Growing up and attending public school in the United States, one gets a vague inkling of the experience of Colonial Africa, the romance of safari, big game hunting, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The horrors of the slave-trade are touched upon briefly, with a hushed sense of shame and unease, but even this is discussed from the vantage point of African-Americans, not Africans. Absent entirely from the history books is the decades long reign of terror brought on the native people of Central Africa by King Leopold II of Belgium, as well as other European countries, who saw Africa not as a sovereign land with its own rightful landowners but as a “cake” to be divided among the European powers. With King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild sheds light on this dark chapter of world history, and exposes the atrocities inflicted on an entire subcontinent of people. Hochschild examines the origins of the “Scramble for Africa” and how one man, King Leopold II of Belgium, was able to mastermind one of the greatest public relations deceptions in history. It is the story of one man’s greed and cruelty, and the many brave men who stood against him to stop the murderous rampage and ceaseless exploitation taking place in the Congo. King Leopold’s Ghost serves not only to tell the story of the atrocities of colonialism and imperialism in Africa, but also provides a context and prelude to current struggles that plague much of the continent.
To provide any legitimate context to the narrative of the “Scramble for Africa”, we must acknowledge the strong European maritime tradition of discovery and conquest, initially led by the Portuguese and Spaniards, later by the British and Dutch. Much of the world now lay under European dominion, with one large and notable exception-Africa. The greatest obstacle to European exploration of the continent was the “disease barrier.” Put simply, more than half of the Europeans that traveled to Africa died rather quickly of diseases like malaria, typhoid, and yellow fever. Only after the discovery of the preventative benefits of quinine were Europeans able to finally venture into the interior with some success. The explorers that did attempt to do so were the great celebrities of their day, including David Livingstone, British explorer and missionary, and even more importantly to our story, Henry Morton Stanley, who himself found the then missing Livingstone after a two year trek through Africa.
Henry Morton Stanley would play a huge role in King Leopold’s Congo, and the “Scramble for Africa” in general, as he was the imminent explorer of his era. A English born orphan, Stanley later fashioned a new identity and biography for himself, claiming to be an American, held a series of odd jobs, including soldier, teacher, and sailor, before landing a job as a journalist. It was in this role that Stanley flourished, and was retained by the New York Herald, which resulted in his being sent abroad and was the catalyst for his career as an explorer (Hochschild,23). He was dispatched by the Herald to find the long missing Livingstone in Africa, which after a two year adventure, he did, and this sealed his fate and fame. He was the first European to trace the course of the Congo River, nearly dying in the process (Hochschild,29). It was his experience exploring the Congo river that brought Stanley to King Leopold’s attention, and that ignited a partnership that would change Central Africa forever.
King Leopold was an awkward youth, who never cared much for arts and literature, and ultimately was only interested in two subjects-geography and finance. It was this combination of interests that fueled his desire for a colony for Belgium. As he grew, while he remained cold and awkward in his close personal relationships, he developed great confidence in his public persona, and became an adept and persuasive monarch. He was a public relations mastermind, who understood very well how to manipulate public perception; these traits would serve him well in his efforts to colonize the Congo. Leopold felt stifled and confined by the tiny nation he only partly ruled, in conjunction with parliament. He wanted a kingdom he could rule completely, without the interference of parliament. His solution to both the size of his country and the limits to his rule was to obtain a colony, either through purchase or force. He knew that parliament would never support military action or the cost of purchasing a colony, so he needed to be highly creative in how he went about it. After H.M. Stanley’s trip along the Congo, Leopold became convinced this was the slice of the “African Cake” he wanted to procure. He needed an angle, and the fury over the Arab slave trade helped provide it. The late 1860’s saw a huge wave of antislavery sentiment sweep England, and Leopold was quick to capitalize on this. In 1876 he hosted a gathering of humanitarians and explorers called the Geographical Conference, and used this forum to announce his desire to “promote moral uplift, curb the slave trade and advance science.” The guests at this conference, moved and inspired by Leopold’s rhetoric, voted to establish the International Africa Association, the first of many cover organizations that Leopold would use in his exploitive orchestrations in the Congo. Leopold was elected as the first (and he would be the only) chairman of the organization, committed to bringing light and civilization to the darkest part of Africa. Leopold had just achieved his first major success in his efforts to cloak his greed for a colony in a humanitarian disguise.
The next critical step in Leopold’s master plan was to get a strong leader to pave the way for him in the Congo, and establish initial outposts that would form the beginnings of his colonial infrastructure. He wanted H.M. Stanley, and courted him relentlessly, eventually getting Stanley to commit to a five year contract. The plan was to set up an initial base near the river’s mouth, and then build a road around the rapids (Hochschild, 63). The long term plan was to establish a network of outposts to be eventually connected by both railroad and steamboats that allowed for the efficient transport of ivory, the primary resource focus of Leopold initially. Leopold created yet another front organization, this one called the Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo, which served as a cover for Leopold’s funding, and to further confuse things the International Association of the Congo was formed as a pseudo-replacement for the Committee for the Studies of the Upper Congo (Hochschild, 61). This was part of Leopold’s game, disguising his personal efforts and investments under myriad organizations. Stanley was the man making it all happen in Africa, and had gained a reputation for cruelty and relentlessness. He forced chiefs into bogus treaties that essentially granted Leopold all the land, resources, and most alarmingly, all the labor, he desired, in exchange for an absolute pittance (Hochschild, 65). Most of these chiefs did not even know what they were signing, so any claim to legal validity was hogwash, but how would the natives challenge this? Leopold did all this under the pretense of opening up the area for free trade, to everyone’s benefit, but the only one freely trading anything was Leopold.
Now that Leopold had effectively had Stanley create a one man colony for him, he needed to secure recognition on an international level so there was no legitimate threat to his Congo claim. To do this, he made use of his persuasive and influential American friend Henry Shelton Sanford, who used his clout to gain an audience with then President Arthur (Hochschild, 75). Sanford extolled the Belgian King’s virtues and noble selfless pursuits in Africa, and asked that the United States formally recognize these efforts. On April 22, 1884, the United States became the first country to formally acknowledge King Leopold’s claim to the Congo (Hochschild, 80). In order to secure France’s support, Leopold gave them the first right of refusal in the event that he had to bow out of the Congo colony. Germany’s support was harder to come by, but ultimately they gave in when promised free trade access to the region (Hochschild, 82). At the Berlin Conference in November later that same year, organized to better divide up Africa among the European powers (rest assured no actual Africans were present or consenting), Leopold sealed his hold over the Congo with the deal that he got the seaport town of Matadi, which meant he could fulfill his dream of building a railway from there to Stanley Pool. No one actively disputed the Belgian king’s claims, as they did not see him, or his tiny country, as a threat. Additionally, he had convinced everyone that his work there was purely humanitarian in nature, and he had no problem agreeing to absolutely open free trade (which would never fully exist in practice). Then on May 29, 1885, by royal decree, King Leopold named his new colony, the Congo Free State. All of Leopold’s deceptive orchestrations had worked flawlessly.
No people on earth would perform backbreaking labor for free of their own free will. In order to procure the free labor they sought, the Belgian traders (as well as other Europeans) had to resort to terrorizing and cruel means. The brutality and violence unleashed on the people of the Congo was nothing short of wholesale slaughter. Reading the eyewitness accounts of beheadings, beatings, fatal lashings, sexual abuse, hangings, burnings, dismemberings, and other forms of torture, as well as the burning and leveling of villages and communities is almost too much to bear. The chopping off of hands and feet, even of very young children, was a daily occurrence. In all, it is estimated that in between 1880 and 1920, due to murder, disease, starvation and exposure, approximately 10 million people died in the Congo-a population literally sliced in half (Hochschild, 233).
It appeared at first, that this reign of terror and murder might have gone on endlessly, until all the natives of the Congo had been killed, if not for the few brave witnesses that began to speak out against Leopold and his Congo, and the atrocities witnessed there. One of the first to do so was a black missionary named George Washington Williams. In a scathing indictment titled “An Open letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo”, Williams puts forth multiple examples of abuse of power, exploitation and outright murder (Hochschild, 102). He went on to produce a report for the President of the United States. William’s unfortunately died of tuberculosis before he could do more. However, the alarm had been sounded, and for the first time, some people were looking more closely at Leopold’s Congo.
Things in the Congo went from bad to worse with the advent of the rubber boom. The demand for rubber was growing exponentially, and Leopold knew he had it in spades in his new territory. The means his men would resort to in order to extract the desired quantities were horrifying. Women and children were held hostage in abysmal conditions until the men returned with their rubber quotas. The use of the dreaded chicotte increased, the horrible whip made of hippopotamus hide that left brutal lesions in the flesh and often times lashings resulted in death. The mutilation and murders increased, as the blind greed for rubber created a frenzied atmosphere. The author speculates that this level of brutality was made possible by the fact that it was instituted practice embraced by the authorities, and to not embrace it or to defy it was to invite scorn and retribution on yourself. Additionally, many white leaders refused to do the dirty work of the beatings and slayings themselves, instead forcing another African to do it, providing yet another layer of insulation from the barbarity of their actions. Another American missionary, William Sheppard, took notice, and made his observations known to his Southern Presbyterian Conference. Little direct action came as a result of Sheppard’s warnings, but it did bring Leopold under a greater cloud of suspicion, and provided information for a much more influential opponent of Leopold’s soon to make a huge impact, Edmund Dene Morel.
Edmund Dene Morel was a young clerk in his twenties working for Elder Dempster, a shipping line that supplied the west coast of Africa. He began to travel back and forth to Antwerp for the company, and it was here that his suspicions were initially aroused. He was shocked to discover the quantity of armament and ammunition being shipped regularly to the Congo, to see how much ivory and rubber was imported into Belgium, but how little to nothing was exported back to Africa in exchange. This could mean only one thing- the Belgians were simply taking it for nothing. This meant that laborers were not being paid for their labors, which clearly meant they were put to work as slaves. Morel made all of these connections in rapid fire succession, and it forever changed the course of his life. Fighting the humanitarian crimes in the Congo became his life’s passion, and King Leopold’s worst nightmare made flesh.
Morel’s passion and determination to take dramatic action was galvanized after his meeting with Sir Roger Casement, who would become his close friend. Casement had also born witness to numerous atrocities in the Congo, and shared his firsthand accounts with Morel. Morel took his information to the Abolitionist movement, eventually forming his own Congo Reform Association (Hochschild, 207). Through his efforts, the British Parliament eventually passed the Congo Protest Resolution in 1903, calling for the humane treatment of all Africans (Hochschild, 194). While a great public relations coup for the cause, it did little to change or impact lives of the natives in the Congo.
Despite the onslaught of horrendous allegations against him regarding the Congo, it took a tacky extramarital affair to finally turn the people of Belgium against their King. At 65 years old, Leopold took a 16 year old prostitute to be his lover and consort (Hochschild, 222). She remained his mistress and eventually because his wife after Queen Marie-Henrietta’s death, and bore him two sons, one of whom ironically (karmically) was born with a deformed hand. At this, finally, the public turned, and he found himself with very little support at home. His attempt at redemption, his Commission of Inquiry, ultimately also turned on him. Sent to the Congo by Leopold to report back on the acceptability of conditions there, the commission found just the opposite, and confirmed all of the allegations against Leopold. In one of his sneakier attempts to control the media message, he sent out a “summary” of the report he edited, attempting to minimize and deflect the contents of the report (Hochschild, 252). This failed, and he was made to look like the fraud he was. He ultimately was forced to concede the “Belgium solution”-turning the rule of Congo over to Belgium, and out of Leopold’s hands. Though this seems like a terrible solution to us today, at the time, turning the country over to the Africans simply wasn’t an option then, and no other European country wanted to take on the task. Leopold didn’t go down easy though, insisting that Belgium assume the Congo’s debt, and pay him an outrageous amount in securities.
Morel was content to accept this outcome, though he continued to fight against perceived injustice for the remainder of his life. Unfortunately, the Congo has yet to really recover. The legacy of colonialism has handicapped African nations in a way unseen in any other part of the world. When Congo finally won its independence in the 1960’s, the country had only 30 African college graduates. It did not have the skill set or resources to self govern, or maintain an independent economy. Many African states, vulnerable like this, became victims of African warlords, warlords often sponsored by the formerly colonizing western imperial powers.
The savage conquest of the Congo is far from the only example of murderous exploitation in human history. However, it is exceptional in that it is an example where we can still see the disastrous consequences of its impact today. This is true for much of Central Africa, where the scars of colonialism run deep. Today in much of Africa, countries are dependent on foreign aid and organizations like the IMF for their very survival. This is due to a combination of things-lack of an educated population due to lack of infrastructure, corrupt puppet leaders bankrolling their pet projects to the neglect of the population as a whole, and an apparent unwillingness by the Western World to let Africa succeed independent of our aid. All of these things have roots in the exploitive old imperialist era, though they are held solidly in place by the new imperialism. In Leopold’s era, there were men like Morel, Sheppard, Casement, and Williams to stand up for what was right, and fight for change. The question is, with poverty, an AIDS epidemic that is leaving an entire generation parentless, and a growing fundamentalist Islamist movement perpetrating numerous acts of violence, who is fighting for Africa now?
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