ABSTRACT
By its sheer size, the Congo* has dominated the affairs of central Africa since it was carved out of the region as the personal fiefdom of Belgium’s King Leopold II in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, it was Leopold’s move into the Congo River basin that triggered the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, at which various European governments divided the continent up among themselves, without even a nod to the territorial lines established by the Africans themselves over hundreds of years.
