Hist 4339

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

Independent Congo

• Immediate political turmoil (mutiny, Katanga secession)

• Sept 14, 1960: Army Chief of Staff Mobutu seizes power

• 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