Leopold II: The Devil You Don’t Know
Archtwat Leopold II of Belgium
Not all holocausts are created equal. I learned this in the course of writing my adaptation of "Tarzan of the Apes" for Dynamite Comics. The first issue of Lord of the Jungle is coming out in December – more on that another time.
The original novel is a wonderful adventure story, exactly what you'd expect of Edgar Rice Burroughs. And, as you'd expect, it's also virulently racist, to the point of hilarity. Throughout the novel, Tarzan preys on a tribe of Congolese cannibals. I, for one, can't find any references online to Bantu tribes who actually practice cannibalism. Maybe the inaccuracy is "creative license", but I don't think so. Reserve your own judgement, Dear Reader, until you've read the original.
For all of this, there are fleeting moments of compassion for the tribe. One passage describes how they are on the run from "...that arch hypocrite, Leopold II of Belgium, because of whose atrocities they had fled the Congo Free State."
I had no idea who "the arch hypocrite Leopold II of Belgium" might be, and the "Congo Free State" rang exactly zero bells. Ever the diligent researcher, I decided to look the two up on Wikipedia. Was I ever in for a treat.
It turns out Leopold II presided over one of the first genocides in modern history. The term "Congo Free State" could not be more Orwellian. Leopold ran a country larger than Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway combined as his personal rubber plantation for twelve years. There's no way to know how many people died. It was probably somewhere between five and ten million people, out of a total population of 30 million. So a pretty Biblical.
Leo's thugs, the "Force Publique", collected the right hands of the people they killed – to prove they weren't wasting ammo, that they were punishing slaves who didn't meet production quotas. Harvesting human hands became an end in itself; hands became a kind of derivative commodity of the rubber trade. Mass rape was a recreational pastime for the Force Publique. In fact, the Congo Free State was the inspiration for the novel Heart of Darkness. In some ways, Heart of Darkness is actually a sanitized version of what really happened.
They actually built a monument to this douchebucket. Stay classy, Belgium.
For whatever reason, some holocausts go not just underreported but unreported. It was one of the things that made me want to write Zero Killer. I mean, I didn't learn about the Congo Free State in school. I didn't learn about the Armenian genocide, either. We brushed over the genocide of the American Indians very lightly in my "Advanced Placement" United States History class.
And what about today? What about Sudan, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the current name of Leo's killing fields? The truth is, the slaughter never stopped. The DRC is the most brutalized, war-torn and miserable place on the face of the Earth, and has been for the entirety of its existence, all thanks to the horrors of Leo II. The current round of fighting, which began in 1998, is officially the world's deadliest conflict since World War II.
Thanks, Leo.
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February 28th, 2012 - 14:14
As your resident Belgian friend, I can tell you that we most certainly learned about the dark deeds of Good Ol’ Leo in high school. There are also enough Rwandan refugees living in Belgium to remind us daily of how badly we messed up their country.
But hey, we gave you fries and waffles, so don’t be hatin’! (Forgive us our Smurfs…)
February 28th, 2012 - 16:57
I stand corrected, Phlibby! I stand corrected.
I loved the Smurfs when I was a lad, I’m not ashamed to admit it anymore. I know you know how to say “Smurf” in German, and I know you know I know, but still: Strümpf. I love that. “Pitfuo” is Spanish for Smurf, isn’t that great? ¡Pitufo!
What is Rwandan food like? It’s probably the one instance in the Known Universe where the immigrant population’s food is NOT superior to the host country’s…
September 18th, 2012 - 23:41
Leopold’s reputation is well-deserved.
However, keep in mind that the Congo was thoroughly screwed over before his men arrived — it was the happy hunting ground of the East Coast slave trade, run by guys like Tippu Tib, who Leopold actually hired for a while as his governor of the eastern Congo before the thieves fell out.
And the Force Publique hired a lot of the same mercenaries the Swahili-Arab slave traders used, and yes, they were cannibals. There are abundant first-person accounts of how they roasted (or smoked for later consumption) the bodies of the fallen after battles.
For that matter, when Stanley (“Rock Crusher” in local lore) blasted his way down the river in the 1870′s, he was repeatedly attacked by war parties chanting a battle cry that translated as “Meat! Meat!”
The lid was eventually blown off the Congo Free State when a guy called E.D. Morel, working in an import-export firm in England, discovered a something really odd about the trade balance of the Free State.
It was finally exporting a lot of stuff — mostly rubber, but also ivory and palm oil and so forth.
But it was -importing- almost nothing except Albertini rifles and ammunition…
September 19th, 2012 - 19:56
Maître Sterling! I feel like Wayne and Garth before Alice Cooper… I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!
I officially don’t know what the hell I’m talking about when it comes to the Congo, or anything else for that matter, so thanks for the insight. I didn’t realize the mercenaries employed by the Force Publique and the Arab slavers were cannibals. Almost makes you sorry for Stanley. There’s no shortage of blame to go around, isn’t there?
Burroughs definitely singles out the Arab slavers for villains in Tarzan of the Apes. As I’m sure you know. The book is so strange, constantly teetering between contempt and pity for the native Congolese.
Morel sounds like a very courageous chap, in the tradition of Gladstone.
I really do appreciate you stopping by – in all seriousness, it’s an honor.
October 2nd, 2012 - 22:43
De Nada.
As for the Congo, keep in mind that being oppressed and exploited doesn’t mean you’re a better person than the ones who are screwing you over. It just means they got the jump on you.
The Congo was on the fringe of two slave-trading zones, after the Atlantic trade was shut down between the early and mid 1800′s; there were the ‘bazinger’ slavers moving south out of Khartoum, and the Swahili-Arab ones coming in from the east, based on the coastal city-states ruled by the Busadi (Omani) Sultans of Zanzibar. Both served the flourishing markets for slaves in the Middle East, and the Zanzibaris had an active plantation sector in their own territories — most of the people on Zanzibar were slaves, brought in to work the clove plantations.
October 9th, 2012 - 11:14
There’s no shortage of blame to go around when it comes to Africa, is there? Or anywhere else, I guess. I saw a production of Othello in which Patrick Stewart played the tawny moor, while everyone else was black.
I’d love to know if this history served as food for any of your novels. I just got a copy of Dies the Fire, which I shamefully admit I haven’t read. But it’s next in my queue!