Talk:Leopold II of Belgium
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[edit] Other Attempts at Colonization
"After a number of unsuccessful schemes for colonies in Africa or Asia," What are those schemes? I'm quite interesting in knowing that... --Andrelvis 21:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] POV discussion
Removed this paragraph:
- The American mystic poet Vachel Lindsay wrote that he was able to "listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost...hear ... the demons chuckle and yell, Cutting his hands off down in Hell." King Leopold had appropriated the rubber-rich "Belgian Congo" for his personal fortune, and his colonial regime of slave labor, rape and mutilation was immortalized in Joseph Conrad's version of Hell on earth, Heart of Darkness. It took an international outcry to force Leopold to relinquish control of what had become his private fiefdom. Despite his phobia about germs--he wore a bag over his beard--His Masjesty had countless mistresses, until he fell in love with a cigar-smoking, sixteen-year-old prostitute named Caroline Lacroix. He married her a few days before his death, and immediately after Leopold expired, she quietly left Belgium with his fortune in a suitcase.
There is valuable information in it but it should be rewritten in a more NPOV way.
- I admit, Leopold's Congo was not the paradise. But the expression "regime of slave labor, rape and mutilation" is most probably excessive and unilateral, in other words, non-NPOV.
- I beg to differ. If anything, describing Leopold's rule in Congo in such mild terms is tantamount to holocaust denial. The man caused millions to die.
- Could you please provide evidence about Lacroix leaving Belgium with Leopold's fortune ? I've never heard of that. That would have been a big scandale at the time if it were true.
FvdP 10:42 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
Vachel Lindsay a bit colourful for your tastes, eh? Yet it's what he wrote, so it's an attributed point of view. And Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness belongs in the article, not the talk page. I will gladly get quotes for those who recognized the human misery caused by Leopold II's rule: once attributed, they can go back in. If you can find any who characterized his rule of the Congo as benign, they'd belong, but I suspect such quotes are rare. After all, as Leopold II said, "In dealing with a race composed of cannibals for thousands of years it is necessary to use methods which will best shake their idleness and make them realize the sanctity of work." The Congolese government conscripted adults and children as porters, fed them little, overworked them, and did not always pay them. Edmond Picard, a Belgian senator described it thusly: "These porters...black, miserable, with only a horribly filthy loin-cloth for clothing, frizzy and bare head supporting the load...most of them sickly, drooping under a burden increased by tiredness and insufficient food -- a handful of rice and some stinking dried fish; pitiful walking caryatids, beasts of burden with thin monkey legs, with drawn features, eyes fixed and round from preoccupation with keeping their balance and from the daze of exhaustion. They come and go like this by the thousands...requisitioned by the State armed with its powerful militia, handed over by chiefs whose slaves they are and who make off with their salaries, trotting with bent knees, belly forward, an arm raised to steady the load, the other leaning on a long walking-stick, dusty and sweaty, insects spreading out across the mountains and valleys and their task of Sisyphus, dying along the road, or, the jouney over, heading off to die from overwork in their villages."
Of the 300 porters conscripted in 1891 by District Commissioner Paul Lemarinel for a forced march of more than 600 miles to set up a new post, not one returned alive.
In any case, let's try and get some numbers:
- Murder: When a village failed to meet its rubber quota, Force Publique solders or rubber company sentries often killed everyone they could find. In 1896, the German newspaper Kölnische Zeitung wrote that 1308 severed hands had been turned over to the notorious District Commissioner Léon Fiévez in a single day. Fiévez admitted he encouraged the practice of cutting hands off corpses, but pointed out that he never ordered cutting hands off the living. In 1899 a missionary, Ellsworth Faris, recorded his conversation with Simon Roi, a state officer, in his diary in 1899: "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 that this is carried on Roi informed me that in six monts they, the State, on the Momboyo River had used 6000 cartridges, which means that 6000 peopel are killed or mutilated. It means more than 60000, for the people have told me repeatedly that the soldiers kill children with the butt of thier rifles." Other massacres are similarly well recorded.
- Starvation, exhaustion, and exposure: A Swedish lieutenant (P. Möller, Tre Ar i Kongo) wrote of how when villagers saw Leopold's soldiers appracing they would try to escape with some of their belongings to the woods, and goes on, "Before I left the place I had the village plundered of the large number of goats, hens and ducks that were there. Then we abandoned the village and retired to a better place for our noon rest." Some 30,000 refugees had cross into French territory by 1900. A Presbyterian missionary wrote "Tonight, in the midst of the rainy season, within a radius of 75 miles of Luebo, I am sure it would be a low estimate to say that 40,000 people, men, women, children, with the sick, are sleeping in the forest without shelter.
- Disease: Europeans and Afro-Arab slave-traders brought many new diseases to the Congo. Smallpox and sleeping sickness killed the most Congolese. 500,000 were estimated to have died of sleeping sickness in 1901 alone. This vast toll was greatly increased by governmental maltreatment of the population. Charles Gréban de Saint-Germain, a magistrate at Stanley Falls, wrote "Disease powerfully ravages an exhausted population, and it's to this cause...that we must attribute the unceasing growth of sleeping sickness in this region; along with porterage and the absecne of food supplies, it will quickly decimate this country. I've seen nowhere in the Congo as sad a spectable as that along the road from Kasongo to Kabambare. The villages for the most part have few people in them, many huts are in ruins; men, like women and children, are thin, weak, without life, very sick, stretched out inert, and above all there's no food."
An official Belgian government commission estimated (in 1919) that under Leopold's rule the population of the Congo decreased by 50%. Others (Major Charles C. Liebrechts, an executive of the Congo state administration, and Jan Vansina, historian and anthropologist) agree with that estimate. This would be a loss of about ten million people.
This all seems attributed, so by rights it ought to go right into the article, though I preferred pointing out that the regime ran on slave labor and maltreatment rather than getting into specifics. If you can find any quotes that suggest the description as a "regime of slave labor, rape and mutilation" is erroneous, I'd love to be able to incorporate them. I'll let you decide how much to put back in.
As for Lacroix, I'll try to find the source. I'm sure she didn't get the WHOLE fortune, but what she got was a fortune to her! --- Someone else 11:35 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
- Lacroix: not the best source, but a source nonetheless: Secrets of the Gotha, by Ghislain de Diesbach, p. 84-85. "After the king's death [Lacroix] hastily left Brussels in oder to avoid hostile demonstrations. She took refuge in France, where Leopold II had [bought] for her the quasi-royal domain of Ballincourt, in the Oise. ....[S]he did not known how to keep the immense fortune which Leopold II had built up for her in a few years - the sum of thirty millions in gold was mentioned. Her marriage to Emmanuel Durrieux, from whose arms the king had removed her, completed her downfall." She goes on to tell how Princess Louise, left very little from Leopold's fortune, had Lacroix's property sequestrate and sued both Lacroix and the Belgian state, which suits she lost. So yes, I suspect it made a bit of a fuss at the time.-- Someone else 11:51 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
Vachel Lindsay a bit colourful for your tastes, eh? : I've never said that, please make no baseless inferences about me ! Remember: you don't know me !
Yet it's what he wrote, so it's an attributed point of view: Wikipedia is not a collection of attributed point of views. Mere collection of POV's does not make a NPOV encyclopedia. I like Lir's solution of putting Lindsay in a "writings about Leopold" section. In the main section, it is better to state fact, they have a better objective strength than litterary citations.
I admit there were probably exploitation and slavery and such under Leopold's rule, and do not claim it was benign, but still maintain that describing this regime as "a regime of rape and murder" is way off NPOV. Write that the regime encouraged exploitation, covered murders and rapes, if that is true: OK. But do not qualify the regime as such, because it was surely also something else, too. I *may* accept the term "exploitation regime" *if* you provide evidence that the regime never did anything else, nor had any other purpose, than exploitation.
As for Lacroix: you first wrote she was gone with Leopold's fortune, which reads as she was gone with the whole of it. Now you're writing something much less strong !
FvdP 11:54 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
stop discussing it and discuss the current version...Lir 11:54 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
I like the current version much better, Lir. Thanks. But, still, we should:
- incorporate the fact that Lacroix received a big fortune from L2, but by no way the whole of L2's fortune;
- not sure about the authenticity and interest of L2's "fear of germs" anecdote;
- is it really Conrad who described Congo's regime as a regime of rape and murder etc ?
Surely it is not for me to provide evidence that the regime never had any other purpose than exploitation: It is evident that its primary purpose was exploitation. If you can find any evidence of another purpose, I welcome its addition, but again, I don't think you'll find much. No history of that time finds Leopold's administration of the Congo to have been beneficial. Someone else 12:10 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
it was exploitative like all governments are. Lir 12:12 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)
- It was exploitive to a degree that few governments have ever been. Infrogmation
One thing is sure 172 know the use of Ctrl+V !
I hate to take an unpopular stand here, but I don't understand why 172's contributions were removed. The page as it stands now is somewhat convoluted, with information appearing twice. 172 was simply giving some in-depth information on Leopold's economic abuse of the Congo, which was his private realm and the brutality of which is, AFAIK, uncontested. It seems like part of a larger edit war, which I haven't been following, but here at least 172's contribution doesn't seem quite so controversial, to me at least. Danny
- I agree the text I removed may be interesting, but it's already present almost verbatim in the article over the history of (ex-Belgian) Congo (sorry, I don't remember the exact title off-hand). 172 is copying the same text everywhere: see e.g. Genocide. This is pure non-sense, however senseful 172's text is. The article here already tells a bit about Congo's abuses, but the main information about Congo abuses should go to a specific article, I think; "History of Congo" is specific enough. The reader may learn about the abuses here, and if he's interested enough, he should know where to look at. Perhaps that latter point is a bit lacking for now. (Note that I left 172's text intact in the "history of Congo" article.) FvdP 01:35 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
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- Okay, I can understand that, and I don't particularly like the idea of just copying text from one article to another, so I see your point. It would, however, be useful to concentrate on Leopold's personal role in the exploitation of the Congo in this article. For instance, the book King Leopold's Ghost makes a fairly good argument that most of the exploitation was the result of his personal megalomanic desire for empire in the colonial era. I read it a while ago, so the precise details are kinda murky. Danny
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- I agree with you, it may be interesting to have Leopold's specific role being explored more in depth in this article. Actually, I know next to nothing about these affairs, as a Belgian I did not learn these things at school, or perhaps I don't remember (that was 15-25 years ago...). This may explain a not-so-anti-Leopoldist bias, yet I'm ready to hear bad news about Leopold's or Belgium's behaviour and motives. I'm just a bit afraid of excesses, as you may see from the discussion above. If you (or anyone else) think you can do that in a NPOV way (which implies placing facts above rhethorics), you're most welcome. FvdP 02:09 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
Much as 172 is unpopular here, this should not blind us to the times when his facts are unquestionably correct. No honest historian who has even a vague familiarity with the history of the Congo Free State would argue with the description of it as "a regime of rape and murder". In the case of the Belgian Congo, any lesser description would be a whitewash. It really was that bad, and there is ample evidence. Tannin
The expression regime of rape and murder is precisely what I target as "rhetoric". The expression does not yield facts, it's just a verbal blame. That is not NPOV. Tell me where and when the regime encouraged rape and murder. These would be facts. FvdP
- Right through Leopold's rule from start to finish, FvdP, and in many, probably all, areas of the colony. I'm at work and don't have my references handy, nor have I read any African history to speak of in ten years or so, so my recollection of details is rusty, but I'll see if I can find time to refresh my memory tonight and post appropriately. The problem with the phrase "regime of rape and murder" is not that it's innaccurate - it is no more than the plain and abundantly verifiable truth - it is that it sounds like one of those wild charges that people often throw around without much justification. Nevertheless, I would prefer to see the entry avoid the phrase, simply because this sort of language gets so over-used in areas where it is not strictly accurate that in this instance (where it is abundantly justified), it can sound like mere mouthing off. If you trouble to read a little of the history of that unhappy area, you will soon discover that the exploitation of the Congo Free State by Leopold and his servants was an excercise in rapacious brutality of the worst kind. Europeans (and Arabs also) committed many such exploitations in Africa's history, but the Congo stands alone as the worst example of all.
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- Thanks for the precisions on your views. Their rational tone appease my fears a good deal. There remains to see the facts of course. Perhaps I'll take the time to dwelve myself into this... FvdP
- Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost is a good start. Danny
I did not use the prase "regime of rape and murder". 172
- I never thought you did. The phrase was here well before you arrived. FvdP
"much of his bloody fortune" NPOV according to 172 Ericd
Are you defending Leopold II now? You've moved on from making pages that mock this tragic chapter of history?
I know that you were trying to irate me, but it really reflects poorly upon you that you’d find light in the murder of millions, Ericd
See Ericd's article: Linda Lovelace and the free Congo state
Yeah I'm a fanatic Belgian nationalist. I have posters of Leopold II in my living. And a nude canvas of Leopold II in my bedroom. I eat only Belgian fries (no French fries) and I drink only Gueuze Lambic. It widely know that Gueuze Lambic cause brain damage :)
More seriously your comments in Genocide shows ohow you care for death of millions when it disturb your POV.
Ericd:
No, I've asked that every charge remain, whether I agree with it or not. You weren’t the Belgian nationalist to whom I was referring either. I was referring to FvdP, who removed descriptions of Belgian mass-murder in the Congo. Coincidentally, I suppose, he just happens to be from Belgium.
- You're upsetting me, 172, with your gratuitous suspicion against me. This is not the way Wikipedia is supposed to work. Continue to dismiss my point of view this way, and I'll refer you to Higher Powers. FvdP 18:03 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
Well, I sort of promised to document the history of the Congo Free State a little earlier today. I haven't actually got that far yet, but in History of the Democratic Republic of the Congo I've made a substantial start. Tannin 11:57 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
I removed some of the information irrelevant to the biography pertaining to changes in Congolese production patterns and society. But just as any Hitler article briefly mentions the Holocaust, this article must briefly describe Leopold’s rule.
- In this case, I find must agree with 172: a short description of the atrocities is needed here, together with a link to a fuller article.
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- That information is already in the article. It may need rework, but it's already there. Please edit what's already here. 172 is just adding text, not editing other people's prose. (Perhaps not even reading it, who knows). FvdP
FvdP:
FvdP, I addressed the redundancy. It doesn’t seem coincidental (being that you’re Belgian) that you’re obsessed with shortening the section on Belgian atrocities either.
- No it's not coincidential. I'm Belgian so I'm interested in Belgium history. That does not mean I feel the need to cover any Belgian crimes. And you should not think I'm editing you just because of that. The fact that I'm Belgian seems to completely blind you about the other motives I may have to edit your prose. It's just too easy to dismiss my opposition by saying that I must be biased, since I am Belgian. Maybe I'm biased, but then you too. Let's judge articles on the basis of what they are, not on the basis of the alledged intentions of the authors. FvdP
- The information you add has barely any direct link to Leopold 2, it's an explanation of the Congo regime that is too detailed for an article on L2. And besides, it's already in the Congo history article, as you perfectly know. And by its choice of words it does not feel NPOV. FvdP
FvdP:
As I've said earlier:
A better work of history will not only chronicle Leopold’s motives, but illuminate briefly why he had such motives, and why he had such an impact on Congolese history.
Mass-production of rubber in a dense, tropical forest in one of the world’s most isolated regions was after all quite a massive endeavor. Other parts of Africa were not cultivating rubber (quite a harsh crop to cultivate); other parts of Africa had milder climates and topographies. So the whole rapid shift to mass-production of rubber might be considered more important than Leopold’s megalomania and insensitivity.
Old paragraph read as follows: “Exploitation of the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina (Vietnam), German Southwest Africa, Rhodesia, and South Africa paled in comparison to that of the Belgian Congo. Like all colonial powers at the time, the fortunes of Belgium and its king, Leopold II, and those of the multinational concessionary companies under his auspices, were mainly made on the proceeds of Congolese rubber, which had historically never been mass-produced in surplus quantities. While King Leopold II was the defacto sovereign of the Belgian controlled Congo Free State, between 1880 and 1920 the population of Congo nearly halved. Although the actual figure is disputed because of a lack of documented statistics at the time, nontheless, several million natives were the victims of murder, starvation, exhaustion induced by over-work, and disease.”
The error (I’m hoping just a typo) renders the article misleading. All colonies were not major rubber-producers.
Sorry to interupt your discussion here, but I was puzzled by the following sentence: "Though Lacroix is said to have been created Baroness de Vaughan, Lucien the Duke of Tervuren, and Philippe the Count of Ravenstein, no such royal decrees were ever issued." Is this supposed to read "have been created BY"? I would make the change myself, but I do not feel that I am qualified to do so, my knowledge of this topic is rather narrow
- Another way to say it would be "Though Lacroix is said to have been granted the title of "Baroness de Vaughan", her son Lucien given the title of "Duke of Tervuren", and her son Philippe given the title of "Count of Ravenstein", no such royal decrees were ever issued." Though I think the first may be clear enough. But "by" would not be right. -- Nunh-huh 21:37, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
"regime of slave labor, rape and mutilation" is the correct way of describing it. lets face it any regime which reduces the population of a whole nation by 50% in less then 40 years through massive execution program, eg in the equtorial province, just for the purpose of showing the locals that the regime can and will kill them all if they dont bring them rubber, calls on all of its soldiers to bring hands of all people who have been killed to prove that no ammo has been wasted and permits rape and torture is commiting genocide. thus "regime of slave labor, rape and mutilation" is VERY much an understatement. next you will be saying that nazi germany should not be labeled totalitarian because that is just an opinion. it is clear that you,FvdP, are some kind of a pro imperialist nazi who thinks that colonasation was a process of bringing education and enlightenment to the savage african people--GregLoutsenko 00:43, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
- "it is clear that you [...] are some kind of a pro imperialist nazi" : I think we can safely ignore "arguments" from a guy who's able to utter such assholic statements... --FvdP 18:04, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Belgian "ignorance"
"This rather naive perception by many Belgians can be traced back in Belgian education programs (or at least in the majority of them) which still mention almost nothing about the reality of Leopold's colonialism."
Can anybody confirm this? I generally take such statements (about countries ignoring certain facts in their educational programs on purposes) with a pinch of salt.David.Monniaux 12:33, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Well, I am the one who wrote this (then you might want to have another point of view and I will clearly understand). But I just want to explain a bit more (feel free obviously to change what I wrote accordingly). What I meant is not that Belgium was ignoring certain facts in their educational programs on purpose. But there is a clear general ignorance of these facts in Belgium, and I admit that I don't know the ultimate cause. A direct and tangible cause at least is that most Belgians do not learn that in high school. I have talked to many Belgians and I was just amazed that they were just knowing nothing at all about this. I did ask the following question to many Belgians: "What comes to your mind first if I tell you Leopold II?". Their answer: "The King-builder, the king-builder, the king-builder...". This is so peculiar, it seems the only thing they learn about Leopold II at school (an example from the web, in you can read French: this is a school report made by pupils from a typical traditional school in Brussels). Well, what is the ultimate cause of this ignorance at the end of the day? Are Belgians too proud of their monarchy? Are they simply considering that Belgium was not involved and has nothing to do with the King Leopold's bad old ways? Leopold's actual achievements in Congo is not to be found in their collective memory anyway. -- Edcolins 21:28, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
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- The section rings POV to me right now. I think that if we can get some non original research confirmation of it, parts of it could be rewritten and stay however. I wouldn't be at all surprised if many Belgians didn't know about this part of their history, or only vaguely. In part because people are generally rather underinformed about their history. I'm Dutch, not that far from Belgium, and while I'd heard a few things about this before, I just learned a ``lot`` more by reading wikipedia. Martijn faassen 00:07, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
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- I am not aware of any study, academic research or survey specifically addressing Belgian ignorance on Leopold's whereabouts, so I reworded the whole thing. This "silence of history" is however explained in Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost.-- Edcolins 20:43, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
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Personally i believe that this Belgian 'ignorance' is somewhat overestimated here. It's true that schools don't spend much attention to the attrocities in Congo, but the media are more or less making up for this. In 1985 Daniel Vangroenwheghe published his book "red rubber". Excerpts of this book have been published in the popular weekly magazine "humo", which has about a million readers, which makes up 10% of the Belgian population. Recently the media have also been delving in the personal lives of the Belgian royals, and this included estimates of their wealth and how it was earned. A popular book called " the shadow of the crown" has been published by royalty-watcher and journalist Jan Van den berghe, which -although slightly biased-tells the full story of the Belgian royal family, past and present. Several documentaries and talk show items have also been devoted to the subject. If the Belgian media have been overly respectful in the past, at present the pendulum seems to swing a bit to the other side, exposing the wrongdoings of Leopold II in detail. User:Karelke 03:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)User:Karelke 03:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "This number is disputed"
(Comment accidentally deleted by Edcollins:)
- (Oups, sorry for this... -- Edcolins 18:07, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC))
I removed the sentence "(This number is disputed.)" from the 5-15 million number. Who disputes it? For what reason? There appears to have been no related discussion. If it's disputed in the same way the Turkish government disputes the Armenian genocide, then it should be noted as such.--Eloquence* 13:49, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Assassination attempt
Kaldari Nov 9, 2004: I have found a single reference to an attempt to assasinate Leopold II, but could not verify its accuracy: "The other day, in Brussels, King Leopold was fired upon three times by a man named Genarro Rubini, an Italian..." The above appeared in Winn's Firebrand Vol II, No. 1 (an obscure political journal published in January, 1903). It is not clear if the assasination attempt occured in 1903 or 1902, as it only says "the other day". Can anyone verify this incident?
- Rubino, not Rubini I think...[1] or Rubin [2][3]. It seems the event happened on November 15, 1902 and the attempt was made by a 43 year-old Italian anarchist Gennaro Rubino (or Rubin).
- I suspect that Rubin is an anglification of Rubino, similar to Leopold's wife's name morphing from Marie Henriette to Maria Henrietta in the American press at the time. Kaldari 23:14, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Also it looks like his first name is 'Gennaro' rather than 'Genarro'. Here's another reference. Kaldari 23:26, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
[edit] 5-21 million
[4] --Viriditas 12:37, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Tervuren Museum and Hochschild
The text on the museum is not up to date anymore. The museum's last exhibition is clearly image enhancing after what Hochschild said (visit their homepage). I haven't been there since 5 years or so, but does it look better? I mean, during my "research" (ahem) I almost felt pity for the poor museum. Phlebas 00:22, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
