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109-750: The Stokes affair mobilized British public opinion against the Congo Free State, also accused of systematic humanitarian abuses by a British report published in May 1895. The campaign would eventually result in the formation of the Congo Reform Association and the annexation of the Free State by Belgium as the Belgian Congo in 1908. Through intercepted letters, Captain Hubert-Joseph Lothaire ,

218-521: 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 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

327-512: A "painful and disgraceful death," the Liverpool Daily Post the widely held "horrified amazement through the British race," and The Daily Telegraph "death like a dog," adding "Have we all been wrong in believing that the most audacious foreigner — not to speak of any savage chief — would think once, twice and even trice, before he laid hands on a subject of Queen Victoria ." As a result,

436-403: 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

545-475: 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

654-436: 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

763-464: 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

872-509: 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

981-451: 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

1090-445: 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

1199-423: 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

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1308-609: A global publicity campaign across the Western world , using a range of strategies including displays of atrocity photographs; public seminars; mass rallies; celebrity endorsements; and extensive press coverage to lobby the Great Powers into pressuring reform in the Congo. The association partially achieved its aims in 1908 with the Belgian government's annexation of the Congo Free State and continued to promote reform until disbanding in 1913. In

1417-495: 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

1526-523: 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

1635-532: 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

1744-627: A similar publicity and lobbying campaign to the CRA's; public figures like Booker T. Washington and Mark Twain , who famously composed King Leopold's Soliloquy , did much to raise the profile of the movement across the United States. However, Morel and British CRA officials still played a crucial role in the formative phase of the ACRA, transferring and reshaping many of their techniques and practices for American audiences. Lobbying and PR were practised by both

1853-455: 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

1962-505: 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

2071-403: 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

2180-458: 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

2289-432: 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

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2398-497: Is said to have had many irregularities, including the use of false statements. There was no penal code, no clerk, the verdict was not read out loud to the convicted, and Stokes did not have a right of appeal, which as a British citizen he was entitled to. To Lothaire, Charles Stokes was no more than a criminal whose hanging was fully justified. Lord Salisbury , the British Prime Minister at the time, commented that if Stokes

2507-459: 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

2616-459: The Belgian Congo . The CRA, acknowledging the gains made, publicly disbanded on 16 June 1913, with Morel declaring that "the native of the Congo is once more a free man", though both he and the movement were aware this was not in fact the case; tensions in Europe and a sharp decline in public support since the 'success' of the annexation, necessitated the declaration and disbandment of the association as

2725-462: The Belgian Congo . It ended many of the systems responsible for 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

2834-562: The Congo and its tributaries exposed him to the worst affected areas of the ' rubber tax ', and provided him with their testimonies – informing many of his inquiries. Throughout his journey Casement recorded oral testimony from victims of the CFS, seeing first-hand the mutilations and brutalities of the administration and later the systemic use of coercive techniques by state and company officials . Casement's dispatches were viewed as sensationalist and he

2943-587: The Congo Free State , a private territory in Central Africa under the absolute sovereignty of King Leopold II. Active from 1904 to 1913, the association formed in opposition to the institutionalised practices of Congo Free State's 'rubber policy', which encouraged the need to minimise expenditure and maximise profit with no political constraints – fostering a system of coercion and terror unparalleled in contemporary colonial Africa . The group carried out

3052-531: 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

3161-570: The Foreign Office , who instead dispatched their consul in the region to investigate the alleged malpractices of the regime. Roger Casement was the resident British consul in Boma when he was directed by the FO to investigate the allegations against the CFS. From June 1903, Casement travelled throughout the northern interior of the territory aided by the missionaries based there. Their unregulated access to

3270-630: The Rubber Terror and by some as the Congolese Genocide , though the latter characterization is disputed. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, 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

3379-699: 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

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3488-501: The atrocities of the CFS. Charles Laderman has argued that the association's most effective tool was the recruitment of missionaries with firsthand accounts of the regime, two of the most prominent were the Rev. John Harris and his wife Alice . In 1905 the pair returned to Britain where they accepted positions as officers in the CRA, and over the next two years delivered between them six hundred public engagements – bringing photos, props from

3597-541: 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

3706-525: 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

3815-605: The Belgian government – was viewed by both Britain and the US to be the optimal answer to the Congo Question . Despite Belgium's position as a neutral state, both countries issued a joint démarche on 23 January 1908 demanding that the Belgian government annex control of the CFS and reform the territory in accordance with the articles of the Berlin Act . Morel and the CRA, aware of the geo-political constraints of any alternative, viewed

3924-565: The Belgian press, increasing the already mounting domestic pressure for Congo annexation in Belgium. The publication of the findings of Leopold's Commission of Inquiry, confirming those of the Casement Report, cemented Belgian formal opposition to the CFS and sparked legitimate discussions of government annexation. What became known as the Belgian Solution – the annexation of the CFS by

4033-558: The British government planned to take any steps regarding the execution of this "well-known character", Sanderson wrote: "I do not quite understand why the Germans are pressing us." In August 1895, the attention of the British press was drawn to this case by Lionel Decle, a journalist for the Pall Mall Gazette . The press began to report on these events in great detail, The Daily News emphasized "bloodthirsty precipitation," The Times

4142-496: The CFS, like the chicotte , and their own extensive documentation of what they witnessed to audiences around Britain, later conducting a similar tour in the USA. Felix Lösing has maintained that neither evangelical philanthropy nor humanitarian sentiment but racist dynamics were the main reason for the success of the reform association. Activists in Britain and the United States warned that

4251-573: The CFS. Morel enlisted fellow journalists in Britain, the United States and sympathetic newspapers in Belgium as agents of the CRA and established regional branches with local activists throughout Britain to promote grassroots movements. The CRA's adoption of contemporary media technologies, like the magic lantern projector , were incorporated into public lectures and seminars , bringing Western audiences face-to-face with photographic proof of

4360-578: The CRA and Leopold's CFS, the king setting up a private and covert Press Bureau in 1904 in reaction to the consistent efforts of the CRA. In December 1906 the ACRA gained momentum with the breaking of the Kowalsky Scandal . The exposé of foreign financial interference in the American political process united various factions across the USA behind the reform movement and demanded government action. It also exposed Leopold's extensive Press Bureau networks to

4469-504: The Congo Free State, but did not explicitly mention Leopold's role. Some activists accused him of not making 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

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4578-451: The Congo and Leopold's system . Nathan Alexander has observed that Morel's impassioned campaigning stemmed largely from his belief that the Congo Free State was a corrupt example of modern standards of European colonialism . Alexander noted that as a humanitarian with paternalistic views towards Africans, Morel favoured indirect rule and the promotion of free trade and commerce to gradually develop African territories and peoples along

4687-465: The Congo and caused public outrage when they were made known in 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

4796-460: 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,

4905-406: The Congo was nationalised, with the majority distributed to private companies as concessions . Some was kept by the state. Between 1891 and 1906, 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

5014-632: 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,

5123-453: 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." Congo Reform Association The Congo Reform Association ( CRA ) was a political and humanitarian activist group that sought to promote reform of

5232-486: 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

5341-405: 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

5450-594: 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

5559-710: 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

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5668-560: 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

5777-489: The atrocities in the CFS destabilised imperial rule on the whole African continent and undermined narratives of white supremacy on a global scale. CRA activism ensured that the Congo Question remained of interest to the general public, fuelling a reciprocal relationship between British parliamentary debates and press coverage that extended globally. The international message of the movement birthed chapters or affiliates across Europe and North America . Outside of Britain,

5886-510: 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

5995-464: 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

6104-501: The case became an international incident, better known as the Stokes Affair. Together, Britain and Germany pressured the Congo Free State to put Lothaire on trial, which they eventually did, a first trial was held in the city of Boma . The Free State paid compensation to the British (150,000 francs) and Germans (100,000 francs) and made it impossible by decree to impose martial law or death sentences on European citizens. Stokes's body

6213-550: The colonial administration was frequently in debt, nearly defaulting on a number of occasions. A boom in demand for natural rubber in 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

6322-449: The commander of the Congo Free State forces in the Ituri -campaign, learned that Charles Stokes was on his way from German East Africa to sell weapons to Zanzibari slavers in the eastern Congo region. In December 1894, Lothaire sent Lieutenant Josué Henry with 70 men ahead to capture Stokes. Henry arrested Stokes in his tent, taking advantage of the absence of a large part of his caravan, that

6431-538: The creation of the CRA, a unifying movement for the competing agents of reform in the Congo. The weight of the Casement Report , a scathing indictment by a British consular official on the CFS, was crucial in engaging the public with the CRA's message of reform in the Congo – though Casement himself had to abstain from direct involvement due to his government role. Morel led the CRA, achieving widespread public endorsements from church leaders, businessmen, peers and MPs;

6540-441: The decisions of the FO prompted him to seek out Morel who, by 1904, was well established as the leading champion of Congo reform. The two agreed a more holistic approach was needed to effect genuine change in the Congo, with the British government having reduced diplomatic pressure on the CFS following Leopold's announcement that he had set up a commission of inquiry to address Casement's findings. With Morel in-charge they resolved to

6649-428: 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

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6758-542: The direct reports and experiences of the missionary community who had for years worked in the Congo , as well as travellers from the region and whistleblowers and former Congo Free States and concession company agents who supplied him with detailed reports and corroborating evidence of widespread atrocities . Morel was a gifted public speaker and prolific writer, giving speeches and publishing articles in other newspapers – foreign and domestic – as well as circulating pamphlets and writing several meticulously researched books on

6867-637: 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 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

6976-430: 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

7085-436: 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

7194-443: 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

7303-529: The foundation of the Congo Reform Association and the annexation of the Congo Free State by the Belgian state in 1908. 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

7412-410: 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 the administration by implementing government orders within their communities. Throughout much of its existence, however, Free State presence in

7521-441: 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

7630-471: The humanitarians with commercial and political elites in the common cause of reform. Others shared Morel's view; the Aborigine Protection Society , headed by Henry Fox Bourne , had denounced the CFS as early as 1890 with material collected from Congo missionaries. Sir Charles Dilke MP was another high-profile figure in the British anti-Leopold movement, advocating in parliament in 1897 for

7739-452: 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, 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

7848-448: The labour policies. Individual workers who refused to participate in rubber collection could be killed and entire villages razed. The main direct cause of 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

7957-425: 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"

8066-660: 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

8175-424: 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

8284-502: The mid-1890s Edmund Dene Morel was working for Elder Dempster as a shipping clerk based in Antwerp , when he noticed discrepancies between public and private accounts given for the import and export figures relating to shipping from the Congo . Morel deduced from the steady export of firearms and cartridge , against the disproportionate mass imports in rubber , ivory and other lucrative commodities, that no commercial transaction

8393-496: The most effective was the American Congo Reform Association, formed in the United States. Though Morel helped found the ACRA, they sought to distance themselves as an independent American movement due to widespread Anglophobic sentiments among sections of the American populace, particularly German and Irish Americans . Orchestrated effectively by Baptist missionaries and the academic Robert E. Park , it waged

8502-524: The movement was characterised as part of the British humanitarian tradition , an appeal that enticed many wealthy donors and powerful supporters to its cause, placing extraordinary pressure on the British government to act. Morel tailored the association's message to appeal to all sections of British society, ensuring it was a non-partisan and Christian issue that Britain must address, his public speeches were inclusive and unifying seeking only to promote reform in

8611-541: 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

8720-439: 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

8829-403: 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

8938-436: 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

9047-448: 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

9156-434: 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

9265-488: 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

9374-438: 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

9483-597: 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 ,

9592-450: 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

9701-566: The revival of the Berlin Conference to ensure all signatories were adhering to the Berlin Act. In 1903 the collective efforts of Morel and these other actors generated enough public agitation over the Congo Question to produce an impassioned debate in parliament, leading to a resolution forcing government action. However, reconvening the Berlin conference was viewed as geo-politically problematic by

9810-443: 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

9919-433: The same lines as Europe. Morel believed the 'Leopoldian system' was the catalyst for the scale of atrocities in the Congo, and that the state's creation of what was in effect a slave-labour force to fuel Leopold's monopolistic enterprise demonstrated he had broken the articles of the Berlin Act in every regard. In Morel's own words, the "King's native policy was the inevitable sequel to his commercial policy". This unified

10028-594: The solution as the most practical for achieving their aims at reform, leading the movement to place public support and endorsement behind the Belgian Solution as early as 1905. The annexation occurred in late 1908 bringing slow and incremental reform, but by 1913 free trade and the effective dismantling of the Leopoldian system , as well as the increasing importance of Belgium to the Entente , led to British recognition of

10137-489: 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

10246-618: 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

10355-486: 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 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

10464-416: 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

10573-469: 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

10682-417: The territory of Belgium; amid financial problems, it was directed by a tiny cadre of administrators drawn from across Europe. Initially 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

10791-409: 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 was perpetually short of administrative staff and officials, who numbered between 700 and 1,500 during the period. In

10900-562: 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

11009-463: Was estimated that 500,000 Congolese had died from sleeping sickness. Disease, famine and violence combined to reduce 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

11118-708: Was in league with Arab slave-trading , then 'he deserved hanging'. Sir John Kirk , for years the British Consul in Zanzibar , remarked that "he was no loss to us, although he was an honest man." The news of Stokes’ execution was received with indifference by the British Foreign Office. When the German ambassador asked Sir Thomas H. Sanderson , the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs , whether

11227-448: 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

11336-522: Was out in the jungle gathering firewood and searching for food. Stokes was taken to Captain Lothaire in Lindi, who immediately formed a drumhead court-martial . Stokes was found guilty of selling guns, gunpowder and detonators to the Congo Free State's Afro-Arab enemies (Said Abedi, Kilonga Longa and Kibonge). On 14 January 1895 he was sentenced to death and was hanged the next day (hoisted on a tree). The procedure

11445-612: 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

11554-419: Was recalled by the FO to return to Britain and produce a report for the government. Published in 1904, The Casement Report confirmed the scale of atrocities taking place in the CFS, yet FO officials' interference and lobbying by agents of the CFS led to softening the graphic nature of the report, with the removal of witnesses and perpetrators names undermining its legitimacy. Casement's disillusionment with

11663-629: Was returned to his family. Lothaire was acquitted twice, first in April 1896 by a tribunal in Boma. In August 1896, the appeal was confirmed in Brussels by the Supreme Court of Congo, paving the way for the rehabilitation of Lothaire. The Stokes Affair mobilized British public opinion against the Congo Free State. It also damaged the reputation of King Leopold II of Belgium as a benevolent despot, which he had cultivated with so much effort. The case helped encourage

11772-500: Was taking place. He concluded that the use of force was the only explanation: the consistency of the exchange could only be supported by a state-led system of mass exploitation. Resigning from his role in 1901, Morel turned to journalism to investigate and raise awareness about the activities of the Congo Free State authorities, establishing his own journal in early 1903 – the West African Mail . Morel's publications drew from

11881-557: 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 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 ),

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