Can the Belgian actions in the Congo be classified as Genocide? PDF

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This essay explores the actions of King Leopold II in the Congo and uses historiography to come to a conclusion on whether or not Belgian actions in the Congo was a genocide....

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The Congo Free State

RQ: To what extent can the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State be considered a genocide? Part I. The word genocide was first mentioned in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, however, the word was defined 4 years later in Article Two of the UN Convention on Genocide in 1948 as carrying out actions with the purpose “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). Although the attrocities commited in the Congo Free State are not officialy recognized as a genocide, the sheer number of deaths, estimated between 1-10 million killed between 1885 and 1908, and the cruelty imposed on the native tribes of the Congo are comparable to the Holocaust. However, since the intentions of the Belgian monarchy were not to wholly destroy the ethnic groups living in the Congo but rather to exploit the land of its natural resources in order to make Belgium rich, the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State does not fall under the the highly specific term of genocide according to the UN. OPCVL: The United States Holocaust Memorial Musuem’s definition of Genocide. This definition of the Holocaust by the USHMM was originally written in 1980, but the definition is revised every year by a group of historians as well as the dirctor of the musuem, Sara J. Bloomfield, The intention of this source is to explain the very specific definition of genocide. It gives a clear and concise definition of genocide, and it states the origin of the word. This source clearly states that genocide is different to mass killings, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and even ethnic cleansing. The definition, background information, and the origin of the word genocide are clearly stated in this source. It gives a clear explanation as to why genocide falls under a different category than other serious crimes such as war crimes, mass killings, etc. However, the source is very short and lacks detail. It doesn’t list any examples of genocides and other serious crimes such as war crimes, ethnic cleansing, etc. leaving the reader conflicted on how to differentiate between ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Part II. Leopold II believed that every nation which desired to be seen as a world power ought to have a colony to generate wealth for that country, so he set out to achieve this very goal even though other European countries no longer sought to establish colonies to exploit the natural resources of the colony

only to bring it back to Europe. As one modern day Congolese historian, Elikiye Ambokolo stated, “The Belgians were behind other Europeans by 100 years... The British, the French invested in their colonies and left those investments there in order to benefit the native population... They didn’t exhaust the land and the people in order to take it back to their own country like the Belgians did” (Belgian Congo, 1:24:26). The day he became king, Leopold II set a goal to have a colony that would generate enough money so that Belgium could become a major European power. Even though he never stepped foot in the Congo, he ruled over it with an iron fist ultimately resulting in the murder of 1-10 million people between 1885 and 1908. The Belgian government burned all of the files that contained information on what happened in the Congo in 1908 and very few Congolese lived to tell the story, and this is why there is great controversy surrounding the Belgian Congo. Most historians don’t even mention the word genocide when speaking of the Belgian Congo because it is clear that the intentions of the Belgians was not to completely eradicate the Congolese population, but they do compare the treatment of the Congolese and the death toll to the Holocaust. Very few historians and some webpages state that Leopold II did commit the severe crime of genocide becuase of the number of dead, the torture and the terror he imposed on the Congolese, but the atrocities committed in the Congo during the Belgian rule are not recognized as a genocide because the Belgian goal was not “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group” although the casualties and treatment of the Congolese people were horrific (What is Genocide?). In 1876 Leopold II hired one of the most renowned explorers of the time, Henry Morton Stanley (Later Sir Henry Morton Stanley, knighted 1899) to venture deep into the heart of uncharted Africa to establish stations, create maps, build roads, build bridges, and most importantly to get the signature of every chief in the area to prevent other countries from interfering with the Belgian operations in the Congo (King Leopold II & the Congo Free State (1885-1908), 00:03:07). Leopold II had spent years studying how white Americans were able to take Native American land and how the British were able to take Indian land so swiftly and so effectively and that was by a piece of paper. He claimed that both the British and the Americans had tricked or persuaded the native leaders to sign a contract, which they did not need to understand, which gave the Americans or the British the indigenous peoples lands. This way no other country was able to speak out against the Americans or the British because they had those contracts in their defense. By 1882 Henry Morton Stanley had secured over 500 signatures from chieftains all around the land that Leopold planned to colonize. Although Leopold did not attend the Berlin Conference in 1884, his delegates made it clear to the other countries present at the conference that Belgium had already invested in building roads and bridges and sending missionaries over to the Congo to Christianize and civilize the native population (Britannica, Congo Free State). Although Leopold’s intentions were never to civilize or Christianize the population of the Congo but instead to extract all the precious gold that he knew lay in the soil of the Congo, but he managed to convince the other European countries that his sole purpose was to better the living quality of the people in the Congo. As soon as he got approval to carry out the “Christianization” of the Congo at the Berlin Conference, Leopold created the “Asociación Internacional Africaine”, which would later go on to be called the “Asociación Internacional du Congo”, and he invested all of the Belgian monarchy’s resources into funding the expeditions to send explorers and missionaries to secure the land of those 500 chieftains officially creating the Congo Free State which would be the largest privately owned piece of land in history coming in at just under 80 times the size of Belgium (Britannica, Leopold II).

By 1890, Leopold was almost certain that he had to withdraw all of his men and stop the gold mining operations around the country in order to save himself from losing any more money. He was on the brink of going bankrupt. Just a few months before Leopold was about to halt all of his efforts in the Congo, Charles Macintosh, a Scottish chemist, invented the rubber tar machine which allowed for the mass production of wheels for the bicycle and automobile industries. As soon as the demand for rubber skyrocketed, Leopold’s already cruel reign in the Congo hastily got worse. Even before the demand for rubber rose, Leopold’s gendarmerie, the Force Publique, were instructed to burn down villages and by 1895, they had made the Congo into one giant work camp (Britanicca, Kisangani) . The natives were no longer able to work for themselves or for their own villages, they had absolutely no rights, and they were forced to give everything they owned or produced to the Belgians. Surprisingly, less than 1000 Belgian’s ever traveled to the Congo and Leopold didn’t even go, but most of the Belgians who had traveled there were either officers or overseers of posts along the Congo river. The Belgian officers were known to be ruthless monsters who ordered their troops, who had been captured and forced into the ranks of the Force Publique, to cut off a right hand for every bullet that was fired in order to ensure that no bullets were wasted. Before each raid the officer in charge would give each soldier a certain number of bullets. If a soldier did not bring a right hand for every bullet fired, he would be executed (Britannica, Congo Free State). These events all happened before the demand for rubber skyrocketed. After the demand for rubber rose, Leopold sent a letter to Léon Fiévez, who was the commander of the station at Stanley falls in Stanleyville which produced the most rubber in the world for nearly two decades, ordering him to multiply rubber production by at least 10 times by the next 3 years (Ozy, Was this Real Monster the inspiration behind ‘Heart of Darkness’?). Fiévez accomplished this in under 7 months. Everyone in Stanleyville knew who Fiévez was; he was the man who had a gallows in his backyard and the man who planted children’s heads in flower pots. He was able to increase rubber production that quickly by ordering his men to capture every single woman they could find and imprison them until their husbands extracted and gave a sufficient amount of rubber to the Force Publique, some historians and certain articles categorize this under genocide because this is where the Belgians created a system based off of fear and murder to maximize their profits (A Forgotten Genocide: The Congo Free State). However, other historians dismiss this argument by saying that the intentions of the Belgians was not to systematically kill the Congolese, but rather to extract rubber as quickly as possible. If the husband could not produce enough rubber the soldiers would rape his wife in front of him and then kill her by chopping parts of her body off and then finally burn the man to death in front of all of the other slaves to show to the other men what would happen if they didn’t work enough. This tactic fueled by imposing fear on the Congolese slaves worked efficiently for the Belgians, but it tragically ended with the death of millions of Congolese people. The first published criticism of the Congo Free State came from an American journalist named George Washington Williams and the truth about the Congo saw the light of day, but at first nobody believed Williams’ story because murder to the extent that Washington was wrting about was unimaginable. In his letter, Washington points out the lies that Leopold told the world and he gives 12 reasons as to why Leopold’s actions in the Congo are illegal, but he never never got a response from the King and died shortly after he wrote the letter ((1890) George Washington Williams’s Open Letter to King Leopold on the Congo). Almost a decade later, in 1899, Joseph Conrad wrote a novel called Heart of Darkness which was more of a journal than a novel that consisted of the horrors that he had seen in the Congo Free State, and still nobody took his novel seriously because they thought that no man could do

these horrible things mentioned in the book to another. Between 1900-1903 many other famous authors and journalists such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain wrote novels, short stories, letters, and poems about Leopold’s brutal reign in the Congo, and in 1903 an article about the Congo Free State titled, “Ought King Leopold to be hanged?” made the front page of a national British newspaper (BBC, 1:39:11-1:44:24). There were organized protests all around the world and people called for Leopold to be tried at the new International Court of Justice. In 1908 the Belgian government reluctantly took control over the Congo Free State and they tried to cover up the extent of destruction in the country in order to not create a bad image of Belgium in the minds of other European countries. Leopold II died shortly after the Belgian government burned all of the documents they could find. Leopold II was the cause of 1-15 million deaths in the Congo giving him the reputation of the cruelest man in European history until Hitler (Leopold II). Although the estimated number of Congolese deaths is higher than the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, and the mutilations in the Congo are like nothing the world has ever seen, Leopold’s grim reign in the Congo cannot be classified as an official genocide because his intention was not to destroy the Congolese culture and population, but rather to be as rich as he could be and he didn’t care how he got there. As Joseph Conrad wrote in Heart of Darkness, “To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their sole desire” (Conrad 21). The atrocities committed in the Congo Free State are regarded as war crimes, mass killings, and even crimes against humanity, but all of these crimes do not fall under the specific definition of genocide, so the actions of Leopold II in the Congo Free State cannot be considered a genocide as defined by the UN Convention of 1948.

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Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness.” Google Books 1904 edition, Google, 2007, pp. 1–54. www.google.com/books/edition/Heart_of_Darkness/GXA2dZ1Xe8sC?hl=en&gbpv=1. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020. "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." PDF file, 9 Dec. 1948.

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