Force Publique

Force Publique
Force Publique soldiers on parade with their Belgian officer in the late 1940s
Active	1908 - 1960
Country	Belgian Congo
Allegiance	Belgian Empire
Branch	Army
Size	24,000
Nickname(s)	FP

The Force Publique (French: [fɔʁs pyblik], "Public Force"; Dutch: Openbare Weermacht) was a gendarmerie and military force in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1885 (when the territory was known as the Congo Free State), through the period of direct Belgian colonial rule (1908 to 1960). After independence, the FP was retitled as the Congolese National Army or ANC.

The FP was initially conceived in 1885 when King Leopold II of the Belgians, who held the Congo Free State as his private property, ordered his Secretary of the Interior to create military and police forces for the State. Soon afterwards, in early 1886, Captain Léon Roger (of the Belgian Army's Carabiniers) was sent to the Congo with orders to establish the force. A few months later, on August 17, he was promoted to "Commandant of the Force Publique". A number of other Belgian officers and non-commissioned officers were also dispatched to the territory as the nucleus of the officer corps. The officers of the Force Publique were entirely European. They comprised a mixture of Belgian regular soldiers and mercenaries from other countries who were drawn by the prospect of wealth or simply attracted to the adventure of service in Africa.

Serving under these European officers was an ethnically-mixed African soldiery, who eventually became comparable to British or Imperial German Askaris. Many were recruited or conscripted from warrior tribes in the Haut-Congo. Others were drawn from Zanzibar and West Africa. The role required of the Force Publique was that of both defending Free State territory and of internal pacification. The Force Publique fought in the 1892–1894 war in the Eastern Congo against Tippu Tip.