ABSTRACT
On 19 July, a formal ceremony was held at Banana Point and finally, on 1 August 1885, the birth of the new state was officially notified to the world as 'L'Etat Independant du Congo', a title that came to be translated as 'The Congo Free State'. Everyone knew that in dealing with the Congo, they were dealing with Leopold, and that, as one commentator has put it 'Leopold owns the Congo in the same way that Rockefeller owns Standard Oil'. There remained two final hurdles, the securing of the international community's formal consent to a declaration of the Free State's neutrality in accordance with Article 10 of the Berlin Act, and international acceptance of its approximate frontiers. Britain took the firm and consistent view that territorial claims could only be based on effective occupation, which was obviously far from being the case so far as the Free State was concerned.
