WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.500 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. You know, I was 00:00:02.500 --> 00:00:05.379 walking through Brussels a few months ago, and 00:00:05.379 --> 00:00:08.500 the architecture there is just, it's staggering. 00:00:08.800 --> 00:00:11.720 It really is. You have these massive triumphal 00:00:11.720 --> 00:00:15.320 arches, the sprawling royal greenhouses at Laken 00:00:15.320 --> 00:00:19.260 that look like crystal palaces, and the grandeur 00:00:19.260 --> 00:00:21.699 of the Antwerp Central Station. A railroad cathedral. 00:00:22.160 --> 00:00:24.660 Exactly. It feels like a city built by giants. 00:00:25.169 --> 00:00:27.929 And locally, the man responsible for a lot of 00:00:27.929 --> 00:00:29.870 that is still sometimes called the Builder King. 00:00:30.170 --> 00:00:32.490 It's a powerful nickname, isn't it? It conjures 00:00:32.490 --> 00:00:35.429 up images of, you know, infrastructure, progress, 00:00:35.750 --> 00:00:38.310 a golden age. Yeah. But it's also a nickname 00:00:38.310 --> 00:00:40.969 that serves as a bit of a mask. Because if you 00:00:40.969 --> 00:00:42.890 take that same man and mention his name in the 00:00:42.890 --> 00:00:44.770 Democratic Republic of the Congo, you aren't 00:00:44.770 --> 00:00:46.409 talking about a builder. You're talking about 00:00:46.409 --> 00:00:49.020 a ghost. A ghost that haunts one of the most 00:00:49.020 --> 00:00:51.600 mechanically brutal regimes in human history. 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:54.020 We are talking, of course, about King Leopold 00:00:54.020 --> 00:00:56.560 II of Belgium. And the mission for today isn't 00:00:56.560 --> 00:00:59.859 just to recount the atrocities, because sadly, 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:01.600 I think a lot of our listeners know the headline, 00:01:01.880 --> 00:01:05.180 the king who cut off hands. Right. The basics 00:01:05.180 --> 00:01:07.780 are known. The mission today is to really unpack 00:01:07.780 --> 00:01:11.700 the paradox. How does a constitutional monarch 00:01:11.700 --> 00:01:15.540 of a tiny, neutral European country, I mean, 00:01:15.540 --> 00:01:18.099 a guy with very limited political power at home, 00:01:18.280 --> 00:01:22.159 how does he manage to personally privately own 00:01:22.159 --> 00:01:26.280 a chunk of Africa, 76 times larger than his own 00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:28.739 kingdom. And not just own it, but run it as a 00:01:28.739 --> 00:01:31.519 vertically integrated corporate monopoly, one 00:01:31.519 --> 00:01:34.879 that extracted wealth with such a ruthless efficiency 00:01:34.879 --> 00:01:37.760 that it broke the demographics of Central Africa 00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:40.299 for a century. So today we've got a massive stack 00:01:40.299 --> 00:01:42.799 of sources. We're pulling from his personal correspondence, 00:01:43.140 --> 00:01:44.879 the breakdown of the Berlin Conference treaties, 00:01:45.079 --> 00:01:47.680 the famous casement report, and some really interesting 00:01:47.680 --> 00:01:49.560 modern economic papers that look at the long 00:01:49.560 --> 00:01:51.439 -term effects of the rubber tear. Yeah, those 00:01:51.439 --> 00:01:52.959 are fascinating. We're going to try to understand 00:01:52.959 --> 00:01:54.799 the machinery of this con, because that's really 00:01:54.799 --> 00:01:57.079 what it was, right? A geopolitical con job. It 00:01:57.079 --> 00:01:59.120 absolutely was. And to understand the con, you 00:01:59.120 --> 00:02:01.140 really have to understand the con artist. Because 00:02:01.140 --> 00:02:03.900 Leopold II wasn't, you know, born a monster. 00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:06.780 He was born a very frustrated, a very ambitious 00:02:06.780 --> 00:02:09.340 second son. Okay, so let's get into that backstory. 00:02:09.659 --> 00:02:13.500 He was born in 1835. And usually second sons 00:02:13.500 --> 00:02:16.159 in royal families have a bit more freedom, maybe 00:02:16.159 --> 00:02:19.639 a military career. But Leopold's life took a 00:02:19.639 --> 00:02:21.900 sharp turn and it happened early on. Right. He 00:02:21.900 --> 00:02:24.180 was never meant to be king. His older brother, 00:02:24.300 --> 00:02:27.300 Louis Philippe, was the heir apparent. But Louis 00:02:27.300 --> 00:02:30.860 Philippe died in infancy. So suddenly Leopold 00:02:30.860 --> 00:02:33.639 is thrust into this position of immense pressure. 00:02:34.159 --> 00:02:38.550 And by all accounts, he wasn't exactly. His mother, 00:02:38.770 --> 00:02:41.490 Queen Louise, died when he was 15. So a teenager. 00:02:41.830 --> 00:02:44.990 Yeah. And the sources describe him as incredibly 00:02:44.990 --> 00:02:47.150 withdrawn. He had this long nose that he was 00:02:47.150 --> 00:02:48.889 very self -conscious about. He had a limp and 00:02:48.889 --> 00:02:51.629 he was just socially awkward. He wasn't the guy 00:02:51.629 --> 00:02:53.389 working the room at the party. Not at all. No. 00:02:53.490 --> 00:02:55.449 He was the guy in the corner taking notes on 00:02:55.449 --> 00:02:58.439 everyone else's assets and his marriage. Well, 00:02:58.460 --> 00:03:00.639 that's a whole other tragedy. Marriage of a stableman 00:03:00.639 --> 00:03:03.120 and a nun. That was the public joke. It was cruel, 00:03:03.219 --> 00:03:06.120 but pretty accurate. At 18, he marries Marie 00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:08.840 Henriette of Austria. Now, she was this vibrant, 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.300 outdoorsy woman who absolutely loved horses. 00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:13.939 She practically lived in the stables. And Leopold 00:03:13.939 --> 00:03:17.719 was this stiff indoor intellectual who just obsessed 00:03:17.719 --> 00:03:20.219 over maps and ledgers. They had absolutely nothing 00:03:20.219 --> 00:03:22.460 in common. It was a miserable match from day 00:03:22.460 --> 00:03:25.610 one. And the tragedy that really seems to seal 00:03:25.610 --> 00:03:27.729 his fate, or at least his psychological trajectory, 00:03:27.949 --> 00:03:30.810 happens in 1869. Yes. They had three daughters 00:03:30.810 --> 00:03:34.169 and one son, also named Leopold. The boy was 00:03:34.169 --> 00:03:37.349 everything, the future of the dynasty. But at 00:03:37.349 --> 00:03:39.729 age nine, he falls into a pond, catches pneumonia, 00:03:40.090 --> 00:03:43.210 and dies. And for a monarch in the 19th century, 00:03:43.349 --> 00:03:45.689 that isn't just a personal loss. It's a professional 00:03:45.689 --> 00:03:48.069 catastrophe. It's a disaster. It's severed the 00:03:48.069 --> 00:03:50.990 direct mail line. Leopold never had another legitimate 00:03:50.990 --> 00:03:53.360 son. And the sources say he became incredibly 00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:55.560 cold toward his daughters and his wife after 00:03:55.560 --> 00:03:57.800 that. You can't help but psychoanalyze that a 00:03:57.800 --> 00:04:00.099 bit. Well, you can't. And many historians argue 00:04:00.099 --> 00:04:02.080 that this is the moment where his ambition really 00:04:02.080 --> 00:04:04.120 shifted. He couldn't build a biological legacy, 00:04:04.300 --> 00:04:06.680 a dynasty, so he decided to build a material 00:04:06.680 --> 00:04:09.139 one. He needed something that couldn't die of 00:04:09.139 --> 00:04:12.360 pneumonia. And he decided that something was 00:04:12.360 --> 00:04:15.379 an empire. I was reading his letters from before 00:04:15.379 --> 00:04:17.860 he was even king. when he was just the Duke of 00:04:17.860 --> 00:04:20.519 Brabant. He was traveling all over India, China, 00:04:20.779 --> 00:04:23.399 Egypt. And he wasn't just sightseeing. He was 00:04:23.399 --> 00:04:26.860 shopping. He was shopping. And he was incredibly 00:04:26.860 --> 00:04:29.160 jealous. He looked at the British Empire, the 00:04:29.160 --> 00:04:31.720 Dutch in the East Indies, and he felt that Belgium 00:04:31.720 --> 00:04:34.589 was just suffocating. He famously wrote to his 00:04:34.589 --> 00:04:37.230 brother, the country must be strong, prosperous, 00:04:37.569 --> 00:04:40.129 therefore have colonies of her own, beautiful 00:04:40.129 --> 00:04:43.009 and calm. Beautiful and calm. It's so ironic 00:04:43.009 --> 00:04:45.350 given what he eventually created. But he didn't 00:04:45.350 --> 00:04:47.300 start with Africa, did he? I read that he actually 00:04:47.300 --> 00:04:49.660 tried to buy the Philippines. He was desperate. 00:04:49.740 --> 00:04:52.259 He looked at the Spanish Empire, which was crumbling, 00:04:52.319 --> 00:04:54.360 and the Portuguese, and he thought, I can just 00:04:54.360 --> 00:04:56.920 buy a fixer -upper. He made serious inquiries 00:04:56.920 --> 00:04:59.300 about buying the Philippines from Spain. He looked 00:04:59.300 --> 00:05:01.600 at purchasing bits of Argentina. He even looked 00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:04.579 at, like, renting territory. And nobody was selling. 00:05:04.699 --> 00:05:06.579 Nobody was selling. And the Belgian parliament 00:05:06.579 --> 00:05:09.819 had zero interest. They were a small, neutral 00:05:09.819 --> 00:05:12.339 country. They didn't want the headache of a nervy 00:05:12.339 --> 00:05:14.920 or a colonial administration. So he realizes. 00:05:15.529 --> 00:05:18.110 I can't buy one and my government won't conquer 00:05:18.110 --> 00:05:20.170 one for me. If I want a colony, I have to go 00:05:20.170 --> 00:05:22.230 out and make one myself. Exactly. And this is 00:05:22.230 --> 00:05:25.310 where the genius, and I use that word very darkly, 00:05:25.310 --> 00:05:28.089 of his plan comes in. He realized that in the 00:05:28.089 --> 00:05:30.829 late 19th century, you couldn't just invade somewhere 00:05:30.829 --> 00:05:33.629 without the other European powers getting angry. 00:05:33.689 --> 00:05:35.810 You needed a cover story. And enter the International 00:05:35.810 --> 00:05:39.540 African Society. which sounds like a very prestigious, 00:05:39.620 --> 00:05:42.379 you know, NGO. And that was precisely the point. 00:05:42.480 --> 00:05:46.660 In 1876, he hosts this massive geographical conference 00:05:46.660 --> 00:05:50.600 in Brussels. He invites all the big names, explorers, 00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:53.430 scientists, geographers from all over. And he 00:05:53.430 --> 00:05:56.670 pitches this organization as a purely humanitarian 00:05:56.670 --> 00:05:59.410 and scientific mission. What were the stated 00:05:59.410 --> 00:06:02.350 goals? The stated goals were to abolish the Arab 00:06:02.350 --> 00:06:05.149 slave trade in East Africa, to bring civilization 00:06:05.149 --> 00:06:07.790 or Christianity to the natives, and to map the 00:06:07.790 --> 00:06:09.589 interior of the continent. It was the perfect 00:06:09.589 --> 00:06:11.389 philanthropic front. We're just here to help. 00:06:11.490 --> 00:06:13.250 And everyone bought it. He was the chairman, 00:06:13.329 --> 00:06:15.810 but he claimed he had no political ambitions 00:06:15.810 --> 00:06:18.490 whatsoever. And it was under this banner that 00:06:18.490 --> 00:06:21.029 he hired Henry Morton Stanley. The Dr. Livingston, 00:06:21.050 --> 00:06:23.490 I presume, guy? The celebrity explorer. The most 00:06:23.490 --> 00:06:26.509 famous celebrity explorer of the era. Leopold 00:06:26.509 --> 00:06:30.269 hired him in 1878, and his job was essentially 00:06:30.269 --> 00:06:33.930 to be a mercenary real estate agent. He sent 00:06:33.930 --> 00:06:36.589 Stanley up the Congo River to establish stations 00:06:36.589 --> 00:06:40.209 and, crucially, to sign treaties with local chiefs. 00:06:40.290 --> 00:06:42.850 I want to dig into these treaties because this 00:06:42.850 --> 00:06:44.649 is the legal bedrock of the whole catastrophe, 00:06:45.050 --> 00:06:47.779 isn't it? Mm -hmm. Stanley goes into these villages, 00:06:47.980 --> 00:06:50.279 meets with local leaders and gets them to sign 00:06:50.279 --> 00:06:52.839 papers. But what were they actually signing? 00:06:53.079 --> 00:06:55.259 It was a total fraud. I mean, the chiefs often 00:06:55.259 --> 00:06:57.720 couldn't read the European languages the treaties 00:06:57.720 --> 00:06:59.360 were written in. Of course not. Stanley would 00:06:59.360 --> 00:07:01.680 use these cheap tricks like a battery that gave 00:07:01.680 --> 00:07:03.879 electric shocks or a magnifying glass to light 00:07:03.879 --> 00:07:06.560 cigars to convince them he had magic. And in 00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:09.199 exchange for some cloth or brass wire or a bottle 00:07:09.199 --> 00:07:12.060 of gin, these chiefs were unknowingly signing 00:07:12.060 --> 00:07:14.500 over the sovereignty of their land. And not just 00:07:14.500 --> 00:07:17.180 the land. No. they were signing over the exclusive 00:07:17.180 --> 00:07:20.519 rights to all labor and all resources to Leopold's 00:07:20.519 --> 00:07:24.199 organization forever. And Stanley came back with 00:07:24.199 --> 00:07:27.160 over 450 of these so -called treaties. That's 00:07:27.160 --> 00:07:29.759 a lot of paperwork. It gave Leopold the paper 00:07:29.759 --> 00:07:32.319 trail he needed, but he still needed the great 00:07:32.319 --> 00:07:35.240 powers of Europe to recognize it. And this brings 00:07:35.240 --> 00:07:39.959 us to the Berlin Conference of 1884 -1885. This 00:07:39.959 --> 00:07:43.180 is the moment the scramble for Africa is formalized. 00:07:43.540 --> 00:07:45.660 Leopold plays this room like a fiddle. He just 00:07:45.660 --> 00:07:48.060 pits everyone against everyone else. It's a master 00:07:48.060 --> 00:07:50.759 class in diplomatic manipulation. He knew the 00:07:50.759 --> 00:07:52.579 British didn't want the French to have the Congo. 00:07:52.680 --> 00:07:54.360 He knew the French didn't want the British to 00:07:54.360 --> 00:07:56.680 have it. Right. So he goes to the French and 00:07:56.680 --> 00:07:59.939 says, look, support my claim. And I promise that 00:07:59.939 --> 00:08:02.120 if I ever have to sell the Congo, I will sell 00:08:02.120 --> 00:08:04.790 it to you first. He gives them the right of first 00:08:04.790 --> 00:08:07.129 refusal. So France thinks, great, this guy is 00:08:07.129 --> 00:08:08.970 going to go bankrupt in a few years and we'll 00:08:08.970 --> 00:08:11.290 just inherit the whole territory. Precisely. 00:08:11.290 --> 00:08:13.470 Then he goes to the Germans under Bismarck and 00:08:13.470 --> 00:08:15.970 says, I'll be a useful buffer zone between the 00:08:15.970 --> 00:08:18.550 big powers. And then he goes to the United States, 00:08:18.649 --> 00:08:21.810 specifically President Chester Hay Arthur, and 00:08:21.810 --> 00:08:24.189 he plays the humanitarian card big time. The 00:08:24.189 --> 00:08:27.579 free trade card. The free trade card. He promises 00:08:27.579 --> 00:08:30.319 that the Congo will be a free trade zone, no 00:08:30.319 --> 00:08:32.820 tariffs, open to merchants from all countries, 00:08:32.980 --> 00:08:35.720 a paradise for capitalists. That was the key, 00:08:35.779 --> 00:08:38.059 right? The name. It wasn't Leopold Empire. It 00:08:38.059 --> 00:08:41.350 was the Congo Free State. The branding was impeccable. 00:08:41.350 --> 00:08:43.250 And the U .S. was actually the first country 00:08:43.250 --> 00:08:46.049 to recognize his claim. By the end of the conference, 00:08:46.309 --> 00:08:49.049 14 European nations and the U .S. recognized 00:08:49.049 --> 00:08:53.070 Leopold II, not the Belgian government, but Leopold 00:08:53.070 --> 00:08:55.649 personally, as the sovereign of the Congo Free 00:08:55.649 --> 00:08:57.789 State. I just want to pause and let the scale 00:08:57.789 --> 00:09:00.549 of that sink in for a moment. A single man, a 00:09:00.549 --> 00:09:03.490 constitutional monarch in Europe, is given personal 00:09:03.490 --> 00:09:06.990 title to 2 .3 million square kilometers of land 00:09:06.990 --> 00:09:09.919 in Africa. It's 76 times the size of Belgium. 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:12.240 It's just I can't wrap my head around. It's unprecedented. 00:09:12.379 --> 00:09:14.379 He didn't have to answer to a parliament. He 00:09:14.379 --> 00:09:16.779 didn't have to answer to a constitution. In the 00:09:16.779 --> 00:09:19.659 Congo, he was an absolute monarch. God on earth. 00:09:19.779 --> 00:09:21.789 So he has the land. He has the international 00:09:21.789 --> 00:09:25.029 recognition. Now he has to make it pay. And initially, 00:09:25.210 --> 00:09:27.230 that wasn't going so well, was it? He was actually 00:09:27.230 --> 00:09:29.470 burning through his personal fortune. Oh, he 00:09:29.470 --> 00:09:31.330 was on the verge of bankruptcy. For the first 00:09:31.330 --> 00:09:33.990 few years, the main export was ivory. And ivory 00:09:33.990 --> 00:09:36.210 is valuable, sure, but it's heavy, it's hard 00:09:36.210 --> 00:09:38.309 to transport, and you only get it once per elephant. 00:09:38.570 --> 00:09:40.909 The cost of building the railway and maintaining 00:09:40.909 --> 00:09:44.070 the steamboats were eating him alive. He was 00:09:44.070 --> 00:09:46.529 borrowing money from the Belgian state just to 00:09:46.529 --> 00:09:48.590 keep the lights on. And then technology changes 00:09:48.590 --> 00:09:52.309 everything. In the 1890s, John Boyd Dunlop invents 00:09:52.309 --> 00:09:55.250 the pneumatic tire. And boom! Suddenly the bicycle 00:09:55.250 --> 00:09:58.129 craze hits Europe and America. Then the automobile 00:09:58.129 --> 00:10:00.929 industry starts to rev up. The world needs rubber. 00:10:01.110 --> 00:10:03.429 And as luck would have it, the Central African 00:10:03.429 --> 00:10:06.370 rainforest is teeming with Landolphia oweriensis 00:10:06.370 --> 00:10:08.990 wild rubber vines. Now this distinction is really 00:10:08.990 --> 00:10:11.470 important. Wild rubber versus cultivated rubber. 00:10:11.929 --> 00:10:13.929 Because I think people imagine these neat rows 00:10:13.929 --> 00:10:16.049 of rubber trees like you'd see in a plantation 00:10:16.049 --> 00:10:18.370 in Southeast Asia. That is not what this was. 00:10:18.570 --> 00:10:21.009 Not at all. And that difference is the root of 00:10:21.009 --> 00:10:23.990 the terror. Cultivated rubber, the hevia trees, 00:10:24.149 --> 00:10:26.769 took years to grow. And Leopold didn't have years. 00:10:26.830 --> 00:10:30.190 He needed cash now. The Congo had wild vines 00:10:30.190 --> 00:10:32.409 that wound their way up giant trees hundreds 00:10:32.409 --> 00:10:34.529 of feet in the air. So how do you even harvest 00:10:34.529 --> 00:10:37.559 that? It's dangerous, exhausting work. You have 00:10:37.559 --> 00:10:40.240 to go deep into the jungle, find these vines, 00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:42.980 slash them, and then catch the sap. And the sap 00:10:42.980 --> 00:10:46.220 coagulates really quickly. Right. So often, the 00:10:46.220 --> 00:10:48.360 collectors had to smear the sap on their own 00:10:48.360 --> 00:10:51.379 bodies to dry it, then peel it off later, which 00:10:51.379 --> 00:10:53.720 would tear out all their hair and skin. It was 00:10:53.720 --> 00:10:55.860 miserable work. Nobody would do it voluntarily 00:10:55.860 --> 00:10:58.000 for the pittance Leopold was willing to pay. 00:10:58.200 --> 00:11:00.740 So the Free State stopped being free pretty quickly. 00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:04.139 Leopold issued a series of decrees that basically 00:11:04.139 --> 00:11:06.740 nationalized the entire territory. He declared 00:11:06.740 --> 00:11:09.320 that all vacant land belonged to the state. And 00:11:09.320 --> 00:11:11.919 since the Congolese legal concept of land ownership 00:11:11.919 --> 00:11:15.700 was about farming plots, village land, Leopold 00:11:15.700 --> 00:11:18.620 argued that the vast forests were vacant. Therefore, 00:11:18.759 --> 00:11:21.299 the rubber in the forests belonged to him. Exactly. 00:11:21.299 --> 00:11:23.700 So if a Congolese man gathered rubber and then 00:11:23.700 --> 00:11:25.720 tried to sell it to, say, a British merchant, 00:11:25.940 --> 00:11:28.779 he was now stealing from the king. And to enforce 00:11:28.779 --> 00:11:30.899 this monopoly and, you know, to make people... 00:11:30.860 --> 00:11:33.559 go into the forest, he created the force public. 00:11:33.820 --> 00:11:36.580 The public force. This was his private mercenary 00:11:36.580 --> 00:11:39.980 army. The officers were white, mostly Belgians, 00:11:39.980 --> 00:11:44.159 but also some Scandinavians and Italians. Basically, 00:11:44.159 --> 00:11:46.980 any adventurer looking for a fat paycheck and 00:11:46.980 --> 00:11:49.240 no oversight. And the rank and file. The rank 00:11:49.240 --> 00:11:52.500 and file were African. And this is a particularly 00:11:52.500 --> 00:11:55.340 tragic layer of it all. Many of the soldiers 00:11:55.340 --> 00:11:58.769 were recruited. by raiding villages, kidnapping 00:11:58.769 --> 00:12:01.769 children, and then raising them in Catholic mission 00:12:01.769 --> 00:12:03.970 schools to be soldiers. So they were completely 00:12:03.970 --> 00:12:06.210 cut off from their own cultures. Stripped of 00:12:06.210 --> 00:12:08.570 their identity and turned into instruments of 00:12:08.570 --> 00:12:11.409 the state, it was a machine designed to turn 00:12:11.409 --> 00:12:14.269 terror into rubber. And the mechanism for that 00:12:14.269 --> 00:12:16.809 was the quota system. Right. So each village 00:12:16.809 --> 00:12:19.070 was given a quota. A quota of rubber to bring 00:12:19.070 --> 00:12:21.409 in every two weeks. If the quota wasn't met, 00:12:21.549 --> 00:12:24.309 the consequences were medieval. The forced public 00:12:24.309 --> 00:12:26.889 would arrive armed with modern rifles and the 00:12:26.889 --> 00:12:29.610 shakut, a whip made of sun -dried hippopotamus 00:12:29.610 --> 00:12:32.350 hide that could flay a man to the bone. And the 00:12:32.350 --> 00:12:34.070 hostage -taking. That seems to have been standard 00:12:34.070 --> 00:12:36.860 operating procedure. It was systematic. The soldiers 00:12:36.860 --> 00:12:39.399 would enter a village, seize the women and children, 00:12:39.600 --> 00:12:42.399 and hold them in stockades, often in horrible 00:12:42.399 --> 00:12:44.960 conditions with little food or water. And they'd 00:12:44.960 --> 00:12:46.960 tell the men. If you want to see your wife and 00:12:46.960 --> 00:12:49.340 children again, you go into the forest and you 00:12:49.340 --> 00:12:51.639 don't come back until you have your 50 kilos 00:12:51.639 --> 00:12:53.980 of rubber. This must have just destroyed the 00:12:53.980 --> 00:12:56.500 local economy, the whole social fabric. If the 00:12:56.500 --> 00:12:59.200 men are in the forest hunting for vines and the 00:12:59.200 --> 00:13:01.860 women are being held hostage, nobody is farming. 00:13:02.269 --> 00:13:04.950 Nobody is hunting for food. Exactly. And this 00:13:04.950 --> 00:13:07.009 is why the death toll is so incredibly high. 00:13:07.169 --> 00:13:09.049 It wasn't just the direct executions. It was 00:13:09.049 --> 00:13:11.450 mass starvation. It was a complete collapse of 00:13:11.450 --> 00:13:14.009 the agricultural cycle. People were dying of 00:13:14.009 --> 00:13:16.529 famine and exhaustion. And disease, I imagine. 00:13:16.789 --> 00:13:19.070 Oh, absolutely. Because their immune systems 00:13:19.070 --> 00:13:21.669 were shot. Diseases like smallpox and sleeping 00:13:21.669 --> 00:13:24.429 sickness just ravaged the population. We have 00:13:24.429 --> 00:13:26.549 to talk about the hands. It is the defining, 00:13:26.669 --> 00:13:30.360 horrifying image of this entire regime. And what 00:13:30.360 --> 00:13:32.419 shocked me in the research was that it wasn't 00:13:32.419 --> 00:13:34.299 just sadism, though I'm sure it was that too. 00:13:34.399 --> 00:13:37.559 It was accounting. It was bureaucracy. That's 00:13:37.559 --> 00:13:40.379 the banality of evil aspect of it. The cartridges, 00:13:40.519 --> 00:13:42.899 the bullets were imported from Europe. They cost 00:13:42.899 --> 00:13:45.700 money. Leopold's administration was paranoid 00:13:45.700 --> 00:13:47.639 that the soldiers were using the expensive bullets 00:13:47.639 --> 00:13:49.639 to hunt for food or maybe were selling them. 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:53.379 So they issued a strict order. Every bullet fired 00:13:53.379 --> 00:13:56.100 must be accounted for. One bullet, one dead rebel. 00:13:56.220 --> 00:13:59.240 Right. And the proof of a kill was a severed 00:13:59.240 --> 00:14:01.899 right hand. So if a soldier fired at a fleeing 00:14:01.899 --> 00:14:04.539 villager and missed, or if he used a bullet to 00:14:04.539 --> 00:14:07.019 shoot a wild boar for dinner, he had a deficit 00:14:07.019 --> 00:14:09.440 in his ledger. He had to produce a hand to show 00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:12.179 his officer. So they would find a living person, 00:14:12.299 --> 00:14:15.460 a child. And cut off their hand to balance the 00:14:15.460 --> 00:14:17.620 books. Men, women, children, it didn't matter. 00:14:18.289 --> 00:14:20.350 Missionaries reported seeing baskets of smoked 00:14:20.350 --> 00:14:22.090 hands being delivered to the post commanders. 00:14:22.470 --> 00:14:25.110 It even became a kind of currency. In some horrific 00:14:25.110 --> 00:14:27.429 cases, villages that couldn't meet their rubber 00:14:27.429 --> 00:14:29.610 quota would attack neighboring villages just 00:14:29.610 --> 00:14:31.629 to gather hands to pay off the forced public. 00:14:31.809 --> 00:14:34.490 It turned the entire society in on itself. Completely. 00:14:34.710 --> 00:14:36.669 The numbers are always debated in genocides and 00:14:36.669 --> 00:14:39.029 atrocities, but what is the modern consensus 00:14:39.029 --> 00:14:41.690 on the human cost here? It's hard to be precise 00:14:41.690 --> 00:14:44.610 because obviously Leopold wasn't taking a careful 00:14:44.610 --> 00:14:47.590 census of the people he was killing. But looking 00:14:47.590 --> 00:14:50.029 at the population data we have from before and 00:14:50.029 --> 00:14:53.509 after, historians like Adam Hochschild and Jan 00:14:53.509 --> 00:14:56.370 van Siena estimate the population dropped by 00:14:56.370 --> 00:15:00.049 about 10 million people. 10 million. That's roughly 00:15:00.049 --> 00:15:03.110 50 percent of the population of the Congo Basin, 00:15:03.169 --> 00:15:07.049 wiped out in roughly 20 years. 50 percent. And 00:15:07.049 --> 00:15:09.090 while this is happening, while the baskets of 00:15:09.090 --> 00:15:11.480 hands are being counted, in the Congo, the money 00:15:11.480 --> 00:15:14.200 is flowing back to Belgium. And this is where 00:15:14.200 --> 00:15:16.080 we get the builder king. This is the disconnect 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:18.659 that is so hard to swallow. Leopold was using 00:15:18.659 --> 00:15:21.539 this blood money to literally pave the streets 00:15:21.539 --> 00:15:24.480 and build monuments in Brussels. And he was clever 00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:26.399 about how he moved the money, right? He didn't 00:15:26.399 --> 00:15:27.940 just deposit checks from the rubber companies. 00:15:28.059 --> 00:15:30.879 He created the royal trust. The donation royale. 00:15:31.100 --> 00:15:33.700 This was his way of laundering the profits and 00:15:33.700 --> 00:15:36.080 securing his legacy. He transferred ownership 00:15:36.080 --> 00:15:38.139 of his private estates and properties to the 00:15:38.139 --> 00:15:40.460 Belgian nation, but, and this is the key part, 00:15:40.580 --> 00:15:44.110 he retained the usufruct. Which means? The right 00:15:44.110 --> 00:15:46.269 to use them and control them until his death. 00:15:46.629 --> 00:15:49.090 This also meant the properties couldn't be sold 00:15:49.090 --> 00:15:51.409 off or divided among his daughters, whom he detested. 00:15:51.490 --> 00:15:54.129 It was a way to control his wealth from beyond 00:15:54.129 --> 00:15:56.610 the grave. And what did he build with this money? 00:15:56.889 --> 00:16:00.129 I mean, the list is extensive. The massive triumphal 00:16:00.129 --> 00:16:02.850 arch at the Cinquantenaire Park that was built 00:16:02.850 --> 00:16:05.309 to celebrate Belgian independence, but it was 00:16:05.309 --> 00:16:08.509 funded by Congolese slavery, the expansion of 00:16:08.509 --> 00:16:11.029 the royal palace at Laken. The Japanese tower 00:16:11.029 --> 00:16:13.759 and the Chinese pavilion, too. Yes, these odd 00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:16.159 exotic follies on the outskirts of Brussels. 00:16:16.440 --> 00:16:19.240 And of course, the Antwerp Central Station, often 00:16:19.240 --> 00:16:21.360 called the Railroad Cathedral, one of the most 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:23.559 beautiful train stations in the world. It was 00:16:23.559 --> 00:16:26.379 finished in 1905, right at the peak of the rubber 00:16:26.379 --> 00:16:29.159 terror. So it effectively means that the tourist 00:16:29.159 --> 00:16:32.039 map of Brussels is a map of colonial exploitation. 00:16:32.460 --> 00:16:34.600 You can't separate the stones from the source 00:16:34.600 --> 00:16:37.320 of the money. You can't. And at the same time 00:16:37.320 --> 00:16:39.360 he was doing all this, he was playing the role 00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:41.500 of the benevolent constitutional monarch at home. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:44.059 In Belgium, his government was actually passing 00:16:44.059 --> 00:16:47.220 some progressive laws. They legalized trade unions. 00:16:47.419 --> 00:16:49.840 They passed laws restricting child labor and 00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:52.480 Belgian factories. Wait, so he's protecting Belgian 00:16:52.480 --> 00:16:55.879 children while enslaving and mutilating Congolese 00:16:55.879 --> 00:16:59.220 children. The compartmentalization is, frankly, 00:16:59.419 --> 00:17:02.570 psychopathic. He viewed Belgium as his family 00:17:02.570 --> 00:17:05.470 home, a place to be protected and improved. He 00:17:05.470 --> 00:17:08.170 viewed the Congo as his plantation, a thing to 00:17:08.170 --> 00:17:10.730 be harvested. He even invested heavily in building 00:17:10.730 --> 00:17:13.849 massive fortresses at Liege and Namur to protect 00:17:13.849 --> 00:17:16.289 Belgian neutrality against the Germans. He was 00:17:16.289 --> 00:17:18.349 obsessed with the safety of Belgium. But the 00:17:18.349 --> 00:17:21.109 secrets couldn't stay hidden forever. The world 00:17:21.109 --> 00:17:23.170 started to notice. And it really started with 00:17:23.170 --> 00:17:25.319 a shipping clerk in Antwerp, didn't it? Edie 00:17:25.319 --> 00:17:27.779 Morrell. This is one of the great detective stories 00:17:27.779 --> 00:17:30.599 of modern history. Edmund D. Morrell was a British 00:17:30.599 --> 00:17:32.720 clerk working for a shipping line that had the 00:17:32.720 --> 00:17:35.420 monopoly on all Congo transport. So he saw the 00:17:35.420 --> 00:17:39.140 manifests. He saw the manifests. He was standing 00:17:39.140 --> 00:17:41.680 on the docks in Antwerp day after day watching 00:17:41.680 --> 00:17:44.680 the ships come and go, and he noticed a glaring 00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:47.839 anomaly. What was it? He saw ships arriving from 00:17:47.839 --> 00:17:50.200 the Congo filled to the brim with incredibly 00:17:50.200 --> 00:17:52.839 valuable goods rubber and ivory and millions 00:17:52.839 --> 00:17:55.200 and millions of francs worth. But when he looked 00:17:55.200 --> 00:17:57.359 at the manifest for what was being shipped back 00:17:57.359 --> 00:18:00.400 to the Congo, it wasn't trade goods. It wasn't 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:02.680 cloth or tools or anything to pay for that rubber. 00:18:02.839 --> 00:18:06.480 It was guns, ammunition and chains. And he just 00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:09.220 did the math. If nothing of value is going in 00:18:09.220 --> 00:18:11.319 and a fortune is coming out. Then the labor must 00:18:11.319 --> 00:18:14.339 be forced. It had to be slavery. Morell realized 00:18:14.339 --> 00:18:17.180 the whole free state was a lie. He quit his job 00:18:17.180 --> 00:18:20.000 and launched the Congo Reform Association. He 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:22.539 became a one -man media machine, publishing the 00:18:22.539 --> 00:18:24.980 West African Mail, dumping data and whistleblower 00:18:24.980 --> 00:18:26.799 accounts into the public sphere. And he wasn't 00:18:26.799 --> 00:18:29.740 alone. The literary world got involved in a huge 00:18:29.740 --> 00:18:32.539 way. Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan 00:18:32.539 --> 00:18:35.299 Doyle. It was the first major international human 00:18:35.299 --> 00:18:37.799 rights campaign of the 20th century. And the 00:18:37.799 --> 00:18:40.400 Kodak camera played a huge role here. Missionaries 00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:43.019 like Alice Seeley Harris took photos. Oh, the 00:18:43.019 --> 00:18:46.500 photos are just unforgettable. There's one famous 00:18:46.500 --> 00:18:48.779 photo, you've probably seen it, of a man named 00:18:48.779 --> 00:18:51.400 Nasala looking at the severed hand and foot of 00:18:51.400 --> 00:18:53.240 his five -year -old daughter, who was killed 00:18:53.240 --> 00:18:55.400 because his village failed to meet its rubber 00:18:55.400 --> 00:18:58.680 quota. That photo changed everything. You couldn't 00:18:58.680 --> 00:19:00.640 deny it when you saw the grief on that man's 00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:03.339 face. Right. And Morell projected these photos 00:19:03.339 --> 00:19:06.019 on huge screens and lecture halls across Britain 00:19:06.019 --> 00:19:09.240 and America. It made the abstraction of imperialism 00:19:09.240 --> 00:19:12.440 completely visceral. Leopold tried to fight back, 00:19:12.500 --> 00:19:14.740 though. He poured millions into a propaganda 00:19:14.740 --> 00:19:17.279 war. He bribed journalists. Bribed newspaper 00:19:17.279 --> 00:19:20.420 editors in Paris and Germany. He sent lobbyists 00:19:20.420 --> 00:19:23.400 to Washington, D .C. to smear Morel. He even 00:19:23.400 --> 00:19:25.759 tried to use a sort of celebrity influencer strategy, 00:19:26.039 --> 00:19:28.819 didn't he? He did. He sponsored an American author 00:19:28.819 --> 00:19:31.400 named May French Sheldon to take a luxury tour 00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:34.380 of the Congo. She traveled on his private steamboats. 00:19:34.440 --> 00:19:36.880 She drank champagne with the force public officers. 00:19:37.140 --> 00:19:39.559 And then she came back and wrote glowing articles 00:19:39.559 --> 00:19:41.809 about how. happy and symbolized everyone was. 00:19:41.910 --> 00:19:44.529 A completely staged Potemkin village tour. Total 00:19:44.529 --> 00:19:47.430 propaganda. But the Casement report was the real 00:19:47.430 --> 00:19:50.029 nail in the coffin. Roger Casement. He was the 00:19:50.029 --> 00:19:52.329 British consul. Right. He traveled deep into 00:19:52.329 --> 00:19:55.690 the interior in 1903, not on Leopold's boats, 00:19:55.809 --> 00:19:59.410 but renting a missionary steam launch. He interviewed 00:19:59.410 --> 00:20:02.710 the refugees. He saw the mutilated bodies. His 00:20:02.710 --> 00:20:05.490 report was official. It was detailed. And it 00:20:05.490 --> 00:20:07.150 was absolutely damning. The British government 00:20:07.150 --> 00:20:10.140 couldn't ignore it. And at the same time, Leopold's 00:20:10.140 --> 00:20:12.460 personal reputation in Belgium was just imploding. 00:20:12.559 --> 00:20:14.819 We mentioned he was unloved, but he became a 00:20:14.819 --> 00:20:17.220 laughingstock because of his love life. The Baroness 00:20:17.220 --> 00:20:20.319 Devon. Her real name was Caroline Lacroix. She 00:20:20.319 --> 00:20:23.599 was a 16 -year -old French prostitute when Leopold, 00:20:23.640 --> 00:20:27.700 then 65, met her. 65 and 16, that is struck. 00:20:27.900 --> 00:20:30.839 He was completely infatuated. He bought her villas, 00:20:30.839 --> 00:20:32.720 gave her millions of francs, and they had two 00:20:32.720 --> 00:20:36.380 illegitimate sons. The Belgian public was scandalized, 00:20:36.420 --> 00:20:38.599 not so much by the genocide in Africa, sadly, 00:20:38.799 --> 00:20:40.920 but by the fact that their aging king was acting 00:20:40.920 --> 00:20:43.299 like a senile fool with a teenager. And there 00:20:43.299 --> 00:20:45.319 was a particularly brutal cartoon from that time 00:20:45.319 --> 00:20:47.990 involving their child. Yes, their second son 00:20:47.990 --> 00:20:51.289 was born with a deformed hand. A cartoonist drew 00:20:51.289 --> 00:20:54.329 Leopold holding the baby, surrounded by the spectral 00:20:54.329 --> 00:20:56.890 figures of Congolese victims holding up their 00:20:56.890 --> 00:20:59.970 stumps. The caption was, Vengeance from on high. 00:21:00.170 --> 00:21:02.970 Wow. It showed that the public was finally starting 00:21:02.970 --> 00:21:05.390 to connect the domestic sin with the colonial 00:21:05.390 --> 00:21:09.470 sin. So the pressure becomes too much. Politically, 00:21:09.470 --> 00:21:12.109 everyone at home, the Catholics, the liberals, 00:21:12.230 --> 00:21:14.269 the socialists, everyone wants him out of the 00:21:14.269 --> 00:21:17.390 Congo business. Exactly. In 1908, the Belgian 00:21:17.390 --> 00:21:20.089 parliament finally acted. They forced Leopold 00:21:20.089 --> 00:21:22.430 to relinquish the Congo Free State to Belgium. 00:21:23.099 --> 00:21:25.279 But and this is the real kicker. It wasn't a 00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:27.500 seizure. It was a purchase. They paid him to 00:21:27.500 --> 00:21:29.619 stop the genocide. Essentially, yes. The Belgian 00:21:29.619 --> 00:21:32.539 state assumed 110 million francs of debt that 00:21:32.539 --> 00:21:34.680 Leopold had racked up running the place. And 00:21:34.680 --> 00:21:36.599 then they agreed to pay him another 50 million 00:21:36.599 --> 00:21:39.140 francs personally as a mark of gratitude for 00:21:39.140 --> 00:21:41.500 his great sacrifices. Gratitude. That is just 00:21:41.500 --> 00:21:43.799 nauseating. He walked away one of the richest 00:21:43.799 --> 00:21:47.140 men in Europe, but he was bitter about it. He 00:21:47.140 --> 00:21:49.400 felt the country had stolen his personal property. 00:21:49.960 --> 00:21:52.480 And this leads to the final act that really brings 00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:55.779 us to the theme of memory. Just before the handover, 00:21:55.940 --> 00:21:58.200 he ordered the archives of the Congo Free State 00:21:58.200 --> 00:22:01.019 to be destroyed. He burned the evidence. For 00:22:01.019 --> 00:22:03.539 eight days, the furnaces in the government offices 00:22:03.539 --> 00:22:07.420 in Brussels were burning, 247. The smoke hung 00:22:07.420 --> 00:22:09.859 over the district, and he allegedly told his 00:22:09.859 --> 00:22:12.380 aide, I will give them my Congo, but they have 00:22:12.380 --> 00:22:14.140 no right to know what I did there. They have 00:22:14.140 --> 00:22:16.519 no right to know. He wanted to curate his own 00:22:16.519 --> 00:22:18.990 history. he wanted to be remembered as the builder 00:22:18.990 --> 00:22:22.009 not the butcher and for a very long time he succeeded 00:22:22.490 --> 00:22:25.250 He died a year later, in 1909. And while the 00:22:25.250 --> 00:22:27.609 crowds at his funeral procession booed, the state 00:22:27.609 --> 00:22:30.130 machinery quickly moved to rehabilitate his image. 00:22:30.349 --> 00:22:32.150 This is what some call the Great Forgetting. 00:22:32.170 --> 00:22:35.369 Exactly. In the 1930s, his nephew, King Albert 00:22:35.369 --> 00:22:37.789 Well, started inaugurating statues of Leopold 00:22:37.789 --> 00:22:40.430 II all over Belgium. They rewrote the history 00:22:40.430 --> 00:22:43.329 books. For decades, Belgian schoolchildren were 00:22:43.329 --> 00:22:46.029 taught that Leopold II was a philanthropic genius 00:22:46.029 --> 00:22:48.609 who saved the Congo from Arab slavers and built 00:22:48.609 --> 00:22:51.109 up the country. And the violence. Completely 00:22:51.109 --> 00:22:53.589 erased. The archives were gone, so the state 00:22:53.589 --> 00:22:57.049 wrote its own truth. It wasn't until fairly recently, 00:22:57.230 --> 00:23:00.569 1998 really, that the ghost came back in a big 00:23:00.569 --> 00:23:03.730 way. Adam Hochschild published King Leopold's 00:23:03.730 --> 00:23:06.720 Ghost. Now, he didn't discover new archives that 00:23:06.720 --> 00:23:09.440 Leopold had missed, but he took the work of earlier 00:23:09.440 --> 00:23:11.960 historians and the incredible first -person accounts 00:23:11.960 --> 00:23:14.859 of people like Morel and Casement, and he wove 00:23:14.859 --> 00:23:17.920 them into a narrative that became a global bestseller. 00:23:18.220 --> 00:23:20.680 It forced Belgium to look in the mirror in a 00:23:20.680 --> 00:23:23.440 way it hadn't before. And we saw the climax of 00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:26.440 that tension in 2020. We did. During the global 00:23:26.440 --> 00:23:28.759 Black Lives Matter protests following the murder 00:23:28.759 --> 00:23:31.859 of George Floyd, the anger in Belgium just crystallized 00:23:31.859 --> 00:23:34.420 around those statues. The statue in Antwerp was 00:23:34.420 --> 00:23:37.460 doused in red paint and set on fire so many times 00:23:37.460 --> 00:23:39.680 the city finally used a crane to take it away. 00:23:39.940 --> 00:23:42.599 And the current king, King Philip, actually sent 00:23:42.599 --> 00:23:44.779 a letter to the Congolese president. He did. 00:23:44.960 --> 00:23:47.279 On the 60th anniversary of Congolese independence, 00:23:47.740 --> 00:23:50.619 he expressed his deepest regret for the acts 00:23:50.619 --> 00:23:52.539 of violence and cruelty committed during the 00:23:52.539 --> 00:23:55.059 colonial period. Now, legally, regret is very... 00:23:55.079 --> 00:23:57.519 different from an apology. Oh, very different. 00:23:58.079 --> 00:24:01.460 An apology implies liability and opens the door 00:24:01.460 --> 00:24:04.859 to reparations. Regret is an emotional state, 00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:07.519 but it was still the first time a reigning Belgian 00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:09.720 monarch had acknowledged the suffering in any 00:24:09.720 --> 00:24:12.579 way. And yet the debate continues. You still 00:24:12.579 --> 00:24:14.900 have people in Belgium, sometimes prominent politicians, 00:24:15.099 --> 00:24:18.779 who say he built the country. He was a man of 00:24:18.779 --> 00:24:22.059 his time. And that excuse. A man of his time 00:24:22.059 --> 00:24:24.140 is the one that always crumbles under scrutiny 00:24:24.140 --> 00:24:26.960 because Mark Twain was a man of his time. Roger 00:24:26.960 --> 00:24:30.059 Casement was a man of his time. The Belgian socialists 00:24:30.059 --> 00:24:32.039 who booed his funeral were men of their time. 00:24:32.259 --> 00:24:34.880 They all knew it was wrong then. Leopold wasn't 00:24:34.880 --> 00:24:36.880 acting according to the standards of the 19th 00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:39.059 century. He was violating them and he knew it. 00:24:39.099 --> 00:24:40.559 That's why he burned the archives. He burned 00:24:40.559 --> 00:24:42.480 the archives because he knew history would judge 00:24:42.480 --> 00:24:45.019 him. And it has. It absolutely has. We're going 00:24:45.019 --> 00:24:47.140 to wrap up there. But as you walk through your 00:24:47.140 --> 00:24:49.160 own cities, look at the grand old buildings, 00:24:49.380 --> 00:24:51.940 look at the banks, the museums, the statues. 00:24:53.099 --> 00:24:55.579 Leopold tried to burn the evidence. But in a 00:24:55.579 --> 00:24:57.720 way, the evidence is actually standing right 00:24:57.720 --> 00:25:01.420 there in the skyline of Brussels. Makes you wonder, 00:25:01.539 --> 00:25:04.380 how many other monuments around the world are 00:25:04.380 --> 00:25:06.920 just beautiful tombstones for crimes we've all 00:25:06.920 --> 00:25:09.200 agreed to forget? That is a question worth digging 00:25:09.200 --> 00:25:11.319 into. Thanks for listening to The Deep Dive. 00:25:11.460 --> 00:25:12.259 We'll catch you next time.