leopold, ivory, and the congo

19 Nov 2024

leopold, ivory, and the congo

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Today's selection--from The World That Trade Created by Kenneth Pomeranz . The unmatched cruelty and pillaging of Belgium’s King Leopold II:

“Billiards seems an innocuous pastime, a diversion little connected to the currents of world history. But the balls that rolled on the tables of nineteenth-century sportsmen were made of ivory, which had a long history. The tusk of the elephant, first used for decorative purposes more than 20,000 years ago by Stone Age humans, later inspired Egyptians, Minoans, and Greeks to carve figurines,jewelry, and gods. The Bible's King Solomon had an ivory throne. Churches and temples in the Middle Ages were decorated with ivory images.

“Then the Industrial Revolution found new uses for the ancient precious material: billiard balls, piano keys, knife handles, and chess pieces. The volume and value of the trade swelled. By the turn of the twentieth century, more than 1,000 tons of ivory was imported yearly into London, Antwerp, Hamburg, and New York. The gentlemen coolly stroking balls across elegant felt, while the piano gently played in the background, were not aware of part of the story. Ivory's lavish, fine-grained texture and opaque shell was doused in the blood of hundreds of thousands of elephants and millions of Africans. Ivory created colonies.

“Colonies were on the mind of King Leopold II, the monarch of Belgium, a small country that was devoid of colonies in a mercantilist era. Leopold knew that if he ever hoped to control a territory he would have to look toward Africa, the only continent that had been left almost completely unsettled by the European powers. Eighty percent of the entire land area of Africa was still under indigenous rulers, making the continent ripe for conquest. He used a series of shrewd diplomatic maneuvers to gain control of the Congo region. As Adam Hochschild remarked, ‘If he was to seize anything in Africa, he could do so only if he convinced everyone that his interest was purely altruistic.’ In a stupendously ironic and tragic moment in history, Leopold found his allies in the European abolitionist movement! He would reinvigorate the slave trade in Africa after the international traffic in humans had all but died out, exactly the opposite of what the abolitionists sought.

“Leopold began to show his interest in Africa at first by voicing his concern over the illegal slave trade that continued to thrive despite the treaties and the proclamations of many powerful European governments. Leopold claimed to protect Africans by sending his military to rid the area of slave traders and to modernize the Congo. He created the International African Association to open routes into the interior to create hospitals, scientific laboratories, and pacification bases. The association purportedly was to establish peace among the chiefs and procure them just and impartial arbitration in order to abolish the slave trade. Leopold convinced the world that his intentions were purely philanthropic.

Men with elephant tusks, Dar es Salaam, c. 1900

“But philanthropy does not pay and is a weak foundation for a colony. Leopold's eyes strayed toward the abundant source of ivory in the region: the herds of elephants protected by the tropical forests. However, the king had to first control the area before he could start to exploit it.

“Leopold started using African mercenaries in 1879 to control the Kongo, Pygmies, Kunda, and other peoples who could not comprehend the idea that someone could own the land that they had inhabited for thousands of years. In 1888 Leopold organized his mercenaries into the Force Publique, which was divided into small garrisons that were usually composed of several dozen black soldiers under one or two white officers. The king gave bonuses to white agents according to the number of men they impressed into the Force Publique and the number of laborers they captured. The white agents usually delivered their ‘ready and willing’ workers in chains.

“Leopold ran his territory mostly through military power. He carved out small areas and gave willing Europeans complete control over their inhabitants. The king left white men alone in charge of areas for months at a time; little or no punishment was meted out to soldiers who mistreated the Kongo.

“The natives were brutalized. White men sailing down the Congo River would shoot Lunda or Mongo for sport. They justified their cruelty by their belief that the indigenous people were simply animals, inferior and devoid of human emotion. The common practice in the Congo was to punish the captive peoples with whippings, chaining them to the ground and giving them thirty lashes in a row, sometimes more. Sometimes ears and limbs would be cut off.

“With the native Kongo and Lunda cowed, Leopold began to treat both vacant and nonvacant land-as well as everything on it-as his property. His soldiers left piles of dead elephants, and Africans were forced to carry tusks on their backs. The self-proclaimed abolitionist depended on slavery, while cruelly naming the colony the Congo Free State. Ivory and produce filled the holds of ships sent to Belgium, but returning ships were practically empty when they arrived in the Congo, because the workers in Africa were not being paid. In search of billiard balls and piano keys, the Belgians were stripping the Congo of its resources. This was theft, not development.”