc state, began to demand greater autonomy of action. The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred to suppress the Prague Spring of 1968, while the United States experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War . In the 1960s–1970s, an international peace movement took root among citizens around
5478-718: The Soviet boycott of the Allied Control Council and its incapacitation, an event marking the beginning of the full-blown Cold War and the end of its prelude, as well as ending any hopes at the time for a single German government and leading to formation in 1949 of the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic . The twin policies of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan led to billions in economic and military aid for Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. With
5644-593: The Turkish Straits crisis and Black Sea border disputes were also a major factor in increasing tensions. In September, the Soviet side produced the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored" by Vyacheslav Molotov ; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in
5810-547: The United Nations Security Council Resolution 82 and 83 backed the defense of South Korea, although the Soviets were then boycotting meetings in protest of the fact that Taiwan (Republic of China), not the People's Republic of China , held a permanent seat on the council. A UN force of sixteen countries faced North Korea, although 40 percent of troops were South Korean, and about 50 percent were from
5976-603: The United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc , that started in 1947, two years after the end of World War II , and lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers , though each supported opposing sides in major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . Aside from
6142-516: The city centers were reserved to the white population only, while the black population was organized in cités indigènes (indigenous neighbourhoods called 'le belge'). Hospitals, department stores and other facilities were often reserved for either whites or blacks. In the Force Publique , black people could not pass the rank of non-commissioned officer. The black population in the cities could not leave their houses from 9 pm to 4 am. This type of segregation began to disappear gradually only in
6308-561: The nuclear arms race starting in 1949 and conventional military deployment , the struggle for dominance was expressed indirectly via psychological warfare , propaganda campaigns , espionage , far-reaching embargoes , sports diplomacy , and technological competitions such as the Space Race . The US and USSR were both part of the Allies of World War II , the military coalition which had defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. After
6474-571: The 'prophet' Simon Kimbangu , who was imprisoned by the Belgians). Apart from active and passive resistance among the Congolese, the colonial regime over time also elicited internal criticism and dissent. Already in the 1920s, certain members of the Colonial Council in Brussels (among them Octave Louwers) voiced criticism regarding the often brutal recruitment methods employed by the major companies in
6640-413: The 1950s, but even then the Congolese remained or felt treated in many respects as second-rate citizens (for instance in political and legal terms). Because of the close interconnection between economic development and the ' civilizing mission ', and because in practice state officials, missionaries and the executives of the private companies always lent each other a helping hand, the image has emerged that
6806-436: The African workforce in the capitalist colonial economy played a crucial role in spreading the use of money in the Belgian Congo. The basic idea was that the development of the Congo had to be borne not by the Belgian taxpayers but by the Congolese themselves. The colonial state needed to be able to levy taxes in money on the Congolese, so it was important that they could make money by selling their produce or their labour within
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6972-400: The Atlantic port of Matadi . The Great Depression of the 1930s affected the export-based Belgian Congo economy severely because of the drop in international demand for raw materials and agricultural products (for example, the price of peanuts fell from 1.25 francs to 25 centimes (cents)). In some areas, as in the Katanga mining region, employment declined by 70%. In the country as a whole,
7138-406: The Belgian Congo , established in 1934, with its large experimental fields and laboratories in Yangambe, played an important role in crop selection and in the popularization of agronomic research and know-how. During World War II, industrial production and agricultural output increased drastically. The Congolese population bore the brunt of the "war effort" – for instance, through a reinforcement of
7304-417: The Belgian Congo was governed by a "colonial trinity" of King-Church-Capital, encompassing the colonial state, the Christian missions, and the Société Générale de Belgique . The paternalistic ideology underpinning colonial policy was summed up in a catchphrase used by Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans (1934–46): Dominer pour servir ("Dominate to serve"). The colonial government wanted to convey images of
7470-494: The Belgian Congo, the Catholic Jesuit Lovanium University , near Léopoldville, opened its doors to black and white students in 1954. Before the foundation of the Lovanium, the Catholic University of Louvain already operated multiple institutes for higher education in the Belgian Congo. The Fomulac (Fondation médicale de l'université de Louvain au Congo), was founded in 1926, with the goal of forming Congolese medical personnel and researchers specialized in tropical medicine. In 1932
7636-401: The Belgian Congo. The highest-ranking representative of the colonial administration residing in the Belgian Congo was the Governor-General . From 1886 until 1926, the Governor-General and his administration were posted in Boma , near the Congo River estuary. From 1923, the colonial capital moved to Léopoldville , some 300 km further upstream in the interior. Initially, the Belgian Congo
7802-506: The Belgian commander of the Force Publique , Lieutenant-General Charles Tombeur , had assembled an army of 15,000 men supported by local bearers – Reybrouck indicated that during the war no less than 260,000 native bearers were called upon – and advanced to Kigali (now the capital of Rwanda ). Kigali was taken by 6 May 1916, and the army went on to take Tabora (now part of Tanzania ) on 19 September after heavy fighting . In 1917, after Mahenge (now in Tanzania ) had been conquered,
7968-444: The Belgian conscript workers; when Belgian Congo was established, chattel slavery was legally abolished in 1910, but prisoners were nevertheless conscripted as force laborers for both public and private work projects. Congolese opposition against colonialism was continuous, sustained and took many different forms. It became more likely as modern ideas and education spread. Armed risings occurred sporadically and localized until roughly
8134-430: The Belgian government in exile in London. The Belgian Congo and the rest of the Free Belgian forces supported the war on the Allied side in the Battle of Britain with 28 pilots in the RAF (squadron 349) and in the Royal South African Air Force (350 Squadron) and in Africa. The Force Publique again participated in the Allied campaigns in Africa. Belgian Congolese forces (with Belgian officers) notably fought against
8300-465: The Belgian government tried to resist what it described as 'interference' with its colonial policy. Colonial authorities discussed ways to ameliorate the situation of the Congolese. Since the 1940s, the colonial government had experimented in a very modest way with granting a limited elite of so-called évolués more civil rights, holding out the eventual prospect of a limited amount of political influence. To this end "deserving" Congolese could apply for
8466-636: The British army in the Burma campaign . The economic exploitation of the Congo was one of the colonizer's top priorities. An important tool was the construction of railways to open up the mineral and agricultural areas. Rubber had long been the main export of the Belgian Congo, but its importance fell in the early 20th century from 77% of exports (by value) to only 15% as British colonies in Southeast Asia like British Malaya began to farm rubber. New resources were exploited, especially copper mining in Katanga province. The Belgian-owned Union Minière du Haut-Katanga , which would come to dominate copper mining, used
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#17328835131078632-446: The British newspaper Tribune . Contemplating a world living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare , Orwell looked at James Burnham 's predictions of a polarized world, writing: Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery... James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is,
8798-404: The Catholic University of Louvain founded the Cadulac (Centres agronomiques de l'université de Louvain au Congo) in Kisantu . Cadulac was specialized in agricultural sciences and formed the basis for what was later to become Lovanium University . In 1956 a state university was founded in Elisabethville . Progress was slow though; until the end of the 1950s, no Congolese had been promoted beyond
8964-414: The Cold War was in its essence a war of ideas. The United States, acting through the CIA, funded a long list of projects to counter the communist appeal among intellectuals in Europe and the developing world. The CIA also covertly sponsored a domestic propaganda campaign called Crusade for Freedom . The rearmament of West Germany was achieved in the early 1950s. Its main promoter was Konrad Adenauer ,
9130-404: The Cold War, preventing Western food, materials and supplies from arriving in the West Germany's exclave of West Berlin . The United States (primarily), Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other provisions despite Soviet threats. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against
9296-408: The Communist governments militarily. The fall of the Iron Curtain after the Pan-European Picnic and the Revolutions of 1989 , which represented a peaceful revolutionary wave with the exception of the Romanian revolution and the Afghan Civil War (1989–1992) , overthrew almost all of the Marxist–Leninist regimes of the Eastern Bloc. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control in
9462-417: The Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of the Belgians attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin . Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Western countries , Leopold achieved international recognition of
9628-493: The Congo Free State became a humanitarian disaster. The lack of accurate records makes it difficult to quantify the number of deaths caused by the ruthless exploitation and the lack of immunity to new diseases introduced by contact with European colonists – like the 1889–1890 influenza pandemic , which caused millions of deaths on the European continent, including Prince Baudouin of Belgium , who died in 1891. William Rubinstein wrote: "More basically, it appears almost certain that
9794-402: The Congo Free State to the Belgian Congo was a turning point, but it was also marked by a considerable continuity. The last Governor-General of the Congo Free State, Baron Wahis, remained in office in the Belgian Congo, and the majority of Leopold II's administration with him. While conditions were improved somewhat relative to rule under King Leopold, reports by doctors such as Dr. Raingeard show
9960-480: The Congo Free State. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic manoeuvres led to the end of Leopold II's personal rule and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the "Belgian Congo". On 18 October 1908, the Belgian Parliament voted in favour of annexing the Congo as a Belgian colony. A majority of the socialists and the radicals firmly opposed this annexation and reaped electoral benefits from their anti-colonialist campaign, but some believed that
10126-451: The Congo and that individual regions became specialised . On many occasions, the interests of the government and of private enterprise became closely linked, and the state helped companies to break strikes and to remove other barriers raised by the indigenous population. The colony was divided into hierarchically organised administrative subdivisions and run uniformly according to a set "native policy" ( politique indigène ). This differed from
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#173288351310710292-440: The Congo, particularly after the Second World War, through the creation of the Institut pour la Recherche Scientifique en Afrique Centrale (IRSAC, 1948). In the early 1950s, political emancipation of the Congolese elites, let alone of the masses, seemed like a distant event. But it was clear that the Congo could not forever remain immune from the rapid changes that, after the Second World War, profoundly affected colonialism around
10458-447: The Congo, the continued involvement of Belgium in Congolese affairs, and the intervention by major parties (mainly the United States and the Soviet Union) during the Cold War led to a five-year-long period of war and political instability, known as the Congo Crisis , from 1960 to 1965. This ended with the seizure of power by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu in November 1964. Until the later part of the 19th century, few Europeans had ventured into
10624-419: The European powers in Central Africa, it did agree on a set of rules to ensure a conflict-free partitioning of the region. The rules recognised ( inter alia ) the Congo Basin as a free-trade zone . But Leopold II emerged triumphant from the Berlin Conference and his single shareholder "philanthropic" organization received a large share of territory (2,344,000 km (905,000 sq mi)) to be organized as
10790-410: The Italian colonial army in Italian East Africa , and were victorious in Asosa , Bortaï and in the Siege of Saïo under Major-general Auguste-Eduard Gilliaert during the second East African campaign of 1940–1941. On 3 July 1941, the Italian forces (under General Pietro Gazzera ) surrendered when they were cut off by the Force Publique . A Congolese unit also served in the Far Eastern Theatre with
10956-434: The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. After World War II, the colonial state became more active in the economic and social development of the Belgian Congo. An ambitious ten-year plan was launched by the Belgian government in 1949. It put emphasis on house building, energy supply, rural development and health-care infrastructure. The ten-year plan ushered in a decade of strong economic growth, from which, for
11122-400: The KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence ." During the Sino-Soviet split , "spy wars" also occurred between the USSR and PRC. In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform to impose orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of communist parties in
11288-428: The Marshall Plan, seeing it as an effort by the US to impose its influence on Europe. In response, the Soviet Union established Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) to foster economic cooperation among communist states. The United States and its Western European allies sought to strengthen their bonds and used the policy of containment against Soviet influence; they accomplished this most notably through
11454-446: The Russian Civil War further complicated relations, and although the Soviet Union later allied with Western powers to defeat Nazi Germany , this cooperation was strained by mutual suspicions. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, disagreements about the future of Europe, particularly Eastern Europe , became central. The Soviet Union's establishment of communist regimes in the countries it had liberated from Nazi control—enforced by
11620-408: The Soviet Union was used to monitor dissent from official Soviet politics and morals. Although to an extent disinformation had always existed, the term itself was invented, and the strategy formalized by a black propaganda department of the Soviet KGB. Based on the amount of top-secret Cold War archival information that has been released, historian Raymond L. Garthoff concludes there probably
11786-400: The Soviet Union, which at the time was undergoing the Era of Stagnation . This phase saw the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introducing the liberalizing reforms of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("reorganization") and ending Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1989. Pressures for national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to further support
11952-558: The Soviet Union. A number of self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist governments were formed in the second half of the 1970s in developing countries , including Angola , Mozambique , Ethiopia , Cambodia , Afghanistan , and Nicaragua . Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. Beginning in the 1980s, this phase was another period of elevated tension. The Reagan Doctrine led to increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on
12118-623: The Soviets accumulated after broken promises by Stalin and Molotov concerning Europe and Iran. Following the World War II Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran , the country was occupied by the Red Army in the far north and the British in the south. Iran was used by the United States and British to supply the Soviet Union, and the Allies agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months after the cessation of hostilities. However, when this deadline came,
12284-525: The Soviets agreed to withdraw from Iran after persistent US pressure, an early success of containment policy. By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman was outraged by the perceived resistance of the Soviet Union to American demands in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, as well as Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan on nuclear weapons. In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance
12450-538: The Soviets had permitted to retain democratic structures. The public brutality of the coup shocked Western powers more than any event up to that point, set in motion a brief scare that war would occur, and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress. In an immediate aftermath of the crisis, the London Six-Power Conference was held, resulting in
12616-533: The Soviets remained in Iran under the guise of the Azerbaijan People's Government and Kurdish Republic of Mahabad . Shortly thereafter, on 5 March, former British prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous " Iron Curtain " speech in Fulton, Missouri . The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" dividing Europe from " Stettin in
12782-455: The Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened during and after the Vietnam War , but ultimately persisted thereafter. Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance, while European and American Communists , financed by
12948-455: The U.S. The USSR solidified its domination of Eastern Europe with the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Both powers used economic aid in an attempt to win the loyalty of non-aligned countries , such as India . After the Sino-Soviet split between the USSR and China in 1961, the U.S. initiated contacts with China in 1972 . In
13114-552: The US assistance, the Greek military won its civil war . Under the leadership of Alcide De Gasperi the Italian Christian Democrats defeated the powerful Communist – Socialist alliance in the elections of 1948 . All major powers engaged in espionage, using a great variety of spies, double agents , moles , and new technologies such as the tapping of telephone cables. The Soviet KGB ("Committee for State Security"),
13280-572: The US government gave to Western European countries over $ 13 billion (equivalent to $ 189 billion in 2016) to rebuild the economy of Europe . Later, the program led to the creation of the OECD . The plan's aim was to rebuild the democratic and economic systems of Europe and to counter perceived threats to the European balance of power , such as communist parties seizing control through revolutions or elections. The plan also stated that European prosperity
13446-572: The US was trying to buy a pro-US re-alignment of Europe. Stalin therefore prevented Eastern Bloc nations from receiving Marshall Plan aid. The Soviet Union's alternative to the Marshall Plan, which was purported to involve Soviet subsidies and trade with central and eastern Europe, became known as the Molotov Plan (later institutionalized in January 1949 as the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance ). Stalin
13612-477: The USSR. In this way, this US would exercise " preponderant power ," oppose neutrality, and establish global hegemony . In the early 1950s (a period sometimes known as the " Pactomania "), the US formalized a series of alliances with Japan (a former WWII enemy), South Korea , Taiwan , Australia , New Zealand , Thailand and the Philippines (notably ANZUS in 1951 and SEATO in 1954), thereby guaranteeing
13778-516: The United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between the West and Tito. The US and Britain merged their western German occupation zones into " Bizone " (1 January 1947, later "Trizone" with the addition of France's zone, April 1949). As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany, in early 1948, representatives of a number of Western European governments and
13944-509: The United States a number of long-term military bases. One of the more significant examples of the implementation of containment was the United Nations US-led intervention in the Korean War . In June 1950, after years of mutual hostilities, Kim Il Sung 's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea at the 38th parallel . Stalin had been reluctant to support the invasion but ultimately sent advisers. To Stalin's surprise,
14110-401: The United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system. In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan , they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the West German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased. The US had secretly decided that
14276-504: The Warsaw Pact's primary function was to safeguard Soviet hegemony over its Eastern European satellites, with the pact's only direct military actions having been the invasions of its own member states to keep them from breaking away; in the 1960s, the pact evolved into a multilateral alliance, in which the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members gained significant scope to pursue their own interests. In 1961, Soviet-allied East Germany constructed
14442-469: The Western agencies paid special attention to debriefing Eastern Bloc defectors . Edward Jay Epstein describes that the CIA understood that the KGB used "provocations", or fake defections, as a trick to embarrass Western intelligence and establish Soviet double agents. As a result, from 1959 to 1973, the CIA required that East Bloc defectors went through a counterintelligence investigation before being recruited as
14608-456: The accusation that the USSR was exerting increasing control over the countries lying in its sphere. He argued that there was nothing surprising in "the fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, [was] trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries." Soviet territorial demands to Turkey regarding the Dardanelles in
14774-436: The administrative reforms of 1933). Each province was in turn divided into a few districts (24 districts for the whole Congo) and each district into a handful of territories (some 130–150 territories in all; some territories were merged or split over time). A territory was managed by a territorial administrator, assisted by one or more assistants. The territories were further subdivided into numerous "chiefdoms" ( chefferies ), at
14940-547: The allocation of $ 400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine , which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes. American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government. Enunciation of
15106-502: The army of the Belgian Congo, by now 25,000 men, occupied one-third of German East Africa. After World War I, under the Treaty of Versailles , Germany ceded control of the western section of the former German East Africa to Belgium, and Ruanda-Urundi would go on to become a League of Nations mandate territory , under Belgian administration. These areas did not become part of the Belgian Congo. Ruanda-Urundi would later become independent as
15272-658: The boom of the private companies in the colony. The Belgian government also privatised many of the government-owned companies that were active in the colony (the Kilo-Moto mines, La Société Nationale des transport fluviaux,..). After the First World War, priority was given to investments in transport infrastructure (such as the rail lines between Matadi and Léopoldville and Elisabethville and Port Francqui ). From 1920 to 1932, 2,450 km of railroads were constructed. The government also invested heavily in harbour infrastructure in
15438-477: The bureau responsible for foreign espionage and internal surveillance, was famous for its effectiveness. The most famous Soviet operation involved its atomic spies that delivered crucial information from the United States' Manhattan Project , leading the USSR to detonate its first nuclear weapon in 1949, four years after the American detonation and much sooner than expected. A massive network of informants throughout
15604-693: The chancellor of West Germany, with France the main opponent. Washington had the decisive voice. It was strongly supported by the Pentagon (the US military leadership), and weakly opposed by President Truman; the State Department was ambivalent. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the calculations and Washington now gave full support. That also involved naming Dwight D. Eisenhower in charge of NATO forces and sending more American troops to West Germany. There
15770-478: The cities of Boma, Matadi, Leopoldville and Coquilhatville. Electricity and waterworks in the main cities were also funded. Airports were built and a telephone line was funded that connected Brussels with Leopoldville. The government accounted for about 50% of the investments in the Belgian Congo; commercial companies accounted for the other 50%. The mining industry—with the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (U.M.H.K.) as
15936-434: The colonial government used maximum quotas of "able-bodied workers" that could be recruited from every area in the Belgian Congo. In this way, tens of thousands of workers from densely populated areas were employed in copper mines in the sparsely populated south (Katanga). In agriculture, too, the colonial state forced a drastic rationalisation of production. The state took over so-called "vacant lands" (land not directly used by
16102-453: The colonial period, with a comparatively high availability of hospital beds relative to the population and with dispensaries set up in the most remote regions. In 1960 the country had a medical infrastructure that far surpassed any other African nation at that time. The Belgian Congo had 3,000 health care facilities, of which 380 were hospitals. There were 5.34 hospital beds for every 1000 inhabitants (1 for every 187 inhabitants). Great progress
16268-476: The colony in 1955, Governor-General Léon Pétillon (1952–1958) worked to create a "Belgian-Congolese community", in which blacks and whites were to be treated as equals. Regardless, anti-miscegenation laws remained in place, and between 1959 and 1962 thousands of mixed-race Congolese children were forcibly deported from the Congo by the Belgian government and the Catholic Church and taken to Belgium. In 1957,
16434-419: The colony seemed to be thriving and calm. A notable exception was the young King Baudouin , who had succeeded his father, King Leopold III, under dramatic circumstances in 1951, when Leopold III was forced to abdicate . Baudouin took a close interest in the Belgian Congo. Cold War The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical tension and struggle for ideological and economic influence between
16600-508: The communist party. Radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Soviet radio broadcasts used Marxist rhetoric to attack capitalism, emphasizing themes of labor exploitation, imperialism and war-mongering. Along with the broadcasts of the BBC and the Voice of America to Central and Eastern Europe,
16766-461: The communist regimes of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Western Bloc included the US and a number of First World nations that were generally capitalist and liberal democratic but tied to a network of often authoritarian Third World states, most of which were the European powers' former colonies . The Eastern Bloc was led by the Soviet Union and its communist party , which had an influence across
16932-443: The concessionary companies had excelled, were curbed. The crime of "red rubber" was put to a stop. Article 3 of the new Colonial Charter of 18 October 1908 stated that: "Nobody can be forced to work on behalf of and for the profit of companies or privates", but this was not enforced, and the Belgian government continued to impose forced labour on the indigenous people of the area, albeit by less obvious methods. The transition from
17098-492: The country and was banned following the 1991 Soviet coup attempt that August. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the collapse of Communist governments across much of Africa and Asia. The Russian Federation became the Soviet Union's successor state, while many of the other republics emerged from the Soviet Union's collapse as fully independent post-Soviet states . The United States
17264-639: The country should annex the Congo and play a humanitarian role to the Congolese population. Eventually, two Catholic MPs and half of the Liberal MPs joined the socialists in rejecting the Colonial Charter (forty-eight votes against) and nearly all the Catholics and the other half of the Liberal MP's approved the charter (ninety votes for and seven abstentions). This way, on 15 November 1908 the Belgian Congo became
17430-489: The development of a new middle-class of Europeanised African " évolués " in the cities. By the 1950s, the Congo had a wage labour force twice as large as that in any other African colony. In 1960, as the result of a widespread and increasingly radical pro-independence movement , the Belgian Congo achieved independence, becoming the Republic of the Congo under Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and President Joseph Kasa-Vubu . Poor relations between political factions within
17596-557: The disastrous effects of erosion and soil exhaustion brought about by the mandatory cultivation scheme. This policy began to be implemented on a large scale throughout the Congo after the Second World War, by the colonial government. The scheme aimed to modernize indigenous agriculture by assigning plots of land to individual families and by providing them with government support in the form of selected seeds, agronomic advice, fertilizers, etc. The National Institute for Agronomic Study of
17762-449: The economic boom of the 1920s, many young Congolese men left their often impoverished rural villages and were employed by companies located near the cities; the population of Kinshasa nearly doubled from 1920 to 1940, and the population of Elizabethville grew from approximately 16,000 in 1923, to 33,000 in 1929. The necessary work-force was recruited by specialised recruiting firms (Robert Williams & Co, Bourse du Travail Kasaï,..) and
17928-514: The end of the Second World War (e.g., revolt of the Pende in 1931, mutiny in Luluabourg 1944). From the end of the Second World War until the late 1950s, the era of what colonial propaganda called a " Pax belgica " prevailed. Until the end of colonial rule in 1960, passive forms of resistance and expressions of an anti-colonial sub-culture were nevertheless manifold and widespread (e.g., Kimbanguism , after
18094-577: The first municipal elections open to black voters took place in a handful of the largest cities — Léopoldville, Élisabethville, and Jadotville. In the Belgian Free State, the Belgians had freed thousands of men, women and children slaves from Swaihili Arab slave owners and slave traders in Eastern Congo in 1886–1892, enlisted them in the militia Force Publique or where given as prisoners to allied local chiefs, who in turn gave them as laborers for
18260-532: The first notable missions into Africa were conducted by David Livingstone and John M. Springer during the late 19th century into the early 20th century. The educational system was dominated by the Catholic Church —as was the case for the rest of Belgium at the time—and, in some rare cases, by Protestant churches. Curricula reflected Christian and Western values. Even in 1948, 99.6% of educational facilities were run by Christian missions. Indigenous schooling
18426-451: The first time, the Congolese began to benefit on a substantial scale. At the same time, the economy had expanded and the number of Belgian nationals in the country more than doubled, from 39,000 in 1950 to more than 88,000 by 1960. In 1953, Belgium granted the Congolese the right – for the first time – to buy and sell private property in their own names. In the 1950s a Congolese middle class, modest at first, but steadily growing, emerged in
18592-401: The formation of NATO , which was essentially a defensive agreement in 1949. The Soviet Union countered with the Warsaw Pact in 1955, which had similar results with the Eastern Bloc. As by that time the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states, the pact has been long considered superfluous. Although nominally a defensive alliance,
18758-612: The framework of the colonial economy. The economic boom of the 1920s turned the Belgian Congo into one of the leading copper-ore producers worldwide. In 1926 alone, the Union Minière exported more than 80,000 tons of copper ore, a large part of it for processing in Hoboken (Belgium). In 1928 King Albert I visited the Congo to inaugurate the so-called 'voie national' that linked the Katanga mining region via rail (up to Port Francqui ) and via river transport (from Port Francqui to Léopoldville ) to
18924-486: The funding of left-wing parties , wars of independence , revolutions and dictatorships. As nearly all the colonial states underwent decolonization and achieved independence in the period from 1945 to 1960, many became Third World battlefields in the Cold War. At the end of World War II, English writer George Orwell used cold war , as a general term, in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb", published 19 October 1945 in
19090-421: The head of which the Belgian administration appointed "traditional chiefs" ( chefs coutumiers ). The territories administered by one territorial administrator and a handful of assistants were often larger than a few Belgian provinces taken together (the whole Belgian Congo was nearly 80 times larger than the whole of Belgium and was roughly twice the size of Germany and France combined). The territorial administrator
19256-587: The irresistible and compelling force of the colonial state. The Belgian Congo was directly involved in the two world wars. During World War I , an initial stand-off between the Force Publique and the German colonial army in German East Africa (Tanganyika) turned into open warfare with a joint Anglo-Belgian invasion of German colonial territory in 1916 and 1917 during the East African campaign . By 1916,
19422-518: The kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbours. In The Observer of 10 March 1946, Orwell wrote, "...after the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire." The first use of the term to describe
19588-416: The local population) and redistributed the territory to European companies, to individual white landowners ( colons ), or to the missions . In this way, an extensive plantation economy developed. Palm-oil production in the Congo increased from 2,500 tons in 1914 to 9,000 tons in 1921, and to 230,000 tons in 1957. Cotton production increased from 23,000 tons in 1932 to 127,000 in 1939. The mobilization of
19754-577: The low importance the Belgian government placed on healthcare and basic education of the natives. Opening up the Congo and its natural and mineral riches for the Belgian economy remained the motive for colonial expansion. The governance of the Belgian Congo was outlined in the 1908 Colonial Charter . Executive power rested with the Belgian Minister of Colonial Affairs , assisted by a Colonial Council ( Conseil Colonial ). Both resided in Brussels. The Belgian Parliament exercised legislative authority over
19920-513: The main cities ( Léopoldville , Elisabethville , Stanleyville , and Luluabourg ). There was rapid political development, forced by African aspirations, in the last years of the 1950s, culminating in the 1960 Belgian Congo general election . Justifications for colonialism in Africa, taking as a given that tribal wars, cannibalism, human sacrifice, display of human trophies, bigamy, and other "primitive" practices were common place, often invoked as
20086-626: The majority (1,359,118) were enrolled in Catholic mission schools, 322,289 in Protestant mission schools and 68,729 in educational institutions organized by the state. Health care, too, was largely supported by the missions, although the colonial state took an increasing interest. In 1906 the Institute of Tropical Medicine was founded in Brussels. The ITM was, and still is, one of the world's leading institutes for training and research in tropical medicine and
20252-638: The mandatory cultivation policy. After Malaya fell to the Japanese (January 1942), the Belgian Congo became a strategic supplier of rubber to the Allies . The Belgian Congo became one of the major exporters of uranium to the US during World War II (and the Cold War ), particularly from the Shinkolobwe mine. The colony provided the uranium used by the Manhattan Project , including in atomic bombs dropped on
20418-586: The matter on his own account. European rivalry in Central Africa led to diplomatic tensions, in particular with regard to the Congo Basin , which no European power had claimed. In November 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference (the Berlin Conference ) to find a peaceful resolution to the Congo situation. Though the Berlin Conference did not formally approve the territorial claims of
20584-428: The mining districts. The stagnation of population growth in many districts—in spite of spectacular successes in the fight against endemic diseases such as sleeping sickness—was another cause for concern. Low birth rates in the countryside and the depopulation of certain areas were typically attributed to the disruption of traditional community life as a result of forced labour migration and mandatory cultivation. Response
20750-414: The most prominent architects of America's early Cold War strategy, especially those who believed that the Cold War would eventually be fought by political rather than military means, such as George F. Kennan. Soviet and Eastern Bloc authorities used various methods to suppress Western broadcasts, including radio jamming . American policymakers, including Kennan and John Foster Dulles , acknowledged that
20916-695: The nations of Rwanda and Burundi , and the Belgian-controlled portions of German East Africa would join the nation of Tanganyika, followed by Tanzania. During World War II , the Belgian Congo served as a crucial source of income for the Belgian government in exile in London after the occupation of Belgium by the Nazis . Following the occupation of Belgium by the Germans in May 1940, the Belgian Congo declared itself loyal to
21082-480: The organisation of health care in developing countries. Endemic diseases, such as sleeping sickness , were all but eliminated through large-scale and persistent campaigns. In 1925 medical missionary Dr. Arthur Lewis Piper was the first person to use and bring tryparsamide, the Rockefeller Foundation's drug to cure sleeping sickness, to the Congo. The health-care infrastructure expanded steadily throughout
21248-661: The policy change. Once again, the East Berlin communists attempted to disrupt the Berlin municipal elections , which were held on 5 December 1948 and produced a turnout of 86% and an overwhelming victory for the non-communist parties. The results effectively divided the city into East and West, the latter comprising US, British and French sectors. 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue, and US Air Force pilot Gail Halvorsen created " Operation Vittles ", which supplied candy to German children. The Airlift
21414-441: The political decision-making level on either side. Similarly, there is no evidence, on either side, of any major political or military decision that was prematurely discovered through espionage and thwarted by the other side. There also is no evidence of any major political or military decision that was crucially influenced (much less generated) by an agent of the other side. According to historian Robert L. Benson, "Washington's forte
21580-533: The population figures given by Hochschild are inaccurate. There is, of course, no way of ascertaining the population of the Congo before the twentieth century and estimates like 20 million are purely guesses. Most of the interior of the Congo was literally unexplored if not inaccessible." Leopold's Force Publique , a private army that terrorized natives to work as forced labour for resource extraction, disrupted local societies and killed and abused natives indiscriminately. The Force Publique also became involved in
21746-410: The practice of British and French colonial policy, which generally favoured systems of indirect rule , retaining traditional leaders in positions of authority under colonial oversight. During the 1940s and 1950s, the Belgian Congo experienced extensive urbanisation and the colonial administration began various development programs aimed at making the territory into a "model colony". One result saw
21912-474: The presence of the Red Army —alarmed the US and UK. Western leaders saw this as a clear instance of Soviet expansionism, clashing with their vision of a democratic Europe. Economically, the divide was sharpened with the introduction of the Marshall Plan in 1947, a US initiative to provide financial aid to rebuild Europe and prevent the spread of communism by stabilizing capitalist economies. The Soviet Union rejected
22078-630: The primary schools, disease prevention campaigns were implemented, and disease prevention classes were part of the curriculum. There was an "implicit apartheid ". The colony had curfews for Congolese city-dwellers and similar racial restrictions were commonplace. Léopoldville's system of racist curfews was particularly notable and was used as a blueprint in other European colonies, such as nearby French Equatorial Africa . Though there were no specific laws imposing racial segregation and barring blacks from establishments frequented by whites, de facto segregation operated in most areas. For example, initially,
22244-479: The promotion of the exploration and colonization of Africa. After Henry Morton Stanley had explored the region in a journey that ended in 1878, Leopold courted the explorer and hired him to help his interests in the region. Leopold II had been keen to acquire a colony for Belgium even before he ascended to the throne in 1865. The Belgian civil government showed little interest in its monarch's dreams of empire-building. Ambitious and stubborn, Leopold decided to pursue
22410-575: The rank of non-commissioned officer in the Force Publique , nor to a responsible position in the administration (such as head of bureau or territorial administrator). In the late 1950s, 42% of the youth of school-going age was literate, which placed the Belgian Congo far ahead of any other country in Africa at the time. In 1960, 1,773,340 students were enrolled in schools around the Belgian Congo, of which 1,650,117 in primary school, 22,780 in post-primary school, 37,388 in secondary school and 1,445 in university and higher education. Of these 1,773,340 students,
22576-505: The regular Belgian army—were posted in the Belgian Congo (for instance in Kamina). The colonial state—and any authority exercised by whites in the Congo—was often referred to by the Congolese as bula matari ("break rocks"), one of the names originally given to Stanley . He had used dynamite to crush rocks when paving his way through the lower-Congo region. The term bula matari came to signify
22742-453: The same year, the US and USSR signed a series of arms control treaties limiting their nuclear arsenals, which eased tensions in a détente . In 1979, the toppling of pro-US governments in Iran and Nicaragua and a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan again raised fears of war. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev rose to leader of the USSR and expanded political freedoms in his country, which led to the fall of
22908-462: The source of the term, Lippmann traced it to a French term from the 1930s, la guerre froide . The roots of the Cold War can be traced back to diplomatic and military tensions preceding World War II. The 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , where Soviet Russia ceded vast territories to Germany, deepened distrust among the Western Allies. Allied intervention in
23074-463: The specific post-war geopolitical confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States came in a speech by Bernard Baruch , an influential advisor to Democratic presidents, on 16 April 1947. The speech, written by journalist Herbert Bayard Swope , proclaimed, "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war." Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann gave the term wide currency with his book The Cold War . When asked in 1947 about
23240-446: The study and preservation of Congolese cultural and linguistic traditions and artefacts. One example among many is that of Father Gustaaf Hulstaert (1900–1990), who in 1937 created the periodical Aequatoria devoted to the linguistic, ethnographic and historical study of the Mongo people of the central Congo basin. The colonial state took an interest in the cultural and scientific study of
23406-412: The task of supervising and, if necessary, sanctioning those peasants who evaded the hated mandatory cultivation. Two distinct periods of investment in the Congo's economic infrastructure stand out during the period of Belgian rule: the 1920s and the 1950s. In 1921, the Belgian government provided 300 million francs of loans to the Belgian Congo, to fund public infrastructure projects in support of
23572-456: The wage labour force decreased by 72,000 and many such labourers returned to their villages. In Leopoldville, the population decreased by 33%, because of this labour migration. In order to improve conditions in the countryside, the colonial government developed the so-called " indigenous peasantry programme ", aimed at supporting the development of a stronger internal market that was less dependent of fluctuations in export demand, but also to combat
23738-466: The war, the USSR installed satellite governments in the territories of Eastern and Central Europe it had occupied, and promoted the spread of communism to North Korea in 1948 and created an alliance with the People's Republic of China in 1949. The US declared the Truman Doctrine of " containment " in 1947 as communist-led uprisings led to the Greek Civil War and First Indochina War , launched
23904-516: The war. The British firm of Lever Bros. greatly expanded the palm oil business during the war, and output of cocoa, rice and cotton increased. New rail and steamship lines opened to handle the expanded export traffic. During the First World War (1914–1918), the system of "mandatory cultivation" ( cultures obligatoires ) was introduced, forcing Congolese peasants to grow certain cash crops (cotton, coffee, groundnuts) destined as commodities for export. Territorial administrators and state agronomists had
24070-473: The world. Movements against nuclear weapons testing and for nuclear disarmament took place, with large anti-war protests . By the 1970s, both sides had started making allowances for peace and security, ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China that opened relations with China as a strategic counterweight to
24236-570: The world. The independence of the British, French and Dutch colonies in Asia shortly after 1945 had little immediate effect in the Congo, but in the United Nations pressure on Belgium (as on other colonial powers) increased. Belgium had ratified article 73 of the United Nations Charter , which advocated self-determination, and both superpowers put pressure on Belgium to reform its Congo policy;
24402-497: Was 'signals' intelligence - the procurement and analysis of coded foreign messages." leading to the Venona project or Venona intercepts, which monitored the communications of Soviet intelligence agents. Moynihan wrote that the Venona project contained "overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds." The Venona project
24568-412: Was a strong promise that West Germany would not develop nuclear weapons. Widespread fears of another rise of German militarism necessitated the new military to operate within an alliance framework under NATO command. In 1955, Washington secured full German membership of NATO. In May 1953, Lavrentiy Beria , by then in a government post, had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of
24734-496: Was administratively divided into four provinces: Congo-Kasaï , Equateur , Orientale , and Katanga , each presided over by a Vice-Governor-General. An administrative reform in 1932 increased the number of provinces to six, while "demoting" the Vice-Governors-General to provincial Governors. The territorial service was the true backbone of the colonial administration. The colony was divided into four provinces (six after
24900-547: Was also fearful of a reconstituted Germany; his vision of a post-war Germany did not include the ability to rearm or pose any kind of threat to the Soviet Union. In early 1948, following reports of strengthening "reactionary elements", Czech Communists executed a coup d'état in Czechoslovakia (resulting in the formation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (9 May 1948)), the only Eastern Bloc state that
25066-452: Was also made in the fight against endemic diseases; the numbers of reported cases of sleeping sickness went from 34,000 cases in 1931 to 1,100 cases in 1959, mainly by eradicating the tsetse fly in densely populated areas. All Europeans and Congolese in the Belgian Congo received vaccinations for polio , measles and yellow fever . Vast disease prevention programmes were rolled out, aimed at eradicating polio, leprosy and tuberculosis . In
25232-433: Was as much a logistical as a political and psychological success for the West; it firmly linked West Berlin to the United States. In May 1949, Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade. In 1952, Stalin repeatedly proposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government chosen in elections supervised by the United Nations, if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances, but this proposal
25398-648: Was contingent upon German economic recovery. One month later, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 , creating a unified Department of Defense , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Council (NSC). These would become the main bureaucracies for US defense policy in the Cold War. Stalin believed economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that
25564-425: Was expected to inspect his territory and to file detailed annual reports with the provincial administration. In terms of the legal system , two systems co-existed: a system of European courts and one of indigenous courts ( tribunaux indigènes ). These indigenous courts were presided over by the traditional chiefs but had only limited powers and remained under the firm control of the colonial administration. In 1936 it
25730-459: Was in some cases supported by governmental recruiting offices (Office de Travail-Offitra,..). In Katanga the main labour force were seasonal migrant workers from Tanganyika , Angola , Northern Rhodesia , and after 1926, also from Ruanda-Urundi. In many cases, this huge labour migration affected the economic viability of rural communities: many farmers left their villages, which resulted in labour shortages in these areas. To counter these problems,
25896-463: Was kept highly secret even from policymakers until the Moynihan Commission in 1995. Despite this, the decryption project had already been betrayed and dispatched to the USSR by Kim Philby and Bill Weisband in 1946, as was discovered by the US by 1950. Nonetheless, the Soviets had to keep their discovery of the program secret, too, and continued leaking their own information, some of which
26062-502: Was left as the world's sole superpower. In February 1946, George F. Kennan 's " Long Telegram " from Moscow to Washington helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, which would become the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. The telegram galvanized a policy debate that would eventually shape the Truman administration 's Soviet policy. Washington's opposition to
26228-475: Was mainly religious and vocational. Children received basic education such as learning how to read, write and some mathematics. The Belgian Congo was one of the few African colonies in which local languages ( Kikongo , Lingala , Tshiluba and Swahili ) were taught at primary school. Even so, language policies and colonial domination often went hand in hand, as evidenced by the preference given to Lingala —a semi-artificial language spread through its common use in
26394-540: Was now restricted to the island of Taiwan , the nationalist government of which exists to this day. The Kremlin promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China. According to Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad , the communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang Kai-Shek made, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Moreover, his party
26560-534: Was often made that that had been the point of the policies, and pointed to the increase of population in the cities, as well as the improvement in health and lifespan due to modern medicine and living conditions. Many missionaries who were in daily contact with Congolese villagers, took their plight in the transition at heart and sometimes intervened on their behalf with the colonial administration (for instance in land property questions). The missions and certain territorial administrators also played an important role in
26726-403: Was parity in the quantity and quality of secret information obtained by each side. However, the Soviets probably had an advantage in terms of HUMINT (human intelligence or interpersonal espionage) and "sometimes in its reach into high policy circles." In terms of decisive impact, however, he concludes: We also can now have high confidence in the judgment that there were no successful "moles" at
26892-421: Was recorded that there were 728 administrators controlling the Congo from Belgium. Belgians living in the Congo had no say in the government and the Congolese did not either. No political activity was permitted in the Congo whatsoever. Public order in the colony was maintained by the Force Publique , a locally recruited army under Belgian command. It was only in the 1950s that metropolitan troops—i.e., units of
27058-427: Was still useful to the American program. According to Moynihan, even President Truman may not have been fully informed of Venona, which may have left him unaware of the extent of Soviet espionage. Clandestine atomic spies from the Soviet Union, who infiltrated the Manhattan Project at various points during WWII, played a major role in increasing tensions that led to the Cold War. In addition to usual espionage,
27224-457: Was the Korean War of 1950 to 1953, which ended in stalemate. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 installed the first communist regime in the Western Hemisphere, and in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis began after deployments of U.S. missiles in Europe and Soviet missiles in Cuba; it is considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into nuclear war . Another major proxy conflict was the Vietnam War of 1955 to 1975, which ended in defeat for
27390-431: Was turned down by the Western powers. Some sources dispute the sincerity of the proposal. Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). That August, the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in Semipalatinsk , Kazakh SSR . Following Soviet refusals to participate in
27556-434: Was weakened during the war against Japan . Meanwhile, the communists told different groups, such as the peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and they cloaked themselves under the cover of Chinese nationalism . Confronted with the communist revolution in China and the end of the American atomic monopoly in 1949, the Truman administration quickly moved to escalate and expand its containment doctrine. In NSC 68 ,
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