SHN Lecture Series: Gert Huskens

Pushing the Limits: Belgian diplomacy and imperial contention over the Congo-Upper Nile frontier, 1885-1908

Shortly after Belgian King Leopold II entered the Scramble for Africa in the 1870s, he sought to connect the African continent’s two longest rivers. One area he had a particular interest in was the Congo-Upper Nile watershed at the northeastern edges of what would become the Congo Freestate. Yet, as this region, also known as the Bahr El Ghazal or Lado region, was increasingly affected by the Mahdist insurgency that had erupted in 1881, this ambition had extensive geopolitical implications. After all, the south-Sudanese theatre was a hotbed for inter-imperial struggle between the Congo Freestate and the British empire – including the subordinate Egyptian khedivate – and the French, Italian, and German empires. Based on previously neglected archives from the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the British administration in Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, as well as several personal documents related to Belgian officials and explorers in service of the Freestate, Huskens will stress the entangled character of Leopold’s so-called “Sudanese fata morgana”.

Gert Huskens wrote his PhD ‘The Lion and the Sphinx. An entangled history of Belgian diplomacy in Egypt, 1830-1914’ at the Université libre de Bruxelles and Ghent University. He is currently affiliated to the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities and specializes in the global history of Belgium’s diplomatic relations in the long nineteenth century with a focus on the non-European world.

More about this event

The lecture will be held on the 14th of March 2024 at the Drift 23, Utrecht, lecture hall 1.04 from 16:00 until 1730. Dr. Ozan Ozavci (Assistant Professor of Transimperial History) will moderate the event.