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Speaker 1: Al Zon Media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, and you

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Speaker 1: know it's another holiday week. This is not a holiday

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Speaker 1: I tend to celebrate, but it is a holiday that

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Speaker 1: our company gives us off, and I like my team

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Speaker 1: not having to work. It's also good to not have

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Speaker 1: to work. And when we drop episodes on weeks like this,

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Speaker 1: it means you basically have to double up during the

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Speaker 1: week before the week after, which causes a lot of

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Speaker 1: stress that isn't necessary when you're trying to have everyone

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Speaker 1: be able to relax. So this week we are doing

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Speaker 1: another rewind our infamous and beloved episodes on King Leopold,

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Speaker 1: the Second of Belgium. So tuck in and enjoy yourselves

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Speaker 1: and enjoy a real terrible story of a real terrible

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Speaker 1: piece of shit. I hope you all have a good week,

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Speaker 1: regardless of what you do during it. Hello, friends, and

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Speaker 1: welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the show where we

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Speaker 1: tell you everything you don't know about the very worst

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Speaker 1: people in history. On this show, we cover monsters like

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Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Eric Prince Will Wheaton, and today's topic,

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Speaker 1: King Leopold. But before we get to King Leopold, i'd

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Speaker 1: like to introduce my guests for the week, Andrew T

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Speaker 1: host of YO is this racist and general man about town.

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Speaker 1: Hello Andrew, what's up? Well? Today we're talking about a

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Speaker 1: little Belgian dude named Leopold. You ever heard of King

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Speaker 1: Leopold of Belgium?

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Speaker 2: Uh, not particularly.

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Speaker 1: King Leopold the second, if that makes sense. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I feel like, uh, the closest I'm gonna come is

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Speaker 2: I feel like, at some point I got a box

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Speaker 2: of fancy chocolates that might have had a a Leopold.

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Speaker 2: Maybe not the bad Leopold. I assume a good Leopold.

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Speaker 1: This is not a good Leopold.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, That's what I'm saying. So probably not this particular Yeahold.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh. Leopold the second was King of Belgium once

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Speaker 1: upon a time, and he was, in my opinion, the

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Speaker 1: first world leader to be truly shitty in the modern

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Speaker 1: sense of the word. Oh snall, like like like the

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Speaker 1: k in a shitty that like Putin and Trump right.

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Speaker 2: Right right, So not right, we're discounting our Genghis cons.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because Genghis Khan like

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Speaker 1: did what he did, but he didn't have like a

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Speaker 1: bunch of newspapers that he justified. He was just like,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna conquer some shit, right right, right now.

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Speaker 2: This is the transition from barbarian bastards into media bastards exactly.

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Speaker 1: And I think Leopold of Belgium is really where it

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Speaker 1: happens in a modern like obviously other people had toyed

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Speaker 1: with aspects of this. He really nailed it. So King

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Speaker 1: Leopold the Second's dad was obviously King Leopold the First,

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Speaker 1: and he was the first king in Belgium. Is that obvious?

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Speaker 1: Is that?

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Speaker 2: Is it always like a like one Pagets two or

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Speaker 2: is it like, ah, your grandfather was Leopold the First,

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Speaker 2: I'm Gerald of Belgium, but you're gonna be Leopold too.

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Speaker 1: I think that's more how it happens most of the time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: not this time. This time Leopold the First was like

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Speaker 1: this went so, well, yeah, we're gonna have it. The

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Speaker 1: second going yeah. So Leopold the First was like the again,

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Speaker 1: the very first king of Belgium at all, because Belgium

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Speaker 1: had just been made a thing in the wake of

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Speaker 1: the Napoleonic Wars. So during the whole fighting between Napoleon

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Speaker 1: and everyone else in Europe, Belgium was generally the battleground

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Speaker 1: where like the everyone would sort of duke it out

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Speaker 1: between the Germans and the French and the French and

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Speaker 1: everybody else. Yeah, Waterloo is in Belgium. Oh so, after

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Speaker 1: Napoleon's butt gets kicked, the European powers who win are like, okay,

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Speaker 1: we can't have France and Germany fighting over Belgium. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna make it its own thing. And since it was

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Speaker 1: going to be a new country, obviously it needed a king.

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Speaker 1: So they Leopold the First got the job because he

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Speaker 1: was a German prince who didn't have a kingdom of

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Speaker 1: his own.

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Speaker 2: Oh okay, so he was just like split off, right,

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Speaker 2: this is like we're gonna give Megan markle Wales or whatever.

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Speaker 1: Part of Whales. Yeah, part of whales. Yeah, yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: that exactly that sort of thing. They actually tried him

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Speaker 1: out to be king of Greece first, but he didn't like,

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Speaker 1: didn't fit for whatever. Yeah, that's an option. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: find you with something, buddy, don't worry, Leopold. Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: to put you in a kingdom Greece isn't the right one.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course you try it starter kingdom.

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Speaker 2: Everyone has a kingdom to start.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sense, Yeah, Greece was his unsold pilot. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And he was, by all accounts a pretty good king

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Speaker 1: of Belgium if you're into that sort of thing. Yeah. Waffles,

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Speaker 1: waffles and chocolate, hacolate, getting beer beer, yeah, get great beer,

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Speaker 1: getting jammed by the Germs, great beer. Great at getting

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Speaker 1: jammed by the Germans. That's Belgium in a nutshell. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was a good king while he was king. Midway

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Speaker 1: through his reign in eighteen forty eight, there was like

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Speaker 1: this big year of revolutions all across Europe, and all

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Speaker 1: these European countries had their monarchs overthrown except for Belgium.

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Speaker 1: So the Christian Spring we call that, yes, the white

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Speaker 1: Man's Spring. That's the last three hundred years. Yeah, that's true.

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Speaker 2: What a time, What a time for the whites, given

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Speaker 2: up for the whites.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So Leopold the first solid king. I've got two

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Speaker 1: main sources for today's podcast, which I should note now.

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Speaker 1: The first is a biography called Leopold, the Second King

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Speaker 1: of Belgium. It's a pro monarchist book that was written

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ten. Great the article is critical above of

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Speaker 1: Leopold sometimes, but he thinks he was like a great king,

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Speaker 1: and he thinks kings are a good idea. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: it's an interesting book because it gives you an idea

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Speaker 1: of how Leopold himself would sort of present himself and

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Speaker 1: defend himself and let you know what the propaganda at

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Speaker 1: the time.

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Speaker 2: Was well and also right, just critical enough to be legitimate.

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Speaker 1: Well no, no, it's totally I guess for the time

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Speaker 1: it wasn't bad.

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Speaker 2: What I mean, you put in just the faintest of

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Speaker 2: criticism to give the exact more you know. Yeah, oh,

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Speaker 2: this is a real investigation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the monarch's equivalent of one of those

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Speaker 1: like celebrity biographies Ben Affleck or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the Heraldo Interview of books exactly right, exactly. And then

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Speaker 1: the other book is a book called Leopold's Ghost by

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Speaker 1: Adam Hoschild, which takes the stance that Leopold was when

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Speaker 1: of history's great monsters. Anyway, so these are these are

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Speaker 1: most of what I come from, a sort of the

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Speaker 1: contrasting views that these two books.

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Speaker 2: You read two books for a podcast out of your mind, Come.

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Speaker 1: On, dog, there's a lot to dig into here. Oh

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Speaker 1: and there's not a lot.

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Speaker 2: You're making me feel real bad. I'm like, usually good

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Speaker 2: for half a Wikipedia article.

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Speaker 1: Holy shit, Well this is at least the equivalent of

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Speaker 1: like four Wikipedia articles a lot. Geez, go ahead, all right. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: Leopold the Second's mom Luis was almost a love match

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Speaker 1: is the term the book uses for his dad, the king,

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Speaker 1: And it says this because the king was already in

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Speaker 1: love with her before they get married. Hey, so that

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Speaker 1: makes it a love match. So nice. He liked her

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Speaker 1: when she was fourteen, so it's love. The eighteen hundreds

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Speaker 1: were hell of it.

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Speaker 2: And she had the right land I assume, Yeah, she

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Speaker 2: had some nice land. I'm related to the right enemies

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Speaker 2: she was with I think from the oily owned family,

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Speaker 2: so she was like she had.

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Speaker 1: Some solid s or royal pedigree. You know. You get

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Speaker 1: some German from King Leopold the first, you get a

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Speaker 1: little bit of French from his wife, and then their

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Speaker 1: baby is sort of a mix. So maybe Germany and

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Speaker 1: France won't fight over Belgium. And oh what a brave

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Speaker 1: Yeah didn't write it. Yeah, yeah, So Leopold the Second

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Speaker 1: was born Leopold Louis Philippe Mary Victor, and he was

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Speaker 1: his parents' second child. His older brother died eleven months

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Speaker 1: before he was born. Nice, So if you think about

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Speaker 1: that timeline a lot, it's not very fun. Because Leopold's

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Speaker 1: older brother is born. Yeah, he dies, Yeah, eleven months

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Speaker 1: later they pop out another son. Yeah, immediately, immediately, not

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Speaker 1: a lot of morning time. Nah, or maybe they just

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Speaker 1: kind of, you know, fucked the pain away.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, that's probably what happened.

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Speaker 1: That's the optimistic look, all right. So at age five,

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Speaker 1: Leopold's father declared him Duke of Brabant, which is how

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Speaker 1: he was addressed right up until his coronation. Uh, here's

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Speaker 1: he said, five, age five? Yeah, h five, great, yeah

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Speaker 1: you can you all have to be a duke at

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Speaker 1: age five.

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Speaker 2: And he looks he looks like he looks like people

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Speaker 2: in this port a pretty little duke.

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Speaker 1: We'll have the pictures up on our website. He has

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Speaker 1: no chin and a kind of a lopsided face, but

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Speaker 1: maybe that's just the painting looks a.

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Speaker 2: Little bit like a ghost, like a human ghost.

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Speaker 1: It looks like the painting of a ghost that you

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Speaker 1: find in the basement of an old house. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: then like there's a rush of wind and the camera

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Speaker 1: falls over and like, yeah, your friend gets mauled by

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Speaker 1: a spirit.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's this guy's selfie essentially. Yeah, that's this

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Speaker 2: guy's like, this is the image we want to put

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Speaker 2: out into the world.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this was like hanging in palaces. Yeah. Yeah, height,

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Speaker 1: So he looks like a creeper from dad, a little

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Speaker 1: spooky boy, but he's still a baby. So the biography

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Speaker 1: notes that Leopold and his siblings were brought up in

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Speaker 1: quote the simplest manner and taught to behave as if

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Speaker 1: they were normal citizens rather than royalty. That sounds great

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Speaker 1: until you get to the next part quote. The king

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Speaker 1: further expressed the wish to develop in the children the

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Speaker 1: sentiment of duty and not to allow them to have

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Speaker 1: an opinion of their own with regard to their duties

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Speaker 1: and their studies. Basically, the king was trying to crush

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Speaker 1: the individuality of his kids so that they would just

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Speaker 1: fit the role of king. That's kind of yeah.

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Speaker 2: Good, Actually is it isn't that? Well, what else are

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Speaker 2: you gonna do because they got to do.

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Speaker 1: This dumb job? Well, I mean, you could try to

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Speaker 1: make them be healthy, fully formed people.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but why then they got to be king.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, okay, that's fair. I mean we're taking Leopold

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Speaker 1: the first side.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well he's the good one again, I'm piating his chocolate. No,

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Speaker 2: but right, isn't that the he's he's just as trapped

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Speaker 2: as everyone else, you know, Yes, so if he's got

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Speaker 2: to do this thing, you.

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Speaker 1: Might as well make it so he can do this thing. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So you're expressing some motivation maybe to why you would

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Speaker 1: do this, why you would do what he winds up doing,

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Speaker 1: and you don't even know what he winds up doing

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Speaker 1: what they do? Yeah, what did I just defend?

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Speaker 2: I still let me just say right now, whatever he does,

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Speaker 2: I stand behind it.

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Speaker 1: Well, he kills about ten to fifteen million people. Yeah

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Speaker 1: that's fine. Okay, Well, what's it? So? When Leopold is fifteen,

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Speaker 1: his mom dies of some illness or another. It's one

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Speaker 1: of those things where the writers at the time aren't specific.

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Speaker 1: They're just like she took ill and was, yeah, sick

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Speaker 1: for it, like and then she dies like yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's probably diphtheria or some weirdo named it the flu disease. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if it was a flu would be a big deal,

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Speaker 1: I guess. I mean it's probably is a flu like

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Speaker 1: that killed everybody back then. Yeah. Yeah. In King Leopold's Ghost,

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Speaker 1: Adam Haschild describes Leopold's childhood as being kind of stark

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Speaker 1: and cold. Quote, if Leopold wanted to see his father,

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Speaker 1: he had to apply for an audience. When the father

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Speaker 1: had something to tell the same, he communicated it through

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Speaker 1: one of his secretaries.

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Speaker 2: I mean, look, this is not just eighteenth century arrested development.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, quite a nice Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what's

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Speaker 1: going on. Like, he definitely has a buster Bluth vibe

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Speaker 1: to him.

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Speaker 2: Again, especially once you see this fucking painting, you'll get

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Speaker 2: it audience.

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Speaker 1: The biography that was written at the time says that

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Speaker 1: it is worthy of note that the late king never

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Speaker 1: had any comrades or playmates. His childhood was passed among

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Speaker 1: his teachers and tutors, and the disciplinarian father made even

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Speaker 1: more the relationship with his brother and sister a very

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Speaker 1: formal one. Frank, childish gaiety and brotherly expansion and confidence

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Speaker 1: were banished. The prince's thoughts thus became concentrated upon himself

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Speaker 1: and his natural activity and vitality. His exuberant strength were

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Speaker 1: expended on work and study. Tight, yeah about it. No, friends,

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Speaker 1: does nothing but work. Yeah, he is a duke. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean he's already achieved a lot. I mean he

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Speaker 1: is kind of a boss baby. Yeah, just throw that

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Speaker 1: out there. So he grows up, He serves in the

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Speaker 1: Belgian military. He apparently does okay. By his early twenties,

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Speaker 1: Leopold becomes an influential figure in Belgian politics. You know,

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Speaker 1: he's the crown prince everyone, he's going to wind to

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Speaker 1: be in king. Yeah, and he kind of looks a

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Speaker 1: little like Adam Driver. He yeah, he looks here. He

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Speaker 1: looks like a anime Adam Driver. Yeah. Yeah, that's who

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Speaker 1: you would cast, is anime Adam Driver. Yeah yeah, in

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Speaker 1: the movie. So, like many rich young people, he traveled

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Speaker 1: far and wide in his early twenties. He went all

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Speaker 1: throughout the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Asia. But

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Speaker 1: he was not traveling for his enjoyment. It was basically traveling.

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Speaker 1: The biography says, it's like a commercial employee. So he

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Speaker 1: was essentially looking for financial opportunities for Belgium because this

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Speaker 1: is the period when all of Europe is colonizing the

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Speaker 1: entire world. Yeah, Belgium doesn't have a colony, so he's

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Speaker 1: traveling all around the Middle East in Asia basically being

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Speaker 1: like what can yeah, who's yeah? Whose line can we take? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what can we get? Does this hop ahead to the Congo?

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, oh nice, Yeah that's where we're headed.

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Speaker 2: Tight, Okay, how do I know that tiny bit of history?

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Speaker 1: It's one of those things that drops in every now

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Speaker 1: and then you'll hear like, oh, yeah the Belgiums did

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Speaker 1: something bad in the Congo, but you don't ever get

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Speaker 1: I don't know any tell story.

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Speaker 2: In fact, I probably no more plot points from Michael

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Speaker 2: Crichton's The Congo than than reality is the Cogo.

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Speaker 1: Yes, I mean there's unconfirmed reports that he tried to

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Speaker 1: find the lost City of Zine, but no, great movie.

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Speaker 2: Is that what they were doing there?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, they're trying to find diamonds. That a monkey

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Speaker 1: There was a monkey city, Yeah, find diamonds. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: monkeys were evil. Yeah, that's more what I remember. Solid,

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Speaker 1: to be honest, really solid. Now, Yeah, there's a laser.

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Speaker 1: There is a laser. There's definitely a laser in that movie.

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Speaker 1: Oh man, what a weird.

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Speaker 2: It's a ride, Michael Crichton, We're still watching as bullshit,

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Speaker 2: I can't believe West World.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, okay, So, uh, Prince Leopold, one of his

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Speaker 1: favorite books as he's a young man studying trying to

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Speaker 1: find a new colony for Belgium is a book about

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Speaker 1: the Dutch East Indies called Java, How to Manage a Colony.

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Speaker 1: Uh yeah, why would you?

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Speaker 2: Oh my god, I mean, I guess that's what you

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Speaker 2: have to tell people your favorite book is.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, that's well, no, I mean, because so the

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Speaker 1: book is all about how the Dutch colonized the island

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Speaker 1: of Java and how they got a shitload of coffee

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Speaker 1: and sugar and like dyes and tobacco, and it made

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Speaker 1: basically made so much money that they were able to

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Speaker 1: buy a bunch of railroads and canals back in Holland.

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Speaker 1: So like, the book is all about that. So it

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Speaker 1: outlines sort of how they were able to monetize Java

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Speaker 1: so well, and like it talks about how the king

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Speaker 1: basically brought in a bunch of private companies and became

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Speaker 1: a major shareholder in those companies. And it was the

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Speaker 1: company's job to farm the land and to produce the

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Speaker 1: resources and export them to Belgium. So the king didn't

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Speaker 1: have to send Dutch government workers over do anything. The

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Speaker 1: king just said, I own Java corporations. Come in, give

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Speaker 1: me a stake in your profits, and do whatever you want.

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Speaker 2: I think it's just cool to have political leaders also

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Speaker 2: own corporations. That has never been a problem. I never

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Speaker 2: will be a problem.

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Speaker 1: No, it seems to always work out great. It seems

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Speaker 1: to work out great one hundred perc end of the time.

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Speaker 1: The book also did note that the Dutch prophets in

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Speaker 1: Java would have been impossible without a huge amount of

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Speaker 1: forced labor, and young Prince Leopold agreed with this and

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Speaker 1: said that forced labor was quote the only way to

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Speaker 1: civilize and uplift these indolent and corrupt peoples of the

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Speaker 1: Far East. Yeah, yeah, he ain't wrong. Go ahead, what else?

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Speaker 1: What else you got? I thought you said this guy

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Speaker 1: was bad, all right. So late in his dukedom, you know,

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Speaker 1: a few years before he becomes king, Leopold gets him

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Speaker 1: in front of Belgium's Senate and he urges them to

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Speaker 1: take up foreign colonies. So they got a king and

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Speaker 1: a senate. Yeah yea, so uh. Basically, the king of

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Speaker 1: Belgium is kind of a ceremonial figure he's got. He's

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Speaker 1: got more power than like the queen in England has today.

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Speaker 1: It's heading towards but it's heading towards that. There's no

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Speaker 1: formal power, lots of soft power, lots of soft power

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Speaker 1: and a little bit of formal power. Okay, but you

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Speaker 1: can't do things as the king like just make colonies, right?

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Speaker 1: You can't do things? Is the king like sin the

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Speaker 1: army places? Yeah? Yeah, And so leop Hold's dad seems

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Speaker 1: to be okay with that. But Leopold is growing up

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Speaker 1: chopping at the bent to do shit and doesn't want

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Speaker 1: to become a monarch who just waves at the crowd.

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Speaker 1: Why So he gets up in front of the Senate

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Speaker 1: and he says, quote, I am profoundly convinced of our

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Speaker 1: vast resources, and I passionately wish that my beautiful country

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Speaker 1: would show the necessary pluck to derive all the benefit which,

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Speaker 1: in my opinion, it can derive. I think that the

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Speaker 1: moment for our expansion abroad has arrived. We must not

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Speaker 1: lose time, otherwise the best positions and markets, which are

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Speaker 1: becoming more rare every day, will be occupied by nations

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Speaker 1: more enterprising than ourselves. And when he talks about positions

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Speaker 1: and markets. He's talking about yeah, whole countries and stuff.

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Speaker 1: I mean millions of people.

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Speaker 2: It's more chilling in the original Flemish.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Flemish. Yes, yeah, he nailed it, although he probably

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Speaker 1: would have been speaking just French.

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Speaker 2: For a All right, so say Flemish.

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Speaker 1: Well you can say, you can say Walloon if you want.

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Speaker 1: I'm kidding, what is that. That's the other group of people.

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Speaker 1: There's Belgium is made up of Flemish people and Walloons. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the Wallunatics.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, band aid on their face.

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Speaker 1: We got it. That's a rough name to grow into

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Speaker 1: the world stage taking on.

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Speaker 2: Ah, well, you know, you gotta get you get enough rifles,

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Speaker 2: get enough cutlasses, everything starts to make sense.

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Speaker 1: I don't feel like it does. I feel like Germany

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Speaker 1: was so fierce in part because German is like, that's

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Speaker 1: like an name, like the Germans are coming. Imagine if

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Speaker 1: the name got switched and the Belgians were called the Germans,

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Speaker 1: and like the Nazis had tried to invade, and everyone

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Speaker 1: was like, oh, the Walloons are invading. Yeah, that's not

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Speaker 1: going to go. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well listen, let's boot up a risk game.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll figure it out, all right. So yeah, Leopold

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Speaker 1: the first, Leopold the Second's dad died in December of

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, the same year the American Civil War ended.

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Speaker 1: Leopold is now the king and thirty years old. This

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Speaker 1: appears to be the point when he decided to grow

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Speaker 1: a gigantic mountain man beard tight, which he would maintain

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Speaker 1: for the rest of his day. He needed it. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of pictures of Leopold with a beard.

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Speaker 1: We'll post him on the site. Some of them look

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Speaker 1: uncomfortably like me. Some of them are clear missteps in

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Speaker 1: the beard growing process, where he's got like gigantic mutton

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Speaker 1: chops and it's he looks like a fucking hair octopus

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Speaker 1: style of the time. Yeah, he went through some rough

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Speaker 1: patches in his sartorial history, for sure. That's pretty.

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Speaker 2: That's got ain't easy we're looking at Yeah.

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Speaker 1: That's a rough picture, cheap and it's almost he's almost

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Speaker 1: wearing bell bottoms in that picture. A it's the sixties.

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Speaker 1: It is the eighteen sixties boom, all right. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: Leopold's the King of Belgium. He's super frustrated because the

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Speaker 1: king doesn't have that much in the way of power.

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Speaker 1: Leopold takes to sort of mocking the restrained role that

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Speaker 1: he has in Belgian politics. There's a story of like

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Speaker 1: this guy who came to visit him because like, you know,

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Speaker 1: the king's got a visit with like his donors and

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Speaker 1: benefactors and whatnot. And this guy complains about the poor

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Speaker 1: state of the roads around his property, and Leopold interrupts

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Speaker 1: him and says, I have no authority to change the roads.

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Speaker 1: You want to address yourself to the press, especially to

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Speaker 1: the small papers. The municipality and the government will do

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Speaker 1: anything they ask. So he was like, he was like

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Speaker 1: making a point. Yeah, I'm frustrated that, like I can't

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Speaker 1: do anything, so I'm just kind of like to take

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Speaker 1: it to the press. Your King's not allowed to do anything.

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Speaker 1: He sort of set to work making himself into kind

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Speaker 1: of an image for the Belgian people. He was the

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Speaker 1: aristocratic equivalent of an alpha male. He spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of time doing science work and you know, supporting the

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Speaker 1: arts and sciences. Nineteenth century science is just like beakers

397
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Speaker 1: of lead and shows. He's pouring colored water into beakers.

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Speaker 1: He's got goggles on, you know, you know how that goes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a quote from his biography that says he used

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Speaker 1: to sleep in a camp bed so like a military

401
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Speaker 1: cot and had a general horror of everything that could

402
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Speaker 1: innervate or under him. A feminate, so he's kind of

403
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Speaker 1: like a he's a proud boy. Proud boy.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what they call people who aren't racist soy boys.

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Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? Because eating soy feminizes you again, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's what that's the alt right thing. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Hey, well at least we know that they have a

408
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Speaker 2: nice historical antasy.

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Speaker 1: Leopold would have been all about that stuff. So he's

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Speaker 1: he's grown a giant, weird beard, he's sleeping in a

411
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Speaker 1: palace in a military cop He's scared of girls. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He hates spending money. His biography says, quote his pocket

413
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Speaker 1: handkerchief was only renewed on Sunday mornings when going to Mass,

414
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Speaker 1: and on no account would he take another in the interval.

415
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Speaker 1: If his valets changed his towels more than once a week,

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Speaker 1: they were sure to receive a good scolding from his majesty.

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Speaker 1: What So he's like a gross miser. Yeah, don't clean

418
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Speaker 1: those dells. Oh, which one of those wasn't one? Of

419
00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:56,040
Speaker 1: the alt right guys living in their mom's basement.

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Speaker 2: I think most of them are will definitely want Yeah

421
00:21:00,280 --> 00:21:04,120
Speaker 2: yeah that guy, yeah, ruche V, the pickup artist guy

422
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Speaker 2: that was found living in his mom's base Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: that's what this guy was. Leopold was missing. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I guess the Beard. The Beard experiment clearly on that factor.

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Speaker 1: His mom died young, so he became a king. Yeah yep.

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Speaker 2: Instead, okay, called peacocking everyone I interract women the kingdom.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, kick, I mean having a castle is pretty solid peacocking,

428
00:21:29,040 --> 00:21:33,480
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, undeniable yeah. Uh. Leopold the Second was

429
00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:36,040
Speaker 1: noted in his biography is the first king to treat

430
00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:39,040
Speaker 1: his kingship as a corporate endeavor. His primary concern was

431
00:21:39,080 --> 00:21:41,720
Speaker 1: making money, not for Belgium, but for himself. It's all

432
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:48,000
Speaker 1: about the bottom line. Yeah. So there's like when you

433
00:21:48,040 --> 00:21:51,639
Speaker 1: talk about dictators and warlords and terrorists, there's like a

434
00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:55,359
Speaker 1: tendency to call them psychopaths and sociopaths. Yeah. Sociopath is

435
00:21:55,400 --> 00:21:57,800
Speaker 1: like an actual medical diagnosis. And I don't think guys

436
00:21:57,840 --> 00:22:01,560
Speaker 1: like Hitler or Stalin, Yeah really it because they all

437
00:22:01,600 --> 00:22:04,439
Speaker 1: had histories of like warm family life and like people

438
00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:07,360
Speaker 1: who cared about them and people that they like sacrificed for.

439
00:22:07,480 --> 00:22:11,080
Speaker 1: At times, Leopold might have been a straight up like

440
00:22:11,200 --> 00:22:12,639
Speaker 1: the mark store level monster.

441
00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:15,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's that's what they say, right, is like

442
00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:20,520
Speaker 2: so many CEOs and Fortune five hundred whatever the fu. Yeah,

443
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:24,800
Speaker 2: there was over represented, like psychopathic traits.

444
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:28,159
Speaker 1: Yeah. Even his positive biography says that while he was charming,

445
00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 1: he was quote devoid of enthusiasm and set himself and

446
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,040
Speaker 1: was quite incapable of arousing any and others. So he

447
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:42,760
Speaker 1: just can't utually touch people's heart. Yeah, he can't motivate people. So, yeah,

448
00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:46,679
Speaker 1: we're going to get more into the soulless Leopold the second,

449
00:22:46,800 --> 00:22:49,800
Speaker 1: his scheme to find a colony and the colony that

450
00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:55,639
Speaker 1: he eventually founds. But first we've got some ads.

451
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:58,520
Speaker 2: Of course, we all realize it's a pro corporate podcast,

452
00:22:58,600 --> 00:22:59,840
Speaker 2: so let's keep it real.

453
00:23:02,400 --> 00:23:12,040
Speaker 1: Here's some buying advice, and we're back. We're back. We're

454
00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:17,040
Speaker 1: talking about King Leopold, who is searching for a little

455
00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:19,680
Speaker 1: colony somewhere in the world to fill that hole little.

456
00:23:19,440 --> 00:23:20,680
Speaker 2: Heart the Deuce, of course.

457
00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:25,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, Leopold, the Deuce. Leopold I Electric Boogloo whenever you

458
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:26,639
Speaker 1: want to call him. We were just talking about what

459
00:23:26,720 --> 00:23:30,520
Speaker 1: a Solis sociopathic creepy is. Allegedly, yeah, allegedly. Well here's

460
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 1: another quote again, This is from like a positive pro

461
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:38,000
Speaker 1: Leopold biography that he probably paid for. He disliked music, hunting, tobacco,

462
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:40,960
Speaker 1: and had no taste for physical exercises except walking. Although

463
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:43,159
Speaker 1: a frequent visitor at Austin, which is like one of

464
00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: his palaces, he never learned to swim. He was seen

465
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:49,040
Speaker 1: yawning in a gala performance of Faust. So he doesn't

466
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:52,639
Speaker 1: like plays, he doesn't like art. He hates music. Like

467
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:54,640
Speaker 1: That's the thing. Any book you read about him, anyone

468
00:23:54,640 --> 00:23:58,280
Speaker 1: who knew him. He hated music, like not like he

469
00:23:58,359 --> 00:24:02,360
Speaker 1: hated popular music. Yeah, music itself was offensive to him.

470
00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:08,480
Speaker 2: So that's fascinating. Well that's cutting into the American psycho narrative.

471
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 1: Yeah unfortunately, yeah a little bit. Yeah, he's a weird guy.

472
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 1: He's very vain, but his main vanity was quite odd.

473
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:18,199
Speaker 1: He thought he had the most beautiful hands in all

474
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:24,760
Speaker 1: of Europe, tight his biography. What his biography notes. Another

475
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:28,159
Speaker 1: of Leopold's hobbies was his dislike for gloves, and although

476
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:31,040
Speaker 1: he often wore uniform he is never reported to have

477
00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:33,720
Speaker 1: put on gloves. It may have been a hatred of restraint,

478
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: but more probably it was a pardonable vanity on the

479
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,160
Speaker 1: part of the late king, for he possessed the shapely

480
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 1: and beautiful hand of the Orlean family.

481
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 2: That rules so hard.

482
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:49,760
Speaker 1: Here's the only picture I could find hands. No, he's

483
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:51,720
Speaker 1: holding the gloves in his hand, so his hand is

484
00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:53,040
Speaker 1: not even stronger.

485
00:24:53,080 --> 00:24:56,000
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, like reminding people you could be wearing gloves.

486
00:24:56,040 --> 00:24:58,120
Speaker 1: I'm the master of the Yeah, and his I mean,

487
00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:00,359
Speaker 1: in fairness to him, his hands are beauty full in

488
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:02,560
Speaker 1: this picture. I mean they just just look at the

489
00:25:02,600 --> 00:25:06,200
Speaker 1: bone definition. Yeah, they are shapely. They good ass hands. Yeah,

490
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:08,400
Speaker 1: they good ass hands. Oh man, So that.

491
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:11,679
Speaker 2: Means that he made some painter do multiple drafts on

492
00:25:11,720 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 2: those hands.

493
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 1: That's like, this is like, isn't it wait, rested development

494
00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:17,840
Speaker 1: where the guy has a fake hands.

495
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 2: Always always thought the lawyer and always Sonny always has

496
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:21,879
Speaker 2: fake hands.

497
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 1: And yeah, then there's some things to be said about

498
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: our president and hands. Nah, it's weird. It's weird that

499
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:31,680
Speaker 1: you would even like, I never think about my hands, Yeah,

500
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 1: like how they look like when I'm thinking about someone

501
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 1: taking a picture of me. Like zero percent of the time,

502
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:38,080
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh my god, my hands do they

503
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:38,639
Speaker 1: look shapely?

504
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 2: Do you know what's crazy is I had to send

505
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 2: a picture of a piece of equipment for this job

506
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 2: I'm on to a technical person and I just took

507
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:53,199
Speaker 2: a picture of my phone and send it to them.

508
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:54,800
Speaker 1: And I realized as I was sending the email, I

509
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:57,120
Speaker 1: was like, my hands a fucked up in this.

510
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:02,320
Speaker 2: I'm having a real low hand self esteem day.

511
00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 1: Oh I think you have the shapely hands of the

512
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 1: or Leone family.

513
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 2: I know you're being really nice right now, but it's

514
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 2: actually a little hilarious that the one day possibly in

515
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:14,399
Speaker 2: my life, that I've noticed my hands.

516
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:17,399
Speaker 1: Horrible, I was like, what the fuck is up with

517
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:19,840
Speaker 1: my hands? Only these were feet. Yeah.

518
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 2: I've been an arm model before. My friend was doing

519
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 2: some not like you know, elbows down I was doing,

520
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 2: was doing some stock photography, which like I wanted to

521
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:29,879
Speaker 2: take pictures of your arms, and I was like, you're

522
00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:32,680
Speaker 2: wilding out. So you know what, I'm good. I'm good

523
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 2: risk to elbow, wrist to elbow, Yeah, I got I

524
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 2: got forearm, my forearms are I'm about it?

525
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 1: Well. Leopold was a hand man. Yeah, so We've got

526
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:45,880
Speaker 1: this frustrated, greedy, gorgeous handed king on the throne of Belgium.

527
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: He keeps trying to get his countrymen to jump on

528
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:49,919
Speaker 1: board the having a colony train that the people of

529
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 1: Belgium express zero interest in this. Oh okay, wait, why

530
00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 1: what do you mean? All right? Because obviously all.

531
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:01,640
Speaker 2: European colonialism is pretty much the root of almost everything.

532
00:27:01,359 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 1: That's wrong in the world right now. But here is.

533
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: But I don't understand why they.

534
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 2: I mean, they certainly didn't I'm gonna guess not want

535
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:09,919
Speaker 2: to do it.

536
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:11,639
Speaker 1: For the reasons why I don't think they should have

537
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:14,679
Speaker 1: done it. I think the Belgians, for one thing, So

538
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,520
Speaker 1: the Belgiums of this era, anyone who's like a mature

539
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:20,679
Speaker 1: adult lived through what was at that point, he equipped

540
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:23,560
Speaker 1: World War two, the Napoleonic Wars, like we just don't

541
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:25,439
Speaker 1: want any trouble, Like you just want to stay in

542
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: Belgium and eat chocolate and drink beer. We don't really

543
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 1: want to go to Africa or Asia. And let's say

544
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: the first of die not the first? Can I say?

545
00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 2: I can continue an incredibly list, long list of ignorant

546
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:38,640
Speaker 2: as shit. I'm about to say.

547
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:42,400
Speaker 1: You do you is Belgium landlocked? No? No, no, no,

548
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 1: it has an antwerp antwarp, that's right, Okay, a number

549
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:48,720
Speaker 1: of small Yeah. Yeah, it's a wee little country. You

550
00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 1: can drive across it in a couple of hours. Yeah, okay.

551
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 2: I was just like, okay, yeah, I was just like,

552
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 2: it's funny to imagine a landlocked country ownings and stuff.

553
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: But of course they can. Who gives a shit, But

554
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:02,679
Speaker 1: they're not landlocked, so fuck me. Yeah, no they're not.

555
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:05,399
Speaker 1: They didn't have a colony at this point, and they

556
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 1: seem to have zero interest in having one now. At

557
00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:12,400
Speaker 1: this same time, from eighteen seventy four to eighteen seventy seven,

558
00:28:12,440 --> 00:28:14,919
Speaker 1: when Leopold's like a decade or so into his kinghood,

559
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: there's this explorer named Henry Morton Stanley, and yeah, from

560
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: seventy four to seventy seven, he completes a seven thousand

561
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,879
Speaker 1: mile expedition across Central Africa. Much of his travels centered

562
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: upon the still undiscovered by like white people, Congo. No

563
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 1: one had like mapped the extent of the Congo River.

564
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:34,719
Speaker 1: We didn't know where it originated from at this point.

565
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 1: So at this time in European history, like different explorers

566
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: mapping Africa are kind of like the Marvel movie franchise

567
00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 1: of the day. Yeah, Like each of these guys is

568
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: world famous and like newspapers breathlessly cover every expedition, and

569
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 1: whenever they finish an expedition, they write a book and

570
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: millions of people by it so automatically exactly, this is

571
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 1: like the thing people care about at this point in time.

572
00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:00,120
Speaker 1: It's like what these explorers are doing in Africa and

573
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: all over the world.

574
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 2: Like that just means if I were alive then and

575
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 2: a white person two big f's, I would be like

576
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 2: struggling to get on one of the good expeditions.

577
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:14,600
Speaker 1: Yeah you really like fingers crossed. It's not one of

578
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: the ones where people eat each other.

579
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, statistically a lot of them are.

580
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Stanley maps like a huge chunk of the Congo,

581
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 1: more than anyone had ever done before, and it's like

582
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:28,200
Speaker 1: big news. He gets back to Europe from Africa and

583
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: he goes on tour. He's doing like speaking engagements. He's

584
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:31,400
Speaker 1: a big celebrity.

585
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a lot of like skulls and

586
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 2: calipers in a talk like this.

587
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, and probably buckets of racism. Yeah, like totally unexamined racism.

588
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:45,080
Speaker 1: My look, don't look. If you don't look, it's not there. Yeah,

589
00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:50,520
Speaker 1: that's the racist motto. So he's touring around and King

590
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: Leopold winds up meeting with him. Stanley had been bullish

591
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: on the idea that the Congo would be a great

592
00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:00,040
Speaker 1: place for a colony, and he wanted the British to

593
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: set up a colony there the Ogs.

594
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 2: You want to go to the best colonizing studio first.

595
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, that's like the is Paramount good? Probably not.

596
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about the Warner Brothers we all

597
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: live in.

598
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 2: But the Disney that's the Disney.

599
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:19,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, Britain's the Disney of colonizing. Yeah, And instead he

600
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:22,400
Speaker 1: goes to I don't know who's who's making DC's garbage movies,

601
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers. Okay, so Leopold's Warner Brothers.

602
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 2: No, they're not even in it.

603
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:32,320
Speaker 1: Leopold is like this has gotten very confusing. Leopold is like, uh, a.

604
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 2: Snapchat making stuff, Like technically they got the our YouTube

605
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:38,479
Speaker 2: like it's a YouTube show. Yeah, you know, like they

606
00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:41,560
Speaker 2: got the money. Let's actually call it no history for it,

607
00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 2: but who knows.

608
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: I feel like we actually hit upon the right thing

609
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:48,719
Speaker 1: to compare him to, which is Amazon. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

610
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: So Stanley tries to sell his Congo idea to Disney

611
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 1: Slash Britain and it fails, and King Leopold aka Amazon's like, well,

612
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:01,240
Speaker 1: we might be interested in this plan. Yeah, we'll fund this.

613
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 1: Why don't you, Why don't you give me your elevator

614
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,400
Speaker 1: pitch colony in the Congo? Huh? I like it. I

615
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 1: like this idea. Yeah. So Leopold contracts Stanley to work

616
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 1: for him and he sends him back to Africa with

617
00:31:13,600 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: a new mission. So Leopold's master plan here, I'm going

618
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 1: to appeal back for a minute. Then we're going to

619
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: zoom into the different pieces because it's a complicated ass plant.

620
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: His master plan is to create the Congo Free State,

621
00:31:24,760 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: which is a supposedly independent African nation that just happened

622
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:30,959
Speaker 1: to also be ruled by King Leopold the Second. Sure,

623
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 1: So he went about doing this in a few ways.

624
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,920
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy six, he hosted the Brussels Geographic Conference,

625
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: where he invited a bunch of European experts to form

626
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 1: the so called International African Association, which, of course had

627
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:50,480
Speaker 1: no Africans as members. The association was a supposedly philanthropic organization.

628
00:31:50,520 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you a selection from Leopold's speech

629
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 1: at the conference where he sort of lays out what

630
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:56,720
Speaker 1: he wants to do. The subject that calls us together

631
00:31:56,760 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: today is one that demands a first place in the

632
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: attention of friends of humanity to open up to civilization.

633
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: The only part of our globe where she has not

634
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness that envelops entire populations

635
00:32:07,480 --> 00:32:10,080
Speaker 1: is I may venture to say a crusade worthy of

636
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: this century of progress, and I am glad to observe

637
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 1: how very favorable public feeling is to its accomplishment. The

638
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:19,440
Speaker 1: current is with us. So he gets this association together

639
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: and he says, this is an international group and we're

640
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: trying to civilize Africa and improve lives of people who

641
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: were there.

642
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that back then. The rhetoric was already

643
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 2: like the kind of like, ah, this is to help

644
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 2: them double speak. I actually just assumed they were like, yeah,

645
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take this ship from black people.

646
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: No, they are, and these guys the people he invites

647
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: to the Geographic conference and forms the International African Association

648
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: with these guys are a lot of people who legitimately

649
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: want to make things better for Africans who aren't even

650
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:53,600
Speaker 1: thinking about making it. Yeah. Yeah.

651
00:32:53,800 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 2: These are the well meaning liberal white people.

652
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and like missionaries who are like and well

653
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 1: meaning liberal white people. Because there's an Arab slave trade

654
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: in Africa, like traders moving through the Congo, and the

655
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: abolition movement is very big at this point in time,

656
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: and so these people are being like, we've got to

657
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: stop the slave trade in Africa. So Leopold's like, we

658
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: can do that. And there's a bunch of people who

659
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 1: are like, we've got to Christianize the Africans, and Leopold's like,

660
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:19,720
Speaker 1: we can do that, and like so that's that's what

661
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 1: he's claiming this association.

662
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:23,760
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is right, This is like definitely like

663
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 2: colonialism two point zero or three point zero.

664
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,960
Speaker 1: He steps ahead of everyone. Yeah yeah, he's not even

665
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: framing this as colonialism. He's framing this as a charitable

666
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:36,640
Speaker 1: endeavor to exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he suggests that

667
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: Belgium would be a great place for this new international

668
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:41,000
Speaker 1: body to meet because it's a neutral country and it's

669
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: centrally located in Europe. And then he suggests that he

670
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 1: might be a good person to run the association just

671
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: for its first year. You pitch yourself, you know, you

672
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 1: got to be for its first year. And he assures

673
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: them all that he's doing this from the goodness of

674
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 1: his heart. He says, Belgium is small, she is happy

675
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: and satisfied with her lot. I have no other ambition

676
00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:01,920
Speaker 1: than to serve well. And it was true that Belgians

677
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: were pretty happy with their lot. But Leopold did have

678
00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:08,680
Speaker 1: some ambitions. So he gets elected head of the International

679
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,760
Speaker 1: African Association the first year, and then he gets elected

680
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: the head of it the second year too, even though

681
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be illegal. Back to back, and

682
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:20,719
Speaker 1: then the association kind of stops existing, and Leopold replaces

683
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:23,280
Speaker 1: it with the Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo,

684
00:34:23,680 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: and then he replaces that with the International Association for

685
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 1: the Congo. On paper, these are all different international philanthropic groups.

686
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,839
Speaker 1: Their names were deliberately forgettable and similar, so the public

687
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:36,719
Speaker 1: would assume they were all the same thing. In King

688
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 1: Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hoschild writes that Leopold directly told his

689
00:34:40,200 --> 00:34:42,799
Speaker 1: aides quote, care must be taken not to let it

690
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 1: be obvious that the Association of the Congo and the

691
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 1: African Association are two different things. The public doesn't grasp that.

692
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:54,240
Speaker 1: So in reality, all of these philanthropic groups are shadow

693
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: fronts for Leopold's plan to conquer the Congo. So they're

694
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: all charity organizations that he gets international aid money getting

695
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: sent into, and he's able to pour Belgian government funds

696
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:08,640
Speaker 1: into as rights and donations, just like Hillary Clinton. Exactly

697
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:12,479
Speaker 1: like Hillary Clinton. Yes, you've watched the documentary Clinton Catch

698
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 1: by Deniche Desoza. Yes.

699
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 2: The thing that's amazing about this is it's so complicated

700
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:25,920
Speaker 2: a plan that doesn't feel like I mean, I don't

701
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:27,360
Speaker 2: you know, I'm a super smart person.

702
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 1: Of course I'm not.

703
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 2: Finding a place where you could improvise your way into this.

704
00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:34,640
Speaker 1: You just gotta wait, because we're not even halfway through

705
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: the planet. Like this, he's he is a legitimate like okay,

706
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:41,799
Speaker 1: so the villain that Marvel keeps trying to write and

707
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 1: like failing to write in my opinion, where it's like

708
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 1: the low key character where there he's got all these

709
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 1: plans within plans and the step ahead Leopold actually was

710
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:51,880
Speaker 1: that guy to the whole world, but in sort of

711
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:54,840
Speaker 1: the same villainous way. You're like, this is insane.

712
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:56,919
Speaker 2: There's so many things that could go wrong in this.

713
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 1: So he's now created three different philanthropic associations just because

714
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:04,399
Speaker 1: like the backers will start realizing that the association's fake

715
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 1: and they'll pull their money, but he'll keep the organization alive,

716
00:36:07,680 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 1: or he'll roll its assets into a new organization. And

717
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:13,560
Speaker 1: nobody who got caught, who realized that this was some

718
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:15,839
Speaker 1: weird show company, wants to admit that they got caught,

719
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:18,279
Speaker 1: so they just don't say anything, and the public just

720
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: hears like, oh, it's the new thing is out the

721
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: International African Association. It's that group of people trying to

722
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 1: make life better in Africa, right, So he all these

723
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 1: groups are basically funneling money into the work of Henry

724
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley, that explorer who Leopold sent back to Africa.

725
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: So Leopold sent him back in eighteen seventy nine, and

726
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:41,960
Speaker 1: his job was to start building, using the association money,

727
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:45,200
Speaker 1: a series of stations along the Congo River to act

728
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:49,319
Speaker 1: as like waypoints for steamboat traffic. He also met with

729
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: hundreds of local chiefs all throughout the Congo, all the

730
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:54,400
Speaker 1: different people who had chunks of land throughout the Congo,

731
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: the different villages and chiefs, hundreds and hundreds of them.

732
00:36:56,840 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: He meets with these guys and he gets them to

733
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:02,279
Speaker 1: sign treaties giving up their rights to the land. Here's

734
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 1: a quote from Hostchild's book. The very word treaty is

735
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 1: a euphemism. For many chiefs had no idea what they

736
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:08,960
Speaker 1: were signing. I few had ever seen the written word before,

737
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:10,719
Speaker 1: and they were being asked to mark their excess to

738
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 1: documents in a foreign language and in legalese. These guys

739
00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:16,719
Speaker 1: weren't ignorant of the concept of diplomacy. They knew it

740
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: meant to write treaties of friendship with neighboring tribes or villages.

741
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 1: They understood the idea of a non aggression pact, and

742
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: that's what they thought these were. The reality was somewhat different.

743
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 1: Quote in return for one piece of cloth per month

744
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 1: to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides present of cloth

745
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:34,400
Speaker 1: in hand, they promised too freely of their own accord

746
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:38,359
Speaker 1: for themselves and their heirs and successors, forever give up

747
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 1: to set association the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing

748
00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:46,520
Speaker 1: rights to all their territories. So basically he gives them cloth.

749
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:49,480
Speaker 1: They think that they're getting some sick ass clothes just

750
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:50,640
Speaker 1: for Agia.

751
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:53,839
Speaker 2: This is this is a thing. Here's our everyone gets

752
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:54,800
Speaker 2: a jersey.

753
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 1: You give us shirts. We promise we won't shoot you.

754
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:58,399
Speaker 1: We don't want to shoot you anyway. That sounds great.

755
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 1: In reality, these are all statements saying that they give

756
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 1: up other rights to the International African Association, and the

757
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: Association will have the right to collect taxes on the

758
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:11,839
Speaker 1: people who gave up their rights to their land, and

759
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:14,960
Speaker 1: those taxes, because there's no currency in most of the Congo,

760
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: those taxes can be paid in labor. So Leopold gets

761
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: hundreds of chiefs from Stanley to sign these agreements. Yeah, Jesus,

762
00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 1: so Europe thinks Stanley's over there doing valuable philanthropic work

763
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 1: fighting with the slave traders and trying to open the

764
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 1: Congo up to free trade. That's the buzzword everyone's using.

765
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:38,480
Speaker 1: It's like, we're going to open the congoup to free

766
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 1: trade and it'll benefit the Africans, it'll benefit Europe. Everyone

767
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:45,360
Speaker 1: will benefit if there's free trade in the Congo. Meanwhile,

768
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,319
Speaker 1: what he's actually doing is getting pieces of paper that

769
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:51,000
Speaker 1: give Leopold the rights to the Congo, that make it

770
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,239
Speaker 1: look like all these chiefs have come together and said,

771
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 1: we want this guy to be our king, and we

772
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: want to be a country. So I feel like I

773
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: should break for just a second and talk a little

774
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 1: bit more about Henry Morton Stanley. Who's the guy who's

775
00:39:02,640 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: actually doing all this leg work. He was one of

776
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:06,840
Speaker 1: the greatest explorers in history, and he was also a

777
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:10,839
Speaker 1: human garbage fire sort of a definitely a Darth Vader too.

778
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,200
Speaker 1: He was terrified by the thought of being touched by

779
00:39:13,200 --> 00:39:16,279
Speaker 1: a woman, just like Darth Vader. He once cut off

780
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:18,279
Speaker 1: his own dog's tail, cooked it, and fed it to

781
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 1: the dog for no real reason. And he basically, when

782
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 1: I say he was an explorer, he shot his way

783
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 1: through Africa. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a quote from a description

784
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:33,120
Speaker 1: of one of Stanley's expeditions in King Leopold's Ghost. To

785
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:35,719
Speaker 1: those unfortunate enough to live in its path, the expedition

786
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 1: felt like an invading army, for it sometimes held women

787
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:42,279
Speaker 1: and children hostage until local chiefs supplied food. So, yeah,

788
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:45,720
Speaker 1: he's shooting his way through these tribes taking their food,

789
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,640
Speaker 1: taking their shit, burning down villages if there's any resistance.

790
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: One of his men described just hunting people like the predator,

791
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:56,680
Speaker 1: like laying in wait and just shooting random strangers.

792
00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 2: Like less ethical than the predator who lead out has

793
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:02,800
Speaker 2: a certain code.

794
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, way less epical than the predators. So these

795
00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: guys are predatoring their way through through Africa, but they're not.

796
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 2: Particularly worse than any other explorer of the time.

797
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 1: I would he's one of the worst. Okay, they vary.

798
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 1: So Henry Morton Stanley, you know, the doctor Livingstone. I

799
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:22,360
Speaker 1: presume he's that guy. Yeah, yeah, And doctor Livingston was

800
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:24,920
Speaker 1: apparently a pretty nice guy. He was also an explorer

801
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 1: and actually would like get to know people and like

802
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:30,239
Speaker 1: invocate himself into the local culture. So some of these

803
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:33,719
Speaker 1: guys are legitimately just in it for the sake of exploration,

804
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 1: and they're scientists and they're good to the people they encounter.

805
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 1: And some of them, like Stanley, just want to make

806
00:40:39,960 --> 00:40:43,680
Speaker 1: a shitload of money and they're creepy. And Stanley is

807
00:40:43,719 --> 00:40:46,640
Speaker 1: one of the kills thousands of people while he's exploring.

808
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:47,319
Speaker 1: Got it, got it?

809
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 2: I just want to I guess when I met not

810
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 2: as a mitigating thing of like everyone was doing it,

811
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 2: but like, uh, if not the only standard practice, it was.

812
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: Not what you're describing is not not he's a standard

813
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 1: he's it's definitely common practice on a lot of these guys.

814
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 1: But he's not near to the only one. But he's

815
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: one of the worst, Yeah for sure. Okay, So yeah,

816
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:12,080
Speaker 1: While Stanley's expedition is going on, Leopold also hires a

817
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:14,880
Speaker 1: bunch of other expeditions to explore other parts of Africa.

818
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:18,840
Speaker 1: These were deliberately showy expeditions meant to distract public attention.

819
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: One of them involved a team of four Indian elephants

820
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:23,879
Speaker 1: being sent to Africa to see if they could reed

821
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:26,840
Speaker 1: with African elephants. All of the elephants died horribly, but

822
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: the news covered the story the whole time. So nobody's

823
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: reading about what Stanley's doing because they think it's a

824
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 1: boring philanthropical mission and there's this crazy story about elephants,

825
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 1: let's read about that. It's so fucking dark, holy sh

826
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:43,480
Speaker 1: So he's clearly understands the media well enough that he's

827
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:45,719
Speaker 1: not just thinking about how to accomplish his plan, but

828
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 1: how to distract public attention and while he does it.

829
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 1: When Morton Stanley gets back from his expedition, he writes

830
00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 1: a book. It's an instant bestseller. King Leopold edits it himself.

831
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: That's one of the things he'd insisted on is that

832
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: Stanley could write a book about this, but King Leopold

833
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 1: would get to edit it. And most of what he

834
00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 1: did was correct the times when Stanley mixed up the

835
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: different associations and committees that he was supposedly working for,

836
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:11,640
Speaker 1: because nobody could keep it straight but Leopold.

837
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:15,440
Speaker 2: That's such an attention to detail, that's unbelievable.

838
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:19,759
Speaker 1: Like I said, he's the first modern, truly modern bastard. Yeah,

839
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:23,840
Speaker 1: so this book is sort of framed as like Henry

840
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley's helping the Congo Free State be born and

841
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:30,920
Speaker 1: helping these Africans like take their stab at nationhood and

842
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:33,880
Speaker 1: joining the international community and whatnot. So that's how all

843
00:42:33,920 --> 00:42:36,360
Speaker 1: this is being played in the outside world. The reality

844
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 1: in the Congo is very different, and what happens next

845
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:44,000
Speaker 1: is not what anyone but Leopold had expected. And we're

846
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:48,040
Speaker 1: going to get into that in a minute. But right now, Andrew,

847
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:51,960
Speaker 1: do you have too much money? Oh? Hell yeah? Well,

848
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:54,279
Speaker 1: one of the great things to do with too much

849
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 1: money is spend it on products, products like the ones

850
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:06,279
Speaker 1: that I'm going to talk about now Here's so we're

851
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: back and King Leopold has sent an explorer off to

852
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:12,279
Speaker 1: the Congo to trick a bunch of tribes people into

853
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 1: signing away their rights to the land, while he's distracted

854
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: the rest of Europe with a bunch of showy expeditions.

855
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:20,440
Speaker 2: So it's just like it used to be, just like

856
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:24,800
Speaker 2: cannons and soldiers swords, I guess, and now it's pr

857
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:27,720
Speaker 2: and fake treaties and stuff.

858
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, it's really modern in a lot of ways.

859
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:35,919
Speaker 1: So Leopold has this new best selling book that's talking

860
00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 1: about the great stuff he's trying to do in the

861
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 1: Congo that gets the public jazz, and he's able to

862
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 1: sort of further push the legitimacy of his project by

863
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 1: getting the US President Chester A. Arthur to recognize the

864
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:49,360
Speaker 1: Congo Free State. Leopold had charmed the former US Minister

865
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: to Belgium, a guy who called himself General Sanford, even

866
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:56,320
Speaker 1: though he wasn't actually a general, but he was a

867
00:43:56,480 --> 00:43:58,400
Speaker 1: rich guy who had a lot of money and like

868
00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 1: an orange plantation. Because he was a rich guy. He

869
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 1: was able to get the president's ear General Sandford appealed

870
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:07,840
Speaker 1: to President Arthur's dislike of Arabs because again, there were

871
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:09,160
Speaker 1: all these Arab slave traders.

872
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just yes, nothing's changed, Yeah, okay, nothing's new.

873
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:18,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Chester A. Arthur was. He also pointed out

874
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:20,839
Speaker 1: that the Congo had been discovered by an American because

875
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:23,480
Speaker 1: Henry Morton Stanley called himself an American. He wasn't. He

876
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:25,360
Speaker 1: was actually British, but he light his whole life and

877
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:28,080
Speaker 1: said he was American. Everyone lies about everything in the

878
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:31,799
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred Yeah, internet, because there yeah, yeah, nothing like

879
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:34,800
Speaker 1: you you run into a thousand colonels when you're reading

880
00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 1: anything in this period, and none of them are colonels. Sure,

881
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 1: none of them were ever in the military. Like I'm

882
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:42,880
Speaker 1: going to be fried chicken colonels. Fine, And in this

883
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:46,839
Speaker 1: case of General anyway, Chesterry Arthur was like, sounds great,

884
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 1: Congo free straights, sounds like a great idea. You're going

885
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: to fight some Arabs. Hooray. Yeah. So he included this

886
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 1: next bit in his State of the Union speech, recognizing

887
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:00,040
Speaker 1: the Congo free state. Quote from Chester A. Arthur, the

888
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 1: rich and populous valley of the Congo spelled with a

889
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: K in. This is being opened by a society called

890
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:08,719
Speaker 1: the International African Association, of which the King of the

891
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,880
Speaker 1: Belgians is the president. Large tracts of territory have been

892
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:15,320
Speaker 1: ceded to the Association by native chiefs. Roads have been opened,

893
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:17,760
Speaker 1: steamboats have been placed on the river, and the Nuclei

894
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 1: of states established under one flag, which offers freedom to

895
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: commerce and prohibits the slave trade. Oh my god, So

896
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 1: that's how Chester A. Arthur pictures it.

897
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:31,360
Speaker 2: So he got paid placement for his propaganda. Yeah, in

898
00:45:31,400 --> 00:45:32,280
Speaker 2: the State of the Union.

899
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:35,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the State of the Union. So far the

900
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: people of Belgium and the other European states are fooled

901
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 1: pretty well. But France and some other folks and like

902
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:44,480
Speaker 1: the British government and whatnot are starting to catch on

903
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:47,120
Speaker 1: the Leopold's plan and realize that he's making a power grab.

904
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:49,920
Speaker 1: This helped us spark a general what's known as the

905
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:52,520
Speaker 1: Scramble for Africa, where all these European powers are like,

906
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:54,640
Speaker 1: oh my god, we're running out of Africa to take over,

907
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:57,520
Speaker 1: so they start shooting out expeditions to claim the last

908
00:45:57,520 --> 00:46:00,399
Speaker 1: pieces of the continent before it fills up. This all

909
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: culminates in the Berlin Conference of eighteen eighty four to

910
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:06,040
Speaker 1: eighty five, and a bunch of stuff is decided there.

911
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:09,239
Speaker 1: But Leopold's main goal is to get recognition for what

912
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:12,239
Speaker 1: he starts calling the Congo Free State. He's basically like,

913
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 1: I've got all these treaties. Like he gets up in

914
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:16,279
Speaker 1: front of Europe and he's like, I got all these treaties. Look,

915
00:46:16,480 --> 00:46:18,479
Speaker 1: the people of the Congo want to be their own state.

916
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:20,520
Speaker 1: They want me to be their king. They've given this

917
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 1: the state, the rights to their land. And if you

918
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: all back me in establishing the state, it'll be a

919
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:28,400
Speaker 1: free trade zone, so all everyone will be able to

920
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:31,279
Speaker 1: trade freely and buy and sell freely in there. It'll

921
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 1: make a bunch of money for everybody. So that's Leopold's

922
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: pitch man, and Europe buys it. In eighteen eighty five,

923
00:46:39,120 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: the Congo Free State is established. Leopold had to go

924
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 1: in front of Belgium Senate to ask if he could

925
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 1: be two kings at once. He promised that the Congo

926
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:48,919
Speaker 1: would be its own independent nation and that it would

927
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:51,080
Speaker 1: pay its own way in the world. He told Belgium

928
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:52,920
Speaker 1: he thought it was his duty to quote help the

929
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:55,879
Speaker 1: nations of second rank become useful members of the great

930
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: family of nations. Then he asked for money, a little

931
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:02,000
Speaker 1: loone to help the fledgling new nation. And he asked

932
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:04,400
Speaker 1: his fellow Belgians to volunteer to help in this bold

933
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:08,160
Speaker 1: project quote more than any other. A manufacturing and commercial

934
00:47:08,160 --> 00:47:11,040
Speaker 1: people like ourselves ought to strive to obtain a market

935
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: for all its workers, for thinkers, capitalists and workmen. So

936
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: the Congo Free State is on paper a country with

937
00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 1: Leopold the Second as its absolute ruler. So he's gone

938
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:23,400
Speaker 1: from the King of Belgium. Yeah, he doesn't really have

939
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:28,760
Speaker 1: any power to be of a country like twenty times

940
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,839
Speaker 1: the size of Belgium. Jesus Christ. So the Congo Free

941
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 1: State is to all intends and purposes of state. It

942
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 1: has its own army, the Force Publique, which is made

943
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 1: up of African soldiers led by Belgian officers. It's illegal

944
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:43,920
Speaker 1: for black men to be officers in the Army of

945
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:44,360
Speaker 1: the Congo.

946
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:47,640
Speaker 2: Yeah that sounds about right.

947
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:56,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Man Leopold has acquired himself an African empire. Unfortunately,

948
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:59,440
Speaker 1: he didn't want an empire. He had no desire to

949
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 1: actually rule and others wanted money. He just wanted money.

950
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:08,320
Speaker 1: So the Congo Free State is entirely a money making

951
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:11,919
Speaker 1: scheme and it's all based around rubber. So the late

952
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:14,959
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds is when rubber really started to take off.

953
00:48:15,400 --> 00:48:17,680
Speaker 1: That's like in the mid eighteen hundreds or so is

954
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: when they figure out how to vulcanize rubber, which is

955
00:48:19,640 --> 00:48:22,239
Speaker 1: what makes it like nice and shiny and stable and

956
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: it doesn't smell weird and fall apart. It's so the

957
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:29,160
Speaker 1: Macintosh coat becomes popular around this time. People like in

958
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: Europe are just like covered headed tone rubber, Like it's

959
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:34,239
Speaker 1: it's everywhere. It's like the fashion of the time, right,

960
00:48:34,320 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 1: people are just flipping out over rubber. Fetishes are born

961
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 1: tons exactly, hot air balloons. It's like this one. It's

962
00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: a wonder material. It's like the first time people they

963
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 1: don't have to use glass for everything. Yeah, so everyone's

964
00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:53,239
Speaker 1: in love with rubber. But there's only two ways to

965
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 1: make rubber at that time, vines and trees. Now, rubber

966
00:48:57,320 --> 00:48:59,600
Speaker 1: vines grew wild all around the Congo.

967
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,879
Speaker 2: It was the two ways are vines and trees. There's

968
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:05,600
Speaker 2: rubber vines and there's rubber. Yeah, I thought it was

969
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 2: going to be vegetation and chemistry.

970
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:11,200
Speaker 1: No they didn't. They do now we can make yeah, yeah,

971
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:14,760
Speaker 1: but they hadn't figured that shit out. Yeah. Yeah. So actually,

972
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 1: harvesting all of the rubber from vines like the ones

973
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:19,360
Speaker 1: who grew in the Congo required thousands and thousands of

974
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 1: people climbing trees in the jungle. There's the risk of

975
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 1: snake bite and monster attacks, and it's just a nightmare harvesting, yeah,

976
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: at large scale in the Congo. Harvesting rubber from trees,

977
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:32,680
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is really easy, and some enterprising

978
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 1: people had already started planting groves of rubber trees in

979
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: South America, but those trees took about twenty years or

980
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 1: so to really get going. So Leopold standing here in

981
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 1: charge of the Congo, knows that he has about twenty

982
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 1: years to be the world's leading producer of rubber. The

983
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 1: Congo Free State wasn't basically just a giant rubber factory.

984
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 1: That was his whole vision for this land filled with

985
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 1: millions of people.

986
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like the actual story of Willy Wonk.

987
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:04,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the real Willy Wonka. Yeah, exactly. Jesus Christ.

988
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 1: So now I remember when I said that Leopold had

989
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:11,080
Speaker 1: the right to collect taxes in the form of labor.

990
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Well, he used these taxes to make Congolese

991
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:17,200
Speaker 1: people go harvest rubber for him. In theory, I think

992
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:19,239
Speaker 1: he was allowed to only demand like forty hours a

993
00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:21,279
Speaker 1: month from them or something. But what happened is that

994
00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 1: he would have his soldiers go from village to village

995
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: and take hostages. These hostages would be put in concentration

996
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: camps where they'd be starved and beaten until the village

997
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:31,759
Speaker 1: met its rubber quota. So if you didn't get all

998
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 1: the rubber that you were supposed to get soon enough,

999
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:38,839
Speaker 1: your family would just starve. Today, Leopold's government did have

1000
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: a problem because obviously it needs soldiers to enforce these

1001
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:46,080
Speaker 1: nightmarish rules. But white people die like crazy in the Congo,

1002
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 1: Like more than a third of the Belgians who went

1003
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:51,960
Speaker 1: there died there. And since again it's illegal for Africans

1004
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 1: to be officers in the Force Publique, there would wind

1005
00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:57,760
Speaker 1: up being like four or five Belgian guys commanding hundreds

1006
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:01,520
Speaker 1: and hundreds of African soldiers. So that's obviously you're treating

1007
00:51:01,520 --> 00:51:04,120
Speaker 1: these guys terribly. You're making the massacre their own people,

1008
00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 1: and there's five of you for every five hundred of them.

1009
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:10,399
Speaker 1: That's like a recipe for a revolution, or it would

1010
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:14,239
Speaker 1: be if the soldiers had free access to bullets. One

1011
00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:16,960
Speaker 1: of the ways the Belgians controlled their army was by

1012
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:20,120
Speaker 1: heavily restricting when anybody would get bullets, and by policing

1013
00:51:20,160 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 1: their AMMO so they couldn't hide any away. So each

1014
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:25,239
Speaker 1: soldier would only be issued a certain amount of AMMO

1015
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 1: when they'd go out to get rubber, and if they

1016
00:51:27,719 --> 00:51:30,360
Speaker 1: fired any rounds, they had to account for them. The

1017
00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 1: general policy in the Congo became that if you fired around,

1018
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 1: you had to provide a right hand from a corpse

1019
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: for every round that you shot. This was meant to

1020
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:40,640
Speaker 1: stop people from stockpiling AMMO, and it was meant to

1021
00:51:40,640 --> 00:51:43,319
Speaker 1: stop them from like hunting for animals, Yeah, when they

1022
00:51:43,320 --> 00:51:48,160
Speaker 1: should have been, you know, shooting people. What this actually meant, yeah, exactly.

1023
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 2: So but that creates a market for right hands exactly. Yeah,

1024
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 2: so possibly go wrong.

1025
00:51:54,239 --> 00:51:56,799
Speaker 1: Yeah. For one thing, these soldiers aren't fed enough, so

1026
00:51:56,840 --> 00:51:59,120
Speaker 1: they're starving and they start hunting, and then once they

1027
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:01,319
Speaker 1: fired a couple rounds hunt and animal they need to

1028
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:03,800
Speaker 1: pick up Okay, well we fired three rounds getting that

1029
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Now we need three hands. So we

1030
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:09,480
Speaker 1: need to go into a village. We need to take

1031
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:12,480
Speaker 1: some people's hands. And in addition to that, like it

1032
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 1: becomes common if a village refuses to provide rubber, like

1033
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:17,880
Speaker 1: people are like, we're not going to work to you.

1034
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:19,719
Speaker 1: We're not going to give up a relatives as hostages.

1035
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:22,200
Speaker 1: The Force Publique would just burn down the whole village.

1036
00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 1: Sometimes they just kill everybody in the entire village. And

1037
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 1: this is happening on basically an industrial scale. In nineteen

1038
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:33,319
Speaker 1: oh three, a single rubber collecting post was sent more

1039
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:36,720
Speaker 1: than forty thousand replacement rounds of ammunition to every round

1040
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 1: that they're being sent. They've got a hand. Yeah, So

1041
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 1: like the military units and the Force Publique even would

1042
00:52:43,600 --> 00:52:45,640
Speaker 1: have a keeper of the hands whose job was to

1043
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:48,480
Speaker 1: smoke all of the severed hands so that they preserve,

1044
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 1: so that you could go back to the authority of evidence.

1045
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:54,320
Speaker 1: We need twenty thousand more bullets. Here's twenty thousand human hands.

1046
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:58,840
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. Yeah. So in eighteen eighty five, when this

1047
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:01,200
Speaker 1: whole operation is just getting off the ground, King Leopold

1048
00:53:01,239 --> 00:53:03,400
Speaker 1: is named in British court as a client of what

1049
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 1: the British called a disorderly house. Can you guess what

1050
00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: a disorderly house was? Uh? Probably not enough. It's a punishment,

1051
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:14,799
Speaker 1: is what I'll go for it. Yeah, I know it's

1052
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:19,960
Speaker 1: a brothelh So while this is all starting off, King sorry,

1053
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:22,000
Speaker 1: a whorehouse in England, I thought, I.

1054
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:25,399
Speaker 2: Thought you disorderly house meant like his dukedom didn't have

1055
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 2: like x or y like paperwork filed.

1056
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: No, no, no. While he's freshly the king of the

1057
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:34,480
Speaker 1: Belgian Congo, he's named in British court as a client

1058
00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:37,359
Speaker 1: of a whorehouse, and they say that he had been

1059
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:40,360
Speaker 1: paying eight hundred pounds a month for a steady supply

1060
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:42,640
Speaker 1: of young women, some of whom were ten to fifteen

1061
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 1: years old. That's so, I mean, that's what Leopold's doing

1062
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 1: in between administering the Congo. Yeah. And while he's doing that,

1063
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 1: his men in the Congo are building a system of roads, railways,

1064
00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:54,640
Speaker 1: posts and steamboats that are meant to allow the rubber

1065
00:53:54,680 --> 00:53:57,520
Speaker 1: making operation to prosper. Leopold doesn't want to pay for

1066
00:53:57,560 --> 00:53:59,799
Speaker 1: all this himself, so he claimed the infrastructure is nes

1067
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:03,080
Speaker 1: so that the Free States army can fight those dastardly

1068
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:07,279
Speaker 1: Arab slavers. Got the US to pay for it, or

1069
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 1: just generally he got everyone else to pay for it.

1070
00:54:10,040 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: So he got in Europe on board with this by

1071
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:14,360
Speaker 1: saying the Congo is going to be a free trade zone.

1072
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:16,080
Speaker 1: But then he's like, we need to build all this

1073
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 1: infrastructure in order to fight the slavers, so we're gonna

1074
00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:20,840
Speaker 1: have to collect import taxes.

1075
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:24,680
Speaker 2: Now nice, He's.

1076
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:26,720
Speaker 1: Just he like. The one thing you can trust Leopold

1077
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:30,560
Speaker 1: to do is he will fuck over every single person. Yeah. Yeah.

1078
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 1: So now even these countries who had gotten on board

1079
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:34,839
Speaker 1: because they thought this was a free trade zone, they're

1080
00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 1: getting screwed. And of course the millions of people whose

1081
00:54:37,600 --> 00:54:40,160
Speaker 1: hands he's having severed being screwed. I guess the key

1082
00:54:40,280 --> 00:54:43,000
Speaker 1: is just never stop lying. Yeah, no, that's the thing.

1083
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 1: Whenever you read about any of these guys. That is

1084
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:48,960
Speaker 1: the most important thing. He's never ever stop lying. If

1085
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: you're going to be a monster, you have to lie

1086
00:54:52,200 --> 00:54:56,680
Speaker 1: consistently for decades about everything. All right, Yeah, I'm in.

1087
00:54:56,880 --> 00:55:01,640
Speaker 1: It works, Yeah no, I mean I'm in. Well, you'll

1088
00:55:01,680 --> 00:55:05,799
Speaker 1: be a great king of the Congo. Ha ha. So

1089
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:09,720
Speaker 1: to Leopold's credit. His men did fight Arab slave traders,

1090
00:55:09,719 --> 00:55:12,560
Speaker 1: but most of the fighting was done by conscripted African

1091
00:55:12,640 --> 00:55:16,760
Speaker 1: soldiers who were themselves basically slaves. Yeah yeah. King Leopold

1092
00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:19,839
Speaker 1: personally endorsed a system where white agents of the Free

1093
00:55:19,840 --> 00:55:21,800
Speaker 1: State got a bonus if they were able to find

1094
00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 1: more recruits for the Force Public. Many agents wound up

1095
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:27,200
Speaker 1: buying them in from various chiefs and effect doing the

1096
00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:29,440
Speaker 1: same thing as the Arab slavers they bragged about fighting.

1097
00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:33,799
Speaker 1: State agents also got bonuses for quote reducing recruiting expenses,

1098
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:36,600
Speaker 1: so if they outright enslaved people rather than paid them

1099
00:55:36,640 --> 00:55:39,279
Speaker 1: to join, they got more money in their pocket. As

1100
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 1: many as three quarters of all volunteers for the Force

1101
00:55:42,120 --> 00:55:45,120
Speaker 1: Public died before they could receive training. Most of those

1102
00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: volunteers were teenagers.

1103
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:52,520
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, so they're just volunteers quote unquote, that's fucking incredible.

1104
00:55:52,719 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 2: So it was like, we have our indentured servant army

1105
00:55:56,160 --> 00:55:57,680
Speaker 2: as going to fight your slave army.

1106
00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:01,640
Speaker 1: So basically the Congo at this point is groups of

1107
00:56:02,719 --> 00:56:05,400
Speaker 1: white guys with soldiers going into the jungle to collect

1108
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:07,640
Speaker 1: a bunch of other soldiers and they'll put them in

1109
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:09,839
Speaker 1: chains and like march them through the jungle and most

1110
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:11,439
Speaker 1: of them will die, and then they'll train those guys

1111
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:13,480
Speaker 1: up to fight. Then they'll take those guys into the

1112
00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:16,360
Speaker 1: jungle to tell people to collect rubber from people, and

1113
00:56:16,400 --> 00:56:19,400
Speaker 1: to kill everyone who doesn't provide enough rubber, and to

1114
00:56:20,239 --> 00:56:22,280
Speaker 1: kill a lot of the people who do provide enough rubber,

1115
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 1: just because these kids are like starving to death, and

1116
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:28,080
Speaker 1: maybe they have to shoot an animal, or maybe there's

1117
00:56:28,239 --> 00:56:30,520
Speaker 1: rebels and they get into a firefight, but they don't

1118
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:32,640
Speaker 1: have killing it. Yeah, and then you got to take

1119
00:56:32,719 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: hands from these So it just keeps spiraling out of

1120
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 1: control and becoming even more of a nightmare to everybody

1121
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:41,959
Speaker 1: but Leopold, because again he's sitting back in Belgium. This time,

1122
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:46,040
Speaker 1: since Leopold was the absolute monarch, he got to rule

1123
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 1: by royal decree. His first decree was that all quote

1124
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,360
Speaker 1: vacant land was now property of the state. He didn't

1125
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:55,400
Speaker 1: explain what vacant meant, because obviously farmers don't live on

1126
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 1: every inch of their farmland, so basically most of the

1127
00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:00,760
Speaker 1: land in the Congo was now just his. He leased

1128
00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: this land to a series of private corporations, and this

1129
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:05,760
Speaker 1: gets to the real brilliance of his scheme. Because Leopold

1130
00:57:05,760 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 1: didn't have to dirty his hands actually running any of

1131
00:57:08,080 --> 00:57:10,920
Speaker 1: the rubber harvesting, he was able to private right. Yeah,

1132
00:57:11,200 --> 00:57:13,960
Speaker 1: other people paid for the right to mine rubber and

1133
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:16,320
Speaker 1: cut off hands and do all the actual work, and

1134
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:19,240
Speaker 1: Leopold owned the rights to a huge chunk of their profits.

1135
00:57:19,440 --> 00:57:22,000
Speaker 1: So basically, these companies would come in and give him

1136
00:57:22,040 --> 00:57:24,320
Speaker 1: an owning stake in the corporation, they.

1137
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:30,640
Speaker 2: Would license the scheme of enslaving people, cutting off their hands, etc.

1138
00:57:31,120 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Adam Hoschild in King Leopold's Ghost compares the Congo

1139
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:38,040
Speaker 1: Free State to a venture capital firm. Quote, he had

1140
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:40,800
Speaker 1: essentially found a way to attract other people's capital to

1141
00:57:40,840 --> 00:57:43,920
Speaker 1: his investment schemes, while he retained half the proceeds. In

1142
00:57:43,960 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 1: the end, what with various taxes and fees the companies

1143
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:49,200
Speaker 1: paid the state, it came to more than half Jesus.

1144
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:52,040
Speaker 1: So in the eighteen nineties, the Congo Free State really

1145
00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:54,480
Speaker 1: starts putting out rubber, and suddenly King Leopold is one

1146
00:57:54,480 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 1: of the richest guys in the world. He starts buying

1147
00:57:56,640 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: gigantic monuments and palaces and shit for Belgium big show projects,

1148
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:03,160
Speaker 1: some of which are still there. It is to make

1149
00:58:03,200 --> 00:58:05,160
Speaker 1: people like him, it's to keep him popular at home.

1150
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:07,920
Speaker 1: He's succeeding beyond his wildest dreams in the business side

1151
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:10,160
Speaker 1: of things, but his personal life is just kind of

1152
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:14,280
Speaker 1: one series of train wrecks after the other. Yeah, his

1153
00:58:14,360 --> 00:58:16,880
Speaker 1: son had died in eighteen sixty four, which led to

1154
00:58:16,920 --> 00:58:20,040
Speaker 1: an understandable estrangement between Leopold and his wife. It took

1155
00:58:20,080 --> 00:58:21,960
Speaker 1: eight years before they could stand to be around each

1156
00:58:21,960 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 1: other and try again. This passage from Leopold's biography tells

1157
00:58:25,440 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 1: you a lot about the relationships between the sexes. In

1158
00:58:28,760 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties quote, Leopold the Second was anxious to

1159
00:58:32,240 --> 00:58:34,680
Speaker 1: have a male heir, and in eighteen seventy two, Queen

1160
00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:38,720
Speaker 1: Marie Henriette consented to resume conjugal life with her royal spouse,

1161
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:42,560
Speaker 1: from whom she had separated sometime before. She sacrificed herself,

1162
00:58:42,600 --> 00:58:45,400
Speaker 1: as one may say, for her country. A child was

1163
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:47,640
Speaker 1: born unto them, but alas it was a daughter and

1164
00:58:47,680 --> 00:58:50,960
Speaker 1: not a son, which was given unto them. So that's

1165
00:58:50,960 --> 00:58:53,200
Speaker 1: messed up for a lot of reasons, Jesus, one of

1166
00:58:53,200 --> 00:58:55,960
Speaker 1: which is just that even in the pro Leopold biography,

1167
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 1: it just admits that having sex with Leopold is a sacrifice.

1168
00:59:00,120 --> 00:59:04,080
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm surprised that the amount of agency she has, Like,

1169
00:59:04,760 --> 00:59:07,560
Speaker 2: you know, she is the queen facing pressure, but wasn't

1170
00:59:07,680 --> 00:59:10,640
Speaker 2: forced at guillotine point or whatever to.

1171
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:13,600
Speaker 1: She kind of was. I guess that's true.

1172
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:15,520
Speaker 2: I guess that's between the lines, of course.

1173
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jesus, it's I mean, she probably has more agency

1174
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:20,480
Speaker 1: than the average, but at the same time, in a

1175
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 1: way she has less because it's less important for a

1176
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:26,439
Speaker 1: commoner to have a son. Yeah, yeah, because like the king,

1177
00:59:26,520 --> 00:59:28,439
Speaker 1: that's like the whole dynasty thing. So you might say

1178
00:59:28,440 --> 00:59:29,280
Speaker 1: she has even less.

1179
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:33,120
Speaker 2: We probably should say that, Yeah, we probably would be

1180
00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:34,240
Speaker 2: respected for the record or that.

1181
00:59:34,400 --> 00:59:38,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, Leopold did not take having a daughter

1182
00:59:38,720 --> 00:59:42,400
Speaker 1: very well. This quote is from King Leopold's ghost. When

1183
00:59:42,400 --> 00:59:45,480
Speaker 1: the last daughter, Clementine, was born, according to his sister Luis,

1184
00:59:45,720 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 1: the king was furious and thenceforth refused to have anything

1185
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:52,400
Speaker 1: to do with his admirable wife from the beginning. She wrote, quote,

1186
00:59:52,440 --> 00:59:55,280
Speaker 1: the king paid very little attention to me or my sisters,

1187
00:59:55,840 --> 00:59:58,280
Speaker 1: so he doesn't pay attention to his daughters, and he

1188
00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:00,320
Speaker 1: mostly seems to care when one of them, like fucks

1189
01:00:00,360 --> 01:00:04,400
Speaker 1: with his garden. Here's a recollection from Luis. Large juicy

1190
01:00:04,400 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 1: peaches grew on the walls of the gardens, and the

1191
01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:08,240
Speaker 1: king was very proud of them. I had a passion

1192
01:00:08,240 --> 01:00:10,439
Speaker 1: for peaches, and one day I dared eat one, which

1193
01:00:10,440 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 1: was hidden away among the leaves. And that year peaches

1194
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:16,080
Speaker 1: were plentiful. But the following day the king discovered the theft.

1195
01:00:16,200 --> 01:00:18,920
Speaker 1: What a dramatic moment. At once suspected, I confessed my

1196
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:21,760
Speaker 1: crime and was promptly punished. I did not realize that

1197
01:00:21,800 --> 01:00:25,760
Speaker 1: the king counted his peaches. So while Leopold is running

1198
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:30,240
Speaker 1: a nightmare hand harvesting rubber making scheme in the Congo,

1199
01:00:30,600 --> 01:00:32,640
Speaker 1: he's got enough time to make sure that his daughter

1200
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:33,640
Speaker 1: doesn't steal a peach.

1201
01:00:34,400 --> 01:00:37,320
Speaker 2: Fuck, Because it's like, at least Ivanka Trump has the

1202
01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:40,960
Speaker 2: decency to pretend that she loved her time with her dad,

1203
01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:44,200
Speaker 2: even though, like in all those stories she tells, it's

1204
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:46,880
Speaker 2: sad and weird too, But it's like, at least she's like,

1205
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:48,640
Speaker 2: I love him. He's my dad, you know, And I

1206
01:00:48,680 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 2: believe in all this shit. He couldn't even get his

1207
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:52,240
Speaker 2: daughters to be like I.

1208
01:00:52,200 --> 01:00:55,600
Speaker 1: Love Well, there's gonna be more about his daughters coming

1209
01:00:55,600 --> 01:00:59,000
Speaker 1: in here. He's he is not a great dad. Yeah,

1210
01:00:59,040 --> 01:01:02,880
Speaker 1: if you can't tell that, huh. There's in fact, no

1211
01:01:03,000 --> 01:01:05,840
Speaker 1: evidence that Leopold cared about any of his children as

1212
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:09,400
Speaker 1: anything more than vehicles for his legacy. Even that fawning

1213
01:01:09,520 --> 01:01:12,000
Speaker 1: nineteen ten biography can't make it seem like Leopold had

1214
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:15,080
Speaker 1: a single fuck for his family. As King Leomara, I'm

1215
01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:17,680
Speaker 1: gonna be honest, that's so far the most relatable thing

1216
01:01:17,760 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 1: about it.

1217
01:01:18,280 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 2: I'm not liking his family, Yeah.

1218
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:25,120
Speaker 1: Just kidding. I love your fam As King Leopold grew

1219
01:01:25,120 --> 01:01:27,680
Speaker 1: older and richer, he also became a full on hypochondriac.

1220
01:01:27,760 --> 01:01:30,520
Speaker 1: He took to wearing a waterproof bag around his gigantic

1221
01:01:30,560 --> 01:01:33,520
Speaker 1: beard whenever he went outside in the rain or when

1222
01:01:33,520 --> 01:01:36,840
Speaker 1: he swam. He required his palace tablecloths to be boiled

1223
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:39,360
Speaker 1: every day to kill any germs, which is at least

1224
01:01:39,400 --> 01:01:46,080
Speaker 1: a character evolution from not letting them wash his sheets. Yeah, snapkin, Yeah,

1225
01:01:46,760 --> 01:01:49,880
Speaker 1: so he's changing. He's had his own little hero's journey. Yeah, yeah,

1226
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:53,560
Speaker 1: we all get there. Yeah, hypochondriac. This wound up being

1227
01:01:54,240 --> 01:01:56,880
Speaker 1: another really really long one. There was just so much research,

1228
01:01:57,120 --> 01:01:59,760
Speaker 1: So this is going to be a two parter podcast,

1229
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:02,400
Speaker 1: and the second part is going to drop on Thursday,

1230
01:02:03,400 --> 01:02:06,720
Speaker 1: so we'll be getting into the rest of Leopold's story

1231
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:09,560
Speaker 1: in the tremendously dark story of the Congo. So stick

1232
01:02:09,600 --> 01:02:12,640
Speaker 1: around check back out on Thursday. It's going to be great.

1233
01:02:12,920 --> 01:02:15,240
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can check out Andrew T's podcast,

1234
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: os This Racist. You can also check out every other

1235
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:20,000
Speaker 1: episode of Behind the Bastards. You can find us on

1236
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:23,200
Speaker 1: Twitter at Bastards Pod and Instagram as well. You can

1237
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:25,800
Speaker 1: find us on the internet at behind the Bastards dot

1238
01:02:25,800 --> 01:02:27,680
Speaker 1: com and you can find me on Twitter at I

1239
01:02:27,800 --> 01:02:30,960
Speaker 1: Write Okay, So Andrew and I will be back on

1240
01:02:31,000 --> 01:02:35,840
Speaker 1: Thursday with more Leopold, so check us out then. Behind

1241
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:38,640
Speaker 1: the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For

1242
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:42,280
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Foolzonemedia dot

1243
01:02:42,320 --> 01:02:46,200
Speaker 1: com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1244
01:02:46,240 --> 01:02:47,640
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.