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Congo. Forever in Chains. Democratic Republic of the Congo -formerly known as Zaire. In 1903, a British man named Roger Casement submitted a report to the British Parliament about his investigations in what was then known as the Congo Free State.
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Congo Forever in Chains
Democratic Republic of the Congo -formerly known as Zaire
In 1903, a British man named Roger Casement submitted a report to the British Parliament about his investigations in what was then known as the Congo Free State. • The Belgian King Leopold II privately owned the Congo Free State, a territory in Central Africa which was more than seventy-six times the size of Belgium.
Leopold used Congolese workers to supply rubber, which comes from vines and trees, for the booming tire business. • Casement’s report confirmed what many in Parliament and elsewhere had suspected for some years.
“ They [the Congolese] had endured such ill-treatment at the hands of the Government officials and soldiers that nothing had remained but to be killed for failure to bring in rubber or to die in their attempts to satisfy the demands.” • —The Casement Report
The report set off a series of international discussions and debates about what was happening in the Congo Free State. Millions of Africans were being killed or dismembered while harvesting rubber from the forest of Central Africa in order to satisfy the desires of Europeans and Americans for cheap rubber and to satisfy King Leopold’s quest for wealth.
“ We tried, always going further into the forest, and when we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot. Some had their ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes round their necks and bodies and taken away.” —A Congolese worker
But how did a single man come to own an entire region of another continent? To understand how the Congo Free State came into being one needs to understand the advent of European imperialism in Africa.
The area that is now the Democratic Republic of Congo spans 1.5 million square miles. It is the third largest country in Africa. The region in which it is located, Central Africa, is the home of most of Africa’s rainforest. The Congo River, nearly 3,000 miles long cuts through Central Africa and drains into the Atlantic ocean.
A number of smaller rivers feed into the Congo, forming the huge Congo Basin, home to numerous species of plants and animals. Mountains as high as 17,000 feet and Lake Tanganyika border the region to the east, and in the south, there are great stretches of grasslands and hardwood forests. The country also has deposits of gold, diamonds, copper, and manganese. All of these factors combine to make Congo one of the most geographically diverse and mineral rich countries in the world.
Who were the groups of peoplewho settled in Central Africa? • The earliest people to live in Central Africa were forest-dwellers who lived off the fruits and nuts they gathered and animals they killed. Anthropologists call these groups collectively “hunter-gatherers.” These specialized hunters were Pygmies, or BaMbuti, and they began living in the area in about 40,000 BCE. Their descendants still live in the forests today
The migration of this category of people, called Bantu, lasted about two thousand years. Unlike the hunter-gatherers who had lived in the Congo region before, these Bantu groups knew how to smelt iron, and began working with sophisticated tools.
Finally, a third category of people called Nilotes moved into Central Africa from what is now known as Sudan, and brought with them knowledge of farming, fishing, and herding. Over a period of several hundred years the Bantu came into contact with the Nilotes from the northeast.
Villages of farmers who had access to iron tools spread across the Central African region. Eventually, these groups developed into distinct tribes with different languages and social structures. • By about 600 CE more than two hundred different ethnic groups occupied the Central African region, each with its own customs and language.
Throughout the Congo region, the religious beliefs and practices of ethnic groups defined their identity. • In general, people worshipped multiple spirits that were associated with a supreme being. People prayed to these spirits or to dead ancestors whom they believed could influence the spirits. • In most areas, leaders derived some of their power from religious practices. • The rulers of the Kongo people, for instance, were thought of as protectors of the “spirits of the land.”
Beginning in about 500 BCE small groups of people who spoke related languages moved from West Africa to Central and East Africa, forcing some of the groups of Pygmies to retreat further into the forested areas of the region, and absorbing others as they moved through.
In addition to religion, the varieties of Central African geography helped to define different ethnic groups. • Regional environmental differences between the tropical rainforest and savannah regions led to variations in plant and animal life. • As a result, the groups of people who lived in those areas developed different practices and cultures. • For instance, in areas close to the Congo River, fishing provided a major source of food and the river allowed for trade and communication among neighbouring groups
In the savannah, groups had access to large areas of fertile agricultural land where they could settle and be assured of a plentiful variety of food. • On the other hand, in the rainforest, people developed different ways of life. Tropical rainforest soils lose their fertility very quickly.
As a result, new fields had to be cleared for agriculture every three to five years to allow exhausted soil to lie fallow and be replenished by the forest. This process of letting land lie fallow meant that villages needed to hold in reserve four or five times the amount of land they were currently farming.
By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries CE, large empires or kingdoms developed as populations grew and smaller communities merged together. • Many of these kingdoms were located in the savannah lands south of the Congo River, which could support large populations.
Some of the biggest groups were the Luba, the Lunda, and the Kongo. • These kingdoms took advantage of trading opportunities to gain access to the copper mines in the south, to salt from the east (salt helped to preserve food), and crafts and tools from each other.
As these trade networks expanded, cultural and technological ideas spread along with the products traded. • Sometimes neighbouring groups fought over resources, and sometimes these trading relationships were friendly and peaceful.
Slave Trading • In the 1480s, Portuguese ships arrived in Central Africa at the mouth of the Congo River, the center of the Kongo kingdom. • It was from the Kongo that Europeans got the name for the entire region. • Initially, the Kongo were glad to trade with the Portuguese, because the relationship provided a new market for their goods and they received goods from the Portuguese.
The Kongo also hoped that the Portuguese would share new technological knowledge. In a few years, however, the Portuguese traders found that the Kongo could not supply the volume of gold, copper, and other valuable resources that they wanted. • After the Portuguese established sugar-cane plantations on nearby islands off the coast of central Africa, they found African labour—slaves—to be a much more valuable commodity.
In 1506, King Afonso took the throne of the Kongo. Afonso converted to Christianity and even communicated with the Pope in Rome. He sent his son to study in Portugal, who returned to become the first black Catholic bishop. He also increased his power and the size of his kingdom by using guns he purchased from the Portuguese.
Beginning in 1514, the slave trade became an integral part of the economy of the area. Like all Kongo monarchs, Afonso owned slaves, but he was troubled by the nature of this new slave trade. In 1526, he wrote to the Portuguese king about its disruptive effects on his kingdom.
“ Sir, Your Highness should know how our Kingdom is being lost in so many ways.... We cannot reckon how great the damage is, since the mentioned merchants are taking every day our natives, sons of the land and the sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives, because the thieves and men of bad conscience grab them wishing to have the things and wares of this Kingdom…. So great, Sir, is the corruption…that our country is being completely depopulated, and Your Highness should not agree with this nor accept it.” • —King Afonso’s
Afonso’s pleas had no effect. • Instead, increasing numbers of Europeans—notably the French, British, and Dutch—came to the region to purchase more slaves for their plantations in the New World. By the late eighteenth century, Europeans were exporting about fifteen thousand slaves per year from the Congo. Congolese middlemen traded with groups in the interior to supply this demand. • European records from the 1790s show slaves arriving at the coast from as far inland as seven hundred miles. Until Europeans abandoned the slave trade in the early 1800s, it dominated the commerce of the area.
The Division of Africa • Diamonds (1867) and gold (1886) were discovered in South Africa. • Berlin Conference (1884-85): • 14 European nations agreed to lay down rules for the division of Africa. • No African ruler was invited to this conference. • Demand of Raw Materials: Africa was rich in mineral resources like copper and tin in the Congo and gold and diamonds in South Africa. • Cash crop plantations for peanuts, palm oil, cocoa, and rubber were also developed.
Berlin Conference 1884 • GOALS: to promote the three c’s • Commerce • Christianity • Civilization • Ensure Free trade • Ensure free navigation on Niger River • Agree to rules to divide up Africa
Also, there was the question of how to divvy up Africa in an orderly manner… • Of course, no one asked the native Africans. • Over time, “warring” tribes would be placed together • Straight lines in Africa and the Middle East clearly indicate “imperial” meddling.
The Berlin Conference laid down certain rules-- A European power with holdings on the coast had prior rights Occupation must include administrators or troops Each power must give notice to the others of what territories it considered its own THE REAL SCRAMBLE BEGAN!
African Colonization • 1884 Berlin Conference: European powers meet and agree on how to divide Africa into colonies. • Only Liberia and Ethiopia remain independent.
Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 Another point of view?
Excerpts from the Berlin Act • Article I: The trade of all nations shall enjoy complete freedom. • Article V: No power exercising sovereign rights in the Congo basin should grant therein a monopoly or favor of any kind in matters of trade. • Article VI: The Powers exercising Sovereign rights of infl uence in the aforesaid territories bind themselves to watch over the preservation of the native tribes and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well being.
The Congo "I do not want to risk...losing a fine chance to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake.”--Leopold II Belgian Congo
6-month old Tilapia. mmm. . . . mmm good!
Yikes! Would you or wouldn’t you?
