Colony of Middle Congo

The Colony of Middle Congo, known in French as the Moyen-Congo, was a French colonial possession in Central Africa created in 1903 out of the older French Congo, which had been established in 1882. Its capital was Libreville until 1904, when the administration moved to Brazzaville on the Congo River. From 1910 the colony formed part of French Equatorial Africa, the federation of French possessions in Middle Africa that also included Gabon, Oubangui-Chari and, after 1920, Chad; a governor-general in Brazzaville coordinated the four territories. Like its neighbours, Middle Congo was treated primarily as a source of rubber, timber and labour, and the concessionary companies of the early colonial period gained a reputation for harsh exploitation. After the First World War the territory's borders with the Belgian Congo and the former German colony of Kamerun were fixed by the settlements of 1919-1922. In 1946 Middle Congo became an overseas territory of France, and in 1958 it voted in the referendum to become an autonomous republic within the French Community. It became independent on 15 August 1960 as the Republic of the Congo.