When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren't Called 'Hitler'

[Miguel M]

When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren't Called 'Hitler'

Take a look at this picture. Do you know who it is?

Most people haven’t heard of him.

But you should have. When you see his face or hear his name you should get as sick in your stomach as when you read about Mussolini or Hitler or see one of their pictures. You see, he killed over 10 million people in the Congo.

His name is King Leopold II of Belgium.

Article --> here.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Historians know all about Leopold...

he wasn't simply a power-mad tyrant like Ivan the Terrible, or a desperate defender of his realm like Vlad the Impaler.

No, he was simply driven by greed and cruelty satisfying that greed.
Imagine Jim Fisk as a king:

Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorized his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants. From the beginning, Leopold essentially ignored these conditions. He ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal enrichment. He used great sums of the money from this exploitation for public and private construction projects in Belgium during this period. He donated the private buildings to the state before his death, to preserve them for Belgium.

Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the native population to harvest and process rubber. Leopold's regime was characterized by notorious systematic brutality; men, women and children had hands amputated for failing to deliver their quota of rubber; thousands were sold into slavery. These and other facts were established at the time by eyewitness testimony to and on-site inspection by an international Commission of Inquiry (1904). Millions of the Congolese people died: modern estimates range from one million to 15 million deaths, with a consensus growing around 10 million. Several historians argue against this figure due to the absence of reliable censuses, the enormous mortality of diseases such as smallpox or sleeping sickness, and the fact that there were only 175 administrative agents in charge of rubber exploitation.[2][3]

Reports of deaths and abuse induced the Belgian government to develop a civil administration, free from Leopold's oversight, for the Congo in 1908.

Belgium was not trying to be a world power, so was largely ignored.

His sins being in Africa, not Europe or North America, is likely the main reason they are not so well known.

[BlueMTexpat]

2. Thanks for highlighting this

extra information.

Although Leopold was no longer in the picture by then, Belgium also had a pivotal role in one of the bloodiest African genocides of the 20th century.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/etc/cron.html

From the link:

1918 Under the Treaty of Versailles the former German colony of Rwanda-Urundi is made a League of Nations protectorate to be governed by Belgium. The two territories (later to become Rwanda and Burundi) are administered separately under two different Tutsi monarchs.

Both Germany and Belgium turned the traditional Hutu-Tutsi relationship into a class system. The minority Tutsi (14%) are favored over the Hutus (85%) and given privileges and western-style education. The Belgians used the Tutsi minority to enforce their rule.

1926 Belgians introduce a system of ethnic identity cards differentiating Hutus from Tutsis.
....

And so on and so forth until the inevitable tragedy ensued.

[secondwind]

3. Thanks for posting this. Too horrific for me, but this should not be kept hidden.

[choie]

4. An excellent.book on the subject

Is king Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild.

[Louis1895]

5. Totally agree!

Very well written book.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Saw the post and pic and immediately blurted out "Leopold"

He and Cecil Rhodes were complete travesties to the African continent.

[Tanuki]

7. I highly recommend the book King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild

https://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905

"Product description

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million—all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated.King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo—too long forgotten—onto the conscience of the West.

Review

"An enthralling story, full of fascinating characters, intense drama, high adventure, deceitful manipulations, courageous truth-telling, and splendid moral fervor . . .A work of history that reads like a novel." Christian Science Monitor 

"As Hochschild's brilliant book demonstrates, the great Congo scandal prefigured our own times . . . This book must be read and reread."--Neal Ascherson The Los Angeles Times 

"A vivid, novelistic narrative that makes the reader acutely aware of the magnitude of the horror perpetrated by King Leopold and his minions." The New York Times 

"King Leopold’s Ghost is a remarkable achievement, hugely satisfying on many levels. It overwhelmed me in the way Heart of Darkness did when I first read it—and for precisely the same reasons: as a revelation of the horror that had been hidden in the Congo." -- Paul Theroux 

"Carefully researched and vigorously told, King Leopold’s Ghost does what good history always does -- expands the memory of the human race." The Houston Chronicle

[geardaddy]

9. Bookmarking your suggestion.

[geardaddy]

8. I have been reading up on him in the past few years

His atrocities should be recognized as on par with Hitler and the North and South American genocide of Native peoples.

[Odoreida]

10. Is this a digression?

Leopold was a long time ago, but if what has been going on in the Congo recently had happened in Europe, it would be called a "World War".