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Throwing Slaves Overboard to Drown and Other Dark Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan July 26, 2020 35 min

Plateau - Slave ship — Slave ship hold. History Channel

6. A False Philanthropist

Leopold II and the dystopian plantation into which he transformed the Congo. Liberty Writers Africa

In 1885, Belgium’s King Leopold II, painting himself as a humanitarian philanthropist, convinced the European powers to award him the Congo. It was the start of the darkest chapter in that country’s history. Leopold 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 new colony by allying with a slave trader named Tippu Tip. He appointed the slaver governor of the eastern Congo, and gave 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 upon the natives.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.