King Leopold’s Ghost by Hochschild

Ref: Adam Hochschild (1999). King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror & Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin.

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Summary­

  • A History of the Belgian Congo.

  • “The Power possessing the Congo would absorb to itself the trade of the whole of the enormous basin behind. This river is and will be the grand highway of commerce to West Central Africa.”

  • What would turn out to be the Congo’s borders, if superimposed on the map of Europe, would stretch from Zürich to Moscow to central Turkey. It was as large as the entire United States east of the Mississippi. 76x the size of Belgium. The Congo river drains more than 1.3 million mi2, an area larger than India. Although mostly rain forest and savanna, it also embraced volcanic hills and mountains covered with snow and glaciers, some of whose peaks reached higher than the Alps.

  • With its opportunities for both combat and riches, to Europeans the Congo was a gold rush and the Foreign Legion combined.

  • The Belgian Congo, fertilized by so many human tears.

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Colonialization

  • In a Europe confidently entering the industrial age, brimming with the sense of power given it by the railroad and the oceangoing steamship, there now arose a new type of hero: the African explorer.

  • European impulses toward Africa: anti slavery zeal, the search for raw materials, Christian evangelism, and sheer curiosity.

  • The conquerors of Africa, like those of the American West, found alcohol as effective as the machine gun.

  • Conrad’s white men go about their rape of the continent in the belief that they are uplifting the natives, bringing civilization, serving “the noble cause.”

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The Belgian Congo

  • The station established at the top of the big rapids, within earshot of their thunder, and featuring a heavily fortified blockhouse and a vegetable garden, was christened Leopoldville.

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Kongo People

  • The Kongo people believed that a person’s skin changed to the color of chalk when he passed into the land of the dead.

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Rubber Trade

  • The industrial world rapidly developed an appetite not just for rubber tires, but for hoses, tubing, gaskets, and the like, and for rubber insulation for the telegraph, telephone, and electrical wiring now rapidly encompassing the globe.

  • Transportation costs aside, harvesting wild rubber required no cultivation, no fertilizers, no capital investment in expensive equipment. It required only labor.

  • The more than eleven million pounds of rubber a year the Congo was producing by the turn of the century could now reach the sea from the steamboat docks of Stanley Pool without being carried for three weeks on men’s heads. Rail cars going the other direction moved steamboats around the rapids in far larger pieces than porters could carry. Leopoldville quickly became the busiest river port in central Africa, home to steamers of up to five hundred tons.

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African Force Publique

  • Forced labour of a terrible and continuous kind could alone explain such unheard-of profits . . . forced labour in which the Congo Government was the immediate beneficiary; forced labour directed by the closest associates of the King himself.

  • In a metaphor that is echoed elsewhere in Africa, local legend along the railway line has it that each (railway) tie cost one African life and each telegraph pole one European life.

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Rape of the Congo

  • In population losses on this scale, the toll is usually a composite of figures from one or more of four closely connected sources: (1) murder; (2) starvation, exhaustion, and exposure; (3) disease; and (4) a plummeting birth rate.

  • The organizing by E. D. Morel, the acts of witness of George Washington Williams, William Sheppard, and Roger Casement, and the deaths of Andrew Shanu and of rebel leaders like Nzansu, Mulume Niama, and Kandolo.

  • In writing, Casement became “Dear Tiger” and Morel “Dear Bulldog.” Leopold was “the King of Beasts.”

  • Lumumba believed that political independence was not enough to free Africa from its colonial past; the continent must also cease to be an economic colony of Europe. His speeches set off immediate alarm signals in Western capitals. Belgian, British, and American corporations by now had vast investments in the Congo, which was rich in copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, tin, manganese, and zinc. An inspired orator whose voice was rapidly carrying beyond his country’s borders, Lumumba was a mercurial and charismatic figure. His message, Western governments feared, was contagious. Moreover, he could not be bought. Finding no sympathy in the West, he asked for help from the Soviet Union. Anathema to American and European capital, he became a leader whose days were numbered. Less than two months after being named the Congo’s first democratically chosen prime minister, a U.S. National Security Council subcommittee on covert operations, which included CIA director Allen Dulles, authorized his assassination. Richard Bissell, CIA operations chief at the time, later said, “The President [Dwight D. Eisenhower] . . . regarded Lumumba as I did and a lot of other people did: as a mad dog . . . and he wanted the problem dealt with.” In a key meeting, another official who was there recalled, Eisenhower clearly told CIA chief Dulles “that Lumumba should be eliminated.”

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Slave Trade

  • Many of the slaves shipped to the Americas from the great river’s mouth came from the Kingdom of the Kongo itself; many others were captured by African slave-dealers who ranged more than 700 miles into the interior, buying slaves from local chiefs and headmen.

  • Roughly one of every four slaves imported to work the cotton and tobacco plantations of the American South began his or her journey across the Atlantic from equatorial Africa, including the Kongo kingdom.

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Misc Quotes

  • Sleeping Sickness: Highly contagious, causes fever, swelling of the lymph glands, a strange craving for meat, and a sensitivity to cold. Later comes immense lethargy that gives the illness its name.

  • The politics of empathy are fickle.

  • More than 80% of the U in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs came from the heavily guarded Congo mine of Shinkolobwe.

  • Many societies, from the Balkans to Afghanistan, have had trouble building nation-states when power-hungry demagogues inflame ethnic chauvinism.

  • “Those who are conquered always want to imitate the conqueror in his main characteristics—in his clothing, his crafts, and in all his distinctive traits and customs.”-14c Philosopher Ibn Khaldun.

  • The vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.-Joseph Conrad on African Colonialization.

  • Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are . . . the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.-Primo Levi on his experience at Auschwitz.

  • Forced labor is the only way to civilize and uplift these indolent and corrupt peoples of the Far East.

  • Bunduki sultani ya bara bara: The gun is the sultan of the hinterland.

  • To have sat still . . . would have been temperamentally impossible.-E.D. Morel.

  • We all on earth have a commission and a right to defend the weak against the strong, and to protest against brutality in any shape or form.-Roger Casement.

  • O mother, how unfortunate we are! . . .  But the sun will kill the white man,  But the moon will kill the white man,  But the sorcerer will kill the white man,  But the tiger will kill the white man,  But the crocodile will kill the white man,  But the elephant will kill the white man,  But the river will kill the white man.

  • The king understood brilliantly that what matters, often, is less the substance of a political event than how the public perceives it.

  • “Self-government is our right. A thing born in us at birth; a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself—than the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers, or to love our kind. . . . Where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labours . . . then surely it is braver, a saner and a truer thing, to be a rebel . . . than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.”

  • John Rowlands aka Henry Morton Stanley.

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Chronology

  • 1997: Zaire’s President Mobutu is overthrown. In his 32 years in power, Mobutu had become one of the world’s richest men; his personal wealth at its peak was estimated at $4 billion. He spent much of his time on his yacht, on the river at Kinshasa, formerly Leopoldville.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1971: The Congo’s President Mobotu changes the countries name to Zaire.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1965: Assassination of Congo’s President Lumumba by Army Chief of Staff and former NCO in the old colonial Force Publique, Joseph Désiré Mobutu. With US encouragement, Mobutu staged the coup that made him the country’s dictator for more than 30 years.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 16 June, 1913: The Congo Reform Association holds its final meeting.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1913: The Belgian Congo is recognized by Britain.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • Mar, 1908: The Belgian Government assumes leadership of the Congo, agreeing to assume its 110 million francs’ worth of debts (bonds given to important people like his Caroline, 32 million francs loaned by the Belgian government, 45.5 million francs to completing the King’s projects, and fully a third of the amount was targeted for the extensive renovations under way at Laeken following a grand Leopoldian blueprint to build a center for world conferences. Finally, on top of all this, Leopold was to receive, in installments, another fifty million francs “as a mark of gratitude for his great sacrifices made for the Congo.”-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • May, 1903: The Congo protest resolution passed.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1900: The British under Roger Casement establishes the first British consulate in the État Indépendant du Congo.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1890-1910: The Rubber Boom; height of the worst bloodshed in the Congo.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1890: The Dunlop Company begins making bicycle tires; while tinkering with his sons’ tricycle in Belfast, Ireland, veterinary surgeon John Dunlop was trying to solve a problem that had bedeviled bicyclists for many years: how do you get a gentle ride without springs? Dunlop finally devised a practical way of making a long-sought solution, an inflatable rubber tire setting off a bicycle craze and starting a new industry just in time, it turned out, for the coming of the automobile.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1885: The Congo formally becomes part of King Leopold II personal estate as the État Indépendant du Congo. It officially exists for twenty-three years.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 22 April, 1884: The Belgian claim to the Congo is recognized by the USA. It was the first country to do so.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1880: The de Brazza- Makoko treaty is signed at Stanley Pool between Frenchman de Brazza and Batekes King Matoko placing his kingdom under the protection of the French flag. Makoko was interested in trade possibilities and in gaining an edge over his rivals while the French wanted to establish a colony in Africa.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • June, 1867: Execution of Ferdinand Maximillian of Austria after being caught by rebel forces. His death was inglorious but not inelegant: he shook hands with the members of the firing squad, handed them all gold pieces, pointed to his heart, and said, “Muchachos, aim well.”-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1867: Diamonds are discovered in South Africa.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1853: At the age of 18, Belgian Prince Leopold is betrothed to Hapsburg Archduchess Marie-Henriette, to strengthen ties with the Austro-Hungarian Empire.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1840s-1870s: David Livingstone (Physician, prospector, missionary, explorer, British consul) explores the African continent in search of the source of the Nile. He denounced slavery, found Victoria Falls, looked for minerals, and preached the gospel. As the first white man to cross the continent from coast to coast, he became a national hero in England.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1839: Vulcanization is invented by American inventor Charles Goodyear after he accidentally spilled sulfur into some hot rubber on his stove. He discovered that the resulting mixture did not turn stiff when cold or smelly and gooey when hot—major problems for those trying to make rubber boots or raincoats before then.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1838: Slavery is formally abolished in the British Empire.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1830: Belgium, after spells of Spanish, Austrian, French, and Dutch rule, becomes a nation following a revolt against Holland. Leopold I, a German Prince related to the British Family, takes the throne.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1823: Rubber Waterproofing is invented by Scot Charles Macintosh when he figured out a mass-production method for doing something long practiced by the Indians of the Americas: applying rubber to cloth to make it waterproof.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1770: Rubber is named by a British scientist Joseph Priestly when he realized it could rub out pencil marks.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1500: Brazil is discovered by a Portuguese expedition blown off course.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

  • 1491: Portuguese priests and emissaries become permanent representatives of their country in the court of the Kongo king. Their arrival marked the beginning of the first sustained encounter between Europeans and a black African nation.-Léopold’s Ghost by Hochschild.

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