If King Leopold II were alive today, there is no doubt he would be on trial alongside Milosevic at The Hague for genocide and crimes against humanity. You might have heard about Leopold II’s exploits in the Congo at the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries — perhaps from Adam Hochschild’s book King Leopold’s GhostExcerpts from Hochschild’s book are available in PDF format here. It’s essential reading., or else White King, Red Rubber, Black Death, a BBC documentary that enraged the Belgian royal family when it was shown in Belgium earlier this year.
Many Belgians have never heard the story. Among the allegations, briefly: The Congo Free State, the personal property of King Leopold II, suffered a decline in population from 20 million to 10 million in the decades straddling 1900 as the king, in constant need of cash, had his colonial agents implement a brutal regime of forced labor on the native population. The process went thus: Belgian agents would enter a village and hold the women and children hostage; to secure their release, the men would have to head into the forest, find rubber trees, tap them, and return with superhuman quotas of sap. Many were worked to death, or else killed. If agents killed those held to ransom, they might chop off (right) hands, to prove that the bullets used hadn’t been wasted on game.
If you were the King, or Milosevic, how would you structure your defence? The numbers are exaggerated? They died from other causes? You never ordered such barbaric acts? You weren’t aware this was going on? It wasn’t systemic, but the actions of isolated individuals? You were framed? The natives did it more than you?
Of course you would. And now, a document [MS Word] published by the Belgian Embassy in LondonDon’t get me started — here is a PDF version I made. in the wake of the BBC documentary mounts a defence of Leopold II precisely along these lines. I have no idea why it even exists — why should government resources be expended defending the personal projects of a long-dead king from the work of historians and documentary filmmakers, irrespective of the accuracy of the claims? Can’t this matter be settled among academics? The Belgian constitution does not grant the current king policy making powers, so I don’t see why royal hissy fits should turn into national policy stances.
It’s a bizarrely defensive document, and stiffly phrased. For example, it doesn’t start, “Yes, King Leopold II’s actions are indefensible, certainly by today’s standards and even by the standards of his contemporaries, but the context in which he acted is more nuanced than a portrayal by a BBC documentary…” Instead, we get nuggets such as these:
About the allegations:
Translation: ‘Weakened,’ ‘some even killed;’ doesn’t sound so bad. And they call this genocide?These media claim that numerous deaths and cruelties ought to be ascribed to the system of licensing that King Leopold II had set up for the exploitation of rubber. The indigenous people were claimed to have been weakened and some even killed by forced labour for the exploitation of rubber in Congo. The reign of Leopold II is described as “genocidal”.
Some excerpts from the defence:
Translation: It wasn’t systemic, and in any case, the locals were doing it too. Bonus gratuitous swipe: They’re still doing it.It was not a practice ordered or imposed by Congo Free State or by Leopold II, but was the result of individual acts, based upon prior existing local customs. Mutilations were not introduced by the Belgians, but already existed (and still do) in some parts of Africa — they occurred not only in the Congo, but for instance also recently in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Taking the “scalp” of the enemy is not even peculiar to Africa.
Translation: There weren’t enough Belgians in the Congo to kill that many (even though they tried). And anyway, of the agents implementing Leopold II’s regime of forced labor, many weren’t Belgian. This reflects well on Leopold II, for some reason.3. Another reason why the accusation of “genocide” is out of proportion and unrealistic, is the fact that only 175 agents were in charge of the exploitation of rubber in Congo at the beginning of the 1890s. Most of them were not Belgian and a considerable number of them quickly succumbed to tropical diseases.
Translation: Some natives died before Leopold’s agents could exploit them. Surely he can’t be held responsible for that?4. […] The alleged deaths for the whole of Congo cannot be ascribed to the Belgians, simply because at the beginning of the colonisation, they were not even present or active in the whole of Congo. (their emphasis)
‘Demographic changes’!! My nomination for euphemism of the year. Translation for ‘Migration’: Apparently some Congolese didn’t like living in Congo Free State. ‘Tropical diseases’: Who would have guessed that exhausted, malnourished and mistreated workers have lowered immune systems? And re the slave trade, which Leopold II made ‘great efforts’ to ‘completely eradicate’: Well, if it contributed to a depopulation of the Congo, how successful were the efforts then? Even if demographic changes would have taken place in certain regions of Congo, they cannot solely by [sic] attributed to the reign of Leopold II. Other factors that have to be taken into account are: migration, tropical diseases and slave trade (which had been taking place in many parts of Congo before the reign of King Leopold II and which he made great efforts to completely eradicate).
Now, all this is just so tactless. Even the one narrow point I am willing to concede is made practically unpalatable by the smug logic the authors use to underpin it:
First of all, the use of the term Îgenocide’ is debatable in this context. ÎGenocide’ can only be used if there is a clear intention to destroy a population on nationalistic, ethnic, racial or religious grounds. Neither King Leopold II nor his administrators ever ordered the extermination of the Congolese population, or of some groups of it. On the contrary, the Congo administration needed the local labour for the cultivation of rubber and therefore had no interest in decimating it.
How enlightened. That practically sounds like sustainable development. Au contraire, the rubber quotas demanded by Leopold II were so large that rubber trees died from overexploitation, requiring desperate Congolese to head further and further into the jungle in bids to secure the release of their kin.
A brief aside here: I don’t believe in holding historical figures to modern moral standards — Vikings just didn’t know any better than to rape and pillage; they were never aware of modern moral alternatives to such methods (like joining the EU, for example) and so cannot be held to task for not choosing them. I do believe in holding rulers to the moral standards of their contemporaries, however, especially if there was widespread condemnation already then on moral grounds. In Leopold II’s case, he was the target of a sustained campaign to stop the abuses in the Congo. People like E.D. Morel, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad made it impossible for the king not to be aware that his rule was morally bankrupt. And yet he did not change. This is what makes the moral indictment stick, in my mind.But, yes, according to the narrow legal definition of genocide, Leopold II did not perpetrate that. He just didn’t give a damn about the Congolese, despite knowledge of the effect his policies were having. The mass depopulation of the Congo was the consequence of his policies, not the aim. In our moot court, however, this makes not an iota of difference to his culpability for crimes against humanity.
The authors, meanwhile, seem to believe that their defense brings his actions back to within the norm of acceptable behavior for a turn-of-the-century monarch — making him someone whom Belgians can continue to honor and respect. But even if everything in the document were true, these defences are so pathetic that Leopold II would still emerge as one of the vilest statesmen of the 20th century. He would still be a vain, racist philanderer whose colonial ambitions led directly to the deaths, estimated far too conservatively then, of at least a million Congolese; and he knew it.
Yet he was king of Belgium, and so there are statues of him around Brussels today. There is one on the Place du TrŸne, around the corner from the Royal Palace and a stone’s throw from EU headquarters. Leopold II is buried in the royal crypt on the grounds of Laeken, a palace he rebuilt entirely with Congo profits, and in which the current royals live.
If you are a soldier or civil servant, put in enough years and you will get a medal with his name on it. Thirty years after becoming an officer, for example, you get to be Commander in the Order of Leopold II. Today.
I find that disgraceful. It’s clear to me that this man needs to be unambiguously disowned by the Belgian state, regardless of the wishes of the royal family. His statues need to come down, his medals need to be replaced (may I propose the Order of Patrice Lumumba?) and, in a gesture of contrition, Laeken needs to be sold to fund thousands of scholarships for Congolese students, so that these ill-gotten gains can finally do some good. (The king has another lovely palace in the center of town where he can live.)
There will soon be an opportunity for all this to happen. In 2005, Belgium’s Africa Museum, founded by Leopold II and which for a century has neglected to tell the story of his rule, will be hosting an academic conference, in order to ascertain the “historic truth” behind Hochschild’s story. An exhibit will accompany it. Sound promising?
The Belgian government admits that individual abuses took place in Congo, but rejects the accusations that circulate in the press. That is the reason why next year the Africa Museum in Tervuren is organising an exhibition, which will portray an independent and realistic picture of Congo under colonial rule.
I guess not.
Ett krig i skuggan över tre miljoner döda i Kongo på tio år
De senaste tio åren har 3,3 miljoner människor dött i ett inbördeskrig medan större delen av världen bara tittat på. Det är en mänsklig tragedi av ofattbara mått och ännu ett exempel på hur vi misslyckas med att hantera komplicerade…
Wasn•t the Congo king Leopold•s private property?
Why would your current governmment defend his atrocities? I could understand if his descendants did defend it, but your government?
Anyways – great post!
More exciting reading about Leopold (but mostly about general warfare in Congo) can be found at the excellent and cynical Gary Brecher, aka The War Nerd. Read Congo: the War without Battles, and maybe Live from the Skeleton Coast. Aah – read all of his writing: list.
Is dat het kommentaar van een Blokker of van een blogger?
I got a substantive comment via email today that I’d like to address:
“You could could have mentioned what that context was: the brutality of the British (in India, the Tipu Sultan episode, for example), the Dutch (Indonesia, read Multatuli), the Portuguese, the Americans and the native populations there, the Australians and the Aborigines… and other colonial powers.”
“You’re bashing your country for acts committed by a king who was PERSONALLY in charge of the area. Belgium took over the Congo specifically to put an end to the human rights abuses and the bad press it was causing in the UK and US about Leopold II.”
It’s good that Multatuli blew the whistle, much in the same way that Morel and his contemporaries organised popular opinion abroad against Leopold II.
My post does not bash the Belgian state for acts committed by Leopold II. I blame him (though he had the collaboration of plenty of obsequious countrymen). I do bash the Belgian state/government/establishment for protecting him and his honor after it became embarrassingly clear that Leopold II’s absolutist rule in the Congo Free State was an absolute outrage. Those efforts find their echo in the document I dissect in my post.
Finally, I also think several generations of Belgians not so much forgot the shameful story of their king as didn’t see what the fuss was all about, because, and there is no way to put this nicely, a rich vein or racism towards black Africans ran through the country, and some of it is still visible today. When some family members call Africans “monkeys” at the boozy tail ends of extended-family reunions, it is difficult to escape that conclusion. I know this happens in other countries too, but that does not make it right.
It is self-evident to me that a statesman who so defined himself by a project that so clearly descended into barbarism does not deserve the official and public acclaim of a statue or a medal. If anyone can conceive of an argument for a statue of Leopold II, I would love to hear it. Meanwhile, the Belgian government should investigate “what the fuss is all about,” and act accordingly. I would welcome an official (but proper) truth and reconciliation committee, and, if it turns out that Leopold II was half as bad as the defence admits he is, Belgium should ditch him, along with the symbols of the riches he plundered from the Congo.
I’m not kidding about selling Laeken to a hotel chain to fund scholarships for young Congolese. Given the state the DRC is in today, helping to educate its next generation would be a useful and welcome gesture of contrition by the Belgian state on behalf of Leopold II.
That 175 agents of King Leopold II is a curious number. How could
175 white men kill millions of black men and women?
Very strange. Kind of hard to believe.
So I go to one of the excerpts from the book, Chapter 19, “The Great
Forgetting” — I really like that title, I think it applies to many
people and times, not just this — and I read it, and I note the
assertion being made but I also note the lack of evidence being
presented.
It’s clear we are supposed to be very angry — millions killed! But
it’s almost like examining the details of how we know this is beneath
the author’s dignity.
And also it’s clear that if someone like myself asks how we know
this, that, somehow, I’m defending abdomination.
Moving on to the question of whether the Belgian state should spend time
and effort trying to ascertain what King Leopold II did — and defend him
from false charges.
For someone thinking as an individualist the answer would likely be “no,”
the state shouldn’t do this, because Leopold whether guilty or innocent, and
the degree of his guilt, the individualist can judge or misjudge Leopold
an evil man without likewise blaming belgians alive today. But for people
reading this coming from a rights of group perspective, who are unfortunately
all to common, it’s a very serious business how Leopold is perceived, because
acts of violence against modern belgians can be rationalized on this basis.
If you want evidence of the mechanisms by which the Congo Free State was run, Mark, I suggest you read chapters 1-18. Nineteen contains the conclusion, which is not usually where one presents new evidence.
Stefan,
Chapter nineteen was the only chapter freely accessible on the web.
Have you read the book, by the way?
Yes, Mark, and some of the primary source material the book references.
Stefan,
What catches my eye about this story is the assertion that millions
were killed. If some of Leopold’s agents did horrible things that’s
interesting but not that interesting because there are many such
individuals in the world, both now and then, and I’m more interested
in the now.
If King Leopold was a moral monster who made a great deal of money by
ruthlessly exploiting and abusing africans, well that’s more interesting
but mostly what makes it interesting is because he was King Leopold.
But if King Leopold caused millions to be killed then that goes beyond the
inherent interest of his being a Belgian king and it seems like a major
event we should all remember — in part as an explanation of how the
present world took it’s shape.
So my interest is the millions dead. What I’m wondering is if you would
explain the reasons for believing that millions were killed and whether
you yourself find the evidence persuasive.
Frankly, to deny now the role that King Leopold II played in the death of at least 5 million Congolese natives is to try to cover the sun with a finger, as we say in Peru, where I come from. There is photographic and documented evidence that Leopold led a regime of extermination. Roger Casement and E. D. Morel made sure that the world knew. And, of course, we have the testimony of other travellers, like missioners and diplomats, who saw what happened and reported the atrocities. The reaction of the Belgian Government shows that their rulers want to keep the image of a chocolate-making country whose second monarch tried to save the natives from Arab traffickers. I am not particularly concerned about the reaction of the Belgian royal family. They do not represent anybody. But it is time that the government in Brussels realise that living in denial is not a healthy political exercise. Many whites are accepting in South Africa their responsibility in the apartheid crimes. South Africa, for all their problems, is a better place than it was 15 years ago. Perhaps the Belgian government should learn that lesson.