Japanese competition in the Congo Basin in the 1930s 1

This chapter will consider the role of the Congo Basin Treaty as the framework which enabled Japan to advance in African markets in the mid-1930s and the Anglo-Japanese rivalries over its revision and abolition. The Agreement was reached easily because equal opportunities to all in the Belgian Congo had been declared in the Berlin protocol in 1885 and the Brussels protocol of 1890, and Japan had signed the Congo Basin Treaty of September 10, 1919. The Congo Basin Treaty was signed by the ministers of Japan, the United States, France, Belgium, Portugal, Britain and Italy. The Congo Basin Treaty originated in the general protocol of the Berlin Conference in 1885, and in September 1919 when the Peace Treaty was signed, Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Italy, Portugal and Belgium proposed an amendment to it. Japan had no influence in the region and was gravely concerned and wary of the motives behind the amendment of the Congo Basin Treaty.