Congo Free State

"By the end of 1892, all the King's collaborators during the first and second phases of Belgian work in the Congo had therefore ceased to participate. M. van Eetvelde, who had increasingly isolated himself from them, remained alone in possession of the sovereign's confidence, with the sole program of being the passive instrument of his designs. This third phase of the administration of the state of Congo affected all signs of impending dissolution."

"In ten years or so, when rubber starts to decline, it will be agriculture that will have to ensure our public income and our trade."

"By blowing up the isolated facts, the British sought to cover up their territorial greed under the guise of philanthropy."

"It would be difficult to imagine a more centralized organization than that which has been achieved in the central government of the Independent State of Congo. The Secretary of State is its absolute head, although he himself remains in the most absolute dependence of the Sovereign."

"The mission which the agents of the State in Congo must fulfill is noble and of high purpose. Their task is to develop the work of civilization. They must gradually contain the primitive wildness, the bloodthirsty habits of thousands of years. They must subject the population to new laws. among which the most urgent and the most beneficial is undoubtedly that of labour."

"Ever since Stanley and the first pioneers entered the Congo Basin, the Flemish and Walloons have used their best efforts to give the country a modern economic structure and a higher civilization for the people. Mistakes have been made in this respect, but the closing balance is very positive. Despite the taunts in the UN guardianship council and sometimes even in Belgium, it is an achievement that all of black Africa looks up to with awe."

"Leopold II was able to push through his imperial wish and obtained that the fate of what would then be called the Congo Free State was linked to his own. He gave Congo its shape and dimensions, as well as a financial-capitalist structure. However, the debt burden that had become too heavy meant that the king handed over his colony to Belgium, a gift that the parliament was hesitant about but did not dare to refuse."

"In many ways a model colony was realized after 1908. A handful of whites turned the wheels in Congo and laid the foundations of the modern state structure. Remarkable achievements were made in the field of education, the traffic network, health care and development in general. This was made possible by the cooperation between the three pillars on which the entire colonial system rested, in particular the interaction between the firm civil administration, the extensive mission network and the powerful colonial private sector. However, there were also dark sides, but no looting was committed. Unfortunately, the former colonials do not receive the appreciation and prestige to which they are entitled. Belgium need not be ashamed of its colonial period, certainly not in view of the failed decolonization."

"In 1885, the whole of Africa was colonized or placed under trusteeship, but Congo climbed to the podium of the three existing sovereign countries. The borders that have been, since 1894, the crucible of Congolese identity were acquired, by treaty, by Leopold II. Thus, Congo has absolutely no debt to Belgium for its international existence. Later, it was through a bilateral treaty, between two sovereign states, regularly ratified, that the Kingdom of Belgium became the metropolis of the Belgian Congo (1908-1960). The little-known truth is that in 1960, Belgium did not grant Congolese independence, but it returned it."

"Congo is the oldest independent country in Africa, after Ethiopia (800 BC) and Liberia (1847). The only country that was not colonized in Berlin!"

"This heroism was also that of the first missionaries. They had a life expectancy of about 5 years in Congo, and some were given extremely anointing at the time of their journey to Africa. There were many young idealists. Their graves are still lined up in the Mpala locality, which overlooks Lake Tanganyika. The Catholic mission was a fort where people who fled slavers and brutality took refuge."

"By 1891, six years into the attempt to build the EIC, the whole project was on the verge of bankruptcy. It would have been easy for Léopold to raise revenues by sanctioning imports of liquor that could be taxed or by levying fees on the number of huts in each village, both of which would have caused harm to the native population. A truly “greedy” king, as Hochschild repeatedly calls him, had many fiscal options that Léopold did not exercise."

"The rubber quotas imposed on natives in this 15 percent of the territory were enforced by native soldiers working for the companies or for the EIC itself. In many areas, the rubber came with ease and the natives prospered. The rubber station at Irengi, for instance, was known for its bulging stores and hospitable locals, whose women spent a lot of time making bracelets and where “no one ever misses a meal,” noted the EIC soldier George Bricusse in his memoirs. Elsewhere, however, absent direct supervision, and with the difficulties of meeting quotas greater, some native soldiers engaged in abusive behavior to force the collection. Bricusse noted these areas as well, especially where locals had sabotaged rubber stations and then fled to the French Congo to the north. In rare cases, native soldiers kidnapped women or killed men to exact revenge. When they fell into skirmishes, they sometimes followed long-standing Arab and African traditions by cutting off the hands or feet of the fallen as trophies, or to show that the bullets they fired had been used in battle. How many locals died in these frays is unclear, but the confirmed cases might put the figure at about 10,000, a terrible number."

"The abuses were first reported by an American missionary in The Times of London in 1895 and quickly brought Léopold’s censure: “If there are these abuses in the Congo, we must stop them,” he warned EIC officials in 1896. “If they continue, it will be the end of the state.” For the next ten years, reforming the Congo’s rubber industry absorbed an inordinate amount of attention in the British and American press and legislatures, not to mention within Belgium and the EIC itself, leading to formal Belgian colonization in 1908. Hochschild thus takes a very limited, unintentional, unforeseen, and perhaps unavoidable problem of native-on-native conflict over rubber harvesting and blows it up into a “forgotten Holocaust” to quote the subtitle given to the French edition of his book. Inside this great invention are many more perfidious Russian dolls."

"Even taking Sanderson’s pessimistic estimate as correct, does this mean that Léopold’s rule “killed” 500,000 people? Of course not, because, in addition to the misplaced personalization of long-term population changes, the rubber regions, as mentioned, experienced both population increases and declines. Even in the latter, such as the rubber-producing Bolobo area in the lower reaches of the Congo river, population decline was a result of the brutalities of freelance native chiefs and ended with the arrival of an EIC officer. More generally, the stability and enforced peace of the EIC caused birth rates to rise near EIC centers, such as at the Catholic mission under EIC protection at Baudouinville (today’s Kirungu). Population declines were in areas outside of effective EIC control. The modest population gains caused by EIC interventions were overwhelmed by a range of wholly separate factors, which in order of importance were: the slave trade, sleeping sickness, inter-tribal warfare, other endemic diseases (smallpox, beriberi, influenza, yellow fever, pneumonia, dysentery, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and venereal disease), cannibalism, and human sacrifice."

"All I can say in my solitude is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one American, English, Turk who will help to heal this open sore of the world."

"The time has now fully arrived when the several nations of Europe who, at the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, and again at the Conference of Verona, in 1822, issued a series of resolutions strongly denouncing the slave-trade, should take the needful steps for giving them a full and practical effect. And, inasmuch as Ike Arab marauders (whose murderous devastations are now depopulating Africa) are subject to no law, and under no responsible rule, it devolves on the Powers of Europe to secure their suppression throughout all territories over which they have any control. This meeting would, therefore, urge upon Her Majesty's Government, in concert with those Powers who now claim either territorial possession or territorial influence in Africa, to adopt such measures as shall secure the extinction of the devastating slave-trade which is now carried on by those enemies of the human race."

"The change which has occurred in the political condition of the African Coast, today calls for common action on the part of the Powers responsible for the control of that Coast. That action should tend to close all foreign slave markets and should also result in putting down slave hunting in the interior. The great work undertaken by the King of the Belgians, in the constitution of the Congo State, and the lively interest taken by His Majesty in all questions affecting the welfare of the African races, lead Her Majesty's Government to hope that Belgium will be disposed to take the initiative in inviting the Powers to meet in Conference at Brussels, in order to consider the best means of attaining the gradual suppression of the slave-trade on the Continent of Africa and the immediate closing of all the outside markets which the slave-trade daily continues to supply."

"A document from the twelfth century tells of the tricks used by sellers of slaves in the Muslim slave markets: merchants would put ointments on slave girls of a darker complexion to whiten their faces; brunettes were placed for four hours in a solution to make them blond (“golden”); ointments were placed on the face and body of black slaves to make them “prettier.”"

"In time, the multiracial character of slavery in the Arab world virtually ceased to exist and became almost exclusively black. In this respect, it differed little from slavery in the New World. ... As long as slavery maintained a multiracial cast, Arab and Turkish slave owner favored white slaves over blacks in so far as work assignments and what might be called career prospects were concerned. White slave girls were preferred as concubines over black girls; and among the latter, the fairer-complexioned Abyssinians were shown partiality over their darker-skinned African sisters."

"It has long been considered a mark of ethnocentric ignorance to equate servitude in Islamic societies with the brutal racial slavery that seemed to curse the New World with unending guilt. Ironically, the very “orientalism” that enabled nineteenth-century Europeans to project their own fears and longings upon an unchanging, exotic, and antipodal “East” also led many anti-Western Westerners to romanticize or defend black slavery in the Islamic world. In 1887, for example, the Dutch orientalist C. Snouck Hurgronje ridiculed the “fantasies” that propelled what he concluded to be Britain’s wholly inappropriate efforts to stop the slave trade from Africa to the Middle East."

"The Arabs, who may be regarded as the man-hunting gang, are already weakened by the measures adopted. Recent events in the German possessions on the east coast, will both destroy the Arab prestige and increase our influence in ihe interior. . . The abolition of the abominable trade in human flesh will be accomplished, provided the necessary means are forthcoming."

"Every proposition having for its object the establishment of trade in Africa and the improvement of the black race, said Sir Samuel Baker, will remain Utopian as long as the slave-trade exists"

"In the west much has been done of late years to bring about a more rational and humane state of things; but in the east the Arab advances continually followed by a procession of misery and desolation and growing stronger from day to-day to the detriment of the natives. How long will Europe permit this shame, how long will she be fooled by these scoundrels?"

"The first step towards the regeneration of the black man is the destruction of the destroyer of the African race, of the adventurer whose power daily increases, in a word, of the Arab."

"As long as Europe is not strong enough to follow up the results already obtained by her voyages of discovery, the explorer can never be satisfied with his work; it will have injured rather than benefited the native races. People hesitate before resorting to extreme measures, but they lose sight of the fact that, if their efforts were concentrated on a single object, more would be done in a day for the real welfare of Africa than has been accomplished in past decades, nay even in past-centuries."

"All over Africa, dried human skeletons show that the slave-trader has passed."

"If instead of talking about neutrality, the Chamber took care of our trade, Belgium would become the richest in the world."

"If I do not promise Belgium a splendid government like that which founded its independence, nor a great King like him whom we mourn, then at least i believe to be a Belgian King in heart and soul, whose whole life belongs to the country."

"Small country, small people."

"My dear General, the Belgian state, will shortly issue a government loan of fifty million, France is writing one of two and a half billion, please ask Lambert to inform you of the condition of the French operation, as for the Belgian loan, leave it to me to try and get information from the ministers, but don't say anything to Lambert, if the French government loan yields 5 or 6 percent I will invest a large sum in it, if the interest is lower then I won't subscribe to it, Leopold."

"We are going to democratize the chamber and the senate, we also have to democratize the monarchy, give it the opportunity, when it feels the need to obtain direct advice, support from the changing electoral corps."

"To the presidents of the chambers, the institutions of the country are on the eve of profound changes, various indications and circumstances have convinced me that it is desirable in the new situation, a new administration should take office, I request you on my behalf to inform the chambers of my abdication, with the highest and most special esteem, your affectionate King, Leopold."

"Dear Minister, I particularly regret that the government, as I had expressly requested, did not make the royal referendum a sine qua non, three points in the program concern the crown directly, the possibility of expanding the territory, the referendum and the princely marriages, I would have liked to see this matter implemented, we have been clear about this during our discussions, we have taken a very moderate attitude with this at a time when the most democratic constitution in Europe is being even more democratized, a constitution drawn up during a revolution, and at a time when there was no monarch, your devotee, etc. Leopold."

"I will instruct the minister of war to strengthen the Gendarmerie in Brussels, to recognize the addresses and customs of the demagogues and to try to find out what is coming up, I am told that the demonstrations which are only intended as intimidation and as preparation in an unguarded moment are able to turn into something else, once they have everyone on the street they will attack the government, what measure have you taken to face such a surprise attack? Do the regiments have been ordered to march on their own accord to the Rue de la Loi and the Boulvard, where in the summer it is more difficult to summon soldiers, will they be more satisfied now, working in the open air is now impossible, if I were you I wouldn't hesitate for a minute to summon them, the responsibility is too great, you are not protected from an incident, and you will have to face a formidable riot, all yours leopold."

"Dear Minister, please let me know how many men are actually available in Hainaut, Ghent and Brussels, please also inform me of any measures that will allow you to remain in control of the situation if necessary, I wish you the assurance, dear minister, of my total devotion, Leopold."

"We must put an end to anarchy and its continuing preaching."

"I am generous and about to make a multi-million dollar sacrifice to beautify my capital. It will cost me three to four years of wages, but I wish my life here on earth to leave many traces."

"You speak of my popularity, but it is out of the question now, and in doing so, my dear Prime Minister, I declare that I will not doubt between my duty and my love: a popularity based on deceiving a country about its true interests would weigh heavily on my conscience and that is a burden that I do not want to bear."

"It is not the first time that Belgium has had to undergo a dangerous ordeal. But never has the situation been more serious than today! … Freedom, honor, the very existence of the fatherland is at stake."

"If God gives me a long life and allows me to carry out my task, then Brussels will become a city of exceptional category."

"I have no other desire than to leave Belgium bigger, stronger and more beautiful."

"I want it to be and it will be."

"France need not to extend its own borders, that would only have a counterproductive effect, however, it should surround itself with allies and friends whom it must make more powerful, and whom in turn make France itself more powerful, such an approach will not disturb anyone, free and without In this way, France can fence itself with reliable allies, it goes without saying that 6 or 7 million Piedmontese, 3 million Swiss, 8 million Belgians and 37 million French can provide the French emperor with a larger, better organized and more complete armed forces than those possessed by the Empire of 50 million people, all the emperor has to do is give us permission to invade the Netherlands, thanks in part to his prestige a quick and easy victory awaits us."

"One aim of the hostilities is a reunification of Catholics under one crown, with the rivers as the northern boundary, to reach that goal we must launch a decisive attack on Amsterdam, depose the king, and at the very least let the people decide which government it prefers."

"A battle with the Netherlands must be a surprise on our part, we must suddenly present ourselves there with weapons, disrupt the order, and keep the provinces that want to join, let the others go free as they please."

"A Prince must not speak the language of the tribunes and proclaim absolute principles in terms which are likely to deeply offend those who are of another opinion than his own."

"You just have to dare to succeed."

"Nothing is more difficult than arriving at a court where nobody knows anyone in the world, add to that the Austrian Etiquette, and you can imagine what kind of evening I had to endure."

"I am very satisfied with my invention. With this pocket, the rain can fall, and i'm not afraid: my beard will stay dry. You laugh, but you don't laugh when a woman, after washing her hair, dries it and wraps it in a towel. You are not laughing, and yet it is the same. Women drying their hair, and I guaranteeing my beard from the rain, we are only keeping us from colds!"