Pierre Ryckmans (governor-general)
Pierre Ryckmans, was a Belgian civil servant who served as Governor-General of Belgium's principal African colony, the Belgian Congo, between 1934 and 1946. Ryckmans began his career in the colonial service in 1915 and also spent time in the Belgian mandate of Ruanda-Urundi. His term as Governor-General of the Belgian Congo coincided with World War II in which he was instrumental in bringing the colony into the war on the Allied side after Belgium's defeat in May 1940. He was also a prolific writer on colonial affairs. He was posthumously created a peer of the realm in the Belgian nobility with the rank of count in 1962.
Pierre Ryckmans (governor-general)
Ryckmans as Governor-General of the Belgian Congo at the inauguration of the monument to King Albert I in Léopoldville, 1938
Congolese soldiers of the Force Publique pictured in 1942
The Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964.
Leopold II, King of the Belgians and de facto owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908
Children mutilated during King Leopold II's rule
Former residence of the Governor-General of the Belgian Congo (1908–1923) located in Boma
On the left hand side, the former Ministry of the Colonies, adjacent to the Constitutional Court, Brussels