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ABSTRACT
The link between the Cold War and decolonisation is tackled by using the uniqueness of the complex Congo crisis and its neo-colonial elements, with a focus on agents and specific policies rather than theories and general themes. The ‘real’ Cold War is essentially defined as that followed by Kennedy, with its priority in the early 1960s, among the Cold War’s many different constituent elements, taken to be the winning of newly independent African nations to the socio-economic values and hoped-for developmental benefits of Western capitalism. The importance of using soft power to defeat the ideology of communism, as opposed to containing the allegedly expansionist Soviet aims in Africa, is highlighted. Clear distinctions are made between the Kennedy administration and those of Eisenhower and Johnson. Interpretations of decolonisation using the Congo’s particular neo-colonial circumstances have been rare, and interpretations of decolonisation in the Congo also require some qualification. In particular the role of the colonial state and its ‘partnership’ with private European enterprises, established under King Leopold, had economic consequences for the Belgian decolonisation process. The importance of the role of financial capital, as opposed to business interests simply represented through trade and industry, is emphasised. The role of the UN and its secretary general is also highlighted but not by using inaccurate perceptions of Hammarskjöld’s neutral Cold War stance. The different positions taken by the Belgians, the British and the Americans, embodying conflict and cooperation in different forms, are analysed at different times with the important consequences of the Belgian refusal to comply with UN Security Council Resolutions highlighted. The need to limit the damage from that and from the neo-colonialism of secession is analysed. Exaggerating the causal consequences of Soviet actions and accusing Lumumba, despite evidence to the contrary, of being a communist or vehicle for Soviet influence was what brought the Cold War to the Congo. The British refusal to do more than decline to support openly the neo-colonialism in Katanga, particularly by supporting action likely to end secession, threatened to damage relations with the US. Such action, which could have led to more military action, would have contributed to the success of US policy in the ‘real’ Cold War but at the expense of those British investors who were the main financial backers of the Conservative party.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Ronald Hyam first introduced the idea of this Cold War/decolonisation relationship at a British Documents on the End of Empire (BDEEP) seminar nearly twenty years ago. For the increased importance of the ‘real’ Cold War (meaning the different priorities actually given to its constituent parts by US administrations) in the less-developed world and non-alignment under Kennedy and Johnson, see Westad, Global Cold War; McMahon, ed., Cold War in the Third World; Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson and the Non-aligned World. The broad extent of the Cold War, revealing its many constituent parts, is well covered in the three-volume Leffler and Westad, eds, Cambridge History of the Cold War. For a useful summary of those interpretations of the Cold War as a clash of social systems and the different emphases including culture and ideology, see Romero, ‘Cold War Historiography at the Crosswords’. Recent collections of themes and regions in the Cold War following the Cambridge History have articles entitled ‘Cold War and Decolonisation’. Goedde and Immerman, eds, Oxford Handbook of the Cold War; Kalinsky and Daigle, eds, Routledge Handbook of the Cold War. Neither has helped significantly to link decolonisation with the Cold War by using the specifics of archival research despite the articles’ titles. The excellent article by Ryan Irwin in the Routledge volume is a conceptual exercise analysing the twentieth-century relationship between broad themes of empire, colonialism and imperialism, only a part of which touches on decolonisation. Irwin, ‘Decolonisation. and Cold War’, in Kalinsky and Daigle, eds, Routledge Handbook of the Cold War. Cary Fraser’s similarly titled article is a general overview written within a conventional decolonisation framework starting with the First World War. Fraser, ‘Decolonisation and the Cold War’, in Goedde and Immerman, eds, Oxford Handbook of the Cold War. Jason Parker deals more with specifics with the Congo’s decolonisation being ‘consumed by the Cold War’. Parker, ‘Decolonisation, the Cold War’, in McMahon, ed., Cold War in the Third World, 132. There are also two recent articles on the Cold War in the Third World, one in the McMahon volume and Michael Latham’s article in the Cambridge History of the Cold War. The latter article begins after the Katangan secession ended and also is based on secondary sources but nevertheless succeeds in accurately tracing some links between the specifics and the general and covers the Kennedy administration and the Congo. In the McMahon, ed., The Cold War in the Third World, two articles dealing with the Third World as an addendum to China and culture and the Cold War are provided by Chen Jian and Andrew Rotter. Articles on the Cold War in Africa are provided by Jeffrey Byrne for both the McMahon and the Routledge volumes, the first dealing with decolonisation’s role in the reinforcing of sovereignty and the state system and the other providing a potted history of the African Cold War crises from the First World War referring only briefly to the Congo. It includes factual errors and avoids almost entirely the use of published and unpublished documentary sources. These authors, with their different views, all see the Cold War as influencing indigenous movements or as the Cold War failing to have a significant effect on such movements, which were allegedly determined to prevent the decolonisation process being tarnished by the Cold War. All neglect the economics of the relationships in Africa as important influences on the Cold War’s relationship to decolonisation. Paradoxically, Soviet Third World policy in the second half of the 1950s is starting to be seen as influenced by economics and financial capitalism. See Sanchez-Sibona, The Political Economy
2 In addition to being a key figure in the British Documents on the End of Empire (BDEEP) series, editing singly or jointly several volumes and their respective parts in two of the general BDEEP series A edited by Steve Ashton, Ronald Hyam has also produced by far and away the best book on British decolonisation. Its excellent prose combines well with the knowledge that he has been able to gain from studying more British documents on the end of empire than has any other academic. Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire.
3 Kennedy, even as a US senator was interested in, and concerned with, the Cold War implications (not just the US domestic political implications) of the less-developed world and particularly of an African continent seeking to find ways to escape from European rule. ‘He wrote scornfully of the … popular American “ill-conceived and ill-concealed disdain for “neutralists” and “socialists” who, in fact, represented “the free world’s strongest bulwarks to the seductive appeal of Peking and Moscow”. Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson and the Non-aligned World, 32, citing Kennedy, ‘A Democrat Looks at Foreign Policy’. Hence the importance of Africa and the Congo when Kennedy became president. He set aside time to meet numerous African leaders and potential leaders in the White House, including left-wing ones like Keita, Nkrumah, Touré and Nyrere. The Bureau of African Affairs, established only in Eisenhower’s second term, contained three offices and eighteen desk officers when Kennedy entered the White House. Sixteen months later it had expanded to five offices and twenty-six desk officers and, according to the FO, matched the European Affairs and Inter American Affairs Bureaux for size. J. D. B. Shaw (Washington Embassy) to K. M. Wilford, 23 March 1962, FO371/161374, National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).
4 See Kent, ‘US Reactions to Empire’.
5 Information on the financial situation and economic resources of the Congo is both lengthy and detailed in the State Department papers, many of which initially drew on the academic assistance of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the form of Robert West who compiled a number of detailed reports on the Congo’s economy, available in the Kennedy Presidential Library as well as the State Department’s Central File. They provide the basic analysis of the Congo’s economic position used here. West was a former analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and on the part-time staff at Yale University. Prior to independence he was on a study mission to the Congo for MIT. He helped the UN negotiate the liquidation of the Belgian Congo’s Central Bank (Banque Centrale du Congo Belge et Ruanda Urundi), which with the help of the IMF had, by the start of 1961, established a body known as the Monetary Council of the Congo to try to bring order to the chaos of foreign-exchange transactions produced partly by secession. That chaos was reflected in an unknown loss of foreign exchange and non-payment for imports, the latter of which was reckoned to constitute $24 million in the second half of 1960. Subsequently, West worked as a specialist on African problems for the Rockefeller Foundation, again visiting the Congo, and in 1963 became a counsellor for economic affairs in Leopoldville, providing reports directly to Harlan Cleveland, the assistant secretary for international organisation affairs in the State Department. In December 1962, when the issue was taking measures to end secession, Cleveland referred to the danger of the US being seen (given the British and Belgian actions and inactions) as having a desire ‘to protect the arbitrary and imposed tax and profit system of a mining company’. For Cleveland, after an African country (the Congo) had achieved independence, these profits were widely regarded as constituting ‘a prototype of an exploitative imperialist-capitalist-monopoly’—an appropriate definition of the economics of neo-colonialism provided by a senior US official. Cleveland went on, in February 1963, to head a team to produce a report for Kennedy based on three weeks in the Congo supposedly in consultation with the British and the Belgians on how the nation-building of the re-integrated state should proceed. Cleveland to Ball (personal), 14 Dec. 1962, Harland Cleveland Papers, Box 68, John F Kennedy Presidential Library (hereafter JFKL). For his report, see Memo for the President, ‘Harlan Cleveland’s Report on the Congo’, Feb. 1963, Harland Cleveland Papers, Box 69, JFKL.
6 Because of the intertwined mix of concessionary, holding and operating companies in the workings of European capitalism in the Belgian Congo, Tanganyika Concessions benefited from financial stakes in a number of different companies including the Société Générale de Belgique and the Comité Spécial du Katanga. See note 11 below.
7 The details of potential asset transfers to the independent Congo became known as the contentieux to be discussed after independence essentially because the belated Belgian commitment to colonial development in the Congo had been financed by bond-holders whose returns in the form of interest on that debt were to be paid for after independence, thus at the very least providing some Belgian leverage when or if asset transfers were discussed
8 Sir Brian Urquhart supplied the US with this information as an explanation for the lack of British government support for Katangan re-integration. State Dept. to London, 19 Sept. 1961, 26, Tel. 1477, College Park RG 59 Central Decimal File (CDF) 770G:00 1960-63, Box 1965, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA).
9 de Boulay (Washington Embassy) to Foster, Sept. 1962, FO371/161517, TNA. It was estimated by the FO that the value of Tanganyika Concessions’ interests in UMHK was £80 million.
10 The Compagnie du Katanga (CK) received the other 20 per cent of the concessionary payments.
11 The Comité Spécial. du Katanga (CSK) had been established under Leopold in 1900, but two-thirds of it was owned by the colonial government. Another feature of colonialism in the Congo was that the operating companies extracting mineral resources from the concessionary lands deposited share-securities to the domanial authority, i.e. the company owning the concessions from Leopold—in southern Katanga primarily the CSK. Thus royalties were not simply paid to the colonial state because of the original land having ‘belonged’ to Leopold and then to a combination of the Belgian Congo state and private firms. Conventionally in the Congo it was the dividends paid on these shares that also served as royalties. For Tanganyika Concessions this meant until 1962 they were paid in the form of dividends to shareholders. The CSK collected such dividends on behalf of the Belgian Congo government and the shares went into the Congo Portfolio, which, before and after independence, was still controlled in Brussels. The Portfolio was a mix of shares and parastatals with the latter often operating at a loss. See Kent, America, the UN and Decolonisation,, 81, n. 116.
12 Ganshof van der Meersch, Fin de la Souveraineté Belge au Congo, 191–299.
13 G. E. Milard to Sir Roderick Barclay, 27 Feb. 1964, FO371/176725, TNA.
14 See the assessments of the new British ambassador, Ian Scott (former consul-general), of the post-mutiny disturbances in FO371/146639, TNA. This is not to say that these neo-colonial plans for the support of secession were hatched in Brussels rather than by settlers and Belgian officials in Katanga. I am grateful to Emmanuel Gerard for pointing out that Belgian Cabinet records indicate that the government’s opinion was divided until Lumumba broke off relations with Brussels in mid-July.
15 West Report for G. Mennen Williams, ‘Financial Groups in the Congo’, 22 Dec. 1961, Harlan Cleveland Papers, Box 70, JFKL.
16 Brussels to S of S, 13 Mar. 1962 (source giving the info to the ambassador is redacted), Airgram, President’s Office Files (hereafter POF), Box 114, JFKL.
17 See especially Kent, ‘Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Congo Crisis’.
18 For details on this I am grateful to the work of Per-Axel Frielingsdorf for his PhD thesis on Hammarskjöld's role as UN secretary general and his 1960 actions in the Congo. Frielingsdorf, ‘“Machiavelli of Peace”’.
19 This applies to the original ‘nationalist’ model put forward by A. Low. A broader international perspective was outlined by John D. Hargreaves and by the ideas of Robinson and Louis before the work of new generation historians of decolonisation was added to the new work of ‘old’ imperial historians. Robinson and Louis, ‘The Imperialism of Decolonization’. The arguments of Robinson and Louis about Anglo-American cooperation over the renewal and subsequent disinvestment of the British Empire effectively cover the 1950s. Nigel Ashton’s criticism uses the Middle East with the colonial aspects centring on Guiana and the Congo, which is to say post-1960. While Ashton correctly identifies more clearly the Anglo-American conflicts, he casts the Congo into the conventional end of empire framework based, in the Congo’s case, on the over-rapid transfer of power. Ashton, ‘Anglo-American Revival and Empire’.
20 Ibid., 171.
21 Robert West to Cleveland, 30 Jan. 1963, Harlan Cleveland Papers, Box 69, JFKL.
22 Brussels to S of S, 8 July 1960, Tel. 58, White House Office Files, Office of the Staff Secretary (General Goodpaster), International Series, Box 4, Dwight D Eisenhower Library (hereafter DDEL); Leopoldville to FO, 14 June 1960, FO371/146639, TNA. Ambassador Scott pointed out that not a single Belgian had been seriously hurt in Leopoldville, the large town closest to the mutiny at Thysville camp. See note 40 below. When referring to the reasons for the mutiny and the sending of Belgian troops, Scott discounted ‘talk of Soviet plots’ as the uprising was against colonial rule and a consequence of the feeling that ‘Belgium was here to stay’—with Belgian flags still flying after independence. Leopoldville to FO, 18 July 1960, FO371/146646, TNA; Account by Sir J. Nicholls of events in the Congo, 10 July 1960, FO371/146642, TNA; White, Decolonisation, 95–96.
23 Work on the Special Relationship as a general guiding light for Anglo-American relations continues to flourish without taking into account the nuanced qualifications centred on the attractions and conflicts provided by the British Empire in both the pre- and post-war years. See the recent article by Baylis and Marsh which still uses Churchill’s three circles as part of a consistent aim of British foreign policy, albeit to be achieved by different means. One FO official is used to justify the 1944 view that Britain was now abandoning the policy of balancing British power against that of America, and the detailed FO report of Graham Spry after a 1943 tour to gauge US opinion of the British empire as part of an assessment of the general difference of American views, within and outside Washington, is ignored. Baylis and Marsh, ‘Anglo-American Relations 1950–51’. Nigel Ashton, by focusing on ‘interdependence’ or the lack of it, provided a more sophisticated assessment of the cooperation and conflict with reference to the British Empire
24 While there has been an increased willingness to link the two, the number of academics who have specialisations and research monographs in both these areas is limited, thus helping to produce more orthodox or superficial coverage in one of the two areas
25 The UN Security Council meeting of 13–14 July followed Belgian troops taking the port of Matadi on 11 July, with some loss of African life, and the landing of paratroops at Leopoldville Airport on 13 July. Policy Paper ‘An Analytical Chronology of the Congo Crisis’, 2 May 1961, POF, Box 114, JFKL. This was not a briefing paper but a policy paper designed to permit a review of the Congo crisis.
26 The neglect of the influence of economics and financial capital in the decolonisation process parallels the acceptance of the Washington Consensus and the Panglossian impact of the ‘free’ market.
27 The new breed of English-language historians of decolonisation also tend not to mention the Congo to any significant degree—or to present a distorted picture. See, for example, White, Decolonisation; also, more particularly, White, ‘The Business and the Politics of Decolonisation’. Sarah Stockwell, however, argues that British policy was more accommodating of business interests. Stockwell, ‘Trade, Empire’; see also Butler, ‘Business and British Decolonisation’; Cohen, ‘Business and Decolonisation in Central Africa’ White deals briefly with the Congo and notes the Nassau ‘arguments’ on the Congo and the British refusal in 1962 to support all the measures which the State Department drafted for the UN and which formed the basis of the UN Reconciliation Plan in that year. Murphy’s BDEEP volume, Series B, vol. 9, does give the Congo more than a passing reference, as does James, Britain and the Congo Crisis, but the latter essentially deals with the Congo as a story of Britain and the UN. Murphy deals with Waterhouse, Tanganyika Concessions and the Congo investments accurately in Party Politics and Decolonisation 111–16, drawing attention to the lack of Waterhouse’s influence on Foreign Office officials before Home, to whom Waterhouse was closely connected socially, became foreign secretary on 27 June 1960. He also refers to the subsequent cooperation over approaches to Tshombe, while pointing out that it was ‘difficult to argue that the business background of Conservative politicians was a major determinant of their general attitude to political change in Africa’. Murphy, Party Politics and Decolonisation, 117. The crux of the Congo issue is really the way owners of capital in general acted where the issue was not influencing the formulation of British colonial policy but ensuring a ‘do nothing’ British foreign policy towards neo-colonialism in an independent Congo (with or without commercial business activities). A ‘do nothing’ policy was less likely to result in losses to the owners of that capital, while action would have threatened the main financial contributions to the Conservative party.
28 While such statements heard in a French bar are unlikely ever to be heard in a UK equivalent, you would also be unlikely to hear a UK government minister comment (putting aside the degree of veracity) in private, as Couve de Murville did: ‘it is well known that the Société Générale [de Belgique] is in the control of the Belgian government’. Paris to S of S, 11 July 1962, Tel. 1973, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960-63, Box 1973, NARA. The other side of the coin is that you would never see a British businessman spit on a European official amid accusations of criminality over policy disagreements. See USUN to S of S, 10 Aug. 1960, Tel. 349, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1955, NARA.
29 See Marseille, Empire Colonial et Capitalisme français; Vanthemsche, Belgium and the Congo. Work on the Congo and decolonisation is still dominated in Europe by Stengers. Stengers, Congo mythes et réalités; Stengers,‘Precipitous Decolonisation’. Recent multi-archival work on the Congo crisis of the early 1960s by Lise Namikas focuses primarily on the Cold War element. Namikas, Battleground Africa. The linguistic skills and the excellent use of non-English sources are somewhat offset by the weaker analyses of the colonial elements of the Congo situation and an orthodox Cold War interpretation of the conflict as a key determinant of the international players’ policy.
30 Lumumba’s character and political beliefs were much discussed and not only in Washington. Initially Lumumba was not portrayed as a communist. It was the disorders that were depicted as communist inspired, but that interpretation was provided by the Belgian Foreign Office. The Americans, the further away they were from direct contact with, or particular knowledge of, the Congo, for example, members of the National Security Council as opposed to the Congo embassy officials under Eisenhower and Kennedy (with the exception of the CIA’s chief of mission in Leopoldville), had a greater proclivity to describe Lumumba as a communist or as being manipulated by communists. Members of the State Department, with more direct knowledge, were as late as mid-August portraying Lumumba as ‘moving left’ but ‘probably not firmly communist oriented’. But ‘at any event it appears doubtful that the Soviets, any more than the Americans, could, under present conditions in Congo, establish reliable continuing influence’. State Dept. to Leopoldville, 12 Aug. 1960, Tel. 438, RG59 CDF 770G:00, NARA. See Kent, America, the UN and Decolonisation 12–15 for assessments of Lumumba based on Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1958–60, vol. 14: Africa, Memcon US Ambassador Brussels (Burden) and Lumumba, 25 Feb. 1960; State Dept. to Accra, 28 April 1960, Tel. 730; Leopoldville to State Dept., 14 June 1960, Tel. 469. In the FO the brief for the prime minister’s visit to Bonn in August 1960 simply stated that Lumumba was not a communist. Brief for Prime Minister’s Bonn visit, Aug. 1960, FO371/146506, TNA.
31 Memo by Hugh Cumming INR (State Dept Bureau of Intelligence and Research), 17 June 1960, RG59 CDF 755A:00 1960–63, Box 1831, NARA; for Ganshof van der Meersch’s account and documents see Fin de la Souveraineté Belge, 191–299.
32 TNA FO371/146639 Report by Ian Scott 5 July 1960
33 Leopoldville to S of S, 7 April 1960, Tel. 302, RG 59 755A.00 1960-63, Box 1832, NARA; Brussels to S of S, 13 April 1960, Tel. 1272, RG 59 855A.00 1960-63, Box 2061, NARA; Report by Ian Scott, 5 July 1960, FO371/146639, TNA.
34 Policy Paper, ‘An Analytical Chronology of the Congo Crisis’, 2 May 1961, POF, Box 114, JFKL.
35 Tanganyika Concessions had a significant shareholding—initially 50 per cent in the new operating company Union Minière du Haut Katanga until the Depression, when it sold all but 14 per cent of its UMHK holdings while retaining seats on the UMHK board for three British Conservative politicians and 20 per cent of voting rights. The other half of UMHK shares were held by the Société Générale de Belgique
36 Brussels to S of S, 9 May 1960, with account of the Ambassador’s trip to the Congo, March 1960, Savingram 1226, RG59 CDF 755A:00 1960-63, Box 1831, NARA. The larger US resources for embassy and consular staff meant that the reports of trips to the African interior were numerous and informative.
37 Elisabethville to S of S, 7 March 1960, Tel. 8, RG59 CDF 755A:00 1960-63, Box 1831, NARA.
38 Memcon by Joseph Satterthwaite (AF) of call by Belgian Ambassador Louis Scheyven, 1 July 1960, RG 59 CDF 755A:00 1960–63, Box 1831, NARA.
39 This was the decolonisation–Cold War link. Kennedy’s determination to confront communism and his interest in the less-developed world, given new life by Khrushchev’s 1961 ‘wars of national liberation speech’, became key components of the ‘New Frontier’, reflecting the development idealism of Walt Rostow, the Alliance for Progress and a new approach to neutralism in Africa and Asia. For the latter, see Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson and the Non-aligned World, ch. 2. Stephen G. Rabe incorporates a greater emphasis on ‘security’ into Kennedy’s approach to dealing with Latin American counterinsurgency. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area, 127–34. Among the many Kennedy biographies Jason K. Duncan’s gives an excellent summary of Kennedy’s formative experiences and his different Cold War emphasis on Africa and the less-developed world. Duncan, John F. Kennedy.
40 The British ambassador believed the mutiny had three causes, the first of which was Bangala resentment at Lumumba not giving their ethnic political leader a key governmental role. Second, that resentment was exacerbated by having to do extra independence day duties without adequate financial reward. Then there was the general African dislike of being told by the Belgian officer commanding, General Janssens, that things were not going to change with the achievement of independence, particularly as democracy did not apply to the Congolese army. Leopoldville to FO, 6 July 1960, Tel. 224, FO371/146639, TNA.
41 J. Nicholls (Brussels) to Frederick Hoyer-Millar (FO), 7 July 1962, FO371/146639, TNA.
42 The Congo, much bigger than Europe and with even more distinct ethnicities, had particular rivalries in Katanga, although the British, for Cold War and neo-colonial reasons, officially maintained throughout the secession that Katanga was particularly stable. See Account by Jack Nicholls (Ambassador in Brussels) of the recent events in the Congo recorded in diary form in a letter to Hoyer-Millar, 19 Aug. 1960, FO371/146642, TNA.
43 For the events of 10 July in Katanga, see de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba, 7.
44 Earl Selborne (Roundell Cecil Palmer) was the 3rd earl, son of Beatrix Cecil, the daughter of Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury. The 5th Marquess of Salisbury from 1947, formerly Viscount Cranbourne, was a leading member of Macmillan’s government. ‘Bobbety’, as he was known, was a defender of white regimes in Africa before becoming the first president of the Monday Club in 1961.
45 Minute by E. B. Boothby, 13 July, FO371/146639, TNA.
46 Account by Nicholls, 19 Aug. 1960, FO371/146642, TNA.
47 Brussels to S of S with text of Ambassador Timberlake’s cable on the dangers of Belgian unilateral action favoured by Wigny and the Liberals, 10 July 1960, Tel. 88, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960-63, Box 1954, NARA.
48 Scott to Hoyer-Millar, 2 Aug. 1960, FO371/146642, TNA.
49 Leopoldville to FO, 18 July 1960, FO371/146640, TNA.
50 Leopoldville to FO, 22 July 1960, FO371/146640, TNA.
51 Leopoldville to FO, 20 July 1960, FO371/146639, TNA.
52 Policy Paper, ‘An Analytical Chronology of the Congo Crisis’, 2 May 1961, POF, Box 114, JFKL.
53 The contents of the telegram from Lumumba and Kasavubu had found their way into US hands and can be found in State Dept. to Brussels, 15 July 1960, Tel. 136, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1956, NARA.
54 UN Security Council S. 4387, 14 July 1960; Hoskyns, The Congo since Independence, 129, citing Soviet News, 18 July 1960. The American State Department records have the reply from Khrushchev on 15 July stating that the Soviet Union would not shrink from ‘'resolute measures to curb the aggression’.
55 ‘Within days [of independence] the country had been swept by large-scale tribal disturbances and renewed external intervention became inevitable … Disturbances spread throughout much of the Congo.’ Holland, European Decolonisation 1918–1961, 184–85; for the ‘unreal’ Cold War interpretation, see White, Decolonisation, 95: ‘Radical nationalists vied for Soviet support, while the pro-western and mineral rich provinces of Katanga and Kasai attempted to secede. Bloody civil war and ethnic in-fighting ensued and Belgian troops returned. Moreover the Cold War had arrived in Africa and the fallout from superpower intervention threatened the whole continent’; also Parker, ‘Decolonisation, the Cold War’, in McMahon, ed., Cold War in the Third World, 131: ‘ The chaos of the Belgian departure induced a power struggle among Congolese factions and a contest for influence between the superpowers. Lumumba’s disillusionment with the West, along with his openness to the East bloc helped turn the Congo into a Cold War pawn.’ Thus the perception of Africans seeking Soviet support as chaos and disturbances grew out of the Belgian departure is vividly portrayed. Nowhere is there a mention of Belgians, Tshombe or European capitalism operating to manufacture a superpower conflict out of the ‘unreal’ Cold War allegedly threatening the whole African continent
56 USUN to S of S, 15 July 1960, Tel. 85, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1954, NARA.
57 USUN to S of S, 3 Aug. 1960, Tel. 300, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1969–63, Box 1955, NARA.
58 UN Security Council Resolution S/4405, 22 July 1960
59 Sergei Mazov, using Soviet sources, has no evidence of Soviet involvement in the Congo before late August 1960 with the provision of planes and helicopters to several African states. Mazov, ‘Soviet Aid to the Gizenga Government’.
60 The fact that the Soviets and the Americans were both supporting a resolution to prevent what was happening to a newly independent state is testimony to the importance of winning the Afro-Asian bloc to their ideological causes.
61 USUN to S of S, 1 Aug. 1960, Tel. 274, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1958, NARA. Hammarskjöld remained convinced at the start of August that the best way of keeping the Soviets out and avoiding another ‘Korea type situation’ was to get the US to pressure the Belgians to declare an intention to withdraw from Katanga and all of the Congo This was to change within the next few weeks.
62 Account by Jack Nicholls in day by day form of events in the Congo in a letter sent to Hoyer-Miller on 19 Aug. referring to details of 17 July, FO371/146442, TNA.
63 The extent to which UMHK actively encouraged and promoted secession, as opposed to elements in the Belgian government encouraging UMHK to do so, is not easy to determine, even from the information received by the Americans. There were benefits to both sides of painting the other as a leading supporter of Tshombe and secession. The differing assessments of the respective views indicate the different degrees of influence of individual managing directors in UMHK. Waleffe, for example, was described by the Brussels government as taking an extreme pro-Katangan independence line. Brussels to S of S, 16 Dec. 1960, Savingram 546, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1957, NARA. Harold d’ Aspremont, the chef du cabinet of Gaston Eyskens (the Belgian PM), was sent on a special mission to the Congo in July 1960 (i.e. after colonial rule had ended) and became minister for African affairs in September. When, in August, Sture Linner, a senior UN official, met with the head of UMHK in the Congo and twenty-four other European managers, four of them came back to see him after the meeting, which had focused on the disastrous impact of any UN entry into Katanga as economic collapse would ensue because the white population would leave. They informed Linner that Aspremont had told them that unless the UN effort was sabotaged they would all lose their jobs. USUN to S of S, 7 Aug. 1960, Tel. 349, RG59 770:G:00 1960–63, Box 1955, NARA.
64 See, for example, Lodge urging Wigny to view things ‘from a world wide perspective’. USUN to S of S, 7Aug. 1960, Tel. 347, RG59 CDF 770:G:00 1960–63, Box 1955, NARA.
65 State Dept. to Brussels, 15 July 1960, Tel. 137, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1954, NARA.
66 Brussels to S of S, 16 July 1960, Tel. 200, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1954, NARA.
67 CIA Briefing Paper for NSC, 25 July 1960, Doc. 7, FRUS 1964–68, vol. 23, Congo. The Congo volume for 1964–68 had been ‘delayed’ and released in 2013 to include intelligence material from 1960 and is therefore in part a retrospective volume to accompany vols 14, 1958–60, and 20, 1961–63.
68 USUN to S of S, 7Aug. 1960, Tel. 347, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1955, NARA.
69 USUN to S of S, 1 Aug. 1960, Tel. 271, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960-63, Box 1955, NARA; USUN to S of S, 3 Aug. 1960, Tel. 300, RG59 CDF 770:G:00 1960–63, Box 1955, NARA.
70 State Dept Circular, 20 July 1960, Tel. 129, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1979, NARA; Policy Paper, ‘An Analytical Chronology of the Congo Crisis’, 2 May 1961, POF, Box 114, JFKL.
71 Hammarskjöld referred specifically to Lumumba’s request for Soviet intervention being ‘dead’. USUN to S of S, 19 July 1960, Tel. 137, RG59 CDF 770.0G 00 1960–63, Box 1954, NARA.
72 Hammarskjöld was still failing to comply with the first resolution requiring the UN force to work with the Congo government, as Lumumba complained, because that would mean UN involvement in a legitimate government’s action in Katanga and could be seen as interference in a state’s internal affairs. While Lumumba had not been able to take action in Katanga, there was, however, UN interference in the Congo’s internal affairs when its forces denied Lumumba the use of the radio station and the airport, and it was likely that in September Andrew Cordier was involved for the UN in encouraging Kasavubu to dismiss Lumumba.
73 Elisabethville to State Dept., 20 July 1960, Tel. 13, RG 59 CDF 770G:00, Box 1954, NARA.
74 Situation Report, 15 Aug. 1960, White House Office Files, Staff Secretary Goodpaster International Series, Box 3, DDEL; De Witte quotes a Belgian Foreign Ministry telegram concerning a meeting between Wigny’s assistants and George Denis, a Belgian adviser to Kasavubu on ‘the overthrow of the government according to our wishes’. De Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba, 18.
75 Tel. from the station in the Congo to the CIA, 11 Aug. 1960, Doc 8, FRUS 1964–68, vol. 23, Congo.
76 Kalb, The Congo Cables, 51
77 Record of 456th NSC meeting, 18 Aug. 1960, FRUS 1958–60, vol. 14, Africa.
78 USUN to S of S, 26 Aug. 1960, Tel. 517, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1955, NARA. For the British FO’s desire to eliminate Lumumba, see Gibbs, The Political Economy. For Belgian and Katangan involvement in the murder, see de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba, ch. 5. The US military expressed a desire for ‘forceful action’ and ‘all possible steps to eliminate Lumumba as a political force’. Memo by JCSM, 2 Sept. 1960, FRUS 1958 –60, vol. 14, Africa. Hammarskjöld told a US official in New York four days after Kasavubu’s dismissal notice that he was trying ‘to get rid of Lumumba without compromising UN position or himself’. USUN to S of S, 7 Sept. 1960, Tel. 605, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1956, NARA.
79 Memo from the Board of National Estimates for Allen Dulles, 22 Aug. 1960, FRUS 1958–60, vol. 14, Africa.
80 The constitutionality of this act was disputed by Lumumba who retaliated by dismissing the president and, while the issue remained unresolved, Colonel Joseph Mobutu seized power in a bloodless coup. The role of CIA money in these events is suspected to be considerable but there is a lack of evidence due to redactions in the CIA documents referring specifically to individual sums and the individuals receiving the money. There was a close relationship between Mobutu and the CIA station chief Devlin, His memoir, Chief of Station Congo, only indicates his claim that he was acting without approval. Details of a CIA plot to assassinate Lumumba appear in Devlin’s memoirs after the coup (ch. 8) with the poisons said to have been provided by an unnamed senior CIA officer. The issue is: who authorised it? The approval of Eisenhower is noted, according to Devlin, by the senior officer, who was not likely to have been present at the NSC meeting at which it was allegedly given. That approval was the subject of conflicting testimony to the Church Committee (the Senate investigatory committee). Ludo de Witte identifies those Belgians and Africans who actually carried out the murder in his biography of Lumumba
81 Policy Paper, ‘An Analytical Chronology of the Congo Crisis’, 2 May 1961, POF, Box 114, JFKL.
82 The new Congo initiative draft paper divided the State Department and a working group with intelligence representatives was established and began discussions on 26 January 1961.
83 Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson and the Non-aligned World, xxi–xxiii, ch. 2.
84 In terms of the paperwork in the State Department Central File, that generated by US relations with Britain and the Soviets combined was under half that generated by relations with the Congo under Kennedy. Only Vietnam generated more—another indication of the importance of Africa and the Congo in the early 1960s.
85 Kent, America, the UN and Decolonisation, 77.
86 Memcon Ormsby-Gore, Rusk, Stevenson, Ball, Cleveland, Williams, 7 Nov. 1961, RG59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1966, NARA.
87 For the UN military actions in August- September 1961 see Kent, America, the UN and Decolonisation, 60–8.
88 On Hammarskjold's suspicious death in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia and the even more suspicious investigation into it by the local authorities in the Central African Federation, see Williams, who, by revealing the misinformation given at the time, the presence of MI6 agents at the airport where the plane was landing and the refusal of the official investigation to accept any eye-witness evidence from black Africans, raises more suspicions and mysteries without providing answers or solutions to them. Williams, Who Killed Hammarskjöld?
89 CC (61) 49th, 5 Sept. 1961, CAB128/35, TNA.
91 Memorandum for the President from Dean Rusk, ‘Courses for the US in View of Fighting in Katanga’, 7 Dec. 1961, NSF Country Series Congo, Box 27A, JFKL.
92 Leopoldville to State, 11 Dec. 1961, RG59 CDF 770G:00, 1960–63, Box 1967, NARA; Special National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), ‘Possible Developments in Katanga’, 7 Dec. 1961, FRUS 1961–63, vol. 20, Congo.
93 State to Rusk, 11 Dec. 1961, FRUS, 1961–63, vol. 20, Congo.
94 Record of telephone conversation, Ball–JFK, 11 Dec. 1961, George Ball papers, Box 2, JFKL.
95 CC(61)74th, 14 Dec. 1961, CAB128/35, TNA.
96 Paris to State, 11 July 1962, RG59 CDF 770G:00, 1960–63, Box 1973, NARA; Brussels to State, 12 July 1962, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 31, JFKL.
97 Nicholls to Stevens, 6 March 1962, FO 371/161516, TNA.
98 Leopoldville to State, 9 April 1962, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 30, JFKL.
99 Leopoldville to State, 19 April 1962, RG59 CDF 770G:00, 1960–63, Box 1971, NARA.
100 State to Brussels, 27 April 1962; State to London, 11 May 1962, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 30, JFKL.
101 Record of telephone conversation, Ball–McGhee, 27 May 1962, Ball papers, JFKL.
102 Draft letter, Kennedy to ‘David’, 13 May, which formed telegram 6054 to London, 14 May 1962, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 28, JFKL.
103 USUN to State, 4 May 1962, Tel. 3657, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 30, JFKL; Kent, America, the UN and Decolonisation, 90. The political importance of the issue for high policy can be gauged by the fact that in 1961, when the crisis in Central Africa hit British territories in the wake of the Monckton report, the Congo was brought to the attention of the British Cabinet on fifteen occasions, as compared to the four times that the Central African Federation featured. In the following year, 1962, Central African Federation issues were raised in Cabinet twenty times, compared to twenty-seven times for the Congo. This does not mean that the neo-colonial elements were necessarily always of prime significance but it does indicate the importance for understanding decolonisation of an international dimension, and that for the British in the Congo something else was even more significant in influencing the general formation of high policy and the decolonisation policy.
104 Record of Tripartite talks morning session, first day, in London to State, 15 May 1962, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 28, JFKL.
105 London to State, 16 May 1962, Tel. 4223; London to State 16 May 1962, Tel. 4225, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 30A, JFKL.
106 London to State 16 May 1962, Tel. 4223, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 30A, JFKL.
107 The key documents on the London conference are all included in FRUS, 1961–63, vol. 20. As Bruce predicted, the paper the conference produced was unacceptable to the State Department because of the measures proposed for the period of transition to independence and the inadequate measures of pressure on Tshombe. State to Leopoldville, 19 May 1962, Tel. 1953, FRUS, 1961–63, vol. 20.
108 Brussels to State, 11 July 1962, Tel. 58, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 31, JFKL.
109 Memorandum of conversation between Rusk, Ormsby Gore and others, 12 July 1962, RG59 CDF 770G:00, 1960–63, Box 1978, NARA; London to State, 13 July 1962, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 31, JFKL.
110 War Office memorandum, ‘Middle East Garrison’, 25 June 1953, FO371/102834, TNA.
111 CIA Office of National Estimates Memo for the Director, ‘Soviet views of the Congo’, 7 Jan. 1963, NSF Country Series, Congo, Box 29, JFKL.
112 Leopoldville to S of S, 10 July 1960, Tel. 88, RG 59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1954, NARA.
113 USUN to S of S, 7 Sept. 1960, RG 59 CDF 770G:00 1960–63, Box 1956, NARA.
114 CC (62) 73, 6 Dec. 1962, CAB128/36, TNA.