Belgian
Congo

 		 The extract which follows is from Bertrand Russell’s Freedom and Organization 1814–1914, Chapter XXXI, Imperialism (pp. 450–456 of the hardback version).
    © apparently with Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Nottingham, England (or possibly Routledge & Co. Publishers). I'm assuming this passage falls within the 'fair dealing' clauses, despite its being somewhat long.

Some early articles from the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
There was (it seems) a huge fight over black labour, described as the 1892-1894 Congo Arab (or Belgo-Arab) War. Arab slave traders were to be replaced by Belgian rubber planters, may be an accurate description. The Fall of the Congo Arabs (Sidney Langford Hinde, 1897) is a British, or perhaps Jewish, report. It seems that the desire for labour out of Islamic hands was one of the motives for the opposition to slavery. Notable characters include Zanzibar and 'Tippu Tip'.
Interestingly, the Arab slave sea route to Zanzibar has its modern parallel with the Jew-controlled Arab countries, and the rail line connecting (with luck) the Indian Ocean with the Atlantic.
I haven't attempted to deal here with Katanga and the Congo in the 1960s; nor the 1990s.

Click for a few endnotes, mostly on diplomacy and on E D Morel.

Important New Note. 16 July 2021 by RW:

I've just watched a 23 minute video by ShadowCyborg, on the Belgian Congo, which I grabbed here not trusting Bitchute to retain it; it was deleted by Youtube.

It attacks the whole idea of mass deaths; mainly on population estimate grounds, convincingly. It says little about rubber; from the 1980s the car trade was small but growing, and details or rubber trees and their output was not examined by ShadowCyborg of The Alternative Hypothesis. Thinking about it, Malaya seems a more likely source for rubber.

That video is a reply to a 'best selling' book by Adam Hochschild published in 1998. A Jewish atrocity book? Hm. We've heard of that in the post-WW2 world! In fact the Congo Reform Association dated from Edwardian times. ShadowCyborg's commentary doesn't go into the detail of E D Morel. He seems to be suggesting the issue was another Jewish scheme; Jews had flooded into London before that time, and must have had opinions on Belgium from their agents there; Belgium was a country divided into Dutch speakers (Flemish) and French speakers (Walloons), and was left over from previous war decisions, naturally something that appealed to Jews, limbering up for South African Wars, China, Bulgaria, Russia, and the invention of the Federal Reserve. The atrocity stories, says Cyborg, are mostly false and were impossible—presumably the product of Jewish atrocity propaganda of the sort embodied in anti-German lies. Very likely 'White' colonisation of Africa was in most cases accompanied by Jewish and Crypto-Jew activities.
      As far as I know, Belgian governments have never attempted to counter the atrocity claims; but of course it's likely that Jews have censorship powers against them.

ShadowCyborg's video doesn't deal with many issues, for example the cutting off of hands and feet, which is an Islamic punishment. Nor with the value and costs of rubber; judging by the cine film shown, these were produced in grubby little fistfuls. There's not much on the internal politics of Belgium, except for the region being the personal property of Leopold II, when of course Jews would have liked it to be their personal property. ShadowCyborg does not examine the background of E D Morel (stated to be born in France; his mother's name suggests Emmeline Pankhurst was related to here, and that she came from wealth). Possibly has was funded in the Jewish fashion by Jews, using then-modern propaganda methods, analogously to the Dreyfus Affair. He resigned from a civil service job to carry out his campaign, so this is entirely possible. There was some French anti-Clericalism (i.e. anti-Roman Catholicism) in the mix.

Jewish plans to star the 'Great War' may be the real issue here: An agent, with no obvious means of support, with some name-changing and nation-changing, running a campaign against vague targets, including Belgium itself, is what Jews do. It may be that Morel was part of the scheme by Jews to start the Great War, and begin the ruin of Europe.

 

II. THE CONGO

The Slave Trade having been abolished, and slaves having been emancipated, the easiest way to exploit black labour was to occupy the countries in which the black men live, and it conveniently happened that these countries contained various valuable raw materials. Greed was only one, though the most important, of the motives to African imperialism, but there was one case, that of the Congo “Free” State, in which it appears to have been the sole motive. Some of the Philosophical Radicals thought that pecuniary self-interest, rightly understood, should be an adequate motive for useful activity. The example of the Congo will enable us to test this theory.

The Congo is a vast river, draining an area about as large as Europe without Russia, flowing through dark forests, and passing through territory almost entirely inhabited by savages. Although the mouth had long been known, the upper reaches were first discovered in 1871 by the virtuous Dr. Livingstone, who combined in equal measure a love of exploration and a desire to convert Africans to the Christian faith. Stanley, who discovered him at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, was less interested in the Gospel than in some other aspects of Christian civilization. His first journey was undertaken on behalf of the New York Herald, his subsequent journeys (which established the whole course of the Congo and of several tributaries) were made at the expense and in the interests of Leopold, King of the Belgians, of whom Stanley spoke always in terms of the highest praise.

King Leopold was the son of  Queen Victoria’s Uncle Leopold, whose advice she valued in the early years of her reign. He was moreover, as Sir H. H. Johnston puts it, “grandson of Louis Philippe, husband of an Austrian Archduchess, a devoted upholder of the Roman Church, and a very rich man.” He was a promoter of scientific research, particularly in Africa, and a patron of missionary efforts. The Berlin Conference of 1884, convened for the partition of Africa, decided that this high-minded monarch should be entrusted personally with the government of a territory which extended over about one million square miles, and contained the greater part of the Congo basin. He was respected by diplomats, extolled by travellers, and generally believed to be a model of philanthropy in his attitude to the negroes. In 1906, when he offered £12,000 for scientific research as to the prevention of sleeping sickness, he declared in a manifesto:
If God gives me that satisfaction (victory over sleeping sickness) I shall be able to present myself before His judgement-seat with the credit of having performed one of the finest acts of the century, and a legion of rescued beings will call down upon me His grace. [Quoted by E. D. Morel, Red Rubber, p. 151.]
When King Leopold took over the Congo, he announced that his purpose was purely philanthropic. Stanley, who conducted propaganda for him in England, explained how much he loved the black man, and feared that English people could not “appreciate rightly, because there are no dividends attached to it, this restless, ardent, vivifying, and expansive sentiment which seeks to extend civilizing influence among the dark places of sad-browed Africa.” The Prince of Wales (Edward VII), whose help was invoked by King Leopold as early as 1876 in calling a conference to discuss “the settlement by Europeans of unexplored Africa and the encouragement of exploration with a view to spreading civilization,” became dubious when assured that the sole motive was philanthropy. He wrote to Sir Bartle Frere:
The question is whether the public who represent money will take the same interest that he does. Philanthropy is all very well, but unless it is practical and gives a practical result it will not find that favour in the eyes of the English public that it deserves. [Sidney Lee, King Edward VII, I, p. 629.]

However, Leopold’s emphasis on philanthropy served his purpose. The other Powers showed little enthusiasm for an enterprise that was represented as involving expenditure without hope of pecuniary recompense, and when he offered to bear all the expense himself, they allowed him to assume the burden (as they supposed it) on condition of his preserving freedom of religion, freedom of trade, freedom of the Press, and so on.

After winning the approval of the world by suppressing Arab slave-raiders, the royal philanthropist set to work to introduce orderly government into his dominions. Being thoroughly up-to-date, he established a system of State Socialism, the most thoroughgoing that has ever existed; and in agreement with much modern opinion, he seems to have held that Socialism should involve no nonsense about democracy. He issued decrees by which all the land, all the rubber, and all the ivory was to be the property of the State – which was himself. It was made illegal for natives to sell rubber or ivory to Europeans, and for Europeans to buy either from natives. He next sent a secret circular to his officials, explaining that they “must neglect no means of exploiting the produce of the forests,” and that they would receive a bonus on all rubber and ivory, which would be great when the cost of collection was small, and small when it was great. For example, if the cost of collection was thirty centimes or less per kilo, the official received fifteen centimes per kilo; while if the cost was over seventy centimes per kilo, the official received only four centimes. The financial results were all that could have been hoped. Parts of the Congo were worked directly for the King, parts for companies in which he was a large shareholder. Take, for example, the Anversoise Trust, which exploited a region to the north of the river. The paid-up capital, of which the State had hall, was £10,000, and the net profits in six years were £370,000. Another company, in four years, made a profit of £731,680 on a paid-up capital of £40,200. The original value of the shares – of which the King held half – was 250 francs, but in 1906 their value had risen to 16,000 francs. It is more difficult to discover what were the profits of the vast areas which were reserved as the King’s private domain, but it is estimated by Professor Cattier that they amounted to £300,000 a year. [Morel, op. cit., p. 145.]

The methods by which these vast profits were accumulated were very simple. Each village was ordered by the authorities to collect and bring in a certain amount of rubber – as much as the men could collect and bring in by neglecting all work for their own maintenance. If they failed to bring the required amount, their women were taken away and kept as hostages in compounds or in the harems of government employees. If this method failed, native troops, many of them cannibals, were sent into the village to spread terror, if necessary by killing some of the men; but in order to prevent a waste of cartridges, they were ordered to bring one right hand for every cartridge used. If they missed, or used cartridges on big game, they cut off the hands of living people to make up the necessary number. The result was, according to the estimate of  Sir H. H. Johnston, which is confirmed from all other impartial sources, that in fifteen years the native population was reduced from about twenty million to scarcely nine million. [Sir H. H. Johnston, The Colonization of Africa (Cambridge Historical Series), p. 352.] It is true that the sleeping sickness contributed something to this reduction, but the spread of this disease was greatly accelerated by King Leopold’s practice of moving hostages from one end of his dominions to the other.

Enormous pains were taken to keep secret the large-scale systematic murder by which the royal capitalist obtained his profits. The officials and law-courts were both in his pay and at his mercy, private traders were excluded, and Catholic missionaries silenced by his piety. Belgium was systematically corrupted, and the Belgian Government was to a considerable extent his accomplice. Men who threatened disclosures were bought off, or, if that proved impossible, disappeared mysteriously. The only men in the Congo who could not be silenced were the Protestant missionaries, most of whom, not unnaturally, supposed that the King was ignorant of the deeds done in his name. To take one instance out of many, Joseph Clark, of the American Baptist Missionary Union, wrote on March 25, 1896:
This rubber traffic is steeped in blood, and if the natives were to rise and sweep every white person on the Upper Congo into eternity there would, still be left a fearful balance to their credit. Is it not possible for some American of influence to see the King of the Belgians and let him know what is being done in his name? The Lake is reserved for the King – no traders allowed – and to collect rubber for him hundreds of men, women, and children have been shot. [Morel, op. cit., p. 54.]

But it was easy to suppose that the missionaries exaggerated, or that these were merely isolated instances of officials who had been turned to cruelty by fever and solitude. It seemed incredible that the whole system was deliberately promoted by the King for the sake of pecuniary gain. The truth might have remained long unrecognized but for one man – E. D. Morel. Sir H. H. Johnston, an empire-builder untainted with eccentricity, thoroughly familiar with Africa, and originally a believer in King Leopold, after describing his influence in stifling criticism throughout the civilized world, says:
Few stories are at once more romantic – and will seem more incredible to posterity – than that which relates how this Goliath was overcome by a David in the person of a poor shipping clerk in the office of a Liverpool shipping firm which was amongst the partners of King Leopold.
      This shipping clerk – E. D. Morel – was sent over to Antwerp, and Belgium generally, because he could speak French, and could therefore arrange all the minutiae of steamer fares and passenger accommodation, and the scales of freights for goods and produce, with the Congo State officials. In the course of his work he became acquainted with some of the grisly facts of Congo maladministration. He drew his employers’ attention to these stories and their verification. The result was his dismissal.
      Almost penniless, he set to work with pen and paper to enlighten the world through the British press and British publishers on the state of affairs on the Congo. [Op. cit., p. 355.]

From that day to the moment of his death, Morel was engaged in ceaseless battle – first against inhumanity in the Congo, then against secret diplomacy in Morocco, then against a one-sided view of the origin of the War, and last against the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles. His first fight, after incredible difficulties, was successful, and won him general respect; his second and greater fight, for justice to Germany, brought him obloquy, prison, ill health, and death, with no success except in the encouragement of those who loved him for his passionate disinterestedness. No other man known to me has had the same heroic simplicity in pursuing and proclaiming political truth.

Morel’s difficulties in the Congo Reform agitation were such as most men would have found overwhelming. The French, impressed by the magnitude of Leopold’s profits, had established a very similar system in the French Congo, where it was producing the same results; they were, therefore, by no means anxious that the world should know the inevitable consequences of his economic methods. The British Foreign Office, needing the friendship of France and Belgium for reasons of high politics, was very loath to be persuaded, and at first suppressed consular reports tending to confirm the accusations of Morel and the missionaries.

The Roman Catholic Church – acting, according to Morel, under orders from the Vatican – represented that the whole movement for reform was a disguised attack upon Roman Catholicism emanating from the Protestant missionaries; but later, when the evidence proved irresistible, this defence was abandoned. King Leopold and his agents, of course stuck at nothing in the way of vilification and imputation of discreditable motives.

Nevertheless, Morel and the Congo Reform Association succeeded in rousing public opinion, first in England, and then throughout the civilized world. The British Government was forced to admit that the accusations had been confirmed by our Consuls, especially Casement (who was hanged during the War). The King, to keep up the pretence that the atrocities had occurred against his wishes, was compelled to appoint a commission of three impartial jurists to investigate the charges, and, although he published only a fragment of their report, what was allowed to appear made it evident that the charges were well founded. At last, in 1908, Europe, using the authority conferred by the Berlin Congress, deprived him of the Congo and handed it over to Belgium, on the understanding that the King’s system of exploitation should cease. By this time King Leopold had come be to avoided by his brother monarchs, on account both of his cruelty to negroes and of his kindness to ballet-girls.

Against King Leopold, it was possible for the conscience of mankind to be victorious, for he was, after all, a minor potentate. Against France, agitation has proved powerless. Except in the coastal regions, from which travellers are not easily excluded, large-scale atrocities occurred, and probably still occur; but “an impenetrable mist still lies upon the forest of the middle and upper Congo, shutting them out from the observation of men.” [Morel, The Black Man’s Burden (1920), p. 147.]

[Back to Start]

ENDNOTES

  • Booklets published by the Congo Reform Association are available in the British Library. I was surprised to see how much of the work seems to have been done by women.
  • There's some irony in Russell's distinction between 'savages' and the 'civilized world': I don't think he ever considered whether survival in dangerous and unhealthy regions of Africa didn't, in fact, require considerable skill. He used the same word 'savages' in his Autobiography, which was written/revised when he was in his 90s. It's possible that the word was meant in the sense of being wild or unplanned, rather than in the technical sense of 'uncivilised' or the other senses suggesting cruelty or unsociability—his History of Western Philosophy has a passage stating in effect that modern techniques wouldn't permit people to survive in small groups.
  • Russell seems never to have revised his views of the various imperialisms, or attempted to seriously weigh evidence, always for example regarding the British Empire as benevolent, and the Russians as barbaric; perhaps similarly with regard to earlier epochs he seems never to have encountered views seriously anti-Norman Conquest or anti-Spanish in South America, or pro-Attila or pro-Genghis Khan.
  • Casement also investigated and reported on Catholic atrocities in Peru. He appears to have been targeted with a 'dirty tricks' campaign, involving a supposed diary of his, but I'm uncertain whether it was shown to be forged.
  • Russell's attribution of atrocities to Catholics occurred in his Vietnam War activities. He never understood Jewish influences. And never attempted to separate Jewish activities from Catholic activities. By the time of these events, Jewish ownership of press sources and 'news agencies' was easily able to censor material from general readers.
  • On the subject of Jews, study of Jew surname changes as a method of concealment causes me to wonder whether Stanley and Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone, of "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" were both crypto-Jews, surveying Africa with Jewish power in mind. It's entirely possible that Leopold was a front for Jewish activity.
  • On censorship processes, just a week ago I saw an ignorant TV antique dealer praising Stanley, evidently with no background knowledge whatsoever, so it seems fair to talk of a continued censorship process. Incidentally, with the rise of Internet communications the slogan 'Holocaust denier' has been manufactured to apply to people investigating the Second World War. The manufacturers have some difficulty with the rather obvious point that this phrase applies to themselves.
  • ... including 'gallant little Belgium', a slogan devised during the First World War.
  • A collection of Labour Booklets, 1921, including E M Forster on Egypt and Eden & Cedar Paul on Communism, lists Military preparations for the Great War, Fact versus Fiction by E D Morel as 1922, and says he's the author of 'Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy', 'Truth and the War', 'Diplomacy Revealed' etc. Morel's object was to show that the idea that Germany armed especially for war was a myth: he used published data, mostly on expenditure on armies and navies, and outdid the conventional 'historians' of the time - a phenomenon not unfamiliar in later years.
  • C H Rolph's 1973 Life of Kingsley Martin has this passage on Morel, based partly on information published in 1968: ‘... E D Morel, a crusading journalist who in 1904 had founded and led a successful movement to liberate the Congo Free State from oppression by the Belgians under Leopold II. Morel had found that his campaign was being secretly obstructed at every step by the British Foreign Office, which shared the fear of the French that Belgium might, because of it, be “pushed into the arms of Germany”. In other words, Anglo-German ill-feeling was making Anglo-French cordiality indispensable to British Foreign policy; and accordingly, if the French wanted the Belgian Congo left alone, the Belgian Congo would be officially left alone, and anyone unofficially interfering with it would have as unhappy a time as could be arranged for him. ... He was appalled and embittered by the duplicity of the Foreign Office, a state of mind that was intensified during the Agadir crisis of 1911, and led him to publish a vehemently pro-German account of that. ..’
  • Frank Harris comments in his My Life and Loves that the British 'could have stopped it with a word'.
  • On E.D. Morel, and the First World War, Russell's Autobiography vol. 2: ‘.. With untiring energy and immense ability in the face of all the obstacles of propaganda and censorship, he did what he could to enlighten the British nation as to the true purposes for which the Government was driving the young men to the shambles. More than any other opponent of the War, he was attacked by politicians and the press, and of those who had heard his name ninety-nine percent believed him to be in the pay of the Kaiser. At last he was sent to prison for the purely technical offence of having employed Miss Sidgwick, instead of the post, for the purpose of sending a letter and some documents to Romain Rolland. He was not, like me, in the first division [i.e. given privileged treatment in prison], and he suffered an injury to his health from which he never recovered. .. when [Ramsay] Macdonald came to form a government, he could not think of including anyone so tainted with pro-Germanism as Morel. Morel felt his ingratitude deeply, and shortly afterwards died of heart disease, acquired from the hardships of prison life.’
    What Russell doesn't say is that Morel also wrote The Horror on the Rhine on atrocities in post-war Germany, published in 1920. This included atrocities by blacks.

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Scanning, HTML, notes Rae West. First uploaded 98-10-02. Revd 98-10-24, 99-05-08, 99-10-30. Browser compatibility improved 99-05-07. Two more notes 2015-05-24. Stanley and Livingstone note 2017-07-18. 'Horror on the Rhine' 8 8 2018 Benguela rail note 2018-09-26
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