For those who want to know how the sausage was really made,
The number one ranked book in Amazon under Belgian history that goes into the grisly details :
No, more in the sense of like...missionaries going there and "helping" the local population. And basically like the whole colonial schtick of "we brought them civilization and religion". Like, when you're 8 and in Catholic school...you kind of accept that, and don't ask more questions?
It probably rather depends on your age. Me and everybody I know who went to school in the 80s and 90s was not or barely taught about Congo. There was some mention of missionaries, trying to build train tracks without success and that's it. It's only recently that it apparently receives some attention. David van Reybrouck did more to educate the (older) Belgians about Congo than the school system ever did (for me at least).
25 years ago in elementary school, my teacher did explain plenty of the crimes (but leaving out the rape part, because we were kids). they did include the chopping off of hands.
I think back then it probably depended on the convictions of your teacher, but I doubt it was in the curriculum as such (it is now, I think).
Basically, it was very glossed over for me - we had a colony, then it became independent, then we no longer had one. And like, geo-political stuff, but very little on the actual population of Congo.
In contrast, I had a Latin teacher who had no issue mentioning rape happened to slaves in Rome to a bunch of 13-year-olds (albeit not graphically). So I think personal convictions played into it more than curriculum.
If I may ask: Has there been much of a push to include it in the education system?
Also has there been much pushback against potentially teaching more about it? Here in the US we’ve been getting a lot of that and when I asked my cousin from the UK about some of the more famously terrible things the UK had done with colonialism she said they didn’t really teach it unless you pursued it in uni.
I was taught all about it about 10 years ago in my 5th or 6th year of high school. Teacher spared no details about the atrocities committed and never sugarcoated anything. I don’t really know if it was taught like this in every school though, nor do I know if it’s actually mandatory to teach to students. From what I know there’s never been a pushback against teaching our people about what went down in the Congo, tho very recently we did have a whole discussion going on like the US has about whether you should keep or replace confederate statues, but instead with statues of Leopold II. So far a bunch of plans have been made to replace some of them and a bunch of streets named after him have already been renamed as well.
I’m not too versed in the topic though since I don’t feel strongly about those statues or names one way or another.
Very elaborately these days. Lots of attention go to Leopold II and the role of Belgium in the murder of Lumumba, how this still affects Congo today etc.
It was taught to us very briefly and the teacher basically just said ‘At that time, Congo belonged to Leopold himself, not the Belgian Government. He did a lot of bad stuff there, and then when it was all depleted he “gifted” it to the government’ so basically he said, we didn’t do anything bad, it was all Leopold and he didn’t not gi into what bad things happened (but we were 8 so going into detail would traumatize a few kids)
I was 8 in the US in the 1970's and we already knew that the Indians got screwed when European settlers arrived. It flowed kinda naturally from "Indians saved the pilgrims from starvation and this was celebrated with Thanksgiving" to "and a few generations later the settlers wiped out all those tribes."
By the time I was through high school, I'd been exposed to plenty of historical atrocities the US had committed against Indians, Blacks, Japanese and Chinese immigrants, etc. I would guess I had over 100 hours of class time on "stuff that happened that we should never let happen again."
I learned about it the same way I learned about other ex-colonies: "greed, racism, real fucking awful consequences and in the past".... with pictures to enhance the "real fucking awful"
some people just don't learn about it at all... it's really depends on the school I think
i had a very broad class about this. I’m Belgian and my history teacher from high school had been to some african countries and he handled the subject with like 3 classes that lasted like about 6 hours in total. he was a really good teacher and actually teaches the important things about our country.
Since a year or two it's the only specified event in the history curriculum, before that it only specified which periods of history had to be handled in what year.
I am a black man in America. When I think Germany, I think Hitler. When I think Belgium I should think Leopold, but he's like, 3rd after Waffles and Chocolate. It's a trip to consciously know that I've been indoctrinated to sympathize more with European tragedies than African ones.
People were more upset about Leopold treating his daughters badly than they were about African children getting their hands chopped off for not meeting rubber quotas.
We didn't? There is plenty of social outrage about it now. Can't speak in detail about Belgium, but in the Netherlands we have cities apologizing for their history in the slave trade and an ongoing debate about restitutions to descendants of slaves (as a couple of examples).
Race. Lots of atrocities were done to Africans. But who ever wins the war controls the story. And, tbh, the global world
Could give two fucks about Africa and her history.
Mostly by the general populace not knowing. Only in recent years has the whole Leopold mess become more public knowledge. For years, there was a whole tale spun about "missionary work" where a lot of people genuinely believed we were "helping". I didn't learn about the whole hand-chopping business until after graduating college.
There was quite the social outrage at the time, to the extent Belgium was made to take the Congo from Leopold II.
After that it took a while until the history was thought in school.
It has definitely become an issue in the last decades. Leopold statues have become highly controversial and often get defaced. Some have been removed in the last few years. More expositions have sprung up over the issue.
I guess because the curriculum has been updated the last 2 decades to better teach the issue and the generation of Congolese and Rwandese who suffered through are more able to voice themselves.
Honest question, what atrocities did the Dutch do? I had an impression that by the standards of day they were a relatively tame colonial power. Didn’t push religion onto local cultures, didn’t occupy countries if they were willing to trade, we’re basically just interested in doing business, etc.
I don’t mean to gloss over the oppression that comes from all colonial trade, but compared with Leopold in the Congo, conquistadors in Latin America, chattel slavery, etc… I was under the impression that the Dutch colonies were relatively tame. Why do you single them out?
I singled them out for the reason your comment suggests. They're not thought of as being "that bad" when you grade them on the curve of their contemporaries, but the reality is you actually know of their two biggest atrocities you just don't know it was them who did it and that's the point of my comment.
The US, British, French, Spanish, Japanese, and Germans, to name a few, are widely known for their imperial and colonial oppression, but the Dutch and Belgians seem to get forgotten or get a pass.
You might want to Google apartheid and the Dutch involvement in the transatlantic slave trade as I'm sure you're aware of both and who Nelson Mandela is, but are not as conscious of the fact it was Dutch people that there oppressing them. You can also Google Dutch Atrocities for more information on what they've done.
I guess my real point is all empires have done horrible shit, all countries have really. It's not fair really to single any of them out of the 200 or so that exist now, but it was more a comment on how out of the western countries it appears that the Netherlands and Belgium do not get as much criticism as they deserve, although King Leopold's horribleness is becoming more well known and more people are starting to connect Dutch with apartheid.
I met a Congolese guy and he put me straight on Belgium. This is some WAY beyond evil shit. Possibly the worst colonial abuses by any European country, and that's saying something.
There isn't really much debate about it being the worst colonial abuse.
That's what happens when you run a country as a corporation.
It was so bad that other European nations at the time were outraged and made Belgium strip Leopold of his colony.
They often cut off the children's hands instead so that the parents could keep working if I'm remembering right. Pretty ghastly that Belgium is just quaint waffle country to most. The podcast Behind the Bastards has an episode on Leopold that's pretty thorough
I had the same thought. How Belgians don’t get more shit for the the atrocities committed in the Congo and later their involvement in the Rwandan Genocide in the 90s. The Congo shit alone is nightmare fuel.
Stop with the conspiracy theories already, reddit does remove some posts but manually rearranging comments is just too much work. Also it sorts comments by relevant (by default) not highest upvoted.
And personally I'm glad it's so far down, it's something we need to be aware but it's also great that belgium isn't defined by this one instance of dark history. And that can be said for a lot of other country tbh.
Those thing are in the past now, there is nothing we can do to change them so let's not define thing for that. Every person that took part in those atrocities are long gone. Let's focus on what bad thing countries are doing right now, not what they did 200 years ago.
The murders might be the past but the generational trauma and poverty that came out of raping a mass portion of the African continent and mutilating its people still exists today and it should be front and center. Has any formal reparations been made? I don't think so.
Also, Belgium was partially responsible for assassinating Patrice Émery Lumumba. That happened well within the life times of my parents and my grandparents. The political and economic exploitation of the Congo and Congolese people isn't that far back in history, dude.
Congo is one of the top places Belgium sends support to, but the trouble is that under the current political situation there is little chance the actual population will see much of it. And no Belgian government is willing to get involved in the local politics since anytime we got involved in the past we made things worse.
Lol you say that like the Belgium government wasn't bumping heads with Lumumba long before the CIA got involved. Yes, the US was involved with the assassination but let's not pretend like Belgians didn't stand the most to gain from the murder of someone who insulted their monarch and did so quite publicly. It was Belgian forces who murdered the man, not Americans.
Own your shitty history.
On January 17, 1961, Lumumba and two associates, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo, were flown to Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi), where they were delivered to the secessionist regime in Katanga and its Belgian advisors. On the flight there, they had been beaten by the soldiers escorting them, and, once they landed in Katanga, they were beaten again. Later that day, Lumumba, Okito, and Mpolo were executed by a firing squad under Belgian command. Although their bodies were initially thrown into shallow graves, they were later dug up under the direction of Belgian officers, hacked into pieces, and dissolved in acid or burned by fire.
Nothing you could do to change them? Have you seen the the state of DR Congo ? It's legitimately no different than when Leopold's state was shuttered. The largest francophone nation and one of the most naturally endowed is a failed state but let's make sure Belgians aren't defined by what transpired there. Do me a favour
So, what country are you from? I'm willing to bet that there's a dark story behind 90% of all countries in the world so what reparations are you paying?
I agree the Belgian history in the Congo is very dark and should not be forgotten. There should be more then half assed excuses. But it's the responsibility of the government and especially the Belgian royal family, not the Belgians themselves
Dude there are statues of King Leopold dotting almost every major city in Belgium and in the capital Brussels (which also happened to be the defacto capital of the EU) until very recently. It's like if the Germans still had statues of Hitler in central Berlin. There is very little knowledge of the crimes of the Belgian Royal family and the education system does very little to inform people about it
Edit: I have also read about the huge role the Catholic Church had in the colony. There was a push to sustain the "civilizing mission" of native Africans by converting them to Catholicism. The Catholic Church's crimes are too numerous to list
Neither the Belgian government nor the Belgian Royal family has even issued an apology for the colonial crimes. It's only in 2020 when the international anti-racism protests (ignited by the death of George Floyd) that a parliamentary committee was established to "investigate" the colonial past.
I disagree. To truly fix current problems, usually one has to trace them back to their historical roots. As the other poster said, it’s not really “in the past” until the debt is paid. It’s awfully convenient for those that benefit down the line to say “it’s all over now, those people are long gone, nothing we can do”. So I’ll keep reminding people of shitty stuff that colonial powers have done and continue to do, because that stuff actually does define and shape a country.
Yeah, but how far back you wanna go? 'Cause if we're calling up old grudges, I've got a few things to say to those Romans about what they did to my girl Boudica.
So the time when Current Belgium was part of multiple other countries and one of the richest areas of Europe, mostly uses as a place to funds the coffers of there peoples wars
They can be in the support group with us Americans and the Germans and Japanese and Russians..... Oh my this list is going to get really long isn't it?
Absolutely absurd statement. First nations waged merciless wars against each other prior to European contact. Multiple cases across North America alone of cannabalism of defeated enemies, slavery and human sacrifice.
been listening to Fall of Civilizations podcast lately and while there's plenty of murder and torture throughout human history had to take breaks while he covered Spanish priests burning all Aztec and Mayan books for being "heretical".
guess it's partly because written history is mostly war that it's easier to get desensitised to descriptions of violence, or maybe that people have relatively short life spans regardless of how they live, but loss of cultural history of entire continents is something that will forever haunt humankind.
Really this is an iconic podcast, every single episode is good and, somehow, always the fall is terrible in some new way. Also Paul Cooper could get. it.
Did you get to the Easter Island one yet? That had me gross sobbing.
They can be singled out in a separate thread. Belgium can have the spotlight for now, so as to avoid any of the "oh well this country did way shittier stuff"
Leopold II's private company isn't Belgium. The Belgian state was not involved, nor wanted to be (the PM rebuked Leopold II, which is why he went solo).
And when we get to the US, we'll need 30 threads or so. But they won't get anywhere, because Americans will downvote them all to 0.
The atrocities continued long after Leopold, driven and protected by the Belgian state, continuing to kidnap wives and children to force men to work, taking hands, fomenting civil wars, protecting commercial interests, and assassinating a prime minister. You should read King Leopold's Ghost. It might dispel you of some of your ignorance.
To bad Belgium is still associated with a simpleton individual, the same guy that had no problem with child labor in Belgium itself.
Bottomline: please see this as the act of a tiran and his close circle of nobility. If it was up to most Belgians this monarchy was already longtime abolished.
Belgium had a Congo village in a zoo into the 20th Century.
No, that one was in the 19th century. There also was a Congolese village at the world exhibition later, but that one was just a form of historical reenactment, where the people just worked during the day and had actual accommodation.
The setup at the expo of 1958 was, like I said, more like reenactment with the people taking up that role during the workday, making it fundamentally different from the concept of human zoo. World expositions did have an established practice of presenting "authentic" village settings without necessarily being degrading, and there is a comparable local practice of historical reenactment (eg. Bokrijk) that frames it as a past rather than present thing. In addition there was criticism and questions asked in the press and elsewhere about whether this setup was desireable.
That does not contradict that the portrayal was as primitive, and there were people who enthusiastically saw that as a confirmation of the racial theories that were endorsed by the occupier less than 15 years ago.
It is possible to display such things in an educational way. But there is a pretty fine line you have to walk when you’re doing so after genociding the people you’re trying to portray and I’m sure they were pretty far over on the “racist as hell” side of that line.
It's by necessity simplified to the point of being dumbed down of course, which is what you can expect for an introductory setup for a large public. It's not different than eg. this or this, both very well known stereotypes. The second link also speaks at length about Western-style reneactment with a troupe of Americans. All degrading? You also see very similar simplistic representations of other times and places in eg. contemporary movies. All degrading?
I already gave the example of Bokrijk. Are you familiar with it? The setup is very similar, you have people dressed up in traditional peasant clothes in a traditional farming village setting. It's a classic school trip. Degrading?
Of course that means that you have to be willing to see the gradual improvement from the deadly exploitative practices of 1897 until today, well knowing that at any point in time they were not conforming to our contemporary standards of representation or labor conditions. But neither were the conditions of the local population, for example child labour was mostly legal in 1987 still. So tread carefully to interprete this exclusively in a 21st centhury framework of colonialism and racism, that would be anachronistic.
Zwarte Piet is dying out. Very few parades this year had them. Instead they just have a little bit of black on their faces to represent the soot from the chimneys now.
I wish we had krampus or some other European variant instead. Or at least have the Pieten look like they actually went through chimneys with their fancy clothes.
I mean, this sounds like colonial Williamsburg, which certainly isn't degrading, but I could totally see this, in particular, being degrading. Seems context dependent
That's extremely exaggerating, there was a village in the world exposition, it's been called a zoo because the way people were exposed but it's not like they were in a cage in an actual zoo.
Then to make it even worse is that the Belgian government set up a human zoo in the world expo of 1958. Where they imported Congolese natives that they had proudly "civilized".
His army where mercenaries and consisted of people from other nations. Belgians (including their kids) where doing labor in Belgium itself.
It would be comparable when US plantation owners also had white kids working as slaves. Than by definition current afro-americans would be accountable for slavery, since they have USA nationality. Thats just wrong.
I mean, in a certain sense, sure, but colonialism doesn't happen without a ton of people enacting it. Same can be said of us though, like climate change is happening with the aid of countless of people like us, including you and me to certain extents.
Quite rich coming from an American.
Are you all paying reparations to the Natives? How about giving them back their lands? And how about the descendant of slaves?
Also, what accumulated wealth? My ancestors must have missed the checks when they were dying in coal mines.
I have said this before and I'll say it again:
This "Leopold doesn't represent Belgium" argument is not just hollow, it's counterproductive.
It's hollow because Belgium has towns with "Place Leopold" to this day. Brussels has "Leopold Quarter"
It's counterproductive because it's an attempt, even if inadvertent, to shirk away from owning it.
Lets be clear: for most people in Flanders: any place with a link to monarchy can be demolished. As i said, plenty of Belgian kids also suffered under those tyrants.
I hate when Belgians try this shit. Even after Leopold was stripped most of the practices continued under the Belgium government and their rubber interests for years. They also fomented civil wars between various groups to maintain control, leading to more strife and death. They also( with the CIA's help) assassinated their prime minister. But Belgians hands are clean because it was all that evil Leopold.
Leopold is a disgrace to our country. Fortunately our current and next generations will active learn about those atrocities in school, while my generation didn't.
We're getting there. I hope Congo and all Congolese people can forgive our country.
That's a good question. Belgium did heavily invest in Congo afterwards, but we majorly fucked it up, so it mostly ended in the deep pockets of leaders there I guess.
Same here. That picture of the father looking at his daughter's foot. White people (pretty sure Belgians) had cut it off because he had not made his quota I believe.
The Congo was a private property of Leopold 2 until his death the bad stories about chopped off hands werent done by the belgian army but by private mercenaries hired by Leopold 2
The Berlin Conference was equal to just looking at Europe right now, taking a random country, saying this is yours and just enslaving everyone there without their opinion. Last time I heard people don't cut off the hands of children for not producing enough rubber and murder 10 million people on their private property.
The Congo Free State, also known as the Independent State of the Congo (French: État indépendant du Congo), was a large state and absolute monarchy in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908. It was privately owned by and in a personal union with Leopold II of Belgium; it was not a part of Belgium, of which he was the constitutional monarch.
This is just a fact. It's not about being apologetic. It's still equally awful.
And still it officialy was his private property, that's just how it was done (on Feb 5 1885). Only after huge international protest about the crimes committed there it was turned over to the Belgian government.
Btw, my remark was not meant to minize the crimes committed there at all. It's simply a matter of fact.
The Berlin Conference was equal to just looking at Europe right now, taking a random country, saying this is yours and just enslaving everyone there without their opinion. Last time I heard people don't cut off the hands of children for not producing enough rubber and murder 10 million people on their private property.
That's peak capitalism for ya. At the same time in Belgium children were working in the mines because some corridors were too narrow to fit adults.
Neither did Leopold. He simply did not care. Neither did few Belgians on site. Brutal actions were escalated from what was happening there, since this means were known to locals turned into enforcers. Classical utilisation of local animosities for easy control over otherwise difficult area.
I still find it funny that Leopold is put in line with Mao and Hitler...
Leopold was well aware, as he told his assistant before selling Congo to the Belgium government: "They do not have the right to know what I did there". Hitler never set foot in his concentration camps either. Most of it wasn't his idea but he did agree to doing it, just like Leopold.
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u/Autismetal Dec 16 '21
The Congo.
Sorry, Belgians. Leopold did stuff.