ABSTRACT
In the 1950s the Belgian Information Center in New York developed a public diplomacy strategy to promote the Belgian colonial project as a means to increase the margins of manoeuvre in Washington. Rather than through Cold War politics, Brussels sought to increase its influence by highlighting how the Belgian development efforts in Congo served US strategic aims in the Third World. While historians have argued the Congo was hidden as an embarrassment by Belgian diplomats, played up as a source of power or considered to be a territory that had to be shielded from Soviet influence, the BIC archives suggest a different type of diplomatic strategy. Brussels tried to increase its influence in Washington by sidestepping the Cold War and relied on a PR strategy built on modernisation theory and exploited notions of elitism, expertise and primitivism.
