The story of how King Leopold raped the Congo of its natural resources,
and in particular its ivory and rubber, involves many famous people
including Henry Morton Stanley, Roger
Casement, Joseph Conrad and Edmund Morel. Of these, Stanley’s
involvement can stand alone whilst Conrad’s can be read in
his semi-autographical book, ‘Heart of Darkness’ but
Morel and Casement are so intimately involved in the downfall of
Leopold that it makes no sense to write of them separately. This
is the story of Leopold’s Congo.
Leopold’s story began with the foundation of the free and
independent state of Belgium on January 20th 1831. Prince Leopold
of Saxe-Coberg was chosen as its first king and came to the throne
later that year. On his death in 1865, his son, the Duke of Brabant,
who was just three months younger than the country, became King
Leopold II.
Leopold seems not to have had a particularly happy upbringing.
He was tall, thin and, according to many reports, he had an enormous
nose. He was also idle (or suffered from late development) but he
did develop a passion for the accumulation of data of all descriptions
which he filed, classified and cross-referenced. He was also showing
signs of subtleness and a manipulative ability which would manifest
themselves with a vengeance in the not too distant future. His main
problem was that he was not rich and so, given his position as director
of foreign affairs, it seemed an obvious move to consider which
parts of the world he could lay claim to.
He had travelled extensively throughout his life and in 1875 he
wrote: ‘I intend to find out discreetly whether there may
not be anything to be done in Africa’. It took little effort
to focus down from ‘Africa’ to ‘the Congo’,
a virtually blank area on the map which had recently become the
subject of renewed interest following the discoveries and writings
of Livingstone, Speke, Baker and Burton into the interrelationship
between the Nile, the Lualaba and the Congo river itself. At the
end of that same year Lovatt Cameron turned up on the west coast,
near Luanda, after a two and a half year journey through the heart
of Africa from the east coast. Some of his comments struck crucial
chords with Leopold. Tales of rich mineral deposits, grain and rubber
triggered his financial lust whilst the stories of the Arab slavers
with their heavily laden caravans provided an opportunity for him
to appeal to Belgian missionary zeal and, hopefully, gain access
to the country through apparently altruistic and honourable means.
His problems now were how to move into the Congo without upsetting
other European nations and how to extract any valuable ‘assets’
without having to share them with another country. This was to be
resolved at the Brussels Conference of 1876.
The conference was a gathering of European scientists, explorers
and geographers. It was non-political and Leopold’s proposition
was that Central Africa should not be a place of national squabbles
and bickerings but that an international body should be set up which
would suppress slavery and develop the country and its infrastructure
through normal and fair commercial practices. National sub-committees
would be set up through existing learned bodies which would be financed
by national governments but not subject to political control or
influence. The meeting then established the international authority
itself, formally known as the ‘Association Internationale
pour reprimer la traite et ouvrir l’Afrique centrale’
but more commonly known as the ‘Association Internationale
Africaine’ (or AIA). This was to be managed by an International
Committee chaired by Leopold on the understanding that the chair
would progress annually through different national representatives.
There was then established an Executive Committee and the various
National Committees. It was a remarkable conference and altruism,
coupled with the spirit of pure research, triumphed – for
a short time. The International Committee met again in 1877 and,
forgetting its own rules, re-elected Leopold to the chair. It never
met again. The Executive committee reported on the AIA’s operations
until 1880 whilst, with the exception of Belgium, the National Committees
never even saw the light of day.
Leopold’s intention at that time was somehow to find a way
for Belgium to take control of the AIA but it rapidly became obvious
to him that Belgium was unfit to receive his creation. He would
just have to establish his own private colony in the Congo basin
but whom could Leopold trust to set up such an organization He would
have to know something of the African native, believe in himself,
be prepared to use force where necessary and yet, be gullible and
unappreciative of Leopold’s true intent. Out of the jungle,
having taken almost three years to cross Africa from Lake Tanganyika
down the Lualaba and the Congo to the West African Coast, came Henry
Morton Stanley.
Leopold’s immediate problem now was how to recruit Stanley
without alerting the British. He therefore resolved to employ Stanley
to explore the Congo basin and establish some posts under the auspices
of the AIA. A little early discussion with Stanley seemed a good
idea so he sent two emissaries to meet him at Marseilles, where
his train had stopped en route to Britain from Italy. Stanley was
not interested; he wanted plaudits from his countrymen (the British)
and time to write his book but by June 1878 he had become tired
of the negative attitude of the British Government so he travelled
to Brussels for a meeting with Leopold. The two got on well but
Stanley emphasised that the first stage of any useful opening-up
of the Congo required a railway round the lower falls and rapids.
Funding was a problem but a proposal from the Dutch traders at the
mouth of the Congo for a ‘Study Syndicate’ fitted nicely
into the ostensible purposes of the AIA and a group of European
financiers agreed to support this. The syndicate came into being
as the ‘Comité d’Etudes du Haut-Congo’.
Its terms of reference were never published but came to light in
1918 and included a clause excluding the Comité from political
action. Like so many of Leopold’s clauses and contracts this
seems to have faded into oblivion very quickly if one considers
the evidence of a document found in the Belgian Foreign Ministry
archives. Leopold writing to Stanley: ‘…It is a question
of creating a new State as big as possible and running it …
there is no question of granting political power to Negroes …
the white man will head the stations which will be populated by
free and freed Negroes. Every station would regard itself as a little
republic … The work will be directed by the King (Leopold)
who attaches particular importance to the setting up of the stations
… the best course of action would be to secure concessions
of land from the natives for the purposes of roads and cultivation
and to found as many stations as possible …should we not try
to extend the influence of the stations over the neighbouring chiefs
and form a Republican Confederation of native freedmen? The President
(of the Confederation) will hold his powers from the King.’
Leopold set out his requirements more fully in a private letter
to Stanley in August 1878. Stanley was to acquire as much land as
possible by purchase or concession on behalf of the Comité
which would set out the laws of this ‘Free State’ with
Leopold, as a private citizen, at its head. Although Stanley obtained
close to 1,000,000 square miles of the Congo for Leopold, the latter
was not happy as the French, through Count Savorgnan de Brazza,
established a camp at Stanley Pool, the site of the future Brazzaville.
What Stanley did not know was that the Comité d’Etudes
du Haut-Congo no longer existed! In November 1878 Leopold announced
to his shareholders that most of the money used to found it had
been spent and the rest was committed to contracts already underway.
He felt very sorry about this but was prepared to return their original
investments in full and offer them preference should any commercial
undertakings grow from the enterprise. All he asked was that the
Comité be dissolved. This was agreed and the Comité
d’Etudes du Haut-Congo was immediately replaced by the Association
Internationale du Congo (AIC) with 100% funding from Leopold. This
fund provided the treasury of the Congo Free State which was thus
also owned by Leopold. The similarity of the names of the AIA and
AIC were hardly coincidental. As Leopold wrote to a supporter, ’care
must be taken not to let it be obvious that the AIA and AIC are
different, the public doesn’t grasp this’.
Leopold now needed international recognition and started with the
United States of America as being the country least likely to understand
the complexities of the pyramid of power which he was creating.
It proved simple to confuse the Americans. In the President’s
message to Congress in December 1883 the AIC was referred to as
the AIA and the Comité d’Etudes du Haut-Congo was taken
as a branch of the AIA. By February 1884 both Congress and the Senate
recognised the flag of the AIC as that of the Congo Free States
(not yet one state).
Leopold then brilliantly bound France, Germany and Britain to his
scheme. A statement, issued jointly by the AIC and the French Prime
Minister, said in essence that the AIC would not cede any of its
territory to any power but that if it ever had to realize its assets
France would have first refusal. The contradiction went unnoticed
or, at least, it was not commented on. Now France could relax, knowing
it would have no problems with the AIC and could, potentially, have
some rich pickings whilst Germany and Britain now had no option
but to support the AIC and so prevent it falling to the French.
Two items remained to be dealt with before Leopold had his new
fiefdom. The first was the Berlin Conference of 1884-5, arranged
by a number of European powers in an attempt to sort out a range
of conflicting land claims in Africa. Interestingly it was not felt
necessary to invite any Africans. Leopold rushed around negotiating
numerous bilateral agreements but had surprisingly little trouble
in acquiring the million or so square miles of central Africa which
he sought as well as the port of Matadi and the land on which to
build his railway past the rapids. There were probably two reasons
for the ease with which he was granted his claims. The first was
that most delegates had never even seen Africa and believed that,
for them, any wealth came from trading near the coast. The second
was that it was still believed that Leopold's organization, be it
the AIA or AIC, was generating some sort of international colony
which would be one giant free trade area. It took Leopold just three
months to clarify the nomenclature when, by royal decree, his privately
purchased country became the ‘État Indépendant
du Congo’ – the Congo Free State. Note that the ‘States’
approved by the US had become one State; a one letter difference
which went unnoticed.
His efforts to date had cost him a fortune and he still did not
have his railway which was essential for the transportation of the
riches of the Congo’s from the interior to the coast in reasonable
quantity. At this time he was still thinking of ivory, rubber hardly
featuring in his calculations. In 1887 for instance only thirty
tons of rubber came out of the Congo. He needed money and turned
to his own country, Belgium, which was beginning to realise that
there might, after all, be some financial benefits to be had from
the Congo. Using a combination of his philanthropic record, the
‘French possession’ threat and a will in which he left
‘all his sovereign rights’ in the Congo Free State to
Belgium upon his death, he received an interest free loan of £1,000,000
(1890 value). He promised to borrow no more without the prior approval
of the Belgian Parliament and to repay the loan (or have the Congo
annexed by Belgium) by the end of 1900. The French do not seem to
have been consulted and, in a typical gesture of altruism, the king
back-dated his will by a year to August 1889 thus making it appear
that his generosity had nothing to do with the ‘subsequent’
loan.
Although the political wheeler-dealing, corruption and lies continued
to the end of Leopold’s reign, he now had his State but to
take full financial advantage of it he needed four fundamental things.
He had to put in place posts throughout his new land in which to
pace his administrators and their ‘enforcers’, ‘recruit’
a labour force, develop the river transport on the 1,000 or so miles
between Stanley Falls and the rapids and build Stanley’s railway
from West of the rapids to Matadi.
In addition he needed stability. He was aware of the growing demand
for rubber and of the competition he was facing from South America
and the plantations in the Far East. He was now close to sixty years
old and needed to make money fast. His idea for short to medium
term stability was simple; he would involve directly, and for their
own financial benefit, influential political and commercial friends
throughout Europe who would, in the preservation of their own interests,
support him against his detractors. He also appreciated the particular
advantage to himself that he would then be able to offload any approbation
onto their shoulders and off his own! This was achieved by a decree
of October 1892 which split the Congo into three zones. The first,
the Domaine Privée, was to be solely for his financial benefit
and consisted of an area round Lake Leopold II and Lake Tumba. In
1901 it was supposed that it had been set up by a Decree of 1896,
reserving the land as ‘Crown Property’ but this was
subsequently shown to have been forged. The Domaine Privée
was about ten times the area of Belgium. A second region was to
be either sold on to new owners or distributed between concession
companies. The largest of these companies, known as the ‘Anversoise’
was to be in the hands of his close friends but, by 1898, a 50%
interest had been acquired by the Congo State (Leopold). The next
largest, The Anglo-Belgian India-Rubber Company (ABIR), was formally
under the chairmanship of an Englishman, Colonel North, although
it later emerged that his financial stake was purchased with Leopold’s
money. As with the Anversoise, Leopold soon owned at least 50% of
the shares and the British Interest reverted to the Belgians.
Perhaps the most interesting area, from the point of view of Leopold’s
machinations, was that situated around the River Kasai. This was
designated a Free Trade Area although Leopold’s organization
already controlled a major part of it and was particularly obstructive
as independent traders tried to work within its ‘free’
economy. Within the 1892 decree was the comment, overlooked by all,
that the free trade rights would cease when Belgium ‘was in
a position to take over the sovereignty of the Congo’. By
the terms of the Belgian Government’s loan this was 1901 and,
although Belgium did not take up its offer, it was in a position
to do so. Leopold took over again, for once with the law on his
side, and that was the end of free trade.
With his land and position reasonably secure he could concentrate
on transport and infrastructure. In 1890 Stanley’s railway
was started at Matadi. Three years later it had advanced 14 miles
at a cost in African life which is, even now, unknown. The official
figures claimed 1800 non-whites and 132 whites but less official
(and more reliable?) sources suggested that the 1800 figure only
related to the first two years of its construction. Nevertheless,
the line was extended to Stanley Pool over the next five years and
was then open for business. Three weeks of portage were reduced
to two days of steam-powered transportation. Leopold needed steamboats
above the rapids well before the completion of the railway so that
he could use the clear 1,000 miles of river, and its tributaries,
to put in place his administrative infrastructure. These had to
be dismantled and carried past the rapids and as an indication of
what this involved, Just one of the steamboats required over 3,000
‘porter loads’.
With transport now under control Leopold could get his ivory and
rubber out - when it had been collected. His preferred modus operandi
was trading posts with a white man in charge of the native work
force. The posts, with their white agents in charge, were put in
place but since the native workers had to be coerced to do anything
for the agents, a middle tier of management was required. This was
supplied by soldiers of Leopold’s private army, the ‘Force
Publique’ which supplied both garrisons for general area protection
and local ‘sentries’. The officers of this army were
generally whites, often from Belgium but sometimes from other countries,
lent to Leopold to learn the techniques of native control. Other
ranks were often enslaved as much as the rubber tappers proved to
be. They were generally stationed far from home and were left to
be self-supporting. However, possessing guns, they were one off
the bottom of the pyramid of power and not actually on the bottom.
There were mutinies but by keeping the tappers under control and
ensuring that they produced their full allocation of rubber, the
soldiers had some chance of survival. Looking to the future, Leopold
organized children’s camps, ostensibly under the auspices
of the Catholic Church, which were intended to educate the native
orphan children but, in actuality, his purpose was to turn them
into trustworthy soldiers. The orphans tended to be collected from
villages destroyed by the Force Publique and, if they were not orphans
when they were found, they became so very soon afterwards.
The control of gangs of labourers by armed supervisors is nothing
new but, because of the individual work of the natives in collecting
the latex, a new protocol had to be developed by the agents and
put into operation by the ‘sentries’ and the Force Publique.
The vine which produced most of the Congo rubber was of the Landolphia
genus which climbed a convenient tree and then spread out through
the upper branches of its neighbours. When one was first located
the latex could be extracted by tapping, or incising close to the
ground but the tappers then had to move higher and higher up the
vine for subsequent tappings. More latex could be obtained by cutting
completely though the vine but this was terminal to the vine and
forbidden. If caught doing it, it was also terminal for the tapper!
As the vines close to a settlement ran dry the tappers had to move
further out, often making journeys of a day or more. The usual trading
goods of trinkets and the like were not of sufficient interest to
the natives for them to put up with the rigours of a tapper’s
life and Leopold had made certain that the Congo was, at least to
the natives, a ‘no money’ economy. Money could give
you power in that you might purchase guns or other undesirable products.
Force was the obvious means of persuasion against the natives who
would not put up with the rigours of a tapper’s life for a
few trinkets or trade goods and this force was better used against
women and children than against the tapper who might then be unable
to work efficiently. A procedure was soon established and documented
in the official manual given to all agents. The soldiers would arrive
at a settlement, loot it of animals and any other items of value,
destroy the buildings, capture the women and children and imprison
them in stockades built close to each trading post for just this
purpose. They would then be ransomed against an arbitrarily decided
weight of rubber. On returning with the rubber, the tappers often
found that their women had been raped by the ‘sentries’
and/or had died from starvation or some disease.
If the natives objected to the forced labour the settlement was
wiped out. Since Leopold did not want to waste money, his agents
knew exactly how many bullets were issued to each soldier and these
were not to be used shooting game for food! The bullet usage was
supposed to relate closely to the number of natives killed and the
soldiers supplied evidence of their kills by cutting the right hand
from each corpse and smoking it so that it might be preserved for
subsequent checking. When one agent suggested that the hands could
have come from women, easier to catch and kill, penises were brought
in to prove the honesty of the soldiers.
Severed heads had been considered trophies of inter-tribal wars
long before Leopold took an interest in the Congo but he certainly
had no objections to the continuation of the practice. One agent,
Van Kerckhoven, paid his soldiers 1p per head ‘to stiffen
their resolve during battle’ whilst another used twenty-one
heads to decorate his flowerbeds. This is probably the origin of
Marlow’s observation of Kurtz’s collection of heads
in Joseph Conrad’s book ‘The Heart of Darkness’.
In the ultimate statement of self-justification one agent reported
how, when local villagers failed to meet their fish and manioc quota,
he decapitated 100 of them. ‘There have been plenty of supplies
ever since. My goal was ultimately humanitarian. I killed 100 people
but this allowed 500 to live’.
Tales of horror and destruction could continue but the point has
been made and it is time to turn to the fall of Leopold. He fought
a running battle with his critics throughout his ‘Congo mission’
but for many years his outward altruism and humanity, as well as
influential friends who were also gaining from his efforts, protected
him. One of the earliest attempts to bring him to some accountability
was initiated by a black American soldier, lawyer and preacher,
James Washington Williams. Williams was already known in America
as a proponent of black civil rights. In 1889 he wrote to Leopold
suggesting that he could recruit black Americans to work in the
Congo where they could advance themselves in a way impossible in
the US. He came to Europe, met and was impressed by Leopold and,
in 1890, set out for Africa where he spent six months touring the
Congo. He was a civil rights activist and what he saw sickened him.
His response was to write an ‘Open Letter to His Serene Majesty
Leopold II’ which was also published as a pamphlet and widely
distributed throughout Europe. He wrote a similar letter to the
President of the United States of America, President Harrison. In
the ‘Open Letter’ he accused Leopold on eight major
points:
- Stanley used a range of crude conjuring tricks to persuade the
natives that he had supernatural powers and to induce them to
sign over their tribal lands for trivial recompense.
- Stanley was not a hero but a cruel foul-mouthed tyrant.
- Leopold’s African soldiers had to be self-sufficient and
the results – death of the unhelpful natives and the destruction
of their villages - followed from that.
- Leopold’s soldiers were excessively cruel to their prisoners.
- There was no wise government, no schools and no hospitals for
the natives.
- The judicial system was corrupt and unjust. Whites could get
away (literally) with murder whilst blacks could receive terrible
punishments, including death, for trivial, or even invented, offences.
- Kidnapping natives to be used a concubines by state officials
was commonplace.
- Leopold’s government was systematically slave trading
throughout the Congo.
In a letter to America he coined a phrase which, still today, is
the ultimate condemnation. He described Leopold’s operations
in the Congo as: ‘A crime against Humanity’.
Leopold immediately set out to discredit Williams but was fortunate
when, in August 1891, Williams died of tuberculosis aged just forty-one.
The rumblings continued but without his passion to fan the flames,
they slowly subsided. Even that august newspaper, The Times, saw
fit to write a leader in 1895 which included: ‘a system of
compulsion closely akin to slavery would be necessary before natives
of the Congo Free State could be trained to regular voluntary labour’.
Another black American Missionary, William Henry Sheppard, was
in the Congo at the same time as Williams and for partly the same
reason – to find a country where black Americans could develop
without segregation. Unlike Williams, however, he was based at one
place, the Presbyterian mission he and a colleague had established
far up the River Kasai, the home of the Kuba people. This was so
remote that it took eight years for Leopold’s soldiers to
reach it and during that time Sheppard established a remarkable
rapport with the natives. He appears to be one of the very few black
men respected by both whites and blacks in the Congo at that time.
When Leopold’s soldiers arrived, the Kubas resisted and were
massacred by the thousand. In 1899 Sheppard was told by his superiors
to go into the jungle and find out what was happening. What he found
was smoked right hands and the soldiers smoking them, for it was
he who first publicised the practice in missionary magazines throughout
both Europe and the States. His, and other missionaries’,
articles continued to infuriate Leopold who, in 1906 made it an
offence punishable by a fine or imprisonment to commit any calumny
against a Congo State official. After the first conviction of a
Baptist minister, things quietened down a little but, in 1908, Sheppard
published the story of another Kuba revolt and the way in which
it was put down. The local concessionaires, the Compagnie du Kasai,
demanded a retraction and when Sheppard’s colleague pointed
out to the company that they had a lot more charges to make the
Compagnie became more enraged. Whilst the arguments were continuing,
the British Vice-Consul visited the region with Sheppard as guide
to prepare his own report and, when this was published supporting
Sheppard’s story, the company had had enough and sued Sheppard
for libel. The judge reserved judgement as he worked out what to
do. The Americans had made it clear that their attitude to Belgian’s
claim on the Congo could depend on his verdict, whilst the judge’s
career was obviously finished if he found for Sheppard. The verdict
was clear. Since Sheppard had not named the Compagnie du Kasai in
his article it could be assumed that he was only blaming soldiers
of chartered trading companies for the massacres and did not intend
to make an attack on the defendant, Sheppard was innocent and the
Compagnie not guilty. Although the story of Sheppard has been told
in isolation it forms only part of the greater story concerning
the downfall of Leopold. If Leopold was the schemer and Stanley
the realizer then E. D. Morel was their nemesis.
Edmund Dene Morel was the son of an English widow and who had been
married to a Frenchman and who, at the age of seventeen, moved from
Paris to Liverpool to become a clerk in the Elder-Dempster shipping
line. He had no history of political activism neither did he know,
nor care, much about Africa. The shipping line had plied the routes
to Africa for a number of years and held the contract for all cargo
to and from Leopold’s Congo. Being bi-lingual he soon became
the liaison officer between the line and the Congo officials in
Belgium and regularly visited Antwerp to compile and check the records
of goods received and dispatched. It did not take him long to realise
that a great fraud was being perpetrated – and that even worse
things were happening. The fraud was obvious to someone used to
dealing with figures. Leopold’s various trading companies
and the Congo Government published certain trade figures for exports
whilst the amounts of ivory and rubber unloaded at Antwerp greatly
exceeded them. Millions of pounds were floating loose somewhere.
The more disconcerting discovery was that there were regular shipments
of guns and ammunition out of Antwerp into the Congo, assigned to
either the State itself or to various named trading companies. Coupled
to this was the fact that over 80% of the goods being shipped to
the Congo were of no benefit to the natives but were intended to
prop up the administrative system. How then were the ever increasing
quantities of ivory and rubber being paid for? He knew that money
was not an option as the natives were not allowed to use it and
yet Elder-Dempster had a monopoly on all trade. The only answer
must be that they were not being paid. They were, in fact, slave
labour.
At the end of the century, in his mid 20’s, Morel found his
conscience and, blistering with outrage, set out to destroy Leopold
and his operation in the Congo. He first revealed his suspicions
to Sir Alfred Jones, head of the shipping line and also Honorary
Consul in Liverpool to the Congo, but, since the latter was more
concerned with keeping his lucrative contract than on displaying
moral principles, he was reluctant to stir the muddy waters. He
did, however, promptly visit Leopold who told him, in essence, that
the natives had to be subdued for their own long-term benefit and
it would be better if this young clerk learned some discretion –
quickly. The offer of a pay rise and a transfer away from the ‘Congo
desk’ was rejected, only to be followed by a more blatant
bribe which was again refused. In his younger days Morel had written
some free-lance articles for trade journals and found he had some
flair for the written word so, in 1901, aged twenty-eight he resigned
and started his onslaught. Unfortunately there were limits to what
he could get published so, two years later, he started his own paper
‘The West African Mail’ in which he had total editorial
control.
Morel insisted on unimpeachable veracity and, whilst writing with
all the fury he could muster, he was always accurate. Every attempt
by Leopold’s supporters to catch him out was foiled. On complaining
that the story of natives being forced to work through the kidnapping
of their women was false, Morel was ready with a copy of the form
given by the ABIR to all its agents headed ‘Natives under
bodily detention’ and an order on the up-keep and feeding
of hostages. As Morel’s fame spread he received letters, reports
and copies of documents from a vast number of people including employees
of Leopold in the Congo and clerks in the Belgian offices of Congo
companies. Missionaries who had at last found a mainstream publisher
outside the normal run of religious pamphlets and journals willingly
released their pent-up emotions and produced more irrefutable evidence
– photographs. Of the eyewitness stories which Morel published,
just one sums up Leopold’s Congo. It came from an American
agent working for the ‘Anversoise’, Edward Canisius:
‘…. We had undergone six weeks of painful marching and
had killed over 900 natives, men, women and children’. The
incentive? ‘Adding fully twenty tons of rubber to the monthly
crop’.
One of Morel’s supporters was Sir Charles Dilkes MP and in
1903 the Congo question was raised in the Houses of Parliament.
A resolution was passed making clear Parliament’s belief in
Morel’s writings and protesting over the treatment of the
natives. It also expressed concern about Leopold’s failure
to live up to his free trade promises. Leopold became concerned
and so started a campaign to present his side of the story.
Britain was intent on destabilising his operations because British
gin manufacturers wanted to export their product to innocent natives
but his enlightened administration would stop them.
Missionaries were bigots out to force their beliefs on everyone
by any methods.
The very profits he was making from the Congo showed how well the
natives were being treated.
Would this be enough and had he bought enough politicians and businessmen
for things to quieten down yet again? The answer was soon forthcoming:
the Foreign Office sent a telegram to HM Consul in the Congo and
asked him to investigate.
The consul was the thirty-nine year old Roger Casement who had
been in Africa for much of the last twenty years. Amongst other
activities he had worked for the surveyors on the ‘rapids
railway’ and had spent a week with Stanley in the Congo. In
1890 he had shared rooms with a Polish ship’s officer, Józef
Konrad Korzeniowski who was on his way to learn the secrets of the
river so that he might take control of his own steamer. Six months
was all he could take in the Congo and later, as Joseph Conrad,
he wrote of the atrocities he had witnessed in ‘Heart of Darkness’.
In 1892 Casement worked in what is today Nigeria and then transferred
to the British Consular service. In 1900, he was to set up the Consular
Service in the Congo. He was fully aware of Leopold’s activities
in the Congo and had already written to the Foreign Office about
them. Now he had permission to investigate officially and he was
not to let either the natives or his government down. For over three
months he travelled throughout the Congo and the more he learned
the more sickened he became. He returned to Britain to write his
report and, although it was written in the formal restrained way
of a government document, the factual and graphic contents were
much more than the government expected or, perhaps, wanted. It was
Casement, for instance, who dispassionately described the severing
of penises in confirmation that the corpses which had provided right
hands were males. Pressure to stop publication came from highly
placed sources, including the British pro-Leopold minister to Brussels,
who wanted to ‘avoid being put in an awkward position at the
(Belgian) court’ and the head of the Elder-Dempster shipping
line for more obvious financial reasons. The report had to be published,
particularly since the frustrated Casement had given several interviews
about its contents to the press but, as a compromise, all names
were purged. Casement seethed when Leopold’s apologists issued
general denials which he was unable to defend with specifics. It
appeared that the ‘sentries’ were to protect the tappers
(from what or whom?) and those unfortunates with missing hands had
had them amputated to prevent the spread of cancer of the hands.
Luckily for Casement’s sanity he had, by then, met Morel
whose work he had read whilst in the Congo and the two men struck
up an immediate strong friendship. Out of this meeting came, in
1904, the ‘Congo Reform Association’, the intention
of which was to persuade European governments to take action against
the abuses of human rights in the Congo. Morel knew that politicians
prefer a quiet life whenever possible so he sought out support from
a wide range of lords, MP’s, churchmen and businessmen and
kept up a continuous barrage of public (and private) meetings and
writings. Perhaps his most famous book is ‘Red Rubber: The
Story of the Rubber Trade Flourishing on the Congo in the Year of
Grace 1906’ in which, in a central section of thirty-six pages,
he documented close to 100 reports which he had received, from a
broad spectrum of sources, concerning atrocities committed on the
Congolese natives between 1890 and 1905. Each report was accompanied
by a full provenance. As some indication of his prolific outpourings,
it is estimated that he wrote over 3,500 letters in the in the first
half of that year (1906) alone.
Leopold now realised that neither his words alone, nor those of
his apologists, were enough to stop the rising tide of concern and
resentment from Britain. He was presented with further problems
when American missionaries lobbied President Roosevelt claiming
that as the US was the first country to recognise the Congo Free
State, it had a special responsibility to protect its indigenous
population. Forced to act, predominantly in response to the Casement
Report, Leopold set up an International Commission of Enquiry consisting
of three judges, one from each of Belgium, Italy and Switzerland,
who were to travel to the Congo to investigate Casement’s
allegations. They returned to Belgium in March 1905 but Leopold
kept their report suppressed until November of that year. In the
meantime a Belgian Member of Parliament struck gold. He asked a
provocative question: ‘Were bonuses still being paid to agents
in inverse proportion to the value of the goods they exchanged for
rubber and ivory?’ The Foreign Minister explicitly denied
any such policy only to have read out to him the confidential State
documents confirming this as official policy. The finally released
report of the Commission of Enquiry was a shattering blow to the
Belgian Government. It listed:
- The Land Laws: contrary to the Berlin Directive
and would militate against the development of native life.
- Forced Labour: applied with unpardonable ferocity
and reprisals.
- Bonus system: unacceptable and dishonest.
- Powers to Concession Companies: intolerable.
- Legal system: biased and inadequate.
(Shades of Williams’ Open Letter over a decade earlier).
Leopold’s choices were becoming very limited and became more
so in March 1906 when a motion to revive the Annexation Bill of
1901 was passed in the Belgian Parliament. Leopold realised that
he was beaten in terms of actual ‘ownership’ of the
Congo but he still had more than half a pack of cards to play in
concealing the multiplicity of companies in which he had shares
or owned outright. He was content to hand over the administrative
shell if he could keep the contents. He retreated to his yacht,
the ‘Alberta’ and his Villa des Cèdres on Cap
Ferat and prepared his defences. These consisted of a series of
defensive ‘walls’, built on the assumption that, as
each defence fell, another would be there to back it up.
In mid 1907 the Congolese and Belgians agreed to produce a draft
treaty and negotiators were appointed, several of whom happened
to be friends of Leopold. By the end of the year a draft treaty
had been produced and signed which proved that Leopold had succeeded
with his most important defence wall – The Belgian State pledged
itself to recognise the Foundations existing in the Congo. This
would include Leopold’s ‘Fondation de la Couronne’,
formed as a foundation barely a year earlier but holding Leopold’s
‘Domaine de la Couronne’ (that tract of land ten times
the area of Belgium) as its major asset together with a massive
portfolio of land holdings throughout Belgium and southern France,
shares and cash. The Government could not accept this but was surprised
when Leopold gave way in early 1908. It had not realised the purpose
of his ‘walls’ and by now he had finished putting most
of his fortune out of reach of the Government. However, he still
believed that he had a saleable asset. There was, and still is,
no argument that a large amount of Leopold’s wealth went into
building works throughout Belgium and the Government agreed to take
these over and complete them as well as taking responsibility for
their many outstanding debts. Leopold himself kept the ‘goods
and movable assets’ of the ‘Fondation’ and received
a gift of £2,000,000 in recognition of a nation’s gratitude.
The politicians still argued but the end was in sight.
A speech from the throne by King Edward VII in 1908 represented
the ultimate approval of the work of Morel and his colleagues. The
King hoped that negotiations between Belgium and the Congo State
would result in a state humanely administered in the spirit of the
Berlin Act. The Belgian Parliament had to act if it was to retain
any credence and self-respect so the treaty became law in 1908.
On November 8th 1908 the flag of the Congo Free State was lowered
for the last time but it took several years yet for the Belgian
government to dismantle the ‘Leopold Legacy’. It was
1913, the year that the Congo Reform Association disbanded, that
Britain recognised that the transfer of power was effective. By
then Leopold had been dead for three and a half years, finally succumbing
to an intestinal operation, probably for cancer, on December 14th
1909.
Was it worth it and what was the cost? No one knows the answer
to either question. Some figures have been produced, most comprehensively
in terms of rubber production by Morel who, after his discoveries
in the late 1890’s which precipitated Leopold’s fall
from grace, set out to establish realistic figures for Congo rubber
exports. The best one can say is that they represent minimum figures.
From the earliest days of trading through the West Coast settlements,
small amounts of rubber had become available for export at the instigation
of the traders. Unlike his Mesoamerican counterpart, the African
native had little use for the material except as an adhesive to
fasten spear- and arrow- heads to their shafts. By 1888 it was still
a small amount, representing about 10% in value of all exports,
rising to 25% by 1895, 50% in 1896, 70% in 1898, 85% in 1900 and
peaking at 90% in 1901 but remaining in this area for the rest of
Leopold’s ownership of the Congo. It has been estimated that
between 1898 and 1905, raw materials to the value of about £14,000,000
were exported from the Congo for the benefit of Leopold and his
collaborators whilst imports, mainly to support the ‘administrative’
regime, were some £6,000,000.
It was also estimated that Leopold’s ‘Domaine de la
Couronne’ gave him a clear profit of some £3,000,000
between 1896 and 1906 whilst the State’s rubber exports in
its peak year of 1901 were estimated to be some £2,000,000.
These estimates were calculated on the ‘most realistic estimates’
of exports from a mass of data and not just on the ‘official’
documents of the time which first arousE D Morel’s suspicions.
They also exclude his profits from companies in which he had shares,
usually over 50%. Morel estimated his income from dividends alone
in the three major companies to be £360,000 in 1904-5. In
attempting to ridicule the figure of £3,000,000, the Belgian
Premier, a known apologist for Leopold, produced figures to show
that it was at least a factor of four too large. Unfortunately,
his mathematical errors did not escape the Members of the Belgian
Parliament who felt that even the £3,000,000 was an underestimate.
In calculating Leopold’s financial gains from the Congo,
the various loans he raised between 1888 and 1904 should not be
forgotten. The Belgian Premier suggested £3,000,000 whilst
others, less in Leopold’s pocket, calculated over £5,000,000.
By the time of Leopold’s death the money was rolling in nicely
and it has already been noted that the Belgian Government did not
act with an excess of zeal to stop the slave trade when it took
control at the end of 1909. The money was, after all, useful to
balance the country’s books and complete Leopold’s lavish
projects. In the four following years 1909-1912, 14,000 tons were
exported but then came the Great War followed by plantation rubber.
The rush for wild rubber was over.
The human cost of the Congo rubber saga is as difficult to calculate
as the financial but it was certainly high. There is general agreement
that the population of the Congo in the 1880’s was around
25,000,000. In 1911 the official figure was put at 8,500,000, 7,700,000
in 1923 and 8 – 10,000,000 in the mid 1930’s. Making
due allowance for inaccuracies in the 1880’s figure there
seems to be no reason to doubt that 10 - 15,000,000 natives ‘vanished’
in the Congo during Leopold’s rubber-grabbing years. Not all
this can be laid at the door of rubber or, indeed, at the door of
Leopold himself, for during this period Africa was swept by a devastating
plague of sleeping sickness. Secret flight was an option but this
was against the Concession Company’s ‘law’ and
it was not easy, as the death toll incurred by native porters during
many explorations have shown. The birth rate of native Congolese
fell substantially in the first decade of the 19th century and this
is generally ascribed to the falling numbers of young indigenous
males, murdered for failing to meet their target quotas of rubber.
However, the concurrent rape of the female hostages should have
compensated for this so the reasons must be more complex. One still
has to ask how this should be factored into any calculations regarding
lives ‘lost’ during this period.
The rubber tappers had to work between twenty and twenty-five days
each month to pay their rubber taxes and this left them with little
time to clear land, build shacks and grow food. Whichever came first,
exhaustion or illness, and either would almost inevitably lead to
the other, the result would be a drop in rubber collection and death.
If half the missing millions died due to rubber-related causes,
the figure would be close to the total population of Belgium and
not dissimilar to the total number of dead in the Great War. If
we take a not-unrealistic weight of rubber to come out of the Congo
as 75,000 tons (75,000,000Kg) and the rubber-related loss of native
life as 7,500,000 we have the value of a Congolese native life –
10Kg of rubber!
What of Morel after his prolonged campaign and ultimate victory?
He became an active member of the Liberal Party and in October,
1912, he became its prospective parliamentary candidate in Birkenhead.
However, he disagreed with the way that Herbert Asquith and his
government were dealing with the crisis in Europe and at the outbreak
of the First World War he became involved with establishing the
Union of Democratic Control (UDC) which had three main objectives:
- to prevent secret diplomacy there should be parliamentary
control over foreign policy
- there should be negotiations after the war with
other democratic European countries in an attempt to form an organisation
to help prevent future conflicts
- that at the end of the war the peace terms should
neither humiliate the defeated nation nor artificially rearrange
frontiers as this might provide a cause for future wars.
To the anger of the Liberal party, Morel wrote many of the UDC
anti-war pamphlets published during the war and this resulted in
his being removed as the Liberal parliamentary candidate for Birkenhead.
The Daily Express suggested that the UDC was working for the German
government and encouraged its readers to go and break-up the organization’s
meetings. The UDC complained to the Home Secretary about this "incitement
to violence" but he refused to take any action. Over the next
few months the police refuse to protect UDC speakers and they were
often attacked by angry crowds, Morel himself being physically attacked
on several occasions. When Scotland Yard was asked to investigate
Morel and the UDC it reported that the UDC was not a revolutionary
body and its funds came from the Society of Friends and "Messrs.
Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree".
In 1917 Morel was sentenced to six months in prison for a technical
violation of the Defence of the Realm Act and never regained his
full health. On his release from prison he left the Liberal Party
and joined the Independent Labour Party where, in 1922, he defeated
the Liberal Party candidate at Dundee, Winston Churchill. In spite
of his relationship with Ramsey Macdonald and his undoubted abilities
he was denied high office and died of a heart attack two years later
on 12th November, 1924.