123-651: (Redirected from Congolese Genocide ) Congo Genocide may refer to: Atrocities in the Congo Free State (1885–1908) Massacres of Hutus during the First Congo War (1996–1997) Effacer le tableau (2002–2003), a genocide of Mbuti people during the Second Congo War See also [ edit ] List of massacres in the Democratic Republic of
246-445: A Belgian Army paratroop drop. This violence immediately led to a military intervention into Congo by Belgium in an ostensible effort to secure the safety of its citizens (the earlier Luluabourg intervention had been against orders). The re-entry of these forces was a clear violation of the national sovereignty of the new nation, as it had not requested Belgian assistance. Soon afterwards, after an extraordinary meeting of ministers of
369-403: A "slave society" as companies became increasingly dependent on forcibly mobilising Congolese labour for their collection of rubber. The state recruited a number of black officials, known as capitas , to organise local labour. However, the desire to maximise rubber collection, and hence the state's profits, meant that the centrally enforced demands were often set arbitrarily without considering
492-530: A Commission of Enquiry, appointed by the regime in 1904, confirmed the stories of atrocities and pressure on the Belgian government increased. In 1908, as a direct result of this campaign, Belgium formally annexed the territory, creating the Belgian Congo . Conditions for the indigenous population improved dramatically with the partial suppression of forced labour, although many officials who had formerly worked for
615-436: A cloth, beads, a portion of salt, or a knife. On one occasion, a customary chief who ordered his subjects to gather rubber was rewarded with slaves. Workers who refused to supply their labour were coerced with "constraint and repression". Dissenters were beaten or whipped with the chicotte , hostages were taken to ensure prompt collection and punitive expeditions were sent to destroy villages which refused. The policy led to
738-464: A collapse of Congolese economic and cultural life, as well as farming in some areas. Much of the enforcement of rubber production was the responsibility of the Force Publique , the colonial military. The "force" had originally been established in 1885, with white officers and non-commissioned officers , and black privates , recruited from as far afield as Zanzibar , Nigeria , and Liberia . In
861-480: A colonel whose headquarters was at Stanleyville , grouped F.P. units in Kivu and Orientale Province (PO). It comprised 3 infantry battalions (each of approximately 800 men), seemingly including 6 Battalions at Watsa (under Lieutenant Colonel Merckx in 1960), 2 battalions of Gendarmerie (each of approximately 860 men), a reconnaissance squadron (jeeps, trucks and armoured M8 Greyhound vehicles – approximately 300 men),
984-592: A colony for himself and inspired by recent reports from central Africa, Leopold began patronising a number of leading explorers, including Henry Morton Stanley . Leopold established the International African Association ( Association internationale africaine ), a "charitable" organisation to oversee the exploration and surveying of a territory based around the Congo River , with the stated goal of bringing humanitarian assistance and "civilisation" to
1107-509: A consequence, Peter Forbath claims, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in cut-off hands. In Forbath's words: The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State. ... The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber ... They became
1230-553: A cyclist company and a battalion headquarters. Lastly, there was the Compagnie d'Artillerie et de Génie (Artillery and Engineers Company) manning Fort de Shinkakasa at the mouth of the Congo River in Boma . The fort contained eight 160mm guns manned by 200 men, plus an equal-sized auxiliary force, which saw little or no service during the war. In 1914, the Force Publique , including
1353-451: A district along the river 500 kilometres (300 mi) north of Stanley Pool : All blacks saw this man as the devil of the Equator ... From all the bodies killed in the field, you had to cut off the hands. He wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each soldier, who had to bring them in baskets ... A village which refused to provide rubber would be completely swept clean. As
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#17330863204041476-445: A famine in 1899 and in 1900 missionaries recorded a "terrible famine" across ABIR's concession. Leopold sanctioned the creation of "child colonies" in which orphaned Congolese would be kidnapped and sent to schools operated by Catholic missionaries in which they would learn to work or be soldiers; these were the only schools funded by the state. More than 50% of the children sent to the schools died of disease, and thousands more died in
1599-423: A figure of at least five million deaths; John Gunther similarly estimates that Leopold's regime caused five to eight million deaths. Lemkin posited that 75% of the population was killed. Since no census records the population of the region at the inception of the Congo Free State (the first was taken in 1924), the precise population change in the period is not known. Despite this, Forbath more recently claimed
1722-657: A full apology. Even before his accession to the throne of Belgium in 1865, the future king Leopold II began lobbying leading Belgian politicians to create a colonial empire in the Far East or in Africa, which would expand and enhance Belgian prestige. Politically, however, colonisation was unpopular in Belgium as it was perceived as a risky and expensive gamble with no obvious benefit to the country and his many attempts to persuade politicians met with little success. Determined to look for
1845-559: A large scale offensive on German East Africa. The allied powers , the British Empire and Belgium, launched a coordinated attack on the German colony; by 1916 the Belgian commander of the Force Publique , Lieutenant-General Charles Tombeur , had assembled an army of 15,000 men supported by local bearers and advanced to Kigali . Kigali was taken by 6 May 1916. The German army stationed in Urundi
1968-543: A larger area. Sleeping sickness, in particular, was "epidemic in large areas" of the Congo and had a high mortality rate. In 1901 alone, it is estimated that as many as 500,000 Congolese died from sleeping sickness. Vansina estimated that five per cent of the Congolese population perished from swine influenza. In areas in which dysentery became endemic, between 30 and 60 per cent of the population could die. Vansina also pointed to
2091-523: A letter to the United States Secretary of State , he described conditions in the Congo as " crimes against humanity ", thus coining the phrase, which would later become key language in international law . Public interest in the abuses in the Congo Free State grew sharply from 1895, when the Stokes Affair and reports of mutilations reached the European and American public which began to discuss
2214-529: A mixture of Belgian regular soldiers and mercenaries from other countries who were drawn by the prospect of wealth or simply attracted to the adventure of service in Africa. To command his Force Publique , Leopold II was able to rely on a mixture of volunteers (regular officers detached from the Belgian Army), mercenaries and former officers from the armies of other European nations, especially those of Scandinavia, Italy and Switzerland. To these men, service in
2337-532: A policy of deliberate extermination has led others to dispute the comparison; there is an open debate as to whether the atrocities constitute genocide. According to the United Nations ' 1948 definition of the term "genocide" , a genocide must be "acts committed with intent to destroy , in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". According to Georgi Verbeeck, this conventional definition of genocide has prevented most historians from using
2460-408: A small aviation element including 2 De Havilland DH.104 Doves . Between 1945 and 1960, Belgium continued to organise the Force Publique as an entity cut off from the people that it policed, with recruits serving in tribally mixed units and no more than a quarter of each company coming from the province in which they served. Tightly disciplined and drilled, the Force Publique impressed visitors to
2583-455: A sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace ... the people who were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force Publique soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands they collected. In theory, each right hand proved a killing. In practice, to save ammunition soldiers sometimes "cheated" by simply cutting off
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#17330863204042706-541: A transport company, a military police company (approximately 100 men), a heavy mortar platoon, a combat engineer company and a training centre at Lokandu. Vanderstraeten reported the dispositions of the Force Publique in July 1960 as: Total strength of the Force Publique immediately prior to independence was 22,403 Congolese regular soldiers and NCOs, 599 European NCOs, and 444 European officers. The last 15 commanders of
2829-505: A village that had protested. The officer in command "ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village palisades ... and to hang the women and the children on the palisade in the form of a cross". After seeing a Congolese person killed for the first time, a Danish missionary wrote, "The soldier said 'Don't take this to heart so much. They kill us if we don't bring the rubber. The Commissioner has promised us if we have plenty of hands he will shorten our service. ' " As
2952-403: A young man, I saw [Fiévez's] soldier Molili, then guarding the village of Boyeka, take a net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big stones to the net, and make it tumble into the river ... Rubber causes these torments; that's why we no longer want to hear its name spoken. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters. One junior officer described a raid to punish
3075-458: Is also widely believed that birth rates fell during the period too, meaning that the growth rate of the population fell relative to the natural death rate. Vansina, however, notes that precolonial societies had high birth and death rates, leading to a great deal of natural population fluctuation over time. Among the Kuba, the period 1880 to 1900 was actually one of population expansion. A reduction of
3198-759: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Atrocities in the Congo Free State From 1885 to 1908, many atrocities were committed in the Congo Free State (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo ) under the absolute rule of King Leopold II of Belgium . These atrocities were particularly associated with the labour policies, enforced by colonial administrators, used to collect natural rubber for export. Combined with epidemic disease, famine , and falling birth rates caused by these disruptions,
3321-496: Is evidence, including photographs, that FP soldiers cut off human hands, either as trophies, or to show that bullets had not been wasted, or (by cutting off the limbs of children) to punish parents viewed as not working hard enough in the rubber plantations. During the Free State period, the Force Publique suffered from institutional problems. During the early years of the force, mutinies of black soldiers occurred several times. By
3444-432: Is impossible to separate deaths caused by massacre and starvation from those due to the pandemic of sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis) which decimated central Africa at the time. Historians generally agree that a dramatic reduction in the overall size of the Congolese population occurred during the two decades of Free State rule in the Congo. It is argued that the reduction in the Congo was atypical and can be attributed to
3567-459: The Force Publique numbered 19,000 men. In addition to the army, rubber companies employed their own militias, which often worked in tandem with the Force Publique to enforce their rule. The red rubber system emerged with the creation of the concession regime in 1891 and lasted until 1906 when the concession system was restricted. At its height, it was heavily localised in the Équateur , Bandundu , and Kasai regions. Failure to meet
3690-466: The Belgian Army 's Regiment of Carabiniers ) was sent to the Congo with orders to establish the force. A few months later, on 17 August, he was promoted to "Commandant of the Force Publique". A number of other Belgian officers and non-commissioned officers were also dispatched to the territory as the nucleus of the officer corps. The officers of the Force Publique were entirely European. They comprised
3813-543: The Belgian Congo with its smart appearance, but a culture of separateness, encouraged by its Belgian officers, led to brutal and unrestrained behaviour when the external restraints of colonial administration were lifted in 1960. The infamous chicote was abolished in only 1955. The Belgian Government made no effort to train Congolese commissioned officers until the very end of the Colonial period, and there were only about 20 African officer cadets at military schools in Belgium on
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3936-531: The Congo–Arab war in 1892–1894, there were reports of widespread cannibalisation of the bodies of defeated combatants by the Batetela allies of the Belgian commander Francis Dhanis . After a brutally suppressed rebellion that followed the completion of the war, a young Belgian officer described the subsequent consumption of the victims' bodies as "horrible but exceedingly useful and hygienic". Officially cannibalism
4059-703: The FP mobile units consisted of 6 battalions of infantry (the V battalion at Stanleyville , the VI battalion at Watsa , the VIII battalion at Luluabourg, the XI battalion at Rumangabo , the XII battalion at Elizabethville , and the XIII battalion at Léopoldville ), 3 reconnaissance units, military police units, a brigade under training at Camp Hardy, still under construction at Thysville , 4 coastal defence guns, and
4182-465: The FP to African soldiers in a mess hall at the main base outside Léopoldville, in which he stated that Independence would not bring any change in their status or role. Lieutenant General Émile Janssens 's intention may only have been to stress the need for continued discipline and obedience to orders, but the impact on the soldiers, unsettled by the demands of maintaining order during Independence celebrations and fearful that they would be excluded from
4305-506: The Force Publique also remained mostly outdated due to the tight budgetary constraints on the colonial administration. Most askaris were armed with single shot 11 mm Albini-Braendlin rifles , though the white cadres and units in Katanga were given better Mauser Model 1889 rifles. Other weapons included Maxim machine guns , smaller numbers of Madsen machine guns , Nordenfelt 4.7 cm and Krupp 7.5 cm cannons. The uniforms of
4428-407: The Force Publique eventually grew to over 600 men each. Their constituent units, known as detachments, were so widely scattered that the force had no real military value. Rather the bulk of these sub-units consisted of small garrisons in fixed locations, with local policing functions. It was intended that each administrative company form a Compagnie Marche of 150 men. Each Marche or field company
4551-491: The Force Publique into two branches. The troupes campées was tasked with guarding the border and protecting the colony from external aggression, while the troupes en service territoriale was responsible for maintaining internal security. Battalions from the latter were assigned to every provincial capital, while companies were stationed at each district headquarters. After Belgium had surrendered to Nazi Germany on 28 May 1940, Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans decided that
4674-466: The Force Publique were: On 5 July 1960, five days after the country gained independence from Belgium, the Force Publique garrison in Léopoldville mutinied against its white officers (who had remained in complete command) and attacked numerous European and Congolese targets. The immediate incident sparking the mutiny was reported to have been a tactless speech made by the Belgian general commanding
4797-518: The Sudan to Cairo . Between 1942 and 1943, an expeditionary force of 13,000 was sent to Nigeria. Nine thousand of these troops served in Egypt and Palestine . They returned to the Belgian Congo at the end of 1944 without having seen active service. The Force Publique also sent the 10th Belgian Congo Casualty Clearing Station to the battle zone. Between 1941 and 1945, some 350 Congolese and 20 Belgians, under
4920-461: The Uele in the north-east. Some of the violence of the period can be attributed to African groups using colonial support to settle scores or white administrators acting without state approval. Ultimately the state's policy towards its African subjects became dominated by the demands which were made—both by the state itself and by the concessionary companies—for labour for the collection of wild produce of
5043-624: The United Kingdom , Belgium, the United States , and elsewhere. An international campaign against the Congo Free State began in 1890 and reached its apogee after 1900 under the leadership of the British activist E. D. Morel . On 15 November 1908, under international pressure, the Government of Belgium annexed the Congo Free State to form the Belgian Congo . It ended many of the systems responsible for
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5166-699: The Zande Federation , and Swahili-speaking territory in the eastern Congo under slave trader Tippu Tip , refused to recognise colonial authority and were defeated by the Force Publique with great brutality, during the Congo–Arab War . In 1895, a military mutiny broke out among the Batetela in Kasai, leading to a four-year insurgency. The conflict was particularly brutal and caused a great number of casualties. The presence of rubber companies such as ABIR exacerbated
5289-523: The askaris fielded by other European colonial powers. Many were recruited or conscripted from “warrior tribes” in the Haut-Congo , others were mercenaries drawn from Zanzibar and West Africa ( Nigerian Hausas ). The role required of the Force Publique was that of both defending Free State territory and of internal pacification. In the 1890s, the Force Publique defeated the African and Arab slavers in
5412-541: The "Congo Question". To appease public opinion, Leopold instigated a Commission for the Protection of Natives ( Commission pour la Protection des Indigènes ), composed of foreign missionaries, but made few serious efforts at substantive reform. In the United Kingdom, the campaign was led by the activist and pamphleteer E. D. Morel after 1900, whose book Red Rubber (1906) reached a mass audience. Notable members of
5535-525: The "crown domain" ( Domaine de la Couronne ) under personal rule, which was added to the territory he already controlled under the Private Domain ( Domaine privé ). Thus most economic exploitation of the Congolese interior was undertaken by Leopold and the major concessionaires. The system was extremely profitable and ABIR made a turnover of over 100 per cent on its initial stake in a single year. The King made 70 million Belgian francs ' profit from
5658-412: The 1890s, however, ended these problems as the Free State compelled Congolese males to work as forced labour collecting wild rubber which could then be exported to Europe and North America. The rubber boom transformed what had been an unexceptional colonial system before 1890 and led to significant profits. Exports rose from 580 to 3,740 tons between 1895 and 1900. To facilitate economic extraction from
5781-652: The Congo Category:Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Congo Genocide . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congo_Genocide&oldid=1188314863 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
5904-406: The Congo Free State offered military experience, adventure and—as they saw it—an opportunity to participate in a humanitarian endeavour. From 1885 to 1908 the officer corps consisted of hundreds of Belgians and dozens of Scandinavians, with smaller numbers recruited from other nations. Serving under these European officers was an ethnically-mixed African soldiery, who eventually became comparable to
6027-526: The Congo by attributing the losses to smallpox and sleeping sickness. Campaigning groups such as the Congo Reform Association did not oppose colonialism and instead sought to end the excesses of the Free State by encouraging Belgium to annex the colony officially. This would avoid damaging the delicate balance of power between France and Britain on the continent. While supporters of the Free State regime attempted to argue against claims of atrocities,
6150-632: The Congo, it recruited from specific ethnic and social demographics. These included the Bangala , and this contributed to the spread of the Lingala language across the country, and freed slaves from the eastern Congo. The so-called Zappo Zaps (from the Songye ethnic group ) were the most feared. Reportedly cannibals, the Zappo-Zaps frequently abused their official positions to raid the countryside for slaves. By 1900,
6273-500: The European powers recognized the claims of a supposedly philanthropic organisation run by Leopold II, to most of the Congo Basin region. Leopold had long held ambitions for colonial expansion. The territory under Leopold's control exceeded 2,600,000 km (1,000,000 sq mi), more than 85 times the territory of Belgium; amid financial problems, it was directed by a tiny cadre of administrators drawn from across Europe. Initially
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#17330863204046396-582: The Force was to enforce the rubber quotas and other forms of forced labour. Armed with modern weapons and the chicote —a bull whip made of hippopotamus hide—soldiers of the FP often took and mistreated hostages. Reports from foreign missionaries and consular officials detail a number of instances where Congolese men and women were flogged or raped by soldiers of the Force Publique, unrestrained by their officers and NCOs . They burned villages they viewed as recalcitrant. There
6519-427: The Free State because there was no evidence of a policy of deliberate extermination or the desire to eliminate any specific population groups, though the latter added that nevertheless there was "a death toll of Holocaust proportions," which led him to call it "the Congo holocaust." Force Publique The Force Publique ( French: [fɔʁs pyblik] , "Public Force"; Dutch : Openbare Weermacht )
6642-486: The Free State were retained in their posts long after annexation. Instead of mandating labour for colonial enterprises directly, the Belgian administration used a coercive tax that deliberately pressured Congolese to find work with European employers to procure the necessary funds to make the payments. For some time after the end of the Free State the Congolese were also required to provide a certain number of days of service per year for infrastructure projects. ... It
6765-405: The Free State, land was divided up under the so-called "domain system" ( régime domanial ) in 1891. All vacant land, including forests and areas not under cultivation, was decreed to be " uninhabited " and thus in the possession of the state, leaving many of the Congo's resources (especially rubber and ivory) under direct colonial ownership. Concessions were allocated to private companies. In
6888-613: The Italian troops surrendered to General Auguste-Édouard Gilliaert on 7 July 1941, and included nine generals, among them General Pietro Gazzera and Count Arconovaldo Bonaccorsi , 370 officers, and 2,574 NCOs and 1,533 native soldiers. About 2,000 additional native irregulars were sent home. The Force Publique lost about 500 men during the East Africa Campaign, among them 4 Belgians. The Force Publique then helped to establish an overland route from Lagos through Fort Lamy and
7011-644: The Katanga companies, totalled about 17,000 askaris with 178 white officers and 235 white NCOs. The majority served in small static garrisons called poste with primarily a police role. With the outbreak of the First World War , the Katangese units were organised in battalions (Ie, IIe, and IIIme) for military service in Northern Rhodesia and the eastern frontier districts of the Belgian Congo . The Force Publique
7134-594: The Kuba population (one of the many Congolese populations) was rising during the first two decades of Leopold II's rule, and declined by 25 per cent from 1900 to 1919, mainly due to sickness and that numbers from the rubber provinces could not be readily extrapolated to the entire Congo area. Others argued a decrease of 20 per cent over the first forty years of colonial rule (up to the census of 1924). According to historian Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem 13 million died, although he later revised this number downwards to 10 million. Louis and Stengers state that population figures at
7257-710: The abuses. He delivered his report in December, and a revised version was forwarded to the Free State authorities in February 1904. In an attempt to preserve the Congo's labour force and stifle British criticism, Leopold promoted attempts to combat disease to give the impression that he cared about the welfare of the Congolese and invited experts from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to assist. Free State officials also defended themselves against allegations that exploitative policies were causing severe population decline in
7380-453: The abuses. The size of the population decline during the period is the subject of extensive historiographical debate; there is an open debate as to whether the atrocities constitute genocide . In 2020 King Philippe of Belgium expressed his regret to the Government of Congo for "acts of violence and cruelty" inflicted during the rule of the Congo Free State, but did not explicitly mention Leopold's role. Some activists accused him of not making
7503-434: The administration by implementing government orders within their communities. Throughout much of its existence, however, Free State presence in the territory that it claimed was patchy, with its few officials concentrated in a number of small and widely dispersed "stations" which controlled only small amounts of hinterland. In 1900, there were just 3,000 white people in the Congo, of whom only half were Belgian. The Free State
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#17330863204047626-560: The administration itself was to be considered responsible for the spreading of the epidemic. Violence and murder were likely not the primary causes of deaths, though detailed statistics are unavailable due to a lack of records. In a local study of the Kuba and Kete peoples , the historian Jan Vansina estimated that violence accounted for the deaths of less than five per cent of the population. The sentries introduced gross and wholesale immorality, broke up family life, and spread disease throughout
7749-669: The atomic bomb for Hiroshima . The military contribution was also important: the Force Publique grew to 40,000 in the course of the War, formed into three brigades, a river force and support units. It provided detachments to fight Italian forces during the East Africa campaign and serve as garrisons in West Africa and the Middle East. At the end of 1940, the XI Battalion of the Force Publique
7872-578: The atrocities contributed to a sharp decline in the Congolese population. The magnitude of the population fall over the period is disputed, with modern estimates ranging from 1.5 million to 13 million. The atrocities have been variously referred to as the Rubber Terror and by some as the Congolese Genocide , though the latter characterization is disputed. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885,
7995-566: The atrocities". Eventually, growing scrutiny of Leopold's regime led to a popular campaign movement, centred in the United Kingdom and the United States, to force Leopold to renounce his ownership of the Congo. In many cases, the campaigns based their information on reports from British and Swedish missionaries working in the Congo. The first international protest occurred in 1890 when George Washington Williams , an American, published an open letter to Leopold about abuses he had witnessed. In
8118-433: The battlefield, winning the respect of their British and Portuguese allies, as well as that of their German opponents. From 1916 onwards, the Force Publique grew to reach a strength of three mobile Groupes (brigades), Kivu, Ruzizi, and Tanganyika , comprising a total of 15 battalions, from the static garrison and police force of 1914. However, it did take until late 1915 for the Force Publique to finish preparations for
8241-462: The benefits of the new freedom, was disastrous. The outbreak caused fear amongst the approximately 100,000 Belgian and other European civilians and officials still resident in the Congo and ruined the credibility of the new government as it proved unable to control its own armed forces. For example, the white community in Luluabourg was besieged in improvised fortifications for three days until rescued by
8364-410: The birth-rate while excess deaths rose. The severing of workers' hands achieved particular international notoriety. These were sometimes cut off by Force Publique soldiers who were made to account for every shot they fired by bringing back the hands of their victims. These details were recorded by Christian missionaries working in the Congo and caused public outrage when they were made known in
8487-464: The campaign included the novelists Mark Twain , Joseph Conrad and Arthur Conan Doyle as well as Belgian socialists such as Emile Vandervelde . In May 1903 a debate in the British House of Commons led to the passing of a resolution in condemnation of the Congo Free State. Soon after, the British consul in the town of Boma , Roger Casement, began touring the Congo to investigate the true extent of
8610-682: The colony would continue to fight on the side of the Allies. With Belgium occupied, the contribution to the Allied cause by the Free Belgian forces from the Belgian Congo was primarily an economic one providing copper, wolfram, zinc, tin, rubber, cotton and more. Already prior to the war uranium from the Shinkolobwe mine had been shipped to New York; it was later used in the Manhattan Project to produce
8733-589: The command of Medical Colonel Thomas, worked together with the British medical services in Abyssinia, Somaliland , Madagascar and Burma. They especially proved their value serving with the Indian XXXIII Corps on the Upper Chindwin , where they were attached to the 11th (East Africa) Division . During the confusion inherent in jungle fighting, the Belgian medical unit found itself on one occasion in advance of
8856-416: The companies were allowed free rein to exploit the concessions, with the result being that forced labour and violent coercion were used to collect the rubber cheaply and maximise profit. The Free State's military force, the Force Publique , enforced the labour policies. Individual workers who refused to participate in rubber collection could be killed and entire villages razed. The main direct cause of
8979-480: The course of the Congo Arab war (1892–1894), which resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. As time went on, the Force Publique began to increasingly recruit and to rely on Belgian officers and native Congolese soldiers, so that the white and black foreign mercenaries had been mostly phased out by 1908. Under Leopold II the Force Publique was described as an "exceptionally brutal army". One major purpose of
9102-428: The direct and indirect effects of colonial rule, including disease and falling birthrate. The historian Adam Hochschild argued that the dramatic fall in the Free State population was the result of a combination of "murder", "starvation, exhaustion and exposure", "disease" and "a plummeting birth rate". Sleeping sickness was also a major cause of fatality at the time. Opponents of Leopold's rule stated, however, that
9225-512: The early 1890s, much of the eastern portion of the Free State was under the control of Arab ivory and slave traders (though the Government was able to re-establish control over the east by the mid-1890s). Organizational problems were also quite prevalent during the Free State era. With many Force Publique detachments being stationed in remote areas of the territory, some officers took to using soldiers under their control to further private economic agendas rather than focusing on military concerns. By
9348-430: The effect of natural disasters such as famine and disease. ABIR's tax collection system forced men out from the villages to collect rubber which meant that there was no labour available to clear new fields for planting. This in turn meant that the women had to continue to plant worn-out fields resulting in lower yields, a problem aggravated by company sentries stealing crops and farm animals. The post at Bonginda experienced
9471-436: The effects of malnutrition and food shortages in reducing immunity to the new diseases. The disruption of African rural populations may have helped to spread diseases further. Nevertheless, historian Roger Anstey wrote that "a strong strand of local, oral tradition holds the rubber policy to have been a greater cause of death and depopulation than either the scourge of sleeping sickness or the periodic ravages of smallpox." It
9594-406: The end of 1891, the force had 60 officers, 60 non-commissioned officers, and 3,500 black soldiers. Friendly tribes and militias were often used to help exert control over the outermost parts of the Free State. By 1900, the Force Publique numbered 19,000 men. Following the takeover of the Free State by the Belgian government in 1908, the new authorities reorganised the Force Publique . This process
9717-681: The eve of Independence. A separate gendarmerie was organised in 1959 drawn from the Territorial Service Troops of the FP . By July 1959, a total of 40 companies and 28 platoons of gendarmerie were either formed or in training. In 1960, the Force Publique comprised 3 groupements (Groups) each of which covered two provinces. The 1st groupement had its headquarters at Elisabethville in Katanga Province, according to Louis-Francois Vanderstraeten. The 2nd groupement covered Léopoldville and Equateur . The 3rd groupement, commanded by
9840-452: The following unarmed aircraft and helicopters were used by Avimil: At independence on 30 June 1960, Avimil was placed under the control of the new government of the Republic of the Congo , and continued its missions until 20 July 1960. On this date the chief of Belgian forces in the Congo ordered the assembly of non-Congolese personnel and operational aircraft ('des appareils en état de vol') at
9963-497: The force was a de Havilland DH.85 Leopard Moth that entered service on 9 October 1940. For the remainder of the period of Belgium's rule, the Force Publique continued its joint military and police role, split into territorial units, charged with maintaining public order, and mobile units (between the wars known as unites campees ) charged with territorial defence. There was a mutiny by the XIV battalion at Luluabourg in 1944. In 1945,
10086-443: The forced marches into the colonies. In one such march 108 boys were sent over to a mission school and only 62 survived, eight of whom died a week later. Indigenous Congolese were not the only ones put to work by the free state. 540 Chinese labourers were imported to work on railways in the Congo; however, 300 of them would die or leave their posts. Caribbean peoples and people from other African countries were also imported to work on
10209-551: The front line troops. This incident was later used by British officers to motivate the fighting troops to greater efforts ("even a hospital can do better"). At the end of 1940, the FP headquarters, recognising the need for aviation support for the force, began forming the Aviation militaire de la Force Publique equipped with requisitioned civilian machines and based at N'Dolo Airport in Leopoldville. The first machine purchased for
10332-441: The hand and leaving the victim to live or die. Several survivors later said that they had lived through a massacre by acting dead, not moving even when their hands were severed, and waiting till the soldiers left before seeking help. In some instances a soldier could shorten his service term by bringing more hands than the other soldiers, which led to widespread mutilations and dismemberment. Historian David Van Reybrouck stated that
10455-425: The land. Formerly native conditions put restrictions on the spread of disease and localized it to small areas, but the black Congo soldiers, moving higher and thither to districts far from their wives and homes, took the women they wanted and ignored native institutions, rights, and customs. Diseases imported by Arab traders, European colonists and African porters ravaged the Congolese population and "greatly exceeded"
10578-660: The living were caused by soldiers who had shot people and had cut off their hands thinking they were dead while they were in fact still alive. Leopold II reportedly disapproved of dismemberment because it harmed his economic interests. He was quoted as saying "Cut off hands—that's idiotic. I'd cut off all the rest of them, but not hands. That's the one thing I need in the Congo." One practice used to force workers to collect rubber included taking wives and family members hostage. Leopold never proclaimed it an official policy, and Free State authorities in Brussels emphatically denied that it
10701-424: The loss was at least five million. Demographer J.P. Sanderson estimates the population in 1885 at around 10–15 million people, and in 2020 proposed three possible scenarios of population decline under Leopold II, suggesting that the most likely scenario is a population decline of 1.5 million people, from 11.5 million people to around 10–10.3 million people during the Congo Free State period. Other investigators put
10824-479: The natives. In the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, European leaders officially recognised Leopold's control over the 2,350,000 km (910,000 sq mi) of the notionally-independent Congo Free State on the grounds that it would be a free trade area and buffer state between British and French spheres of influence. In the Free State, Leopold exercised total personal control without much delegation to subordinates. African chiefs played an important role in
10947-649: The new Congolese Government at Camp Leopold on 8 July, the FP was renamed as the Congolese National Army ( Armée Nationale Congolaise ( ANC )), and its leadership was Africanised. The chain of events this started eventually resulted in Joseph Mobutu ( Mobutu Sésé Seko ), a former Sergeant-Major in the FP who had been promoted to Chief of Staff of the ANC by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba , gaining power and establishing his dictatorial kleptocracy . His regime
11070-541: The north, the Société Anversoise was given 160,000 km (62,000 sq mi), while the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company (ABIR) was given a comparable territory in the south. The Compagnie du Katanga and Compagnie des Grands Lacs were given smaller concessions in the south and east respectively. Leopold kept 250,000 km (97,000 sq mi) of territory known as
11193-439: The number of deaths significantly higher. Adam Hochschild and Jan Vansina use an approximate number of 10 million. Hochschild cites several recent independent lines of investigation, by anthropologist Jan Vansina and others, that examine local sources (police records, religious records, oral traditions, genealogies, personal diaries), which generally agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government commission: roughly half
11316-403: The number of workers or their welfare. In the concessionary territories, the private companies which had purchased a concession from the Free State administration were able to use virtually any measures they wished to increase production and profits without state interference. The lack of a developed bureaucracy to oversee any commercial methods produced an atmosphere of "informality" throughout
11439-436: The numbers killed by violence. Smallpox , sleeping sickness , amoebic dysentery , venereal diseases (especially syphilis and gonorrhea ), and swine influenza were particularly severe. Lawyer Raphael Lemkin attributed the quick spread of disease in Congo to the indigenous soldiers employed by the state, who moved across the country and had sex with women in many different places, thus spreading localised outbreaks across
11562-411: The old Free State remained in use among the Force Publique until the First World War : Belgian officers wore white uniforms until late 1914, while the blue uniform (with red trim around the neck and down the front opening), red fez and sash of the askaris was phased out in a series of changes during 1915–1917. Thereafter, officers and askaris wore a variety of khaki uniforms. The Force Publique
11685-448: The photographs of mutilated people have created a misconception that dismemberment of the living was a widespread practice. He wrote that while dismemberment of the living did occasionally happen, the practice was not as systemic as often presented. Jean Stengers and Daniel Vangroenweghe have also stated there was no systemic practice of dismembering living people as a punishment for not producing enough rubber. Most cases of dismemberment of
11808-408: The population decline was disease, which was exacerbated by the social disruption caused by the atrocities of the Free State. A number of epidemics, notably African sleeping sickness , smallpox , swine influenza and amoebic dysentery , ravaged indigenous populations. In 1901 alone it was estimated that 500,000 Congolese had died from sleeping sickness. Disease, famine and violence combined to reduce
11931-434: The population decreased by half during this period. According to Edmund D. Morel , the Congo Free State counted "20 million souls". Other estimates of the size of the overall population decline (or mortality displacement ) range between two and 13 million. Ascherson cites an estimate by Roger Casement of a population fall of three million, although he notes that it is "almost certainly an underestimate". Peter Forbath gave
12054-488: The population of the Congo is noted by several researchers who have compared the country at the beginning of Leopold's control with the beginning of Belgian state rule in 1908, but estimates of the death toll vary considerably, mainly due to the absence of reliable demographic sources about the region, as well as the sometimes unsubstantiated numbers mentioned by contemporaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Estimates of some contemporary observers suggest that
12177-438: The population perished during the Free State period, based on numbers from the rubber provinces. Since the first official census by the Belgian authorities in 1924 put the population at about 10 million, these various approaches suggest a rough estimate of a population decline by 10 million. Jan Vansina returned to the issue of quantifying the total population decline, and discarded his earlier claim of 10 million, he concluded that
12300-597: The posts at Bongandanga and Mompono each recorded death rates of three to ten prisoners per day in 1899. Persons with records of resisting ABIR were deported to forced labour camps . There were at least three such camps: one at Lireko , one on the Upper Maringa River and one on the Upper Lopori River. Aside from rubber collection, violence in the Free State chiefly occurred in connection with wars and rebellions. Native states, notably Msiri 's Yeke Kingdom ,
12423-428: The quasi-colony proved unprofitable and insufficient, with the state always close to bankruptcy. The boom in demand for natural rubber, which was abundant in the territory, created a radical shift in the 1890s—to facilitate the extraction and export of rubber, all vacant land in the Congo was nationalised, with the majority distributed to private companies as concessions . Some was kept by the state. Between 1891 and 1906,
12546-450: The railway in which 3,600 would die in the first two years of construction from railroad accidents, lack of shelter, flogging, hunger, and disease. Cannibalism was well-established in parts of the Free State area when the State was founded, and the colonial administration seems to have done little to suppress it, sometimes rather tolerating it among its own auxiliary troops and allies. During
12669-443: The rubber collection quotas was punishable by death . Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting or to stockpile them for mutiny. A Catholic priest quotes a man, Tswambe, speaking of the hated state official Léon Fiévez , who ran
12792-489: The start of Leopold's control are only "wild guesses", while calling E. D. Morel's attempt and others at coming to a figure for population losses "but figments of the imagination". Generally, works based on the highest numbers have often been discredited as "wild" and "unsubstantiated", whereas authors who point out the lack of reliable demographic data are questioned by others, calling them "minimalists", "agnosticists" and "revisionists" who allegedly "seek to downplay or minimize
12915-618: The state in regard to the operation of enterprises, which in turn facilitated abuses. Treatment of labourers (especially the duration of service) was not regulated by law and instead was left to the discretion of officials on the ground. ABIR and the Anversoise were particularly noted for the harshness with which their officials treated Congolese workers. The historian Jean Stengers described regions controlled by these two companies as "veritable hells-on-earth". Rubber harvesters were usually compensated for their labour with cheap items, such as
13038-416: The system between 1896 and 1905. The Free State's concession system was soon copied by other colonial regimes, notably those in the neighbouring French Congo . With the majority of the Free State's revenues derived from the export of rubber, a labour policy—known by critics as the "red rubber system"—was created to maximise its extraction. Labour was demanded by the administration as taxation. This created
13161-469: The term to describe atrocities in the Free State; in the strict sense of the term, most historians have rejected allegations of genocide. Sociologist Rhoda Howard-Hassmann stated that because the Congolese were not killed in a systematic fashion according to this criterion, "technically speaking, this was not genocide even in a legally retroactive sense." Adam Hochschild and political scientist Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja rejected allegations of genocide in
13284-419: The territory. The system itself engendered abuses ... The Free State was intended, above all, to be profitable for its investors and Leopold in particular. Its finances were frequently precarious. Early reliance on ivory exports did not make as much money as hoped and the colonial administration was frequently in debt, nearly defaulting on a number of occasions. A boom in demand for natural rubber in
13407-639: The war their actions were supported by more than 260,000 local bearers. In 1916, Tombeur was made Military Governor of the Belgian Occupied East African Territories. After the Mahenge offensive and the capture of Mahenge in 1917, the Belgian Congolese army controlled roughly one-third of German East Africa. After the First World War , as outlined in the Treaty of Versailles , Germany
13530-688: Was able to assemble another battalion from smaller units; originally called the IIIe, but changed to the 11e to avoid confusion with the Katanga IIIme battalion. During the First World War (1914–18), an expanded Force Publique served against German colonial forces in Kamerun and German East Africa ( Tanzania , Rwanda , Burundi ), as part of the East African campaign . The Force Publique performed well on
13653-515: Was employed. Nevertheless, the administration supplied a manual to each station in the Congo which included a guide on how to take hostages to coerce local chiefs. The hostages could be men, women, children, elders, or even the chiefs themselves. Every state or company station maintained a stockade for imprisoning hostages. ABIR agents would imprison the chief of any village which fell behind its quota; in July 1902 one post recorded that it held 44 chiefs in prison. These prisons were in poor condition and
13776-455: Was forced to cede "control" of the Western section of the former German East Africa to Belgium. On 20 October 1924, Ruanda-Urundi (1924–1945), which consisted of modern-day Rwanda and Burundi , became a League of Nations mandate territory under Belgian administration, with Usumbura as its capital. On 10 May 1919, the Belgian colonial administration issued a decree formally reorganising
13899-602: Was forced to retreat by the numerical superiority of the Belgian army, and by 17 June 1916, Ruanda-Urundi was occupied. The Force Publique and the British Lake Force then started a thrust to capture Tabora , an administrative centre of central German East Africa. The army went on to take Tabora on 19 September after heavy fighting. At the time of the Battle of Tabora in September 1916, about 25,000 men were under arms; during
14022-448: Was indeed a holocaust before Hitler's Holocaust. ... What happened in the heart of Africa was genocidal in scope long before that now familiar term, genocide, was ever coined. The significant number of deaths under the Free State regime has led some scholars to relate the atrocities to later genocides , though understanding of the losses under the colonial administration's rule as the result of harsh economic exploitation rather than
14145-468: Was intended to have four Belgian officers and NCOs plus between 100 and 150 askaris. In principle, companies comprised two or three 50-man platoons. There were supposed to be enough companies to form three Marche battalions. Eight Congolese soldiers were promoted to NCO. The 2,875 men of the Troupes du Katanga constituted a semi-autonomous force of six companies: four de marche and two other infantry, plus
14268-608: Was organised into 21 separate companies (originally numbered but later known only by their names) each between 225 and 950 men strong, along with an artillery and an engineers unit. The entire force numbered over 12,100 men. The companies were as follows: Aruwimi, Bangala, Bas-Congo , Cateracts, Équateur , Ituri , Kasai , Kwango , Lac Léopold II , Lualaba , Lulongo, Makrakas, Makua-Bomokandi, Ponthiérville , Rubi, Ruzizi - Kivu , Stanley Falls , Stanley Pool , Ubangi , and Uele-Bili. There were also six recruit training camps containing over 2,400 men. The separate companies comprising
14391-612: Was outlawed in the Force Publique and punishable by death. When sending out "punitive expeditions" against villages unwilling or unable to fulfil the government's exorbitant rubber quota, Free State officials nevertheless repeatedly turned a blind eye both to arbitrary killings of those considered guilty as well as to the "cannibal feast[s]" celebrated by native soldiers that sometimes followed. In various cases they even handed captives, including infants and old women, over to their soldiers or local allies, implicitly or even explicitly allowing them to kill and eat them. I suggest that it
14514-501: Was perpetually short of administrative staff and officials, who numbered between 700 and 1,500 during the period. In the early years of the Free State, much of the administration's attention was focused on consolidating its control by fighting the African peoples on the Free State's periphery who resisted the Free State's rule. These included the tribes around the Kwango , in the south-west, and
14637-634: Was placed at the disposal of the British forces in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan . The 3rd Brigade of the Force Publique , together with the XI battalion (5,700 men), took part in the campaign in Abyssinia in Italian East Africa , arriving from the Congo via the Sudan. The troops took Asosa and Gambela with little resistance, and shelled Italian forces at Saïo on 8 June 1941. Their retreat cut off ,
14760-402: Was rather slow, however, and was only completed during the First World War . Though the new Belgian administration was "more enlightened" than its predecessor, it still tried to keep the cost of the colonial army low. As result, the proportion of commissioned Belgian officers to askaris (about one to a hundred) was very low by the standards of most colonial armies of this period. The weaponry of
14883-639: Was renamed to the Congolese National Army in July 1960 after Congo gained independence from Belgian colonial rule. The Force Publique was initially conceived in 1885 when Leopold II of Belgium , who established the Congo Free State as his private colony , ordered the Belgian Secretary of the Interior to create a military for the Free State. Soon afterwards, in early 1886, Captain Léon Roger (of
15006-404: Was the military of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo from 1885 to 1960. It was established after Belgian Army officers travelled to the Free State to found an armed force in the colony on Leopold II of Belgium 's orders. The Force Publique was heavily involved in atrocities in the Congo Free State , and also saw action in the Congo Arab war , World War I and World War II . It
15129-399: Was to remain in power until May 1997. Prior to independence, the air component of the Force Publique (Avi / or Avimil, Aviation militaire de la Force publique ) was based mainly at the N'Dolo airport, Leopoldville. Avimil's roles included the transportation of passengers, medical supplies and other goods, as well as undertaking connecting flights and recognition duties. Between 1944 and 1960
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