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Tragic Discoveries from the Canadian Indigenous Schools and other Events

Khalid Elhassan July 27, 2021 37 min

Painting by Kent Monkman of the tragic seizure of Indigenous children by the RCMP to place in mandatory boarding schools. Pintrest

King Leopold II and the tragic dystopian plantation into which he transformed the Congo for his personal profit. Liberty Writer Africa

9. Leopold II Promised to End Slavery in the Congo, Then Allied Himself With its Biggest Slaver

King Leopold II consolidated his power in the Congo River basin through an expedient alliance with a powerful Arab slave trader named Tippu Tip. That was awkward, given that the Belgian monarch had convinced the Berlin Conference to award him the Congo with a promise that he would combat its endemic slave trade. Leopold made Tippu a provincial governor in the eastern Congo and gave him a free hand in exchange for the slaver’s promise not to compete with the king in the western Congo.

Unsurprisingly, Tippu ramped up his slaving activities in his province, until Leopold, under pressure from European public opinion, turned on his slaver ally. He double-crossed Tippu, and raised a mercenary force that expelled him from the Congo. Leopold 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. The result was the transformation of the Congo into a massive dystopian plantation and the Congolese into Leopold’s de facto slaves.

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.