539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
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What are the opening thoughts on King Leopold's Congo?
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A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. I could see every rib. The joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope. Each had an iron collar on his neck. and all were connected together with a chain whose bites swung between them, rhythmically clinking. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete death-like indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter, one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be.
He was speedily reassured and with a large, white, rascally grin and a glance at his charge seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings. Joseph Conrad, of course, writing in Heart of Darkness, which he wrote in 1899. And he sat down to write that nine years after he himself died. had visited the Congo Free State as a merchant seaman, captaining a steamer, the roi de Belge, the king of the Belgians, up the Congo deep into the interior, just as Marlowe in Heart of Darkness will do. And Marlowe is describing their experiences that Conrad himself, we know, definitely had. He saw scenes like that, preparatory to taking the steamer up the river to meet the mysterious and enigmatic, charismatic Mr. Kurtz.
And what he's seeing, of course, is a chain gang of porters escorted by an armed African officer building the railway that will facilitate Leopold II's control of this vast expanse of the Congo that he's been given at a conference in Berlin where no Africans were in attendance. And Conrad, when he went to the Congo, initially was a true believer. He trusted the philanthropic intentions of Leopold II, but by the time he left, he had a very, very different perspective. The last line, Dominic, of that passage that we read, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings. I mean, a deep and painful sense of irony there. Very
Definitely. Self-accusatory. Absolutely. A very self-lacerating irony there, the high unjust proceedings. And today's episode will be quite a dark subject. So we're going to get into the realities of the Congo Free State under the regime of King Leopold.
I mean, Dominic, just to emphasise, you said in the previous episode that this bears comparison with the great atrocities of the 20th century. So we should warn people that there are a lot of
A lot of horrors in this. There are indeed. Before we get into them, let's remind ourselves what happened last time. The central character was King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, this lonely, awkward, selfish, ruthless man whom we likened in that episode, Tom, to you. And he has carved out his own private colonial fiefdom, a huge chunk of Central Africa with the Congo snaking through its heart. Somewhere between 8 and 12 million people may be living there. His agent, his operative, Henry Morton Stanley, the great explorer, though bloodstained explorer, has signed treaties with 450 different settlements, giving their land, their economic rights, and crucially their labor to the International Association of the Congo, which has proved to be a front for the Congo Free State, which has been set up from May 1885.
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