14. The King Who Turned His Colony Into a Horror Story
In 1885, Belgium’s King Leopold II, painting himself as a humanitarian philanthropist, convinced the European powers to award him the Congo. He promised to develop the region and uplift its residents, but instead subjected the locals to atrocities that contemporaries described as the “Congo Horrors”. It began when Leopold consolidated his power in the Congo by allying with a slave trader named Tippu Tip, appointing him governor of the eastern Congo and giving him a free hand there, in exchange for Tippu’s promise not to interfere in the western Congo. Tippu immediately ramped up his slaving activities, until European public opinion forced Leopold to hire a mercenary army, with which he expelled Tippu. The Belgian king then reorganized his mercenaries into an occupation army named the Force Publique, and turned it loose to visit a reign of terror and horrors upon the natives.
A Dystopian Plantation
Leopold turned the Congo into a dystopian plantation, and the Congolese into de facto slaves. The natives were given quotas of rubber, ivory, diamonds, or other goods, to produce, and men who fell short of their quotas were mutilated by having their hands or feet amputated. If a man escaped, or it was deemed necessary that he keep his limbs to continue producing, the Belgian king’s goons would mutilate his family instead, amputating the hands of his wife and children. Millions were mutilated for failure to meet production quotas. Millions more were murdered, starved, worked to death, or perished from various forms of mistreatment and misgovernment under Leopold’s colonial regime. Numerous villages were wiped out, with all their inhabitants massacred, for daring to protest. It is estimated that between 10 million to 15 million Congolese died in order to enrich Leopold.
