Congo horror

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Under the name Congo atrocities the systematic looting of was the Congo Free State about 1888 to 1908 known as concession companies, especially the Société générale de Belgique , the rubber production by slavery and forced labor operated. There were massive hostages, killings, mutilations and rape. It is estimated that eight to ten million Congolese people perished, about half of the then population.

The Congo Free State was the private colony of the King of the Belgians , Leopold II of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . The main shareholder of the concession companies was the Congo Free State, i.e. Leopold II himself.

Territories of the concession companies in the Congo Free State. Map from a 1906 work by ED Morel .
A father stares at the small hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter who was killed by "guards" to collect rubber - the iconic photograph Nsala of Wala in the Nsongo District (Abir Concession) by Alice Seeley Harris .

prehistory

Flogging of a Congolese with the chicotte, the hippopotamus whip .

King Leopold II convened a geographic conference in Brussels in September 1876 to promote the exploration of the Congo. At this conference it was also decided to found the International Society for Africa (IAG), which was supposed to coordinate humanitarian and scientific work in Africa. In 1879 the Belgian stake in the IAG was replaced by the International Congo Society (IKG), which had the economic development of the Congo Basin as its goal. The International Congo Society played a key role in the development of the Congo. Contracts were concluded with local rulers in which they undertook to cede their land to the IKG. The IKG set up trading stations on the land they had acquired, made rivers navigable and built roads. At the Congo Conference of 1884/85 in Berlin, the Congo Basin and its hinterland were awarded to the International Congo Society. Since Leopold II had already bought up all of the company's shares, he was its sole owner. Thus the colony took on a special role: While the other colonies in the world were administered and ruled by one state , the so-called Congo Free State had been the personal private property of the king since 1885 .

The rubber boom arose due to the increasing demand for rubber . The best conditions for rubber cultivation were found in the Congo Free State. There was the largest natural area of ​​trees with rubber tendrils, mostly from the genus Landolphia . The rubber plantations, which were set up in Asia and the Caribbean at the same time, would only become profitable in 20 years, so that there was a temporary, profitable monopoly. From then on, a state-established and organized forced labor system covered the country. In an attempt to maximize profits, Belgian companies were guilty of serious attacks on the Congolese people.

Conditions in the Congo Free State

After the acquisition of the Congo, it was divided into 15 districts with respective sub-zones. These were controlled by the governors-general resident in the Congo and a vice-governor, who in turn received their orders from Belgium. In order to control the huge area, military and administrative posts were set up at various strategically important points (e.g. on long-distance trade routes). This led to a regional differentiation of the presence of colonial rule.

Since it was not possible due to the sheer size of the area to organize or control it by European troops and officials, Leopold II recruited various local warlords , leaders and African mercenaries . These recruitments culminated in the founding of the Force Publique . This was an armed mercenary force with around 19,000 African soldiers, who were led by European officers. From 1896 courts of justice (one main court in Boma and eight lower courts) were established. Last but not least, these courts should provide a legal legitimation for the actions of the colonial administration. However, concessions were also awarded to other private companies. These companies not only had a trade monopoly in the areas awarded, but also exercised de facto jurisdiction. The trading communities close to the king were even allowed to raise independent troops. Examples of such companies were the Abir Congo Company , the Compagnie du Katanga or the Compagnie des Grands Lacs . In addition, King Leopold added a huge area of ​​250,000 km 2 as a crown domain to his private property.

Since 1891 various decrees have been issued, which z. For example, all areas not yet cultivated were awarded directly to the Belgian king, import tariffs increased or per capita taxes established. These had to be done in kind like ivory or rubber, which in fact meant that every Congolese had to give a certain amount of kind to the colonial rule. However, since the Congolese had been banned from hunting elephants in 1892, this meant an indirect compulsion to harvest rubber.

Huge rubber plantations emerged, which destroyed the traditional economy and made the population dependent on food supplies from Belgian companies. In order to force the workers to collect as much rubber as possible, the Belgian colonial rulers chose hostage detention as a coercive instrument. Simply chaining the workers together was not always practical because they had to climb trees to work.

Crimes against the population

The acts of violence against the local population were manifold. There were many reasons for these violent outbursts by the administrative organs, from the smallest violations, such as not fully achieved yield quotas, to uprisings for any alleged rebellion or non-compliance with the orders of the rulers to brutal punishments.

Delivery quotas and deadlines were imposed on each village (either in two or four weeks - depending on the distance between the village and the nearest collection point). As a guarantee, the women were taken hostage. If the men came too late or did not deliver enough rubber, the women were killed. Often, however, the women died beforehand as a result of the privations they were held hostage. Even rape were common. If a village refused to cooperate or if there was an uprising , it was destroyed and some of the residents, women, men and children, were shot.

The amount of rubber required was so high that it could actually only be obtained by incessant work day and night. Anyone who did not achieve the required amount was considered lazy and was severely punished. Often the men chopped off the entire rubber patient, which brought in more. However, the tendril died off, so that over time the men had to move further and further into the jungle in order to be able to harvest enough. In response to this, the chopping of the tendril was prohibited and punished with death . The profits made by the brutal exploitation were enormous. The shares of one of the companies involved, the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company (ABIR), rose from £ 4.5 within two years to £ 700, and finally to £ 1,000.

There were repeated uprisings and rebellions, but these were brutally suppressed by the Free State's colonial army, the Force Publique . In addition to the shootings, other cruel punishments were also used. Workers were punished by hanging them upside down from trees and leaving them to die. Other types of maltreatment, such as piercing legs with arrows, have been used e.g. B. carried out as punishment for adultery. Often the victims were put on public display after fatal sentences as a deterrent. For example, it is reported about Léon Rom , who collected human heads to decorate his flower beds. Other reports stem from rumors of genital hanging in villages of disgraced workers. Another example of deterrence was cannibalism against victims: The case of Nsala (a Congolese whose wife and daughter were eaten) became known. Another commonly used remedy was chicotte , which was used for corporal punishment. The blows with this whip made of dried and twisted hippo skin left permanent scars. A few blows could lead to unconsciousness or even death.

Mutilated Congolese

Another instrument of force often used was the chopping off (brutal amputation ) of the hands. The Force Publique was made up of blacks - only the officers were Europeans. In order for the soldiers not to go hunting with their ammunition or to keep them back for a revolt, a precise account had to be given for each cartridge that was fired. This was 'solved' by the formula “A right hand for every bullet”: For every bullet that was shot, the infantrymen had to cut off the right hand of those who had been killed and present it as evidence. The hands of the living were often cut off to explain the ammunition that had been used. The hands were smoked to make them more durable as it could take a long time for a white supervisor to check the number of hands. Sometimes noses were called in instead of hands in order not to weaken the labor of the enslaved population.

In addition to these corporal punishments, there were also many other punishments related to humiliation. It is reported that the district commissioner Jean Verdussen had men who did not use the latrine rub their faces with feces in order to have them march in front of the troops and publicly humiliate them. Furthermore, chaining the slave laborers, often by the neck, in groups was part of everyday life.

Upheaval and end of the Congo Free State

Through individual committed missionaries , such as William Henry Sheppard , who defended themselves, the events in the Congo came to the public. The full extent of the atrocity became apparent when Edmund Dene Morel , an employee of the shipping company that had a monopoly on trade with the Congo Free State, discovered that there was no trade with the colony, but the ships going into the Colony were practically only loaded with weapons and ammunition.

Morel subsequently initiated the first international human rights movement and achieved a great response to outrage, particularly in Great Britain and the USA. Photographs clearly demonstrated the extent of the oppression. Recordings of black people with chopped off hands or feet then made the rounds in Europe and the USA. In 1903 Great Britain sent the diplomat Roger Casement to the Congo to investigate the allegations against Leopold II and his regime. His report confirmed all of Morel's allegations. Under international and national pressure (Leopold II was unpopular in Belgium) the king finally gave in: in 1908 he ceded the Congo to the Belgian state. The colony was now called the Belgian Congo . The brutal coercive measures were stopped immediately, and forced labor itself was at least officially abolished in 1910. In reality, locals continued to be forced to work, albeit in slightly better conditions.

Impact and Evaluation

The state administration gradually improved the situation of the local population. However, despite the legal prohibition, forced labor was initially tolerated. External circumstances were the main reason for the changes: The majority of the rubber trees had been cut down, and the rubber plantations established in the Caribbean and Asia could now be used.

In order to secure large parts of the property obtained through the exploitation of the Free State of the Congo, King Leopold II founded the Niederfüllbach Foundation on September 9, 1907 . He transferred securities to the value of 40 million francs at the time, as well as furniture and jewelery to the value of 1.5 million francs, from the former Kronstiftung . In addition, his building site in Niederfüllbach was included in this foundation.

Even contemporaries estimated that half of the population in the Congo Free State had died from forced labor, hunger, the cruelty of the administration and disease. In the 20 years between the Congo Conference and Mark Twain's pamphlet King Leopold's Self-Discussion (1905), the population of the Congo was probably already decimated from originally around 25 million to 15 million. Twain and others also pointed out that without the ten million deaths, the population would number 30 million in those 20 years due to natural growth, so Leopold's death record would even be 15 million. In 1924, Belgian authorities finally determined that the Belgian Congo only had about ten million inhabitants. At the time of the end of Belgian rule (independence in 1960) it was 18 million.

The atrocities of the Congo "are undoubtedly one of the greatest crimes in modern colonial history". Whether they were genocide , however, is controversial, despite the genocidal proportions of the crimes. While Micha Brumlik calls it genocide or even Holocaust avant la lettre , other authors reject this designation because no systematic attempt was made to destroy a people or a certain ethnic group. Millions of deaths in the Congo were the result of extreme exploitation. What is striking when looking at the crimes afterwards are the three different phases into which they can be divided. Thus, with the publications of Sheppard, Twain and others, a hitherto unprecedented wave of public outrage about a reigning monarch emerged. International magazines even called for Leopold to be condemned for the crimes. The acts were ostracized internationally, and Leopold quickly found himself under political pressure. During this time, his reputation changed from the figure of the peaceful and caring father of the Congo to that of an unscrupulous tyrant who exploited the population to a previously unknown level of violence (captured by pictures). At the latest, however, with the turmoil of the First World War and the subsequent financial crisis, Leopold's deeds were more and more forgotten.

In this second phase, the dream of the former Belgian king came true: he was portrayed as a modernizer and liberator. An example of this forgetting is that up to the present day some Belgian textbooks are missing chapters on Leopold's crimes and only illuminate his intentions. The Belgian Colonial Museum also did not show any information about the crimes committed by Belgians against the Congolese population until 2005. After the renovation, which was completed in 2018, this was corrected. Further evidence of this forgetting are the countless statues and busts that are erected in many Belgian cities. The third phase can be described as a phase of remembering the deeds. Above all, Adam Hochschild should be mentioned here, who in 1998 again stimulated the reappraisal of Belgian colonial history with his publication Shadows over the Congo .

As part of the protests against racism due to the violent death of George Floyd, protesters demand the removal of statues by Leopold II.

Contemporary works

literature

  • Adam Hochschild : King Leopold's Ghost. Macmillan, 1998.
    • Shadows over the Congo. The story of one of the great, almost forgotten crimes of humanity. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-608-91973-2 ; Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-61312-3 .
  • Dieter H. Kollmer: Congo Free State and Belgian Congo. The Belgian colonial rule 1885 to 1960. In: Bernhard Chiari & Dieter H. Kollmer (Hrsg.): Guide to the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 3. Edition. Schöningh, Paderborn [a. a.] 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-75745-6 , pp. 40-49. ( PDF; 1.09 MB )
  • Daniel Vangroenweghe: Rood rubber . Leopold II in the Congo. Van Halewyck, Leuven 2010, ISBN 978-90-5617-973-1 .
  • Simon Hartmann: The institutions of the Leopoldian system: How perverted incentives contributed to extreme violence in the Congo In: Andreas Exenberger (Ed.): Africa Continent of Extreme Innsbruck, 2011, pp. 47–74.
  • Stefan Müller: Unregulated violence and genocide in the Congo. A humanitarian catastrophe in the dark of the global public , Vienna 2012.
  • Jörg-Uwe Albig: The Heart of Darkness In: Geo Epoche 66 (2014), Africa pp. 96-155.
  • Dominic Johnson : Congo: Wars, Corruption and the Art of Survival. Brandes and Apsel Verlag, Frankfurt, 2014.
  • Matthias Krupa : Farewell to Tervuren In: Die Zeit 50 (2013). ( [3] )
  • Neal Ascherson: The King Incorporated. Leopold the Second and the Congo. London 1999.

Movie

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Matthew White makes various estimates on Death Tolls in the Congo Free State section (1886–1908) , the average of which is 8 million .; Dieter H. Kollmer: The Belgian colonial rule 1908 to 1960 , in: Bernhard Chiari, Dieter H. Kollmer (Ed.): Guide to the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo , 2nd edition, Paderborn et al. 2006, p. 45. Information on the film Weißer König, Roter Kautschuk, Schwarzer Tod ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (Peter Pater, Belgium 2004) at the arte broadcaster.
  2. ^ Robert Harms: The end of red rubber: a reassessment . In: The Journal of African History . tape 16 , no. 1 , 1975, p. 75. , Doi : 10.1017 / S0021853700014110 , JSTOR : 181099 .
  3. ↑ Simon Hartmann: The institutions of the Leopoldian system , p. 50 f.
  4. ↑ Simon Hartmann: The institutions of the Leopoldian system , p. 51 ff.
  5. ↑ Simon Hartmann: The institutions of the Leopoldian system , p. 49 ff.
  6. ^ Anton Zischka : Science breaks monopolies. The researcher's struggle for new raw materials and new living space. Goldmann, Leipzig 1936, p. 151.
  7. ↑ Dominic Johnson: Congo: Wars, Corruption and the Art of Survival. P. 23.
  8. ↑ Adam Hochschild: Shadows over the Congo. , P. 235 f.
  9. ↑ Jörg-Uwe Albig: The heart of darkness. In: Geo Epoche 66, p. 96 ff.
  10. ↑ Luigi Tucciarone: The "Congo Abominations" as reflected in two official reports , p. 7 ff.
  11. ^ Niederfüllbach Foundation: History . ( [1] )
  12. ↑ Horst founder : genocide or forced modernization? , P. 145.
  13. ↑ Micha Brumlik : The Century of Extremes. In: Irmtrud Wojak (Ed.): Yearbook on the history and effects of the Holocaust - 2004. Genocide and war crimes in the first half of the 20th century, ( Fritz Bauer Institute ) Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York, NY 2004, Pp. 19–36, here p. 29.
  14. ↑ Adam Hochschild: Shadows over the Congo. The story of one of the great, almost forgotten crimes of humanity. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-608-91973-2 , p. 320f.
    Boris Barth : Genocide. Genocide in the 20th Century. History, theories, controversies. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-52865-1 , p. 314.
    Heinrich August Winkler : History of the West. From the beginnings in antiquity to the 20th century. Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61565-8 , p. 888.
  15. ^ William Thomas Stead & John Hobbis Harris: Ought King Leopold to be hanged? P. 51ff.
  16. ↑ Boris Pofalla: Postcolonialism: White Men, White Spots . In: THE WORLD . January 5, 2019 ( welt.de [accessed May 24, 2020]).
  17. ^ Farewell to Tervuren. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .
  18. ^ Colonial atrocities in the Congo: Leopold's ghost haunts Belgium . SPIEGEL-online, accessed on June 14, 2020.