Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty nine, an American journalist named George Washington
Speaker 1: Williams was granted an opportunity to sit down informally with
Speaker 1: King Leopold the second of Belgium. Williams was a groundbreaking
Speaker 1: published historian, but his life was a done fascinating history.
Speaker 1: He was a black man born free in Pennsylvania who
Speaker 1: enlisted to fight for the Union during the Civil War
Speaker 1: when he was just fourteen years old. From there, he
Speaker 1: went to Mexico and joined the army fighting to overthrow
Speaker 1: the European Emperor Maximilian. Later, he became a college graduate
Speaker 1: of Baptist minister and the first black man to serve
Speaker 1: in the Ohio State legislature. By this point, Leopold Drain
Speaker 1: he had become an expert in the trappings of monarchy.
Speaker 1: He was a master of charm. He was friendly, self effacing, modest,
Speaker 1: and above all diplomatic. He remembered names of wives and children,
Speaker 1: and he always asked after them. He welcomed Williams into
Speaker 1: his palace in Brussels and told him with obvious relish
Speaker 1: about all of the philanthropic work he had been doing
Speaker 1: in the Congo Free State. The meeting went incredibly well.
Speaker 1: One side note, one has to imagine that maybe William's
Speaker 1: youthful military service in Mexico didn't come up. After all,
Speaker 1: the imperialist queen he had been fighting against, Carlotta of Mexico,
Speaker 1: was Leopold's sister. But for Williams, it was difficult not
Speaker 1: to be impressed with Leopold and with Belgium It's clean, wide,
Speaker 1: sweeping avenues and open national parks and the stately facades
Speaker 1: of palaces. It was a new country and a new monarchy.
Speaker 1: The Belgian people had installed Leopold's father as the first king,
Speaker 1: imported him from a line of German royals back when
Speaker 1: Belgium had gained its independence from Holland in eighteen thirty.
Speaker 1: But under Leopold the Second, the nation had become a
Speaker 1: center of international affairs in Europe, thanks a note small
Speaker 1: part to Leopold's passion for developing the Congo. What had
Speaker 1: been a blank spot on the map of Africa just
Speaker 1: a few decades ago was now, as Leopold told Williams,
Speaker 1: a quote benevolent enterprise of local programs seeking to increase
Speaker 1: the knowledge of the natives and secure their welfare. And so,
Speaker 1: as Williams left the meeting and strolled down the marble
Speaker 1: steps of the palace, he reflected on what an impressive
Speaker 1: man the young king was. Leopold the Second was a
Speaker 1: paradig for a new kind of compassionate modern imperialism. Out
Speaker 1: of his own pocket, the king had funded stations along
Speaker 1: the Congo River that were stocked with scientists, linguists, and researchers.
Speaker 1: He built infrastructure to help missionaries spread Christianity, all while
Speaker 1: helping establish a system in which black tribal leaders could
Speaker 1: establish their own local dominions as part of a larger
Speaker 1: organized coalition. At least that's what Leopold said he was doing.
Speaker 1: Fascinated by Leopold's description of the Congo Free State George Washington,
Speaker 1: Williams decided to visit for himself. What he found both
Speaker 1: sickened and outraged him. It was a slave state in
Speaker 1: all but name. Men, women and children who had had
Speaker 1: their land stolen from them, either by trickery or by violence,
Speaker 1: who are then forced to work grueling hours gathering rubber
Speaker 1: that would be shipped back to Europe to pay for
Speaker 1: Belgium's beautiful roads and parks. Men, women and children who
Speaker 1: failed to meet their quota for rubber production were either
Speaker 1: whipped or killed under the capricious and brutal authority of
Speaker 1: black soldiers also enslaved. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away sat
Speaker 1: civilized Leopold the Second charmingly asking about your wife by name.
Speaker 1: George Washington Williams became the first person to interview Native
Speaker 1: Africans about the horrific abuses they were suffering under imperialism.
Speaker 1: From an outpost at Stanley Falls, he wrote an open
Speaker 1: letter which he addressed to his serene Majesty Leopold, the
Speaker 1: second King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State,
Speaker 1: in which will Ms wrote in clear detail every one
Speaker 1: of the atrocities in the so called Congo free State
Speaker 1: that he came across. He consulted his notes and echoed
Speaker 1: back the very words that Leopold had used to describe
Speaker 1: his endeavor, the so called fostering care and benevolent enterprise
Speaker 1: and effort to ensure the native's welfare. Williams wrote against
Speaker 1: the deceit, fraud, robberies, arson, murder, slave rating and general
Speaker 1: policy of cruelty of your Majesty's government. To the natives
Speaker 1: stands their record of unexampled patience, long suffering and forgiving spirit,
Speaker 1: which puts the boasted civilization and professed religion of your
Speaker 1: Majesty's government to the blush. Leopold had not claimed the
Speaker 1: Congo as a colony for Belgium. Using smoke screens of
Speaker 1: shell corporations and meaningless charity committees, he became the sole
Speaker 1: owner of the largest private landholding in history. Belgium did
Speaker 1: not own the Congo. Leopold did. It was banal, bureaucratic evil,
Speaker 1: ignored and then accepted by the rest of the world
Speaker 1: out of sheer apathy. Leopold exploited the flimsiness of the
Speaker 1: institutions that hold up the civilized world and the veneer
Speaker 1: of respectability that comes from a royal title. Williams's open
Speaker 1: letter sparked the first wave of international interest in Leopold's
Speaker 1: Congolese endeavor, But of course Belgian officials would attempt to
Speaker 1: discredit Williams, and Williams would die of disease before returning
Speaker 1: home to America. It would be decades before the international
Speaker 1: community reckoned with the stress machine of Leopold the Second, congo,
Speaker 1: if indeed it ever really has, I'm Danis Schwartz, and
Speaker 1: this is noble blood. Leopold the Second was not a
Speaker 1: boy of great promise. He was gangly and awkward boy
Speaker 1: who looked like a scarecrow in his military uniform. He
Speaker 1: has such a nose, said Benjamin Disraeli, the British Prime Minister,
Speaker 1: as a young prince has in a fairy tale, who
Speaker 1: has been banned by a malignant fairy. From an early age,
Speaker 1: Leopold's parents decided not to bother with much affection for him.
Speaker 1: In a letter while he was off at military school,
Speaker 1: his mother wrote, I was disturbed to see in the
Speaker 1: colonel's report that you had again been so lazy, and
Speaker 1: that your exercises had been so bad. Your father was
Speaker 1: as disturbed as I by this last report. Leopold had
Speaker 1: no expectation that he would hear directly from his father.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to speak with his father, the King,
Speaker 1: he was required to request a formal audience and go
Speaker 1: through his father's secretary. When Leopold was eighteen, he was
Speaker 1: married to Marie Henrietta and Austrian Habsburg archduchess. They hated
Speaker 1: each other almost immediately. Marie Henrietta was athletic and an
Speaker 1: active horsewoman, and Leopold was well, in the words of
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria, very odd and in the habit of saying
Speaker 1: disagreeable things to people. He was narrow minded, interested in geography,
Speaker 1: and fastidious about keeping track of money, and exactly as
Speaker 1: fun of a person as those two interests make him sound.
Speaker 1: The pair honeymooned in Venice, and Marie Henrietta wept in
Speaker 1: public because her new husband refused to let her ride
Speaker 1: in a gondola. If God hears my prayers, she wrote
Speaker 1: to a friend, I shall not go on living much
Speaker 1: longer still, Even though by all accounts they barely tolerated
Speaker 1: one another, the royal couple managed to have four children,
Speaker 1: though their one son died at age nine from pneumonia
Speaker 1: after falling in a pond. At his son's funeral, Leopold
Speaker 1: broke down publicly for the first and only time, although
Speaker 1: he did regain enough composure to ask members of Parliament
Speaker 1: to make sure that the funeral costs would be handled
Speaker 1: by the state. Leopold was so uninterested in his daughters
Speaker 1: that he tried to make himself an exception to the
Speaker 1: law in Belgium that requires one's assets to be passed
Speaker 1: on to one's children. From that point on, Leopold simply
Speaker 1: had no use for his wife, or really for the
Speaker 1: Belgian government Petipe petition. Leopold would say, small coun tree,
Speaker 1: small people. He would have no more sons, and so
Speaker 1: his legacy would need to become something greater. Leopold became
Speaker 1: king at thirty years old, but being king in Belgium
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century wasn't anything close to the power
Speaker 1: a king would have had in Europe a few hundred
Speaker 1: years earlier. Their family was a symbolic monarchy who served
Speaker 1: at the pleasure of parliament, not because they were granted
Speaker 1: absolute authority by God. Even Leopold's title was restrictive and awkward.
Speaker 1: He wasn't the King of Belgium technically, he was the
Speaker 1: King of the Belgians, a formality that just reinforced the
Speaker 1: notion that his leadership was more for show than anything else.
Speaker 1: And so Leopold decided to turn his gaze beyond his
Speaker 1: small country and begin to focus his energy on his
Speaker 1: earliest passion profits, but not just any prophets the profits
Speaker 1: that came from owning a colony. Even before he had
Speaker 1: become king, Leopold's interest in colonialization bordered on obsession. He
Speaker 1: spent a month in Spain going through the dusty archives
Speaker 1: in the old Exchange Building page by page to calculate
Speaker 1: the revenue they made from their colonies in America. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the people of Belgium didn't really share their king's imperialist dreams.
Speaker 1: Their nation was new and small, Focusing on a colony
Speaker 1: seemed like an expensive luxury, especially when they didn't have
Speaker 1: a merchant fleet, let alone in navy. But Leopold wouldn't
Speaker 1: be deterred, even as they elected officials with the real
Speaker 1: power in the country continued to demure when Leopold approached
Speaker 1: in the halls of the Palace with a new idea
Speaker 1: for a place to plant the Belgian flag. After returning
Speaker 1: from one of his many scouting trips, Leopold brought the
Speaker 1: finance minister two gifts, a piece of marble from the
Speaker 1: Acropolis and a locket with his portrait. Inside the locket,
Speaker 1: Leopold wrote, Belgium must have a colony if Belgium was
Speaker 1: ever going to be a world power. If Leopold was
Speaker 1: ever going to have any real power, he needed to
Speaker 1: claim land from somewhere else on the globe. The power
Speaker 1: was by the end of the eighteen hundreds, unclaimed land
Speaker 1: would become harder to find. Leopold scoured maps of the world.
Speaker 1: Could someone buy those tiny islands off the coast of
Speaker 1: South America is Fiji for sale? Could he buy the
Speaker 1: Philippines from Spain. Leopold even floated the idea of buying
Speaker 1: lakes in the Nile Delta so that he could drain
Speaker 1: them and claim the land. For the moment, he wrote,
Speaker 1: neither the Spanish, nor the Portuguese, nor the Dutch are
Speaker 1: inclined to sell. I intend to find out discreetly if
Speaker 1: there's anything to be done in Africa. It's at this
Speaker 1: point in the story that we need to introduce another character,
Speaker 1: a writer turned explorer born in Wales with the name
Speaker 1: John Rowlands. Rowlands had a miserable childhood, born out of wedlock,
Speaker 1: abandoned by his mother, and bounced around among extended family
Speaker 1: until he landed at a workhouse for the poor, like
Speaker 1: a character in a Charles Dickens novel. But as soon
Speaker 1: as he turned eighteen, like a character in a Mark
Speaker 1: Twain novel, John Rowlands made his way to the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: He eventually settled in New Orleans, and this is where
Speaker 1: Rowland's story becomes more myth than fact. According to him,
Speaker 1: he saw the wealthy trading magnet, Henry Hope Stanley, sitting
Speaker 1: on his porch and boldly asked if he could have
Speaker 1: a job. The man became such a mentor to the
Speaker 1: younger boy that he eventually adopted him, and Rowlands took
Speaker 1: on his new father's name, rechristening himself Henry Morton Stanley.
Speaker 1: Henry Morton Stanley wrote all about his unconventional upbringing in
Speaker 1: his autobiography. He wrote about how tragically the senior Stanley
Speaker 1: died just two years after his adoption, but Henry Hope
Speaker 1: Stanley wouldn't actually die for another twenty years, and there
Speaker 1: are no records of any adoption. In fact, Henry Morton
Speaker 1: Stanley gets so many strange details wrong that some historians
Speaker 1: argue that he didn't even meet the wealthy trader, let
Speaker 1: alone become his protegee. But the truth didn't matter as
Speaker 1: much as a good story. That was the real lesson
Speaker 1: learned Henry Morton Stanley would be come a master of
Speaker 1: reworking and mythologizing his own narrative until the truth was unknowable.
Speaker 1: Stanley would go on to fight on both sides of
Speaker 1: the American Civil War, first for the South and then
Speaker 1: for the North, and then after the war was over,
Speaker 1: he began to work as a journalist. It was an
Speaker 1: assignment for the New York Herald in that catapulted Henry
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley to international fame. You see, four years earlier,
Speaker 1: Europe had lost touch with a Scottish geologist by the
Speaker 1: name of doctor David Livingston. Stanley made it his mission
Speaker 1: to go find Livingston, alive or dead, all while sending
Speaker 1: back columns to be published in the New York Herald.
Speaker 1: It took two years and a seven hundred mile trek
Speaker 1: outfitted with one hundred and eleven porters, but in present
Speaker 1: day Tanzania, Stanley found the scientists and, according to Stanley,
Speaker 1: greeted him with a line that is now iconic. Dr Livingston.
Speaker 1: I presume it's a great line, but in all actuality,
Speaker 1: not one that he actually said at the time. It
Speaker 1: doesn't appear anywhere in his contemporary journals, but that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Stanley was a writer, and he knew that the most
Speaker 1: important part of a story was the way you tell it.
Speaker 1: In a way, He's right, we all remember that line
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years later. In some ways, Stanley
Speaker 1: was the prototype for the type of self conscious travel
Speaker 1: on luxury blogs and outdoorsy Instagram accounts, in which the
Speaker 1: experience itself only exists through its presentation to the outside world.
Speaker 1: Stanley's accounts of his adventure and the book he wrote
Speaker 1: about the experience, turned him into an overnight international celebrity.
Speaker 1: He also got a lucky break, its Livingstone, dying of
Speaker 1: malaria and dysentery before they both returned to Europe, so
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be another white man who could contradict any
Speaker 1: of his accounts. It was Stanley's word against no one's,
Speaker 1: and the world loved it. They devoured his tales of
Speaker 1: rebellious porters and vicious barbarian African tribes, wild animals, and
Speaker 1: most terrible of all, the brutal quote Arab slave trade,
Speaker 1: which Europe was free to Scoff and gas Bat having
Speaker 1: mostly banned their own massive industrial transatlantic slave trade operations.
Speaker 1: Oh about thirty years earlier after his incredible Livingston mission,
Speaker 1: Stanley set out again, this time to trace the Great
Speaker 1: Lakes of Africa, the unmapped heart of what he Stanley
Speaker 1: called the Dark Continent, and to trace the Lualaba River
Speaker 1: to see if it fed into the Nile or if
Speaker 1: it horses shoot around and became the Congo River. This time,
Speaker 1: Stanley was sponsored by both the New York Herald and
Speaker 1: the Daily Telegraph in London, and his caravan was more
Speaker 1: than twice the size of the one that had accompanied
Speaker 1: him to find Livingstone. There were over three hundred people
Speaker 1: traveling with him, although only three other white men and
Speaker 1: Henry Morton Stanley being Henry Morton, Stanley didn't want anyone
Speaker 1: with him who might upstage him, so the men he
Speaker 1: chose to accompany him had no experience exploring, and all
Speaker 1: three of them died before the journey was complete. For
Speaker 1: his hundreds of Zanzibari porters, the trip was months of
Speaker 1: carrying incredibly heavy loads on their heads and backs, while
Speaker 1: Stanley riddled them with abuse. If they mutinied or attempted
Speaker 1: to flee, he punished them either with lashes or by
Speaker 1: keeping in chains to humiliate them. But the natives that
Speaker 1: Stanley ran into fared if possible. Even worse villages armed
Speaker 1: only with spears, arrows, or a few ancient traded for
Speaker 1: muskets were no match for Stanley, outfitted with rifles and
Speaker 1: an elephant gun. Unfortunately, the only source we have to
Speaker 1: go on about these encounters is Stanley himself, Yet reading
Speaker 1: his words, he doesn't mask his own pettiness or brutality.
Speaker 1: Attacked and destroyed twenty eight large towns and three or
Speaker 1: four score villages, he wrote. He went on to describe
Speaker 1: a river coast where mockers shook their spears at him.
Speaker 1: Stanley opened fire with a Winchester repeating rifle. Quote six
Speaker 1: shots and four deaths were sufficient to quiet the mocking.
Speaker 1: Stanley's columns did lead to shock and criticism from anti
Speaker 1: slavery society and humanitarians around the world, but James Gordon Bennett,
Speaker 1: his newspaper editor, dismissed their criticisms as the pearl clutching
Speaker 1: of elites who had never been in the metaphorical trenches. Critics,
Speaker 1: Bennett wrote, are safe in London philanthropists whose impractical view
Speaker 1: is that a leader should permit his men to be
Speaker 1: slaughtered by the natives and should be slaughtered himself and
Speaker 1: let discovery go to the dogs, but should never pull
Speaker 1: a trigger against the species of human vermin. One European
Speaker 1: read every single update from Stanley with rapturous fascination. King
Speaker 1: Leopold the Second who asked his servants to bring any
Speaker 1: newspaper with any dispatch from Henry Morton Stanley up to
Speaker 1: his chambers right away. When Stanley finally completed his mission,
Speaker 1: emerging at the Portuguese settlement at the mouth of the
Speaker 1: Congo River, he became the second white man ever to
Speaker 1: traverse Africa from east to west, and the first white
Speaker 1: explorer to trace the source of the Congo. The Congo
Speaker 1: was perfect for Leopold's purposes. It was a massive area
Speaker 1: laced with waterways for easy transportation once roads were built
Speaker 1: to traverse the most dangerous sections of rapids. Best of all,
Speaker 1: as Stanley's writings had made clear, the local inhabitants were
Speaker 1: no military threat. Thanks to centuries of slave raids from
Speaker 1: both coasts, the few large kingdoms around the Congo were
Speaker 1: significantly weakened. The diverse population consisted of two hundred different
Speaker 1: ethnic groups who spoke over four hundred languages and dialects,
Speaker 1: which meant that the risk of them uniting against colonialists
Speaker 1: was small. Leopold had found the answer to the question
Speaker 1: he had been asking his entire adult life, but actually
Speaker 1: claiming the undeveloped region encircled by the Congo River would
Speaker 1: be more challenging than just willing it. The Belgian people
Speaker 1: were completely uninterested, and any European country that put down
Speaker 1: a flag could ignite the scrambling of other jealous countries
Speaker 1: who could simply refuse to recognize their neighbor's colony or
Speaker 1: claim it for themselves. And so even before Stanley's mission
Speaker 1: was over, Leopold had begun to orchestrate a meticulous global
Speaker 1: propaganda campaign that, through a combination of subterfuge, flattery, and
Speaker 1: sheer force, would make him the sole owner of a
Speaker 1: piece of land over seventy six times larger than the
Speaker 1: tiny nation in which he was The King. Leopold would
Speaker 1: rule a new population with an iron, merciless fist, claiming
Speaker 1: the blood soaked profits from his comfortable throne on the
Speaker 1: other side of the world, all while white men praised him.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy six, King Leopold the Second organized a
Speaker 1: geographical conference to be held in Brussels. Being a monarch
Speaker 1: at the end of the nineteenth century meant that Leopold
Speaker 1: had a very specific type of capital, the magnetic allure
Speaker 1: of the monarchy itself and all of the legitimacy it
Speaker 1: provides in a vacuum. The formalities of the monarchy are
Speaker 1: arbitrary and useless, but in Leopold's hands they became very
Speaker 1: weapons he would use to conquer the congo. So decorum
Speaker 1: and formality were the chief objectives of his Geographical Conference.
Speaker 1: The goal was to dazzle his visitors, the redozen of
Speaker 1: the world's most famous explorers and military men, including a
Speaker 1: rear admiral and the president of the Paris Geographical Society.
Speaker 1: Leopold sent Belgian ships to pick up British guests in Dover,
Speaker 1: who were then escorted onto an express train to zip
Speaker 1: them the rest of the way to Brussels, with special
Speaker 1: instructions for them to pass through the Belgian border without customs.
Speaker 1: Leopold knew how impressive it would be for his guests
Speaker 1: to stay at the Royal Palace. The only problem was
Speaker 1: the Royal Palace in Brussels wasn't actually really a residence.
Speaker 1: It was more of an administrative office. Leopold and his
Speaker 1: family actually lived in a chateau on the outskirts of
Speaker 1: the city, but that wouldn't do, and so for the
Speaker 1: weekend the royal Palace was transformed into a residence. Servants
Speaker 1: frantically converted offices into guest bedrooms. In the end, everything
Speaker 1: to draper, the betting, the ink, even the toilet paper
Speaker 1: was read. As each guest entered, Leopold greeted them in French,
Speaker 1: German or English, and one by one they filed up
Speaker 1: a white marble staircase to the throne room, which glistened
Speaker 1: in the flickering light of seven thousand candles. Leopold opened
Speaker 1: the conference with an effusive speech about the importance of
Speaker 1: their purpose to open to civilization the only parts of
Speaker 1: our globe which it has not yet penetrated, to pierce
Speaker 1: the darkness which hangs over entire people's is dare I say,
Speaker 1: a crusade worthy of this century of progress. The practical
Speaker 1: purpose for the conference was for the experts to work
Speaker 1: together to select locations for bases along the Congo, which
Speaker 1: could serve as hubs or scientists, linguists, and artisans. These bases,
Speaker 1: Leopold said, would be non political, working only to abolish
Speaker 1: the slave trade and established peace among chiefs, and each
Speaker 1: one would be well equipped with medicine and extra supplies
Speaker 1: for explorers passing through. At the end of the weekend,
Speaker 1: the men in attendance voted to establish the International African Association. Leopold,
Speaker 1: of course, would be the association's first chairman, but he
Speaker 1: modestly promised to step down after a year. The association
Speaker 1: gave itself a flag, a yellow star on a blue backdrop,
Speaker 1: meant to represent the bright hope of civilization in the
Speaker 1: darkness of Africa. Each new member of the Association was
Speaker 1: awarded the Cross of Leopold. Throughout Europe, prominent men began
Speaker 1: to send me a called donations, including the Viscount Ferdinando Lessons.
Speaker 1: Leopold was undertaken to less Us declared the greatest humanitarian
Speaker 1: work of this time. A side note, if the name
Speaker 1: Count de Lessup sounds familiar, it's because he is an
Speaker 1: ancestor of the man who would go on to marry
Speaker 1: Real Housewives star Countess lou An. The idea with the
Speaker 1: International African Association was that the men would return back
Speaker 1: to their home countries and start their own national chapters
Speaker 1: and that there would be a big meeting in Brussels
Speaker 1: every year. In actuality, the organization fizzled after its bombastic inauguration.
Speaker 1: It only ever had one more meeting, where they elected
Speaker 1: Leopold as chairman for the second time despite his earlier pledge,
Speaker 1: and then the group all but disappeared forever its purpose
Speaker 1: had been served. Leopold had established the foundations for legitimacy
Speaker 1: where his future endeavors in the Congo. The great men
Speaker 1: of Europe were behind him. After Henry Morton Stanley had
Speaker 1: completed his truck along the Congo and floated back to
Speaker 1: Europe on a raft of acclaim and medals and book money,
Speaker 1: Leopold dispatched one of his officers to get Stanley to
Speaker 1: come to a meeting in Brussels. King Leopold had a
Speaker 1: proposition for the explorer, a five year contract in which
Speaker 1: Leopold would pay the equivalent of two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year, plus the cost of an expedition
Speaker 1: for Stanley to go back to Africa and begin to
Speaker 1: establish Leopold's foothold in the Congo. The plan that was
Speaker 1: for Stanley to first set up a base and then
Speaker 1: build roads around the most dangerous parts of the Congo River,
Speaker 1: where they would be able to take a steamboat apart,
Speaker 1: carry it on land, and then bring it back to
Speaker 1: the river. Leopold's goal was to stay out several stations
Speaker 1: along the thousand mile main stretch of the Congo River
Speaker 1: so he could claim the land profit. Ben would be easy.
Speaker 1: The Congo was incredibly resourced tents, especially with regards to
Speaker 1: valuable ivory, which could be shaped into anything from chess
Speaker 1: pieces to piano keys to fake teeth. African elephants had
Speaker 1: tusks far larger than their Asian counterparts. Stanley had reported
Speaker 1: that ivory was so accessible in Africa that it was
Speaker 1: used for door posts. Who exactly was Stanley claiming the
Speaker 1: land for even Stanley wasn't sure. He thought at first
Speaker 1: it was the International African Association, or was it the
Speaker 1: vaguely named Committee for the Study of the Upper Congo,
Speaker 1: which was a private business whose shareholders included a Belgian
Speaker 1: banker secretly acting as Leopold's proxy. Leah Pold would go
Speaker 1: on to buy out the other shareholders and the company
Speaker 1: would legally cease to exist, but both he and others
Speaker 1: would continue to refer to it as if it did
Speaker 1: still exist. Even Stanley didn't realize that the company had folded.
Speaker 1: The subterfuge was deliberate. All of Stanley's European staff on
Speaker 1: the ground in Africa were required to sign a contract
Speaker 1: of secrecy. And it was around this time that King
Speaker 1: Leopold organized something called the International Association of the Congo.
Speaker 1: If that sounds similar to that pointless but idealistic International
Speaker 1: African Association, that was on purpose. The former even adopted
Speaker 1: the exact same flag as the latter, a gold star
Speaker 1: against a blue backdrop. Care must be taken, Leopold said,
Speaker 1: not to let it be obvious that the Association of
Speaker 1: the Congo and the African Association two different things. The
Speaker 1: public doesn't grasp that. Leopold framed the Association of the
Speaker 1: Congo a sort of a new Red Cross, and wealthy
Speaker 1: men all over the world sent donations. Leopold was an
Speaker 1: expert at manipulating the message depending on his audience. Two Germans,
Speaker 1: he framed the enterprise as akin to the divine mission
Speaker 1: of the Night of the Crusade. Two Americans, he stressed
Speaker 1: that he would establish in Africa a union of free cities,
Speaker 1: each led by local African tribe leaders, not dissimilar to
Speaker 1: the Union of American States. But in his letters to Stanley,
Speaker 1: Leopold dropped the facade. There is no question, he wrote
Speaker 1: of granting the slightest political power to Negroes. That would
Speaker 1: be absurd. The white men heads of the stations retain
Speaker 1: all of the powers. While continuing to promote his smoke
Speaker 1: screen charity organizations, Leopold reached out to an Oxford scholar
Speaker 1: and a lawyer to handle the legal details of acting
Speaker 1: as a corporation and claiming sovereignty of territories for individuals
Speaker 1: in Africa. Henry Morton Stanley worked not only as a
Speaker 1: brutal taskmaster, berating his crews of workmen as they filled ravines,
Speaker 1: built trails, and put together steamships, but also on Leopold's behalf,
Speaker 1: tricking African leaders into signing treaties that gave Leopold their
Speaker 1: land and gave him an exclusive trading monopoly. Using trick
Speaker 1: bullets and small electric buzzers, Stanley convinced leaders who hadn't
Speaker 1: interacted with Western technology that white men possessed superhuman strength
Speaker 1: and invulnerability, and then it was only a matter of
Speaker 1: some clothes, a few left over uniforms, and a couple
Speaker 1: of bottles of gin to trade, and the leaders signed
Speaker 1: the treaties that Stanley put in front of them. As
Speaker 1: historian Adam Hopeshelled writes in his excellent biography King Leopold's Ghost,
Speaker 1: the concept of signing your land away would have been
Speaker 1: completely for it. The tribe leaders would have been familiar
Speaker 1: with the idea of a contract of friendship, but someone
Speaker 1: across an ocean owning their land was absurd and outside
Speaker 1: the realm of contemplation. They just put an x where
Speaker 1: they were told at the bottom of a contract in
Speaker 1: a foreign language they didn't understand. And these contracts also
Speaker 1: included a clause even more sinister than you can imagine.
Speaker 1: They granted not just the land, but an agreement that
Speaker 1: the tribe would quote assist by labor or otherwise any works,
Speaker 1: improvement or expeditions which the said associations shall cause at
Speaker 1: any time to be carried out in any part of
Speaker 1: these territories. In short manpower. The Congo would become, in
Speaker 1: effect a slave state. The United States became the first
Speaker 1: to recognize Leopold's claim to the land of the Congo
Speaker 1: and in his speech the Secretary of State conveniently confused
Speaker 1: the International African Association and International Association of the Congo.
Speaker 1: The dominoes were falling into place. The next year, Leopold
Speaker 1: formally declared his landholdings to be the Congo Free State,
Speaker 1: operating under his exclusive private control. King Leopold of the
Speaker 1: Belgians was now the owner of the world's largest private
Speaker 1: landholding in history, seventies six times larger than the country
Speaker 1: you ruled over. From this point on, the details become horrific.
Speaker 1: It turns out the real profit to be made in
Speaker 1: the Congo wasn't in ivory, it was in a rubber.
Speaker 1: Leopold established a private army, the Force Publique, to enforce
Speaker 1: rubber gathering quotas in the native populations through brutal torture.
Speaker 1: The police force would arrive in a village, hold the
Speaker 1: women and children hostage, and whip workers with a bull
Speaker 1: whip called the chicot made from dried elephants hide. The
Speaker 1: penalty for not gathering enough rubber was death. In order
Speaker 1: to make sure that the police officers were using their
Speaker 1: bullets on people and not on animals to hunt for food,
Speaker 1: the hands of victims were required as trophies. Hands and
Speaker 1: feet of children would be severed if parents weren't productive enough.
Speaker 1: Even the act of gathering the rubber was violent. Once
Speaker 1: the viands were split open, the worker would slather his
Speaker 1: body in the soft latex, which would then harden. Once hard,
Speaker 1: the latex would be stripped painfully from the body, taking
Speaker 1: hair along with it. Men were worked to death, hostages starved.
Speaker 1: Some estimate that as many as ten million people were
Speaker 1: killed during King Leopold's bloody twenty three year long reign
Speaker 1: in the Congo. Ten million people slaughtered in his name
Speaker 1: as the rubber and ivory came on chips back to Belgium,
Speaker 1: and he gleefully sent only soldiers and bullets back. In Europe,
Speaker 1: they called him the Builder King for the urban projects
Speaker 1: and buildings and parks he erected using his profits. Leopold
Speaker 1: never actually went to the Congo himself, but he did
Speaker 1: bring the Congo to him in and when he opened
Speaker 1: a temporary exhibition at his country estate that would become
Speaker 1: the Royal Museum for Central Africa. The heart of the
Speaker 1: exhibit was a human zoo where two hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: seven Congolese men, women, and children were kidnapped and brought
Speaker 1: to a mock African village set up on the Royal
Speaker 1: Estates grounds. When the prisoners got sick because of visitors
Speaker 1: throwing candy over the fences, they put up a sign
Speaker 1: that said the blacks are fed by the organizing Committee.
Speaker 1: In other words, don't feed the animals. For twenty three years,
Speaker 1: Leopold was the sole owner of the Congo Free State,
Speaker 1: and his atrocities were largely ignored by the rest of
Speaker 1: the world out of convenient apathy. How much easier was
Speaker 1: it to believe that charming Leopold actually was fronting a
Speaker 1: pilanthropic endeavor. It would only be through the tireless work
Speaker 1: of missionaries that things would eventually change, people like George
Speaker 1: Washington Williams, who wrote his open letter, and like Alice
Speaker 1: see Lee Harris, a documentary photographer who captured the gruesome
Speaker 1: dismemberments on film. It would actually be a shipping officer
Speaker 1: named Edmund Dinney Morrell who would provide one of the
Speaker 1: largest public pushes for the world to recognize Leopold's horrific exploitation.
Speaker 1: Morrell noticed that it was ivory and rubber arriving on
Speaker 1: ships from the Congo, but only bullets going back. He
Speaker 1: realized there was no trade happening, and so he enlisted
Speaker 1: thinkers and celebrities of the day like Arthur Conan Doyle
Speaker 1: and Mark Twain, and eventually, in night, Leopold the Second
Speaker 1: was forced to sell the Congo Free State to Belgium
Speaker 1: to make it actually an official bell Rgian colony. Let
Speaker 1: that sink in the Congo wasn't actually made free, it
Speaker 1: was just not personally owned by Leopold anymore. That was
Speaker 1: the humanitarian victory. Leopold died the next year at age
Speaker 1: seventy four. His funeral procession was met by booze from
Speaker 1: Belgian people. But as soon as Leopold was gone, his
Speaker 1: legacy in the Congo began to be whitewashed. He was dead,
Speaker 1: so the international fervor died out. Statues of Leopold were
Speaker 1: erected in the parks he helped build. They taught in
Speaker 1: school that colonialism might have gotten too violent under the
Speaker 1: Builder King, but colonialism was always bad. People in other
Speaker 1: European countries try to make Leopold look worse to make
Speaker 1: themselves feel better, you see. Besides, sure, there was some blood,
Speaker 1: but he was bringing civilization to Africa. It's so easy
Speaker 1: sometimes to believe the lies and to enjoy the pretty statues,
Speaker 1: the comforting facade of authority and dignity and civilization. And
Speaker 1: the statues of Leopold remained in Belgium until June twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: During the international Black Lives Matter March following George Floyd's
Speaker 1: death in the United States, protesters in Belgium coated statues
Speaker 1: of Leopold the Second in red paint in Antwerp and
Speaker 1: in Ghent and in Brussels. Some of the statues have
Speaker 1: already been taken down, but I think it's worth asking
Speaker 1: ourselves what had been keeping them up for so long?
Speaker 1: All this time. That's the story of King Leopold the
Speaker 1: Second and how he used the symbolic power of his
Speaker 1: monarchy to enact horrific realities. Keepless ning after a brief
Speaker 1: sponsor break, to hear a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: legacy he left in literature. After Henry Morton Stanley built
Speaker 1: the roads and base camps along the Congo, steamboats began
Speaker 1: to appear on the river, delivering supplies and taking rubber
Speaker 1: and ivory off to the coasts. One of those steamboats
Speaker 1: a boat called the King of the Belgians was piloted
Speaker 1: by a man named Joseph Conrad. Conrad's experience in the
Speaker 1: Congo and all of the horrors he saw first hand,
Speaker 1: would lead him to write his most famous novel, Heart
Speaker 1: of Darkness. If you haven't read it yet, you might
Speaker 1: have at least seen the movie adaptation. Although the movie
Speaker 1: doesn't take place in nineteenth century Africa, Francis Ford Coppola
Speaker 1: decided to set it in Vietnam. The movie, of course,
Speaker 1: is a acalypse. Now there's another important literary legacy from
Speaker 1: the Congo worth pointing out. Remember George Washington Williams, the
Speaker 1: Civil War soldier turned journalists who wrote the open letter
Speaker 1: to King Leopold. He also wrote a pamphlet for the
Speaker 1: international community advocating action, and he coined a phrase to
Speaker 1: describe what Leopold had done, a phrase that we still
Speaker 1: use to this day, Crimes against Humanity. Noble Blood is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Minkey. The show was written and hosted by
Speaker 1: Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Speaker 1: Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
Speaker 1: show over at Noble blood Tales dot com. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.