. ] The women were chained neck to neck and dragged out of the town. The commissioner has promised us if we have plenty of hands he will shorten our service. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes. One cause of death in the Congo Free State was disease. In harsher cases, they might get 100. These soldiers might spare their victims or waste their ammunition on something else. Life in the Congo Free State was a waking nightmare, the likes of which the world had never seen. By one estimate, it killed 500,000 people in the Congo alone. “He ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village palisades, also their sexual members,” the soldier said, “and to hang the women and children on the palisade in the form of a cross.”. One man named Nsala was interviewed after being photographed looking at his five-year-old daughter’s severed hand. Not every worker who missed his quota was killed right away. This disease wiped out huge chunks of the population. Women were often kidnapped from villages that didn’t provide enough rubber. . This, they were sure, was a form of witchcraft.

They were held hostage until the chief could meet his quota. Different commissioners handled it in different ways. A plague broke out because of the work conditions. They wanted to make the Africans work without paying them for it.

Some villages were destroyed for almost no reason at all.

They would have to meet their quotas first.

At one point in the expedition, seven tribes convened and confronted Stanley.

Entre 1874 et 1876, le bush, au centre du continent africain, est encore pour les Européens une terre mystérieuse dans laquelle seuls des aventuriers se rendent. “Mr. King Leopold II hired a British explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, to help him establish the Congo Free State. So the Belgians set up a law: Every time a worker was killed, the African soldiers had to chop off and deliver his hand. Henry Morton Stanley retrouve David Livingstone, après 236 jours de recherche, dans ce qui s’avère une partie du monde en soi, immense, aux inextricables zones de forêts, de marais et de savane, arrosées par un fleuve Congo labyrinthique. [ . By the end of the expedition, he had burned down 32 of their towns. They had seen him writing in his journal. Hopefully, we will never see it again. Frequently, this was rotten meat that would make the men sick. I have brought in plenty of hands already, and I expect my time of service will soon be finished.”. Often, the people couldn’t meet their quotas and that left them terrified. The Belgians didn’t take care of their workers and fed them poorly, often giving them just enough food to survive. Most people who donated to the International African Association thought they were helping to fund public works in the Congo and putting an end to slavery in East Africa. If the workers fell short by a small amount, they would get 25 lashes with a whip. To Mr. Goffin, though, this was just business as usual.

Illnesses swept across the Congo and, from there, farther across Africa. These people had no idea that their land had been sold, and now they were being forced into labor to live on it. Entretien avec l'auteur et éditeur Marc Wiltz. So Leopold was determined to make it profitable.

Some would chop up the vines to squeeze out a little extra sap. But the commissioner sent in his soldiers instead. Leopold II hired these men to turn the area into a workhouse, and they did it by enslaving the people. . Cannibalism was used in some places to keep people in line. Le Congo belge de Léopold II : les origines du massacre Le 16/09/2018 À la fin du XIXe siècle, le système colonial établi au Congo par Léopold II, roi de Belgique, atteint un degré de brutalité telle qu’il sera à l’origine d’un des plus grands massacres de l’Histoire. By the 1890s, King Leopold was selling more rubber than he could harvest.

One Swedish missionary reported that 45 towns had burned down in his area alone since he’d arrived. After a massacre, the papers reported, “Some of the victims were eaten by cannibals. His men and the natives of the Congo, though, had vastly different cultures. Another town was targeted because they had been unable to deliver their rubber. Many would slip and fall to their deaths. Entre 1874 et 1876, le bush, au centre du continent africain, est encore pour les Européens une terre mystérieuse dans laquelle seuls des aventuriers se rendent. Men in the rear column went wild and started kidnapping and raping African women or flogging the men to death for the smallest infractions. It’s difficult to say exactly how often this happened. Rubber profits boomed. Things quickly got out of control. Some were satisfied with removing the workers’ hands, but other commissioners gave the workers savage beatings. Although they had met their quota, their recorded infraction was that “the rubber brought by the villagers to the State was not of the best quality.”. Mark Oliver. To harvest the rubber, the men were forced to work in areas infested with tsetse flies that spread diseases. One European officer reported that he had complained to Mr. Goffin, the secretary of the Railway Company in the Congo, that he had seen men kicked, whipped, and chained by their necks. Stanley struck back. And so Leopold cut his knife in and sliced up the Congo—backed by the donations of concerned citizens. The rainforest, swamps and accompanying malaria and other tropical diseases, such as sleeping sickness, made it a difficult environment for European exploration and exploitation. Instead, he called harvesting rubber a tax that every person who lived on the land was required to pay. Even with the workers’ looming fear of death, gathering this rubber was difficult. He explained to the photographer that his daughter had lost her hand because he hadn’t made his rubber quota that day.
. ] King Leopold did nothing to dissuade them. From 1885 to 1908, Belgian King Leopold II took control of the Congo. His writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion's StarWipe and Cracked.com. Even then, though, the women often stayed prisoners. He turned two-thirds of the country into his own private land. These beatings were done with a strong whip made of hippopotamus hide that could break the skin quickly. A missionary there wrote to the commissioner on the villagers’ behalf.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to Listverse. Those misunderstandings turned into terrible fears and soon boiled into brutal violence.

After catching a worker chopping a vine, one commissioner wrote a note about it. Until the later part of the 19th century, few Europeans had ventured into the Congo Basin. But one man reported that when someone was recorded as “shot” in his area, it also meant that the victim had been eaten. They were a particularly vicious tribe whom the Belgians recruited as soldiers. They didn’t understand each other. From 1885 to 1908, Belgian King Leopold II took control of the Congo. He would have to burn his notebook, they demanded, or he and his men would be killed. When other Europeans started traveling to the Congo and saw what was happening, they were shocked. Stanley wasn’t evil; he entered the country with no intention other than to explore. “Don’t take this to heart so much,” the soldier told the missionary. The Belgians didn’t just want to slaughter Africans wholesale. The worst for this were the Zappo Zaps. When King Leopold got the legal right to take control of the Congo, he started bleeding it dry for profits. Then, when they had spare time left over, they could work to feed their families. “They kill us if we don’t bring the rubber. The horrors of the Congo Free State had a purpose—they were meant to scare people into working. [ . They were required to meet their quotas by filling baskets with hands, sometimes even gathered from their own mothers. An army of men would march into the town, slaughter the people, and burn the village to the ground. Then the soldiers gave the body parts to the man—a token to remind him that he had better meet his quota next time. At first, these people were given a penny per pound of rubber, but Leopold soon stopped even giving them pennies. They were a humanitarian organization that promised to make life better in Africa, and they received donations from around the world. His men, though, were even worse. One village was decimated by the soldiers, with 50 men killed and 28 taken prisoner. Une tuerie inouïe de cruauté. The soldiers followed their orders because they were afraid of what would happen to them if they didn’t. Stanley had already explored and mapped most of the Congo River and had experience with the people who lived there. While the missionary begged for mercy, the soldiers set the town on fire. Leopold’s harsh policies to keep people working turned into a brutal reign of mutilations and terror that led to the deaths of an estimated 10 million people in a few short years. So, if the workers were caught doing it, they risked beatings or death. When the quota was met, the men of the village had to buy back their wives by giving up some of their livestock. The bodies of all who were slain were mutilated, their heads having been cut off. It had to be gathered from vines, which were hard to find and often hung high up in the trees. From three bodies, the flesh has been carved and eaten.”. Henry Morton Stanley retrouve David Livingstone, après 236 jours de recherche, dans ce qui s’avère une partie du monde en soi, immense, aux inextricables zones de forêts, de marais et de savane, arrosées par un fleuve Congo labyrinthique. Begging for donations, Leopold gave a stirring speech: “To open to civilization the only part of our globe which it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness which hangs over entire peoples, is, I dare say, a crusade worthy of this century of progress.”, Behind closed doors, though, he was more honest. 10 Horrifying Facts About The Genocide In The Congo Free State. For the people in the Congo, this meant that their quotas went up and meeting the rubber tax became nearly impossible. This happened a lot. African soldiers were enlisted to enforce these rules, but that left a risk for the Belgians. Their quotas were huge. The people there were forced to work for him. Les régions du cœur de l’Afriq… Stanley had reported temples of ivory, and people had found caches of rubber there.

In some places, a third of the population caught it. Un massacre de masse qui a fait probablement plusieurs millions de morts entre 1885 et 1908. The average person had to work 20 days per month just to meet his rubber quota, and they weren’t paid for it.


In some places, this meant doing some horrible things to the workers’ families. L'ouvrage "Il pleut des mains sur le Congo" retrace un massacre de masse oublié dans les limbes de l'histoire, celui perpétré par l'administration belge du roi Léopolod II entre 1885 et 1908. It spread from the harvesters to the villagers and across the country. There was a very real risk that they might be killed and mutilated for their failures. He founded a group that was originally called the International African Association. He turned the nation into a moneymaking machine by farming ivory and rubber and building a fortune on the labor of the people who lived there. Sometimes, the victims died. The worst disease was sleeping sickness—a disease that was often fatal. His overseer had cut off her hand and foot, killed her and the man’s wife, and cannibalized both victims. Goffin shrugged his shoulders,” the officer wrote, “and said that was nothing.”.