EARLY BELGIAN COLONIAL EFFORTS - The University of Texas at ...

It was this situation in Belgium that Leopold attempted to remedy; at least, that
was his avowed purpose. The few colonists who did emigrate to Guatemala and Brazil
did so as the result of desperation, governmental propaganda, commercial
misinformation, and, in some cases, church support. On the whole there was simply
very little interest in emigrating.
There were not many overt examples of racism or the attitude that developed in
Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Herbert Spencer’s ethical theory of
social Darwinism was still thirty years in the future. Some of the reports 95 on the native
populations indicated, however, that the universal brotherhood of the Enlightenment
had already become mixed with the rhetoric of racism. Belgium did not at this time
show any overt sense of mission or intellectual justification for dominance which one
identifies with the New Imperialism.
Shortly after independence, the revolutionary forces under the newly crowned
King of the Belgians, Leopold I, met the invading Dutch army. They were quickly
routed. Over the next twenty years, Belgium attempted to raise a larger, more
professional army. It never really succeeded. Initially, there was never a real demand
for military forces; Europe was basically at peace until 1914. 96 Secondly, there was no
military cadre that identified itself and the military with Belgium. Thirdly, Belgium was
created as a neutral country.
95
Lieutenant P. L. N. Petit, captain of the Louise Marie on the first voyage complained in general
about the laziness of the natives in Guatemala, as did Captain Pirson in Texas when he described the
Mexican population in San Antonio.
96
The only two times the Belgian military saw action before the German Army invaded in 1914
were in the first months of the Revolution when it faced the Dutch army in 1831and at the battle of Boké
on the Rio Nunez in 1849.
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