This paper explores the complex nature of Belgian attempts to shape legitimate customary power in twentieth century Congo. It aims to undermine the idea that 'traditional' chiefs, chiefdoms and customs were straightforward colonial 'inventions', created to enforce indirect rule through focusing on the Commission for the Protection of the Native Population, a colonial advice organ. Initially created by King Leopold II to justify his violent regime, it was relaunched by the Belgian colonial state when it acquired the Congo in 1908 and functioned until 1957. Including missionaries, jurists and administrators, it consisted of an intersection of Belgian colonial society and was representative of the “trinity” between the State, Capital and the Church. The commissioners, experts who combined local authority, expertise and experience with study, discussed a wide range of “native issues”, including depopulation, education and labour. Only officially acquiring the Congo in 1908, Belgium entered the imperial scene with little experience and tradition to draw upon. Behind the self-assured facade of a deliberate choice for indirect rule as a 'new start' from 1918 onwards, the hesitant administrators looked to the Commission for guidance, specifically regarding their immediate concern about how to apply indirect rule in practice. They posed questions regarding which attitude to take towards indigenous customs, how to invest chiefs and how to organise chiefdoms and courts; in short, how to construct colonial society.
In this paper, I explore how the Commission's seemingly straightforward advice was the result of a complex and continuous debate, informed by competing religious, political and economic interests. I chart how the central question of balancing respect, regulation and intervention in indigenous structures, customs and society, was a controversial issue, rather than a foregone conclusion. I focus on the Commission's concerns about chiefs' and courts' legitimacy and effectiveness within the changing administrative system and policy. I investigate how the Commission tried to find general, colony-wide solutions, by drawing upon local examples from all corners of the Congo, based on the local expertise of its members. I illustrate how it attempted to generate consensus out of differing opinions. I also explore the issues which undermined the realisation of the Commission's proposed solutions and its accompanying vision of an indirectly administered colonial society, including the 'disintegration of indigenous structures' and the 'qualitative and quantitative' insufficient Belgian colonial administration. Focusing on the role of 'actors from the middle', between the officials who made the top-down decisions and the administrators who applied them locally, this paper reveals how 'customary rule' was not a straightforward colonial invention. It shows how it rather resulted from long-term, complicated and extensive 'behind the scenes discussion', shaped by competing interests and wide-ranging arguments. In arguing that the 'Belgian civilising mission' was not scaffolded upon a ready-made notion of indirect rule, but the result of painstaking 'trial and error' and 'work in progress', it exemplifies general trends about European approaches to indirect rule, while crucially connecting them to the particularities of Belgian imperialism, namely its paternalist nature and insecurities, and competition within the “trinity” of Church, State and Capital.