When you kill 10 million Africans…No one Remembers
King Leopold II of Belgium was responsible for the death and mutilation of an
estimated 10 million Congolese Africans during the late 1800’s. The spoils of modern
day Belgium owes much to the people of the Congo River Basin. In a testament to the
hideous brutality of the European colonial era and imperialism in its finest form,
during the 1880s, when Europe was busy dividing up the continent of Africa, King
Leopold II of Belgium laid personal claim to the largely uncharted Congo Free State.
The 905,000 square miles (76 times larger than Belgium) of African rainforest held a
vast fortune in rubber plantations, a commodity in high demand in late 19th century
industrial Europe.
The Ambition of Leopold II
King Léopold II (1835 - 1909) occupied the Belgium throne from 1865 until his death
in 1909. Outside of Belgium, however, he is chiefly remembered as the personal owner of the Congo Free State. This was
a private project undertaken by the King to extract rubber and ivory from his personal colony, relying on human slavery.
He was ultimately responsible for the death of possibly tens of millions of Africans.
Léopold fervently believed that overseas colonies were the key to a country's greatness, and worked tirelessly to acquire
colonial territory for Belgium. However, neither the Belgian people nor the Belgian government were interested, and
Léopold eventually began trying to acquire a colony in his private capacity as an ordinary citizen.
After a number of unsuccessful schemes for colonies in Africa and Asia, in 1876 he organized a private holding company,
Association Internationale Africaine, which was disguised as an international scientific and philanthropic association.
Leopold became its single shareholder. Under the guise of missionary work and westernization of African peoples,
Leopold II used the Association Internationale Africaine to further his ambitions of empire building in the hope if
bringing international prestige to relatively small Belgium. In reality, the International African Association was a vehicle
to enslave the people of the Congo River Basin and enrich Leopold II. After much diplomatic and economic maneuvering
with European nations the Berlin Conference of 1884-5, formalized Léopold as sovereign of the occupied territory. On
1885-FEB-05, the result was the Congo Free State (later the Belgian Congo, then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic
of Congo.)
Leopold’s Plan
Léopold’s administration was a brutal colonial regime that operated to maximize profitability. His first change was the
introduction of the concept of terres vacantes — "vacant" land, which was anything that no European was living on. This
was deemed to belong to the state, and servants of the state (i.e., any white men in Léopold's employ) were encouraged
to exploit it.
Next, the Free State was divided into two economic zones: the Free Trade Zone was open to entrepreneurs of any
European nation, who were allowed to buy 10 and 15-year monopoly leases on anything of value: ivory from a particular
district, or the rubber concession, for example. The other zone — almost two-thirds of the Congo — became the
Domaine Privé: the exclusive private property of the State, which was in turn the personal property of King Léopold.
During the years Leopold II ruled the Congo Free State he was responsible for the massacre of millions Congolese.
Estimates of the death under the reign of Leopold are estimated to have loomed near 10 million. Those who survived
also met a pitiable fate. Many were mutilated, having their hands and genitals cut off, some were flogged, others were
starved into forced labor, or had children held for ransom and Leopold even instructed the burning of villages in order to
coerce labor. The irony is that Leopold II accomplished all these atrocities without ever setting foot in the Congo.
It must be noted however, that whilst much attention has been given to Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo, in the same
period acts of brutality were being committed on native peoples elsewhere in the world. Britain on the Aborigines in
Australasia, the United States on native Americans and Pilipino , French on Northwest Congolese, Spanish on the north
and central native Americans, Portuguese on the Angolans and Amazonians and Germans on Southwest Africans.
However, so severe was the brutality of the genocide in Leopold’s Congo that many European visitors publicly
condemned Leopold and the Belgium government. The veracity of the crimes was so well known that Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle penned the book, “The crime of the Congo” in 1909, highlighting the plight of the Congolese.
Leopold’s Contract:
(Unable to read or write, the Congolese tribal Chiefs unwittingly sold their tribe members into a lifetime of slavery for
pieces of cloth believing that they were signing friendship treaties.) In return for "one piece of cloth per month to each of
the undersigned chiefs, besides present of cloth in hand, they promised to freely of their own accord, for themselves and
their heirs and successors for ever...give up to the said Association [set up by Leopold] the sovereignty and all sovereign
and governing rights to all their territories...and to assist by labor or otherwise, any works, improvements or expeditions
which the said Association shall cause at any time to be carried out in any part of these territories... All roads and
waterways running through this country, the right of collecting tolls on the same, and all game, fishing, mining and forest
rights, are to be the absolute property of the said Association."
Severed Limbs and Unimaginable Brutality
Such was the brutality of Leopold’s Congo that those who failed to meet the rubber quotas set by the Belgian officers,
were routinely flogged with the chicotte or had their hands severed. (the chicotte was a whip made out of raw, sundried hippopotamus hide, cut into a long sharp-edged cork-screw strip)
Leopold used a private mercenary force, Force Publique (FP), to do his terrorizing
and killing. White Officers commanded black soldiers many of whom were from
tribes in the upper Congo and others had been kidnapped as children during raids
on surrounding villages and raised in missionaries.
A FP junior officer described a raid to punish a village that had protested, in the
following words. “The commanding officer ordered us to cut off the heads of the
men and hang them on the village palisades, also their sexual members, and to
hang the women and the children on the palisade in the form of a cross."
Under Leopold II's administration, the Congo Free State became the site of one of
the worst atrocities of the twentieth century. In 1908, four years after the
Casement Report was released and six years after Heart of Darkness was first
printed, the Parliament of Belgium annexed the Congo Free State and took over
its administration. Both publications told of the atrocities occurring in the Congo Free State. Unfortunately, the
international scrutiny was no major loss to Léopold or the concessionary companies in the Belgian Congo. By then,
Southeast Asia and Latin America had become lower-cost producers of rubber. Along with the effects of resource
depletion in the Congo, international commodity prices had fallen to a level that rendered Congolese extraction
unprofitable. The state took over Léopold's private dominion and bailed out the company, but the rubber boom was
already over. All in all, Leopold’s legacy is one that can only be remembered as destructive and disparaging. The sad
irony is that Leopold II is scarcely remembered in history at all. Apparently, when you kill 10 million Africans no one
remembers.