Nov. 5, 2025

King Leopold and his Rubber

King Leopold and his Rubber
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Today we talk about Leopold II, King of Belgium from 1865-1909, and his personal empire in the African Congo. This is the story of a man who put his pocketbook ahead of a people, the nation he enslaved, and the global cast of writers and advocates that worked to bring him down.

Image

In The Rubber Coils. Scene - The Congo 'Free' State" Linley Sambourne depicts King Leopold II of Belgium as a snake attacking a Congolese rubber collector. Published on 28 November 1906

Edward Linley Sambourne, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Mariner Books, United States, 1999.

David Renton; Seddon, David; Zeilig, Leo.  The Congo: Plunder and Resistance. London: Zed Books, 2007.

“General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa, 26 February 1885”.  Signed by the representatives of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the United States of America, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden-Norway, and Turkey (Ottoman Empire).  Berlin, February 26, 1885. 

George Washington Williams. “Appendix 1: An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo.”  Stanley Falls, Central Africa, July 18th 1890. 

George Washington Williams. “Report upon the Congo-State and country to the President of the Republic of the United States of America, ” 1890. 

“In the Rubber Coils.” Punch, 1906 from King Leopold’s Ghost, 120.

“The Guilt of Delay.” Punch, 1909. In King Leopold’s Ghost, p. 120.

Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. Originally published 1899.  Independently published, December 9, 2019

Inventory of the Stanley Archives.  “Henry Morton Stanley: correspondence.” 

Maps from the Belgian Congo and Congo Free State. 1921.  Internet Archive. 

Mark Twain.  King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule.  Boston: The P.R. Warren Co., 1905. In King Leopold’s Soliloquy.The University of New Orleans Press Edition, 2016.

David Renton; Seddon, David; Zeilig, Leo (2007). The Congo: Plunder and Resistance. London: Zed Books.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Crime of Congo. New York Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909.

Vachal Lindsay (1914). The Congo and Other Poems.  New York: The Macmillian Company. OCLC 40402773

Accounts and Papers: Sixty-Five Volumes.  (14) Colonies and British Possessions—continued.  Africa—continued.  Session: 2 February 1904-15 August 1904.  Vol.  LXLL. Correspondence relating to the Recruitment of Labour in the British Central Africa Protectorate for Employment in the Transvaal.  [In continuation of “Africa No 2 (1903.] “Correspondence and Report from Hist Majesty’s Consul at Boma Respecting the Administration of the Independent State of the Congo.”  Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of His Majesty.  February 1904.  London: Printed for His Majesty’s Stationary Office, by Harrison and Sons, 1904.  Found in Project Gutenberg eBooks.

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00:00:00.479 --> 00:00:08.800
It seems strange to see a king destroying a nation and laying waste a country for mere sordid money's sake.

00:00:08.800 --> 00:00:11.679
And solely and only for that.

00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:34.399
Who was King Leopold II?

00:00:34.399 --> 00:00:36.399
Where was he a king of?

00:00:36.399 --> 00:00:39.200
And uh what's going on with him?

00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:45.119
This is he's from Belgium, and this is the mid to late 1800s.

00:00:45.119 --> 00:00:49.679
And I think it's important to understand what was going on in the world.

00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:53.759
So where he was coming from, just set setting the scene.

00:00:53.759 --> 00:00:58.640
So, first of all, he was related to Queen Victoria of England.

00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:01.119
Uh, she thought he was really boring.

00:01:01.119 --> 00:01:08.239
She liked his wife, but no, really, like she told people to the effect that he was really boring.

00:01:08.719 --> 00:01:14.159
She went around and was like, you know what, King Leopold II, that guy, snoozer.

00:01:14.560 --> 00:01:15.200
The worst.

00:01:15.200 --> 00:01:23.760
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.

00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:31.120
His sister became Empress of Mexico, and she was Austrian, so that's a fun story.

00:01:31.439 --> 00:01:34.480
Well, this is very this sounds like people are getting around a lot here.

00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:36.159
Well, they really are.

00:01:36.159 --> 00:01:59.200
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.

00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:19.520
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.

00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:21.840
I mean, it it was, right?

00:02:21.840 --> 00:02:23.439
Yeah, they were very aggressive.

00:02:23.439 --> 00:02:24.560
They were.

00:02:24.560 --> 00:02:27.840
I being from the south, I feel like I was aggressed upon.

00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:29.199
Yeah, I was oppressed.

00:02:29.439 --> 00:02:29.759
Yes.

00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:38.960
Well, it is it is interesting to look at the different names that people give wars.

00:02:38.960 --> 00:02:45.280
For example, which we're gonna talk about soon, the opium war, which was, of course, over opium.

00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:48.960
Um the Chinese prefer to call it the Anglo-Chinese War.

00:02:49.120 --> 00:02:50.639
Uh scene for scene.

00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:51.120
Yeah.

00:02:51.120 --> 00:03:00.000
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.

00:03:00.159 --> 00:03:04.000
It's so really it depends on which side of the word you're on as to what you would call it.

00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:07.120
Yeah, everyone has like their own thing going on.

00:03:07.120 --> 00:03:11.280
But we have with Leopold the same type thing.

00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:19.840
There were he had a cabinet and a parliament underneath him, and they actually had more power than in a lot of places.

00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:36.879
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.

00:03:36.879 --> 00:03:41.039
But under him, a lot of reforms did happen.

00:03:41.039 --> 00:03:43.360
They were passed by parliament and the cabinet.

00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:47.360
And of course, different parties were in charge at different times.

00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:55.120
The Labor Party, the Conservative Party, the Labor Party was all for, you know, public education, free for everyone.

00:03:55.120 --> 00:03:57.360
Conservatives, not so much.

00:03:57.360 --> 00:04:00.240
Um, so it only lasted about four years in there.

00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:07.919
But while he was king, there became the the work week that they got Sundays off.

00:04:07.919 --> 00:04:16.079
And he instituted or were instituted child labor laws and uh for in factories and things.

00:04:16.079 --> 00:04:23.519
And he um and there were also well, universal male suffrage happened under his time.

00:04:23.519 --> 00:04:31.360
And we need to see, like, in the world at that time, you know, I I just talked about factories and stuff.

00:04:31.360 --> 00:04:36.720
This was around the time that the second industrial revolution was happening.

00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:43.759
The first one was with textiles and just beginning to get the factory process started.

00:04:43.759 --> 00:04:57.839
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.

00:04:57.839 --> 00:05:03.120
And so that's why the factory reforms meant so much.

00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:08.399
He was called the Builder King because, well, he built a lot of stuff.

00:05:08.399 --> 00:05:10.639
He built statues of himself.

00:05:10.639 --> 00:05:17.839
As one does, as one is want to do, and museums and a cathedral.

00:05:17.839 --> 00:05:27.519
So when we look at him, we're looking at basically an executive branch guy who isn't happy with Parliament and the cabinet.

00:05:27.519 --> 00:05:37.519
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.

00:05:37.519 --> 00:05:42.000
And so that's the context that we have Leopold in right now.

00:05:42.399 --> 00:05:47.920
So a guy who was, yeah, sounds like he was doing quite a bit of good things back home.

00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:49.680
They were getting done under him.

00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:52.720
Okay, so so maybe he doesn't deserve all the credit.

00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:55.519
Uh he you have a parliament that's doing a lot of the and cabinet.

00:05:55.519 --> 00:05:59.439
But but he's the guy, he's the he's the figurehead, and things are going okay.

00:05:59.439 --> 00:06:08.800
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.

00:06:09.279 --> 00:06:09.839
Yes.

00:06:09.839 --> 00:06:20.399
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.

00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:28.319
Africa, like even in 1870, was owned, like 80% of it was under African rule.

00:06:28.319 --> 00:06:33.439
They didn't have like the colonies and things that they had like right before World War I.

00:06:33.439 --> 00:06:37.680
So he saw going in there into Africa as making a colony.

00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:48.720
In fact, he uh he told the Belgian people, um, quote, the homeland may be our headquarters, but our objective must be the world.

00:06:48.720 --> 00:06:53.040
There are no small countries, there are only small minds.

00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:59.600
When people are great, they can, no matter how narrow the boundaries, achieve great things.

00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:06.879
So, lucky for Leopold, that was a common theme around the world in Europe.

00:07:06.879 --> 00:07:15.759
And in 1884, Ottawa and Bismarck, who was from Germany, set up a conference in Berlin.

00:07:15.759 --> 00:07:27.600
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.

00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:38.319
Uh, Belgium had only been a constitutional monarchy since like the 1850s, and Germany was just getting established in the early 1870s.

00:07:38.319 --> 00:07:40.319
So they were kind of in the same boat.

00:07:40.319 --> 00:07:49.839
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.

00:07:49.839 --> 00:07:52.240
So he he was very involved in this.

00:07:52.240 --> 00:08:00.720
They called, like, I think 14 white men to come carve up Africa into different territories.

00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:13.920
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.

00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:22.319
So he sent someone to the Berlin conference to go carve out a piece of this for Belgium.

00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:30.480
So at the time, it sounds like was this mostly the European powers getting together and deciding that, hey, you know what?

00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:33.519
It it's time to make colonies because that's where it's at.

00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:34.799
Um, yeah.

00:08:34.799 --> 00:08:42.960
Russia was there, but you know, not not too much of the Asian, definitely, you know, not Canada.

00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:47.120
It was under Great Britain, you know, Greenland, no part of it.

00:08:47.279 --> 00:08:48.000
All right, it's a good thing.

00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:49.039
Canada's clear.

00:08:49.039 --> 00:08:49.840
Like, nope, nope.

00:08:50.399 --> 00:08:50.960
And Greenland.

00:08:51.039 --> 00:08:51.759
Uh Greenland.

00:08:51.759 --> 00:08:51.919
Yeah.

00:08:51.919 --> 00:08:52.480
Okay, right.

00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:52.960
Absolutely.

00:08:53.279 --> 00:08:58.000
Just want to make it clear that those guys were not involved in this carving up the African cake situation.

00:08:58.240 --> 00:08:58.559
Right.

00:08:58.799 --> 00:08:59.039
Okay.

00:08:59.200 --> 00:08:59.679
Yes.

00:08:59.919 --> 00:09:00.480
All right.

00:09:00.480 --> 00:09:03.360
So they went, they went into the conference.

00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:05.360
What did Leopold get his cake?

00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:10.480
I'm assuming since since this is the show about Leopold and he he got something out of it.

00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:11.840
What what did he get?

00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:21.919
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.

00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:23.759
Um Henry Morton Stanley?

00:09:23.759 --> 00:09:24.159
Yes.

00:09:24.159 --> 00:09:25.679
That's like three first names.

00:09:25.919 --> 00:09:26.320
Right.

00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:34.320
I I know he was a very interesting guy, very into himself and the things that he had done.

00:09:34.720 --> 00:09:36.159
And it's for in his three first names.

00:09:36.159 --> 00:09:37.120
No, that's fantastic.

00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:48.879
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.

00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:49.759
Um Dr.

00:09:49.759 --> 00:09:51.519
Henry Livingstone.

00:09:51.519 --> 00:10:01.919
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.

00:10:01.919 --> 00:10:03.759
Livingstone, I presume.

00:10:03.759 --> 00:10:18.240
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.

00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:20.480
But he credited himself with saying that.

00:10:20.799 --> 00:10:23.679
So he sounds like a presumptuous guy.

00:10:24.080 --> 00:10:25.440
Uh yes.

00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:30.879
But you know, he he had a pretty good well grasp on things.

00:10:30.879 --> 00:10:40.559
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.

00:10:40.559 --> 00:10:41.120
Right.

00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:42.799
Oh, quite okay.

00:10:42.799 --> 00:10:58.559
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.

00:10:58.559 --> 00:11:06.559
We go to spread blessings, arise from amiable and just intercourse with people who have been strangers to them.

00:11:06.559 --> 00:11:24.639
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.

00:11:24.639 --> 00:11:50.080
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.

00:11:50.080 --> 00:12:19.919
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.

00:12:19.919 --> 00:12:24.240
No wonder all this commercial knowledge had left its traces on their faces.

00:12:24.240 --> 00:12:27.519
Indeed, it's the same as in our own cities in Europe.

00:12:27.519 --> 00:12:34.240
Know you not the military man among you, the lawyer and the merchant, the banker, the artist, or the poet?

00:12:34.240 --> 00:12:41.840
It is the same in Africa, more especially on the Congo, where the people are so devoted to trade.

00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:52.000
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.

00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:52.799
End quote.

00:12:53.120 --> 00:12:58.080
So Stanley sounds like he had a pretty high opinion of the Congolese people.

00:12:58.080 --> 00:12:58.720
Yes.

00:12:58.720 --> 00:13:03.440
So it sounds like Stanley was doing uh pretty good, pretty good work here.

00:13:03.440 --> 00:13:07.519
What what happened at the the uh the Berlin Conference?

00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:18.879
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.

00:13:18.879 --> 00:13:21.679
And this is what he said.

00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:38.799
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.

00:13:38.799 --> 00:13:42.000
Was he at this time consciously hypocritical?

00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:47.679
Did he already foresee how widely his future actions would differ from his present professions?

00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:56.879
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?

00:13:56.879 --> 00:14:07.919
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.

00:14:07.919 --> 00:14:19.600
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.

00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:33.120
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.

00:14:33.120 --> 00:14:43.360
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.

00:14:43.360 --> 00:14:49.519
Once faced with the facts, his astute brain perceived the great material possibilities of this country.

00:14:49.519 --> 00:15:11.679
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.

00:15:11.679 --> 00:15:21.120
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.

00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:34.639
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.

00:15:34.639 --> 00:15:38.000
That was the admitted outcome of their enterprise.

00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:39.679
End quote.

00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:54.399
He wanted to be a missionary.

00:15:54.639 --> 00:15:58.000
Yeah, rehabilitate them, give them a better life.

00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:01.919
You know, he may have actually meant that at the time.

00:16:01.919 --> 00:16:08.159
What Doyle's saying, who was a contemporary, you know, we don't really know what he thought at this time.

00:16:08.159 --> 00:16:10.720
We just know that he wanted the Congo.

00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:12.639
To to make it better.

00:16:12.960 --> 00:16:14.559
Yes, to make it a better place.

00:16:14.879 --> 00:16:17.840
So you mentioned that uh trees were signed.

00:16:17.840 --> 00:16:19.840
How how did they get those trees?

00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:26.080
What what was like like what did it look like from the perspective of Congolese people there?

00:16:26.080 --> 00:16:30.399
Um, these these Europeans coming in, uh signing treaties.

00:16:30.399 --> 00:16:31.519
What what was that like?

00:16:31.519 --> 00:16:32.960
What was life like for them?

00:16:33.440 --> 00:16:50.320
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.

00:16:50.320 --> 00:16:56.159
If the villagers said, nah, that doesn't sound good to us, well, then sometimes they would just kill them all.

00:16:56.159 --> 00:17:06.799
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.

00:17:06.799 --> 00:17:11.599
Clothes, food, you know, random things that really meant nothing to the Belgians.

00:17:11.599 --> 00:17:12.079
Yeah.

00:17:12.400 --> 00:17:18.319
But so it sounds like the Belgians went in along with did they send any missionaries as well?

00:17:18.640 --> 00:17:25.759
Well, so Leopold allowed missionaries from well, they were Dutch missionaries and some from England, some from America.

00:17:25.759 --> 00:17:27.599
So, yes, missionaries were there.

00:17:28.079 --> 00:17:39.119
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.

00:17:39.519 --> 00:17:43.359
Um yes, well, that was you know the premise of it.

00:17:43.359 --> 00:17:47.920
Um we'll talk about in a few minutes uh how a man, E.

00:17:47.920 --> 00:17:48.079
D.

00:17:48.079 --> 00:17:51.599
Morrell, saw that this was not exactly the case.

00:17:51.599 --> 00:17:55.119
He worked on the docks and would notice the discrepancies.

00:17:55.119 --> 00:17:57.119
Uh, but we'll talk about him in a minute.

00:17:57.119 --> 00:18:08.559
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.

00:18:08.559 --> 00:18:24.720
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.

00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:34.480
And the fact that the um that the Congo had huge jungles of rubber trees provided Leopold with the chance to get that.

00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:35.599
Gotcha.

00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:38.079
So rubber was a valuable resource at that point in time.

00:18:38.480 --> 00:18:38.880
Yes.

00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:46.880
And what Leopold did, and I and I say Leopold because this had nothing to do with the Belgian government at all.

00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:52.160
He himself never visited the Congo, but it was all under his name.

00:18:52.160 --> 00:18:58.000
You can trace, you know, there were front organizations all the way down, but everything went back to him.

00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:13.519
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.

00:19:13.519 --> 00:19:20.240
And in 1885 he said, oh, they're just humanitarians, they're there to help and everything.

00:19:20.240 --> 00:19:31.920
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.

00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:42.319
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.

00:19:42.319 --> 00:19:48.160
I know that sounds horrible, but evidently they were it was really bad.

00:19:48.160 --> 00:19:49.440
Like one of the worst.

00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:52.400
They would people they would flog people to death with them.

00:19:52.400 --> 00:20:03.359
And anyway, so in 1891, there were about 3,500 of these people, and by 1900 there were 19,000.

00:20:03.680 --> 00:20:04.720
Well, that's a force.

00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:06.160
Yeah, it well, yes.

00:20:06.640 --> 00:20:08.319
Also a lot of hippo tails.

00:20:08.799 --> 00:20:17.119
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.

00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:24.640
Look, man, if I'm gonna be in the Congo as a humanitarian force publique, I'd better get a hippo tail.

00:20:24.640 --> 00:20:25.839
Just saying.

00:20:26.480 --> 00:20:27.680
Well, okay.

00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:30.160
You might have to go try to get that yourself.

00:20:30.160 --> 00:20:35.519
But hippo teeth have ivory in them, so maybe you could use the ivory too.

00:20:35.759 --> 00:20:37.279
So you get ivory and a tail.

00:20:37.279 --> 00:20:39.359
All you have to do is face down a hippo.

00:20:39.359 --> 00:20:40.079
Right.

00:20:40.079 --> 00:20:42.640
That sounds like a sounds like a story for another time.

00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:44.240
Probably a different podcast.

00:20:44.720 --> 00:20:45.039
Totally.

00:20:45.039 --> 00:20:48.400
One entirely on hippos because they're my favorite animal.

00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:53.279
Um, anyway, and so these stories started coming out.

00:20:53.279 --> 00:21:05.359
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.

00:21:05.519 --> 00:21:05.680
Yeah.

00:21:06.079 --> 00:21:17.920
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.

00:21:17.920 --> 00:21:22.880
A village which refused to provide rubber would be completely swept clean.

00:21:22.880 --> 00:21:36.160
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.

00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:38.400
Rubber causes these torments.

00:21:38.400 --> 00:21:41.519
That's why we no longer want to hear its name spoken.

00:21:41.519 --> 00:21:46.160
Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters.

00:21:46.160 --> 00:21:47.200
End quote.

00:21:47.200 --> 00:21:51.839
And it's you know, it just it gets worse um from there.

00:21:51.920 --> 00:21:53.759
I yes it gets worse.

00:21:53.920 --> 00:21:54.480
Oh yeah.

00:21:54.799 --> 00:21:57.039
So what what were these hands about?

00:21:57.519 --> 00:22:00.480
Okay, well, we were talking about bullets.

00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:02.640
They were with the guns.

00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:05.519
You know, you you asked about um hippo tails and stuff.

00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:06.799
And yeah, okay.

00:22:06.799 --> 00:22:10.720
So they actually counted how many bullets were used, right?

00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:17.599
Okay, well, I have this quote from a report done um that we'll talk about in a minute by um a Mr.

00:22:17.599 --> 00:22:19.839
Casement uh for Britain.

00:22:19.839 --> 00:22:29.119
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.

00:22:29.119 --> 00:22:34.880
He must bring back all not used, and for everyone used, he must bring back a right hand.

00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:41.519
They told me that sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting, then cut off the hand of a living man.

00:22:41.519 --> 00:22:55.359
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.

00:22:55.359 --> 00:23:02.960
This means more than six thousand, for the people have told me repeatedly that soldiers kill the children with the butt of their guns.

00:23:02.960 --> 00:23:05.039
End quote.

00:23:05.839 --> 00:23:07.440
Okay, so that's horrible.

00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:13.039
Yes, Mark Twain wrote um had this in his soliloquy that we'll talk about later.

00:23:13.039 --> 00:23:29.119
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.

00:23:29.119 --> 00:23:30.079
End quote.

00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:47.440
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.

00:23:47.440 --> 00:23:49.839
They kill us if we don't bring the rubber.

00:23:49.839 --> 00:23:55.440
The commissioner has promised us if we have plenty of hands, he will shorten our service.

00:23:55.440 --> 00:24:06.640
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.

00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:10.000
The collection of hands became an end in itself.

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.559
Forced public soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber.

00:24:14.559 --> 00:24:17.920
They even went out to harvest them instead of rubber.

00:24:17.920 --> 00:24:20.079
They became a sort of currency.

00:24:20.079 --> 00:24:29.359
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.

00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:35.359
The forced public soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands were collected.

00:24:35.359 --> 00:24:36.160
End quote.

00:24:36.160 --> 00:24:43.599
I told you it got worse, and you know, there's so many horrible things that happened.

00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:46.720
Um in my bibliography, I I list several places.

00:24:46.720 --> 00:24:50.079
You're welcome to go find out more about the atrocities.

00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:51.839
Yeah, no, that sounds pretty horrible.

00:24:51.839 --> 00:24:54.319
So, so that this was going on.

00:24:54.319 --> 00:24:58.240
Um what what did the what did the rest of the world think?

00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:01.039
I mean, obviously this is not going well for the villagers.

00:25:01.039 --> 00:25:02.799
How how did word get out?

00:25:02.799 --> 00:25:05.599
What did did everyone just kind of go along with it?

00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:18.240
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.

00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:18.880
Right.

00:25:19.200 --> 00:25:28.400
But it was into this setting of craziness in the Congo that a man, George Washington Williams, went into.

00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:35.519
So this guy was super interesting and would probably require an hour or two just on himself.

00:25:35.519 --> 00:25:42.319
But basically, he was um an African American born in Pennsylvania before the Civil War.

00:25:42.319 --> 00:25:43.920
It was a free state at the time.

00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:49.599
He was the oldest of four kids, and he fought in the Civil War for the North.

00:25:49.599 --> 00:26:02.000
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.

00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:09.440
So they would fight in the plains against the Native Americans who called them Buffalo soldiers because they showed great strength.

00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:17.039
Buffalo soldiers were only regiments of African Americans, and they were formed in 1866.

00:26:17.039 --> 00:26:27.599
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.

00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:34.319
But he was the first African-American graduate from Newton Theological Institute.

00:26:34.319 --> 00:26:43.119
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.

00:26:43.119 --> 00:27:01.920
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.

00:27:01.920 --> 00:27:12.240
And he wrote a large tome that was basically the Negro race in America from 1619 to um 1880.

00:27:12.240 --> 00:27:21.680
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.

00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:27.279
He had this idea in the late 1880s to relocate slaves to South America.

00:27:27.279 --> 00:27:35.200
Um, that didn't work out, and he became a journalist um traveling to Africa to check Africa out.

00:27:35.200 --> 00:27:41.200
He met Leopold just at an informal meeting because Leopold was like, hey, this is pretty cool.

00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:52.960
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.

00:27:52.960 --> 00:28:08.400
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.

00:28:08.400 --> 00:28:17.440
He, Washington Williams, went and was absolutely appalled at what was going on.

00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:22.240
And he was the first person to really bring this into public view.

00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:39.839
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.

00:28:39.839 --> 00:28:40.960
End quote.

00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:51.200
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.

00:28:52.319 --> 00:28:53.200
That makes sense.

00:28:53.519 --> 00:28:54.559
It it really does.

00:28:54.559 --> 00:28:57.759
And he addresses it to a good and great friend.

00:28:57.759 --> 00:29:03.519
But I'm going to read you some of what he said and his conclusions from it.

00:29:03.519 --> 00:29:16.559
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.

00:29:16.559 --> 00:29:33.759
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.

00:29:33.759 --> 00:29:48.000
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.

00:29:48.000 --> 00:30:04.559
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.

00:30:04.559 --> 00:30:18.079
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.

00:30:18.079 --> 00:30:27.119
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.

00:30:27.119 --> 00:30:28.079
End quote.

00:30:28.079 --> 00:30:39.839
So Williams went through that and then talked about, like he brought several charges up, including being engaged in the slave trade and rapes.

00:30:39.839 --> 00:30:43.839
And basically what we've talked about before he saw those things.

00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:46.160
And I mean he bought up the hands.

00:30:46.799 --> 00:30:47.759
You know what?

00:30:47.759 --> 00:30:52.319
Yeah, you are you are welcome to read this letter.

00:30:52.319 --> 00:30:55.759
It's rough, which is why I didn't include a lot of it in here.

00:30:55.759 --> 00:31:24.799
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.

00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:34.079
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.

00:31:34.079 --> 00:31:45.279
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.

00:31:45.279 --> 00:32:02.240
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.

00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:27.359
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.

00:32:27.359 --> 00:32:28.160
End quote.

00:32:28.160 --> 00:32:35.599
He based this appeal on Article 36, Chapter 7, from an act at the Congress of Berlin.

00:32:35.599 --> 00:32:47.039
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.

00:32:47.039 --> 00:32:49.440
And he did not hold back.

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:50.960
It doesn't sound like it.

00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:56.240
It sounds like he wanted literally everyone under heaven and above to know what was going on in the Congo.

00:32:56.559 --> 00:32:58.240
Yes, he he absolutely did.

00:32:58.240 --> 00:33:00.000
And it goes further.

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:15.440
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.

00:33:15.440 --> 00:33:29.119
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.

00:33:29.119 --> 00:33:39.279
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.

00:33:39.279 --> 00:34:02.319
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.

00:34:02.319 --> 00:34:15.840
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.

00:34:15.840 --> 00:34:19.840
An exclusive Belgian colony now tottering to its fall.

00:34:19.840 --> 00:34:21.119
End quote.

00:34:21.119 --> 00:34:24.639
So both of these letters were sent in 1890.

00:34:24.639 --> 00:34:31.199
Um George Washington Williams died in 1891 after getting sick in Africa.

00:34:31.199 --> 00:34:33.760
He is buried in Liverpool, England.

00:34:34.239 --> 00:34:36.559
So this was one of the last things he was able to do.

00:34:36.880 --> 00:34:38.559
Yeah, and he was only 41.

00:34:39.039 --> 00:34:39.519
Wow.

00:34:39.840 --> 00:34:40.320
I know.

00:34:40.320 --> 00:34:43.280
Think about what he could have done if he'd lived longer.

00:34:43.679 --> 00:34:46.000
It sounds like he had a very full life as it was.

00:34:46.239 --> 00:34:46.719
Mm-hmm.

00:34:47.280 --> 00:34:53.119
And and that this was important enough to him to spend his his his time working on.

00:34:53.519 --> 00:34:54.159
Yes.

00:34:54.159 --> 00:34:59.760
Um and the whole world let it sit for about ten years.

00:35:00.559 --> 00:35:00.880
Really?

00:35:01.519 --> 00:35:01.920
Yeah.

00:35:03.119 --> 00:35:05.760
So he sent this letter to Leopold.

00:35:05.760 --> 00:35:08.719
He sent this letter to someone in the United States.

00:35:08.719 --> 00:35:09.360
No, the president.

00:35:09.360 --> 00:35:10.159
He sent it to the president.

00:35:10.400 --> 00:35:11.599
President Harrison of the United States.

00:35:11.920 --> 00:35:12.960
Send it to the president.

00:35:12.960 --> 00:35:15.760
So Leopold knew what was going on.

00:35:16.079 --> 00:35:16.800
Oh yeah.

00:35:17.119 --> 00:35:19.760
The President of the United States knew what was going on.

00:35:20.079 --> 00:35:20.800
Oh yeah.

00:35:21.440 --> 00:35:24.400
And nobody really did anything.

00:35:24.719 --> 00:35:25.599
Well, think about it.

00:35:25.599 --> 00:35:32.239
Would the United States want to admit that they were wrong about Belgium at the conference in Berlin?

00:35:33.119 --> 00:35:34.559
I apparently not.

00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:35.360
Yeah.

00:35:35.360 --> 00:35:39.039
I mean, because then they'd have to admit that they, you know, were off.

00:35:39.519 --> 00:35:52.559
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.

00:35:52.559 --> 00:36:03.039
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.

00:36:03.039 --> 00:36:13.440
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.

00:36:13.440 --> 00:36:14.400
He doesn't know.

00:36:14.400 --> 00:36:17.360
But at this point, he absolutely knows.

00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:18.239
Yes.

00:36:18.239 --> 00:36:21.360
Well, he knows that a letter was sent to him saying that.

00:36:21.679 --> 00:36:22.000
Right.

00:36:22.320 --> 00:36:29.280
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.

00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:30.719
Okay.

00:36:30.719 --> 00:36:33.280
So what happens next?

00:36:33.280 --> 00:36:40.320
You said that that nothing happens for ten years, everybody's just kind of sitting on this, and the atrocities are continuing.

00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:41.599
Now what?

00:36:42.320 --> 00:36:48.000
Well, next came a very unassuming man, you know, random guy, E.

00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:48.320
D.

00:36:48.320 --> 00:36:56.079
Morel, born in France, then went and worked on the dock, worked for Elder Dempster as a clerk on the docks.

00:36:56.400 --> 00:36:57.360
The docks where?

00:36:57.519 --> 00:36:58.400
Well, in London.

00:36:58.400 --> 00:37:01.280
But they sent him to Belgium because he could speak French.

00:37:01.440 --> 00:37:01.760
Okay.

00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:03.840
And so he spent time.

00:37:03.840 --> 00:37:06.400
Well, he spent time in both places, but he was a clerk.

00:37:06.400 --> 00:37:11.760
So he was writing down, you know, how much they were sending out in money and how much they were getting back.

00:37:12.079 --> 00:37:14.320
So he was a dock worker in Belgium.

00:37:14.719 --> 00:37:17.199
Yes, but from an English company.

00:37:17.199 --> 00:37:17.760
Okay.

00:37:17.760 --> 00:37:18.239
Okay.

00:37:18.239 --> 00:37:22.159
And he noticed the goods did not seem right.

00:37:22.159 --> 00:37:35.360
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.

00:37:35.360 --> 00:37:45.280
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.

00:37:45.280 --> 00:37:49.360
And so he asked himself, does this seem right to you?

00:37:49.360 --> 00:37:53.199
And started to look into it.

00:37:53.199 --> 00:37:55.599
Um, his employer wasn't happy.

00:37:55.599 --> 00:38:05.360
They kind of tried, in the modern sense, to pay him off, but he was just like, nah, and quit to become a journalist.

00:38:05.360 --> 00:38:09.519
And so he started to write about the trade imbalance.

00:38:09.519 --> 00:38:11.519
He had a background in it.

00:38:11.519 --> 00:38:14.559
He had the he he knew his stuff, you know.

00:38:14.559 --> 00:38:15.679
It wasn't just, yeah.

00:38:16.079 --> 00:38:16.320
Right.

00:38:16.320 --> 00:38:17.920
He was he was a dock worker.

00:38:17.920 --> 00:38:30.639
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?

00:38:31.360 --> 00:38:32.000
Well, latex.

00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:32.960
Latex, yeah.

00:38:33.119 --> 00:38:34.239
Sure, but and ivory.

00:38:34.239 --> 00:38:36.079
Uh latex and ivory.

00:38:36.079 --> 00:38:41.199
So he thought to himself, someone should look into this, and that someone is me.

00:38:41.519 --> 00:38:47.360
Yes, because his company was like, Yeah, we're just we're just gonna like not think about that.

00:38:47.760 --> 00:38:49.679
You're a dock worker, don't rock the boat.

00:38:49.840 --> 00:38:51.599
Yeah, d literally.

00:38:51.599 --> 00:38:53.039
You're so funny.

00:38:53.039 --> 00:38:59.840
Um that so he became he talked about the trade and balance prolifically.

00:38:59.840 --> 00:39:12.320
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.

00:39:12.320 --> 00:39:22.000
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.

00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:29.920
So part of it was, you know, to make people really aware of the Congo, to prevent other governments from doing the same thing.

00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:45.360
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.

00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:52.719
And I just I just want to read you a couple things that he had in this really long report.

00:39:52.719 --> 00:39:55.039
I read the whole thing, it's really long.

00:39:55.039 --> 00:40:06.159
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?

00:40:06.159 --> 00:40:08.239
And why do women do that?

00:40:08.239 --> 00:40:13.280
And uh and the man that he was talking to said, Don't you see the answer?

00:40:13.280 --> 00:40:16.639
If I caught and kept the men, who would work the rubber?

00:40:16.639 --> 00:40:24.400
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.

00:40:24.400 --> 00:40:25.039
End quote.

00:40:25.039 --> 00:40:46.719
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.

00:40:46.719 --> 00:40:52.239
And then, of course, there was always the are they gonna cut off my hand randomly or arm?

00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:54.159
Are they gonna kill my child?

00:40:54.159 --> 00:41:06.880
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.

00:41:06.880 --> 00:41:09.440
His his report is very detailed in that.

00:41:10.079 --> 00:41:12.239
I'm guessing it wasn't it wasn't pleasant.

00:41:12.559 --> 00:41:12.960
Mm-mm.

00:41:12.960 --> 00:41:13.760
No.

00:41:13.760 --> 00:41:26.400
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.

00:41:26.400 --> 00:41:54.960
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.

00:41:54.960 --> 00:41:58.639
Um it's called The Congo A Study of the Negro Race.

00:41:58.639 --> 00:42:06.559
Quote, then I saw the Congo creeping through the black, cutting through the forest with a golden track.

00:42:06.559 --> 00:42:12.960
Then along that river bank a thousand miles, tattooed cannibals danced in files.

00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:19.920
Then I heard the boom of the bloodlust song, and a thigh bone beating on a tin pin gong.

00:42:19.920 --> 00:42:24.159
And blood screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors.

00:42:24.159 --> 00:42:28.000
Blood screamed the skull faced lean witch doctors.

00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:36.559
Whirl ye the deadly voodoo rattle, harry the uplands, steal all the cattle, rattle rattle, rattle rattle.

00:42:36.559 --> 00:42:42.960
A roaring epic rabtime tomb from the mouth of the Congo to the mountains of the moon.

00:42:42.960 --> 00:42:48.480
Death is an elephant, torch eyed and horrible, foam flanked and terrible.

00:42:48.480 --> 00:42:54.719
Boom steal the pygmies, boom kill the Arabs, boom kill the white men.

00:42:54.719 --> 00:43:00.400
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost, burning in hell for his hand maimed host.

00:43:00.400 --> 00:43:05.840
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell, cutting his hands off down in hell.

00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:17.840
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.

00:43:17.840 --> 00:43:25.679
Be careful what you do, our Mambo Jumbo, god of the Congo, and all the other gods, well who do you?

00:43:25.679 --> 00:43:27.039
End quote.

00:43:27.039 --> 00:43:32.880
I just think that that very well sums up what was happening.

00:43:32.880 --> 00:43:36.800
There were actual co um cannibals, so that wasn't a thing she made up.

00:43:36.800 --> 00:43:49.840
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.

00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:55.280
So that, you know, it was just the idea of killing um elephants.

00:43:55.280 --> 00:44:06.559
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.

00:44:06.559 --> 00:44:29.840
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.

00:44:29.840 --> 00:44:33.199
That one was from Punch magazine in 1906.

00:44:33.199 --> 00:44:40.800
But the amount of satirical cartoons coming out at that time was actually a worldwide phenomenon.

00:44:40.800 --> 00:44:48.320
It was it's called yellow journalism and started with FDR, uh, mainly in the Spanish-American War.

00:44:48.320 --> 00:44:50.880
Um not FDR, Teddy Roosevelt.

00:44:50.880 --> 00:44:51.599
It's a Roosevelt.

00:44:51.599 --> 00:44:55.039
It's a Roosevelt, it's Teddy, so sorry.

00:44:55.039 --> 00:44:56.559
Uh with the Rough Riders.

00:44:56.559 --> 00:44:59.360
He would have been so embarrassed if I called him FDR.

00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:00.480
But anyway.

00:45:01.519 --> 00:45:02.000
Anyway.

00:45:02.239 --> 00:45:03.360
It would have been the worst.

00:45:03.360 --> 00:45:07.119
But anyway, so there were political cartoons.

00:45:07.119 --> 00:45:15.920
Leopold had his own campaign out, propaganda campaign being like, yeah, I I don't know what these people are talking about.

00:45:16.400 --> 00:45:17.840
But there was some traction.

00:45:17.840 --> 00:45:24.800
There were there were some people that had that had some things to say, and they were and their voices were were gaining momentum.

00:45:25.199 --> 00:45:44.079
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.

00:45:44.079 --> 00:46:02.239
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.

00:46:02.239 --> 00:46:13.360
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.

00:46:13.760 --> 00:46:23.519
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.

00:46:23.519 --> 00:46:24.000
Yes.

00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:33.679
And he gathered together, he basically gathered together all the documents and the reports and stuff, and then sat down and pinned this pamphlet.

00:46:34.320 --> 00:46:36.480
Yes, and and it was pretty long too.

00:46:36.480 --> 00:46:38.320
I think it was 70 something pages.

00:46:38.639 --> 00:46:39.760
That's a a small book.

00:46:40.079 --> 00:46:41.199
Yes, yeah, it is.

00:46:41.199 --> 00:46:46.880
So I'm just I'm gonna read you one of the things or a couple of things that were in the soliloquy.

00:46:46.880 --> 00:46:52.079
That this first one was this is just a direct quote from a Reverend A.

00:46:52.079 --> 00:46:52.320
E.

00:46:52.320 --> 00:47:02.320
Shrivener, who was a British missionary, and he wrote this in The Journey Made in July, August, and September 1903.

00:47:02.320 --> 00:47:06.480
And so I'm getting this from the soliloquy.

00:47:06.480 --> 00:47:06.960
Okay.

00:47:06.960 --> 00:47:18.000
Shrivener said, quote, Soon we began talking, and without any encouragement on my part, the natives began the tales I'd become accustomed to.

00:47:18.000 --> 00:47:25.760
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.

00:47:25.760 --> 00:47:32.239
They thought it meant slavery, so they attempted to keep the white men out of their country, but without avail.

00:47:32.239 --> 00:47:40.880
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.

00:47:40.880 --> 00:47:47.440
First came the command to build houses for the soldiers, and this was done without a murmur.

00:47:47.440 --> 00:47:54.719
Then they had to feed the soldiers, and all the men and women, hangers on, who accompanied them.

00:47:54.719 --> 00:47:57.440
Then they were told to bring in rubber.

00:47:57.440 --> 00:47:59.760
This was quite a new thing for them to do.

00:47:59.760 --> 00:48:06.239
There was rubber in the forest several days away from their home, but that it was worth anything was news to them.

00:48:06.239 --> 00:48:10.320
A small reward was offered and a rush made for the rubber.

00:48:10.320 --> 00:48:15.360
What strange white men to give us cloth and beads for the sap of a wild vine?

00:48:15.360 --> 00:48:18.639
They rejoiced in what they thought was their good fortune.

00:48:18.639 --> 00:48:24.880
But soon the reward was reduced until at last they were told to bring in the rubber for nothing.

00:48:24.880 --> 00:48:35.920
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.

00:48:35.920 --> 00:48:42.800
Terrified, they began to prepare their food for the fortnight's absence from the village, which the collection of rubber entailed.

00:48:42.800 --> 00:48:45.199
The soldiers discovered them sitting about.

00:48:45.199 --> 00:48:45.840
What?

00:48:45.840 --> 00:48:47.119
Not gone yet.

00:48:47.119 --> 00:48:53.599
Bang bang bang, and down fell one and another, dead in the midst of wives and companions.

00:48:53.599 --> 00:48:59.440
There's a terrible wail and an attempt to prepare the dead for burial, but this was not allowed.

00:48:59.440 --> 00:49:01.760
All must go at once to the forest.

00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:03.039
Without food?

00:49:03.039 --> 00:49:10.320
Yes, without food, and off the poor wretches had to go, without even their tinder boxes to make fires.

00:49:10.320 --> 00:49:18.159
Many died in the forests of hunger and exposure, and still more from the rifles of the ferocious soldiers in charge of the post.

00:49:18.159 --> 00:49:23.519
In spite of all their efforts, the amount fell off and more and more were killed.

00:49:23.519 --> 00:49:29.039
I was shown around the place and the sites of a former big chief settlement were pointed out.

00:49:29.039 --> 00:49:43.679
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.

00:49:43.679 --> 00:49:48.079
There is so much sadness and gloom about them that they are fast decreasing.

00:49:48.079 --> 00:49:48.880
End quote.

00:49:48.880 --> 00:49:55.599
So that was just one example of a missionary's journals and diaries coming out.

00:49:55.599 --> 00:50:01.440
There there's several more missionaries, but that that was just one of them.

00:50:01.440 --> 00:50:16.159
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.

00:50:16.159 --> 00:50:24.000
This Morel is a king's subject, and reverence for the monarchy should have restrained him from reflecting upon me with exposure.

00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:27.840
This Morel is a reformer, a Congo reformer.

00:50:27.840 --> 00:50:29.280
That sizes him up.

00:50:29.280 --> 00:50:47.519
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.

00:50:47.519 --> 00:50:48.880
I will suppress it.

00:50:48.880 --> 00:50:58.079
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.

00:50:58.079 --> 00:51:06.639
And so it's you know, Twain s says that he's studying some photographs of mutilated Negroes and looks down.

00:51:06.639 --> 00:51:08.880
And this is Leopold again.

00:51:08.880 --> 00:51:15.760
The Kodak camera has been a sore calamity to us, the most powerful enemy indeed.

00:51:15.760 --> 00:51:34.400
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.

00:51:34.400 --> 00:51:47.679
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.

00:51:47.679 --> 00:51:56.719
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.

00:51:56.719 --> 00:51:59.760
Then all of a sudden came the crash.

00:51:59.760 --> 00:52:05.280
That is to say, the incorruptible Kodak, and all the harmony went to hell.

00:52:05.280 --> 00:52:10.079
The only witness I could have encountered in my long experience that I couldn't bribe.

00:52:10.079 --> 00:52:15.599
Every Yankee missionary and every interrupted trader sent home and got one.

00:52:15.599 --> 00:52:23.280
And now, oh well, the pitchers get sneaked around everywhere in spite of all we do to ferret them out and suppress them.

00:52:23.280 --> 00:52:33.519
Ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand presses are saying the good word for me all the time and placidly and convincingly denying the mutilations.

00:52:33.519 --> 00:52:43.119
Then that trivial little kodak that a child can carry in its pocket gets up, uttering never a word, and knocks them dumb.

00:52:43.119 --> 00:52:46.480
And then he continues, and this is a quote.

00:52:46.480 --> 00:52:49.440
But enough of trying to tally off his crimes.

00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:51.280
His list is interminable.

00:52:51.280 --> 00:52:53.199
We should never get to the end of it.

00:52:53.199 --> 00:53:03.599
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.

00:53:03.599 --> 00:53:05.519
It is a land of graves.

00:53:05.519 --> 00:53:07.519
It is the land of graves.

00:53:07.519 --> 00:53:10.000
It is the Congo Free graveyard.

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:21.440
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.

00:53:21.440 --> 00:53:24.159
Leopold, king of the Belgians.

00:53:24.159 --> 00:53:32.719
He is personally and solely responsible for all the myriad of crimes that have blackened the history of the Congo state.

00:53:32.719 --> 00:53:35.360
He is the sole master there.

00:53:35.360 --> 00:53:36.800
He is absolute.

00:53:36.800 --> 00:53:40.239
He could have prevented the crimes by his mere command.

00:53:40.239 --> 00:53:43.360
He could have stopped them today with a word.

00:53:43.360 --> 00:53:46.880
He withholds the word for his pocket's sake.

00:53:46.880 --> 00:53:55.599
It seems strange to see a king destroying a nation and laying waste a country for mere sordid money's sake.

00:53:55.599 --> 00:54:01.119
And solely and only for that, lust of conquest is royal.

00:54:01.119 --> 00:54:06.159
Kings have always exercised that stately vice, and we are used to it.

00:54:06.159 --> 00:54:10.719
By old habit, we condone it, perceiving a certain dignity in it.

00:54:10.719 --> 00:54:21.679
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.

00:54:21.679 --> 00:54:23.280
This is new.

00:54:23.280 --> 00:54:25.920
This distinctly revolts us.

00:54:25.920 --> 00:54:28.559
We cannot seem to reconcile ourselves to it.

00:54:28.559 --> 00:54:34.480
We resent it, we despise it, we say it is shabby, unkingly, out of character.

00:54:34.480 --> 00:54:41.360
Being Democrats, we ought to jeer and jest, we ought to rejoice to see the purple dragged in the dirt.

00:54:41.360 --> 00:54:45.920
But well, account for it as we may, we don't.

00:54:45.920 --> 00:55:15.519
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.

00:55:15.519 --> 00:55:27.519
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.

00:55:27.519 --> 00:55:35.440
It shames us to see a king degraded to this aspect, and we shrink from hearing and the particulars of how it happened.

00:55:35.440 --> 00:55:39.920
We shudder and turn away when we come upon them in print.

00:55:39.920 --> 00:55:50.639
And it ends with Leopold saying, Why certainly that is my protection, and you will continue to do it.

00:55:50.639 --> 00:55:52.800
I know the human race.

00:55:52.800 --> 00:56:42.079
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.

00:56:42.079 --> 00:56:49.199
It is this sordid caused and uncuous hypocrisy which makes this crime unparalleled in its horror.

00:56:49.199 --> 00:56:50.159
End quote.

00:56:50.559 --> 00:56:54.400
So those guys let him have it with both barrels.

00:56:54.400 --> 00:56:57.440
What was the result?

00:56:58.960 --> 00:57:11.440
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.

00:57:11.440 --> 00:57:25.360
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.

00:57:25.360 --> 00:57:36.719
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.

00:57:36.719 --> 00:57:40.159
And so the Belgian government got it.

00:57:40.159 --> 00:57:43.199
And then of course, you know, things improved.

00:57:43.199 --> 00:57:45.440
It was Parliament and the Cabinet in charge.

00:57:45.440 --> 00:58:01.840
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.

00:58:01.840 --> 00:58:06.159
And the Belgian government then held control until 1960.

00:58:08.079 --> 00:58:08.719
Wow.

00:58:08.719 --> 00:58:24.320
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.

00:58:25.119 --> 00:58:33.199
There was no civil war, you know, there was no like huge fight with you know people dying and things.

00:58:33.199 --> 00:58:39.360
It was just few people creating public outcry and uh to get things changed.