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Leopold's ghost vies with spirit of truth
Irish Times
Mar 19, 2005
A Belgian museum may, at last, be slowly coming to terms with the
country's colonial past, writes Adam Hochschild
No country likes to come to terms with embarrassing parts of its past.
Japanese schoolbooks still whitewash the atrocities of the second
World War, and the Turkish government continues to deny the Armenian
genocide. Until about 1970 the millions of visitors to Colonial
Williamsburg in Virginia saw no indication that roughly half the
inhabitants of the original town were slaves.
Until recently, one of the world's more blatant denials of history had
been taking place at the Royal Museum of Central Africa, an immense,
chateau-like building on the outskirts of Brussels. It was founded a
century ago by Belgium's King Leopold II who, from 1885 to 1908,
literally owned the Congo as the world's only privately controlled
colony.
Right through the 1990s the museum's magnificent collection of African
art, tools, masks and weapons - among the largest and best anywhere,
much of it gathered during the 23 years of Leopold's rule - reflected
nothing of what had happened in the territory during that period. It
was as if a great museum of Jewish art and culture in Berlin revealed
nothing about the Holocaust.
The holocaust visited upon the Congo under Leopold was not an attempt
at deliberate extermination, like the one the Nazis carried out on
Europe's Jews, but its overall toll was probably higher.
Soon after the king got his hands on the colony, there was a worldwide
rubber boom, and Leopold turned much of the Congo's adult male
population into forced labour for gathering wild rubber.
His private army marched into village after village and held the women
hostage to force the men to go into the rain forest, often for weeks
out of each month, to tap rubber vines. This went on for nearly two
decades.
Although Leopold made a fortune estimated at well over $1 billion in
today's dollars, the results were catastrophic for the
Congolese. Labourers were often worked to death, and many female
hostages starved. With few people to hunt, fish or cultivate crops,
food grew scarce.
Hundreds of thousands of people fled the forced-labour regime, but
deep in the forest they found little to eat and no shelter, and
travellers came upon their bones for years afterwards. Tens of
thousands more rose up in rebellion and were shot down. The birthrate
plummeted. Disease - principally sleeping sickness - took a toll in
the millions among half-starved and traumatised people who otherwise
might have survived.
Leopold's murderous regime was exposed in its own day by a brave band
of activists including Roger Casement, American, British and Swedish
missionaries, and a hard-working British journalist, E.D. Morel. Any
historian of Africa knows the basic story, and many have written about
parts of it.
In 1998 I finished a book on the subject, King Leopold's Ghost, which
was published in Belgium and drew furious denunciations from royalists
and conservatives. The foreign minister sent a special message to
Belgian diplomats abroad, counselling them on how to answer awkward
questions from readers.
Asked if the museum planned changes, a senior official of the Royal
Museum of Central Africa replied that some were under study, "but
absolutely not because of the recent disreputable book by an
American".
The museum's current director, Guido Gryseels, caught between pressure
from human rights activists on the one hand and rumoured strong
pressure from the government and the royal family on the other,
several years ago appointed a commission of historians to study the
Leopold period and determine just what did happen.
The move won favourable news coverage, but was in essence an odd
one. Usually commissions take evidence and hear witnesses; they don't
study the distant past.
Under Gryseels, the museum has gradually begun rewording signs on its
exhibits, and several weeks ago it opened a new exhibit, "Memory of
Congo: the Colonial Era", accompanied by a catalogue, a thick,
lavishly illustrated coffee-table book of several dozen scholarly
articles.
Judging from the latter, the museum has pulled its head out of the
sand - but only part way. There are a few atrocity photos, but they
are far outnumbered by pictures of dancers, musicians and happy black
and white families. The catalogue is rife with evasions and denials.
The commission of historians, for instance, sets the loss of
population during the most brutal colonial period at 20 per cent. This
ignores the fact that in 1919 an official body of the Belgian colonial
government estimated the toll at 50 per cent. And that the
Belgian-born Jan Vansina, professor emeritus of history and
anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and widely
regarded as the greatest living student of Central African peoples,
makes the same estimate today.
One wall panel at the new museum exhibit raises - and debunks - the
charge, "Genocide in the Congo?" But this is a red herring: no
reputable scholar of the Congo uses the word. Forced labour is
different from genocide, although both can be fatal.
Most of all, it is strange to see the catalogue's articles on the bus
system of Leopoldville, Congo national parks and the Congo visit of a
Belgian crown prince, but not a single piece on the deadly
forced-labour system.
Belgium is not alone in failing to face up to its own history. All
countries mythologise their pasts and confront the worst of it only
slowly. But once they do, there are positive discoveries as well as
painful ones.
The Royal Museum of Central Africa has figures it could
celebrate. Stanislas Lefranc was a devout Catholic and monarchist who
went to the Congo 100 years ago to work as a magistrate. In pamphlets
and newspaper articles he later published in Belgium, he spoke out
bravely against the cruelties he witnessed.
Jules Marchal, who died recently, was a Belgian diplomat in Africa
who, in his spare time, wrote the definitive history of forced labour
in the Congo, much of it based on years of searching files for
duplicate copies of documents that King Leopold had ordered
destroyed. Both men were shunned and ostracised in their
time. Confronting the past is not just about acknowledging guilt, but
rediscovering heroes.
Adam Hochschild is the author of King Leopold's Ghost (Mariner Books,
1999) and Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an
Empire's Slaves (Houghton Mifflin, 2005).
Irish Times
Mar 19, 2005
A Belgian museum may, at last, be slowly coming to terms with the
country's colonial past, writes Adam Hochschild
No country likes to come to terms with embarrassing parts of its past.
Japanese schoolbooks still whitewash the atrocities of the second
World War, and the Turkish government continues to deny the Armenian
genocide. Until about 1970 the millions of visitors to Colonial
Williamsburg in Virginia saw no indication that roughly half the
inhabitants of the original town were slaves.
Until recently, one of the world's more blatant denials of history had
been taking place at the Royal Museum of Central Africa, an immense,
chateau-like building on the outskirts of Brussels. It was founded a
century ago by Belgium's King Leopold II who, from 1885 to 1908,
literally owned the Congo as the world's only privately controlled
colony.
Right through the 1990s the museum's magnificent collection of African
art, tools, masks and weapons - among the largest and best anywhere,
much of it gathered during the 23 years of Leopold's rule - reflected
nothing of what had happened in the territory during that period. It
was as if a great museum of Jewish art and culture in Berlin revealed
nothing about the Holocaust.
The holocaust visited upon the Congo under Leopold was not an attempt
at deliberate extermination, like the one the Nazis carried out on
Europe's Jews, but its overall toll was probably higher.
Soon after the king got his hands on the colony, there was a worldwide
rubber boom, and Leopold turned much of the Congo's adult male
population into forced labour for gathering wild rubber.
His private army marched into village after village and held the women
hostage to force the men to go into the rain forest, often for weeks
out of each month, to tap rubber vines. This went on for nearly two
decades.
Although Leopold made a fortune estimated at well over $1 billion in
today's dollars, the results were catastrophic for the
Congolese. Labourers were often worked to death, and many female
hostages starved. With few people to hunt, fish or cultivate crops,
food grew scarce.
Hundreds of thousands of people fled the forced-labour regime, but
deep in the forest they found little to eat and no shelter, and
travellers came upon their bones for years afterwards. Tens of
thousands more rose up in rebellion and were shot down. The birthrate
plummeted. Disease - principally sleeping sickness - took a toll in
the millions among half-starved and traumatised people who otherwise
might have survived.
Leopold's murderous regime was exposed in its own day by a brave band
of activists including Roger Casement, American, British and Swedish
missionaries, and a hard-working British journalist, E.D. Morel. Any
historian of Africa knows the basic story, and many have written about
parts of it.
In 1998 I finished a book on the subject, King Leopold's Ghost, which
was published in Belgium and drew furious denunciations from royalists
and conservatives. The foreign minister sent a special message to
Belgian diplomats abroad, counselling them on how to answer awkward
questions from readers.
Asked if the museum planned changes, a senior official of the Royal
Museum of Central Africa replied that some were under study, "but
absolutely not because of the recent disreputable book by an
American".
The museum's current director, Guido Gryseels, caught between pressure
from human rights activists on the one hand and rumoured strong
pressure from the government and the royal family on the other,
several years ago appointed a commission of historians to study the
Leopold period and determine just what did happen.
The move won favourable news coverage, but was in essence an odd
one. Usually commissions take evidence and hear witnesses; they don't
study the distant past.
Under Gryseels, the museum has gradually begun rewording signs on its
exhibits, and several weeks ago it opened a new exhibit, "Memory of
Congo: the Colonial Era", accompanied by a catalogue, a thick,
lavishly illustrated coffee-table book of several dozen scholarly
articles.
Judging from the latter, the museum has pulled its head out of the
sand - but only part way. There are a few atrocity photos, but they
are far outnumbered by pictures of dancers, musicians and happy black
and white families. The catalogue is rife with evasions and denials.
The commission of historians, for instance, sets the loss of
population during the most brutal colonial period at 20 per cent. This
ignores the fact that in 1919 an official body of the Belgian colonial
government estimated the toll at 50 per cent. And that the
Belgian-born Jan Vansina, professor emeritus of history and
anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and widely
regarded as the greatest living student of Central African peoples,
makes the same estimate today.
One wall panel at the new museum exhibit raises - and debunks - the
charge, "Genocide in the Congo?" But this is a red herring: no
reputable scholar of the Congo uses the word. Forced labour is
different from genocide, although both can be fatal.
Most of all, it is strange to see the catalogue's articles on the bus
system of Leopoldville, Congo national parks and the Congo visit of a
Belgian crown prince, but not a single piece on the deadly
forced-labour system.
Belgium is not alone in failing to face up to its own history. All
countries mythologise their pasts and confront the worst of it only
slowly. But once they do, there are positive discoveries as well as
painful ones.
The Royal Museum of Central Africa has figures it could
celebrate. Stanislas Lefranc was a devout Catholic and monarchist who
went to the Congo 100 years ago to work as a magistrate. In pamphlets
and newspaper articles he later published in Belgium, he spoke out
bravely against the cruelties he witnessed.
Jules Marchal, who died recently, was a Belgian diplomat in Africa
who, in his spare time, wrote the definitive history of forced labour
in the Congo, much of it based on years of searching files for
duplicate copies of documents that King Leopold had ordered
destroyed. Both men were shunned and ostracised in their
time. Confronting the past is not just about acknowledging guilt, but
rediscovering heroes.
Adam Hochschild is the author of King Leopold's Ghost (Mariner Books,
1999) and Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an
Empire's Slaves (Houghton Mifflin, 2005).