Lado Enclave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lado Enclave was an enclave of the Congo Free State that existed from 1894 until 1910, situated on the west bank of the Upper Nile in what is now southeast Sudan and northern Uganda.
[edit] History
Previously a part of the Ottoman-Egyptian province of Equatoria, Lado came under the control of the British, who, under the stipulations of the 1894 British-Belgian Congolese Treaty, leased the area to King Leopold II of Belgium for the period of his lifetime. In exchange, Belgium agreed to cede a strip of land in eastern Congo when construction of the Cape to Cairo railway was to begin.
The enclave had an area of about 15,000 square miles, a population of about 250,000 and had its capital at the town of Lado.
The Lado Enclave was important to the Congo Free State as it included Rejaf, which was the terminus for boats on the Nile. Rejaf was the seat of the Commander, the only Belgian colonial official within the enclave, who were in place from 1897 to June 1910.
On 10 June 1910, following Léopold’s death, the district became a province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and in 1912 the southern half was ceded to Uganda, a British colony.
[edit] Sources and references
- Ascherson, N. The King Incorporated: Leopold II in the Age of Trusts, Granta Books, 2001. ISBN 1-86207-290-6
- Hochschild, A. King Leopold's Ghost, Mariner Books, 1999. ISBN 0-618-00190-5
- Pakenham, T. Scramble For Africa, Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0-380-71999-1
- WorldStatesmen- Sudan
