A piece written 5 years ago on Rileylrichter.wordpress.com talks about what would be known as the forgotten genocide in Congo.

King Leopold II and the Congo Free State

Introduction

Often times people know Belgium for it’s chocolate, french fries, and beer.. But what about the mass murder of somewhere in between 2 and 15 million Congolese natives? In 1865 the most brutal ruler Belgium has ever seen came to power. King Leopold II would rule the Belgians for 44 relentless years, holding the longest reign in the history of Belgian monarchy, and administering what was possibly the largest international scandal of it’s time period. With the help of explorer Henry Morton Stanley, Leopold was able to move throughout the Congo, bribing and tricking native leaders into signing away the rights to their land, and gaining his own personal foothold in it. Eventually Leopold conquered all of the area known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He acted deviously under the disguise of what was supposed to be a humanistic and philanthropic mission to better the lives of these Congolese natives. In reality the king was after only personal gain, capturing native resources such as ivory and rubber, by any means necessary.

From 1885 to 1909 this power hungry king built his wealth off of the forced labour of these unexpecting inhabitants, whose population was devastated from the torturing, mutilating, and killing of those who defied Leopold’s rule. Because of the extent to which he abused his power, Leopold II failed as a king. What happened in the Congo was nothing short of genocide. When such an event occurs in history, it is necessary that the story is passed on so that the same mistakes won’t be allowed to repeat.

 

The Birth of the Congo Free State

It was in December of 1865 that King Leopold died and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Leopold II. As the second king of Belgium, it would be this son that would bring infamy to Leopold’s name. Initially, Leopold II seemed promising enough as he brought along a great list of many political developments to Belgium. He created primary schools, labour unions, gave worker’s rights, revised Belgium’s constitution, and strengthened the military. However, none of that was enough for the power hungry king. He believed that colonising foreign territory was what was truly necessary to the prosperity of Belgium, and he would stop at nothing to try and do this. At first, the king attempted multiple times at taking the Philippines from Spain but was unsuccessful, so he then shifted his attention to Africa. When Africa proved to be a difficult conquest as well, Leopold devised a new, much more devious plan. In 1876, he organised what appeared to be an international philanthropic association. He named his company “The International Association for the Exploration and Civilisation of the Congo”. Under this clever disguise, he was able to hire the well-known, European explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, to establish a colony in the Congo. Stanley’s job was to speak with the native tribe leaders, convincing them to hand over their land with the promise that the king would bring advancement and improvement to their villages. Under the impression that Leopold’s intentions were to simply introduce western civilisation and bring religion to the Congo, Stanley successfully yet unwittingly, conquered the entire land for the king. Nonetheless, things did not go well for the natives, nor did Belgium intervention better their lives in any way. It did not turn out to be for the betterment of the natives. Leopold quickly delved into his real plan; the exploitation of the Congo. He sought to reap the land of all it’s resources, and used the profits to improve his own country rather than help the Congolese natives. Under the implementation of his private army, the Force Publique, Leopold was able to contain and keep order in the Congo without ever having to step foot in the land.

 

Life During Leopold’s Rule

Leopold II was cruel and manipulative to the people he ruled over in the Congo. He would rule the natives using terror and torture them if they spoke or acted against him. Because he lied about his purposes for going into the Congo, he could strip it of its natural resources and force the natives to do dangerous work without the rest of the world having any idea what was going on. The king once said as if to justify himself, “To be a great person, is not necessarily the same thing as being a good person” (Frost 2001). While he ruled in the Congo, his own private militia enforced the rules by killing people who did not follow the rules, and cutting off their hands as proof of the punishment. Often times, the militia would use the mutilation of children’s hands as a way to bribe villagers. With the signed contracts that gave him complete power over all of the people in the Congo, he turned this area of about 900,000 square miles into his own slave plantation. This power that he gained over the people of the Congo would give him a fortune that he made sure to collect.

King Leopold was set on cashing out from the new lands he controlled. With the industrial revolution under way, there was a large market for rubber. Leopold had forced the natives of the Congo to go into the jungles and collect rubber by slashing vines and slinging them over their own bodies. When they would remove the rubber latex from their bodies, often times skin would be removed in the process. If they did not meet a quota of rubber balls, the king’s militia were ordered to kill them.To ensure that they were dead, the militia were required to cut off the hands of the people that they had killed to prove they were not just wasting bullets. This caused the rise of a trading system where villagers would trade severed hands because the militias did not want to kill the people. Many villages were also looted if they did not meet their quota. This left many Congolese people without food and proper nourishment. Many of these people died of starvation or disease because their bodies were too weak to fight off the sickness.

The king’s men killed villagers and looted their homes when they did not meet quota. They also burned many native of their homes (or villages) to the ground. These acts of arson furthered the number of deaths in the Congo from the rules set in place by King Leopold. There was also a large number of rapes when the villages were being looted and burned. Many children and women died from this because of the lack of nutrients available to them; they were simply not healthy enough to carry a child or give birth.

The natives of the Congo were constantly tortured by the king. Belgian officer Rene de Pementier recounted “If he found a leaf in a courtyard that women prisoners had swept, he ordered a dozen of them beheaded. If he found a path in the forest not well-maintained, he ordered a child killed in the nearest village” (Frost 2001). All of these horrible things that he did to the villagers caused many of them to flee their villages if they found out that he and his men were coming. Many Congolese people became refugees this way. People who refused to become slaves for the king were tortured, starved, killed, or had their families made hostages.

King Leopold’s men would sometimes have to go to villages and search for slaves that would be sent into the jungles to collect rubber. If they did not collect enough people, the King would have local labourers and villagers killed out of rage. There have been accounts of nearly hundreds of villagers being killed at a given time because the King did not like the way they were working or they did not gather enough resources for the King. King Leopold II did many terrible things to the people of the Congo and caused many deaths for his own gain. He was a greedy man responsible for the deaths of millions of Congolese. Approximately between 2 and 15 million Congolese died under the rule of King Leopold II, all for the one purpose of serving to his greed.

 

The End of the Congo Free State

For a long period of time, King Leopold II was able to keep the abuses that were taking place a secret. Many of the first witnesses of these events were Protestant missionaries. Missionaries by default were not seen as a reliable source on political events because the culture of the time simply thought they should be doing their job and not involving themselves in politics in any way. To add to this, Leopold brushed off their accusations as lies that to try and paint the predominantly Catholic Belgium in a bad light (Hochschild 230). Due to these facts, missionaries were largely ineffective in portraying the atrocities that were taking place in Leopold’s Congo. However, things cannot be hidden forever, and in the early 1890s, snippets of information finally began to leak through. The media began to take reports of missionaries more seriously and went to investigate for themselves. However, being the King of Belgium, Leopold II still had a significant amount of political capital, and was able to have news articles written that dismissed rumours of any wrongdoing in the Congo. But once again, the truth was bound to get out eventually. In 1899, Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness was published. While it was a work of fiction, it was based on his experiences in the Congo Free State. It tells the story of a steamboat captain for an ivory trading business. As he travels the rivers, he comes to experience the senselessness of imperialism and colonisation, and the brutality against the native people. “Conrad fully recognised Leopold’s rape of the Congo for what it was: ‘the Horror, the Horror!’” (Hochschild 146), wrote Adam Hochschild in King Leopold’s Ghost, quoting the final lines of Heart of Darkness. This was one of the first works that brought the horror of what the Congolese people were experiencing into the public light. Five years later, British diplomat Roger Casement published what would be known as the Casement Report, a detailed summary of his findings of abuses in the Congo Free State. In conjunction with the release of this report, he co founded the Congo Reform Association with eventual Nobel prize nominee Edmund Morel. This association would grow into one of the first international human rights organisations. They worked to spread the truth throughout Europe and and United States. With pressure mounting, Leopold II realised that his time of unchecked rule over the Congo was reaching a conclusion.

Facing harsh international criticism, Leopold saw that he could no longer keep the Congo as his own. However, this was not on any level a change of heart by the ruler. Congo had been exploited to the point that much of its remaining resources were too expensive to be sold competitively. It was an easy decision to give it up, because the flow of resource money had finally dried up. Even with this realisation, Leopold had no intention of taking accountability for his actions. “I will give them my Congo but they have no right to know what I have done there,” he said in one of his last days as the personal ruler (Wrong). He then proceeded to burn any and all records that he could that documented his wrongdoing. In 1908, the annexation of the Congo as an official Belgian colony was complete. King Leopold II died one year later, never receiving anything close to punishment for his crimes.

As a Belgian colony, the Congolese people found themselves in an interesting situation. Belgium was investing heavily in the Congo, and as a result, the natives were finally beginning to gain economic prosperity. From a purely economic standpoint, the Congolese were benefiting from the Belgian rule. However, as this was happening, they still faced harsh social inequality. Whites were viewed as superior to natives by default, and the Congolese people were unable to advance out of the working class, or be educated. It was certainly a better situation than being under King Leopold’s rule, but this is by no means anything for Belgium to be proud of. When Belgium decided that the Congo was too big of an area to easily rule, they granted the Congolese independence and left in 1960. They left behind a country of mostly uneducated people and people ill equipped to run a government (BBC Monitoring). Within the year, civil war had erupted, and it would continue until a dictatorship came into power five years later. Fast forward to today, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has gone through multiple more wars, and is still seen as a fragile and insecure state. Many of these problems originally stem from the Congolese oppression during the period of the Belgian Congo and the Congo Free State.

When asked, many Congolese people blame colonialism and King Leopold’s rule for the problems that have plagued their country (Wrong). The oppression and genocide of the natives of the Congo Free State was an event that set them back for generations, and they have never truly recovered. It allowed the Belgian government to maintain social order during the period of Belgian colonisation, and caused there to be a major shortage of capable native people in running the government. Only now are we beginning to see a generation of educated Congolese people who are able to try and move their country forward. The Congolese government is taking actions to prosecute some of the local warlords that have committed violence during the Congo’s periods of instability, and have cracked down against militia groups vying for control in the very large country (BBC Monitoring). The Congo has been moving forward, but they have a long way to go.

Belgium however has not had to deal with the constant negative consequences of their leader all those years ago. In fact, it has been quite the opposite. Towards the end of the Congo Free State, King Leopold II was able to take the money he made and poured it into Belgium itself. Great monuments, museums, and statues were constructed, all paid for by the blood of Congolese natives. Many of these structures still stand today, and plaques celebrate the generosity and hard work of Leopold (Riding). As a whole, Belgium never compensated, apologised, or made up for its actions against the Congolese people. If pressed, most citizens will admit that it happened, but it is rarely taught in schools, and there is an overall lack of knowledge about the subject. This needs to change. We cannot continue to ignore an atrocity of this measure.