King Leopold II and the Congo Free State. The cruel Congo colony.
Between 1885 and 1908 the Belgian King Leopold II personally ruled the Congo Free State,
which was also known as the independent state of the Congo.
Because he ruled the state personally, he had total control of its resources and had to answer to no one. In
1865 King Leopold II succeeded his father King Leopold the First to the Belgian throne. The Belgium nation was a young one.
Created in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1830,
it recently had broken away from the Netherlands and was recognized as a neutral and constitutional monarchy.
Belgium experienced great industrial development and colonial expansion during Leopold's reign, and he is mainly
remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State.
The brutal exploitation of the Congolese population in his pursuit of resources like ivory and rubber are infamous.
The King believed that without a colony a country could never achieve any historical significance, and in addition to that
he believed a colony would have great economic possibilities and could help spread Western civilization.
Underneath this, as a constitutional mark Leopold II had no real power in Belgium.
So it could offer him a way to gain more power and enrich himself.
However, his government disagreed with him.
They considered colonialism to be anachronistic and were therefore not interested in pursuing his colonial dreams.
The King knew he couldn't count on their support and had to think of another way.
His eyes were set on the Congo, in sub-Saharan Africa
which was largely unexplored in the mid 19th century, and was mostly unclaimed by European countries except for the coastal areas.
King Leopold II developed a new strategy to obtain the Congo.
In 1876, he helped organize a geographical conference in Brussels, so that his operations would be legitimized. There
he proposed the creation of a holding company named the Association Internationale Africaine, later known as the Comite d'etudes du Haut Congo, and
finally as the Association Internationale du Congo from 1879.
The AIA would provide a front for his colonial activities. That way he would have a recognized and philanthropic platform. As
its mission Leopold pledged to suppress the East African slave trade,
guarantee free trade with the colony and promote humanitarian policies.
This was to distract critics and justify Leopold's ambition on the Congo. In
1878 the King found a journalist and explorer who also saw great economic possibilities in Africa named Henry Morton Stanley.
Stanley had been to the Congo between 1874 and 1877. The King decided to hire him to survey the Congo River area in
1879.
Stanley was to build roads and bridges, establish posts along the navigable river, and he had to make treaties with the Congolese chiefs.
His exploration was under the guise of Leopold's holding company, which was devoted to free trade in the suppression of the slave trade.
Stanley returned in 1882 and had concluded treaties with over 500 chiefs.
His chiefs did not have a true idea of what they had signed, and only received a few yards of cloth or a few trinkets
in exchange for putting their marks on his mysterious papers, and thus accepting the flag of the Congo Association.
King Leopold II was not the only person to see great opportunities in Africa.
Many explorers went there trying to claim pieces of land. This became known as the "Scramble for Africa",
and led to the division of Africa at the Berlin Conference from 1884 to 1885.
Here Leopold used skillful and cunning diplomacy and played the major powers against each other.
He managed to get the Congo River Basin and changed the name of the territory to the Congo Free State.
Now, he was the absolute ruler of the basin which was 8 times the size of Belgium.
Europe had no way to enforce the general agreements made at the conference, which included further steps to root out slave trade and the
protection of the rights and the local people. As the enforcement of these agreements was therefore impossible
Leopold was determined to make the Congo commercially profitable.
Therefore he ignored the fact that slavery was banned.
The world was demanding rubber for the growing bicycle and automobile industry, and much of the resource was found in the Congo.
The local people were put to work to collect the rubber and were to meet inhumane quotas under impossible
conditions. The natives were to slash the vines and lathered their bodies with the rubber and then scrape it off into the baskets.
If these quotas were not met, horrible consequences would follow:
- beatings with the chicote whip
-mutilation
-or death
Those who refuse to provide labor, rubber or ivory met with the same fate.
Leopold had set up his own private army, the "Force Publique" to enforce these quotas and suppress any uprising.
They were recruited or conscripted from tribes in the Congo, Zanzibar and British West Africa. As
proof that they had killed a villager who didn't fulfill their quota, these soldiers were
required to sever the hands off to show their officers, one hand for every bullet used.
This was because the officers were concerned that ammunition was being wasted on hunting animals for sport.
Desperate measures were taken as the quantity of chopped off hands could pay for an unfulfilled rubber quota.
There were even small wars between villages to provide enough hands, and soldiers would cut them off from villagers dead or alive.
Leon Rom was the brutal administrator who was in charge of the "Force Publique".
He was known to decorate his flowerbed with the severed heads of his victims, and kept a gallows outside his house at Stanley Falls.
While choosing to maximize his short-term economic gains, Leopold the Second exhausted the resources and enslaved the people.
He managed to gain a serious income from this and amassed a personal fortune.
But this was not enough to make it profitable and more investments were needed. In
1889 and 1895 the King borrowed money from his own government,
in return the government will get the right to annex the Congo in 1901.
That year the government decided not to use that opportunity and Leopold could continue his exploitation.
The atrocities became clearer and clearer starting in 1890. That year George Washington Williams who was an African-American
Baptist minister made a trip across the Congo Free State.
He was shocked by what he saw and wrote an open letter to the King condemning the brutal and inhumane treatment of the locals.
He said that the crimes committed were done in the King's name
and even though he hadn't set one foot in the Congo, he would still be just as guilty.
Unfortunately Williams died on the way home and therefore the King didn't feel compelled to investigate the accusations.
But after this letter other reports soon followed. A
public outrage in the beginning of 1904 after European press revelations of what actually was going on in the Congo, led to an international
protest movement.
Prominent writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain took part in these condemnations. Twain wrote a pamphlet called King Leopold's Soliloquy, and
Doyle later in 1909 published The Crime of the Congo after supporting the campaign for reforms.
Joseph Conrad visited the Congo colony which inspired him to write the novel
Heart of Darkness, and Leon Rom may have been the basis for the character of Kurtz.
It is estimated that as many as 10 million people had died during the Congo Free States existence, which was half of the population.
In November 1908
it was over. The Belgian government forced the King to end his rule over the Congo Free State and give it to Belgium.
Starting November 15th. 1908 a Congo was a Belgian colony.
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