Guido Gryseels, the director of the government-owned museum, says the purpose of the study is not to pass judgment but to provide information about a neglected past. In addition, he says, the study will address more than the political aspects of colonialism. It will also look at the period through the prisms of Central Africa's history, anthropology, zoology and geology, disciplines that form part of the museum's permanent scientific mission.

Yet the initiative is daring, since it raises the broader question of a country's continuing responsibility for unsavory actions carried out in its name generations or even centuries earlier. These range from promotion of the slave trade and annexation of territories to colonial repression and ransacking of natural resources. Further, while the study is not subject to Belgian government control, it will be financed by the taxpayer, which makes intense public debate of its findings even more likely.

So far, no other former colonial power has shown an appetite for looking back with a critical eye, even though the colonial records of, say, the British in India, the French in Algeria, the Dutch in Indonesia and the Portuguese in Angola all contain examples of human rights abuses and excessive use of force. Interestingly, Mr. Gryseels said he had received strong expressions of support for his project from foreign historians and social scientists.

Maria Misra, a lecturer in modern history at Oxford University, believes that Britain, for one, should follow Belgium's example. ''The point of cataloging Britain's imperial crimes is not to trash our forebears,'' she wrote in The Guardian of London, ''but to remind rulers that even the best-run empires are cruel and violent, not just the Belgian Congo. Overwhelming power, combined with boundless superiority, will produce atrocities -- even among the well-intentioned.''

The strong emotional attachment of some former colonial administrators to prized former colonies, however, can pose a problem. ''Every time Belgian ex-colonials hear criticism of what happened under King Leopold, they see it as a criticism of colonialism in general,'' Mr. Gryseels explained. ''A lot of Belgians worked hard in developing the infrastucture, building roads, organizing school systems, and they feel they did a good job and it is very unfair that the whole thing is being criticized in a very one-sided way.''