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

Leopold made a great effort to increase the army, but he lacked both popular
interest and monetary commitment. Most of the officer corps came from either French
or the German principalities. There were forts and garrisons, but they were small in
comparison to those of other European powers. Lastly, Belgium was a neutral country.
Why would a neutral country possibly need a large military? No one had yet heard of
von Schlieffen and his plan.
Then there was the navy. At its height in the 1840s, the Belgian navy had two
small frigates, the Louise-Marie and the Duc de Brabant. The entire navy consisted of
five hundred officers and men. By the 1860s, for fiscal reasons, the Belgian navy had
been disbanded, and the officer corps, as it was, joined the growing Prussian navy. 97
From a technological and medical point of view there were few significant
discoveries or improvements in Europe similar to those of the late nineteenth century.
Ships were still made of wood, and muskets were the weapon of choice. In the
technological transportation area, however, Belgium proved itself far ahead of the rest
of Europe. The first railroad in continental Europe was completed between Brussels and
Mechelen on May 5, 1835. This was a goal that Leopold had set at the beginning of his
kingship. The first concerted use of quinine against malaria had begun with the French
in Algeria in the 1830s, but its true medicinal use remained decades away.
As the more industrial part of the Netherlands, Belgium had little use for maps
other then those of a local nature. When Belgium did develop a navy and use it in its
colonial pursuits, it used maps from other countries, especially England and France.
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