The Europeans who visited central Africa, as well as those who observed it from afar through the dispatches of Stanley and other explorers, maintained the belief that the region was essentially "empty," simply waiting for the arrival of Europeans, who would open it up to capitalism. Of course this was a convenient fiction, for it ignored the fact that the region had a significant population of native Africans.

   What was the Congo like when the Europeans first arrived? The Kingdom of the Kongo (the common African spelling) comprised approximately two to three million people, under the leadership of a king. The capital, Mbanza Kongo, was some hundred miles inland from the Atlantic coast. As in most parts of Africa, slavery was practiced in the kingdom. In fact, when the Portugese arrived in the late 15th century, the local rulers obliged the Portugese slave traders by capturing slaves and selling them. However, indigenous African slavery was typically much less oppressive than the slavery system that was controlled by the Europeans. The distinction between slave and free was not as firm as in Europe, and there was frequent intermarriage. Furthermore, slaves could more easily earn their freedom. The brutal European system that replaced the African system shipped the captured Africans overseas, many of them to the Caribbean islands and to Brazil, to work in inhumane conditions. Those who survived the overseas journey often died of disease, malnutrition, or overwork in their new homes. After 1600 the slavers began to supply a new market for slaves in the North American colonies of Britain.

   When Stanley arrived on the headwaters of the Congo, he found a kingdom that had been decimated by the slave trade. It was by no means, however, an uninhabited land. In fact, once the Congo Free State had been established, it was with African labor that the inland was opened up to trade. A 250-mile railroad line from the coast to a point on the Congo River where navigation by steamboat was possible, required many African laborers. With a workforce of 2,000, the enterprise lost some 150 workers to death each month. Once the railroad was completed in 1898, trading could begin in earnest.

   Initially, the major products taken out of the region were elephant tusks and palm oil. In 1891 a new invention, the pneumatic tire, set the stage for the transformation of the trade in the Congo. The demand for wild rubber to make bicycle and car tires, as well as other goods, soared. Agents for King Leopold developed a system to satisfy the demand. They required all the men of villages in certain areas to collect rubber--eight kilos per month. Armed guards, stationed in the villages, collected the rubber and punished those who failed to meet their quotas. Punishment ranged from imprisonment to beatings to execution. In some instances, when villages did not meet their rubber quotas, militias murdered all villagers they could find--men, women, and children. Even with these efforts, the demand could still not be met, so women and children were also forced to collect rubber. Before long, the heavy quotas led to overexploitation of the wild rubber resources, and the laborers found it increasingly difficult to fill them. One African said:

   "We tried, always going further into the forest, and when we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot, some had their ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes around their necks and bodies and taken away."

In order to justify their use of ammunition, the soldiers hired by the rubber companies cut off the hands of their victims and brought them to the posts. Of course, one did not need to kill an African to take his hand, and many victims were maimed. The hands that arrived at the posts were of all sizes--adult to child. One particularly disturbing photograph from the Congo shows a father staring--with what? despair? disbelief?--at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter.

Practices such as these would ultimately come back to haunt the Belgians. On the one hand, Africans used the very concept of "civilization" against the European invaders. In conditions such as these, who were the truly civilized and who were the "savages"? One Congolese song of the late 19th century clearly made the point:

"We are tired of living under this tyranny. We cannot endure that our women and children are taken away and dealt with by the white savages. We shall make war. . . . We know that we shall die, but we want to die. We want to die."

   Gradually, news of these horrors escaped to the outside world. The widespread use of another relatively new invention, the camera, provided reformers with the documentation they needed to bring international condemnation of the brutal practices in the Congo. The most famous reformer, Edmund Morel, created the Congo Reform Association. Morel thus became one of the earliest international human rights advocates. In 1908, under increasing international pressure, Leopold gave up his one-man show in the Congo and the colony was annexed by Belgium. Leopold did not go away empty-handed, of course. Belgium provided Leopold 50 million francs as compensation--and the money was to be taken from the Congo.

Readings on Africa

Joseph Conrad worked on a steamboat in the Congo in the early 1890s. In his novel Heart of Darkness he describes the conditions that he found there. This selection consists of the opening pages of that novel.

Adam Hothschild is the author of Leopold's Congo: A Holocaust We Have Yet to Comprehend . In this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, he describes the reaction that his book provoked in Belgium and questions why the history of the Congo Free State, in which so many were killed, is relatively unknown in Europe and the United States.

©1996, Richard Hooker

For information contact: Richard Hines
Updated 6-6-1999