History’s Forgotten Monster

by Sam Griffiths

When we think of the worst people in history, we often think of men such as Hitler, Stalin or Mao. It would only be reasonable considering the millions of people that died due to their actions and the crimes against humanity they committed. Rarely however, do we think of Leopold II, the constitutional monarch of the small country of Belgium. On the surface, one would think that a man in a position such as his would never be able to rival the most infamous dictators of the 20^th century, yet King Leopold is estimated to have killed 10,000,000 people in the Congo, or around half of it’s population. How was he able to possibly do this and why do we not think of him when thinking of history’s greatest monsters?

Born in 1835, Leopold was never destined to wield great power. He was just the prince of a lowly nation, an awkward young man with a nose so large people could not help but remark on it, from his own mother to the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. The country of Belgium was barely older than he was, it’s monarchs were bound by a constitution and held little influence in the affairs of state. Yet Leopold held greater ambitions for little Belgium, wishing to forge an empire for himself although few Belgians shared this dream. He would end up searching the globe for a colony to call his own, from Fiji to Brazil but in the end it would be Africa where he would set his sights upon.

Henry Morton Stanley, the British explorer who had discovered David Livingstone would be the man Leopold employed to explore the area around the Congo river. Stanley pushed his way through the previously unexplored lands of the deepest darkest Africa, charting out the Congo river and the future borders of the Leopold’s colony. After finishing and returning to Europe, Leopold would send Stanley on a second expedition, but this was not for exploration. Stanley, when he wasn’t having his African servants whipped for the slightest infraction, was to make local chiefs sign ‘treaties’, which in reality signed away all sovereignty over the land to King Leopold, and their labour too. The leaders of these tribes could barely read Stanley’s ‘treaties’ often signing with just an X, essentially selling themselves into slavery for little more than the clothes Stanley gave them in exchange. They would not know the what had been done until it was too late.

Meanwhile in Europe, Leopold had been busy lobbying for other nations to recognise his colony in the Congo. The king had been promising that this was purely a philanthropic gesture, meant to evangelise the people of Africa and fight against the evil of the Arab slave trade in Africa, little did his supporters know that he would enslave the entirety of the Congo. Leopold would set up and refer to shell companies with similar names in order to smokescreen his darker intentions for the Congo. All his efforts would come to ahead at the Berlin Conference, where Leopold would finally receive the colony he dreamed of, a million square miles in the heart of Africa, rich in resources and defenceless against the modern european weaponry.

The Congo would be entirely under the ownership of Leopold too, his own personal fiefdom where the state of Belgium had absolutely no control. Rubber would become the main resource harvested, with punishments set out for those who did not meet their quota, including mutilation, flogging and death. Leopold set up the Force Publique, a private army composed mostly of African soldiers with white commanding officers to enforce his control over the territory, and they used brutal force to do so. It was demanded that the soldiers of the Force Publique would bring back a hand for every bullet they used to prove they had not been wasted as starving soldiers often used their bullets hunting for food. This in turn led to a whole economy based around severed hands, as soldiers mutilated people across the Congo, severing the hands of men women and children alike off. Likewise the rubber quota could be met with gathering hands and wars were even fought between villages to gather them. Leopold would disapprove of the dismemberment but not for any humanitarian reason. He was quoted as saying "Cut off hands—that's idiotic. I'd cut off all the rest of them, but not hands. That's the one thing I need in the Congo”.  In essence, the king’s ‘Congo Free State’ had become one enormous labour camp dedicated to the extraction of raw materials from rubber to ivory, easily comparable to atrocities of the other great dictators of the 20^th century, as millions died in Leopold’s greed.

This system could not last forever though. In 1908, King Leopold had relinquished control of his colony to the state of Belgium, in the face of overwhelming public scrutiny. Despite the best efforts of the king, the truth had eventually leaked out of the Congo, thanks to the good work of men such as Roger Casement and George Washington Williams, who exposed the appalling conditions in the colony. In the end, this would matter little as the Leopold died just a year later anyway. While it would be easy to say his death was the end of this dark tale, crimes against humanity committed by europeans in Africa would not end with Leopold. Even after the Belgian government took control of the Congo, they still treated the natives like animals, only banning whipping as a punishment in 1955. Nor were the atrocities limited to the Belgians, as the British placed Kenyans into concentration camps and had thousands tortured during the Mau Mau uprising from 1952-60. It’s estimated that anywhere between 11,000 and 100,000 Kenyans were killed by the British. Perhaps it is easier for people in west today to remember how the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler because they represented regimes alien to our own, whilst the atrocities of Leopold provide us with a dark reflection of what happens in a world where capitalism is allowed to go unchecked by laws or regulation, where powerful people and companies can get away with heinous acts, as is still often the case. So next time you are asked who you think history’s forgotten monster is, spare a thought for King Leopold.