King Leopold’s Ghost

In the early 20th century, Henry Morton Stanley was in poor health. After a lifetime of traveling through jungles and down rivers, he was weary and slow-moving. In public, when asked about the atrocities in the Congo, he continued to support King Leopold. He died in 1904, before the attacks against Leopold became really vitriolic.

By 1905, the backlash against Leopold had become truly international. Members of the Swedish Parliament signed a statement supporting Morel’s CRA, and human rights groups protesting Leopold appeared in many European countries. In response, Leopold launched a counterattack, criticizing the human rights abuses of the British Empire. He found information about atrocities in China, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Australia. He launched smear campaigns against some of his more vocal opponents, and paid writers to draft books and articles defending his administration in the Congo.

In spite of Leopold’s efforts, the criticism of his regime in the Congo spread quickly, eventually reaching the writer Mark Twain. Twain lobbied against Leopold in Washington, D.C., causing other politicians and writers to join the cause. Morel visited the U.S. and met with John Tyler Morgan, who still supported a “back to Africa” movement. Morel convinced Morgan, a white supremacist, that, unless the human rights situation improved, African Americans could never be convinced to leave the U.S.

In America, Leopold tried to get powerful politicians and businessmen on his side. He met with congressmen and offered their districts concession rights (i.e., the right to conduct business out of the Congo without paying tariffs) in the Congo if the congressmen supported him publicly. The plan worked, and Leopold was able to prevent the White House from appointing a consul general to the Congo. Leopold, a Catholic, also managed to convince several cardinals of the Vatican that he was the victim of a Protestant smear campaign.

Leopold made a huge blunder by hiring a man named Henry Kowalsky as his lobbyist in the U.S. Kowalsky was a charismatic speaker, and a successful lawyer in the western United States. But when he moved to Washington, D.C. to begin his lobbying, he immediately infuriated the Belgian ambassador to the U.S., Ludovic Moncheur. Moncheur, afraid that Kowalsky would overshadow him in D.C., kept Kowalsky out of the loop. Frustrated, Kowalsky switched sides and went to the press, claiming that Leopold was trying to use bribery to influence the U.S. government’s policy on the Congo. In all, the tide was turning against Leopold throughout Europe and America.

Leopold tried to launch a new commission, the Commission of Inquiry. He sent three judges to the Congo to make a report on the state of human rights there. Leopold gambled that the judges’ inability to speak any African languages and their cooperation with the authorities in the Congo would result in a positive report. However, his gamble failed when the three judges met with witnesses to the Force Publique’s cruelty. The Commission of Inquiry released a 150-page report attacking the state of the Congo. In response, Leopold arranged for an organization called the West African Missionary Association to send a heavily censored “summary” of the report to various newspapers; the plan worked, and newspapers published the less critical, less specific summary.