Some friends and I were talking about colonialism and I brought up Belgium's horrific colonial behavior in the Congo, yet of the ones who knew about it, they didn't know much, and the rest had no idea. How is that Belgium was able to get this swept under the rug, yet other countries' behavior in their colonies is widely known?
I will attempt to answer question for its lack of prevalence in the American public Here are two quotations in the Michigan high school content expectations (HSCE) that either directly refer to the Congo or indirectly refer to African colonization during that period. (p.27)
"6.2.4 Imperialism – Analyze the political, economic, and social causes and consequences of imperialism by using historical and modern maps and other evidence to analyze and explain the causes and global consequences of nineteenth-century imperialism, including encounters between imperial powers (Europe, Japan) and local peoples in India,Africa, Central Asia, and East Asia"
"6.3.3 Africa – Evaluate the different experiences of African societies north and south of the Sahara with imperialism (e.g., Egypt, Ethiopia and the Congo). (National Geography Standard 16, p. 216)"
You can see in standard 6.3.3 that the teacher is not expressly required to teach the Congo, but may teach about the Belgian Congo as well as other African states. In Michigan, teachers are not required to comprehensively teach Imperialism in Africa. They are encouraged and guided through the state standards to identify the themes and teach them through an in depth answer.
I did some research into other state standards and California's standards are ambiguous as well (p.44).
"10.4 Students analyze patterns of global change in the era of New Imperialism in at least two of the following regions or countries: Africa, Southeast Asia, China, India, Latin America, and the Philippines. Describe the rise of industrial economies and their link to imperialism and colonialism (e.g., the role played by national security and strategic advantage; moral issues raised by the search for national hegemony, Social Darwinism, and the missionary impulse; material issues such as land, resources, and technology)."
(I added the bold to make the larger standard easier to digest. In this case, students may not even be taught about Imperialism because the teacher choose to cover India and China instead.
It seems that the Belgian Congo is not broadly taught in our schooling system because of the broadness of the topic. There are plenty of examples of European states economically exploiting non-European regions at the expense of indigenous populations and teachers are required to cover other content areas within the school year.
Sources
One of the main things, and I haven't seen it here, is that there is a major difference between "The Belgian Congo" which only existed from 1908-1960 and the Congo Free State (1885-1908).
Almost all of the atrocities you know and read of happened during the Congo Free State period when the colony was not owned by Belgium but was closer to a privately owned estate by the King of Belgium: Leopold II.
So while the atrocities happened when the Belgian king owned Congo and despite the fact that the majority of the people committing the atrocities were Belgian it is not really considered to have happened when Belgium was in charge.
As a matter of fact after the Belgium government took over the colony in 1908 the Belgian Congo wasn't as bad to live in if you had the bad luck to live in a colony. Belgium spend a lot of effort in healthcare and education (although most of it was done by missionairies and there was a system of Apartheid in effect).
Please remember that answers based on personal anecdotes (I was taught about X in school ...) are not acceptable on AskHistorians.
Reading through this thread there are some things that haven't really been addressed. I base this on university-level lectures, my own experiences and some literature. I've studied in Belgium.
My professor of colonial history mentioned that when he was studying (1980s), the Congo was a minor subject. They only spent half an hour on it, and it was hardly mentioned in the textbook.
Belgians also did not really care about the Congo. The 1960's notion that 'every Belgian knew someone in the Congo' was pretty much false and there was only a minority of Belgians present abroad (50 people in 1886; 17,700 in 1930; 11,400 in 1934; 89,000 in 1959) and people weren't really connected emotionally to the colony. Tourism was also limited as only 10k tourists went there in 1957. Hence the fast independence without much bloodshed/opposition.
To answer your question: Belgian Congo is different than Congo Free State (and it lasted twice as long). The press and critics sensationalized the Belgian Colonialism by using hyperboles. The rubber boom also ended well before 1908. Another (yet bad) argument is that the atrocities of other empires paralleled the one of the Free State (and Belgians). My source also mentions that Leopold IIs rule was the opposite of what Belgians proclaimed their colonialism to be after 1908, namely to be benevolent, beneficial, efficient and civilizing.
I'd like to add that most of the Belgians did not really have an imperialistic culture and they did not really care about the colony. Some people wanted this to change by using pro-empire propaganda which emphasized on the fact that Belgians were 'saviors' of the Congo after Leopold II's reign. This lead to the creation of colonial statues throughout Belgium, which was quite a unique development. Moreover, streets were named after colonials, expositions were held etc. About the imperialistic memorials/statues: almost all of them (dozens, if not hundreds) were built after 1908, almost all of them depicted males.
My classes in Highschool were vastly different than what my professor told. The post-colonial memory of the Congo really only became important after the release of the book 'Leopold II's ghost'. My HS teacher expanded a lot on the subject and made the atrocities quite clear.
Source: Matthew G Stanard, 'Selling the Congo. A history of European pro-empire propaganda and the making of Belgian Imperialism', University of Nebraska Press 2011, pp. 1-25 & 167-202
what would be a good book to read up on this and other atrocities of Empire?
To a certain extent, your question reminds of when my brother-in-law expressed shock that there had a been a second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. He either had simply never heard of the Nagasaki bombing, or just wasn't paying attention. But he was certain that it had been--to use both his term and yours--"swept under the rug", simply because he hadn't been aware of the second bombing.
I would suggest that the fact that many of your friends didn't know about it isn't necessarily because it has been ignored. You are probably aware of King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Horschild; the magesterial (and a little bit controversial) 1998 book about this specific subject. It was a monstrous best-seller; selling over 600,000 copies.
All this aside; I wasn't particularly aware of it until I read Hoschild's book. It was then I realized I had learned about much of this previously (and Heart of Darkness was my favorite book for God's sake) but I just hadn't thought of them as a manifestation of Belguim's policies. It was mostly just a collection of horrifying anecdotes taking up space in the noggin.