So far as the French Congo was concerned, circumstances played into the hands of King Leopold and his financial bodyguard. As in the Congo Free State, the bulk of the French Congo forests are full of rubber vines and trees. Emulation and envy were aroused in French colonial circles by the prodigious development in rubber exports from the Congo Free State. French finance was excited by the wild wave of speculation in Congo rubber shares which swept over Belgium, and by the prodigious profits of the great Belgian Concessionaire Companies. These results were contrasted with the conditions prevailing in the French Congo, which had long been the Cinderella of the French African dependencies, and where French commercial enterprise had been almost wholly lacking. What trade existed, and it was by no means inconsiderable, was confined to the maritime region and to the Ogowe basin. It had been largely built up by British firms, and was almost wholly in their hands, although there was plenty of room, even within that area, for dozens of French firms had they chosen to embark on the venture. The whole of the middle and upper French Congo was commercially untouched. King Leopold played his cards skilfully. The French press was flooded with articles contrasting the "prosperity" of the Congo Free State with the "stagnation" of tho French Congo. Much pressure was brought to bear upon the French Government of the day. The King's personal friendship with a prominent politician conspicuously identified with the French "Colonial Party" was a useful asset. In due course the plunge was taken. Before the close of 1900 the whole territory of the French Congo had been parcelled out among forty financial corporations on a thirty years' charter. Belgian capital figured in most of them, and the men at the head of the Congo Free State corporations reappeared on the boards of many of them. With Belgian capital, Belgian methods, and Belgian agents to execute them, the "Belgianising" or, more justly, the Leopoldianising of the French Congo was, indeed, carried out in thorough-going fashion.
Other methods, other men. When these revolutionary changes were in their preliminary stage the necessity of getting rid of the then Governor of the dependency, De Brazza, was recognised and acted upon. De Brazza
