Leopold II of Belgium - Doesn't Get His Due?

[Coito ergo sum]

Leopold II was King of Belgium from 1865-1909. With financial support from the government, Leopold created the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken to extract rubber and ivory in the Congo region of central Africa, which relied on forced labour and resulted in the deaths of approximately 3 million Congolese. The regime of the Congo Free State became one of the more infamous international scandals of the turn of the century. The area of land privately owned by the King was an area 76 times larger than Belgium, which he was free to rule as a personal domain through his private army, the Force Publique. Leopold’s rubber gatherers tortured, maimed and slaughtered until at the turn of the century, the conscience of the Western world forced Brussels to call a halt.



Does Leopold get enough coverage? As a butcher and slaver, with that much of a success rate, one would think we'd hear more about him....

[Mysturji]

Who's Gert?

[JimC]

His legacy lives on th the current tragic reality of that part of Africa...

[FBM]

If he'd done his killing in Europe, and if he'd killed white people, he'd be ranked right up there. IOW, he didn't shit where he slept.

[Coito ergo sum]

'Why should King Leopold be afraid of submitting his case to the Hague tribunal?' Mrs. Sheldon answered, 'Men do not go to the gallows and put their heads in a noose if they can avoid it.'"

"This work of 'civilization' is an enormous and continual butchery." "All the facts we brought forward in this chamber were denied at first most energetically; but later, little by little, they were proved by documents and by official texts." "The practice of cutting off hands is said to be contrary to instructions; but you are content to say that indulgence must be shown and that this bad habit must be corrected 'little by little' and you plead, moreover, that only the hands of fallen enemies are cut off, and that if the hands are cut off 'enemies' not quite dead, and who, after recovery, have had the bad
taste to come to the missionaries and show them their stumps, it was due to an original mistake in thinking that they were dead." From Debate in Belgian Parliament, July, 1903.

"But enough of trying to tally off his crimes! His list is interminable, we should never get to the end of it. His awful shadow lies across his Congo Free State, and under it an unoffending nation of 15,000,000 is withering away and swiftly succumbing of their miseries. It is a land of graves; it is The Land of Graves; it is the Congo Free Graveyard. It is a majestic thought: that is, this ghastliest episode in all human history is the work of one man alone; one solitary man; just a single individual -- Leopold, King of the Belgians. He is personally and solely responsible for all the myriadcrimes that have blackened the history of the Congo State. He is sole master there; he is absolute. He could have prevented the crimes by his mere command; he could stop them today with a word. He withholds the word. For his pocket's sake.

It seems strange to see a king destroying a nation and laying waste a country for mere sordid money's sake, and solely and only for that. Lust of conquest is royal; kings have always exercised that stately vice; we are used to it, by old habit we condone it, perceiving a certain dignity in it; but lust of money -- lust of shillings -- lust of nickels -- lust of dirty coin, not for the nation's enrichment but for the king's alone -- this is new. It distinctly revolts us, we cannot seem to reconcile ourselves to it, we resent it, we despise it, we say it is shabby, unkingly, out of character. Being democrats we ought to jeer and jest, we ought to rejoice to see the purple dragged in the dirt, but -- well, account for it as we may, we don't. We see this awful king, this pitiless and blood-drenched king, this money-crazy king towering toward the sky in a world-solitude of sordid crime, unfellowed and apart from the human race, sole butcher for personal gain findable in all his caste, ancient or modern, pagan or Christian, proper and legitimate target for the scorn of the lowest and the highest, and the execrations of all who hold in cold esteem the oppressor and the coward; and -- well, it is a mystery, but we do not wish to look; for he is a king, and it hurts us, it troubles us, by ancient and inherited instinct it shames us to see a king degraded to this aspect, and we shrink from hearing the particulars of how it happened. We shudder and turn away when we come upon them in print."

http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/i2l/kls.html

[klr]

May I recommend King Leopold's Ghost?

http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Gho ... 0618001905

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold%27s_Ghost

[AshtonBlack]

Bit of a dick then, huh? [/understatement]

[Coito ergo sum]

Bit of a dick then, huh? [/understatement]

It's amazing that the 20th century brought at least 3 monsters of greater murderous stature than Leopold.

It makes one wonder - if Mark Twain and other 19th century folks were given a crystal ball, and could look ahead at what lay before them in the 20th century...what would they have thought?

[devogue]

if Mark Twain and other 19th century folks were given a crystal ball, and could look ahead at what lay before them in the 20th century...what would they have thought?

Buck's Fizz are fucking great.

[AshtonBlack]

Bit of a dick then, huh? [/understatement]

It's amazing that the 20th century brought at least 3 monsters of greater murderous stature than Leopold.

It makes one wonder - if Mark Twain and other 19th century folks were given a crystal ball, and could look ahead at what lay before them in the 20th century...what would they have thought?

Free Porn on the intertubes!

[devogue]

It makes one wonder - if Mark Twain and other 19th century folks were given a crystal ball, and could look ahead at what lay before them in the 20th century...what would they have thought?

Fuck me! I'm on Star Trek TNG!

[.Morticia.]

why no fuss

The fuss is in the french language

the king acted for personal enrichment, he stole the money from the gov and used gov forces to support his personal business ventures'.

the belgians were fucking glad when he died

there were a whole slough of books and docos a decade ago

I believe Schwietzer was motivated by the cruelty of Leopold to go to Africa.

[Cormac]

Wasn't Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" about Leopold's Belgium?