Speaker 1: Al Zon Media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, and you
Speaker 1: know it's another holiday week. This is not a holiday
Speaker 1: I tend to celebrate, but it is a holiday that
Speaker 1: our company gives us off, and I like my team
Speaker 1: not having to work. It's also good to not have
Speaker 1: to work. And when we drop episodes on weeks like this,
Speaker 1: it means you basically have to double up during the
Speaker 1: week before the week after, which causes a lot of
Speaker 1: stress that isn't necessary when you're trying to have everyone
Speaker 1: be able to relax. So this week we are doing
Speaker 1: another rewind our infamous and beloved episodes on King Leopold,
Speaker 1: the Second of Belgium. So tuck in and enjoy yourselves
Speaker 1: and enjoy a real terrible story of a real terrible
Speaker 1: piece of shit. I hope you all have a good week,
Speaker 1: regardless of what you do during it. Hello, friends, and
Speaker 1: welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the show where we
Speaker 1: tell you everything you don't know about the very worst
Speaker 1: people in history. On this show, we cover monsters like
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Eric Prince Will Wheaton, and today's topic,
Speaker 1: King Leopold. But before we get to King Leopold, i'd
Speaker 1: like to introduce my guests for the week, Andrew T
Speaker 1: host of YO is this racist and general man about town.
Speaker 1: Hello Andrew, what's up? Well? Today we're talking about a
Speaker 1: little Belgian dude named Leopold. You ever heard of King
Speaker 1: Leopold of Belgium?
Speaker 2: Uh, not particularly.
Speaker 1: King Leopold the second, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like, uh, the closest I'm gonna come is
Speaker 2: I feel like, at some point I got a box
Speaker 2: of fancy chocolates that might have had a a Leopold.
Speaker 2: Maybe not the bad Leopold. I assume a good Leopold.
Speaker 1: This is not a good Leopold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, That's what I'm saying. So probably not this particular Yeahold.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh. Leopold the second was King of Belgium once
Speaker 1: upon a time, and he was, in my opinion, the
Speaker 1: first world leader to be truly shitty in the modern
Speaker 1: sense of the word. Oh snall, like like like the
Speaker 1: k in a shitty that like Putin and Trump right.
Speaker 2: Right right, So not right, we're discounting our Genghis cons.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because Genghis Khan like
Speaker 1: did what he did, but he didn't have like a
Speaker 1: bunch of newspapers that he justified. He was just like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna conquer some shit, right right, right now.
Speaker 2: This is the transition from barbarian bastards into media bastards exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think Leopold of Belgium is really where it
Speaker 1: happens in a modern like obviously other people had toyed
Speaker 1: with aspects of this. He really nailed it. So King
Speaker 1: Leopold the Second's dad was obviously King Leopold the First,
Speaker 1: and he was the first king in Belgium. Is that obvious?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: Is it always like a like one Pagets two or
Speaker 2: is it like, ah, your grandfather was Leopold the First,
Speaker 2: I'm Gerald of Belgium, but you're gonna be Leopold too.
Speaker 1: I think that's more how it happens most of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not this time. This time Leopold the First was like
Speaker 1: this went so, well, yeah, we're gonna have it. The
Speaker 1: second going yeah. So Leopold the First was like the again,
Speaker 1: the very first king of Belgium at all, because Belgium
Speaker 1: had just been made a thing in the wake of
Speaker 1: the Napoleonic Wars. So during the whole fighting between Napoleon
Speaker 1: and everyone else in Europe, Belgium was generally the battleground
Speaker 1: where like the everyone would sort of duke it out
Speaker 1: between the Germans and the French and the French and
Speaker 1: everybody else. Yeah, Waterloo is in Belgium. Oh so, after
Speaker 1: Napoleon's butt gets kicked, the European powers who win are like, okay,
Speaker 1: we can't have France and Germany fighting over Belgium. We're
Speaker 1: gonna make it its own thing. And since it was
Speaker 1: going to be a new country, obviously it needed a king.
Speaker 1: So they Leopold the First got the job because he
Speaker 1: was a German prince who didn't have a kingdom of
Speaker 1: his own.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so he was just like split off, right,
Speaker 2: this is like we're gonna give Megan markle Wales or whatever.
Speaker 1: Part of Whales. Yeah, part of whales. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that exactly that sort of thing. They actually tried him
Speaker 1: out to be king of Greece first, but he didn't like,
Speaker 1: didn't fit for whatever. Yeah, that's an option. We're gonna
Speaker 1: find you with something, buddy, don't worry, Leopold. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: to put you in a kingdom Greece isn't the right one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course you try it starter kingdom.
Speaker 2: Everyone has a kingdom to start.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sense, Yeah, Greece was his unsold pilot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he was, by all accounts a pretty good king
Speaker 1: of Belgium if you're into that sort of thing. Yeah. Waffles,
Speaker 1: waffles and chocolate, hacolate, getting beer beer, yeah, get great beer,
Speaker 1: getting jammed by the Germs, great beer. Great at getting
Speaker 1: jammed by the Germans. That's Belgium in a nutshell. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a good king while he was king. Midway
Speaker 1: through his reign in eighteen forty eight, there was like
Speaker 1: this big year of revolutions all across Europe, and all
Speaker 1: these European countries had their monarchs overthrown except for Belgium.
Speaker 1: So the Christian Spring we call that, yes, the white
Speaker 1: Man's Spring. That's the last three hundred years. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: What a time, What a time for the whites, given
Speaker 2: up for the whites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Leopold the first solid king. I've got two
Speaker 1: main sources for today's podcast, which I should note now.
Speaker 1: The first is a biography called Leopold, the Second King
Speaker 1: of Belgium. It's a pro monarchist book that was written
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten. Great the article is critical above of
Speaker 1: Leopold sometimes, but he thinks he was like a great king,
Speaker 1: and he thinks kings are a good idea. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it's an interesting book because it gives you an idea
Speaker 1: of how Leopold himself would sort of present himself and
Speaker 1: defend himself and let you know what the propaganda at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: Was well and also right, just critical enough to be legitimate.
Speaker 1: Well no, no, it's totally I guess for the time
Speaker 1: it wasn't bad.
Speaker 2: What I mean, you put in just the faintest of
Speaker 2: criticism to give the exact more you know. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a real investigation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the monarch's equivalent of one of those
Speaker 1: like celebrity biographies Ben Affleck or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Heraldo Interview of books exactly right, exactly. And then
Speaker 1: the other book is a book called Leopold's Ghost by
Speaker 1: Adam Hoschild, which takes the stance that Leopold was when
Speaker 1: of history's great monsters. Anyway, so these are these are
Speaker 1: most of what I come from, a sort of the
Speaker 1: contrasting views that these two books.
Speaker 2: You read two books for a podcast out of your mind, Come.
Speaker 1: On, dog, there's a lot to dig into here. Oh
Speaker 1: and there's not a lot.
Speaker 2: You're making me feel real bad. I'm like, usually good
Speaker 2: for half a Wikipedia article.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, Well this is at least the equivalent of
Speaker 1: like four Wikipedia articles a lot. Geez, go ahead, all right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Leopold the Second's mom Luis was almost a love match
Speaker 1: is the term the book uses for his dad, the king,
Speaker 1: And it says this because the king was already in
Speaker 1: love with her before they get married. Hey, so that
Speaker 1: makes it a love match. So nice. He liked her
Speaker 1: when she was fourteen, so it's love. The eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: were hell of it.
Speaker 2: And she had the right land I assume, Yeah, she
Speaker 2: had some nice land. I'm related to the right enemies
Speaker 2: she was with I think from the oily owned family,
Speaker 2: so she was like she had.
Speaker 1: Some solid s or royal pedigree. You know. You get
Speaker 1: some German from King Leopold the first, you get a
Speaker 1: little bit of French from his wife, and then their
Speaker 1: baby is sort of a mix. So maybe Germany and
Speaker 1: France won't fight over Belgium. And oh what a brave
Speaker 1: Yeah didn't write it. Yeah, yeah, So Leopold the Second
Speaker 1: was born Leopold Louis Philippe Mary Victor, and he was
Speaker 1: his parents' second child. His older brother died eleven months
Speaker 1: before he was born. Nice, So if you think about
Speaker 1: that timeline a lot, it's not very fun. Because Leopold's
Speaker 1: older brother is born. Yeah, he dies, Yeah, eleven months
Speaker 1: later they pop out another son. Yeah, immediately, immediately, not
Speaker 1: a lot of morning time. Nah, or maybe they just
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, fucked the pain away.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, that's probably what happened.
Speaker 1: That's the optimistic look, all right. So at age five,
Speaker 1: Leopold's father declared him Duke of Brabant, which is how
Speaker 1: he was addressed right up until his coronation. Uh, here's
Speaker 1: he said, five, age five? Yeah, h five, great, yeah
Speaker 1: you can you all have to be a duke at
Speaker 1: age five.
Speaker 2: And he looks he looks like he looks like people
Speaker 2: in this port a pretty little duke.
Speaker 1: We'll have the pictures up on our website. He has
Speaker 1: no chin and a kind of a lopsided face, but
Speaker 1: maybe that's just the painting looks a.
Speaker 2: Little bit like a ghost, like a human ghost.
Speaker 1: It looks like the painting of a ghost that you
Speaker 1: find in the basement of an old house. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then like there's a rush of wind and the camera
Speaker 1: falls over and like, yeah, your friend gets mauled by
Speaker 1: a spirit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's this guy's selfie essentially. Yeah, that's this
Speaker 2: guy's like, this is the image we want to put
Speaker 2: out into the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was like hanging in palaces. Yeah. Yeah, height,
Speaker 1: So he looks like a creeper from dad, a little
Speaker 1: spooky boy, but he's still a baby. So the biography
Speaker 1: notes that Leopold and his siblings were brought up in
Speaker 1: quote the simplest manner and taught to behave as if
Speaker 1: they were normal citizens rather than royalty. That sounds great
Speaker 1: until you get to the next part quote. The king
Speaker 1: further expressed the wish to develop in the children the
Speaker 1: sentiment of duty and not to allow them to have
Speaker 1: an opinion of their own with regard to their duties
Speaker 1: and their studies. Basically, the king was trying to crush
Speaker 1: the individuality of his kids so that they would just
Speaker 1: fit the role of king. That's kind of yeah.
Speaker 2: Good, Actually is it isn't that? Well, what else are
Speaker 2: you gonna do because they got to do.
Speaker 1: This dumb job? Well, I mean, you could try to
Speaker 1: make them be healthy, fully formed people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but why then they got to be king.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, okay, that's fair. I mean we're taking Leopold
Speaker 1: the first side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he's the good one again, I'm piating his chocolate. No,
Speaker 2: but right, isn't that the he's he's just as trapped
Speaker 2: as everyone else, you know, Yes, so if he's got
Speaker 2: to do this thing, you.
Speaker 1: Might as well make it so he can do this thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're expressing some motivation maybe to why you would
Speaker 1: do this, why you would do what he winds up doing,
Speaker 1: and you don't even know what he winds up doing
Speaker 1: what they do? Yeah, what did I just defend?
Speaker 2: I still let me just say right now, whatever he does,
Speaker 2: I stand behind it.
Speaker 1: Well, he kills about ten to fifteen million people. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's fine. Okay, Well, what's it? So? When Leopold is fifteen,
Speaker 1: his mom dies of some illness or another. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things where the writers at the time aren't specific.
Speaker 1: They're just like she took ill and was, yeah, sick
Speaker 1: for it, like and then she dies like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably diphtheria or some weirdo named it the flu disease. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it was a flu would be a big deal,
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean it's probably is a flu like
Speaker 1: that killed everybody back then. Yeah. Yeah. In King Leopold's Ghost,
Speaker 1: Adam Haschild describes Leopold's childhood as being kind of stark
Speaker 1: and cold. Quote, if Leopold wanted to see his father,
Speaker 1: he had to apply for an audience. When the father
Speaker 1: had something to tell the same, he communicated it through
Speaker 1: one of his secretaries.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, this is not just eighteenth century arrested development.
Speaker 1: Yeah, quite a nice Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what's
Speaker 1: going on. Like, he definitely has a buster Bluth vibe
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 2: Again, especially once you see this fucking painting, you'll get
Speaker 2: it audience.
Speaker 1: The biography that was written at the time says that
Speaker 1: it is worthy of note that the late king never
Speaker 1: had any comrades or playmates. His childhood was passed among
Speaker 1: his teachers and tutors, and the disciplinarian father made even
Speaker 1: more the relationship with his brother and sister a very
Speaker 1: formal one. Frank, childish gaiety and brotherly expansion and confidence
Speaker 1: were banished. The prince's thoughts thus became concentrated upon himself
Speaker 1: and his natural activity and vitality. His exuberant strength were
Speaker 1: expended on work and study. Tight, yeah about it. No, friends,
Speaker 1: does nothing but work. Yeah, he is a duke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's already achieved a lot. I mean he
Speaker 1: is kind of a boss baby. Yeah, just throw that
Speaker 1: out there. So he grows up, He serves in the
Speaker 1: Belgian military. He apparently does okay. By his early twenties,
Speaker 1: Leopold becomes an influential figure in Belgian politics. You know,
Speaker 1: he's the crown prince everyone, he's going to wind to
Speaker 1: be in king. Yeah, and he kind of looks a
Speaker 1: little like Adam Driver. He yeah, he looks here. He
Speaker 1: looks like a anime Adam Driver. Yeah. Yeah, that's who
Speaker 1: you would cast, is anime Adam Driver. Yeah yeah, in
Speaker 1: the movie. So, like many rich young people, he traveled
Speaker 1: far and wide in his early twenties. He went all
Speaker 1: throughout the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Asia. But
Speaker 1: he was not traveling for his enjoyment. It was basically traveling.
Speaker 1: The biography says, it's like a commercial employee. So he
Speaker 1: was essentially looking for financial opportunities for Belgium because this
Speaker 1: is the period when all of Europe is colonizing the
Speaker 1: entire world. Yeah, Belgium doesn't have a colony, so he's
Speaker 1: traveling all around the Middle East in Asia basically being
Speaker 1: like what can yeah, who's yeah? Whose line can we take? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what can we get? Does this hop ahead to the Congo?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, oh nice, Yeah that's where we're headed.
Speaker 2: Tight, Okay, how do I know that tiny bit of history?
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that drops in every now
Speaker 1: and then you'll hear like, oh, yeah the Belgiums did
Speaker 1: something bad in the Congo, but you don't ever get
Speaker 1: I don't know any tell story.
Speaker 2: In fact, I probably no more plot points from Michael
Speaker 2: Crichton's The Congo than than reality is the Cogo.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean there's unconfirmed reports that he tried to
Speaker 1: find the lost City of Zine, but no, great movie.
Speaker 2: Is that what they were doing there?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, they're trying to find diamonds. That a monkey
Speaker 1: There was a monkey city, Yeah, find diamonds. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: monkeys were evil. Yeah, that's more what I remember. Solid,
Speaker 1: to be honest, really solid. Now, Yeah, there's a laser.
Speaker 1: There is a laser. There's definitely a laser in that movie.
Speaker 1: Oh man, what a weird.
Speaker 2: It's a ride, Michael Crichton, We're still watching as bullshit,
Speaker 2: I can't believe West World.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, okay, So, uh, Prince Leopold, one of his
Speaker 1: favorite books as he's a young man studying trying to
Speaker 1: find a new colony for Belgium is a book about
Speaker 1: the Dutch East Indies called Java, How to Manage a Colony.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, why would you?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I mean, I guess that's what you
Speaker 2: have to tell people your favorite book is.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's well, no, I mean, because so the
Speaker 1: book is all about how the Dutch colonized the island
Speaker 1: of Java and how they got a shitload of coffee
Speaker 1: and sugar and like dyes and tobacco, and it made
Speaker 1: basically made so much money that they were able to
Speaker 1: buy a bunch of railroads and canals back in Holland.
Speaker 1: So like, the book is all about that. So it
Speaker 1: outlines sort of how they were able to monetize Java
Speaker 1: so well, and like it talks about how the king
Speaker 1: basically brought in a bunch of private companies and became
Speaker 1: a major shareholder in those companies. And it was the
Speaker 1: company's job to farm the land and to produce the
Speaker 1: resources and export them to Belgium. So the king didn't
Speaker 1: have to send Dutch government workers over do anything. The
Speaker 1: king just said, I own Java corporations. Come in, give
Speaker 1: me a stake in your profits, and do whatever you want.
Speaker 2: I think it's just cool to have political leaders also
Speaker 2: own corporations. That has never been a problem. I never
Speaker 2: will be a problem.
Speaker 1: No, it seems to always work out great. It seems
Speaker 1: to work out great one hundred perc end of the time.
Speaker 1: The book also did note that the Dutch prophets in
Speaker 1: Java would have been impossible without a huge amount of
Speaker 1: forced labor, and young Prince Leopold agreed with this and
Speaker 1: said that forced labor was quote the only way to
Speaker 1: civilize and uplift these indolent and corrupt peoples of the
Speaker 1: Far East. Yeah, yeah, he ain't wrong. Go ahead, what else?
Speaker 1: What else you got? I thought you said this guy
Speaker 1: was bad, all right. So late in his dukedom, you know,
Speaker 1: a few years before he becomes king, Leopold gets him
Speaker 1: in front of Belgium's Senate and he urges them to
Speaker 1: take up foreign colonies. So they got a king and
Speaker 1: a senate. Yeah yea, so uh. Basically, the king of
Speaker 1: Belgium is kind of a ceremonial figure he's got. He's
Speaker 1: got more power than like the queen in England has today.
Speaker 1: It's heading towards but it's heading towards that. There's no
Speaker 1: formal power, lots of soft power, lots of soft power
Speaker 1: and a little bit of formal power. Okay, but you
Speaker 1: can't do things as the king like just make colonies, right?
Speaker 1: You can't do things? Is the king like sin the
Speaker 1: army places? Yeah? Yeah, And so leop Hold's dad seems
Speaker 1: to be okay with that. But Leopold is growing up
Speaker 1: chopping at the bent to do shit and doesn't want
Speaker 1: to become a monarch who just waves at the crowd.
Speaker 1: Why So he gets up in front of the Senate
Speaker 1: and he says, quote, I am profoundly convinced of our
Speaker 1: vast resources, and I passionately wish that my beautiful country
Speaker 1: would show the necessary pluck to derive all the benefit which,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, it can derive. I think that the
Speaker 1: moment for our expansion abroad has arrived. We must not
Speaker 1: lose time, otherwise the best positions and markets, which are
Speaker 1: becoming more rare every day, will be occupied by nations
Speaker 1: more enterprising than ourselves. And when he talks about positions
Speaker 1: and markets. He's talking about yeah, whole countries and stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean millions of people.
Speaker 2: It's more chilling in the original Flemish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Flemish. Yes, yeah, he nailed it, although he probably
Speaker 1: would have been speaking just French.
Speaker 2: For a All right, so say Flemish.
Speaker 1: Well you can say, you can say Walloon if you want.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, what is that. That's the other group of people.
Speaker 1: There's Belgium is made up of Flemish people and Walloons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Wallunatics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, band aid on their face.
Speaker 1: We got it. That's a rough name to grow into
Speaker 1: the world stage taking on.
Speaker 2: Ah, well, you know, you gotta get you get enough rifles,
Speaker 2: get enough cutlasses, everything starts to make sense.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like it does. I feel like Germany
Speaker 1: was so fierce in part because German is like, that's
Speaker 1: like an name, like the Germans are coming. Imagine if
Speaker 1: the name got switched and the Belgians were called the Germans,
Speaker 1: and like the Nazis had tried to invade, and everyone
Speaker 1: was like, oh, the Walloons are invading. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: going to go. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well listen, let's boot up a risk game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll figure it out, all right. So yeah, Leopold
Speaker 1: the first, Leopold the Second's dad died in December of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, the same year the American Civil War ended.
Speaker 1: Leopold is now the king and thirty years old. This
Speaker 1: appears to be the point when he decided to grow
Speaker 1: a gigantic mountain man beard tight, which he would maintain
Speaker 1: for the rest of his day. He needed it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pictures of Leopold with a beard.
Speaker 1: We'll post him on the site. Some of them look
Speaker 1: uncomfortably like me. Some of them are clear missteps in
Speaker 1: the beard growing process, where he's got like gigantic mutton
Speaker 1: chops and it's he looks like a fucking hair octopus
Speaker 1: style of the time. Yeah, he went through some rough
Speaker 1: patches in his sartorial history, for sure. That's pretty.
Speaker 2: That's got ain't easy we're looking at Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a rough picture, cheap and it's almost he's almost
Speaker 1: wearing bell bottoms in that picture. A it's the sixties.
Speaker 1: It is the eighteen sixties boom, all right. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Leopold's the King of Belgium. He's super frustrated because the
Speaker 1: king doesn't have that much in the way of power.
Speaker 1: Leopold takes to sort of mocking the restrained role that
Speaker 1: he has in Belgian politics. There's a story of like
Speaker 1: this guy who came to visit him because like, you know,
Speaker 1: the king's got a visit with like his donors and
Speaker 1: benefactors and whatnot. And this guy complains about the poor
Speaker 1: state of the roads around his property, and Leopold interrupts
Speaker 1: him and says, I have no authority to change the roads.
Speaker 1: You want to address yourself to the press, especially to
Speaker 1: the small papers. The municipality and the government will do
Speaker 1: anything they ask. So he was like, he was like
Speaker 1: making a point. Yeah, I'm frustrated that, like I can't
Speaker 1: do anything, so I'm just kind of like to take
Speaker 1: it to the press. Your King's not allowed to do anything.
Speaker 1: He sort of set to work making himself into kind
Speaker 1: of an image for the Belgian people. He was the
Speaker 1: aristocratic equivalent of an alpha male. He spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time doing science work and you know, supporting the
Speaker 1: arts and sciences. Nineteenth century science is just like beakers
Speaker 1: of lead and shows. He's pouring colored water into beakers.
Speaker 1: He's got goggles on, you know, you know how that goes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a quote from his biography that says he used
Speaker 1: to sleep in a camp bed so like a military
Speaker 1: cot and had a general horror of everything that could
Speaker 1: innervate or under him. A feminate, so he's kind of
Speaker 1: like a he's a proud boy. Proud boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what they call people who aren't racist soy boys.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? Because eating soy feminizes you again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what that's the alt right thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hey, well at least we know that they have a
Speaker 2: nice historical antasy.
Speaker 1: Leopold would have been all about that stuff. So he's
Speaker 1: he's grown a giant, weird beard, he's sleeping in a
Speaker 1: palace in a military cop He's scared of girls. Uh.
Speaker 1: He hates spending money. His biography says, quote his pocket
Speaker 1: handkerchief was only renewed on Sunday mornings when going to Mass,
Speaker 1: and on no account would he take another in the interval.
Speaker 1: If his valets changed his towels more than once a week,
Speaker 1: they were sure to receive a good scolding from his majesty.
Speaker 1: What So he's like a gross miser. Yeah, don't clean
Speaker 1: those dells. Oh, which one of those wasn't one? Of
Speaker 1: the alt right guys living in their mom's basement.
Speaker 2: I think most of them are will definitely want Yeah
Speaker 2: yeah that guy, yeah, ruche V, the pickup artist guy
Speaker 2: that was found living in his mom's base Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what this guy was. Leopold was missing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess the Beard. The Beard experiment clearly on that factor.
Speaker 1: His mom died young, so he became a king. Yeah yep.
Speaker 2: Instead, okay, called peacocking everyone I interract women the kingdom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kick, I mean having a castle is pretty solid peacocking,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, undeniable yeah. Uh. Leopold the Second was
Speaker 1: noted in his biography is the first king to treat
Speaker 1: his kingship as a corporate endeavor. His primary concern was
Speaker 1: making money, not for Belgium, but for himself. It's all
Speaker 1: about the bottom line. Yeah. So there's like when you
Speaker 1: talk about dictators and warlords and terrorists, there's like a
Speaker 1: tendency to call them psychopaths and sociopaths. Yeah. Sociopath is
Speaker 1: like an actual medical diagnosis. And I don't think guys
Speaker 1: like Hitler or Stalin, Yeah really it because they all
Speaker 1: had histories of like warm family life and like people
Speaker 1: who cared about them and people that they like sacrificed for.
Speaker 1: At times, Leopold might have been a straight up like
Speaker 1: the mark store level monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's that's what they say, right, is like
Speaker 2: so many CEOs and Fortune five hundred whatever the fu. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was over represented, like psychopathic traits.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Even his positive biography says that while he was charming,
Speaker 1: he was quote devoid of enthusiasm and set himself and
Speaker 1: was quite incapable of arousing any and others. So he
Speaker 1: just can't utually touch people's heart. Yeah, he can't motivate people. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to get more into the soulless Leopold the second,
Speaker 1: his scheme to find a colony and the colony that
Speaker 1: he eventually founds. But first we've got some ads.
Speaker 2: Of course, we all realize it's a pro corporate podcast,
Speaker 2: so let's keep it real.
Speaker 1: Here's some buying advice, and we're back. We're back. We're
Speaker 1: talking about King Leopold, who is searching for a little
Speaker 1: colony somewhere in the world to fill that hole little.
Speaker 2: Heart the Deuce, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Leopold, the Deuce. Leopold I Electric Boogloo whenever you
Speaker 1: want to call him. We were just talking about what
Speaker 1: a Solis sociopathic creepy is. Allegedly, yeah, allegedly. Well here's
Speaker 1: another quote again, This is from like a positive pro
Speaker 1: Leopold biography that he probably paid for. He disliked music, hunting, tobacco,
Speaker 1: and had no taste for physical exercises except walking. Although
Speaker 1: a frequent visitor at Austin, which is like one of
Speaker 1: his palaces, he never learned to swim. He was seen
Speaker 1: yawning in a gala performance of Faust. So he doesn't
Speaker 1: like plays, he doesn't like art. He hates music. Like
Speaker 1: That's the thing. Any book you read about him, anyone
Speaker 1: who knew him. He hated music, like not like he
Speaker 1: hated popular music. Yeah, music itself was offensive to him.
Speaker 2: So that's fascinating. Well that's cutting into the American psycho narrative.
Speaker 1: Yeah unfortunately, yeah a little bit. Yeah, he's a weird guy.
Speaker 1: He's very vain, but his main vanity was quite odd.
Speaker 1: He thought he had the most beautiful hands in all
Speaker 1: of Europe, tight his biography. What his biography notes. Another
Speaker 1: of Leopold's hobbies was his dislike for gloves, and although
Speaker 1: he often wore uniform he is never reported to have
Speaker 1: put on gloves. It may have been a hatred of restraint,
Speaker 1: but more probably it was a pardonable vanity on the
Speaker 1: part of the late king, for he possessed the shapely
Speaker 1: and beautiful hand of the Orlean family.
Speaker 2: That rules so hard.
Speaker 1: Here's the only picture I could find hands. No, he's
Speaker 1: holding the gloves in his hand, so his hand is
Speaker 1: not even stronger.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, like reminding people you could be wearing gloves.
Speaker 1: I'm the master of the Yeah, and his I mean,
Speaker 1: in fairness to him, his hands are beauty full in
Speaker 1: this picture. I mean they just just look at the
Speaker 1: bone definition. Yeah, they are shapely. They good ass hands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they good ass hands. Oh man, So that.
Speaker 2: Means that he made some painter do multiple drafts on
Speaker 2: those hands.
Speaker 1: That's like, this is like, isn't it wait, rested development
Speaker 1: where the guy has a fake hands.
Speaker 2: Always always thought the lawyer and always Sonny always has
Speaker 2: fake hands.
Speaker 1: And yeah, then there's some things to be said about
Speaker 1: our president and hands. Nah, it's weird. It's weird that
Speaker 1: you would even like, I never think about my hands, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like how they look like when I'm thinking about someone
Speaker 1: taking a picture of me. Like zero percent of the time,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh my god, my hands do they
Speaker 1: look shapely?
Speaker 2: Do you know what's crazy is I had to send
Speaker 2: a picture of a piece of equipment for this job
Speaker 2: I'm on to a technical person and I just took
Speaker 2: a picture of my phone and send it to them.
Speaker 1: And I realized as I was sending the email, I
Speaker 1: was like, my hands a fucked up in this.
Speaker 2: I'm having a real low hand self esteem day.
Speaker 1: Oh I think you have the shapely hands of the
Speaker 1: or Leone family.
Speaker 2: I know you're being really nice right now, but it's
Speaker 2: actually a little hilarious that the one day possibly in
Speaker 2: my life, that I've noticed my hands.
Speaker 1: Horrible, I was like, what the fuck is up with
Speaker 1: my hands? Only these were feet. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've been an arm model before. My friend was doing
Speaker 2: some not like you know, elbows down I was doing,
Speaker 2: was doing some stock photography, which like I wanted to
Speaker 2: take pictures of your arms, and I was like, you're
Speaker 2: wilding out. So you know what, I'm good. I'm good
Speaker 2: risk to elbow, wrist to elbow, Yeah, I got I
Speaker 2: got forearm, my forearms are I'm about it?
Speaker 1: Well. Leopold was a hand man. Yeah, so We've got
Speaker 1: this frustrated, greedy, gorgeous handed king on the throne of Belgium.
Speaker 1: He keeps trying to get his countrymen to jump on
Speaker 1: board the having a colony train that the people of
Speaker 1: Belgium express zero interest in this. Oh okay, wait, why
Speaker 1: what do you mean? All right? Because obviously all.
Speaker 2: European colonialism is pretty much the root of almost everything.
Speaker 1: That's wrong in the world right now. But here is.
Speaker 1: But I don't understand why they.
Speaker 2: I mean, they certainly didn't I'm gonna guess not want
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 1: For the reasons why I don't think they should have
Speaker 1: done it. I think the Belgians, for one thing, So
Speaker 1: the Belgiums of this era, anyone who's like a mature
Speaker 1: adult lived through what was at that point, he equipped
Speaker 1: World War two, the Napoleonic Wars, like we just don't
Speaker 1: want any trouble, Like you just want to stay in
Speaker 1: Belgium and eat chocolate and drink beer. We don't really
Speaker 1: want to go to Africa or Asia. And let's say
Speaker 1: the first of die not the first? Can I say?
Speaker 2: I can continue an incredibly list, long list of ignorant
Speaker 2: as shit. I'm about to say.
Speaker 1: You do you is Belgium landlocked? No? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it has an antwerp antwarp, that's right, Okay, a number
Speaker 1: of small Yeah. Yeah, it's a wee little country. You
Speaker 1: can drive across it in a couple of hours. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: I was just like, okay, yeah, I was just like,
Speaker 2: it's funny to imagine a landlocked country ownings and stuff.
Speaker 1: But of course they can. Who gives a shit, But
Speaker 1: they're not landlocked, so fuck me. Yeah, no they're not.
Speaker 1: They didn't have a colony at this point, and they
Speaker 1: seem to have zero interest in having one now. At
Speaker 1: this same time, from eighteen seventy four to eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: when Leopold's like a decade or so into his kinghood,
Speaker 1: there's this explorer named Henry Morton Stanley, and yeah, from
Speaker 1: seventy four to seventy seven, he completes a seven thousand
Speaker 1: mile expedition across Central Africa. Much of his travels centered
Speaker 1: upon the still undiscovered by like white people, Congo. No
Speaker 1: one had like mapped the extent of the Congo River.
Speaker 1: We didn't know where it originated from at this point.
Speaker 1: So at this time in European history, like different explorers
Speaker 1: mapping Africa are kind of like the Marvel movie franchise
Speaker 1: of the day. Yeah, Like each of these guys is
Speaker 1: world famous and like newspapers breathlessly cover every expedition, and
Speaker 1: whenever they finish an expedition, they write a book and
Speaker 1: millions of people by it so automatically exactly, this is
Speaker 1: like the thing people care about at this point in time.
Speaker 1: It's like what these explorers are doing in Africa and
Speaker 1: all over the world.
Speaker 2: Like that just means if I were alive then and
Speaker 2: a white person two big f's, I would be like
Speaker 2: struggling to get on one of the good expeditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah you really like fingers crossed. It's not one of
Speaker 1: the ones where people eat each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, statistically a lot of them are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Stanley maps like a huge chunk of the Congo,
Speaker 1: more than anyone had ever done before, and it's like
Speaker 1: big news. He gets back to Europe from Africa and
Speaker 1: he goes on tour. He's doing like speaking engagements. He's
Speaker 1: a big celebrity.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a lot of like skulls and
Speaker 2: calipers in a talk like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and probably buckets of racism. Yeah, like totally unexamined racism.
Speaker 1: My look, don't look. If you don't look, it's not there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the racist motto. So he's touring around and King
Speaker 1: Leopold winds up meeting with him. Stanley had been bullish
Speaker 1: on the idea that the Congo would be a great
Speaker 1: place for a colony, and he wanted the British to
Speaker 1: set up a colony there the Ogs.
Speaker 2: You want to go to the best colonizing studio first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, that's like the is Paramount good? Probably not.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about the Warner Brothers we all
Speaker 1: live in.
Speaker 2: But the Disney that's the Disney.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Britain's the Disney of colonizing. Yeah, And instead he
Speaker 1: goes to I don't know who's who's making DC's garbage movies,
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers. Okay, so Leopold's Warner Brothers.
Speaker 2: No, they're not even in it.
Speaker 1: Leopold is like this has gotten very confusing. Leopold is like, uh, a.
Speaker 2: Snapchat making stuff, Like technically they got the our YouTube
Speaker 2: like it's a YouTube show. Yeah, you know, like they
Speaker 2: got the money. Let's actually call it no history for it,
Speaker 2: but who knows.
Speaker 1: I feel like we actually hit upon the right thing
Speaker 1: to compare him to, which is Amazon. Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So Stanley tries to sell his Congo idea to Disney
Speaker 1: Slash Britain and it fails, and King Leopold aka Amazon's like, well,
Speaker 1: we might be interested in this plan. Yeah, we'll fund this.
Speaker 1: Why don't you, Why don't you give me your elevator
Speaker 1: pitch colony in the Congo? Huh? I like it. I
Speaker 1: like this idea. Yeah. So Leopold contracts Stanley to work
Speaker 1: for him and he sends him back to Africa with
Speaker 1: a new mission. So Leopold's master plan here, I'm going
Speaker 1: to appeal back for a minute. Then we're going to
Speaker 1: zoom into the different pieces because it's a complicated ass plant.
Speaker 1: His master plan is to create the Congo Free State,
Speaker 1: which is a supposedly independent African nation that just happened
Speaker 1: to also be ruled by King Leopold the Second. Sure,
Speaker 1: So he went about doing this in a few ways.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy six, he hosted the Brussels Geographic Conference,
Speaker 1: where he invited a bunch of European experts to form
Speaker 1: the so called International African Association, which, of course had
Speaker 1: no Africans as members. The association was a supposedly philanthropic organization.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you a selection from Leopold's speech
Speaker 1: at the conference where he sort of lays out what
Speaker 1: he wants to do. The subject that calls us together
Speaker 1: today is one that demands a first place in the
Speaker 1: attention of friends of humanity to open up to civilization.
Speaker 1: The only part of our globe where she has not
Speaker 1: yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness that envelops entire populations
Speaker 1: is I may venture to say a crusade worthy of
Speaker 1: this century of progress, and I am glad to observe
Speaker 1: how very favorable public feeling is to its accomplishment. The
Speaker 1: current is with us. So he gets this association together
Speaker 1: and he says, this is an international group and we're
Speaker 1: trying to civilize Africa and improve lives of people who
Speaker 1: were there.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that back then. The rhetoric was already
Speaker 2: like the kind of like, ah, this is to help
Speaker 2: them double speak. I actually just assumed they were like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take this ship from black people.
Speaker 1: No, they are, and these guys the people he invites
Speaker 1: to the Geographic conference and forms the International African Association
Speaker 1: with these guys are a lot of people who legitimately
Speaker 1: want to make things better for Africans who aren't even
Speaker 1: thinking about making it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: These are the well meaning liberal white people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and like missionaries who are like and well
Speaker 1: meaning liberal white people. Because there's an Arab slave trade
Speaker 1: in Africa, like traders moving through the Congo, and the
Speaker 1: abolition movement is very big at this point in time,
Speaker 1: and so these people are being like, we've got to
Speaker 1: stop the slave trade in Africa. So Leopold's like, we
Speaker 1: can do that. And there's a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: are like, we've got to Christianize the Africans, and Leopold's like,
Speaker 1: we can do that, and like so that's that's what
Speaker 1: he's claiming this association.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is right, This is like definitely like
Speaker 2: colonialism two point zero or three point zero.
Speaker 1: He steps ahead of everyone. Yeah yeah, he's not even
Speaker 1: framing this as colonialism. He's framing this as a charitable
Speaker 1: endeavor to exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he suggests that
Speaker 1: Belgium would be a great place for this new international
Speaker 1: body to meet because it's a neutral country and it's
Speaker 1: centrally located in Europe. And then he suggests that he
Speaker 1: might be a good person to run the association just
Speaker 1: for its first year. You pitch yourself, you know, you
Speaker 1: got to be for its first year. And he assures
Speaker 1: them all that he's doing this from the goodness of
Speaker 1: his heart. He says, Belgium is small, she is happy
Speaker 1: and satisfied with her lot. I have no other ambition
Speaker 1: than to serve well. And it was true that Belgians
Speaker 1: were pretty happy with their lot. But Leopold did have
Speaker 1: some ambitions. So he gets elected head of the International
Speaker 1: African Association the first year, and then he gets elected
Speaker 1: the head of it the second year too, even though
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be illegal. Back to back, and
Speaker 1: then the association kind of stops existing, and Leopold replaces
Speaker 1: it with the Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo,
Speaker 1: and then he replaces that with the International Association for
Speaker 1: the Congo. On paper, these are all different international philanthropic groups.
Speaker 1: Their names were deliberately forgettable and similar, so the public
Speaker 1: would assume they were all the same thing. In King
Speaker 1: Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hoschild writes that Leopold directly told his
Speaker 1: aides quote, care must be taken not to let it
Speaker 1: be obvious that the Association of the Congo and the
Speaker 1: African Association are two different things. The public doesn't grasp that.
Speaker 1: So in reality, all of these philanthropic groups are shadow
Speaker 1: fronts for Leopold's plan to conquer the Congo. So they're
Speaker 1: all charity organizations that he gets international aid money getting
Speaker 1: sent into, and he's able to pour Belgian government funds
Speaker 1: into as rights and donations, just like Hillary Clinton. Exactly
Speaker 1: like Hillary Clinton. Yes, you've watched the documentary Clinton Catch
Speaker 1: by Deniche Desoza. Yes.
Speaker 2: The thing that's amazing about this is it's so complicated
Speaker 2: a plan that doesn't feel like I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: you know, I'm a super smart person.
Speaker 1: Of course I'm not.
Speaker 2: Finding a place where you could improvise your way into this.
Speaker 1: You just gotta wait, because we're not even halfway through
Speaker 1: the planet. Like this, he's he is a legitimate like okay,
Speaker 1: so the villain that Marvel keeps trying to write and
Speaker 1: like failing to write in my opinion, where it's like
Speaker 1: the low key character where there he's got all these
Speaker 1: plans within plans and the step ahead Leopold actually was
Speaker 1: that guy to the whole world, but in sort of
Speaker 1: the same villainous way. You're like, this is insane.
Speaker 2: There's so many things that could go wrong in this.
Speaker 1: So he's now created three different philanthropic associations just because
Speaker 1: like the backers will start realizing that the association's fake
Speaker 1: and they'll pull their money, but he'll keep the organization alive,
Speaker 1: or he'll roll its assets into a new organization. And
Speaker 1: nobody who got caught, who realized that this was some
Speaker 1: weird show company, wants to admit that they got caught,
Speaker 1: so they just don't say anything, and the public just
Speaker 1: hears like, oh, it's the new thing is out the
Speaker 1: International African Association. It's that group of people trying to
Speaker 1: make life better in Africa, right, So he all these
Speaker 1: groups are basically funneling money into the work of Henry
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley, that explorer who Leopold sent back to Africa.
Speaker 1: So Leopold sent him back in eighteen seventy nine, and
Speaker 1: his job was to start building, using the association money,
Speaker 1: a series of stations along the Congo River to act
Speaker 1: as like waypoints for steamboat traffic. He also met with
Speaker 1: hundreds of local chiefs all throughout the Congo, all the
Speaker 1: different people who had chunks of land throughout the Congo,
Speaker 1: the different villages and chiefs, hundreds and hundreds of them.
Speaker 1: He meets with these guys and he gets them to
Speaker 1: sign treaties giving up their rights to the land. Here's
Speaker 1: a quote from Hostchild's book. The very word treaty is
Speaker 1: a euphemism. For many chiefs had no idea what they
Speaker 1: were signing. I few had ever seen the written word before,
Speaker 1: and they were being asked to mark their excess to
Speaker 1: documents in a foreign language and in legalese. These guys
Speaker 1: weren't ignorant of the concept of diplomacy. They knew it
Speaker 1: meant to write treaties of friendship with neighboring tribes or villages.
Speaker 1: They understood the idea of a non aggression pact, and
Speaker 1: that's what they thought these were. The reality was somewhat different.
Speaker 1: Quote in return for one piece of cloth per month
Speaker 1: to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides present of cloth
Speaker 1: in hand, they promised too freely of their own accord
Speaker 1: for themselves and their heirs and successors, forever give up
Speaker 1: to set association the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing
Speaker 1: rights to all their territories. So basically he gives them cloth.
Speaker 1: They think that they're getting some sick ass clothes just
Speaker 1: for Agia.
Speaker 2: This is this is a thing. Here's our everyone gets
Speaker 2: a jersey.
Speaker 1: You give us shirts. We promise we won't shoot you.
Speaker 1: We don't want to shoot you anyway. That sounds great.
Speaker 1: In reality, these are all statements saying that they give
Speaker 1: up other rights to the International African Association, and the
Speaker 1: Association will have the right to collect taxes on the
Speaker 1: people who gave up their rights to their land, and
Speaker 1: those taxes, because there's no currency in most of the Congo,
Speaker 1: those taxes can be paid in labor. So Leopold gets
Speaker 1: hundreds of chiefs from Stanley to sign these agreements. Yeah, Jesus,
Speaker 1: so Europe thinks Stanley's over there doing valuable philanthropic work
Speaker 1: fighting with the slave traders and trying to open the
Speaker 1: Congo up to free trade. That's the buzzword everyone's using.
Speaker 1: It's like, we're going to open the congoup to free
Speaker 1: trade and it'll benefit the Africans, it'll benefit Europe. Everyone
Speaker 1: will benefit if there's free trade in the Congo. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: what he's actually doing is getting pieces of paper that
Speaker 1: give Leopold the rights to the Congo, that make it
Speaker 1: look like all these chiefs have come together and said,
Speaker 1: we want this guy to be our king, and we
Speaker 1: want to be a country. So I feel like I
Speaker 1: should break for just a second and talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about Henry Morton Stanley. Who's the guy who's
Speaker 1: actually doing all this leg work. He was one of
Speaker 1: the greatest explorers in history, and he was also a
Speaker 1: human garbage fire sort of a definitely a Darth Vader too.
Speaker 1: He was terrified by the thought of being touched by
Speaker 1: a woman, just like Darth Vader. He once cut off
Speaker 1: his own dog's tail, cooked it, and fed it to
Speaker 1: the dog for no real reason. And he basically, when
Speaker 1: I say he was an explorer, he shot his way
Speaker 1: through Africa. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a quote from a description
Speaker 1: of one of Stanley's expeditions in King Leopold's Ghost. To
Speaker 1: those unfortunate enough to live in its path, the expedition
Speaker 1: felt like an invading army, for it sometimes held women
Speaker 1: and children hostage until local chiefs supplied food. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's shooting his way through these tribes taking their food,
Speaker 1: taking their shit, burning down villages if there's any resistance.
Speaker 1: One of his men described just hunting people like the predator,
Speaker 1: like laying in wait and just shooting random strangers.
Speaker 2: Like less ethical than the predator who lead out has
Speaker 2: a certain code.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, way less epical than the predators. So these
Speaker 1: guys are predatoring their way through through Africa, but they're not.
Speaker 2: Particularly worse than any other explorer of the time.
Speaker 1: I would he's one of the worst. Okay, they vary.
Speaker 1: So Henry Morton Stanley, you know, the doctor Livingstone. I
Speaker 1: presume he's that guy. Yeah, yeah, And doctor Livingston was
Speaker 1: apparently a pretty nice guy. He was also an explorer
Speaker 1: and actually would like get to know people and like
Speaker 1: invocate himself into the local culture. So some of these
Speaker 1: guys are legitimately just in it for the sake of exploration,
Speaker 1: and they're scientists and they're good to the people they encounter.
Speaker 1: And some of them, like Stanley, just want to make
Speaker 1: a shitload of money and they're creepy. And Stanley is
Speaker 1: one of the kills thousands of people while he's exploring.
Speaker 1: Got it, got it?
Speaker 2: I just want to I guess when I met not
Speaker 2: as a mitigating thing of like everyone was doing it,
Speaker 2: but like, uh, if not the only standard practice, it was.
Speaker 1: Not what you're describing is not not he's a standard
Speaker 1: he's it's definitely common practice on a lot of these guys.
Speaker 1: But he's not near to the only one. But he's
Speaker 1: one of the worst, Yeah for sure. Okay, So yeah,
Speaker 1: While Stanley's expedition is going on, Leopold also hires a
Speaker 1: bunch of other expeditions to explore other parts of Africa.
Speaker 1: These were deliberately showy expeditions meant to distract public attention.
Speaker 1: One of them involved a team of four Indian elephants
Speaker 1: being sent to Africa to see if they could reed
Speaker 1: with African elephants. All of the elephants died horribly, but
Speaker 1: the news covered the story the whole time. So nobody's
Speaker 1: reading about what Stanley's doing because they think it's a
Speaker 1: boring philanthropical mission and there's this crazy story about elephants,
Speaker 1: let's read about that. It's so fucking dark, holy sh
Speaker 1: So he's clearly understands the media well enough that he's
Speaker 1: not just thinking about how to accomplish his plan, but
Speaker 1: how to distract public attention and while he does it.
Speaker 1: When Morton Stanley gets back from his expedition, he writes
Speaker 1: a book. It's an instant bestseller. King Leopold edits it himself.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things he'd insisted on is that
Speaker 1: Stanley could write a book about this, but King Leopold
Speaker 1: would get to edit it. And most of what he
Speaker 1: did was correct the times when Stanley mixed up the
Speaker 1: different associations and committees that he was supposedly working for,
Speaker 1: because nobody could keep it straight but Leopold.
Speaker 2: That's such an attention to detail, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Like I said, he's the first modern, truly modern bastard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this book is sort of framed as like Henry
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley's helping the Congo Free State be born and
Speaker 1: helping these Africans like take their stab at nationhood and
Speaker 1: joining the international community and whatnot. So that's how all
Speaker 1: this is being played in the outside world. The reality
Speaker 1: in the Congo is very different, and what happens next
Speaker 1: is not what anyone but Leopold had expected. And we're
Speaker 1: going to get into that in a minute. But right now, Andrew,
Speaker 1: do you have too much money? Oh? Hell yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: one of the great things to do with too much
Speaker 1: money is spend it on products, products like the ones
Speaker 1: that I'm going to talk about now Here's so we're
Speaker 1: back and King Leopold has sent an explorer off to
Speaker 1: the Congo to trick a bunch of tribes people into
Speaker 1: signing away their rights to the land, while he's distracted
Speaker 1: the rest of Europe with a bunch of showy expeditions.
Speaker 2: So it's just like it used to be, just like
Speaker 2: cannons and soldiers swords, I guess, and now it's pr
Speaker 2: and fake treaties and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, it's really modern in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: So Leopold has this new best selling book that's talking
Speaker 1: about the great stuff he's trying to do in the
Speaker 1: Congo that gets the public jazz, and he's able to
Speaker 1: sort of further push the legitimacy of his project by
Speaker 1: getting the US President Chester A. Arthur to recognize the
Speaker 1: Congo Free State. Leopold had charmed the former US Minister
Speaker 1: to Belgium, a guy who called himself General Sanford, even
Speaker 1: though he wasn't actually a general, but he was a
Speaker 1: rich guy who had a lot of money and like
Speaker 1: an orange plantation. Because he was a rich guy. He
Speaker 1: was able to get the president's ear General Sandford appealed
Speaker 1: to President Arthur's dislike of Arabs because again, there were
Speaker 1: all these Arab slave traders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just yes, nothing's changed, Yeah, okay, nothing's new.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Chester A. Arthur was. He also pointed out
Speaker 1: that the Congo had been discovered by an American because
Speaker 1: Henry Morton Stanley called himself an American. He wasn't. He
Speaker 1: was actually British, but he light his whole life and
Speaker 1: said he was American. Everyone lies about everything in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred Yeah, internet, because there yeah, yeah, nothing like
Speaker 1: you you run into a thousand colonels when you're reading
Speaker 1: anything in this period, and none of them are colonels. Sure,
Speaker 1: none of them were ever in the military. Like I'm
Speaker 1: going to be fried chicken colonels. Fine, And in this
Speaker 1: case of General anyway, Chesterry Arthur was like, sounds great,
Speaker 1: Congo free straights, sounds like a great idea. You're going
Speaker 1: to fight some Arabs. Hooray. Yeah. So he included this
Speaker 1: next bit in his State of the Union speech, recognizing
Speaker 1: the Congo free state. Quote from Chester A. Arthur, the
Speaker 1: rich and populous valley of the Congo spelled with a
Speaker 1: K in. This is being opened by a society called
Speaker 1: the International African Association, of which the King of the
Speaker 1: Belgians is the president. Large tracts of territory have been
Speaker 1: ceded to the Association by native chiefs. Roads have been opened,
Speaker 1: steamboats have been placed on the river, and the Nuclei
Speaker 1: of states established under one flag, which offers freedom to
Speaker 1: commerce and prohibits the slave trade. Oh my god, So
Speaker 1: that's how Chester A. Arthur pictures it.
Speaker 2: So he got paid placement for his propaganda. Yeah, in
Speaker 2: the State of the Union.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the State of the Union. So far the
Speaker 1: people of Belgium and the other European states are fooled
Speaker 1: pretty well. But France and some other folks and like
Speaker 1: the British government and whatnot are starting to catch on
Speaker 1: the Leopold's plan and realize that he's making a power grab.
Speaker 1: This helped us spark a general what's known as the
Speaker 1: Scramble for Africa, where all these European powers are like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, we're running out of Africa to take over,
Speaker 1: so they start shooting out expeditions to claim the last
Speaker 1: pieces of the continent before it fills up. This all
Speaker 1: culminates in the Berlin Conference of eighteen eighty four to
Speaker 1: eighty five, and a bunch of stuff is decided there.
Speaker 1: But Leopold's main goal is to get recognition for what
Speaker 1: he starts calling the Congo Free State. He's basically like,
Speaker 1: I've got all these treaties. Like he gets up in
Speaker 1: front of Europe and he's like, I got all these treaties. Look,
Speaker 1: the people of the Congo want to be their own state.
Speaker 1: They want me to be their king. They've given this
Speaker 1: the state, the rights to their land. And if you
Speaker 1: all back me in establishing the state, it'll be a
Speaker 1: free trade zone, so all everyone will be able to
Speaker 1: trade freely and buy and sell freely in there. It'll
Speaker 1: make a bunch of money for everybody. So that's Leopold's
Speaker 1: pitch man, and Europe buys it. In eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: the Congo Free State is established. Leopold had to go
Speaker 1: in front of Belgium Senate to ask if he could
Speaker 1: be two kings at once. He promised that the Congo
Speaker 1: would be its own independent nation and that it would
Speaker 1: pay its own way in the world. He told Belgium
Speaker 1: he thought it was his duty to quote help the
Speaker 1: nations of second rank become useful members of the great
Speaker 1: family of nations. Then he asked for money, a little
Speaker 1: loone to help the fledgling new nation. And he asked
Speaker 1: his fellow Belgians to volunteer to help in this bold
Speaker 1: project quote more than any other. A manufacturing and commercial
Speaker 1: people like ourselves ought to strive to obtain a market
Speaker 1: for all its workers, for thinkers, capitalists and workmen. So
Speaker 1: the Congo Free State is on paper a country with
Speaker 1: Leopold the Second as its absolute ruler. So he's gone
Speaker 1: from the King of Belgium. Yeah, he doesn't really have
Speaker 1: any power to be of a country like twenty times
Speaker 1: the size of Belgium. Jesus Christ. So the Congo Free
Speaker 1: State is to all intends and purposes of state. It
Speaker 1: has its own army, the Force Publique, which is made
Speaker 1: up of African soldiers led by Belgian officers. It's illegal
Speaker 1: for black men to be officers in the Army of
Speaker 1: the Congo.
Speaker 2: Yeah that sounds about right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Man Leopold has acquired himself an African empire. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: he didn't want an empire. He had no desire to
Speaker 1: actually rule and others wanted money. He just wanted money.
Speaker 1: So the Congo Free State is entirely a money making
Speaker 1: scheme and it's all based around rubber. So the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds is when rubber really started to take off.
Speaker 1: That's like in the mid eighteen hundreds or so is
Speaker 1: when they figure out how to vulcanize rubber, which is
Speaker 1: what makes it like nice and shiny and stable and
Speaker 1: it doesn't smell weird and fall apart. It's so the
Speaker 1: Macintosh coat becomes popular around this time. People like in
Speaker 1: Europe are just like covered headed tone rubber, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's everywhere. It's like the fashion of the time, right,
Speaker 1: people are just flipping out over rubber. Fetishes are born
Speaker 1: tons exactly, hot air balloons. It's like this one. It's
Speaker 1: a wonder material. It's like the first time people they
Speaker 1: don't have to use glass for everything. Yeah, so everyone's
Speaker 1: in love with rubber. But there's only two ways to
Speaker 1: make rubber at that time, vines and trees. Now, rubber
Speaker 1: vines grew wild all around the Congo.
Speaker 2: It was the two ways are vines and trees. There's
Speaker 2: rubber vines and there's rubber. Yeah, I thought it was
Speaker 2: going to be vegetation and chemistry.
Speaker 1: No they didn't. They do now we can make yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but they hadn't figured that shit out. Yeah. Yeah. So actually,
Speaker 1: harvesting all of the rubber from vines like the ones
Speaker 1: who grew in the Congo required thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: people climbing trees in the jungle. There's the risk of
Speaker 1: snake bite and monster attacks, and it's just a nightmare harvesting, yeah,
Speaker 1: at large scale in the Congo. Harvesting rubber from trees,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is really easy, and some enterprising
Speaker 1: people had already started planting groves of rubber trees in
Speaker 1: South America, but those trees took about twenty years or
Speaker 1: so to really get going. So Leopold standing here in
Speaker 1: charge of the Congo, knows that he has about twenty
Speaker 1: years to be the world's leading producer of rubber. The
Speaker 1: Congo Free State wasn't basically just a giant rubber factory.
Speaker 1: That was his whole vision for this land filled with
Speaker 1: millions of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like the actual story of Willy Wonk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the real Willy Wonka. Yeah, exactly. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So now I remember when I said that Leopold had
Speaker 1: the right to collect taxes in the form of labor.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Well, he used these taxes to make Congolese
Speaker 1: people go harvest rubber for him. In theory, I think
Speaker 1: he was allowed to only demand like forty hours a
Speaker 1: month from them or something. But what happened is that
Speaker 1: he would have his soldiers go from village to village
Speaker 1: and take hostages. These hostages would be put in concentration
Speaker 1: camps where they'd be starved and beaten until the village
Speaker 1: met its rubber quota. So if you didn't get all
Speaker 1: the rubber that you were supposed to get soon enough,
Speaker 1: your family would just starve. Today, Leopold's government did have
Speaker 1: a problem because obviously it needs soldiers to enforce these
Speaker 1: nightmarish rules. But white people die like crazy in the Congo,
Speaker 1: Like more than a third of the Belgians who went
Speaker 1: there died there. And since again it's illegal for Africans
Speaker 1: to be officers in the Force Publique, there would wind
Speaker 1: up being like four or five Belgian guys commanding hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of African soldiers. So that's obviously you're treating
Speaker 1: these guys terribly. You're making the massacre their own people,
Speaker 1: and there's five of you for every five hundred of them.
Speaker 1: That's like a recipe for a revolution, or it would
Speaker 1: be if the soldiers had free access to bullets. One
Speaker 1: of the ways the Belgians controlled their army was by
Speaker 1: heavily restricting when anybody would get bullets, and by policing
Speaker 1: their AMMO so they couldn't hide any away. So each
Speaker 1: soldier would only be issued a certain amount of AMMO
Speaker 1: when they'd go out to get rubber, and if they
Speaker 1: fired any rounds, they had to account for them. The
Speaker 1: general policy in the Congo became that if you fired around,
Speaker 1: you had to provide a right hand from a corpse
Speaker 1: for every round that you shot. This was meant to
Speaker 1: stop people from stockpiling AMMO, and it was meant to
Speaker 1: stop them from like hunting for animals, Yeah, when they
Speaker 1: should have been, you know, shooting people. What this actually meant, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So but that creates a market for right hands exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so possibly go wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For one thing, these soldiers aren't fed enough, so
Speaker 1: they're starving and they start hunting, and then once they
Speaker 1: fired a couple rounds hunt and animal they need to
Speaker 1: pick up Okay, well we fired three rounds getting that
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Now we need three hands. So we
Speaker 1: need to go into a village. We need to take
Speaker 1: some people's hands. And in addition to that, like it
Speaker 1: becomes common if a village refuses to provide rubber, like
Speaker 1: people are like, we're not going to work to you.
Speaker 1: We're not going to give up a relatives as hostages.
Speaker 1: The Force Publique would just burn down the whole village.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they just kill everybody in the entire village. And
Speaker 1: this is happening on basically an industrial scale. In nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three, a single rubber collecting post was sent more
Speaker 1: than forty thousand replacement rounds of ammunition to every round
Speaker 1: that they're being sent. They've got a hand. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: like the military units and the Force Publique even would
Speaker 1: have a keeper of the hands whose job was to
Speaker 1: smoke all of the severed hands so that they preserve,
Speaker 1: so that you could go back to the authority of evidence.
Speaker 1: We need twenty thousand more bullets. Here's twenty thousand human hands.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. Yeah. So in eighteen eighty five, when this
Speaker 1: whole operation is just getting off the ground, King Leopold
Speaker 1: is named in British court as a client of what
Speaker 1: the British called a disorderly house. Can you guess what
Speaker 1: a disorderly house was? Uh? Probably not enough. It's a punishment,
Speaker 1: is what I'll go for it. Yeah, I know it's
Speaker 1: a brothelh So while this is all starting off, King sorry,
Speaker 1: a whorehouse in England, I thought, I.
Speaker 2: Thought you disorderly house meant like his dukedom didn't have
Speaker 2: like x or y like paperwork filed.
Speaker 1: No, no, no. While he's freshly the king of the
Speaker 1: Belgian Congo, he's named in British court as a client
Speaker 1: of a whorehouse, and they say that he had been
Speaker 1: paying eight hundred pounds a month for a steady supply
Speaker 1: of young women, some of whom were ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: years old. That's so, I mean, that's what Leopold's doing
Speaker 1: in between administering the Congo. Yeah. And while he's doing that,
Speaker 1: his men in the Congo are building a system of roads, railways,
Speaker 1: posts and steamboats that are meant to allow the rubber
Speaker 1: making operation to prosper. Leopold doesn't want to pay for
Speaker 1: all this himself, so he claimed the infrastructure is nes
Speaker 1: so that the Free States army can fight those dastardly
Speaker 1: Arab slavers. Got the US to pay for it, or
Speaker 1: just generally he got everyone else to pay for it.
Speaker 1: So he got in Europe on board with this by
Speaker 1: saying the Congo is going to be a free trade zone.
Speaker 1: But then he's like, we need to build all this
Speaker 1: infrastructure in order to fight the slavers, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to collect import taxes.
Speaker 2: Now nice, He's.
Speaker 1: Just he like. The one thing you can trust Leopold
Speaker 1: to do is he will fuck over every single person. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So now even these countries who had gotten on board
Speaker 1: because they thought this was a free trade zone, they're
Speaker 1: getting screwed. And of course the millions of people whose
Speaker 1: hands he's having severed being screwed. I guess the key
Speaker 1: is just never stop lying. Yeah, no, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Whenever you read about any of these guys. That is
Speaker 1: the most important thing. He's never ever stop lying. If
Speaker 1: you're going to be a monster, you have to lie
Speaker 1: consistently for decades about everything. All right, Yeah, I'm in.
Speaker 1: It works, Yeah no, I mean I'm in. Well, you'll
Speaker 1: be a great king of the Congo. Ha ha. So
Speaker 1: to Leopold's credit. His men did fight Arab slave traders,
Speaker 1: but most of the fighting was done by conscripted African
Speaker 1: soldiers who were themselves basically slaves. Yeah yeah. King Leopold
Speaker 1: personally endorsed a system where white agents of the Free
Speaker 1: State got a bonus if they were able to find
Speaker 1: more recruits for the Force Public. Many agents wound up
Speaker 1: buying them in from various chiefs and effect doing the
Speaker 1: same thing as the Arab slavers they bragged about fighting.
Speaker 1: State agents also got bonuses for quote reducing recruiting expenses,
Speaker 1: so if they outright enslaved people rather than paid them
Speaker 1: to join, they got more money in their pocket. As
Speaker 1: many as three quarters of all volunteers for the Force
Speaker 1: Public died before they could receive training. Most of those
Speaker 1: volunteers were teenagers.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, so they're just volunteers quote unquote, that's fucking incredible.
Speaker 2: So it was like, we have our indentured servant army
Speaker 2: as going to fight your slave army.
Speaker 1: So basically the Congo at this point is groups of
Speaker 1: white guys with soldiers going into the jungle to collect
Speaker 1: a bunch of other soldiers and they'll put them in
Speaker 1: chains and like march them through the jungle and most
Speaker 1: of them will die, and then they'll train those guys
Speaker 1: up to fight. Then they'll take those guys into the
Speaker 1: jungle to tell people to collect rubber from people, and
Speaker 1: to kill everyone who doesn't provide enough rubber, and to
Speaker 1: kill a lot of the people who do provide enough rubber,
Speaker 1: just because these kids are like starving to death, and
Speaker 1: maybe they have to shoot an animal, or maybe there's
Speaker 1: rebels and they get into a firefight, but they don't
Speaker 1: have killing it. Yeah, and then you got to take
Speaker 1: hands from these So it just keeps spiraling out of
Speaker 1: control and becoming even more of a nightmare to everybody
Speaker 1: but Leopold, because again he's sitting back in Belgium. This time,
Speaker 1: since Leopold was the absolute monarch, he got to rule
Speaker 1: by royal decree. His first decree was that all quote
Speaker 1: vacant land was now property of the state. He didn't
Speaker 1: explain what vacant meant, because obviously farmers don't live on
Speaker 1: every inch of their farmland, so basically most of the
Speaker 1: land in the Congo was now just his. He leased
Speaker 1: this land to a series of private corporations, and this
Speaker 1: gets to the real brilliance of his scheme. Because Leopold
Speaker 1: didn't have to dirty his hands actually running any of
Speaker 1: the rubber harvesting, he was able to private right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: other people paid for the right to mine rubber and
Speaker 1: cut off hands and do all the actual work, and
Speaker 1: Leopold owned the rights to a huge chunk of their profits.
Speaker 1: So basically, these companies would come in and give him
Speaker 1: an owning stake in the corporation, they.
Speaker 2: Would license the scheme of enslaving people, cutting off their hands, etc.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Adam Hoschild in King Leopold's Ghost compares the Congo
Speaker 1: Free State to a venture capital firm. Quote, he had
Speaker 1: essentially found a way to attract other people's capital to
Speaker 1: his investment schemes, while he retained half the proceeds. In
Speaker 1: the end, what with various taxes and fees the companies
Speaker 1: paid the state, it came to more than half Jesus.
Speaker 1: So in the eighteen nineties, the Congo Free State really
Speaker 1: starts putting out rubber, and suddenly King Leopold is one
Speaker 1: of the richest guys in the world. He starts buying
Speaker 1: gigantic monuments and palaces and shit for Belgium big show projects,
Speaker 1: some of which are still there. It is to make
Speaker 1: people like him, it's to keep him popular at home.
Speaker 1: He's succeeding beyond his wildest dreams in the business side
Speaker 1: of things, but his personal life is just kind of
Speaker 1: one series of train wrecks after the other. Yeah, his
Speaker 1: son had died in eighteen sixty four, which led to
Speaker 1: an understandable estrangement between Leopold and his wife. It took
Speaker 1: eight years before they could stand to be around each
Speaker 1: other and try again. This passage from Leopold's biography tells
Speaker 1: you a lot about the relationships between the sexes. In
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties quote, Leopold the Second was anxious to
Speaker 1: have a male heir, and in eighteen seventy two, Queen
Speaker 1: Marie Henriette consented to resume conjugal life with her royal spouse,
Speaker 1: from whom she had separated sometime before. She sacrificed herself,
Speaker 1: as one may say, for her country. A child was
Speaker 1: born unto them, but alas it was a daughter and
Speaker 1: not a son, which was given unto them. So that's
Speaker 1: messed up for a lot of reasons, Jesus, one of
Speaker 1: which is just that even in the pro Leopold biography,
Speaker 1: it just admits that having sex with Leopold is a sacrifice.
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm surprised that the amount of agency she has, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, she is the queen facing pressure, but wasn't
Speaker 2: forced at guillotine point or whatever to.
Speaker 1: She kind of was. I guess that's true.
Speaker 2: I guess that's between the lines, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jesus, it's I mean, she probably has more agency
Speaker 1: than the average, but at the same time, in a
Speaker 1: way she has less because it's less important for a
Speaker 1: commoner to have a son. Yeah, yeah, because like the king,
Speaker 1: that's like the whole dynasty thing. So you might say
Speaker 1: she has even less.
Speaker 2: We probably should say that, Yeah, we probably would be
Speaker 2: respected for the record or that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, Leopold did not take having a daughter
Speaker 1: very well. This quote is from King Leopold's ghost. When
Speaker 1: the last daughter, Clementine, was born, according to his sister Luis,
Speaker 1: the king was furious and thenceforth refused to have anything
Speaker 1: to do with his admirable wife from the beginning. She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: the king paid very little attention to me or my sisters,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't pay attention to his daughters, and he
Speaker 1: mostly seems to care when one of them, like fucks
Speaker 1: with his garden. Here's a recollection from Luis. Large juicy
Speaker 1: peaches grew on the walls of the gardens, and the
Speaker 1: king was very proud of them. I had a passion
Speaker 1: for peaches, and one day I dared eat one, which
Speaker 1: was hidden away among the leaves. And that year peaches
Speaker 1: were plentiful. But the following day the king discovered the theft.
Speaker 1: What a dramatic moment. At once suspected, I confessed my
Speaker 1: crime and was promptly punished. I did not realize that
Speaker 1: the king counted his peaches. So while Leopold is running
Speaker 1: a nightmare hand harvesting rubber making scheme in the Congo,
Speaker 1: he's got enough time to make sure that his daughter
Speaker 1: doesn't steal a peach.
Speaker 2: Fuck, Because it's like, at least Ivanka Trump has the
Speaker 2: decency to pretend that she loved her time with her dad,
Speaker 2: even though, like in all those stories she tells, it's
Speaker 2: sad and weird too, But it's like, at least she's like,
Speaker 2: I love him. He's my dad, you know, And I
Speaker 2: believe in all this shit. He couldn't even get his
Speaker 2: daughters to be like I.
Speaker 1: Love Well, there's gonna be more about his daughters coming
Speaker 1: in here. He's he is not a great dad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you can't tell that, huh. There's in fact, no
Speaker 1: evidence that Leopold cared about any of his children as
Speaker 1: anything more than vehicles for his legacy. Even that fawning
Speaker 1: nineteen ten biography can't make it seem like Leopold had
Speaker 1: a single fuck for his family. As King Leomara, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest, that's so far the most relatable thing
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: I'm not liking his family, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just kidding. I love your fam As King Leopold grew
Speaker 1: older and richer, he also became a full on hypochondriac.
Speaker 1: He took to wearing a waterproof bag around his gigantic
Speaker 1: beard whenever he went outside in the rain or when
Speaker 1: he swam. He required his palace tablecloths to be boiled
Speaker 1: every day to kill any germs, which is at least
Speaker 1: a character evolution from not letting them wash his sheets. Yeah, snapkin, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's changing. He's had his own little hero's journey. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we all get there. Yeah, hypochondriac. This wound up being
Speaker 1: another really really long one. There was just so much research,
Speaker 1: So this is going to be a two parter podcast,
Speaker 1: and the second part is going to drop on Thursday,
Speaker 1: so we'll be getting into the rest of Leopold's story
Speaker 1: in the tremendously dark story of the Congo. So stick
Speaker 1: around check back out on Thursday. It's going to be great.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can check out Andrew T's podcast,
Speaker 1: os This Racist. You can also check out every other
Speaker 1: episode of Behind the Bastards. You can find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Bastards Pod and Instagram as well. You can
Speaker 1: find us on the internet at behind the Bastards dot
Speaker 1: com and you can find me on Twitter at I
Speaker 1: Write Okay, So Andrew and I will be back on
Speaker 1: Thursday with more Leopold, so check us out then. Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Foolzonemedia dot
Speaker 1: com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.