Exploitation of Colonial Raw Materials

Case Study: The Belgian Congo

Goal of Today

• We have talked about all of the different reasons for imperialism. Today we will look at some of the economic reasons for imperialism, specifically the desire to get cheap raw materials for industrialization.

• Terms– chicotte

• “He (King Leopold) first explained his view to me when I was his guest in Brussels some years ago.. His designs are most philanthropic and are amongst the few schemes of the kind… free from any selfish commercial or political object.” Sir Bartle Frere 1883

The Congo Free State or The Belgian Congo

King Leopold II:(r. 1865 – 1909)

Sir Henry Morton Stanley

In the 1870’s Stanley began exploring partsOf Africa. Stanley was then hired by King Leopold.

• The King sent instructions to Stanley to purchase as much land as he could. All the chiefs from the mouth of the Congo to the Stanley falls should agree to sign their land away. Stanley was to purchase all the available ivory and establish barriers and tolls on the roads he opened up. Land rights treaties should be as "brief as possible and in a couple of articles must grant us everything." (p71) Stanley secured 450 such agreements.

• Leopold was able to develop a military dictatorship over a country 76 times the size of Belgium, with only a small number of white officials.

Resources

Ivory, from elephant tusks, were collected at trading posts throughout the Congo and other parts of Africa. Ivory was often purchased from Africans at a fraction of its value or simply taken from them at gunpoint. Ivory as a raw material was used in Europe from everything from false teeth to piano keys.

• One of the precious resources of the Congo was its rubber trees. The industrial revolution in Europe had brought a growing demand for the resilient material.

• Harvesting the precious substance from the trees was very labor intensive, so the Belgians wanted a cheap source of labor. Leopold put in place a forced labor system to keep the money flowing.  Natives of the Congo Free State were expected to pay taxes. Since they had not operated with a money economy, this requirement forced natives to work for the white men for very low wages under very difficult conditions. The Congo was depopulated as many fled their villages to avoid the taxes.

• To gather rubber, you had to slash vines with a knife and hang a bucket or pot to collect the slow drip of thick milky sap. Once vines near villages were drained villagers would have to travel farther and farther into the forest looking for more rubber.

A group of Bongwonga rubber workers

• A gather had to dry the syrup- like rubber so that it would coagulate, and often the only way to do so was to spread the substance on his arms, thighs, and chest. According to a Force Publique officer Louis Chaltin “The first few times it is not without pain that the man pulls it off the hairy parts of his body… The native doesn’t like making rubber. He must be compelled to do it.”

• Coagulate: being clotted or congealed

• A young boy forced to collect rubber for the Anglo-Belgium India Rubber Company (ABIR). The rubber quotas imposed on the indigenous population were so great that, as in this picture, the rubber vines were cut down rather than waiting for them to be tapped. As a result hardly any vines were left around the rubber stations.

• Cheap Labor• In order to harvest the

rubber and carry the ivory to ports Natives were forced into working.

• Swedish missionary and a young boy mutilated by a rubber sentry. As the demand for rubber grew King Leopold's private army was able to use any method to coerce the population into meeting quotas, including random killing, mutilation, village burning, starvation and hostage taking.

• One form of punishment was a chicotte. The chicotte was a whip of sun dried hippopotamus hide, cut into a long sharp edged corkscrew strip.

Blows from the chicottewould leave permanent scars. More than 25 strokes could mean unconsciousness and a hundred or more- not an uncommon punishment- were often fatal.

• If a village refused to submit to the rubber regime, troops (usually fellow natives of the Congo) would shoot everyone in sight in an effort to scare neighboring tribes into working. European officers did not trust the troops (they were natives) so for each cartridge issued to the soldiers they demanded proof that the bullet had been used to kill someone and not wasted on hunting. The standard proof that they had killed someone with the bullet was to take the right hand of the corpse, but if they had used the bullet for hunting they would simply chop the hand off of a living person.

Initially, Leopold paid mercenaries, but in 1888 these were Transformed into the “Force Publique”. At its peak, there were 19,000 conscripted African soldiers and 420 white officers.

• A young boy (Impongi) with a severed hand and foot, mutilated by sentries after his village failed to meet its rubber quota. He was a witness before Leopold's Commission of Enquiry which was an unsuccessful attempt to refute Roger Casement's damning report to the British government on human rights abuses in the Congo.

• Two British missionaries with Congolese men holding the severed hands of two men from their village, murdered by rubber sentries from the ABIR (Anglo-Belgian India Rubber company).

Actual Accounts

• 1899, a state officer, Simon Roi, bragging about the killing squads under his command.– “Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges

are given to him. He must bring back all not used; and for every one used he must bring back a right hand!… As to the extent to which this is carried on, in 6 months 6,000 cartridges were used meaning that 6,000 people were killed or mutilated.”

Diary of officer Charles Lemaire

• 28 March 1891.. The village of Bokanga was burned.. 4 April 1891: Since they wanted to meet us only with spears and guns, the village was burned. One native killed. (it continues with more burnings)

• Entry “13 July 1892: The Bompopo villages were attacked 7 July by Lieutenant Sarrazijn; 20 natives killed; 13 woman and children taken prisoner.”

Witness M’Putila of Bokote• “As you can see my right hand is cut off. When I

was small, the soldiers came to make war in my village because of rubber… As I was fleeing, a bullet grazed my neck and gave me the wound whose scars you can still see. I fell, and pretended to be dead. A soldier used a knife to cut off my right hand and took it away, I saw that he was carrying other cut-off hands… The same day, my father and mother were killed, and I know that they had their hands cut off.”

8-10 Million Victims! (50% of Popul.)

It is blood-curdling to see them (the soldiers) returning with the hands of the slain, and to find the hands of young children amongst the bigger ones evidencing their bravery...The rubber from this district has cost hundreds of lives, and the scenes I have witnessed, while unable to help the oppressed, have been almost enough to make me wish I were dead... This rubber traffic is steeped in blood, and if the natives were to rise and sweep every white person on the Upper Congo into eternity, there would still be left a fearful balance to their credit. -- Belgian Official

Belgium’s Stranglehold on the Congo

What is this picture trying to say?

• King Leopold, who privately owned most of the Congo, made countless profits from the colony while many natives suffered.

Profits• In 1897 on of the companies in the Congo, the Anglo-

Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company, spent 1.35 francs per kilo to harvest rubber in the Congo and ship it to the company’s headquarters in Antwerp Belgium- where it was sold for prices that sometimes reached 10 francs per kilo, a profit of more than 700% .

• By 1898 stock in the Anglo- Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company was nearly 30 times what it had been 6 years earlier.

• The profits came swiftly because transportation costs aside harvesting wild rubber required no cultivation, no fertilizers, no capital investment in expensive equipment. It required only labor…….

Leopold Defends Himself in Paris, 1903

King Leopold (to Loubert) : How about that!  John Bull claims that I tortured, robbed and murdered more than he did. . .

Loubert : No, your Majesty, that's impossible .

• Genocide- The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.

• Holocaust- Mass slaughter of people.

• Question:

Between 1880 and 1920, the population of the Congo was slashed in half: some ten million people were victims of murder, starvation, exposure, disease, and a plummeting birth rate. Why do you think this massive carnage has remained virtually unknown in the US and Europe?

Assignment

• As you know there were many missionaries in the Congo and many of the letters and reports they wrote back to Europe and the US helped bring some awareness of the abuses in the Congo. Pretend you are a missionary in the 1890’s (the height of the rubber craze) and describe what conditions were like. Tell of the abuses and atrocities you witnessed. Try to convince people in Europe and the United States to help.