Hist 4339
18 Nov 2008
European Expansion: The Congo Free State
King Leopold II’s Rule
• Profits based on rubber extraction
• Use of forced labor: hostages, chicotte whippings
• Severed hands required as evidence of efficient bullet use
• Governor of the Equatorial District of the Congo Free State: “As soon as it was a question of rubber, I wrote to the government, ‘To gather rubber in the district... one must cut off hands, noses and ears’” (Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost 165)
International Reaction
• International scandal by turn of century
• 1908: Belgian government purchase of Congo from Leopold
• 1909: Leopold’s death
• 1912: US poet Vachel Lindsay, “The Congo:”
“Listen to the yell
of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.”
The Belgian Congo (post-Leopold II)
• 1908: Belgian state takeover
• Focus on practical and vocational education
• 1958: Collapse of world copper market renders Congo unprofitable
• Belgian announcement of imminent independence
• Congolese nationalist groups:
—Congolese National Movement, led by Patrice Lumumba
—Alliance of Kongo People, led by Joseph Kasavubu
• June 30, 1960: independence of Republic of Congo
—Lumumba Prime Minister
—Kasavubu President
—Belgian king’s paternalistic speech
—Lumumba’s fiery response
[See this contemporary newspaper report on Lumumba's "offensive" speech]
Independent Congo
• Immediate political turmoil (mutiny, Katanga secession)
• Sept 14, 1960: Army Chief of Staff Mobutu seizes power (click link and scroll down for photo)
• Jan 1961: Lumumba’s flight, capture, execution
• Feb 1961: Mobutu restores power to Kasavubu
• 1965: Mobutu coup (Congo becomes Zaire)
• 1994: Rwandan genocide, refugees to Zaire
• 1997: Rwanda invades Zaire, installs Laurent Kabila as pres.
—Zaire renamed Congo
• 1998: new conflict (“Africa’s world war”)
• 2001: Kabila assassinated, succeeded by his son, Joseph Kabila
• 2006: Joseph Kabila elected president
Excerpts from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)
“But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale.”
“Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about 'weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.”
“Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding.”
Kurtz’s report to the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs: “Exterminate all the brutes.”
Kurtz’s madness: “His was an impenetrable darkness.”
Kurtz’s final words: “The horror! The horror!”
