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The Belgians and Private Imperialism Leopold II and the Congo

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The Belgians and Private Imperialism Leopold II and the Congo The Belgians and Private Imperialism Leopold II and the Congo Key Points The Congo Free State was a corporate state privately controlled by Leopold II of Belgium through his Association internationale africaine, a non-governmental organization supposedly dedicated to humanitarian purposes. Under Leopold II’s administration, the Congo Free State became the site of one of the most infamous international scandals of the turn of the 20th century. In the Free State, colonists brutalized the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of automobiles and development of rubber tires created a growing international market. The police force, the Force Publique, routinely mutilated (especially cutting off hands) and murdered the indigenous population to enforce rubber production quotas. The report of the British Consul Roger Casement led to the arrest and punishment of white officials responsible for cold-blooded killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1903, including one Belgian national who caused the shooting of at least 122 Congolese natives. The parliament of Belgium annexed the Congo Free State and took over its administration on November 15, 1908, as the colony of the Belgian Congo. Key Terms Congo Reform Association: A movement formed with the declared intention to aid the exploited and impoverished workforce of the Congo by drawing attention to their plight. Force Publique: A military force in the Congo Free State. Early on, they were used primarily to campaign against the Arab slave trade in the Upper Congo, protect Leopold’s economic interests, and suppress frequent uprisings within the state, but eventually they partook in horrific abuse of the Congolese people, including frequent mutilation and murder. Congo Free State: A large state in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908 in personal union with the Kingdom of Belgium under Leopold II. Private imperialism/colonialism Leopold fervently believed that overseas colonies were the key to a country's greatness, and he worked tirelessly to acquire colonial territory for Belgium. Neither the Belgian people nor the Belgian government was interested, however, and Leopold eventually began trying to acquire a colony in his private capacity as an ordinary citizen. In 1876 he organized a private holding company disguised as an international scientific and philanthropic association, which he called the International African Society. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/13/features11.g22 https://www.historytoday.com/tim-stanley/belgiums-heart-darkness King Leopold and the Conquest of the Congo The story of the Scramble for territory in Africa is full of powerful European countries making game changing moves to outplay and outlast their rivals. An unremarkable monarch of an insignificant little kingdom, however, outwitted them all. Like a tiny yapping watchdog that wakes up the bigger dogs at the slightest sound of a disturbance, Leopold II, King of Belgium, made the first bold imperial move into new territory in the interior of Africa. His bark quickly awoke the bigger dogs in the imperial neighborhood. "I do not want to risk...losing a fine chance to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake.”--Leopold II at the Berlin Conference For decades, most Europeans mistakenly believed that King Leopold spent his considerable fortune funding public works in the Congo and stopping slavery in East Africa. He was the unintimidating King of Belgium, cousin of Queen Victoria of England—a wealthy, noble and philanthropic modern king. But it was all a sham. Underneath the veneer of generosity and graciousness laid a cunning and self-engrossed scoundrel, a duplicitous fraud to rival the evil charm of Iago or Richard III. Under the guise of an international charitable foundation, he personally owned the colony of the Congo, and he ran it as a brutal business investment. His “charity” resulted in the death of ten million people, approximately 50% of the population in the Congo. Colonization of the Congo Belgian exploration and administration took place from the 1870s until the 1920s. It was first led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who explored under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium. The eastern regions of the precolonial Congo were heavily disrupted by constant slave raiding. Leopold had designs on what would become the Congo and was able to procure the region by convincing the European community that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade. Leopold extracted ivory, rubber, and minerals in the upper Congo basin for sale on the world market, even though his nominal purpose in the region was to uplift the local people and develop the area. Leopold formally acquired rights to the Congo territory at the Conference of Berlin in 1885 and made the land his private property. On May 29, 1885, the king named his new colony the Congo Free State. The state would eventually include an area now held by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leopold’s regime began various infrastructure projects, such as construction of the railway that ran from the coast to the capital of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and took eight years to complete. Nearly all such projects were aimed at making it easier to increase the assets Leopold and his associates could extract from the colony. Administration of the Congo Free State Leopold used the title Sovereign King as ruler of the Congo Free State. He appointed the heads of the three departments of state: interior, foreign affairs and finances. Each was headed by an administrator-general who was obligated to enact the policies of the sovereign or else resign. Leopold pledged to suppress the east African slave trade; promote humanitarian policies; guarantee free trade within the colony; impose no import duties for twenty years; and encourage philanthropic and scientific enterprises. Beginning in the mid-1880s, Leopold first decreed that the state asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the Congo territory. In three successive decrees, Leopold promised the rights of the Congolese in their land to native villages and farms, essentially making nearly all of the Congo Free State state-owned land. Additionally, the colonial administration liberated thousands of slaves. Shortly after the anti-slavery conference he held in Brussels in 1889, Leopold issued a new decree which said that Africans could only sell their harvested products (mostly ivory and rubber) to the state in a large part of the Free State. This grew out of the earlier decree that all “unoccupied” land belonged to the state and ivory and rubber collected from this land also belonged to the state, creating a de facto state-controlled monopoly. Suddenly, the only outlet a large share of the local population had for its products was the state, which could set purchase prices and therefore control the amount of income the Congolese could receive for their work. The Force Publique (FP), Leopold’s private army, was used to enforce the rubber quotas. In the Congo Free State, colonists brutalized the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of automobiles and development of rubber tires created a growing international market. Rubber sales made a fortune for Leopold, who built several buildings in Brussels and Ostend to honor himself and his country. Early on, the FP was used primarily to campaign against the Arab slave trade in the Upper Congo, protect Leopold’s economic interests, and suppress the frequent uprisings within the state. The Force Publique’s officer corps included only white Europeans (Belgian regular soldiers and mercenaries from other countries). On arriving in the Congo, they recruited men from Zanzibar and west Africa, and eventually from the Congo itself. In addition, Leopold actually encouraged the slave trade among Arabs in the Upper Congo in return for slaves to fill the ranks of the FP. During the 1890s, the FP’s primary role was to exploit the natives as laborers to promote the rubber trade. Many of the black soldiers were from far-off peoples of the Upper Congo, while others had been kidnapped in raids on villages in their childhood and brought to Roman Catholic missions, where they received a military training in conditions close to slavery. Armed with modern weapons the Force Publique routinely took and tortured hostages, slaughtered families of rebels, and flogged and raped Congolese people. They also burned rebellious villages, and above all, cut off the hands of Congolese natives, including children. Human Rights Abuses Leopold’s reign in the Congo eventually earned infamy due to the increasing mistreatment of the indigenous peoples. Under Leopold II’s administration, the Congo Free State became one of the greatest international scandals of the early-20th century. The report of the British Consul Roger Casement led to the arrest and punishment of white officials who were responsible for killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1903. From 1885–1908, millions of Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and disease. In some areas, the population declined dramatically; it has been estimated that sleeping sickness and smallpox killed nearly half the population in the areas surrounding the lower Congo River. A government commission later concluded that the population of the Congo was “reduced by half” during this period, but no accurate records exist. Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the FP was required to provide the hands of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid in severed hands. Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the FP and sometimes by the villages themselves. There were even small wars where villages attacked neighboring villages to gather hands, since their rubber quotas were too unrealistic to fill.
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