Henry Morton Stanley

Most famous for allegedly uttering the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume," Henry Morton Stanley was one of the most stanleypic well-known of all nineteenth-century British explorers. In his early years (as a naturalized American) he led a roving life, fighting in the American Civil War, serving in the merchant marine and the federal navy, and reporting as a journalist on the early days of frontier expansion. He became famous when the New York Herald commissioned him to "find Livingstone" in Africa.

After finding Robert Livingstone (no mean feat, since Livingstone was living in the interior of Zanzibar, where even his friends could not find him), and following in the footsteps of Livingstone, Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, and others, Stanley went on to explore the rivers and lakes of central Africa. Through the Dark Continent (1877) is his account of those explorations. Failing to interest the British government in developing the Congo, Stanley accepted the invitation of King Leopold of Belgium to explore the region -- an expedition that led to the establishment of the "Congo Free State" under the sovereignty of King Leopold, and to Stanley's book, The Founding of the Congo Free State (1885). Stanley continued to explore and write until the end of the century, producing In Darkest Africa in 1890 and Through South Africa in 1898. He died in England in 1904.

Leopold and Hitler (the hidden holocaust)

The following is a 1999 book review from the Guardian of the landmark book, "King Leopold's Ghost", by Adam Hochschild, in which Hochschild makes the claim that Leopold's mass murder in the Congo was on par or worse than what Adolph Hitler did to the Jews of Western and Eastern Europe during World War II:

As the sun sank slowly over Brussels, its fading rays glinted off the glass domes and towers of the magnificent Victorian greenhouses in the grounds of the royal palace at Laeken. Built to celebrate King Leopold II's acquisition of the Congo a century ago, the greenhouses stretch for more than half a mile and are among the most visible and grandiose remaining symbols of a once enormous African empire, 60 times the size of Belgium. The colony was the largest private estate ever acquired by a single man - and one he never saw.

It is said that when he showed his nephew the greenhouses, the youth gasped that they were like a little Versailles. 'Little?' snorted the king.
Leopold always did think big. But the row over the king's notorious stewardship of his African territories still has the ability to evoke raw emotions in a country trying to come to terms with a brutal colonial past.

The question is: was the spade-bearded old reprobate a mass-murderer, the first genocidalist of modern times, responsible for the death of more Africans than the Nazis killed Jews? Was his equatorial empire, the setting for Conrad's Heart of Darkness and the terrible Kurtz with the human heads dangling round his garden, the scene of a largely forgotten holocaust? The old wounds have been re-opened by the publication of a book called King Leopold's Ghost, by the American author Adam Hochschild, which has brought howls of rage from Belgium's ageing colonials and some professional historians even as it has climbed the country's best-seller lists.

The debate over Belgium's colonial legacy could not be more timely. In the realm beyond the palace walls where Leopold's great grandson Albert II is now king, the openly racist extreme rightwing Vlaams Blok, which blames much of the country's ills on coloured immigrants from Africa, is bidding to become one of the biggest parties in next month's elections.

And the planes which soar over the greenhouses as they depart Brussels sometimes carry human cargo - black asylum seekers being unceremoniously deported, occasionally naked and still bleeding, back to Africa. Last September, the Belgian immigration service succeeded in suffocating one of them, a Nigerian woman called Semira Adamu, 20, on board the plane that was to take her home, by shoving her head under a pillow. The police videoed themselves chatting and laughing while they pushed her head down. It took them 20 minutes to kill her.

The history of Leopold's rule over the Congo has long been known. It was first exposed by American and British writers and campaigners at the turn of the century - publicity which eventually forced the king to hand the country which had been his private fiefdom over to Belgium.

But Hochschild's book has hit a raw nerve for a new generation with its vividly drawn picture of a voracious king anxious to maximise his earnings from the proceeds of rubber and ivory. It is clear that many of Leopold's officials in the depots up the Congo river terrorised the local inhabitants, forcing them to work under the threat of having their hands and feet - or those of their children - cut off. Women were raped, men were executed and villages were burned in pursuit of profit for the king.

But what has stuck in the gut of Belgian historians is Hochschild's claim that 10 million people may have died in a forgotten holocaust. In outrage, the now ageing Belgian officials who worked in the Congo in later years have taken to the internet with a 10-page message claiming that maybe only half a dozen people had their hands chopped off, and that even that was done by native troops. They argue that American and British writers have highlighted the Congo to distract attention from the contemporary massacre of the North American indians and the Boer War.

Under the headline 'a scandalous book', members of the Royal Belgian Union for Overseas Territories claim: 'There is nothing that could compare with the horrors of Hitler and Stalin, or the deliberate massacres of the Indian, Tasmanian and Aboriginal populations. A black legend has been created by polemicists and British and American journalists feeding off the imaginations of novelists and the re-writers of history.' Professor Jean Stengers, a leading historian of the period, says: 'Terrible things happened, but Hochschild is exaggerating. It is absurd to say so many millions died. I don't attach so much significance to his book. In two or three years' time, it will be forgotten.' Leopold's British biographer, Barbara Emerson, agrees: 'I think it is a very shoddy piece of work. Leopold did not start genocide. He was greedy for money and chose not to interest himself when things got out of control. Part of Belgian society is still very defensive. People with Congo connections say we were not so awful as that, we reformed the Congo and had a decent administration there.' Stengers acknowledges that the population of the Congo shrank dramatically in the 30 years after Leopold took over, though exact figures are hard to establish since no one knows how many inhabited the vast jungles in the 1880s.

It is true too that some of those reporting scandals had their own knives to grind. Some were Protestant missionaries who were rivals to Belgian Catholics in the region. Yet Leopold certainly emerges as an unattractive figure, described as a young man by his cousin Queen Victoria as an 'unfit, idle and unpromising an heir apparent as ever was known' and by Disraeli as having 'such a nose as a young prince has in a fairy tale, who has been banned by a malignant fairy.' As king, he did not bother to deny charges in a London court that he had sex with child prostitutes. When the bishop of Ostend told him that people were saying he had a mistress, he is reputed to have replied benignly: 'People tell me the same about you, your Grace. But of course I choose not to believe them.' His wiliness in convincing the world that he had only humanitarian motives in annexing the Congo, in persuading the Belgian government essentially to pay for his purchase and in buying up journalists, including the great explorer Henry Morton Stanley, to promote his cause show both cunning and skill.
Emerson claims Leopold was appalled to hear about the atrocities in his domain, but dug his heels in when he was attacked in the foreign press. He did indeed apparently write to his secretary of state: 'These horrors must end or I will retire from the Congo. I will not be splattered with blood and mud: it is essential that any abuses cease.' But the man who (as Queen Victoria said) had the habit of saying 'disagreeable things to people' was also reputed to have snorted: 'Cut off hands - that's idiotic. I'd cut off all the rest of them, but not hands. That's the one thing I need in the Congo.' Although few now defend him, strange things happen even today when the Congo record is challenged. Currently circulating on the internet is an anguished claim by a student in Brussels called Joseph Mbeka alleging he his thesis marked a failure when he cited Hochschild's book: 'My director turned his back on me.' Daniel Vangroenweghe, a Belgian anthropologist who also published a critical book about the period 15 years ago, says: 'Senior people tried to get me sacked at the time. Questions were asked in parliament and my work was subjected to an official inspection.' At a large chateau outside Brussels in Tervuren is the Musee Royal de l'Afrique, which Leopold was eventually shamed into setting up to prove his philanthropic credentials. It contains the largest African ethnographic collection in the world, rooms full of stuffed animals and artefacts including shields, spears, deities, drums and masks, a 60ft-long war canoe, even Stanley's leather suitcase.

There is one small watercolour of a native being flogged, but a visitor would be hard-pressed to spot any other reference to the dark side of Leopold's regime. Dust hangs over the place. A curator has said changes are under consideration 'but absolutely not because of the recent disreputable book by an American'.

The real legacy of Leopold and of the Belgians who ran the country until they were bloodily booted out in 1960 has been the chaos in the region ever since and a rapacity among rulers such as Mobutu Sese Seko which outstripped even the king's. Leopold made £3m in 10 years between 1896 and 1906, Mobutu filched at least £3bn. When the Belgians left there were only three Africans in managerial positions in the Congo's administration and fewer than 30 graduates in the entire country.
Vangroenweghe says: 'Talk of whether Leopold killed 10 million people or five million is beside the point, it was still too many.' I asked Belgium's prime minister, Jean-Luc Dehaene, about the Congo legacy this week. 'The colonial past is completely past,' he said. 'There is really no strong emotional link any more. It does not move the people. It's part of the past. It's history.'

Children of Congo: From War to Witches

Please check out this very important documentary about the plight of the children of Congo.

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/children_of_congo_from_war_to_witches

The following is a New York Times review of "War Witch":

Atrocities, Through a Child’s Eyes

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: February 28, 2013

New York Times

“Respect your guns. They are your mother and your father.” In “War Witch,” those orders are barked at orphaned African children who have been kidnapped and conscripted into a rebel army after their village has been decimated and their parents slain.

The adolescent captives in this mesmerizing, cinematic hallucination are herded into a forest, where they are handed AK-47s and trained to be soldiers under a warlord known as the Great Tiger. Although the location is identified only as sub-Saharan Africa, “War Witch” was filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ground zero of endless carnage and unspeakable atrocities.

The only references to the issues of the war are fleeting mentions of coltan, which is short for columbite-tantalite, a black, metallic ore used in cell phones. Congo produces more than 60 percent of the world’s supply and is the site of a coltan gold rush.

Because the narrative is driven by the sporadic off-screen narration of Komona (Rachel Mwanza) — a soft-voiced girl with spiky, braided hair, who is 12 when the story begins and 14 when it ends — “War Witch” barely acknowledges the political and economic factors behind the strife. The combatants are identified only as the government and the rebels. The villagers are caught in the squeeze.

The story unfolds as a child’s magical realist fable, haunted by ghosts in the imagination of the girl, who addresses her remarks to her unborn child, the product of rape. Komona ominously voices her doubts about “whether God will give me the strength to love you,” and she contemplates drowning her baby when it is born. The film examines the concepts of good and evil in the mind of a child who is repeatedly forced to do what she calls “bad things” but maintains an elemental moral sense.

The fourth feature directed by Kim Nguyen, a Montreal-based filmmaker of Vietnamese descent, “War Witch” shows a lot of gunfire but little actual bloodshed. There is nothing so overtly grisly that you might want to avert your eyes. This discretion lends the film an almost disembodied feeling, as if the horrors Komona witnesses and perpetuates were somehow unreal to her, although they are not.

In the opening scene she is given a gun and told to choose between shooting her parents, who huddle in front of her, or watching them come to a much more painful end via machete. With tears in her eyes, she shoots them. Then, with other captives, she is whisked by motorized canoe up the river and led into a forest where training exercises immediately commence. New recruits are regularly beaten and face near-starvation.

Komona’s salvation is her imagination. Stimulated by “magic milk,” a hallucinogen found in sap, she has visions of ghosts in the trees (actors in white body paint, their eyes blank), including those of her parents, who warn her of the enemy’s proximity. When she narrowly escapes an ambush after the ghosts alert her to danger, word of her supernatural gifts gets back to the Great Tiger (Mizinga Mwinga), who summons her to his side and dubs her his protective “war witch.”

With her only friend, Magician (Serge Kanyinda), a slightly older albino boy who introduced her to the sap, she flees the rebel army. The movie’s middle section is an idyll during which Magician asks Komona to marry him. She refuses unless he catches her a white rooster, and his comical quest for this elusive prize, which is reputed not to exist, is a respite from the rest of the film’s horrors.

For a time, the couple stay with Magician’s uncle, Butcher (Ralph Prosper), who witnessed acts against his family that were so barbarous that Komona refuses to describe them. This peaceful section is buoyed by sparkling fragments of African pop music.

Their euphoria is short-lived. The Great Tiger, needing his war witch, dispatches his soldiers to find Komona, and she is dragged back into the forest, where she becomes the sexual slave of a hateful commander who impregnates her; she wreaks an excruciating revenge.

Komona’s ultimate desire is to return to her village and bury her parents’ remains so that her child will not grow up cursed. And the movie reaches a tentative peace as she ritually buries what few bones she can find in shallow pockets of sand.

Superstition, witchcraft, exorcism, talismans that ward off evil: in this land of the supernatural, irrationality prevails. But “War Witch” is so cleareyed that it makes you wonder how much more irrational this world is than the so-called civilized one under its camouflage of material wealth.

The movie is committed to revealing the world through Komona’s eyes, and you never feel a taint of voyeurism or condescension. It stays true to her.

King Afonso I

We cannot reckon how great the damage is, since the merchants daily seize our subjects, sons of the land and sons of our noblemen, vassals and relatives ... and cause them to be sold; and so great, Sir, is their corruption and licentiousness that our country is being utterly depopulated.

—Afonso I, in a letter to King João of Portugal, 1526

In 1506, Nzinga Mbemba, also known as Afonso I, succeeded his father, Nzinga Nkuwu, after a battle with his brother. Afonso I ruled for thirty-seven years, the longest reign in Kongo history. While his father maintained limited contact with the Portugese and viewed Christianity as a cult headed by them, Afonso I was a devout Christian who gladly welcomed trade with the Portugese.

  

Immediately upon his accession, Afonso started building churches and made Catholicism the state religion, under the aegis of his son Henrique, an ordained Catholic bishop. He banned and burned all non-Christian idols and any paraphernalia associated with magic and sorcery. In addition, he fashioned his court after the court of Lisbon and embarked on a modernization program, focusing on the education of the elite.

The economy was based mainly on the tribute system where the king derived his revenue from the trade in ivory and raffia fabric, supplemented by trade tolls and taxes. The currency, nzimbu shells which came from the fishing grounds at Luanda, was monopolized by the king. Afonso controlled the trade himself. At first, trade between Kongo and Portugal was conducted in an atmosphere of peace and friendship, with letters being exchanged between King Afonso and his "royal brother," King Manuel.

In 1512, the famous regimento issued by the Portugese declared, in the first part, that it was a "civilizing mission" using, as Duffy states, "tact and discretion... to create where possible an African parallel to Portugese society." However, in the second part, Manuel was attentive to "material gain" stating that "this expedition has cost us much: it would be unreasonable to send it home with empty hands. Although our principal wish is to serve God and the pleasure of the King, he should... fill the ships with slaves, or copper, or ivory." Afonso wanted technical aid from the Portugese to provide his subjects with the skills and education available in Europe. The Portugese, however, were interested in slaves. Subsequently, commerce degenerated into the inhuman slave trade, which brutalized Africans and denied them their humanity.

From 1514, the slave trade became an integral part of the economy. Afonso's attempts to control and later abolish the slave trade were futile, as the Portugese appetite for slaves was insatiable.

By 1516, Kongo was exporting 4,000 slaves annually until 1540, when it increased to approximately 7,000. The Portugese pressed for more slaves, and the demands of the tribute system forced Afonso to comply with their excessive demands. The standard source of slaves—war captives and criminals—was drying up and new sources—slave raiding and buying slaves from the Tio region with nzimbu shells—were found. The revenue from the slave trade financed the hiring of priests, artisans, and teachers, and purchased luxury items for the nobility.

Harried by the Portugese and the slave trade, Afonso I had to secure the allegiance of the nobility to maintain his position as mwene Kongo. Therefore, all the revenue from the slave trade was eventually disbursed to the nobility. Social and political life in Kongo were transformed as the gap between the educated, Christianized nobility and the masses increased, leading to the shameful exploitation of the latter.

Before Afonso came to the throne, the Portugese were fascinated with the mythical gold mines of Kongo. In addition to the trade in slaves, they also wanted to exploit the mineral wealth of Kongo. However, Afonso and successive rulers maintained control over the copper of Bembe and the working of Mbanza Kongo iron.

Trade with the Portugese had always been unequal, and with the slave trade, the Portugese transgressed all boundaries to satisfy their craving for African slaves. Afonso balanced the forces affecting his kingdom by catering to the indulgences of the nobility. He survived several efforts to topple him, including an assassination attempt by the Portugese in 1540.

Afonso died in 1543.