Atrocities in the Congo Free State

A child victim of Belgian atrocities in Congo stands with a missionary (probably Mr Wallbaum), Congo, ca. 1890-1910

During the period that the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo was controlled by Leopold II of Belgium, large numbers of atrocities and deaths occurred. Some historians have termed this a genocide, though the use of the term is disputed. The atrocities began soon after Leopold gained control of the region in 1884 and lasted until an international campaign forced the territory to be turned over to the Belgium in 1908.

Estimates of the death toll range from one million to fifteen million, since accurate records were not kept. Historians Louis and Stengers in 1968 stated that population figures at the start of Leopold's control are only "wild guesses", and that attempts by E. D. Morel and others to determine a figure for the loss of population were "but figments of the imagination".

Background

Leopold stated that he was trying to protect the people of the Congo from Arab slavers, and to open the nation to Christian missionaries as well as Western capitalists. Under the name the International African Society, Leopold stated he was doing “philanthropic” and “scientific” efforts. It has been stated that Leopold enacted "work camps, body mutilations, torture, executions, and his own private army". The people of the Congo had no laws or restrictions to protect themselves from the brutality of Leopold. Many chiefs in Africa were tricked into signing away their rights by Henry Morton Stanley. Many atrocities were committed by Leopold's private army called the Force Publique. Mark Twain wrote a pamphlet called "King Leopold’s Soliloquy; A Defense of His Congo Rule", published in 1905, which detailed the violence of his reign in the Congo. In an effort to cover up his genocide it was alleged that Leopold burned paperwork which took over three days. He allegedly stated "I will give them my Congo," the king is reported saying, "but they have no right to know what I did there." Leopold has been called one of history's biggest mass murderers. The death total was estimated to be between two and ten million people, which puts Leopold within the top 10 of mass murderers in the world.

Academic Disagreements

Mutilated people from Congo Free State. From Mark Twains pamphlet.

Robert Weisbord stated in the 2003 Journal of Genocide Research that attempting to eliminate a portion of the population is enough to qualify as genocide under the UN convention. In the case of the Congo Free State, the unbearable conditions would qualify as a genocide. Adam Hochschild, however, devotes a chapter of his book King Leopold's Ghost to the problem of estimating the death toll. He cites several recent lines of investigation, by anthropologist Jan Vansina and others, that examine local sources (police records, religious records, oral traditions, genealogies, personal diaries, and "many others"), which generally agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government commission: roughly half the population perished during the Free State period. Since the first official census by the Belgian authorities in 1924 put the population at about 10 million, these various approaches suggest a population decline of approximately 10 million.

Additional causes of deaths

Smallpox epidemics and sleeping sickness also devastated the disrupted population. By 1896 the sleeping sickness had killed up to 5,000 Africans in the village of Lukolela on the Congo River. The mortality statistics were collected through the efforts of British consul Roger Casement, who found, for example, only 600 survivors of the disease in Lukolela in 1903.

Literature

• Mark Twain (1905): King Leopold’s Soliloquy; A Defense of His Congo Rule, Warren & Co.