1890s–1920s: (Cash Crops and Private Companies — The Congo Free State’s Rubber Terror, Leopold Compelled to Hand Over to Belgium in 1908, and the Broader Pat…

1890s–1920s: (Cash Crops and Private Companies — The Congo Free State’s Rubber Terror, Leopold Compelled to Hand Over to Belgium in 1908, and the Broader Pattern of Production Left to African Peasant Farmers Whose Efficiency Was Widely Acknowledged): Markets and raw materials were the primary economic needs of European colonialism, and initially responsibility was given to private companies — the Royal Niger Company, the BSAC, the IBEAC in Britain, and the Compagnie française de l’Afrique occidentale in France. These companies were at the commercial and political frontier but struggled to make themselves viable — many went bankrupt from mismanagement and African resistance, and most were superseded by governmental authority by the 1920s. The Congo Free State witnessed the worst abuses: expropriated land was leased to private companies, and the main focus around the early 1900s was wild rubber, stimulated by the motor industry. Companies employed effectively armies of the displaced to collect rubber, terrorizing communities, destroying villages, and carrying out arbitrary executions. International condemnation combined with African resistance and a dip in rubber prices forced Leopold to hand over responsibility to the Belgian government in 1908. More generally across the tropical belt, production was left to African peasant producers, whose efficiency was widely acknowledged, and in British and French West Africa farmers were encouraged to produce cash crops for export.