WEBVTT - The Red Paint on Leopold II 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:03.840 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:08.360 and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:19.880 In eighteen eighty nine, an American journalist named George Washington 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:25.200 Williams was granted an opportunity to sit down informally with 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:30.880 King Leopold the second of Belgium. Williams was a groundbreaking 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:34.920 published historian, but his life was a done fascinating history. 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.400 He was a black man born free in Pennsylvania who 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:42.120 enlisted to fight for the Union during the Civil War 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:45.680 when he was just fourteen years old. From there, he 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:48.720 went to Mexico and joined the army fighting to overthrow 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:53.360 the European Emperor Maximilian. Later, he became a college graduate 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.400 of Baptist minister and the first black man to serve 0:00:56.480 --> 0:01:00.880 in the Ohio State legislature. By this point, Leopold Drain 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:04.480 he had become an expert in the trappings of monarchy. 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:09.360 He was a master of charm. He was friendly, self effacing, modest, 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:14.480 and above all diplomatic. He remembered names of wives and children, 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:19.440 and he always asked after them. He welcomed Williams into 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:23.920 his palace in Brussels and told him with obvious relish 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.960 about all of the philanthropic work he had been doing 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:31.520 in the Congo Free State. The meeting went incredibly well. 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:36.080 One side note, one has to imagine that maybe William's 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:40.400 youthful military service in Mexico didn't come up. After all, 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:44.399 the imperialist queen he had been fighting against, Carlotta of Mexico, 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:49.320 was Leopold's sister. But for Williams, it was difficult not 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:54.880 to be impressed with Leopold and with Belgium It's clean, wide, 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:59.760 sweeping avenues and open national parks and the stately facades 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:04.960 of palaces. It was a new country and a new monarchy. 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.919 The Belgian people had installed Leopold's father as the first king, 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:13.000 imported him from a line of German royals back when 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.680 Belgium had gained its independence from Holland in eighteen thirty. 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.160 But under Leopold the Second, the nation had become a 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:25.160 center of international affairs in Europe, thanks a note small 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:29.520 part to Leopold's passion for developing the Congo. What had 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:32.400 been a blank spot on the map of Africa just 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:36.720 a few decades ago was now, as Leopold told Williams, 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:42.440 a quote benevolent enterprise of local programs seeking to increase 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:47.400 the knowledge of the natives and secure their welfare. And so, 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.000 as Williams left the meeting and strolled down the marble 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:54.919 steps of the palace, he reflected on what an impressive 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:59.000 man the young king was. Leopold the Second was a 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:04.679 paradig for a new kind of compassionate modern imperialism. Out 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:08.079 of his own pocket, the king had funded stations along 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:12.800 the Congo River that were stocked with scientists, linguists, and researchers. 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:18.000 He built infrastructure to help missionaries spread Christianity, all while 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.679 helping establish a system in which black tribal leaders could 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:25.280 establish their own local dominions as part of a larger 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:31.919 organized coalition. At least that's what Leopold said he was doing. 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:38.640 Fascinated by Leopold's description of the Congo Free State George Washington, 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:44.040 Williams decided to visit for himself. What he found both 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:49.880 sickened and outraged him. It was a slave state in 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:54.920 all but name. Men, women and children who had had 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:59.200 their land stolen from them, either by trickery or by violence, 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.800 who are then forced to work grueling hours gathering rubber 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.160 that would be shipped back to Europe to pay for 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:13.680 Belgium's beautiful roads and parks. Men, women and children who 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:17.320 failed to meet their quota for rubber production were either 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:22.720 whipped or killed under the capricious and brutal authority of 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:29.080 black soldiers also enslaved. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away sat 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:34.440 civilized Leopold the Second charmingly asking about your wife by name. 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:40.599 George Washington Williams became the first person to interview Native 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:45.919 Africans about the horrific abuses they were suffering under imperialism. 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:49.640 From an outpost at Stanley Falls, he wrote an open 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:54.040 letter which he addressed to his serene Majesty Leopold, the 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:58.680 second King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State, 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:03.159 in which will Ms wrote in clear detail every one 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:06.440 of the atrocities in the so called Congo free State 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:11.000 that he came across. He consulted his notes and echoed 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.520 back the very words that Leopold had used to describe 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:20.800 his endeavor, the so called fostering care and benevolent enterprise 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:27.880 and effort to ensure the native's welfare. Williams wrote against 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:35.000 the deceit, fraud, robberies, arson, murder, slave rating and general 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:39.200 policy of cruelty of your Majesty's government. To the natives 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:46.000 stands their record of unexampled patience, long suffering and forgiving spirit, 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:51.839 which puts the boasted civilization and professed religion of your 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:57.320 Majesty's government to the blush. Leopold had not claimed the 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.760 Congo as a colony for Belgium. Using smoke screens of 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:07.159 shell corporations and meaningless charity committees, he became the sole 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:12.920 owner of the largest private landholding in history. Belgium did 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:19.480 not own the Congo. Leopold did. It was banal, bureaucratic evil, 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.920 ignored and then accepted by the rest of the world 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:28.120 out of sheer apathy. Leopold exploited the flimsiness of the 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:33.080 institutions that hold up the civilized world and the veneer 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:38.760 of respectability that comes from a royal title. Williams's open 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:43.440 letter sparked the first wave of international interest in Leopold's 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:48.120 Congolese endeavor, But of course Belgian officials would attempt to 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:52.520 discredit Williams, and Williams would die of disease before returning 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:57.560 home to America. It would be decades before the international 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:02.719 community reckoned with the stress machine of Leopold the Second, congo, 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:09.800 if indeed it ever really has, I'm Danis Schwartz, and 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:19.600 this is noble blood. Leopold the Second was not a 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:24.800 boy of great promise. He was gangly and awkward boy 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:28.680 who looked like a scarecrow in his military uniform. He 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.560 has such a nose, said Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime Minister, 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:36.240 as a young prince has in a fairy tale, who 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:41.280 has been banned by a malignant fairy. From an early age, 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:46.080 Leopold's parents decided not to bother with much affection for him. 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.440 In a letter while he was off at military school, 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.480 his mother wrote, I was disturbed to see in the 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.080 colonel's report that you had again been so lazy, and 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.800 that your exercises had been so bad. Your father was 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:03.120 as disturbed as I by this last report. Leopold had 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.239 no expectation that he would hear directly from his father. 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:09.440 If you wanted to speak with his father, the King, 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:12.960 he was required to request a formal audience and go 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:17.640 through his father's secretary. When Leopold was eighteen, he was 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:23.160 married to Marie Henrietta and Austrian Habsburg archduchess. They hated 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:27.520 each other almost immediately. Marie Henrietta was athletic and an 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:32.360 active horsewoman, and Leopold was well, in the words of 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.360 Queen Victoria, very odd and in the habit of saying 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:42.160 disagreeable things to people. He was narrow minded, interested in geography, 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:46.520 and fastidious about keeping track of money, and exactly as 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.600 fun of a person as those two interests make him sound. 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:54.760 The pair honeymooned in Venice, and Marie Henrietta wept in 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:58.400 public because her new husband refused to let her ride 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:02.600 in a gondola. If God hears my prayers, she wrote 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.400 to a friend, I shall not go on living much 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:10.199 longer still, Even though by all accounts they barely tolerated 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.720 one another, the royal couple managed to have four children, 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.720 though their one son died at age nine from pneumonia 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:22.880 after falling in a pond. At his son's funeral, Leopold 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:27.720 broke down publicly for the first and only time, although 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:31.960 he did regain enough composure to ask members of Parliament 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.240 to make sure that the funeral costs would be handled 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:40.040 by the state. Leopold was so uninterested in his daughters 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:42.480 that he tried to make himself an exception to the 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:46.320 law in Belgium that requires one's assets to be passed 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:51.160 on to one's children. From that point on, Leopold simply 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.520 had no use for his wife, or really for the 0:09:54.559 --> 0:10:00.319 Belgian government Petipe petition. Leopold would say, small coun tree, 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:04.200 small people. He would have no more sons, and so 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:11.839 his legacy would need to become something greater. Leopold became 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.040 king at thirty years old, but being king in Belgium 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:18.600 in the nineteenth century wasn't anything close to the power 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:20.680 a king would have had in Europe a few hundred 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:25.120 years earlier. Their family was a symbolic monarchy who served 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.120 at the pleasure of parliament, not because they were granted 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:34.040 absolute authority by God. Even Leopold's title was restrictive and awkward. 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:38.360 He wasn't the King of Belgium technically, he was the 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:42.560 King of the Belgians, a formality that just reinforced the 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:46.480 notion that his leadership was more for show than anything else. 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:50.960 And so Leopold decided to turn his gaze beyond his 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:54.800 small country and begin to focus his energy on his 0:10:54.880 --> 0:11:01.000 earliest passion profits, but not just any prophets the profits 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:05.600 that came from owning a colony. Even before he had 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:11.400 become king, Leopold's interest in colonialization bordered on obsession. He 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:15.240 spent a month in Spain going through the dusty archives 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:19.480 in the old Exchange Building page by page to calculate 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:24.200 the revenue they made from their colonies in America. Unfortunately, 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:29.200 the people of Belgium didn't really share their king's imperialist dreams. 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:34.559 Their nation was new and small, Focusing on a colony 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:38.840 seemed like an expensive luxury, especially when they didn't have 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:43.280 a merchant fleet, let alone in navy. But Leopold wouldn't 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:46.680 be deterred, even as they elected officials with the real 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:50.839 power in the country continued to demure when Leopold approached 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.640 in the halls of the Palace with a new idea 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:58.280 for a place to plant the Belgian flag. After returning 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:02.040 from one of his many scouting trips, Leopold brought the 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:06.000 finance minister two gifts, a piece of marble from the 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:11.280 Acropolis and a locket with his portrait. Inside the locket, 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:17.160 Leopold wrote, Belgium must have a colony if Belgium was 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.160 ever going to be a world power. If Leopold was 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.200 ever going to have any real power, he needed to 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:27.120 claim land from somewhere else on the globe. The power 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.560 was by the end of the eighteen hundreds, unclaimed land 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:36.000 would become harder to find. Leopold scoured maps of the world. 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.400 Could someone buy those tiny islands off the coast of 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:43.959 South America is Fiji for sale? Could he buy the 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:49.199 Philippines from Spain. Leopold even floated the idea of buying 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:52.560 lakes in the Nile Delta so that he could drain 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:57.040 them and claim the land. For the moment, he wrote, 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:01.360 neither the Spanish, nor the Portuguese, nor the Dutch are 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:06.120 inclined to sell. I intend to find out discreetly if 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:14.600 there's anything to be done in Africa. It's at this 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:17.920 point in the story that we need to introduce another character, 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:22.240 a writer turned explorer born in Wales with the name 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:28.200 John Rowlands. Rowlands had a miserable childhood, born out of wedlock, 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:32.480 abandoned by his mother, and bounced around among extended family 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:35.680 until he landed at a workhouse for the poor, like 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:39.800 a character in a Charles Dickens novel. But as soon 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:43.000 as he turned eighteen, like a character in a Mark 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.920 Twain novel, John Rowlands made his way to the Mississippi River. 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:51.520 He eventually settled in New Orleans, and this is where 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:57.360 Rowland's story becomes more myth than fact. According to him, 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:01.360 he saw the wealthy trading magnet, Henry Hope Stanley, sitting 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.600 on his porch and boldly asked if he could have 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.920 a job. The man became such a mentor to the 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:11.959 younger boy that he eventually adopted him, and Rowlands took 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:18.440 on his new father's name, rechristening himself Henry Morton Stanley. 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:23.280 Henry Morton Stanley wrote all about his unconventional upbringing in 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:28.000 his autobiography. He wrote about how tragically the senior Stanley 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:32.440 died just two years after his adoption, but Henry Hope 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.880 Stanley wouldn't actually die for another twenty years, and there 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:41.840 are no records of any adoption. In fact, Henry Morton 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:46.520 Stanley gets so many strange details wrong that some historians 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:50.080 argue that he didn't even meet the wealthy trader, let 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:54.160 alone become his protegee. But the truth didn't matter as 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:57.400 much as a good story. That was the real lesson 0:14:57.480 --> 0:15:01.200 learned Henry Morton Stanley would be come a master of 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:06.480 reworking and mythologizing his own narrative until the truth was unknowable. 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:10.040 Stanley would go on to fight on both sides of 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:13.040 the American Civil War, first for the South and then 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:15.920 for the North, and then after the war was over, 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:19.720 he began to work as a journalist. It was an 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:25.120 assignment for the New York Herald in that catapulted Henry 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:30.720 Morton Stanley to international fame. You see, four years earlier, 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.120 Europe had lost touch with a Scottish geologist by the 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:39.680 name of doctor David Livingston. Stanley made it his mission 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:44.160 to go find Livingston, alive or dead, all while sending 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:47.040 back columns to be published in the New York Herald. 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.760 It took two years and a seven hundred mile trek 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:56.600 outfitted with one hundred and eleven porters, but in present 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:02.360 day Tanzania, Stanley found the scientists and, according to Stanley, 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:07.640 greeted him with a line that is now iconic. Dr Livingston. 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:12.160 I presume it's a great line, but in all actuality, 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:15.040 not one that he actually said at the time. It 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:19.400 doesn't appear anywhere in his contemporary journals, but that doesn't matter. 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.000 Stanley was a writer, and he knew that the most 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:25.920 important part of a story was the way you tell it. 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:29.440 In a way, He's right, we all remember that line 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:33.240 a hundred and fifty years later. In some ways, Stanley 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.560 was the prototype for the type of self conscious travel 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:42.800 on luxury blogs and outdoorsy Instagram accounts, in which the 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:48.640 experience itself only exists through its presentation to the outside world. 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:52.840 Stanley's accounts of his adventure and the book he wrote 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:57.920 about the experience, turned him into an overnight international celebrity. 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:01.320 He also got a lucky break, its Livingstone, dying of 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.879 malaria and dysentery before they both returned to Europe, so 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:07.920 there wouldn't be another white man who could contradict any 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:12.600 of his accounts. It was Stanley's word against no one's, 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:16.960 and the world loved it. They devoured his tales of 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:23.600 rebellious porters and vicious barbarian African tribes, wild animals, and 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:29.119 most terrible of all, the brutal quote Arab slave trade, 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:33.199 which Europe was free to Scoff and gas Bat having 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:38.640 mostly banned their own massive industrial transatlantic slave trade operations. 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:46.760 Oh about thirty years earlier after his incredible Livingston mission, 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:50.160 Stanley set out again, this time to trace the Great 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:54.800 Lakes of Africa, the unmapped heart of what he Stanley 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:59.040 called the Dark Continent, and to trace the Lualaba River 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:01.840 to see if it fed into the Nile or if 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:06.719 it horses shoot around and became the Congo River. This time, 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:09.760 Stanley was sponsored by both the New York Herald and 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.560 the Daily Telegraph in London, and his caravan was more 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:16.280 than twice the size of the one that had accompanied 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.639 him to find Livingstone. There were over three hundred people 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:24.679 traveling with him, although only three other white men and 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:29.280 Henry Morton Stanley being Henry Morton, Stanley didn't want anyone 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.720 with him who might upstage him, so the men he 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:36.920 chose to accompany him had no experience exploring, and all 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:40.479 three of them died before the journey was complete. For 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:45.399 his hundreds of Zanzibari porters, the trip was months of 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:49.880 carrying incredibly heavy loads on their heads and backs, while 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:55.119 Stanley riddled them with abuse. If they mutinied or attempted 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:59.480 to flee, he punished them either with lashes or by 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:04.280 keeping in chains to humiliate them. But the natives that 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:10.160 Stanley ran into fared if possible. Even worse villages armed 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:14.240 only with spears, arrows, or a few ancient traded for 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:18.879 muskets were no match for Stanley, outfitted with rifles and 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:23.439 an elephant gun. Unfortunately, the only source we have to 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:28.240 go on about these encounters is Stanley himself, Yet reading 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.720 his words, he doesn't mask his own pettiness or brutality. 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:36.840 Attacked and destroyed twenty eight large towns and three or 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:40.960 four score villages, he wrote. He went on to describe 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:44.680 a river coast where mockers shook their spears at him. 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:51.119 Stanley opened fire with a Winchester repeating rifle. Quote six 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:55.440 shots and four deaths were sufficient to quiet the mocking. 0:19:56.760 --> 0:20:00.439 Stanley's columns did lead to shock and criticism from anti 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:05.680 slavery society and humanitarians around the world, but James Gordon Bennett, 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:10.480 his newspaper editor, dismissed their criticisms as the pearl clutching 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:15.320 of elites who had never been in the metaphorical trenches. Critics, 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:22.040 Bennett wrote, are safe in London philanthropists whose impractical view 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:25.280 is that a leader should permit his men to be 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:29.320 slaughtered by the natives and should be slaughtered himself and 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.960 let discovery go to the dogs, but should never pull 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:38.760 a trigger against the species of human vermin. One European 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:45.240 read every single update from Stanley with rapturous fascination. King 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:49.080 Leopold the Second who asked his servants to bring any 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:52.919 newspaper with any dispatch from Henry Morton Stanley up to 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:58.359 his chambers right away. When Stanley finally completed his mission, 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:02.040 emerging at the Portuguese settlement at the mouth of the 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:06.159 Congo River, he became the second white man ever to 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:10.080 traverse Africa from east to west, and the first white 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:14.640 explorer to trace the source of the Congo. The Congo 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:19.919 was perfect for Leopold's purposes. It was a massive area 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:24.399 laced with waterways for easy transportation once roads were built 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:28.879 to traverse the most dangerous sections of rapids. Best of all, 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:33.080 as Stanley's writings had made clear, the local inhabitants were 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:38.080 no military threat. Thanks to centuries of slave raids from 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:42.200 both coasts, the few large kingdoms around the Congo were 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:48.080 significantly weakened. The diverse population consisted of two hundred different 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:51.960 ethnic groups who spoke over four hundred languages and dialects, 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:55.880 which meant that the risk of them uniting against colonialists 0:21:56.119 --> 0:22:01.080 was small. Leopold had found the answer to the question 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:05.680 he had been asking his entire adult life, but actually 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:10.680 claiming the undeveloped region encircled by the Congo River would 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.760 be more challenging than just willing it. The Belgian people 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:19.640 were completely uninterested, and any European country that put down 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:23.760 a flag could ignite the scrambling of other jealous countries 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:28.159 who could simply refuse to recognize their neighbor's colony or 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:33.719 claim it for themselves. And so even before Stanley's mission 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:38.600 was over, Leopold had begun to orchestrate a meticulous global 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:45.280 propaganda campaign that, through a combination of subterfuge, flattery, and 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:49.320 sheer force, would make him the sole owner of a 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:53.320 piece of land over seventy six times larger than the 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:57.480 tiny nation in which he was The King. Leopold would 0:22:57.560 --> 0:23:03.440 rule a new population with an iron, merciless fist, claiming 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:06.879 the blood soaked profits from his comfortable throne on the 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:14.400 other side of the world, all while white men praised him. 0:23:14.440 --> 0:23:18.919 In eighteen seventy six, King Leopold the Second organized a 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:23.760 geographical conference to be held in Brussels. Being a monarch 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:26.480 at the end of the nineteenth century meant that Leopold 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:31.399 had a very specific type of capital, the magnetic allure 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:34.879 of the monarchy itself and all of the legitimacy it 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:39.640 provides in a vacuum. The formalities of the monarchy are 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:45.840 arbitrary and useless, but in Leopold's hands they became very 0:23:45.920 --> 0:23:50.760 weapons he would use to conquer the congo. So decorum 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:56.080 and formality were the chief objectives of his Geographical Conference. 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:00.760 The goal was to dazzle his visitors, the redozen of 0:24:00.800 --> 0:24:05.040 the world's most famous explorers and military men, including a 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:09.440 rear admiral and the president of the Paris Geographical Society. 0:24:09.720 --> 0:24:13.600 Leopold sent Belgian ships to pick up British guests in Dover, 0:24:14.080 --> 0:24:17.240 who were then escorted onto an express train to zip 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:19.880 them the rest of the way to Brussels, with special 0:24:19.920 --> 0:24:24.040 instructions for them to pass through the Belgian border without customs. 0:24:25.080 --> 0:24:27.960 Leopold knew how impressive it would be for his guests 0:24:28.000 --> 0:24:31.679 to stay at the Royal Palace. The only problem was 0:24:31.760 --> 0:24:36.000 the Royal Palace in Brussels wasn't actually really a residence. 0:24:36.119 --> 0:24:39.960 It was more of an administrative office. Leopold and his 0:24:40.040 --> 0:24:43.080 family actually lived in a chateau on the outskirts of 0:24:43.080 --> 0:24:46.800 the city, but that wouldn't do, and so for the 0:24:46.880 --> 0:24:53.240 weekend the royal Palace was transformed into a residence. Servants 0:24:53.400 --> 0:24:58.760 frantically converted offices into guest bedrooms. In the end, everything 0:24:59.160 --> 0:25:03.600 to draper, the betting, the ink, even the toilet paper 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:10.200 was read. As each guest entered, Leopold greeted them in French, 0:25:10.480 --> 0:25:14.720 German or English, and one by one they filed up 0:25:14.760 --> 0:25:19.320 a white marble staircase to the throne room, which glistened 0:25:19.440 --> 0:25:25.360 in the flickering light of seven thousand candles. Leopold opened 0:25:25.359 --> 0:25:29.439 the conference with an effusive speech about the importance of 0:25:29.480 --> 0:25:34.639 their purpose to open to civilization the only parts of 0:25:34.640 --> 0:25:38.600 our globe which it has not yet penetrated, to pierce 0:25:38.680 --> 0:25:43.480 the darkness which hangs over entire people's is dare I say, 0:25:44.000 --> 0:25:50.040 a crusade worthy of this century of progress. The practical 0:25:50.160 --> 0:25:53.359 purpose for the conference was for the experts to work 0:25:53.400 --> 0:25:58.680 together to select locations for bases along the Congo, which 0:25:58.680 --> 0:26:04.520 could serve as hubs or scientists, linguists, and artisans. These bases, 0:26:04.680 --> 0:26:09.200 Leopold said, would be non political, working only to abolish 0:26:09.240 --> 0:26:13.960 the slave trade and established peace among chiefs, and each 0:26:14.000 --> 0:26:17.679 one would be well equipped with medicine and extra supplies 0:26:17.680 --> 0:26:21.600 for explorers passing through. At the end of the weekend, 0:26:21.880 --> 0:26:29.240 the men in attendance voted to establish the International African Association. Leopold, 0:26:29.480 --> 0:26:33.359 of course, would be the association's first chairman, but he 0:26:33.480 --> 0:26:38.200 modestly promised to step down after a year. The association 0:26:38.440 --> 0:26:42.600 gave itself a flag, a yellow star on a blue backdrop, 0:26:42.960 --> 0:26:47.199 meant to represent the bright hope of civilization in the 0:26:47.320 --> 0:26:52.320 darkness of Africa. Each new member of the Association was 0:26:52.359 --> 0:26:59.119 awarded the Cross of Leopold. Throughout Europe, prominent men began 0:26:59.160 --> 0:27:04.160 to send me a called donations, including the Viscount Ferdinando Lessons. 0:27:05.119 --> 0:27:10.480 Leopold was undertaken to less Us declared the greatest humanitarian 0:27:10.600 --> 0:27:14.360 work of this time. A side note, if the name 0:27:14.440 --> 0:27:17.679 Count de Lessup sounds familiar, it's because he is an 0:27:17.720 --> 0:27:20.080 ancestor of the man who would go on to marry 0:27:20.480 --> 0:27:26.919 Real Housewives star Countess lou An. The idea with the 0:27:26.960 --> 0:27:31.000 International African Association was that the men would return back 0:27:31.040 --> 0:27:34.760 to their home countries and start their own national chapters 0:27:34.880 --> 0:27:37.199 and that there would be a big meeting in Brussels 0:27:37.240 --> 0:27:44.040 every year. In actuality, the organization fizzled after its bombastic inauguration. 0:27:45.040 --> 0:27:47.960 It only ever had one more meeting, where they elected 0:27:48.040 --> 0:27:51.800 Leopold as chairman for the second time despite his earlier pledge, 0:27:52.440 --> 0:27:56.800 and then the group all but disappeared forever its purpose 0:27:56.840 --> 0:28:02.000 had been served. Leopold had established the foundations for legitimacy 0:28:02.240 --> 0:28:05.400 where his future endeavors in the Congo. The great men 0:28:05.440 --> 0:28:10.159 of Europe were behind him. After Henry Morton Stanley had 0:28:10.200 --> 0:28:13.480 completed his truck along the Congo and floated back to 0:28:13.560 --> 0:28:16.879 Europe on a raft of acclaim and medals and book money, 0:28:17.520 --> 0:28:21.080 Leopold dispatched one of his officers to get Stanley to 0:28:21.119 --> 0:28:24.480 come to a meeting in Brussels. King Leopold had a 0:28:24.520 --> 0:28:28.920 proposition for the explorer, a five year contract in which 0:28:29.000 --> 0:28:31.840 Leopold would pay the equivalent of two hundred and fifty 0:28:31.920 --> 0:28:35.520 thousand dollars a year, plus the cost of an expedition 0:28:36.160 --> 0:28:39.320 for Stanley to go back to Africa and begin to 0:28:39.480 --> 0:28:44.520 establish Leopold's foothold in the Congo. The plan that was 0:28:44.600 --> 0:28:47.320 for Stanley to first set up a base and then 0:28:47.360 --> 0:28:50.800 build roads around the most dangerous parts of the Congo River, 0:28:51.280 --> 0:28:53.600 where they would be able to take a steamboat apart, 0:28:54.040 --> 0:28:56.480 carry it on land, and then bring it back to 0:28:56.520 --> 0:29:01.560 the river. Leopold's goal was to stay out several stations 0:29:01.640 --> 0:29:04.640 along the thousand mile main stretch of the Congo River 0:29:05.280 --> 0:29:09.960 so he could claim the land profit. Ben would be easy. 0:29:10.160 --> 0:29:14.840 The Congo was incredibly resourced tents, especially with regards to 0:29:15.240 --> 0:29:18.800 valuable ivory, which could be shaped into anything from chess 0:29:18.840 --> 0:29:23.440 pieces to piano keys to fake teeth. African elephants had 0:29:23.480 --> 0:29:28.560 tusks far larger than their Asian counterparts. Stanley had reported 0:29:28.640 --> 0:29:31.920 that ivory was so accessible in Africa that it was 0:29:32.080 --> 0:29:37.560 used for door posts. Who exactly was Stanley claiming the 0:29:37.680 --> 0:29:42.440 land for even Stanley wasn't sure. He thought at first 0:29:42.520 --> 0:29:46.880 it was the International African Association, or was it the 0:29:47.000 --> 0:29:51.000 vaguely named Committee for the Study of the Upper Congo, 0:29:51.600 --> 0:29:55.840 which was a private business whose shareholders included a Belgian 0:29:55.880 --> 0:30:00.959 banker secretly acting as Leopold's proxy. Leah Pold would go 0:30:01.000 --> 0:30:04.680 on to buy out the other shareholders and the company 0:30:04.800 --> 0:30:08.680 would legally cease to exist, but both he and others 0:30:08.680 --> 0:30:11.000