King Leopold’s Ghost

The death of King Leopold II was widely seen as marking the end of an era of cruelty in the Congo. But his influence on Belgium and Africa persisted for a long time. It was quickly discovered that he’d left a vast fortune, which he wanted to be spent on future monuments and palaces (diverting inheritance from his daughters). The Belgian Parliament spent years trying to transfer Leopold’s fortune to the public purse; Parliament eventually discovered that Leopold had stolen money from his sister, Charlotte, who was still alive, and mentally ill. Historians estimate that Leopold personally made a billion dollars (in today’s money) from his Congo territory. Nobody in Belgium argued that this money should be returned to the Congolese people.

Another unpleasant question: did the European/American Congo reform movement do any lasting good? On one hand, it seems clear that the achievements of Roger Casement, George Washington Williams, and Edmund Dene Morel were not in vain: they led the Belgian government to reform conditions in the Congo and protect African lives. But, although there were fewer cases of torture and execution under the Belgian Parliament’s Congo territories, the Belgian administrators continued to use forced labor. During the First World War, for instance, the Belgians forced thousands of Africans to fight in a battle in which they had no stake. And under Belgian authority, the people of the Congo were still deprived of their right to their own land, as well as the enormous wealth of that land. As late as World War II, Congolese people were forced to work in harsh conditions in mines, usually for insultingly little pay.

Another question: why, out of all the imperialist ventures in Africa, did the Congo finally attract the attention of powerful Europeans? There were, after all, hundreds of cases of European powers depriving Africans of their land rights and forcing them to work and fight. In the early 20th century, in the German-controlled territory of Namibia, German administrators killed and tortured a comparable number of Africans of the Herero tribe. And in the Philippines, around the same time, the U.S. tortured tens of thousands of Filipino prisoners and burned villages full of women and children. Why, then, was there no major protest against U.S. colonialism in the Philippines, or German colonialism in Namibia?

One simple reason that the Congo aroused such outrage in Europe is that it was a safe target. The Congo was controlled by one small and relatively new European country, while most of the large European powers, such as Britain and France, had no economic or political interest in the Congo. Powerful British, American, and French figures criticized the state of affairs while turning a blind eye to the atrocities of their own countries’ colonies.

In 1913, Roger Casement, now a knight of the British Empire, retired from consular service and devoted himself to fighting for Irish independence from Great Britain. Casement tried to buy guns and raise an army to fight against British forces in Ireland; he even proposed sending Irish troops to Egypt to help the Egyptians fight for their own independence from the British Empire. Casement was eventually arrested and tried for high treason. The case prompted an international outpouring of sympathy for Casement, but, nevertheless, he was found guilty and sent to prison. When the police discovered his diary, full of evidence of his homosexuality, they made copies and distributed them to the newspapers, essentially ending any possibility that Casement could appeal his sentence. Casement was executed for his treason.

In 1914, Morel entered a new phase of his life when he became one of the most famous people in Britain to protest World War I. Morel’s decision made him extremely unpopular, and many of his old friends and allies deserted him instead of tarnishing their own reputations by association. Morel’s position on World War I now seems ahead of its time: not only did he protest the pointlessness of the war, but he argued, after the war ended, that harsh peace terms for Germany could lead to another world war. Morel was imprisoned for protesting the war, in the same prison in which Casement had been executed one year previously.

When Morel was released from prison in 1918, he was surprised to find himself a hero to the British Labor Party (which had gradually become more and more opposed to the war). He was elected to Parliament in Dundee, Scotland, and he was one of the party’s most important voices on foreign policy in the early 1920s. In 1924, records now show, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize; tragically, he died the same year. He was mourned at enormous memorial services in Dundee, London, and New York