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King Leopold II and some of his unfortunate Victims.
Images from Mark Twain's soliloquy
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Mark Twain is one of the most celebrated American
writers. His failed business ventures
are well- documented but his writing to advocate for human rights and global inequality are less known.
In 1905 Mark Twain published “King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule,” a powerful satire/drama of King Leopold who basically ruled Congo with a ruthlessness unmatched even by the late dictator Mobutu Sesse Seko. Mark Twain used his pen as a weapon to fight imperialist ideas.
His criticism of European imperialism in general was intense. King Leopold'sSoliloquy is a harsh political satire about his private colony, the Congo Free State. Before 1900, there were wide reports of outrageous exploitation and surreal abuses that finally convince the embryonic civil society of the time to organize a protest, perhaps the first large-scale human rights movement. “King Leopold's Soliloquy” served as a hymn to the movement. The suffering of rubber gatherers has been widely documented. They were tortured; their hands were cut off until the beginning of the last century when the Western world outrage forced Brussels to stop the inhuman abuses.
The pictures above are from “King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His CongoRule.” It is worth noting that the US was the first Nation to recognize that Congo was a private property of King Leopold II of Belgium. No wonder the US has remained the key player in Congo; which in term of size is bigger than all of Europe.
Below is and excerpt from the soliloquy.
In 1905 Mark Twain published “King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule,” a powerful satire/drama of King Leopold who basically ruled Congo with a ruthlessness unmatched even by the late dictator Mobutu Sesse Seko. Mark Twain used his pen as a weapon to fight imperialist ideas.
His criticism of European imperialism in general was intense. King Leopold'sSoliloquy is a harsh political satire about his private colony, the Congo Free State. Before 1900, there were wide reports of outrageous exploitation and surreal abuses that finally convince the embryonic civil society of the time to organize a protest, perhaps the first large-scale human rights movement. “King Leopold's Soliloquy” served as a hymn to the movement. The suffering of rubber gatherers has been widely documented. They were tortured; their hands were cut off until the beginning of the last century when the Western world outrage forced Brussels to stop the inhuman abuses.
The pictures above are from “King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His CongoRule.” It is worth noting that the US was the first Nation to recognize that Congo was a private property of King Leopold II of Belgium. No wonder the US has remained the key player in Congo; which in term of size is bigger than all of Europe.
Below is and excerpt from the soliloquy.
[…] These meddlesome American missionaries! these frank British consuls! these blabbingblabbing Belgian-born traitor officials! -- those tiresome parrots are always talking, always telling. They have told how for twenty years I have ruled the Congo State not as a trustee of the Powers, an agent, a subordinate, a foreman, but as a sovereign -- sovereign over a fruitful domain four times as large as the German Empire -- sovereign absolute, irresponsible, above all law; trampling the Berlin-made Congo charter under foot; barring out all foreign traders but myself; restricting commerce to myself, through concessionaires who are my creatures and confederates; seizing and holding the State as my personal property, the whole of its vast revenues as my private "swag" -- mine, solely mine -- claiming and holding its millions of people as my private property, my serfs, my slaves; their labor mine, with or without wage; the food they raise not their property but mine; the rubber, the ivory and all the other riches of the land mine -- mine solely -- and gathered for me by the men, the women and the little children under compulsion of lash and bullet, fire, starvation, mutilation and the halter […]
I
also suggest you read this excerpt from a debate in the Belgian Parliament in Brussels
in July 1903, one can only laugh!
"This
work of 'civilization' is an enormous and continual butchery." "All
the facts we brought forward in this chamber were denied at first most
energetically; but later, little by little, they were proved by documents and
by official texts." "The practice of cutting off hands is said to be
contrary to instructions; but you are content to say that indulgence must be
shown and that this bad habit must be corrected 'little by little' and you
plead, moreover, that only the hands of fallen enemies are cut off,
and that if the hands are cut off 'enemies' not quite dead, and who, after
recovery, have had the bad taste to come to the missionaries and show them
their stumps, it was due to an original mistake in thinking that they were dead”
Here is another excerpt, the last one - I assure you - from the report published by the King’s Commission
that investigated the atrocities after a great international pressure led by Mark Twain started to bear fruit. I
hope you will have the stomach for it!"Missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, whom we heard at Leopoldville, were unanimous in accentuating the general wretchedness existing in the region. One of them said that "this system which compels the natives to feed 3000 workmen at Leopoldville, will, if continued for another five years, wipe out the population of the district."
"Judicial officials have informed us of the sorry
consequences of the porterage system; it exhausts the unfortunate people
subjected to it, and threatens them with partial destruction."
"In the majority of cases the native must go one
or two days' march every fortnight, until he arrives at that part of the forest
where the rubber vines can be met with in a certain degree of abundance. There
the collector passes a number of days in a miserable existence. He has to build
himself an improvised shelter which cannot, obviously, replace his hut. He has
not the food to which he is accustomed. He is deprived of his wife, exposed to
the inclemencies of the weather and the attacks of wild beasts. When once he
has collected the rubber he must bring it to the State station, or to that of
the Company, and only then can he return to his village where he can sojourn
for barely more than two or three days because the next demand is upon him."
