http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/esclavage3.

htm

Patrice Lumumbo:Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, who wanted Congo to be completely free from Europe. He was assassinated with help from the CIA because other countries were afraid they would not be able to take advantage of Congo's resources if Lumumbo became too powerful.

Mobutu: With american help, he was a dictator of Congo after he assassinated Lumumbo. Fabulously rich, also can be compared to Leopold with his yacht and great wealth from the land. Diogo Cao: The Portuguese Naval Captain who was the first European to arrive at the Congo River King Affonso I: The ManiKongo whoruled the Kingdom of the Kongo from 1509 to 1542, did not appreciate people being taken from his kingdom to be used as slaves Dorothy Tennant:Stanley's wife William Sheppard: black American, explored Congo, first African American missionary in Congo. Also the first outsider to get inside the Kuba kingdom's capital Leon Fievez: terrorized district along a river north of Stanley pool Captian Leon Rom: man who may have inspired Conrad's character, Mr. Kurtz because of his row of African heads in his garden. He also painted and collected butterflies. Mr. Kurtz: murderous character in "Heart of Darkness" Joseph Conrad: original name was Konrad Korzeniowski, traveled to Africa and wrote "Heart of Darkness" Henry Stanley: original name: John Rowlands, world renowned journalist and explorer who explores the Congo for Leopold David Livingston: explored Africa, but died Mark Twain: American author Edmund Dene Morel: The British businessman who exposes teh slavery atrocities of Congo [King] Leopold II: heir and then ruler of Belgium, colonized Congo

King Leopold I: father of Leopold II Archduchess/Queen Marie-Henriette: wife of Leopold II Archduke/Emperor Maximilian: Leopold II's brother-in-law, appointed emperor of Mexico, overthrown and killed [Empress] Charlotte/Carlota: Leopold II's sister, married Maximilian, went crazy Cameroon: British explorer Pytor Semenov: Russian Geographer, chairman of conference "Colonel" George Washington Williams: American Civil War veteran, historian, minister, and negative critic of the Belgian Congo Alice Pike:Is supposed to get married to Henry Stanly after his exploration of Africa but leaves him Stanislas Lefranc: devout Catholic and monarchist, appalled at treatment of Africans in Congo Auguste Achte: a French priest who was captured by rebels Mary Richardson Morel: E.D. Morel's wife, helped Morel with his campaigns Hezekiah Andrew Shanu: former Force Publique worker, who helped morel by supplying information. Was found out and commited suicide Sir Alfred Jones- Morel's former boss, and head of the Elder Dempster line, president of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, honorary consul in Liverpool of Congo state. Mary Kingsley- Writer, and friend of Morel, wrote Travels in West Africa, and was one of the first writers that did not treat Africans as savages, but instead as human beings. Raymond De Grez- Secret source of Morel's information for his newspaper. Was a Force Publique veteran, that was wounded in action, gave Morel information from a port in Brussels. And had someone pass the letters to Morel, instead of the Post. Sir Hugh Gilzean Reid- British Baptist, newspaper owner, and a former member of Parliament, and was sought out greatly by King Leopold so as the cultivate. Edgar Canisius- Eyewitness of attacks on Leopold that Morel published, and wrote of an attack he witnessed that the Budja tribe (slaves of a rubber making factory) did against the soldiers of the rubber making company, and the company itself.

Roger Casement-Witnessed first hand the wrong-doings of the soldiers in the Congo, befriends Morel to try and take down King Leopold. Van Kerckhoven- The Force Publique officer that payed his black soldies five brass rods for every human head they brought to him. Stephen Gwynn-An Irish writer that complimented Roger Casements looks after he met him. Raoul Van Calcken- A.B.I.R. Official,ordered several africans to be hurt Emile Vandervelde- The leader of the Belgian socialists. ( and a lawyer ) William Morrison- A white minister who had been with the Southern Presbyterian Congo mission since 1897

Some History Monday, November 13, 2006 Africa: A Case Study in Capitalism, Colonial Dominance and Genocide This is a three part posting on Western exploitation and colonial domination of the African continent and its people. Part 1 deals with the way in which African slavery and the establishment of plantations on European colonial possessions was a necessary element in the rise of the capitalist system many of us endorse today. Part 2 is a brief discussion of the "scramble for Africa" which marked the beginning of European colonialism on the African continent in the 1880's. Part 3 is a biography of King Leopold II of Belgium his systematic genocide in the Belgian Congo which reduced the Congolese population from 20 million to only 10 million in a span of 40 years. Statues and monuments of Leopold, one of histories greatest mass murderers, adorn Belgium to this day and the government has refused to pay any type of reparations to the Congolese people, many of whom live in abject poverty as a direct result Part 1: Profit Over People source: "Capitalism and Slavery," by Eric Williams of Belgian exploitation.

In accordance with 16th century precedents, the Negro slave trade was entrusted to a company which was given the sole right by a nation to trade in slaves on the coast of West Africa and to maintain forts necessary for the protection of the trade post. They then could transport and sell the slaves in the West Indies. Accordingly, the British incorporated the Company of Royal Adventurers in 1663 and later replaced it with the Royal African Company in 1672, as did the Swedish, Danish and French, following the precedent set by the Portugese in 1450. Individual traders were excluded and thus, the slave trade became, in effect, an economic venture monopolized by European colonial states, thus assuring that profits would flow directly to each respective treasury. Merchants and Plantation heads alike began to complain about the government monopolies, claiming them to be inefficient and unprofitable, as well as unable to meet demand and provide low prices. Accordingly, on July 5, 1698 the British gave in and allowed the slave trade to be open to all British subjects, so long as a payment of a 10 percent duty was paid on all goods exported to Africa for the purchase of slaves. This development proved profitable in the newly introduced economic theory of mercantilism which stated that a country could increase its stock by a favorable balance of trade, exporting more goods than were imported. Thus, the increased amount of goods traded for slaves (since more slaves could be bartered under the new system) would actually accelerate the growth of the British treasury. In addition, the slaves helped to increase production on the colonies and thus, provided sugar and other tropical commodities which otherwise would have needed to be imported from foreigners, upsetting the favorable balance of trade. As the plantation colonies grew, so too did the markets for British industrial goods and industry flourished in Britain as a result of the ever growing markets. The colonies of the West Indies, with the supply of sugar and other tropical commodities exerted itself as an ideal colonial asset, as opposed to those in the Americas, which began to compete with the colonial empires by producing comparable manufactured goods.

By 1690, the amount of capital produced by the planters of the West Indies was so astonishing that Sir Dalby Thomas that every white man in the West Indies, (through exploitation of the valuable "commodity" "black ivory ") was one hundred and thirty times more valuable, than a white man at home. It was estimated that the profit involved with the slave trade amounted to no less than 36 percent of Britains total commercial profits. As mentioned, as the amount of slaves traded increased, so to did profits and the rise in profits led inevitably to more slaves being traded. By the 18th

century this cycle had culminated in one of the greatest migrations in recorded history. The conditions, however were so appalling that, for every 100 slaves that left Africa, only 84 would reach the West Indies and, by the end of three years about one third of them would be dead. Thus, for every 100 that left the coast, only 56 would be alive after three years. This astounding cost in human life, which fueled the massive accumulation of capital, grants merit to the saying that in Liverpool (which grew as a direct result of the slave trade) "the principal streets had been marked out by chains, and the walls of its houses cemented by the blood, of the African slave." The saying may no doubt be extended to countless cities in the colonial empires, whose foundations were likewise laid with the blood and tears of the enslaved African. The slave trade had another result, besides the massive accumulation of wealth for the European powers. The amount of slaves traded became so dramatic that, by 1787 the population of the British West Indies consisted of 58,353 whites, 7,706 free Negroes and 461,864 slaves, with an annual average of 34,000 slaves exported from Africa. The population of the French West Indies was relatively similar, with an annual export of 20,000 slaves from Africa. This enormous population shift in addition to slaves who perished, resulted in Africa being deprived of many of its most prosperous members of society, crippling the continents development with consequences that reverberate to the present.

Part

2:

Capitalism,

Competition,

Empire

and

the

Partition

of

Africa

At the onset of the 19th century, Europeans began a process known as the "opening of Africa," whereby the continent was opened to exploration and the exploitation of the continents relatively untapped raw materials. While many of the European powers took control of parts of the continent along the coast and established trading posts, the majority of the African continent remained free of European control. Since Europeans already had access to the raw materials of Africa through trade and trade posts, the question arises as to why Europe proceeded to slice up and distribute Africa amongst themselves, a process known as the "Scramble for Africa," which began in 1885 following the failure of the Berlin Conference and ran through the onset of the 20th century. Examining circumstances in Europe, leading up to the onset of the scramble, will help to illustrate the necessity of further "opening" the African continent.

The unification of Germany in 1871 and Bismarks policy of Weltpolitik to establish the German Empires "place in the sun;" the "Long Depression," from 1873-1876 which hampered the economies of many of the European powers; strategic interests, most notably control of the Suez canal, which was seen as a vital strategic possession; and the advancement of the modern capitalist system, which John A Hobson argued was the necessary precursor to imperialism - were all significant factors. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 attempted to set rules for the colonization of Africa, many of which were not followed - almost resulting in war amongst colonial powers on several occasions; the end of the Berlin Conference is generally seen as the onset of the scramble and indeed, within a decade all of the continent save Liberia and the Orange free state remained independent of European control (Ethiopia would also gain nominal independence following the defeat of Italy in 1896).

Returning to the reasons for the scramble, the unification of Germany in 1871 under Bismark found the large and powerful nation in a position to compete with Britain and France for European dominance, yet it entered the scene well after most of the world had been colonized. Germany was a quickly rising industrial power and lacking colonies from which to extract raw materials they moved to establish a footing on the African continent. With Germany, who British and French planners already viewed as a rising threat, setting its sights on Africa, Britain and France also moved to grab a piece of Africa, motivated in part, to assure Germany did not seize all the territory first. Other emerging powers, such as Italy, and nominal powers such as Belgium and the former colonial powers of Portugal and Spain also acquired territories on the continent, none of whom managed to control as much territory as Britain, France or Germany. A second factor in the move to control Africa was the "Long Depression," caused by the reparations payments from the Franco-Prussian war as well as the collapse of the Vienna Stock exchange in 1873 and various other factors. This was a major cause of the "new imperialism" which the scramble for Africa constituted. Many of the European powers were experiencing a rising deficit in their balance of trade and Africa was seen as a vast new market as well as a possible area for development and capital investment. This was in addition to the prospect of increased control over raw materials. The third factor was strategic interests and control of trade, especially the Suez canal, control of which meant dominance of the primary trade route between the east and west. The British had envisioned strategic control "from Cape to Cairo" a notion made famous by the South African businessman and colonizer Cecil Rhodes. The "red line

through Africa," which Rhodes envisioned, uniting resource rich South Africa with the trade route of the Suez canal by railway was hampered by German control of Tanganyika. This British vision also encroached upon French ambitions to extend their control from French West-Africa toward the eastern shores, ultimately the British won out. While this scramble was fueled by the competition between the European powers, it was also fueled by accelerating Western capitalism. The people of the African continent, whose lands were taken, were seen as idle and lazy, their lifestyles of communal land control and subsistence farming, hunting and gathering did not produce a surplus to be bought sold or traded. These people then, it was thought, could be civilized by revolutionizing agricultural production to produce cash crops, opening mines and setting up light industry where cheap African labor could be produced. The total political, economic, cultural and social intrusion of the African continent which the "scramble for Africa" represented - like the slave trade before it had devastating consequences for the people, which can be seen by the massive poverty and violence, as Africans on their own continent are still deprived of the land seized from them by European colonialists which is now owned by their white descendents and Western multi-nationals.

Part

3:

beto

febole

yiwa

Rubber

is

Death

source: An incredibly well produced and eye-opening documentary film produced by the BBC entitled "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death." The film is available to be viewed in its entirity here: "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death"

The documentary White King, Red Rubber, Black Death shows how the greed of one man systematically raped the African land of both its resources and its souls to produce the grandiose and splendor of his Belgian nation. As one travels through the magnificent cities today there is still no mention of the millions of exploited Congolese at the foundations, and accordingly, historical revisionism continues to keep Leopolds name from assuming its rightful place on the list of humanities greatest mass murderers. King Leopold IIs quest for overseas colonies began in the late 1870s, when he

appointed Henry Morton Stanley to map out and establish a colony in the Congo region of North Africa, which had yet to be claimed by any of the European powers. The area, more than seventy times the size of Belgium was granted to Leopold in 1885 at the Berlin Conference and he established the Congo Free State that same year. Leopolds agents had acquired documents signed by tribal leaders, many of whom did not understand the nature of the agreements. Nevertheless, Belgiums fellow colonial powers deemed them to be binding treaties laying a legal framework for the exploitation that was to follow.

In 1908 the CFS officially became a Belgian colony. King Leopold II died the next year, his public funeral procession was met with taunts and boos. At the time of his death, he was widely regarded as the most hated man in Europe. It seemed that the efforts of Morel and Casement, among others, had succeeded in revealing the true character of the fallen monarch. Today, the hatred of King Leopold II, so prominent with his death, seems to have been largely forgotten. Statues of Leopold still adorn Belgium, including a bust of the former monarch which has been erected only recently. In the various memorials, Leopold is portrayed as a civilizer and a benefactor. Thus, when Leopolds defenders are faced with accusations against him, they may simply respond by saying bring us the proof. Has King Leopold II been vilified in death? The question will be answered by the next generation of historians and social scientists. Today, abject poverty and violence continue in the Congo. The people and resources are still exploited by foreign mining operations, as reported by the UN. Since 1998 more than four million people have died in a brutal civil war. Agencies in Belgium such as Pro Belgica continue to lobby the Ministry of Education against criticism of their role in the Congo. The nation still refuses to pay any type of indemnity for their destructive role in the Congo or even admit that their genocide may have constituted a severe

human rights violation. King Leopold II, more than a century after his crimes against humanity, continues to be protected by his subjects.

In his history King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hochschild suggests that Leon Rom was one of the inspirations for the Mr. Kurtz character, citing references as the heads on the stakes outside of the station and other similarities between the two.

Through the Berlin Conference and other diplomatic efforts, he finally obtains international recognition for his colony. He then establishes a system of forced labour that keeps the people of the Congo basin in a condition of slavery. ??) [edit] Documentation and bibliography

Belgium and the Scramble for Africa As has already been suggested, the rise of the new imperialism begins in the 1870s and continues to the First World War. It represents changing international relations and registers, in particular, the rise of the United States and of Germany, on the one hand, the relative decline of France and Britain, on the other hand. One of the consequences of this was the scramble for Africa. In this process and for reasons connected to the power of the British royal family Belgian was granted an enormous stretch of land in Africa, the Belgian Congo as this became today's Zaire. Heart of Darkness centres around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa, or better put, the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company's stations.

The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company's service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment in the hands of the Company's agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrast sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white man's settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness. Amidst difficulties in getting on with the oppressed natives, Marlow survives in the Congo but as the novella closes, he returns home in ill health.

The Butcher of Congo By Baffour Ankomah, New African, October 1999 Only 90 years ago, the agents of King Leopold II of Belgium massacred 10 million Africans in the Congo. Cutting off hands as we see in Sierra Leone today, was very much part of Leopold's repertoire. Today, Leopold's "rubber terror" has all been swept under the carpet. Adam Hochschild calls it "the great forgetting" in his brilliant new book, King Leopold's Ghost, recently published by Macmillan. This is a story of greed, exploitation and brutality that Africa and the world must not forget. This story is actually best understood when told in reverse order. Leopold never set foot in "his" Congo Free State - for all the 23 years (1885-1908) he ruled what Hochschild calls "the world's only colony claimed by one man". It was a vast territory which "if superimposed on the map of Europe", says Hochschild, "would stretch from Zurich to Moscow to central Turkey. It was bigger than England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined. Although mostly rainforest and savannah, it also embraced volcanic hills and mountains covered by snow and glaciers, some of whose peaks reached higher than the Alps." Leopold's "rubber terror" raised a lot of hairs in Britain, America and continental Europe (particularly between the years 1900-1908). But while they were condemning Leopold's barbarity, his accusers were committing much the same atrocities against Africans elsewhere on the continent. Hochschild tells it better: "True, with a population loss estimated at 10 million people, what happened in the Congo could reasonably be called the most murderous part of the European Scramble for Africa. But that is so only if you look at sub-Saharan Africa as the arbitrary checkerboard formed by colonial boundaries. "With a decade of [Leopold's] head start [in the Congo], similar forced labour systems for extracting rubber were in place in the French territories west and north of the Congo River, in Portuguese-ruled Angola, and in the nearby Cameroon under the

Germans. "In France's equatorial African territories, where the region's history is best documented, the amount of rubber-bearing land was far less than what Leopold controlled, but the rape was just as brutal. Almost all exploitable land was divided among concession companies. Forced labour, hostages, slave chains, starving porters, burned villages, paramilitary company 'sentries', and the chicotte were the order of the day. [The chicotte was a vicous whip made out of raw, sun-dried hippopotamus hide, cut into a long sharp-edged cork-screw strip. It was applied to bare buttocks, and left permanent scars. Twenty strokes of it sent victims into unconsciousness; and a 100 or more strokes were often fatal. The chicotte was freely used by both Leopold's men and the French]. "Thousands of refugees who had fled across the Congo River to escape Leopold's regime eventually fled back to escape the French [in Congo-Brazzaville]. The population loss in the rubber-rich equatorial rainforest owned by France is estimated, just as in Leopold's Congo, at roughly 50%." Hochschild cannot fathom how the reform movement in Europe focused exclusively on Leopold's Congo when "if you reckon [the] mass murder by the percentage of the population killed", the Germans did as much in Namibia, if not worse, than Leopold in Congo. "By these standards", Hochschild argues, "the toll was even worse among the Hereros in German South West Africa, today's Namibia. The killing there was masked by no smokescreen of talk about philanthropy. It was genocide, pure and simple, starkly announced in advance. "After losing much of their land to the Germans, the Hereros rebelled in 1904. In response, Germany sent in a heavily armed force under Lt-Gen Lothar von Trotha, who issued an extermination order (Vernichtungsbefehl): 'Within the German boundaries every Herero, whether found with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, shall be shot... Signed: The Great General of the Mighty Kaiser, von Trotha.' "In case everything was not clear, an addendum specified: 'No male prisoners will be taken." By the time von Trotha's murderous hordes had finished their job in 1906, fewer than 20,000 of the 80,000 Herreros who lived in Namibia in 1903 remained. "The others [more than 60,000 of them]", writes Hochschild, "had been driven into the desert to die of thirst (the Germans poisoned the waterholes), were shot, or - to economise on bullets - bayoneted or clubbed to death with rifle stocks." Hochschild tries to be fair here by pointing to what the Americans and the British were doing, or had done, elsewhere.

"Around the time the Germans were slaughtering the Hereros," he writes, "the world was largely ignoring America's brutal counter-guerrilla war in the Phillipines, in which US troops tortured prisoners, burned villages, killed 20,000 rebels, and saw 200,000 more Filipinos die of war-related hunger or disease. "Britain [too] came in for no international criticism for its killings of Aborigines in Australia, in accordance with extermination orders as ruthless as Von Trotha's. And, of course, in neither Europe nor the United States was there major protest against the decimation of the American Indians." Hochschild then poses the controversial question: "When these other mass murders went largely unnoticed except by their victims, why, in England and the United States, was there such a storm of righteous protest about the Congo?" He answers the question himself: "What happened in the Congo was indeed mass murder on a vast scale, but the sad truth is that the men who carried it out for Leopold were no more murderous than many Europeans then at work or at war elsewhere in Africa. Conrad said it best [in his book, Heart of Darkness, based on the brutalities in the Congo]: 'All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz'." Kurtz is Joseph Conrad's lead character in Heart of Darkness. He is "both a murderous head collector and an intellectual, an emissary of science and progress, a painter, a poet and a journalist, and an author of a 17-page report to the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, at the end of which he scrawls in shaky hand: 'Exterminate all the brutes'." Hochshild believes that Kurtz was Leon Rom in real life. Rom was born in Mons in Belgium. Poorly educated, he joined the Belgian army aged 16. Nine years later, aged 25 in 1886, he found himself in the Congo in search of adventure. He became district commissioner at Matadi and was later put in charge of the African troops in Leopold's murderous Force Publique army in the Congo. Rom's brutality knew no bounds. It was such that even the white people working with him were shocked to their boots. "When Rom was station chief at Stanley Falls," Hochshild reveals, "the governor general sent a report back to Brussels about some agents who 'have the reputation of having killed masses of people for petty reasons'. He mentions Rom's notorious flower bed rigged with human heads, and then adds: 'He kept a gallows permanently erected in front of the station'." Conrad had himself gone to Congo in 1890 at the time Rom was committing his atrocities. "The moral landscape of Heart of Darkness", writes Hochshild, "and the shadowy figure at its centre are the creations not just of a novelist but of an openeyed observer who caught the spirit of a time and place with piercing accuracy." So, how did Leopold come to own such a vast territory, exploited it, killed its people,

took away its riches and never set foot in it? Three things stand out in this sad story - the naivety of the African kings and people; the misfits of Europe sent to subdue the Africans; and the superior weapons of war that the Europeans possessed which the Africans lacked. When the first Europeans (the Portuguese) arrived in Congo in 1482, they met a thriving African kingdom. "Despite the contempt for Kongo culture," says Hochschild, "the Portuguese grudgingly recognised in the kingdom a sophisticated and welldeveloped state - the leading one on the west coast of central Africa. It was an imperial federation, of two or three million people, covering an area roughly 3,000 sq miles, some of which lie today in several countries after the Europeans had drawn arbitrary border lines across Africa in 1886." The great fascination of the Congo at the time was its mighty 3,000-mile river, variously called Lualaba, Nzadi or Nzere by the people who lived on its banks. Nzere means "the river that swallows all rivers" because of its many tributaries. Just one tributary, the Kasai, carries as much water as Europe's longest river, the Volga in Russia and it is half as long as the Rhine. Another tributary, the Ubangi is even longer. On Portuguese tongue, Nzere became Zaire which was adopted by Mobutu when he renamed the country in 1971. Like most things African, the Europeans changed the river's name to Congo. In 1482 when the Portuguese sailor Diogo C%o accidentally came upon the river as it emptied into the Atlantic, he was astounded by its sheer size. "Modern oceanographers", writes Hochschild, "have discovered more evidence of the great river's strength in its 'pitched battle with the ocean': a 100-mile-long canyon, in place 4,000 feet deep, that the river has carved out of the sea floor... It pours some 1.4 million cubic feet of water per second into the ocean; only the Amazon carries more water." Thanks to satellite technology, the world now knows that much of the river's basin lies on a plateau which rises nearly 1,000 feet high 220 miles from the Atlantic coast. Thus the river descends to sea level in a furious 220-mile dash down the plateau. "During this tumultous descent," writes Hochshild, "the river squeezes through narrow canyons, boils up in waves of 40 feet high, and tumbles over 32 separate cataracts. So great is the drop and the volume of water that these 220 miles have as much hydroelectric potential as all the lakes and rivers of the United States combined." In all, the river (Africa's second longest) drains more than 1.3 million square miles, "an area larger than India," Hochschild testifies. "It has an estimated one-sixth of the world's hydroelectric potential... Its fan-shaped web of tributaries constitute more than seven thousand miles of interconnecting waterways, a built-in transportation grid rivalled by few places on earth."

Thus, Congo was a jewel any colonialist would kill for. And the lot fell to Henry Morton Stanley to colonise it for King Leopold II. Stanley was Welsh but he passed himself round as an American. He had first stumbled on the river on his second trip to Africa. Because the river flowed north from this point, Stanley thought it was the Nile. Stanley's background tells a lot about the brutality he unleashed on the Africans he met on his journeys. He had been born a "bastard" in the small Welsh market town of Denbigh on 28 January 1841. His mother, Betsy Parry (a housemaid) had recorded him on the birth register of St Hillary's Church in Denbigh as "John Rowlands, Bastard". His father was believed to be a local drunkard called John Rowlands who died of delirium tremens, a severe pyschotic condition occurring in some alcoholics. John Rowlands Bastard was the first of his mother's five illegitimate children. After an exceptionally difficult childhood spent with foster parents and in juvenile workhouses, John Rowlands Bastard moved to New Orleans (USA) in February 1859 where he changed his name several times - sometimes calling himself Morley, Morelake and Moreland. Finally he settled on Henry Morton Stanley which he claimed was the name of a rich benefactor he lived with in New Orleans. Stanley would become a soldier, sailor, newspaperman and famous explorer feted by the high and mighty on both sides of the Atlantic. He was knighted by Britain and elected to parliament. Though records show that Stanley wrote love letters to at least three women, he himself confessed despairingly in 1886: "The fact is, I can't talk to women". He eventually married "the eccentric high-society portrait painter" Dorothy Tennant on 12 July 1890 in a lavish wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London, attended by the good and great of Britain, including Prime Minister Gladstone. Yet, Hochschild provides evidence showing that Stanley's "great fear of women" prevented him from ever consummating his marriage. After his honeymoon, Stanley himself wrote in his dairy; "I do not regard it wifely, to procure these pleasures, at the cost of making me feel like a monkey in a cage". To which his biographer, Frank McLynn adds: "Stanley's fear of women was so great that when he was finally called upon to satisfy a wife, [he] in effect broke down and confessed that he considered sex for the beasts." Hochschild adds his own telling comment: "Whether this inference is right or wrong, the inhibitions that caused Stanley so much pain are a reminder that the explorers and soldiers who carried out the European seizure of Africa were often not the bold, bluff, hardy men of legend, but restless, unhappy, driven men, in flight from something in their past or in themselves. The economic explanations of imperial expansion -the search for raw materials, labour and markets - are all valid, but there was

pyschological fuel as well." Here Stanley had a common link with his ultimate employer, King Leopold II. Hochschild tells how the "loveless marriage" of Leopold's parents affected the young prince. "If Leopold wanted to see his father, he had to apply for an audience". The cold atmosphere in which he grew up haunted him in later life. He became an "ungainly, haughty young man whom his first cousin Queen Elizabeth of England thought 'very odd' and in the habit of 'saying disagreeable things to people'," says Hochschild. Like his parents, Leopold and his wife, Marie-Henriette "loathed each other at first sight, feelings that apparently never changed", Hochschild continues. "Like many young couples of the day, the newlyweds apparently found sex a frightening mystery." Queen Victoria became their sex-educator. She and her husband, Prince Albert, gave Leopold and his wife (visiting from Brussels) tips about how to consummate their marriage. Several years later, when Marie-Henriette became pregnant, Leopold wrote to Prince Albert thanking him for "the wise and practical advice you gave me...[It] has now borne fruit." When Leopold finally ascended the throne in 1865, his undying desire was to own colonies. He tried everything under the sun to get a colony to no avail, including offering to buy the Philippines from Spain, buying lakes in the Nile and draining them out, or trying to lease territory on the island of Formosa. He despised Belgium's small size. "Small country, small people" was how he described his little Belgium that had only become independent in 1830. The brutal expeditions of Stanley in Africa finally offered Leopold the chance to land his prized jewel, Congo. Stanley had made two "journalistic" trips to Africa, first in 1869 to find David Livingstone. The second was in 1874 where, starting from Zanzibar with 356 people (mostly Africans), he "attacked and destroyed 28 large towns and three or four score villages" (his own words) as he plundered his way down to Boma and the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic coast. In 1879, Stanley was off again to Africa, this time under commission from King Leopold to colonise Congo for him. Stanley used the gun, cheap European goods and plainfaced deceit to win over 450 local chiefs and their people and take over their land. Stanley apparently remembered how the 22-sq-mile Manhattan Island in New York Bay had been "bought" from the Native Americans by the Dutch colonial officer, Peter Minuit, with trinkets valued at just $24. If Minuit could do it in Manhattan, Stanley could do it, too, in the Congo. Only that in his case, he just asked the Congolese chiefs to mark Xs to legal documents written in a foreign language they had not seen before. Stanley called them treaties, like this one signed on 1 April 1884 by the chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela: In return for "one piece of cloth per month to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides

present of cloth in hand, they promised to freely of their own accord, for themselves and their heirs and successors for ever...give up to the said Association [set up by Leopold] the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing rights to all their territories...and to assist by labour or otherwise, any works, improvements or expeditions which the said Association shall cause at any time to be carried out in any part of these territories... All roads and waterways running through this country, the right of collecting tolls on the same, and all game, fishing, mining and forest rights, are to be the absolute property of the said Association." With treaties like this, Stanley set forth to colonise Congo for Leopold. But the French would not let them have all the laugh. They sent Count Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza on their own colonising mission. De Brazza landed north of the Congo River, curved out an enclave for France and had a town named after him (Brazzaville). The enclave eventually became known as Congo Brazzaville, where the French too unleashed their own brutality on the local people. Meanwhile Stanley was doing a "good" job across the river for Leopold, building a railway and a dirt road to skirt the 220-mile descent of the river. This was to facilitate the shipping of Congo's abundant ivory and other wealth to Belgium to enrich Leopold and his petit pays. In 1884, Stanley finally left for home in England, his work for Leopold done. Leopold next sent in his hordes, including Leon Rom, to use absolute terror to rule the land and ship out the wealth. It was the brutality of Leopold's agents that would catch the eye of the world and lead to his forced sale of Congo to the Belgian government in 1908. Ivory had been the initial prized Congo export for Leopold. Then something happened by accident in far away Ireland that dramatically changed the fate of Leopold, his Congo and its people. John Dunlop, an Irish veterinary surgeon, was tinkering with his son's bicycle in Belfast and accidentally discovered how to make an inflatable rubber tire for the bike. He set up a tire company in 1890 named after himself, Dunlop, and a new major industry was up and running. Rubber became the new gold, and Leopold was soon laughing all the way to the bank. The huge rainforest of Congo teemed with wild rubber, and Leopold pressed his agents for more of it. This is when the genocide reached its peak. Tapping wild rubber was a difficult affair, and Leopold's agents had to use brutal force to get the people of Congo to go into the forests and gather rubber for Leopold. Any Congolese man who resisted the order, saw his wife kidnapped and put in chains to force him to go and gather rubber. Or sometimes the wife was killed in revenge. As more villages resisted the rubber order, Leopold's agents ordered the Force Publique army to raid the rebellious villages and kill the people. To make sure that the

soldiers did not waste the bullets in hunting animals, their officers demanded to see the amputated right hand of every person they killed. As Hochschild puts it, "the standard proof was the right hand from a corpse. Or occasionally not from a corpse. 'Sometimes', said one officer to a missionary, 'soldiers shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a living man'. In some military units, there was even a 'keeper of the hands', his job was the smoking [of them]." Fortunately for the people, Edmund Dene Morel, a clerk of a Liverpool shipping line used by Leopold to ship out Congo's wealth, discovered on his several journeys to the Belgian port of Antwerp in the 1890s that while rubber and ivory were shipped from Congo to Antwerp, only guns and soldiers were going from Antwerp to Congo. This marked the beginning of his massive newspaper campaign to expose Leopold and his atrocities in the Congo. Morel's campaign in Europe and America finally forced Britain to ask its consul in Congo, the Irish patriot Sir Roger Casement, to make an investigative trip all over Congo and report. Casement's findings were so damning that the Foreign Office in London was too embarrassed that it could not publish the original. Casement's description of "sliced hands and penises was far more graphic and forceful than the British government had expected". When the Foreign Office finally published a sanitised version of his report, an angry Casement sent a stinking 18-page letter of protest to his superiors in the Foreign Office, threatening to resign. He called his superiors "a gang of stupidities" and "a wretched set of incompetent noodles." In the end, the Belgian government was forced to step in and buy Congo from Leopold in 1908. Negotiations for the buy-out started in 1906. Leopold dragged his feet for two years, but finally, in March 1908, the deal was done. "The Belgian government first of all agreed to assume [Congo's] 110 million francs worth of debt, much of them in the form of bond's Leopold had freely dispensed over the years to [his] favourites", says Hochschild. Nearly 32 million franc of the debt was owed to the Belgian government itself through loans it had given years earlier to Leopold. The government also agreed to pay 45.5 million francs towards completing Leopold's then unfinished pet building projects. On top of all this, Leopold got another 50 million francs (to be paid in instalments) 'as a mark of gratitude for his great sacrifices made for the Congo.' "Those funds were not expected to come from the Belgian taxpayer.", Hochschild writes. "They were to be extracted from the Congo itself." He finishes his book on a very high note: Calling this bit The Great Forgetting, Hochschild writes: "From the colonial era, the major legacy Europe left for Africa was not democracy as it

is practised today in countries like England, France and Belgium; it was authoritarian rule and plunder. On the whole continent, perhaps no nation has had a harder time than the Congo in emerging from the shadow of its past. "When independence came, the country fared badly... Some Africans were being trained for that distant day; but when pressure grew and independence came in 1960, in the entire territory there were fewer than 30 African university graduates. There were no Congolese army officers, engineers, agronomists or physicians. The colony's administration had made few other steps toward a Congo run by its own people; of some 5,000 management-level positions in the civil service, only three were filled by Africans." Yet on the day of independence, King Baudouin, the then monarch of Belgium, had the gall to tell the Congolese in his speech in Kinshasa: "It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show that you are worthy of our confidence". No cheek could be bigger! And you could well imagine how mad the Congolese nationalists like Patrice Lumumba were jumping. Hochschild has written an excellent book. Africa owes him a huge debt of gratitude. New African highly recommends the book for compulsory reading in African schools and universities. Copyright (c) IC Publications Limited 1999. All rights reserved. [Articles on BRC-NEWS may be forwarded and posted on other mailing lists/discussion forums, as long as proper attribution is given to the author and originating publication, and the wording is not altered in any way. In particular, if there is a reference to a web site where an article was originally located, please do *not* remove that. Unless stated otherwise, do *not* publish or post the entire text of any copyrighted articles on web sites (web-based discussion forums exempted) or in print, without getting *explicit* permission from the article author or copyright holder. Check the fair use provisions of the copyright law in your country for details on what you can and can't do. As a courtesy, we'd appreciate it if you let folks know how to subscribe to BRC-NEWS, by leaving in the first two lines of the signature below.] BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News/Alerts/Announcements Subscribe: Email "subscribe brc-news" to <majordomo@tao.ca>