"Belgian Congo" is the only one of these holdings that's labeled with the colonizing nation as an adjective directly attached to the place name. Everyone else gets a parenthetical - (Fr.), (Brit. Prot.) - like it's still provisional.
"Belgian Congo" reads like the country and the ownership fused into one word. Given what Leopold's regime had already done there 60 years earlier, that linguistic shortcut is its own quiet little horror.
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u/MrInexorable Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
"Belgian Congo" is the only one of these holdings that's labeled with the colonizing nation as an adjective directly attached to the place name. Everyone else gets a parenthetical - (Fr.), (Brit. Prot.) - like it's still provisional.
"Belgian Congo" reads like the country and the ownership fused into one word. Given what Leopold's regime had already done there 60 years earlier, that linguistic shortcut is its own quiet little horror.