Mark Twain on the Congo Free State

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 – 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist, who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter called "the Great American Novel."

In 1905, Twain published King Leopold's Soliloquy, a pamphlet whose subject is King Leopold's rule over the Congo Free State. Twain’s Soliloquy is a work of political satire harshly condemning Leopold and his Congo Free State by way of a narrative in which Leopold himself is giving a defense of his actions.

In it, King Leopold raves madly about the good things that he says he has done for the people of the Congo, including the disbursement of millions of dollars on religion and art in an attempt to “civilize” them. He says he had come to Congo with piety "oozing" from "every pore," that his real intention was to convert the people to Christianity, and to stop the slave trade.  Leopold claims that he has not personally benefited from profits made in the rubber and ivory trade, and that such claims by the "meddlesome American missionaries", "British consuls", and "Belgian-born traitors" are wholly false. Leopold asserts that for a king to be criticized is blasphemy because all king’s rule by divine right and are in effect carrying out the will of God.

George Washington Williams and the first critique of the Congo Free State

George Washington Williams (1849 – 1891) was an African-American Civil War veteran, minister, politician and historian. After the Civil War he traveled to King Leopold II's Congo Free State where he penned an open letter to Leopold about the suffering of the region's inhabitants at the hands of Leopold's agents.  William’s work spurred the first public outcry against the regime running the Congo under which approximately 10 million Congolese lost their lives. 

The following his George Washington Williams open letter to King Leopold:

 George Washington Williams, “An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo By Colonel, The Honorable Geo. W. Williams, of the United States of America,” 1890

Good and Great Friend,

I have the honour to submit for your Majesty’s consideration some reflections respecting the Independent State of Congo, based upon a careful study and inspection of the country and character of the personal Government you have established upon the African Continent.

It afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me last year, of visiting your State in Africa; and how thoroughly I have been disenchanted, disappointed and disheartened, it is now my painful duty to make known to your Majesty in plain but respectful language. Every charge which I am about to bring against your Majesty’s personal Government in the Congo has been carefully investigated; a list of competent and veracious witnesses, documents, letters, official records and data has been faithfully prepared, which will be deposited with Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, until such time as an International Commission can be created with power to send for persons and papers, to administer oaths, and attest the truth or falsity of these charges.

There were instances in which Mr. HENRY M. STANLEY sent one white man, with four or five Zanzibar soldiers, to make treaties with native chiefs. The staple argument was that the white man’s heart had grown sick of the wars and rumours of war between one chief and another, between one village and another; that the white man was at peace with his black brother, and desired to “confederate all African tribes” for the general defense and public welfare. All the sleight-of- hand tricks had been carefully rehearsed, and he was now ready for his work. A number of electric batteries had been purchased in London, and when attached to the arm under the coat, communicated with a band of ribbon which passed over the palm of the white brother’s hand, and when he gave the black brother a cordial grasp of the hand the black brother was greatly surprised to find his white brother so strong, that he nearly knocked him off his feet in giving him the hand of fellowship. When the native inquired about the disparity of strength between himself and his white brother, he was told that the white man could pull up trees and perform the most prodigious feats of strength. Next came the lens act. The white brother took from his pocket a cigar, carelessly bit off the end, held up his glass to the sun and complaisantly smoked his cigar to the great amazement and terror of his black brother. The white man explained his intimate relation to the sun, and declared that if he were to request him to burn up his black brother’s village it would be done. The third act was the gun trick. The white man took a percussion cap gun, tore the end of the paper which held the powder to the bullet, and poured the powder and paper into the gun, at the same time slipping the bullet into the sleeve of the left arm. A cap was placed upon the nipple of the gun, and the black brother was implored to step off ten yards and shoot at his white brother to demonstrate his statement that he was a spirit, and, therefore, could not be killed. After much begging the black brother aims the gun at his white brother, pulls the trigger, the gun is discharged, the white man stoops . . . and takes the bullet from his shoe!

By such means as these, too silly and disgusting to mention, and a few boxes of gin, whole villages have been signed away to your Majesty.

When I arrived in the Congo, I naturally sought for the results of the brilliant programme: “fostering care”, “benevolent enterprise”, an “honest and practical effort” to increase the knowledge of the natives “and secure their welfare”. 1 had never been able to conceive of Europeans, establishing a government in a tropical country, without building a hospital; and yet from the mouth of the Congo River to its head-waters, here at the seventh cataract, a distance of 1,448 miles, there is not a solitary hospital for Europeans, and only three sheds for sick Africans in the service of the State, not fit to be occupied by a horse. Sick sailors frequently die on board their vessels at Banana Point; and if it were not for the humanity of the Dutch Trading Company at that place—who have often opened their private hospital to the sick of other countries—many more might die. There is not a single chaplain in the employ of your Majesty’s Government to console the sick or bury the dead. Your white men sicken and die in their quarters or on the caravan road, and seldom have Christian burial. With few exceptions, the surgeons of your Majesty’s Government have been gentlemen of professional ability, devoted to duty, but usually left with few medical stores and no quarters in which to treat their patients. The African soldiers and labourers of your Majesty’s Government fare worse than the whites, because they have poorer quarters, quite as bad as those of the natives; and in the sheds, called hospitals, they languish upon a bed of bamboo poles without blankets, pillows or any food different from that served to them when well, rice and fish.

I was anxious to see to what extent the natives had “adopted the fostering care” of your Majesty’s “benevolent enterprise” (?), and I was doomed to bitter disappointment. Instead of the natives of the Congo “adopting the fostering care” of your Majesty’s Government, they everywhere complain that their land has been taken from them by force; that the Government is cruel and arbitrary, and declare that they neither love nor respect the Government and its flag. Your Majesty’s Government has sequestered their land, burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail. It is natural that they everywhere shrink from “the fostering care” your Majesty’s Government so eagerly proffers them.

There has been, to my absolute knowledge, no “honest and practical effort made to increase their knowledge and secure their welfare.” Your Majesty’s Government has never spent one franc for educational purposes, nor instituted any practical system of industrialism. Indeed the most unpractical measures have been adopted against the natives in nearly every respect; and in the capital of your Majesty’s Government at Boma there is not a native employed. The labour system is radically unpractical; the soldiers and labourers of your Majesty’s Government are very largely imported from Zanzibar at a cost of £10 per capita, and from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Accra and Lagos at from £1 to £1/10 per capita. These recruits are transported under circumstances more cruel than cattle in European countries. They eat their rice twice a day by the use of their fingers; they often thirst for water when the season is dry; they are exposed to the heat and rain, and sleep upon the damp and filthy decks of the vessels often so closely crowded as to lie in human ordure. And, of course, many die.

Upon the arrival of the survivors in the Congo they are set to work as labourers at one shilling a day; as soldiers they are promised sixteen shillings per month, in English money, but are usually paid off in cheap handkerchiefs and poisonous gin. The cruel and unjust treatment to which these people are subjected breaks the spirits of many of them, makes them distrust and despise your Majesty’s Government. They are enemies, not patriots.

There are from sixty to seventy officers of the Belgian army in the service of your Majesty’s Government in the Congo of whom only about thirty are at their post; the other half are in Belgium on furlough. These officers draw double pay—as soldiers and as civilians. It is not my duty to criticise the unlawful and unconstitutional use of these officers coming into the service of this African State. Such criticism will come with more grace from some Belgian statesman, who may remember that there is no constitutional or organic relation subsisting between his Government and the purely personal and absolute monarchy your Majesty has established in Africa. But I take the liberty to say that many of these officers are too young and inexperienced to be entrusted with the difficult work of dealing with native races. They are ignorant of native character, lack wisdom, justice, fortitude and patience. They have estranged the natives from your Majesty’s Government, have sown the seed of discord between tribes and villages, and some of them have stained the uniform of the Belgian officer with murder, arson and robbery. Other officers have served the State faithfully, and deserve well of their Royal Master.

From these general observations I wish now to pass to specific charges against your Majesty’s Government.

FIRST.—Your Majesty’s Government is deficient in the moral military and financial strength, necessary to govern a territory o 1,508,000 square miles, 7,251 miles of navigation, and 31,694 square miles of lake surface. In the Lower Congo River there is but One post, in the cataract region one. From Leopoldville to N’Gombe, a distance of more than 300 miles, there is not a single soldier or civilian. Not one out of every twenty State-officials know the language of the natives, although they are constantly issuing laws, difficult even for Europeans, and expect the natives to comprehend and obey them. Cruelties of the most astounding character are practised by the natives, such as burying slaves alive in the grave of a dead chief, cutting off the heads of captured warriors in native combats, and no effort is put forth by your Majesty’s Government to prevent them. Between 800 and 1,000 slaves are sold to be eaten by the natives of the Congo State annually; and slave raids, accomplished by the most cruel and murderous agencies, are carried on within the territorial limits of your Majesty’s Government which is impotent. There are only 2,300 soldiers in the Congo.

SECOND.—Your Majesty’s Government has established nearly fifty posts, consisting of from two to eight mercenary slave-soldiers from the East Coast. There is no white commissioned officer at these posts; they are in charge of the black Zanzibar soldiers, and the State expects them not only to sustain themselves, but to raid enough to feed the garrisons where the white men are stationed. These piratical, buccaneering posts compel the natives to furnish them with fish, goats, fowls, and vegetables at the mouths of their muskets; and whenever the natives refuse to feed these vampires, they report to the main station and white officers come with an expeditionary force and burn away the homes of the natives. These black soldiers, many of whom are slaves, exercise the power of life and death. They are ignorant and cruel, because they do not comprehend the natives; they are imposed upon them by the State. They make no report as to the number of robberies they commit, or the number of lives they take; they are only required to subsist upon the natives and thus relieve your Majesty’s Government of the cost of feeding them. They are the greatest curse the country suffers now.

THIRD.—Your Majesty’s Government is guilty of violating its contracts made with its soldiers, mechanics and workmen, many of whom are subjects of other Governments. Their letters never reach home.

FOURTH.—The Courts of your Majesty’s Government are abortive, unjust, partial and delinquent. I have personally witnessed and examined their clumsy operations. The laws printed and circulated in Europe “for the Protection of the blacks” in the Congo, are a dead letter and a fraud. T have heard an officer of the Belgian Army pleading the cause of a white man of low degree who had been guilty of beating and stabbing a black man, and urging race distinctions and prejudices as good and sufficient reasons why his client should be adjudged innocent. I know of prisoners remaining in custody for six and ten months because they were not judged. T saw the white servant of the Governor-General, CAMILLE JANSSEN, detected in stealing a bottle of wine from a hotel table. A few hours later the Procurer-General searched his room and found many more stolen bottles of wine and other things, not the property of servants. No one can be prosecuted in the State of Congo without an order of the Governor-General, and as he refused to allow his servant to be arrested, nothing could be done. The black servants in the hotel, where the wine had been stolen, had been often accused and beaten for these thefts, and now they were glad to be vindicated. But to the surprise of every honest man, the thief was sheltered by the Governor General of your Majesty’s Government.

FIFTH—Your Majesty’s Government is excessively cruel to its prisoners, condemning them, for the slightest offences, to the chain gang, the like of which can not be seen in any other Government in the civilized or uncivilized world. Often these ox-chains eat into the necks of the prisoners and produce sores about which the flies circle, aggravating the running wound; so the prisoner is constantly worried. These poor creatures are frequently beaten with a dried piece of hippopotamus skin, called a “chicote”, and usually the blood flows at every stroke when well laid on. But the cruelties visited upon soldiers and workmen are not to be compared with the sufferings of the poor natives who, upon the slightest pretext, are thrust into the wretched prisons here in the Upper River. I cannot deal with the dimensions of these prisons in this letter, but will do so in my report to my Government.

SIXTH.—Women are imported into your Majesty’s Government for immoral purposes. They are introduced by two methods, viz., black men are dispatched to the Portuguese coast where they engage these women as mistresses of white men, who pay to the procurer a monthly sum. The other method is by capturing native women and condemning them to seven years’ servitude for some imaginary crime against the State with which the villages of these women are charged. The State then hires these woman out to the highest bidder, the officers having the first choice and then the men. Whenever children are born of such relations, the State maintains that the women being its property the child belongs to it also. Not long ago a Belgian trader had a child by a slave-woman of the State, and he tried to secure possession of it that he might educate it, but the Chief of the Station where he resided, refused to be moved by his entreaties. At length he appealed to the Governor-General, and he gave him the woman and thus the trader obtained the child also. This was, however, an unusual case of generosity and clemency; and there is only one post that I know of where there is not to be found children of the civil and military officers of your Majesty’s Government abandoned to degradation; white men bringing their own flesh and blood under the lash of a most cruel master, the State of Congo.

SEVENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government is engaged in trade and commerce, competing with the organised trade companies of Belgium, England, France, Portugal and Holland. It taxes all trading companies and exempts its own goods from export-duty, and makes many of its officers ivory-traders, with the promise of a liberal commission upon all they can buy or get for the State. State soldiers patrol many villages forbidding the natives to trade with any person but a State official, and when the natives refuse to accept the price of the State, their goods are seized by the Government that promised them “protection”. When natives have persisted in trading with the trade-companies the State has punished their independence by burning the villages in the vicinity of the trading houses and driving the natives away.

EIGHTH.—Your Majesty’s Government has violated the General Act of the Conference of Berlin by firing upon native canoes; by confiscating the property of natives; by intimidating native traders, and preventing them from trading with white trading companies; by quartering troops in native villages when there is no war; by causing vessels bound from “Stanley-Pool” to “Stanley-Falls”, to break their journey and leave the Congo, ascend the Aruhwimi river to Basoko, to be visited and show their papers; by forbidding a mission steamer to fly its national flag without permission from a local Government; by permitting the natives to carry on the slave- trade, and by engaging in the wholesale and retail slave-trade itself.

NINTH.—-Your Majesty’s Government has been, and is now, guilty of waging unjust and cruel wars against natives, with the hope of securing slaves and women, to minister to the behests of the officers of your Government. In such slave-hunting raids one village is armed by the State against the other, and the force thus secured is incorporated with the regular troops. I have no adequate terms with which to depict to your Majesty the brutal acts of your soldiers upon such raids as these. The soldiers who open the combat are usually the bloodthirsty cannibalistic Bangalas, who give no quarter to the aged grandmother or nursing child at the breast of its mother. There are instances in which they have brought the heads of their victims to their white officers on the expeditionary steamers, and afterwards eaten the bodies of slain children. In one war two Belgian Army officers saw, from the deck of their steamer, a native in a canoe some distance away. He was not a combatant and was ignorant of the conflict in progress upon the shore, some distance away. The officers made a wager of £5 that they could hit the native with their rifles. Three shots were fired and the native fell dead, pierced through the head, and the trade canoe was transformed into a funeral barge and floated silently down the river.

TENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government is engaged in the slave-trade, wholesale and retail. It buys and sells and steals slaves. Your Majesty’s Government gives £3 per head for able bodied slaves for military service. Officers at the chief stations get the men and receive the money when they are transferred to the State; but there are some middle-men who only get from twenty to twenty-five francs per head. Three hundred and sixteen slaves were sent down the river recently, and others are to follow. These poor natives are sent hundreds of miles away from their villages, to serve among other natives whose language they do not know. When these men run away a reward of 1,000 N’taka is offered. Not long ago such a recaptured slave was given one hundred “chikote” each day until he died. Three hundred N’taka—brassrod-—is the price the State pays for a slave, when bought from a native. The labour force at the stations of your Majesty’s Government in the Upper River is composed of slaves of all ages and both sexes.

ELEVENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government has concluded a contract with the Arab Governor at this place for the establishment of a line of military posts from the Seventh Cataract to Lake Tanganyika territory to which your Majesty has no more legal claim, than I have to be Commander-in-Chief of the Belgian army. For this work the Arab Governor is to receive five hundred stands of arms, five thousand kegs of powder, and £20,000 sterling, to he paid in several instalments. As I write, the news reaches me that these much- treasured and long-looked for materials of war are to be discharged at Basoko, and the Resident here is to be given the discretion as to the distribution of them. There is a feeling of deep discontent among the Arabs here, and they seem to feel that they are being trifled with. As to the significance of this move Europe and America can judge without any comment from me, especially England.

TWELFTH—The agents of your Majesty’s Government have misrepresented the Congo country and the Congo railway. Mr. H. M. STANLEY, the man who was your chief agent in setting up your authority in this country, has grossly misrepresented the character of the country. Instead of it being fertile and productive it is sterile and unproductive. The natives can scarcely subsist upon the vegetable life produced in some parts of the country. Nor will this condition of affairs change until the native shall have been taught by the European the dignity, utility and blessing of labour. There is no improvement among the natives, because there is an impassable gulf between them and your Majesty’s Government, a gulf which can never be bridged. HENRY M. STANLEY’S name produces a shudder among this simple folk when mentioned; they remember his broken promises, his copious profanity, his hot temper, his heavy blows, his severe and rigorous measures, by which they were mulcted of their lands. His last appearance in the Congo produced a profound sensation among them, when he led 500 Zanzibar soldiers with 300 camp followers on his way to relieve EMIN PASHA. They thought it meant complete subjugation, and they fled in confusion. But the only thing they found in the wake of his march was misery. No white man commanded his rear column, and his troops were allowed to straggle, sicken and die; and their bones were scattered over more than two hundred miles of territory.

CONCLUSIONS

Against the deceit, fraud, robberies, arson, murder, slave-raiding, and general policy of cruelty of your Majesty’s Government to the natives, stands their record of unexampled patience, long-suffering and forgiving spirit, which put the boasted civilisation and professed religion of your Majesty’s Government to the blush. During thirteen years only one white man has lost his life by the hands of the natives, and only two white men have been killed in the Congo. Major Barttelot was shot by a Zanzibar soldier, and the captain of a Belgian trading-boat was the victim of his own rash and unjust treatment of a native chief.

All the crimes perpetrated in the Congo have been done in your name, and you must answer at the bar of Public Sentiment for the misgovernment of a people, whose lives and fortunes were entrusted to you by the august Conference of Berlin, 1884—1 885. I now appeal to the Powers which committed this infant State to your Majesty’s charge, and to the great States which gave it international being; and whose majestic law you have scorned and trampled upon, to call and create an International Commission to investigate the charges herein preferred in the name of Humanity, Commerce, Constitutional Government and Christian Civilisation.

I base this appeal upon the terms of Article 36 of Chapter VII of the General Act of the Conference of Berlin, in which that august assembly of Sovereign States reserved to themselves the right “to introduce into it later and by common accord the modifications or ameliorations, the utility of which may be demonstrated experience”.

I appeal to the Belgian people and to their Constitutional Government, so proud of its traditions, replete with the song and story of its champions of human liberty, and so jealous of its present position in the sisterhood of European States—to cleanse itself from the imputation of the crimes with which your Majesty’s personal State of Congo is polluted.

I appeal to Anti-Slavery Societies in all parts of Christendom, to Philanthropists, Christians, Statesmen, and to the great mass of people everywhere, to call upon the Governments of Europe, to hasten the close of the tragedy your Majesty’s unlimited Monarchy is enacting in the Congo.

I appeal to our Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect love, in witness of the purity of my motives and the integrity of my aims; and to history and mankind I appeal for the demonstration and vindication of the truthfulness of the charge I have herein briefly outlined.

And all this upon the word of honour of a gentleman, I subscribe myself your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant,

GEO. W. WILLIAMS

Stanley Falls, Central Africa,

July 18th, 1890.

Sources:  Adelaide Cromwell Hill & Martin Kilson, eds., Apropos of Africa: Sentiments of American Negro Leaders on Africa From the 1800s to the 1950s (London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1969).

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Congo

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is of course best known for is "Sherlock Holmes" detective series, which has spawned numerous television shows, movies and various adaptations of the Holmes/Watson partnership. 

In 1909 Sir Conan Doyle published a book entitled "Crime of the Congo", in which Doyle not only illuminated the atrocities committed by King Leopold and Belgium, but also implicated the United States to a certain extent in allowing Leopold to take possession of the Congo in the first place.  He also makes the case that England will do its part in making sure the Congolese are sufficiently helped out and even compensated.  the following is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's preface for his "Crime of the Congo":

 

There are many of us in England who consider the crime which has been wrought in the Congo lands by King Leopold of Belgium and his followers to be the greatest which has ever been known in human annals. Personally I am strongly of that opinion. There have been great expropriations like that of the Normans in England or of the English in Ireland. There have been massacres of populations like that of the South Americans by the Spaniards or of subject nations by the Turks. But never before has there been such a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacre all done under an odious guise of philanthropy and with the lowest commercial motives as a reason. It is this sordid cause and the unctuous hypocrisy which makes this crime unparalleled in its horror.

The witnesses of the crime are of all nations, and there is no possibility of error concerning facts. There are British consuls like Casement, Thesiger, Mitchell and Armstrong, all writing in their official capacity with every detail of fact and date. There are Frenchmen like Pierre Mille and Félicien Challaye, both of whom have written books upon the subject. There are missionaries of many races—Harris, Weeks and Stannard (British); Morrison, Clarke and Shepherd (American); Sjoblom (Swedish) and Father Vermeersch, the Jesuit. There is the eloquent action of the Italian Government, who refused to allow Italian officers to be employed any longer in such hangman’s work, and there is the report of the Belgian commission, the evidence before which was suppressed because it was too dreadful for publication; finally, there is the incorruptible evidence of the kodak. Any American citizen who will glance at Mark Twain’s “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” will see some samples of that. A perusal of all of these sources of information will show that there is not a grotesque, obscene or ferocious torture which human ingenuity could invent which has not been used against these harmless and helpless people.

This would, to my mind, warrant our intervention in any case. Turkey has several times been interfered with simply on the general ground of humanity. There is in this instance a very special reason why America and England should not stand by and see these people done to death. They are, in a sense, their wards. America was the first to give official recognition to King Leopold’s enterprise in 1884, and so has the responsibility of having actually put him into that position which he has so dreadfully abused. She has been the indirect and innocent cause of the whole tragedy. Surely some reparation is due. On the other hand England has, with the other European Powers, signed the treaty of 1885, by which each and all of them make it responsible for the condition of the native races. The other Powers have so far shown no desire to live up to this pledge. But the conscience of England is uneasy and she is slowly rousing herself to act. Will America be behind?

At this moment two American citizens, Shepherd and that noble Virginian, Morrison, are about to be tried at Boma for telling the truth about the scoundrels. Morrison in the dock makes a finer Statue of Liberty than Bartholdi’s in New York harbour.

Attempts will be made in America (for the Congo has its paid apologists everywhere) to pretend that England wants to oust Belgium from her colony and take it herself. Such accusations are folly. To run a tropical colony honestly without enslaving the natives is an expensive process. For example Nigeria, the nearest English colony, has to be subsidized to the extent of $2,000,000 a year. Whoever takes over the Congo will, considering its present demoralized condition, have a certain expense of $10,000,000 a year for twenty years. Belgium has not run the colony. It has simply sacked it, forcing the inhabitants without pay to ship everything of value to Antwerp. No decent European Power could do this. For many years to come the Congo will be a heavy expense and it will truly be a philanthropic call upon the next owner. I trust it will not fall to England.

Attempts have been made too (for there is considerable ingenuity and unlimited money on the other side) to pretend that it is a question of Protestant missions against Catholic. Any one who thinks this should read the book, “La Question Kongolaise,” of the eloquent and holy Jesuit, Father Vermeersch. He lived in the country and, as he says, it was the sight of the “immeasurable misery,” which drove him to write.

We English who are earnest over this matter look eagerly to the westward to see some sign of moral support of material leading. It would be a grand sight to see the banner of humanity and civilization carried forward in such a cause by the two great English-speaking nations.

Arthur Conan Doyle.

Colonial Images from the Congo

In most parts of Africa, the colonial period lasted from 1885 to 1960. In 1885, Léopold II, king of the Belgians, claimed extensive territories in central Africa as his private holdings and established the Congo Free State. In 1908, after worldwide protests castigating labor abuses and atrocities committed against the African population, the Belgian government annexed the king's private holdings, which then became the Belgian Congo. To the north of the Congo Free State, France established French Equatorial Africa (A.E.F.). To the east, Germany took over the kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi, but lost them to Belgium as a result of the First World War. In the south, Portugal occupied Angola.
Throughout this period photography was used to describe and classify peoples under colonial domination and to record information about African architecture and art, dress and adornment, body decoration, ceremonies and rituals. Today, many of these photographs--even considering the circumstances under which they were taken--have become valuable historical documents of African ways of life. However, they are equally important as primary evidence of commonly held Western beliefs about Africans. Photographers tended to focus on themes that often reinforced erroneous notions of an "exotic" or "savage" Africa, visually evoking stereotypes about Africans. Some of these stereotypes--which could be traced to the earliest Western encounters with Africans along the coast in the 16th century--were celebratory; others were derogatory, racist and deeply painful. Seen from our contemporary perspective, many of the perceptions conveyed by the imagery were "out of focus": viciously wrong and permanently damaging.
Besides documenting Africans and African life, much of the photographic activity in central Africa served to popularize the colonial venture. The building of the colonial infrastructure and successful economic exploitation of ivory, rubber and later minerals were common themes. Africans, whom the colonials saw as culturally inferior, were to be Christianized and educated in what has become known as the "civilizing mission." Missionary activities and educational efforts are portrayed in the imagery, which celebrated colonial achievement. Many of the photographs exhibited here are aesthetically and technically compelling, which is one of the reasons they were widely reproduced. They formed an image world that focused on narrow, repetitive themes. These pictures left an indelible mark on the Western imagination, creating representations of central Africa that have had tremendous staying power. It is, however, important to go beyond their nostalgic beauty to reveal the underlying concepts that informed their creation and were promulgated by their publishers and understood by their viewers.

Heart of Darkness: The novel as entry-point of Revision History PART 3 (final installment)

As early as the seventeen hundreds there were a few who did speak out against the immoral nature of colonialism and its derivatives such as slavery, including, the French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot, as well as the German philosophers Immanuel Kant and J. G. Herder.  But in all honesty, even though these Western European thinkers opposed colonialism of non-European people on ethical rather than economic grounds, their views focused more on the inappropriate nature of the processes of colonialism from the Western perspective of what is considered fair play, as opposed to its horrors.

 

The intention of the previously mentioned political, economic and philosophical thinkers was to delineate clear, concise ideas and explanations from the mess and confusion of human experience, that is, to define, systematize and order social, economic, political and philosophical phenomena—in this case colonialism—so people can make sense of and understand it, to clarify the mess and dispel the confusion.  That is what political scientists, economists and social scientists do.  They attempt to categorize and clarify.

Novelists, on the other hand, tend to approach the world somewhat differently than scientists. Rather than trying to categorize or quantify the human experience, novelists tend to bask in the multiplicity of sensations and emotions that experience can provoke, and try to communicate these rich complexities to the reader.   For most novelists, the fullness of experience is what really matters, in all its ambiguity and messiness, and not a set of formulas and doctrines intended to clarify, sometimes at the expense of the fullness of experience because of omissions or additions made to reach the desired scientific conclusion.

Here is what Conrad says in a preface he wrote for a novel in 1897:

"The thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts.  They speak authoritatively to our common-sense, our intelligence.  It is otherwise with the artist. Confronted with the same enigmatical spectacle, the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to our less obvious capacities.  The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom.  He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to that sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn." For Conrad, the fullness of experience, and perhaps the fullness of understanding, is not scientific, rather it is an appeal to our emotive selves—to beauty, mystery, pain, elation, suffering, happiness, love, hate, bitterness, anger, etc.

For Conrad, the world as we experience it is not something that can be reduced to a set of clear scientific or even philosophical principles. Life and historical phenomena are messy, vague, irrational, suggestive, and in flux.  And it is art, according to Conrad, that gives us the broadest view or picture, because whereas it is the intent of the scientist and social theorist to whittle away noise and distractions of a messy world, the intention of the novelist is to display the messy world in its wholeness for the reader to decipher.

In Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s intention is not to shed the light of science, or even reason on colonialism, but rather to re-create, in all its fullness, the experience of political, economic, social, religious, moral, ethical elation and torment, and all points in-between, of the colonial experience.

In Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, the reader, along with Marlowe, is anticipating meeting Mr. Kurtz, and experiencing Kurtz’s colonial enterprise in the Congolese jungle.  The trip down the river is a journey of both the physical senses, and of Marlowe’s sense of self and of the ‘other’.  This is going to be a clash of cultures—Western European vs. African.  Marlowe, it can be gleaned early on, has a sense of both.  But unknown to Marlowe is that these perceptions are going to be challenged, turned upside down.  There is nothing scientific here.  The things experienced by Marlowe will not come to him in the neat and tidy package of doctrine or dogma.  His experience is a full frontal assault to his eyes, ears, and even nose, and well as his understanding on race and culture, politics and religion. 

The reader, like Marlowe, is not sure who or what they will find when they get to Kurtz.  There is an air of mystery surrounding him, and that is of course the intention of Conrad.  Kurtz, the African jungle, Africans, the colonial enterprise, are all shrouded in mystery.  But perhaps the biggest mystery of all is that of Western civilization, its heart and soul.  What will Kurtz and his colonial enterprise say about Western civilization?  What will the verdict be once Marlowe sees Kurtz and his colonial outpost?  Kurtz is carrying a lot of weight, bearing a lot of responsibility here.  The reader gets the sense that Marlowe is sincerely hoping that Kurtz will not let him down, that he will not let Western civilization down.  After all, the Western Europeans burdened themselves with being the great civilizers, creators, savers of souls, purveyors of God’s will.  Kurtz, although a Westerner like Marlowe, must have been changed or altered in some way as a result of his colonial experience, as a result of living in a place considered by the Western world at that time to be dark, dangerous, foreboding, wild, uncivilized.  And even though Kurtz was supposed to be an instrument of taming and civilizing process of Africa, how has that untamed and wild land and its people affected Mr. Kurtz?

The first bits and pieces Marlowe, and the reader, receive regarding Kurtz come from the Russian man.  He too was in the Congo to extract ivory in order to get rich.  The man was in awe of Colonel Kurtz and was not shy in conveying his admiration for the man, while at the same time divulging Kurtz’s flaws.  The man tells Marlowe that Kurtz tried to kill him the other day, to Marlowe’s horror.  Yet the Russian man still held Kurtz in high esteem, but then concedes the fact that the things Marlowe was seeing in Kurtz’s camp were things caused by a man who was indeed quite mad, that Mr. Kurtz himself acknowledges that there is something not quite right in this place.  “He hates all this,” confesses the Russian while looking around the camp, a place teaming with the sights and smells of death.  There were skulls detached from their bodies and placed on spikes and short poles strewn about.   

The reader is led to believe that they are a testament to both Kurtz’s genius and to his insanity.  The Russian tries to explain to Marlowe that these two things are really one and the same, that the fine line between genius and madness is in reality so thin that perhaps the two are perhaps identical.  He hints to Marlowe that Kurtz is beyond comprehension to people of the Western world, that his ways and thinking are at the same time primitive and yet advanced, and that this is something the Western mindset cannot understand.  Marlowe ignores this assertion and immediately begins to believe the heads are evidence that there is something wrong with Kurtz, that he is not right, that he is not the great and visionary man that the Russian is trying to make him out to be, but rather that he is altogether insane.

When Marlowe sees Kurtz for the first time, he describes him as ‘emaciated’, ‘nothing but bones’.  Yet, when Kurtz opens what Marlowe describes as his ‘frail mouth’ to speak for the first time in Conrad’s account, he says that Kurtz, albeit frail looking, appears poised to swallow and devour.  Conrad’s Kurtz, although very real, can be construed as a kind of metaphor, a symbolic figure.  He represents the West, the white Western Europeans.  They are a dying empire by the late nineteen hundreds.  The time of European white man’s domination of the world is almost over, and Kurtz symbolizes or represents this to a certain extent.   And so Kurtz, like the Western Europeans, although a mere shell of his former self, is still feared, still dangerous, still in a position of power, still obeyed, still hungry for more.  Conrad writes that Kurtz opened his mouth as if wanting to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.

But Conrad adds a very interesting twist to this.  He says that the wilderness drew Kurtz to its ‘pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts.’  And that this awakening ‘beguiled his soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.’  Conrad is implying that Kurtz has in effect thrown off the shackles of civilized society, of Western civilization, and is hearkening back to the ways of his primeval ancestors, those who relied on instinct and adhered to the so-called ‘law of the jungle’ or ‘survival of the fittest.’  This ‘bounds of permitted aspirations’ is what is allowed by Western civilization, what is considered moral, ethical, normal or proper.

A question for the reader is whether or not Kurtz has ascended or descended, evolved or devolved, in order to go beyond the ‘bounds of permitted aspirations.’  One answer to this question is that he did both, that Kurtz ascended and descended, evolved and devolved.  On the one hand, Kurtz has freed himself from the constraints of Western society.  Its

Judeo-Christian ethical and moral code would not allow the violent subjugation of other human beings, even if they are dark of skin, non-Christian, or even ‘wild’ and ‘uncivilized’, as people from the African continent were portrayed in the nineteenth century.  And so in this regard, Kurtz ascended the ethical and moral code from whence he came.  But it is more complicated than that, because it is that very same Judeo-Christian moral and ethical code that justified the Western world’s claim to their ascendancy over and above the African.  And so Kurtz’s descent or devolvement is in effect justified in order to conquer and subjugate the so-called “noble savage” who is altogether lacking in moral and ethical character and restraint.  That is, Kurtz had to become more wild, more savage, more lacking in moral and ethical restraint than the savage in order to savage, yet at what cost to himself?

Marlowe explains that there is ‘nothing above or below Kurtz’.  Perhaps Conrad is trying to make the point that Kurtz, and the Western European colonial enterprise, has ascended to the place of god, and that both the colonizer and the colonized have bought into this lofty ideal.  The Europeans have transcended Judeo-Christian morality by descending to that of the most violent and cruel of all human beings; that because they are gods, their ends justify their means. 

But what exactly are their ends?  What are their means?  Intention and results can sometimes be two separate things, as they are in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

The work performed by the Company is described as “trade,” and their treatment of the Africans is framed as the benevolent project of “civilization.” But Kurtz does not speak in such vague and flowery terms.  He is clear about the fact that he does not trade but rather takes ivory by force.  He uses such words a “suppression” and even “extermination” to describe his treatment of the Congolese people.  He is not afraid to admit that he rules through violence and intimidation. His honesty, his lack of diplomatic tact, his willingness to tell the truth, leads to his downfall in the mind of Marlowe, that is, it is exposing the evil practices of the Europeans in Africa.

But Kurtz’s admissions do not necessarily produce sympathy for the plight of the Africans on the part of Marlowe.  However, it does speak to the dehumanization of the Congolese in that they are portrayed for the most part as objects, props, things in the background, pieces of machinery, statuary.  Conrad has received much criticism of this, his detractors claiming that this is Conrad’s own perspective of Africans.  But what the reader must keep in mind is that Conrad is making the point that colonization dehumanizes both the colonizer and the colonized, and his is a novel which speaks to the evils of colonization from the perspective of Mr. Kurtz and of Mr. Marlowe, two Western Europeans.  It explains how one man has grown numb to exploitation and the excesses of freedom, while the other is at the same time horrified and already in the process of numbing himself in order to comprehend, and accept, the incomprehensible and the unacceptable. 

<END>

Heart of Darkness: The novel as entry-point of Revision History PART 2

In the post-modern world it is not hard to find anti-colonial and anti-imperialist sentiment, in everything from street graffiti, to novels, to academic prose. In other words, there has been much written and said in past fifty or so years, in the Western world, which speaks to the injustice and even the horror of Western colonialism and the damage that it has done. 

Just a little over a hundred years ago, in the latter half of the nineteenth-century, the opposite would have been true.  Yes, there were people—philosophers, political scientists, poets, and even novelists—who were using the tools of their trade to speak out against colonialism.  Those who did were certainly in the minority, and even many of them spent the lion’s share of time speaking about how colonialism affected the colonizer rather than the colonized. 

In fact, most negative attitudes toward empire arose from their lack of profitability rather than moral censure.  For example, the Englishman Roger Coke asserted that English interests in Ireland were only serving to drain England.  William Petty complained about the treasury-draining impact of providing imperial defense for remote colonial outposts, arguing that their defense was too much of a financial burden and ultimately something that diminished national strength.  Classical Liberals like Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, wrote that Britain should liberate all of its colonies, concluding that the economic costs bore by the British people to defend the colonies greatly exceeded the benefits reaped by a select few mercantilists and industrialists.

Heart of Darkness: The novel as entry-point of Revision History PART 1

The next few entries will attempt to shed light on how Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel, Heart of Darkness, pushed the boundaries of Western thinking and scholarship regarding Western imperialism, in that it allowed for its consideration from something other than a Providential perspective.

Prior to the late twentieth century much of the historical accounts of Western conquest and colonization were written from a predominantly Western- as well as Christian-centric perspective, that is, from a Providential point of view in which it was God’s will that the Western European Christians export their religion and culture to the so-called “noble savage” in places such as North and South America, Asia, and Africa.

Up until the writing and release of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it was relatively unheard of to speak of Western colonialism from anything other than a Providential perspective.  To convey historical accounts from the viewpoint of the colonized and exploited, or even that of a conflicted and regretful conqueror, was for the most part nonexistent, in history books, or any other form of academic and artistic expression for that matter.  It was something still outside the confines of what was considered acceptable scholarship in most Western academic circles.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness offered up one of the first alternative perspectives of Western imperialism and its effects on both the oppressed and the oppressor.  He was one of the first Westerners to dialogue about Western atrocities committed in the name of Race, God and Progress, and was a building block to the eventual revision of Western expansion, conquest and colonialism.  By way of the novel, and inter-personal dialogue between Kurtz and Charles Marlowe, Joseph Conrad brought to the Western world one of the first analysis of Western imperialism from a perspective that did not flatter Western sensibilities, and in effect flung open the doors to future dialogue and study of Western imperialism from a non Western-centric point of view.

King Leopold

When walking into the "Royal Museum of Central Africa" in Brussels, Belgium a person is in effect stepping back in time, the late 1800s or early part of the twentieth century to be exact.  It does not take a person long to come to the conclusion that the overall message being conveyed here is that Belgium's involvement in the Congo, both king Leopold's Free Congo State and the post-Leopold Belgian Congo, was philanthropic as opposed to the raping and pillaging murder-state that it was.

There have been certain changes made in recent years to the museum in order to curb some of the criticisms, but the Royal Museum is still a celebration of the Belgium's 'achievment' against the African 'savages'.  Large gilded personifications of kindly Belgians bringing peace, prosperity and civilization to the grateful Congolese abound throughout its halls and galleries.  Most prominent is the statue of Leopold clutching Congolese children to his breast as if he is/was some kind of father figure, or even a kind of savior, of the Congo and its people.  This is an image rejected by many Congolese people, but one whose legacy they have not been able to escape.

The Congolese people, including children, were forced to labor for the Belgians in Leopold's Congo Free State.  If they did not cooperate, hands and arms would be severed.

Congo history

Congo Free State, 1885-1908

In 1876, Belgium’s King Leopold II (1835-1909) convened a geographical conference in Brussels. Leopold proposed establishing an international benevolent committee for the propagation of civilization among the peoples of Central Africa (the Congo region). Originally conceived as a multi-national, scientific, and humanitarian assembly, the Association Internationale Africaine (AIA, African International Association) eventually became a development company controlled by Leopold.[1,2,3] He subsequently organized the Comité d'Études du Haut-Congo (CEHC, Study Committee of the Upper Congo), an international commercial, scientific, and humanitarian committee, and sometime between 1879 and 1882, the Association Internationale du Congo (AIC, International Congo Society) emerged.[1,2,3] From 1878 to 1884, Leopold used these organizations to establish influence and eventually Belgian sovereignty, in the Congo Basin. His primary objective was to exploit the lucrative ivory market in Central Africa by establishing a secure trade route between the Upper and Lower Congo.[1,2,3] The region was reported to be rich in other commodities as well, such as mineral resources.[3] Rubber exports began as early as 1890,[4] and by the mid-1890s rubber extraction would become the colony’s most profitable industry. 

In 1884, the Conference of Berlin (1884-1885) convened to finalize the colonial partitioning of the African continent. Conference participants included Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States. In 1885, Leopold’s efforts to establish Belgian influence in the Congo Basin were awarded with the État Indépendant du Congo (CFS, Congo Free State). By a resolution passed in the Belgian parliament, Leopold became Roi-Souverain of the newly formed CFS, over which he enjoyed nearly absolute control.[3] The CFS (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo), a country of over two million square kilometers, became Leopold’s personal property, the Domaine Privé.[5] 

Under terms of the General Act of the Berlin Conference, 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.[5] Contrary to his pledge, beginning in the mid-1880s Leopold issued a series of decrees that eventually violated these conditions. Leopold first decreed that the State asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the Congo territory.[1,2,3,5] By three successive decrees, Leopold reduced the rights of the Congolese in their land to native villages and farms, essentially making nearly all of the CFS terres domainales.[5] Leopold further decreed that merchants limit their commercial operations in rubber to bartering with the natives.[3,5]  

By this time, Leopold had also established the Force Publique (FP) to campaign against the Arab slave trade in the Upper Congo, protect his economic interests, and suppress uprisings within the CFS, which were common. The FP's officer corps comprised only whites—Belgian regular soldiers and mercenaries from other countries.[1] On arriving in the CFS, these officers recruited men from Zanzibar and West Africa, and eventually from the Congo itself.[3] In addition, Leopold had been actually encouraging the slave trade among Arabs in the Upper Congo in return for slaves to fill the ranks of the FP.[3,5] During the 1890s, the FP’s primary role was to exploit the natives as corvée laborers to promote the rubber trade.[1,2,3]

By 1890, facing considerable financial difficulty, Leopold applied for permission to levy import duties.[5] However, in direct violation of his promises of free trade within the CFS under the terms of the Berlin Treaty, not only had the State become a commercial entity directly or indirectly trading within its dominion,[5] but also, Leopold had been slowly monopolizing a considerable amount of the ivory and rubber trade by imposing export duties on the resources traded by other merchants within the CFS.[5]  

By the final decade of the 19th century, J. B. Dunlop’s 1887 invention of inflatable, rubber bicycle tubes and the growing popularity of the automobile dramatically increased the global demand for rubber. To monopolize the resources of the entire CFS, Leopold issued three decrees in 1891 and 1892 that reduced the native population to serfs.[5] Collectively, these forced the natives to deliver all ivory and rubber, harvested or found, to State officers thus nearly completing Leopold’s monopoly of the ivory and rubber trade.[3]

An additional decree in 1892 divided the terres vacantes into a domainal system, which privatized extraction rights over rubber for the State in certain private domains, allowing Leopold to grant lucrative concessions to private companies.[3] In other areas, private companies could continue to trade but were highly restricted and taxed. The domainal system destroyed the traditional economy of the Congo basin and enforced a labor tax on Leopold’s Congolese subjects requiring local chiefs to supply men to collect rubber and other resources.[3] It essentially obliged natives to supply these products without payment.

Genocide scholar Adam Jones comments, “The result was one of the most brutal and all-encompassing corvée institutions the world has known . . . Male rubber tappers and porters were mercilessly exploited and driven to death.”[6] Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men hostage until they returned with their rubber quota.[5] Those who refused or failed to supply enough rubber often had their villages burned down, children murdered, and their hands cut off.[1,3] 
Although local chiefs organized tribal resistance, the FP brutally crushed these uprisings. Rebellions often included Congolese fleeing their villages to hide in the wilderness, ambushing army units, and setting fire to rubber vine forests.[2] In retribution, the FP burned villages and FP officers sent their soldiers into the forest to find and kill hiding rebels. To prove the success of their patrols, soldiers were ordered to cut off and bring back dead victims’ right hands as proof that they had not wasted their bullets.[3]  If their shots missed their targets or if they used cartridges on big game, soldiers would cut off the hands of the living and wounded to meet their quotas.[3]

“Everywhere I hear the same news of the Congo Free State – rubber and murder, slavery in its worst form.” This account was published in Century Magazine (1897) by E. J. Glave, a former CFS administrator.[3] Inspired by works such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902), originally published as a three-part series in Blackwood’s Magazine (1899), organized international criticism of Leopold’s genocidal activities mobilized. In 1900, Edmund Dene Morel, a part-time journalist and head of trade with Congo for the Liverpool shipping firm Elder Dempster, began writing articles describing conditions in the CFS.  In 1902, Morel retired from his position at Elder Dempster and launched a full-time campaign to expose the human rights abuses occurring in the CFS. He founded his own magazine, The West African Mail, and conducted speaking tours in Britain.

Increasing public outcry over the atrocities in the CFS moved the British government to launch an official investigation. The diplomat, Sir Roger Casement, was sent to the CFS as British Consul. Reporting to the Foreign Office in 1900, Casement wrote, “The root of the evil lies in the fact that the government of the Congo is above all a commercial trust, that everything else is orientated towards commercial gain . . .”[3] The establishment of the Congo Reform Association (CRA) in Great Britain was a direct result of Casement’s 1904 Congo Report. The CRA, whose members included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and inspired Mark Twain among others, provided a foundation for one of the 20th century’s first human rights movements.

Yielding to international pressure, in 1908 the Belgian parliament annexed the CFS as the Belgian Congo, effectively removing Leopold from power. Just prior to releasing sovereignty over the CFS, Leopold destroyed all evidence of his activities in the CFS, including the archives of its Departments of Finance and the Interior.[3] The Belgian parliament refused to hold any formal commission of inquiry into the human rights abuses that had occurred in the CFS. Over the next few decades, inhumane practices in the Belgian Congo continued and a huge number of Congolese remained enslaved.[4] By 1959, Belgium power began to erode due to a series of riots in Leopoldville (today Kinshasa). The Congo was emancipated from Belgium on June 30, 1960, and the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo was established.

From 1885 to 1908, it is estimated that the Congolese native population decreased by about ten million people.[2] Historian Adam Hochshild identifies a number of causes for this loss under Leopold’s reign—murder, starvation, exhaustion and exposure, disease, and plummeting birth rates. Congolese historian Ndaywel e Nziem estimates the death toll at thirteen million.[7]  Leopold capitalized on the vast wealth extracted in ivory and rubber during his twenty-three year reign of terror in the CFS. He spent some of this wealth by constructing grand palaces and monuments including the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. Ironically, Leopold never visited the kingdom in which he committed such atrocities, to witness the tragedy of his greed.
Russell Schimmer, GSP, Yale University

Dean Pavlakis adds: There is some debate over whether the Congo catastrophe qualifies as genocide, because the Congo state did not act with the intent of eliminating one or more ethnic groups.[2] However, the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide includes deliberate killings, for whatever motive, of members of an ethnic group with the intent to destroy them as such, “in whole or in part.” This suggests that the Congo Free State, in deciding to wipe out particular ethnic groups that resisted its inhuman practices, did indeed practice genocide.[8]

REFERENCES
[1] Delathuy, A. M. De Kongo Staat van Leopold II: Het Verloren Paradijs. Standaard Uitgeverij n.v., Antwerpen, 1989.
[2] Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost : A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1998.
[3] Ewans, Martin. European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State and its Aftermath. RoutledgeCurzon, New York, 2002.
[4] ERGO, André-Bernard. Congo Belge: La colonie assassinée. L’Harmattan, Paris, 2008.
[5] Larned, J. N. The Congo. History for Ready Reference: From the Best Historians, Biographers, and Specialists, Volume VII− Recent History (1901-1910) A to Z. The C. A. Nichols Co.. Springfield, Mass., 1910.
[6] Jones, Adam. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Routledge, London and New York, 2006, p.42.
[7] Wrong, Michela. “Belgium confronts its heart of darkness” in The  Independent, February 23, 2005. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/belgium-confronts-its-heart-of-darkness-484374.html. Accessed October 2011.  
[8] Kiernan, Ben. “From Irish Famine to Congo Reform: Nineteenth-Century Roots of International Human Rights Law and Activism,” in R. Provost and P. Akhavan (eds.), Confronting Genocide, Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice 7, Springer, Heidelberg-London-New York, 2011, 13-43.  

Congo history

Kongo, kingdom of (kôngˈgō), former state of W central Africa, founded in the 14th cent. In the 15th cent. the kingdom stretched from the Congo River in the north to the Loje River in the south and from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to beyond the Kwango River in the east. Several smaller autonomous states to the south and east paid tribute to it. Kongo was ruled by the manikongo, or king, and was divided into six provinces, each administered by a governor appointed by the manikongo.

In 1482, Diogo Cão, a Portuguese explorer, visited the kingdom, and the reigning manikongo, Nzinga Nkuwu, was favorably impressed with Portuguese culture. In 1491, Portuguese missionaries, soldiers, and artisans were welcomed at Mbanza, the capital of the kingdom. The missionaries soon gained converts, including Nzinga Nkuwu (who took the name João I), and the soldiers helped the manikongo defeat an internal rebellion.

The next manikongo, Afonso I (reigned 1505–43), was raised as a Christian and attempted to convert the kingdom to Christianity and European ways. However, the Portuguese residents in Kongo were primarily interested in increasing their private fortunes (especially through capturing Africans and selling them into slavery), and, despite the attempts of King Manuel I of Portugal to channel the efforts of his subjects into constructive projects, the continued rapaciousness of the Portuguese played a major part in weakening the kingdom and reducing the hold of the capital (renamed São Salvador) over the provinces.

After the death of Afonso, Kongo declined rapidly and suffered major civil wars. The Portuguese shifted their interest southward to the kingdom of Ndongo and helped Ndongo defeat Kongo in 1556. However, in 1569 the Portuguese aided Kongo by helping to repel an invasion from the east by a Lunda ethnic group. The slave trade, which undermined the social structure of Kongo, continued to weaken the authority of the manikongo.

In 1641, Manikongo Garcia II allied himself with the Dutch in an attempt to control Portuguese slave traders, but in 1665 a Portuguese force decisively defeated the army of Kongo and from that time onward the manikongo was little more than a vassal of Portugal. The kingdom disintegrated into a number of small states, all controlled to varying degrees by the Portuguese. The area of Kongo was incorporated mostly into Angola and partly into the Independent State of the Congo in the late 19th cent.