Robyn: 0:00

It seems strange to see a king destroying a nation and laying waste a country for mere sordid money's sake. And solely and only for that.

Thad: 0:32

Who was King Leopold II? Where was he a king of? And uh what's going on with him?

Robyn: 0:40

This is he's from Belgium, and this is the mid to late 1800s. And I think it's important to understand what was going on in the world. So where he was coming from, just set setting the scene. So, first of all, he was related to Queen Victoria of England. Uh, she thought he was really boring. She liked his wife, but no, really, like she told people to the effect that he was really boring.

Thad: 1:08

She went around and was like, you know what, King Leopold II, that guy, snoozer.

Robyn: 1:14

The worst. No, um, but yeah, she she liked his wife though, which incidentally he didn't like his wife, but you know, that's that's a story for another time. His sister became Empress of Mexico, and she was Austrian, so that's a fun story.

Thad: 1:31

Well, this is very this sounds like people are getting around a lot here.

Robyn: 1:35

Well, they really are. Like relatives were connected everywhere in places of power, but I think what's really important to look at here is there were a lot of kings, queens, you know, what we would look at as like the executive branch, and then like they were just kind of testing out all over the world how a constitutional monarchy would work. And you see it in Germany, and you see it in England and Belgium, and oh my gosh, the United States was just chaos because that was the end of the Civil War, and it was like, well, who knows what's happening, especially since half of the country called it the war of northern aggression, and some people still do.

Thad: 2:20

I mean, it it was, right? Yeah, they were very aggressive. They were. I being from the south, I feel like I was aggressed upon.

Robyn: 2:28

Yeah, I was oppressed.

Thad: 2:29

Yes.

Robyn: 2:34

Well, it is it is interesting to look at the different names that people give wars. For example, which we're gonna talk about soon, the opium war, which was, of course, over opium. Um the Chinese prefer to call it the Anglo-Chinese War.

Thad: 2:49

Uh scene for scene.

Robyn: 2:50

Yeah. So, you know, you have the Spanish-American War, and the Spanish are like, yeah, this was the year of devastation or something like that.

Thad: 3:00

It's so really it depends on which side of the word you're on as to what you would call it.

Robyn: 3:04

Yeah, everyone has like their own thing going on. But we have with Leopold the same type thing. There were he had a cabinet and a parliament underneath him, and they actually had more power than in a lot of places. There was actually a parade once in Belgium, if you turned to Wilhelm, the Kaiser of Germany, and said, There's really nothing left for us kings but money, because he was just frustrated that parliament wouldn't pass some of the military things he wanted passed. But under him, a lot of reforms did happen. They were passed by parliament and the cabinet. And of course, different parties were in charge at different times. The Labor Party, the Conservative Party, the Labor Party was all for, you know, public education, free for everyone. Conservatives, not so much. Um, so it only lasted about four years in there. But while he was king, there became the the work week that they got Sundays off. And he instituted or were instituted child labor laws and uh for in factories and things. And he um and there were also well, universal male suffrage happened under his time. And we need to see, like, in the world at that time, you know, I I just talked about factories and stuff. This was around the time that the second industrial revolution was happening. The first one was with textiles and just beginning to get the factory process started. Um, but there was a lot of you know problems within countries all over the world because they were getting to the point of mass production and chemicals and electricity. And so that's why the factory reforms meant so much. He was called the Builder King because, well, he built a lot of stuff. He built statues of himself. As one does, as one is want to do, and museums and a cathedral. So when we look at him, we're looking at basically an executive branch guy who isn't happy with Parliament and the cabinet. They wouldn't pass some of the military things that he wanted passed, was looking for a way to make more money for himself, just himself, not to share with Belgium or anything. And so that's the context that we have Leopold in right now.

Thad: 5:42

So a guy who was, yeah, sounds like he was doing quite a bit of good things back home.

Robyn: 5:48

They were getting done under him.

Thad: 5:50

Okay, so so maybe he doesn't deserve all the credit. Uh he you have a parliament that's doing a lot of the and cabinet. But but he's the guy, he's the he's the figurehead, and things are going okay. But he said he looks around and says, Man, I've got a lot of great stuff and I've got a lot of great statues, but what I really could use is some more money.

Robyn: 6:09

Yes. And the way he sought to get that was through getting colonies, which a lot of countries had around the world, a lot of European countries. Africa, like even in 1870, was owned, like 80% of it was under African rule. They didn't have like the colonies and things that they had like right before World War I. So he saw going in there into Africa as making a colony. In fact, he uh he told the Belgian people, um, quote, the homeland may be our headquarters, but our objective must be the world. There are no small countries, there are only small minds. When people are great, they can, no matter how narrow the boundaries, achieve great things. So, lucky for Leopold, that was a common theme around the world in Europe. And in 1884, Ottawa and Bismarck, who was from Germany, set up a conference in Berlin. Now, Germany at this time was kind of in the same boat where it's a small country, it's mainly landlocked, and they were also trying to get colonies. Uh, Belgium had only been a constitutional monarchy since like the 1850s, and Germany was just getting established in the early 1870s. So they were kind of in the same boat. Bismarck, who we'll talk about, I'm sure, at some point, people make him like say he's responsible for the treaties and things that started World War I. So he he was very involved in this. They called, like, I think 14 white men to come carve up Africa into different territories. And what Leopold said to an aide, I think when he was in London, was quote, I do not want to miss a good chance of getting a slice of this magnificent African cake. So he sent someone to the Berlin conference to go carve out a piece of this for Belgium.

Thad: 8:22

So at the time, it sounds like was this mostly the European powers getting together and deciding that, hey, you know what? It it's time to make colonies because that's where it's at.

Robyn: 8:33

Um, yeah. Russia was there, but you know, not not too much of the Asian, definitely, you know, not Canada. It was under Great Britain, you know, Greenland, no part of it.

Thad: 8:47

All right, it's a good thing. Canada's clear. Like, nope, nope.

Robyn: 8:50

And Greenland.

Thad: 8:51

Uh Greenland. Yeah. Okay, right.

Robyn: 8:52

Absolutely.

Thad: 8:53

Just want to make it clear that those guys were not involved in this carving up the African cake situation.

Robyn: 8:58

Right.

Thad: 8:58

Okay.

Robyn: 8:59

Yes.

Thad: 8:59

All right. So they went, they went into the conference. What did Leopold get his cake? I'm assuming since since this is the show about Leopold and he he got something out of it. What what did he get?

Robyn: 9:12

Well, so he sent uh a guy, Henry Morton Stanley, whose real name was John Rollins, but he changed it because he thought it sounded better.

Thad: 9:22

Um Henry Morton Stanley? Yes. That's like three first names.

Robyn: 9:25

Right. I I know he was a very interesting guy, very into himself and the things that he had done.

Thad: 9:34

And it's for in his three first names. No, that's fantastic.

Robyn: 9:37

Um and he had already gone on an expedition to Africa in I think the early 70s, 18, 1870s, to go look for the Scottish missionary and Dr. Um Dr. Henry Livingstone. And I mean, you y'all may have heard the story of the man who went up and to him and said to the only other white man he'd seen, you know, in days, Dr. Livingstone, I presume. Well, Henry uh Henry Morton Stanley said that he was the guy that said that, and he's the one that wrote it down, I think, in his uh like I think it's volume one of his expeditions in the dark continent, or one of the many, many things he wrote. But he credited himself with saying that.

Thad: 10:20

So he sounds like a presumptuous guy.

Robyn: 10:24

Uh yes. But you know, he he had a pretty good well grasp on things. Well, let me let me read you actually something he wrote to Leopold as he was getting into the Congo, as he was meeting the Congolese people. Right. Oh, quite okay. Quote We shall require but mere contact, he wrote, to satisfy the natives that our intentions are pure and honorable, seeking their own good materially and socially, more than our own interests. We go to spread blessings, arise from amiable and just intercourse with people who have been strangers to them. So this was written by uh published later by uh Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who talked about Stanley and said that he was a hard man, but he he would say what he meant when he wrote things. And so it's worth it's worth looking at here that Stanley really was talking, you know, pretty highly of the Africans as he says as he's continu as Stanley's continuing to Leopold, Bolobo is a great center for the ivory and camwood powder trade, principally because its people are so enterprising. He continued, these people were really acquainted with many lands and tribes on the upper Congo, from Stanley Pool to Apoto, a distance of 6,000 miles, they knew every landing place on the river banks, all the ups and downs of savage life, all the profits and losses derived from barter, all the diplomatic arts used by tactful savages, were all well known and as well as the Roman alphabet to us. No wonder all this commercial knowledge had left its traces on their faces. Indeed, it's the same as in our own cities in Europe. Know you not the military man among you, the lawyer and the merchant, the banker, the artist, or the poet? It is the same in Africa, more especially on the Congo, where the people are so devoted to trade. During the few days of our mutual intercourse, they gave us high ideas of their quality, industry after their own style, not being the least conspicuous. End quote.

Thad: 12:53

So Stanley sounds like he had a pretty high opinion of the Congolese people. Yes. So it sounds like Stanley was doing uh pretty good, pretty good work here. What what happened at the the uh the Berlin Conference?

Robyn: 13:08

Well, uh Sir Arthur Clunen Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock he was most famous for the Sherlock Holmes books, wrote and published in 1909, The Crime and the Congo. And this is what he said. Quote, with his chief of treaties in his portfolio, the King of the Belgians now approached the powers with high sentiments of humanitarianism, and with a definite request the state which he was forming should receive some recognized status among the nations. Was he at this time consciously hypocritical? Did he already foresee how widely his future actions would differ from his present professions? Is it a problem it is a problem which will interest historians in the future, who may have more materials than upon which we are to form judgment? On the one hand, there was a furtive secrecy about the evolution of his plans and the dispatch of his expeditions, which should have no place in philanthropic enterprise. On the other hand, there are limits to human powers of deception, and it is almost inconceivable that a man who was acting a part could so completely deceive the whole civilized world. It is more probable, as it seems to me, that his ambitious mind discerned that it was possible for him to acquire a field of action, which his small kingdom could not give in mixing himself with the affairs of Africa. He chose the obvious path, that of civilizing and elevating mission, taking the line of least resistance without any definite idea where it might lead him. Once faced with the facts, his astute brain perceived the great material possibilities of this country. His early dreams faded away to be replaced by unscrupulous cupidity, and step by step he was led downward until he, a man of holy aspirations in 1885, stands now in 1909 with such a cloud of terrible direct personal responsibility resting upon him, as no man in modern European history had to bear. Indeed, in it is indeed ludicrous with our knowledge of the outcome to read the declarations of the king and of his representatives at that time. They were actually forming the strictest of commercial monopolies, an organization which was destined to crush out all general private trade in a country as large as the whole of Europe, with Russia omitted. That was the admitted outcome of their enterprise. End quote.

Thad: 15:53

He wanted to be a missionary.

Robyn: 15:54

Yeah, rehabilitate them, give them a better life. You know, he may have actually meant that at the time. What Doyle's saying, who was a contemporary, you know, we don't really know what he thought at this time. We just know that he wanted the Congo.

Thad: 16:11

To to make it better.

Robyn: 16:12

Yes, to make it a better place.

Thad: 16:14

So you mentioned that uh trees were signed. How how did they get those trees? What what was like like what did it look like from the perspective of Congolese people there? Um, these these Europeans coming in, uh signing treaties. What what was that like? What was life like for them?

Robyn: 16:33

Well, so you know, it was hundreds of small villages everywhere, and small groups of white men, mercenaries, Europeans, Belgian generals, and Congolese people they'd already found would come into a village, make a treaty. If the villagers said, nah, that doesn't sound good to us, well, then sometimes they would just kill them all. Um, but a lot of times it was f it was friendly and there were treaties made, you know, you go get rubber for us, go get things for us, and we will give you something in return. Clothes, food, you know, random things that really meant nothing to the Belgians. Yeah.

Thad: 17:12

But so it sounds like the Belgians went in along with did they send any missionaries as well?

Robyn: 17:18

Well, so Leopold allowed missionaries from well, they were Dutch missionaries and some from England, some from America. So, yes, missionaries were there.

Thad: 17:28

So it sounds like, at least when they were first establishing uh presence in the Congo, it sounds like they were just engaging in what you would think of as regular trade.

Robyn: 17:39

Um yes, well, that was you know the premise of it. Um we'll talk about in a few minutes uh how a man, E. D. Morrell, saw that this was not exactly the case. He worked on the docks and would notice the discrepancies. Uh, but we'll talk about him in a minute. But the Belgiums were mainly looking for rubber, and like I said, a lot of the you know treaties were based on also like how much rubber they were able to get. And because at the time people were beginning to actually be able to mass produce back to the second industrial revolution, tires and for bicycles and automobiles, and rubber was a big thing to have. And the fact that the um that the Congo had huge jungles of rubber trees provided Leopold with the chance to get that.

Thad: 18:35

Gotcha. So rubber was a valuable resource at that point in time.

Robyn: 18:38

Yes. And what Leopold did, and I and I say Leopold because this had nothing to do with the Belgian government at all. He himself never visited the Congo, but it was all under his name. You can trace, you know, there were front organizations all the way down, but everything went back to him. But he set up what was called Force Publique, which was a combination of some Belgium's like military people, armed forces, and uh and a lot from the villages. And in 1885 he said, oh, they're just humanitarians, they're there to help and everything. But that became not the case as different, like missionaries and and people that visited the Congo came back with stories of what it was like. This force had better weapons than anyone else around them, and they had, now I think this is interesting, they used hippo tails as whips. I know that sounds horrible, but evidently they were it was really bad. Like one of the worst. They would people they would flog people to death with them. And anyway, so in 1891, there were about 3,500 of these people, and by 1900 there were 19,000.

Thad: 20:03

Well, that's a force.

Robyn: 20:04

Yeah, it well, yes.

Thad: 20:06

Also a lot of hippo tails.

Robyn: 20:08

Well, I don't honestly know how many hippo tails they used, but it was an issue for uh for how many the amount of guns.

Thad: 20:17

Look, man, if I'm gonna be in the Congo as a humanitarian force publique, I'd better get a hippo tail. Just saying.

Robyn: 20:26

Well, okay. You might have to go try to get that yourself. But hippo teeth have ivory in them, so maybe you could use the ivory too.

Thad: 20:35

So you get ivory and a tail. All you have to do is face down a hippo. Right. That sounds like a sounds like a story for another time. Probably a different podcast.

Robyn: 20:44

Totally. One entirely on hippos because they're my favorite animal. Um, anyway, and so these stories started coming out. One villager who lived through this, he was talking about what life was like to p to be he was being interviewed after Leopold was no longer in the Congo and it was under the Belgian government.

Thad: 21:05

Yeah.

Robyn: 21:06

He said that the uh that the blacks that were the force publique, quote, wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each soldier who had to bring them in baskets. A village which refused to provide rubber would be completely swept clean. As a young man, um, then guarding the village of Boeka, I saw him take a net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big stones to the net, and make it tumble into the river. Rubber causes these torments. That's why we no longer want to hear its name spoken. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters. End quote. And it's you know, it just it gets worse um from there.

Thad: 21:51

I yes it gets worse.

Robyn: 21:53

Oh yeah.

Thad: 21:54

So what what were these hands about?

Robyn: 21:57

Okay, well, we were talking about bullets. They were with the guns. You know, you you asked about um hippo tails and stuff. And yeah, okay. So they actually counted how many bullets were used, right? Okay, well, I have this quote from a report done um that we'll talk about in a minute by um a Mr. Casement uh for Britain. But one of the passages in it um that he saw from a diary said, quote, each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used, and for everyone used, he must bring back a right hand. They told me that sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting, then cut off the hand of a living man. As to the extent to which this is carried on, he informed me that in six months in the state on the Mombogo River, he had used six thousand cartridges, which means that six thousand people were killed or mutilated. This means more than six thousand, for the people have told me repeatedly that soldiers kill the children with the butt of their guns. End quote.

Thad: 23:05

Okay, so that's horrible.

Robyn: 23:07

Yes, Mark Twain wrote um had this in his soliloquy that we'll talk about later. But um a junior officer came to a village and said that the officer in command, quote, ordered us to cut off the heads of men and hang them on the village palisades, and to hang the women and the children on the palisade in the form of a cross. End quote. Another Danish missionary wrote, after seeing after seeing this happen for the first time, the Danish missionary was, you know, uh obviously upset as one would be, and uh and a soldier told him, quote, don't take this to heart so much. They kill us if we don't bring the rubber. The commissioner has promised us if we have plenty of hands, he will shorten our service. And and he continued, the baskets of severed hands set down at the feet of the European post commanders became the symbol of the Congo Free State. The collection of hands became an end in itself. Forced public soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber. They even went out to harvest them instead of rubber. They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls and rubber quotas to replace the people who were demanded for the forced labor gangs. The forced public soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands were collected. End quote. I told you it got worse, and you know, there's so many horrible things that happened. Um in my bibliography, I I list several places. You're welcome to go find out more about the atrocities.

Thad: 24:50

Yeah, no, that sounds pretty horrible. So, so that this was going on. Um what what did the what did the rest of the world think? I mean, obviously this is not going well for the villagers. How how did word get out? What did did everyone just kind of go along with it?

Robyn: 25:06

Well, the first person to actually write anything about the Congo, there were missionaries in there, but the journals and things, they they hadn't come out yet because they were still being missionaries in there for the most part.

Thad: 25:18

Right.

Robyn: 25:19

But it was into this setting of craziness in the Congo that a man, George Washington Williams, went into. So this guy was super interesting and would probably require an hour or two just on himself. But basically, he was um an African American born in Pennsylvania before the Civil War. It was a free state at the time. He was the oldest of four kids, and he fought in the Civil War for the North. And then afterwards, he became a Buffalo soldier, which uh were soldiers that went out and fought in the plains because going out into the frontier was a huge thing at this time. So they would fight in the plains against the Native Americans who called them Buffalo soldiers because they showed great strength. Buffalo soldiers were only regiments of African Americans, and they were formed in 1866. Because, of course, even though we had the Emancipation Proclamation, even though we just fought this war, segregation was still a thing, I mean, uh until the mid-1900s. But he was the first African-American graduate from Newton Theological Institute. He was a Baptist minister, first African-American member of the House, Ohio House of Representatives, but he he was only there for a couple of years. And most importantly to historians, uh, he was the first person that we really know about that uh African-American who dug into oral histories and newspaper articles and primary sources and historiography to um to write. And he wrote a large tome that was basically the Negro race in America from 1619 to um 1880. And you know, he wrote many other things, but he was supported by Frederick Douglass and William Jennings Bryan, other famous people of the time, reformers. He had this idea in the late 1880s to relocate slaves to South America. Um, that didn't work out, and he became a journalist um traveling to Africa to check Africa out. He met Leopold just at an informal meeting because Leopold was like, hey, this is pretty cool. I'm gonna send him in and look at stuff for me to check things out, see if this would be a good place to reform, you know, just basically to go and check it out and write back to him about it. Um and Williams went to Harrison, um, who was president of the United States at the time, to get his approval and say, okay, you can go um into the Congo because the United States is, you know, supporting this too. He, Washington Williams, went and was absolutely appalled at what was going on. And he was the first person to really bring this into public view. He wrote a letter, an open quote, 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 George Washington Williams of the United States of America. End quote. And that like introduction is interesting because he wrote it that way because he knew that Leopold would read it if it said such great things about him.

Thad: 28:52

That makes sense.

Robyn: 28:53

It it really does. And he addresses it to a good and great friend. But I'm going to read you some of what he said and his conclusions from it. He said, quote, Your Majesty will testify to my affection for your person and friendship for your African state, of which you have had ample practical proofs over nearly six years. My friendship and service for the state of the Congo were inspired by and based upon your publicly declared motives and aims, and your personal statement to your humble subscriber, humane sentiments, and the work of Christian civilization in Africa. Thus, I was led to regard your enterprise as the rising of the star of hope for the dark continent, so long the habitation of cruelties, and I journeyed in its light and labored in its hope. All the principles I have spoken and written of the Congo country, state and sovereign, was inspired by the firm belief that your government was built upon the enduring foundation of Truth, liberty, humanity, and justice. So it afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity to visit the State of 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 and respectful language every charge that I am going to bring about to you. End quote. So Williams went through that and then talked about, like he brought several charges up, including being engaged in the slave trade and rapes. And basically what we've talked about before he saw those things.

Thad: 30:44

And I mean he bought up the hands.

Robyn: 30:46

You know what? Yeah, you are you are welcome to read this letter. It's rough, which is why I didn't include a lot of it in here. But his conclusions that he sent to Leopold were, quote, against the deceit, fraud, robberies, arson, murder, slave raiding, and general policy of cruelty of your majesty's government to the natives stands the record of unexampled patience, long-suffering and forgiving spirit, which put the boasted civilization and professed religion of your Majesty's government to the blush. During thirteen years only one white man has lost his life at the hands of natives, and only two white men have been killed in the Congo. Major Bottelup 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 in 1884 to 85. 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 civilization. End quote. He based this appeal on Article 36, Chapter 7, from an act at the Congress of Berlin. At the end of it, at the end of the letter, Williams appealed to the Belgian people, anti-slavery societies, and ended with a plea to the Heavenly Father. And he did not hold back.

Thad: 32:50

It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like he wanted literally everyone under heaven and above to know what was going on in the Congo.

Robyn: 32:56

Yes, he he absolutely did. And it goes further. So he decided he not only wrote to the King of Belgium, to Leopold, but he decided to write um a report upon the Congo state and country to the President of the Republic of the United States of America. And uh quote Although America has no commercial interests in the Congo, it was the government of the Republic of the United States which introduced this African government into the Sisterhood of States. It was the American Republic which stood sponsor to this young state, which has disappointed the most glowing hopes of its most ardent friends and most zealous promoters. Whatever the government of the Republic of the United States did for the independent state of Congo was inspired and guided by noble and unselfish motives, and whatever it refrains from doing will be on account of its elevated sentiments of humanity and its sense of the sacredness of agreements and compacts in their letter and spirit. The people of the United States of America have a just and right to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, respecting the independent state of Congo, an absolute monarchy, an oppressive and cruel government. An exclusive Belgian colony now tottering to its fall. End quote. So both of these letters were sent in 1890. Um George Washington Williams died in 1891 after getting sick in Africa. He is buried in Liverpool, England.

Thad: 34:34

So this was one of the last things he was able to do.

Robyn: 34:36

Yeah, and he was only 41.

Thad: 34:39

Wow.

Robyn: 34:39

I know. Think about what he could have done if he'd lived longer.

Thad: 34:43

It sounds like he had a very full life as it was.

Robyn: 34:46

Mm-hmm.

Thad: 34:47

And and that this was important enough to him to spend his his his time working on.

Robyn: 34:53

Yes. Um and the whole world let it sit for about ten years.

Thad: 35:00

Really?

Robyn: 35:01

Yeah.

Thad: 35:03

So he sent this letter to Leopold. He sent this letter to someone in the United States. No, the president. He sent it to the president.

Robyn: 35:10

President Harrison of the United States.

Thad: 35:11

Send it to the president. So Leopold knew what was going on.

Robyn: 35:16

Oh yeah.

Thad: 35:17

The President of the United States knew what was going on.

Robyn: 35:20

Oh yeah.

Thad: 35:21

And nobody really did anything.

Robyn: 35:24

Well, think about it. Would the United States want to admit that they were wrong about Belgium at the conference in Berlin?

Thad: 35:33

I apparently not.

Robyn: 35:34

Yeah. I mean, because then they'd have to admit that they, you know, were off.

Thad: 35:39

So, you know, uh a little bit ago you were talking about uh Sir Arthur Conan Doyle uh remarking about future historians looking back and and trying to parse what Leopold's objectives were. But it sounds like, you know, you you might be able to make the argument that, oh, he just he he never went to the Congo, so he really couldn't have known exactly what was happening. Uh maybe, you know, he had a series of lieutenants that did things and they got carried away, and all of a sudden, you know, you have atrocities happening, but yeah, he's a long ways away. He doesn't know. But at this point, he absolutely knows.

Robyn: 36:17

Yes. Well, he knows that a letter was sent to him saying that.

Thad: 36:21

Right.

Robyn: 36:22

That doesn't mean that he necessarily wants to believe it, but he probably just doesn't care because he's getting a lot of money right now.

Thad: 36:30

Okay. So what happens next? You said that that nothing happens for ten years, everybody's just kind of sitting on this, and the atrocities are continuing. Now what?

Robyn: 36:42

Well, next came a very unassuming man, you know, random guy, E. D. Morel, born in France, then went and worked on the dock, worked for Elder Dempster as a clerk on the docks.

Thad: 36:56

The docks where?

Robyn: 36:57

Well, in London. But they sent him to Belgium because he could speak French.

Thad: 37:01

Okay.

Robyn: 37:02

And so he spent time. Well, he spent time in both places, but he was a clerk. So he was writing down, you know, how much they were sending out in money and how much they were getting back.

Thad: 37:12

So he was a dock worker in Belgium.

Robyn: 37:14

Yes, but from an English company. Okay. Okay. And he noticed the goods did not seem right. I mean, he was like, so they were sending out manacles and guns, um, ammunition to the Congo, and then coming back with supply with rubber. And he said, and the estimate is that like Belgium was making, I think, five times more from the things they sent out to what came back. And so he asked himself, does this seem right to you? And started to look into it. Um, his employer wasn't happy. They kind of tried, in the modern sense, to pay him off, but he was just like, nah, and quit to become a journalist. And so he started to write about the trade imbalance. He had a background in it. He had the he he knew his stuff, you know. It wasn't just, yeah.

Thad: 38:16

Right. He was he was a dock worker. He was literally there looking at it, and he said, Yes, hey, this math doesn't math, because if we're sending out guns and manacles and we're receiving back a whole lot more in rubber, what could be going on?

Robyn: 38:31

Well, latex. Latex, yeah.

Thad: 38:33

Sure, but and ivory. Uh latex and ivory. So he thought to himself, someone should look into this, and that someone is me.

Robyn: 38:41

Yes, because his company was like, Yeah, we're just we're just gonna like not think about that.

Thad: 38:47

You're a dock worker, don't rock the boat.

Robyn: 38:49

Yeah, d literally. You're so funny. Um that so he became he talked about the trade and balance prolifically. He wrote a lot and started the West African Mail and the African Mail, which were both like journals um that submitted volunteer letters, volunteer writing. Uh, a lot of people that wrote for him that wrote with it, and he did, were worried that the same thing that was happening in the Congo would happen in the rest of Africa. So part of it was, you know, to make people really aware of the Congo, to prevent other governments from doing the same thing. And eventually it caught the attention of British Parliament, and they sent their consul, who was in the Congo, Robert Casement, to go and do a report of what was going on in the Congo. And I just I just want to read you a couple things that he had in this really long report. I read the whole thing, it's really long. And he said that um when when he was asked, uh when a woman was asked to collect rubber, he said, Isn't that man's work? And why do women do that? And uh and the man that he was talking to said, Don't you see the answer? If I caught and kept the men, who would work the rubber? But if I catch their wives, the husbands are anxious to have them home again, and so the rubber is brought in quickly and quite up to the mark. End quote. So what was happening is the force public, people in charge would literally take wives and children hostage while the men went to go collect rubber, which sometimes took two and three days to get to the trees, and come back and kept their wives and children hostages in case they decided not to bring enough rubber or not to come back. And then, of course, there was always the are they gonna cut off my hand randomly or arm? Are they gonna kill my child? Um, I read about it, it was in his report talking about what happened to the wives and to the people um in the Congo when they didn't meet quotas and things. His his report is very detailed in that.

Thad: 41:10

I'm guessing it wasn't it wasn't pleasant.

Robyn: 41:12

Mm-mm. No. And so he came back and gave all this information to the British Parliament and wanted to do more, but he was a government employee, and so he couldn't do more. So he encouraged Morrell to form the Congo Reform Association, which was supported by people like Mark Twain, mission activists around the world, Joseph Conrad, another author, Robert Conan Doyle, and um Vichelle Lindsay, who wrote a poem, yes, and I know it's a poem, guys, I know, but it's it's really moving. Um it's called The Congo A Study of the Negro Race. Quote, then I saw the Congo creeping through the black, cutting through the forest with a golden track. Then along that river bank a thousand miles, tattooed cannibals danced in files. Then I heard the boom of the bloodlust song, and a thigh bone beating on a tin pin gong. And blood screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors. Blood screamed the skull faced lean witch doctors. Whirl ye the deadly voodoo rattle, harry the uplands, steal all the cattle, rattle rattle, rattle rattle. A roaring epic rabtime tomb from the mouth of the Congo to the mountains of the moon. Death is an elephant, torch eyed and horrible, foam flanked and terrible. Boom steal the pygmies, boom kill the Arabs, boom kill the white men. Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost, burning in hell for his hand maimed host. Hear how the demons chuckle and yell, cutting his hands off down in hell. Listen to the creepy proclamation blown through the lairs of a forest nation, blown past the white ant's hill of clay, blown past the marsh where the butterflies play. Be careful what you do, our Mambo Jumbo, god of the Congo, and all the other gods, well who do you? End quote. I just think that that very well sums up what was happening. There were actual co um cannibals, so that wasn't a thing she made up. She talks about the or he talks about the elephants, you know, dying from ivory, which incidentally at the time in the late 1800s, it was not illegal to get ivory. So that, you know, it was just the idea of killing um elephants. And and so she was one of the writers for this, or he, I'm not really sure, um was one of the writers for this for the West African Mail. Um, there also began to be publications that published things in like satirical journals in England and in Belgium that would publish political cartoons of, you know, Leopold carving up the cake and Leopold being wrapped around with rubber coils and political cartoons of the time. That one was from Punch magazine in 1906. But the amount of satirical cartoons coming out at that time was actually a worldwide phenomenon. It was it's called yellow journalism and started with FDR, uh, mainly in the Spanish-American War. Um not FDR, Teddy Roosevelt. It's a Roosevelt. It's a Roosevelt, it's Teddy, so sorry. Uh with the Rough Riders. He would have been so embarrassed if I called him FDR. But anyway.

Thad: 45:01

Anyway.

Robyn: 45:02

It would have been the worst. But anyway, so there were political cartoons. Leopold had his own campaign out, propaganda campaign being like, yeah, I I don't know what these people are talking about.

Thad: 45:16

But there was some traction. There were there were some people that had that had some things to say, and they were and their voices were were gaining momentum.

Robyn: 45:25

Yes, and the main the main thing to have an impact work that was done was by Mark Twain, who's American, his real name was Samuel Clemens, and he wrote the King Leopold's soliloquy, a defense of his Congo rule. And in it, he takes on the persona of King Leopold, which, as is normal in a Mark Twain writing, it's just very expressive and fun to read, but he includes so many primary sources. He includes the casement report and morale and missionaries, and he just he's gathered up all this evidence that I've been talking about so far.

Thad: 46:13

So so Mark Twain stopped whatever it was that Mark Twain usually does and went off and said, This is something that someone needs to write about. Yes. And he gathered together, he basically gathered together all the documents and the reports and stuff, and then sat down and pinned this pamphlet.

Robyn: 46:34

Yes, and and it was pretty long too. I think it was 70 something pages.

Thad: 46:38

That's a a small book.

Robyn: 46:40

Yes, yeah, it is. So I'm just I'm gonna read you one of the things or a couple of things that were in the soliloquy. That this first one was this is just a direct quote from a Reverend A. E. Shrivener, who was a British missionary, and he wrote this in The Journey Made in July, August, and September 1903. And so I'm getting this from the soliloquy. Okay. Shrivener said, quote, Soon we began talking, and without any encouragement on my part, the natives began the tales I'd become accustomed to. They were living in peace and quietness when the white men came in from the lake with all sorts of requests to do this and that. They thought it meant slavery, so they attempted to keep the white men out of their country, but without avail. The rifles were too much for them, so they submitted and made up their minds to do the best they could under the altered circumstances. First came the command to build houses for the soldiers, and this was done without a murmur. Then they had to feed the soldiers, and all the men and women, hangers on, who accompanied them. Then they were told to bring in rubber. This was quite a new thing for them to do. There was rubber in the forest several days away from their home, but that it was worth anything was news to them. A small reward was offered and a rush made for the rubber. What strange white men to give us cloth and beads for the sap of a wild vine? They rejoiced in what they thought was their good fortune. But soon the reward was reduced until at last they were told to bring in the rubber for nothing. And to this they tried to demure, but to their great surprise several were shot by the soldiers, and the rest were told, with many curses and blows, to go at once, or more would be killed. Terrified, they began to prepare their food for the fortnight's absence from the village, which the collection of rubber entailed. The soldiers discovered them sitting about. What? Not gone yet. Bang bang bang, and down fell one and another, dead in the midst of wives and companions. There's a terrible wail and an attempt to prepare the dead for burial, but this was not allowed. All must go at once to the forest. Without food? Yes, without food, and off the poor wretches had to go, without even their tinder boxes to make fires. Many died in the forests of hunger and exposure, and still more from the rifles of the ferocious soldiers in charge of the post. In spite of all their efforts, the amount fell off and more and more were killed. I was shown around the place and the sites of a former big chief settlement were pointed out. A careful estimate was made of the population, say, seven years ago, to be two thousand people in and about the post, within a radius of, say, a quarter mile, all told they would not muster 200 now. There is so much sadness and gloom about them that they are fast decreasing. End quote. So that was just one example of a missionary's journals and diaries coming out. There there's several more missionaries, but that that was just one of them. And then as Twain takes on the persona of Leopold, quote, in 1904 and 1905, I do not see how a person can act so so as Morel. This Morel is a king's subject, and reverence for the monarchy should have restrained him from reflecting upon me with exposure. This Morel is a reformer, a Congo reformer. That sizes him up. He publishes a sheet in Liverpool called the West African Mail, which is supported by the voluntary contributions of the sab headed and soft hearted, and every week it steams and reeks and festers with up-to-date Congo atrocities of the sort detailed in this pile of pamphlets here. I will suppress it. I suppressed a Congo atrocity book there, and after it was actually in print, it should not be difficult for me to suppress a newspaper. And so it's you know, Twain s says that he's studying some photographs of mutilated Negroes and looks down. And this is Leopold again. The Kodak camera has been a sore calamity to us, the most powerful enemy indeed. In the early years, we had no trouble in getting the press to expose the tales of mutilations as slanders, lies, inventions of a busybody American missionaries and exasperated foreigners who found the open door of the Berlin Congo Charter closed against them. And when they innocently went out there to trade, and by the press's help, we got the Christian nations everywhere to turn an irritated and unbelieving ear to those tales, and say hard things about the tellers of them. Yes, all things went harmoniously and pleasantly in those days, and I was looked up to as a benefactor of a downtrodden and friendless people. Then all of a sudden came the crash. That is to say, the incorruptible Kodak, and all the harmony went to hell. The only witness I could have encountered in my long experience that I couldn't bribe. Every Yankee missionary and every interrupted trader sent home and got one. And now, oh well, the pitchers get sneaked around everywhere in spite of all we do to ferret them out and suppress them. Ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand presses are saying the good word for me all the time and placidly and convincingly denying the mutilations. Then that trivial little kodak that a child can carry in its pocket gets up, uttering never a word, and knocks them dumb. And then he continues, and this is a quote. But enough of trying to tally off his crimes. His list is interminable. We should never get to the end of it. His awful shadow lies across the Congo Free State, and under it an unoffending nation of fifteen million is withering away and swiftly succumbing to their miseries. It is a land of graves. It is the land of graves. It is the Congo Free graveyard. It's a majestic thought that this, this ghastly episode in all human history, is the work of one man alone, one solitary man, just a single individual. Leopold, king of the Belgians. He is personally and solely responsible for all the myriad of crimes that have blackened the history of the Congo state. He is the sole master there. He is absolute. He could have prevented the crimes by his mere command. He could have stopped them today with a word. He withholds the word for his pocket's sake. It seems strange to see a king destroying a nation and laying waste a country for mere sordid money's sake. And solely and only for that, lust of conquest is royal. Kings have always exercised that stately vice, and we are used to it. By old habit, we condone it, perceiving a certain dignity in it. But lust of money, lust of shillings, lust of nickels, lust of dirty coin, not for the nation's enrichment, but for the kings alone. This is new. This distinctly revolts us. We cannot seem to reconcile ourselves to it. We resent it, we despise it, we say it is shabby, unkingly, out of character. Being Democrats, we ought to jeer and jest, we ought to rejoice to see the purple dragged in the dirt. But well, account for it as we may, we don't. We see this awful king, this pitiless and blood-drenched king, this money-crazy king towering towards the sky in a world solitude of sordid crime, unfellowed and apart from the human race, soul butcher for personal gain, findable in all his caste, ancient or modern, pagan or Christian, lowest and highest, and the excreations of all who hold in cold esteem the oppressor and the coward. And well it is a mystery, but we do not wish to look, for he is king, and it hurts us, it troubles us by ancient and inherited instinct. It shames us to see a king degraded to this aspect, and we shrink from hearing and the particulars of how it happened. We shudder and turn away when we come upon them in print. And it ends with Leopold saying, Why certainly that is my protection, and you will continue to do it. I know the human race. He said, quote, but never before has there been such a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacre, all done under an odious guise of philanthropy, with the lowest commercial motives as a reason. It is this sordid caused and uncuous hypocrisy which makes this crime unparalleled in its horror. End quote.

Thad: 56:50

So those guys let him have it with both barrels. What was the result?

Robyn: 56:58

Well, after the soliloquy came out, like in 1906, there was su people were upset like all around the world, because everyone, you know, read well, not everyone, but Mark Twain was well known. And um, and it was so well documented, so well written, that there was such uh the public was so upset that um that Leopold was extracted from the Belgium, his sole grip. And I I don't remember where I read it, but basically, like none of the other countries wanted the bell wanted the Congo because it like wasn't worth it financially. And so the Belgian government got it. And then of course, you know, things improved. It was Parliament and the Cabinet in charge. Leopold died a year later in 1909, and the Congo Reform Association kept active until 1913 just to make sure that the transfer actually happened and the abuses stopped and everything. And the Belgian government then held control until 1960.

Thad: 58:08

Wow. So one guy was able to start the bowl roll rolling on that level of whores, and a bunch of regular normal people and writers got together and and blew the whistle on it.

Robyn: 58:25

There was no civil war, you know, there was no like huge fight with you know people dying and things. It was just few people creating public outcry and uh to get things changed.