The Congo Crisis

CHAPTER 6 · 1960–1965 · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994

If Nigeria showed independence’s best hopes, the Congo showed its worst nightmare — and it happened in five days. Belgium had ruled its enormous central-African colony with brutal paternalism and had done almost nothing to prepare it: at independence on 30 June 1960 there were a handful of Congolese university graduates and not one African army officer or senior administrator. Watch the map: within a week of Patrice Lumumba’s defiant independence speech, the Force Publique mutinied against its Belgian officers, Belgium sent troops back in “to protect its nationals,” and the copper-rich provinc

The turn: Katanga secedes, 11 July 1960.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.