Belgium controlled several territories and concessions during the colonial era, principally the Belgian Congo (modern DRC) from 1908 to 1960 and Ruanda-Urundi (modern Rwanda and Burundi) from 1922 to 1962.It also had small concessions in Guatemala (1843–1854) and in China (1902–1931) and was a co-administrator of the Tangier International Zone in Morocco.

The Belgian Congo (French: Congo belge, pronounced [kɔ̃ɡo bɛlʒ]; Dutch: Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964.. Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of the Belgians attempted to …

A colonial empire is a collective of territories (often called colonies), either contiguous with the imperial center or located overseas, settled by the population of a certain state and governed by that state.. Before the expansion of early modern European powers, other empires had conquered and colonized territories, such as the Roman Empire in Iberia, or the Chinese in what is now …

The Battle of Singapore was fought in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II when the Japanese Empire invaded British Malaya and its stronghold of Singapore.Singapore was the major British military base in South East Asia and nicknamed the "Gibraltar of the East".The fighting in Singapore lasted from 31 January 1942 to 15 February 1942.

The Belgian Defense Forces (Dutch: Defensie; French: La Défense) is the national military of Belgium.The King of the Belgians is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The Belgian Armed Forces was established after Belgium became independent in October 1830. Since then, the Belgian armed forces have fought in World War I, World War II, the Cold War (Korean …

Early life. Leopold was born in Brussels on 9 April 1835, the second child of the reigning Belgian monarch, Leopold I, and of his second wife, Louise, the daughter of King Louis Philippe of France. The French Revolution of 1848 forced his maternal grandfather, Louis Philippe, to flee to the United Kingdom. Louis Philippe died two years later, in 1850. Leopold's fragile mother was …

Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe.The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. The capital and largest city is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven.

The Second French Intervention in Mexico (Spanish: Segunda intervención francesa en México), also known as the Second Franco-Mexican War (1861–1867), was an invasion of the Second Federal Republic of Mexico, launched in late 1862 by the Second French Empire at the invitation of Mexican conservatives.It helped replace the republic with a monarchy, known as …

The Spanish Empire largely collapsed in the Americas with the Latin American wars of independence (c. 1808 onwards). Empire-builders established several new colonies after this time, including in the German colonial empire and the Belgian colonial empire. In the late-19th century, many European powers became involved in the Scramble for Africa.

The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period from 286 to 476, where there were separate coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire in the Western and the Eastern …