Running Header: A TALE OF ONE COLONY KING LEOPOLD

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A Tale of One Colony: King Leopold IIs Exploitation of Belgium in the Late Nineteenth
and Early Twentieth Century

Maryam Abdallah
HIST H02
Ms. Mary Moran

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Abstract
The twentieth-century narrative of the conquest and subsequent plundering of todays Republic
of the Congo by the infamous King Leopold is a topic that, until recently, was relegated to a
mere footnote within many major history textbooks. A select few have delved into the chilling
tale of the self-appointed monarch with a sort of horrified fascination, narrating the story through
the then-suppressed voices of expeditioners, fellow politicians, and the general Congolese
populace. How did King Leopold manage to inconspicuously acquire such a huge swath of land
for himself, and what allowed him to remain in power for so long while blatantly exploiting his
slice of the African cake? This paper aims to answer those questions.
KEYWORDS: King Leopold II, Congo Free State

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A Tale of One Colony: King Leopold IIs Exploitation of Belgium in the Late Nineteenth
and Early Twentieth Century

During the late nineteenth century, Europe was at war with itself. Every country was after
an easy way to acquire territory for economic improvement and to show off. They raced each
other to colonize every area and fought over imaginary boundaries drawn over maps in a
phenomenon that is now known in history as the land scramble for the continent of Africa;
meanwhile, the story of the Congo Free State and its terrifying leader, King Leopold II, skipped
all manner of notice until at least the mid-twentieth century. How?
Lets begin with some backstory. The main character of our tale, King Leopold the
Second, spent most of his dismal childhood undergoing military training and flunking every
subject in school except geography. He married young and unhappily, and his only legitimate
heir perished after falling into a pond. Perhaps to spite the train wreck that was his early life,
Leopold II learned the art of politicking well and used it to great effect in later years. His
foremost goal was to acquire some swath of land besides the country of Belgium, about which he
once commented Petit pays, petit gens/small country, small people (Hothschcild 36). After he
inherited the title of King of the Belgians from his father after his passing in 1885, this goal
suddenly became a lot more attainable. Using his carefully constructed political network,
Leopold finagled a meeting with an explorer named Cameron, who tells him about the recently-
traversed Congo territory and, more importantly, Britains lack of interest in it. Leopold IIs
subsequent manipulation of pretty much everyone that he knew culminated in the Geographical
Conference of September 1886. A handful of prominent figures and famous explorers arrived at
Brussels and were welcomed with a great display of opulence and hospitality, after which
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Leopold manipulated its chairman into placing the proposed exploration bases exactly where he
wanted them.
Things moved very quickly in Leopolds favor after the conference. Over the next few
years, Leopold acquired a loyal supporter in the form of Henry Morton Stanley, a well-known
explorer prone to fits of violent anger and poetic prose (sometimes both), and convinced him to
head several explorations across the new country. He created a fake philanthropic organization to
back his agenda and bestowed upon it the same moniker as the actual official International
African Association. Donations to the fraudulent organization flooded in. The Berlin Conference
of 1884 was merely the icing on the cake, giving Leopold official rights to the territory he had
previously laid claim to and giving him a solid excuse for possessing itnamely, Belgium
lacked the money necessary to support a landmass seventy-six times bigger than itself, and as
such it was all right because they would probably end up selling it anyway.
Needless to say, that did not happen. On May 29, 1885, King Leopold II legally
established himself as the leader of the newly-renamed Congo Free State, gave it an anthem, and
set about plundering its resources for himself. He forced millions of Congolese to harvest rubber
and ivory in what is known today as one of the largest mass genocides in history, and his newly-
established army of Force Publique soldiers removed limbs from those who failed to meet the
quota and shot natives for sport. His regime was only toppled by the combined efforts of
unsuspecting bystanders and leading figures to bring the real story of the Congo to the rest of the
world, culminating in an article published by one William Sheppard and his subsequent victory
in the libel trial Leopold tried to bring against him.
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Quite simply, King Leopold II escaped the notice of the world by being a master
strategist. He draped himself in a cloak of affluency, purposefully dazzling anyone who
happened to glance in his direction with fancy displays of wealth and glamour. About the farcical
Geographical Conference, one participant wrote: I have a suite of magnificent apartments to
myselfall crimson damask and goldEverything is red, even the Ink and the Ammunition
[toilet paper]! (Hothschild 44) However, Leopold manipulated the participants of the
Conference into placing so-called scientific study bases away from British posts so as to ensure
full control of them later on. In addition, he used the name and flag of the International African
Association, an official society that bore host to many prominent explorers and researchers of
Africa at the time, as the emblems for his International Association of the Congo, fooling the
populace into believing that the smokescreen organization was part of a legitimate philanthropic
movement to aid Africa. He paid off the investigators sent to his country and entered into bribes
with an immeasurable amount of people. Even in defeat, he was ruthless, stalling negotiations
with officials by throwing temper tantrums at them and slamming doors in their faces while
secretly working to hide the huge fortune he made from his exploitation of the Congo. He was a
master of deception and disguise, and his plans were crafted specifically to confuse and remove
his opponents and dissenters.
Another factor that allowed Leopolds manipulation of Belgium to go undiscovered was
fear. Nearly everyone who wandered across the brutality of his regime emerged not quite the
same. One visitor to the Congo transcribed his account of the severe chicotte whippings doled
out to mere children, ending it with the confession that he feared for his life if he spoke a word
about it. A man named Tswambe narrates his experiences with a soldier named Fievez and his
particular battalion of Force Publique soldiers:
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All the blacks saw this man as the Devil of the EquatorFrom all the bodies killed in
the field, you had to cut off the hands. He wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each
soldier, who had to bring them in basketsAs a young man, I saw [Fievezs] soldier
Molilitake a big net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big stones to the net, and make it
tumble into the river (Hothschild 166)
The man whose name was attached to these monstrosities became a monster in the eyes
of the informed, especially considering he was portraying himself as a philanthropist and a
humanitarian and continuing to receive benefactions from his clients and assorted donors. Only
after the details of the mass genocide were exposed was King Leopold II forced to relinquish his
hold on the Congo Free State.
It is only through a combination of forced ignorance, political maneuvering and a
widespread terror of the person who basically perpetuated a genocide that King Leopold
managed to retain his seat of power for such a long time. Europe was too involved with taking
names and territories to notice Leopolds backhanded plans, and he executed those who tried to
testify against him. Thanks to this, there was a huge amount of difficulty in ousting him, and it
was not until November 1908 that the Congo Free State changed ownership to the country of
Belgium.

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References
1. Edgerton, R. B. (2002). The Troubled Heart of Africa: A history of the Congo. New
York: St. Martins.
2. Hothschild, Adam. (1999). King Leopold's Ghost: A story of greed, terror, and heroism
in colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
3. Merriam, A. P. (1961). Congo: Background of conflict. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press.
4. Sternstein, J. L. (1969). King Leopold II, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, and the Strange
Beginnings of American Economic Penetration of the Congo. African Historical Studies,
v 2, #2. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/216355
5. Twain, Mark. (2013). Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2. California: University of
California Press.