Meet Leopold II

Belgium is a small, beautiful country that's doing a lot of things right.

On a recent visit, though, I kept seeing indications of what it did very wrong in the past, and how it (or its people) don't seem to recognize that fact. I'm speaking of one of its kings, Leopold II, who reigned from 1865 to 1909. Here's an example, where he's honored in the name of an apartment building:


I think that sign indicates this is the 11th building named for him.

We are not taught about his heinous crimes in school (or at least I wasn't), but I had heard through social media that his victims outnumber those of Hitler. Here's what the Wikipedia has to say about that:

At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 the colonial nations of Europe authorized [Leopold's] claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants. From the beginning Leopold essentially ignored these conditions. He ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal enrichment. He used great sums of the money from this exploitation for public and private construction projects in Belgium during this period. He donated the private buildings to the state before his death, to preserve them for Belgium.

Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the native population to harvest and process rubber. Under his regime millions of the Congolese people died. Modern estimates range from one million to fifteen million, with a consensus growing around 10 million (emphasis added).

European colonialism is not surprising, but this was possibly the most egregious form of it in history: the Congo was "given" to Leopold by the other monarchs of Europe as his personal property, not as a colony of Belgium. Ironically, Leopold named it the "Congo Free State." Free for him to do what he wanted, I guess. More from the Wikipedia:

To enforce the rubber quotas, the army, the Force Publique, was called in and made the practice of cutting off the limbs of the natives a matter of policy.... [after decades] News of the abuses began to circulate. In 1904, the British consul at Boma in the Congo...was instructed by the British government to investigate. His report, called the Casement Report, confirmed the accusations of humanitarian abuses. The Belgian Parliament forced Leopold II to set up an independent commission of inquiry. Its findings confirmed Casement's report of abuses, concluding that the population of the Congo had been "reduced by half" during this period.

These inquiries led to turning over control of the Congo to Belgium itself in 1909, which made a difference on paper but not much in practice. The governor-general remained in office and much of his administration as well. They permitted no political activity at all and enforced it with the armed Force Publique.

Belgians, the Wikipedia informs me, think of Leopold as the "Builder King" because he commissioned many prominent public buildings in Belgium, including the beautiful train station in Antwerp:






This building, and others such as the Royal Museum of Central Africa near Brussels and several parks in Brussels, was built with the blood-money extracted from killing 10 million people in the Congo. He also built a scad of private palaces and parks for himself and his family, and had them turned over to public use when his reign was ending. More from the Wikipedia:

On the boardwalk of Blankenberge, a popular coastal resort, a monument shows a pair of colonists as heroes protecting a desperate Congolese woman and child with "civilization". In Ostend, the beach promenade has a 1931 sculptural monument to Leopold II, showing Leopold and grateful Ostend fishermen and Congolese. The inscription accompanying the Congolese group notes: "The gratitude of the Congolese to Leopold II for having liberated them from slavery under the Arabs."

While there, I also came across this monument in Antwerp's equivalent of Central Park:


This is the plaque at the base:


Which reads: "In the presence of King Leopold II, the Chamber of Commerce celebrates the combining of Congo to Belgium, June 6, 1909."

All of this makes me think of how exploitation allows a few to have beautiful things or achieve great feats, while others live in abject miserableness or die outright. Belgium is Omelas (as is the United States, of course).

There was only one reference I saw to Leopold that seemed appropriate during my time in Antwerp. It was within the excellent Museum aan de Stroom (MAS, opened only recently, in 2011). Ladies and gents, I give you King Leopold's toilet:




It's part of an exhibit called Antwerp a la Carte, about food (and therefore waste) in the city over the centuries. It's a great exhibit, and this was a sly poke at a ruler who is best remembered for the shit he generated.

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Facts to know:

• The current Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire, among other names) is the second-largest country in Africa, equaling the combined areas of Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway.
• King Leopold's Ghost is a popular history by American journalist Adam Hochschild, which, perhaps not surprisingly, was turned down by nine out of 10 publishing houses, despite Hochschild's well established retuptation at the time of its writing in 1998.