I was searching for info on Leopold II and stumbled upon this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mjGXDlSk0c My question is for anyone familiar with the subject: Is there any wrong info in the video or was the congolese genocide truly a political campaign against Leopolds personal claim on the congo. Thanks in advance for any insight!
I would say that this video has quite a few incorrect assumptions. For context, the creator of it, Ryan Faulk, is an ethnic nationalist who often uses pseudohistory and pseudoscience in his coverage of world history, for the purposes of lionizing various European groups. In this case several falsehoods are stated about Belgium’s history in Africa. I think that the comments on that Youtube video, making remarks implying that previous research into Congolese history is biased solely because of historian Adam Hochschild being an ethnic Jew, speak volumes of who sees people like Faulk as authorities on this subject.
What cannot be ignored is that atrocities happened in the Congo Free State, and that these events were well documented, not only through prose but through photographs. It was not a subject that arose out of nowhere in the purpose of attacking the King, as is implied by Faulk. The 1890s and 1900s saw many Westerns speak out against the violence that was occurring in the Congo and the millions that it affected. The African-American journalist George Washington Williams wrote to King Leopold II in 1890 on the events he witnessed in the essay: “An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Léopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo". British journalist E. D. Morel campaigned heavily to educate the world on this tragedy. His book Red Rubber (1906) was a bestseller and informed the public greatly on the topic. Others who spoke about the Congo crisis include Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, and Emile Vandervelde. Conrad’s famous novel, Heart of Darkness, even contains the critical subtext that Belgium colonialism is grossly inhumane in comparison to that of the British.
So, after establishing that the Congo Free State’s atrocities were real and well known enough at the time to enter pop culture, we come to the issue of death toll. Estimates range from 1 million to 15 million Congolese killed, so an approximation of 10 million is rather uncontroversial for most academics. The population decline comes from a mixture of mass violence, starvation, disease, and low birth rates, all stemming from problems originating from its organization as a colony.
Faulk claims about 12 minutes into this video that there were not enough Belgians in the Congo to kill such a high population. He states that it would require each Belgian located there to kill 197 Africans, which he implies is impossible. This ignores that it is accepted that the majority of the deaths occurred from starvation and disease, as is outright stated in popular works on the subject such as Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghosts. So, we see that Faulk has not read up on the subject, or at least not closely. No real historian claims that all the deaths are the result of physical violence. Often in the denial of mass tragedy, you will see denialists misunderstand that statistics of wars and ethnic cleansing always include victims of war who died of starvation and diseases. Many people are ignorant on how many could truly be killed through a famine or plague centuries or even decades ago.
This leads us to our next point. That famines and plagues can be the direct result of human activity and that these deaths are recorded the result of human activity by historians, rather than natural events. It’s why Native Americans killed through smallpox, rather than direct warfare, are included in genocide totals, because the spread of the disease was not natural.
Faulk brings up a lack of records related to the Congo Horrors. This is a fallacy. Belgian politicians at the time claimed to have witnessed the government destruction of records, as is documented in King Leopold’s Ghost. In addition, we have a large number of testimonies of witnesses to the violence and suffering, such as these statements by a Catholic missionary:
“All blacks saw this man as the devil of the Equator...From all the bodies killed in the field, you had to cut off the hands. He wanted to see the number of hands cut off by each soldier, who had to bring them in baskets...A village which refused to provide rubber would be completely swept clean. As a young man, I saw [Fiévez's] soldier Molili, then guarding the village of Boyeka, take a net, put ten arrested natives in it, attach big stones to the net, and make it tumble into the river...Rubber causes these torments; that's why we no longer want to hear its name spoken. Soldiers made young men kill or rape their own mothers and sisters.”
In addition, we have a number of photographs of the mutilated bodies. Faulk cries foul again, saying that the murderers would not want to document their brutalities. “Therefore, the photos are fake!” the colonial apologist claims. However, this ignores that the photos were taken by people critical of the barbaric practices, often Christian missionaries, such photos were circulated in newspapers to demonstrate the bloodshed that was occurring.
Now then who claimed that the violence was little more than a smear campaign against the King? None other than Leopold himself. The King spent large amounts of money in a propaganda campaign to attempt to silence those raising awareness of the Congo horrors. This included having articles attacking the campaigners published in the New York Times, and a multitude of other writings, from books to pamphlets defending the king. These were distributed throughout the world.
Leopold’s critics struck back and satirized this disinformation. In his popular essay “King Leopold's Soliloquy”, Mark Twain mocked the king with his trademark humor and wit. So effective was this that Twain was caricatured by the King’s loyalists in the Belgian press. Here you can see Twain and E. D. Morel lampooned in a pro-Leopold cartoon, just one of many pieces of media used to shield the king:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/An_AnswerTwain.JPG
When Leopold claimed that the criticism was motivated by the Protestant distasted for his Catholic faith, it was rebutted that many of the missionaries were Catholic. Leopold would die in 1909, a year after the Free State became the Belgium Congo, placing it into the hands of the Belgian government. Leopold died unpopular, reportedly there were loud boos as his caskets was taken down the roads of his country.
In conclusion, the genocide was not exaggerated, nor is the most likely death toll impossible to achieve, considering the role disease and hunger played. It was a much-covered topic the time, and photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony overwhelmingly show the horrors that occurred. The notion of it being an attack upon the King is little more than classic “fake news”, a desperate attempt by an unpopular sovereign and his supporters to defend himself. The Congo Free State continues to be rightfully remembered as an example of the sins of African colonialism by the mainstream, only fondly recalled by the fanatics on today’s alt-right forums.
Further reading can be found in the following two books, both carefully researched:
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
Congo: The Epic History of a People by David Van Reybrouck
There are experts on this sub who could speak to the details of atrocities in the Belgian Congo far better than I could, but the video you link as your source comes from an astoundingly white-supremacist Youtube channel.
When someone's videos go to the extent of saying nonwhites and liberty are intrinsically incompatible, it's a really good hint that it might be a good idea to take anything they have to say about African colonialism with a few tablespoons of salt.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/7t40ok/more_congo_free_state_apologetics/
r/badhistory did a nice and long 2-part takedown of an article written by the creator of the video on this very subject so I imagine that the content and arguments are pretty similar
Edit: also if you want to know about the congo free state, this AMA was done in the past on it
