Talk:Belgian Congo

Territories and administrators

The section on Belgian rule indicates that from 1932 there were six provinces, each province divided into 24 districts, and each district divided into 120 territories, with a (presumably Belgian) administrator in charge of each territory. This works out to 17 280 territories in need of an administrator. Since the total Belgian population of the Congo in the period is given as around 17 600, that would imply that nearly every single Belgian in the colony worked as a territorial administrator. I suspect an error somewhere, particularly as it's claimed that a territory could be as large as several Belgian provinces put together, which doesn't work out either – Congo could only be divided into about 800 territories similar in size to a Belgian province. Perhaps it was the provinces, not the districts, that were divided into 120 territories each (i.e. 5 territories per district), for a total of 720 territories?

The statement that "there were 728 administrators controlling the Congo from Belgium" is also confusing. It seems to be saying that these administrators did not leave Belgium. So is this in addition to the on-site territorial administrators? Or supposed on-site administrators who never actually visited their territory? (If so, how could they perform their duties of inspection?) Was this seen as a problem or failure, or was it by design? If I'm correct about the mistake in the count of territories, does that mean that all administrators operated out of Belgium? Did they then have representatives in the territories? Detailed as the description is, it provides more questions than answers.

I don't have access to the sources cited for these sections, so I can't look it up. – Snarkibartfast (talk) 16:45, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

The 17,000 number would not surprise me, though it does seem a bit high. Very few people were allowed to settle in the colony if they were not actually employed by the colonial administration; at least before 1945. I assume the 728 figure refers to civil servants in the Ministry of the Colonies.—Brigade Piron (talk) 16:59, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

I found some figures in this French-language document on the colonial administration inside the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi.

http://www.urome.be/pdf/admin.pdf

"Each province is divided in districts, which in turn are divided in territories. The number of territories will not vary much. In 1960 they numbered 132." (page 194)

"On 31 December 1958, the administration of (Belgian) Africa totaled 10,325 civil servants (fonctionnaires) and service agents (agents de service), including approximately 1750 in the territorial administration." (page 192).--Lubiesque (talk) 00:55, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

needs detail regarding quotas and abuse

There's the picture at the top of people who had their hands cut off because someone in their family(?) failed to meet a quota. Looking through the text, I can't find any further detail about this practice. Anthony Bordain is probably not a good reference for the article, but here's what he said about the Belgian Congo: "Handed outright to Belgium's King Leopold II for his personal exploitation, nearly half its population were worked to death, whipped, dismembered, executed outright or sent running into the bush to die of starvation and disease in a pitiless quest for first ivory and then rubber." He also indicated that the Belgians stripped the country on departure. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I could fill in the blanks? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.94.38.34 (talk) 21:55, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

A good book on the topic is King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild. Red Rubber is another good one, but a heavier read, written by E.D. Morel. Adam Hochschild wrote about it as a historian, and E.D. Morel was an anti-slavery campaigner who wrote about it while it was still happening. If you know French, Jules Marchal also wrote about it. Red Rubber is available for free online from archive.org. Here are some relevant pages. https://archive.org/stream/redrubberstoryof00more#page/42/mode/2up/search/hand https://archive.org/stream/redrubberstoryof00more#page/46/mode/2up/search/hand https://archive.org/stream/redrubberstoryof00more#page/48/mode/2up/search/hand — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashy Waves (talk • contribs) 03:11, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Untitled

• has replicated text from Congo Crisis
• more opinion than history

Rename

I'd suggest renaming Congo Free State and Belgian Congo, as they suggest articles about a former states, when in fact they are just history of a current state article. Consider also an example of History of Poland (1945–1989) vs. People's Republic of Poland, or History of Poland (1569-1795) vs. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 21:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

WWII photo

I don't have much detail about this photo but it might be useful. It's of soldiers in Belgian Congo in 1943.

I believe those are British King's African Rifles troops. As far as I know the Force Publique generally wore a khaki cover over the red fez with the adoption of the 1917 pattern uniform which was more or less the standard uniform until independence in 1960.69.115.242.114 (talk) 20:51, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid that you are mistaken - the badge on the Kepi is very much Force Publique (pre-1944) as are the uniforms. Brigade Piron (talk) 09:13, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion

Suggestion for advanced Wiki user(s) to fix apparent linking problems in right column regarding general statistics.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ctrl freak (talk • contribs) 13:49, 16 May 2006.

I have replaced the infobox tamplate with a table. {{Infobox Country}} is really not appropriate for defunct states. --Ezeu 15:34, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

New International Encyclopedia

Is the entire text of this article from the NIE?? Because I can't find a copy of the NIE in order to verify, and this article has no other references!

I added two, but they're woefully inadequate. It's problems like these that cause Wikipedia to not be taken seriously as a source of academic knowledge! 207.175.48.45 21:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Gross National Product

It's inconceivable to me that the Congo's GNP in the 1950s was greater than that of South Africa. Maybe the greatest among the African colonies--but more than that of Algeria, with its petroleum production? I'll check for data. Dynzmoar 16:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Life Expectancy

The claim that the Belgian Congo life expectancy was 55 in the 1950s, is almost laughable, that would make it a land with lamost no roads, and still some forced labour, and few doctors have a life expectancy above some of the richest lands in the World of the time. This source shows this strange claim is untrue, life expectancy was 38-39.5 in the early 1950s, http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:Y8l_-3MZSvcJ:www.lifetable.de/data/RileyBib.pdf+Congo+%22life+expectancy%22+1940&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk.

This article is unclear, especially towards the end

The article is unclear in its later paragraphs. Who were the 'évolués' and what was their viewpoint? How, when and why did Belgium decide to leave the Congo? How did the elections that are mentioned come about? What were the riots at Léopoldville? Somebody who knows the answers ought to put this right. --APW 07:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

And the entire section on ABAKO has disappeared/not appearing on my screen. I'll insert a link to the article on ABAKO, but i'm not sure how reliable that article is either...76.205.56.93 (talk) 17:24, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Clarification Needed

==

In the 1908-1945 section the word arachid indicates a need for clarification. That is the French word for peanut. Hope that helps. (talk) 8 Dec 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris Latour (talk • contribs) 18:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Slaughter of millions

Seemingly missing from the article is the fact that an estimated 8-10 million Congolese were killed during the reign of Leopold II. This must be further emphasized.

This is adressed in the article Congo Free State.--91.181.192.228 (talk) 19:15, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Because it never happened. The book Heart of Darkness is set in this area which is a fictionalized version of a real travelogue but only one guy got murdered in that account. Erose9210 (talk) 21:40, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Belgians in Congo table

I changed the class on the table so that the page does not have as much white space on it. If you have another option like this please suggest it. Sadads (talk) 00:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Genozide in Belgian Kongo

It is quite surprising to see that the cruel Belgium regime is hardly mentioned. With one decade 10mio people died as a result of the colonial regime! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.198.184.90 (talk) 12:58, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

This is adressed in the article Congo Free State.--91.181.192.228 (talk) 19:19, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

not anymore, right now there's just a small segment about a humanitarian crisis —Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.5.184.66 (talk) 09:10, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Atrocities by King Leopold II in Belgian Congo

Several paragraphs will briefly explain the machinations of King Leopold II to enslave the people of Congo for the benefit of Belgium. Discovery of the Rubber, invention of Goodyear to make cycle tyres and subsequent demand for rubber etc made the atrocities even worse for the people. I will gather this information from other textbooks and include it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Psseshadri (talk • contribs) 11:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid that your comment about enslavement "for the benefit of Belgium" is untrue. The Congo Free State was run for the Benefit of Leopold and the company that he ran. Comparatively, Belgium had little impact in the Congo until the period immediately before annexation in 1908. Plenty of sources indictate this: Ascherson's "The King Incorporated"/ Slade's "King Leopold's Congo" and Packenham "The Scramble for Africa" and even in "Red Rubber" by Morel to name just a few. As for the rest of your comments, I believe this is addressed in the Congo Free State article. Brigade Piron (talk) 09:20, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Difference between Congo Free State and Belgian Congo

Can we keep this in mind please? "*Joseph Conrad (1903) Heart of Darkness" in the Books about the Belgian Congo section is, I'm sure, well meant but it does not deal with the Belgian Congo for the simple reason that it did not exist at the time. It has now been removed. --(Brigade Piron (talk) 08:24, 12 October 2012 (UTC))

Semi-protection requested

There have been a number of minor, but very destructive, incidences of vandalism to this article within the last couple of weeks and, since this article is of considerable importance to the DRC taskforce of WP:Africa, it would be good to have it protected. The vandalism is at low levels by unregistered users by has often taken quite a bit of time to correct. --Brigade Piron (talk) 19:14, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I made a request for you at WP:RFPP so it is up to the admins there now. --Jnorton7558 (talk) 01:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I have declined that for now; while I acknowledge the importance to WP:Africa (and living in Brussels myself at the moment, so I know a bit about the subject), the frequency of the vandalism is way under the threshold for semiprotection or even pending charges protection level 1. Lectonar (talk) 09:01, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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Links to DAB pages

This article links to Flag of Congo and to Coat of arms of the Congo, both DAB pages. I can see the links below the images in the infobox, but have no idea how they're being generated or how to fix them. Can anyone help? Narky Blert (talk) 12:29, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Slavery

An editor has posted substantially similar content to a number of discussion pages, including this one, asking for help in increasing the amount of coverage about slavery in various articles. The content posted to each page amount to thousands words. It was contrary to WP:CANVAS and WP:FORUMSHOP, and also probably futile, as it would fall under WP:TLDR. The editor has now been blocked indefinitely for disruptive editing. I was intending to remove the content from all but one of the pages it was posted to, both to avoid the risk of having duplication of discussions on the same topic, and also to reduce the amount of unhelpful cluttering of talk pages with absurd walls of text, but I see there have been replies on this page, so rather than removing replies from other editors for now I am collapsing the disruptive content for now. If nobody posts to it again I shall consider removing the section after a while. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 15:14, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

An indefinite block seems overly harsh, but I haven't been a party to the matter except in the last day or so, in responding to the most recent edits here. This is a new user, who appears to be having a hard time wrapping their head around the wide range of strictures, rules, guidelines, and nuances of editing here. That, of course, isn't an excuse, but instead, points to a need for guidance. I noticed that the editor mentioned the Tea House, which is a good start, and which is where the user should spend considerable time under tutelage for lack of a better word. And no, I'm not volunteering. Anastrophe (talk) 18:21, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Extended content

For some reason, large amounts of information about the use of forced labour in the Belgian Congo have been removed, and inaccuracies have been re-added to the article.

The information was referenced. Here are the two references I consider to be of the greatest quality and relevance.

Marchal, Jules (1999). Forced labor in the gold and copper mines: a history of Congo under Belgian rule, 1910-1945. Translated by Ayi Kwei Armah (reprint ed.). Per Ankh Publishers.

Marchal, Jules (2008). Lord Leverhulme's Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo. Translated by Martin Thom. Introduced by Adam Hochschild. London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-84467-239-4. First published as Travail forcé pour l'huile de palme de Lord Leverhulme: L'histoire du Congo 1910-1945, tome 3 by Editions Paula Bellings in 2001.

Here are some additional references. While they are not as comprehensive with respect to the use of forced labour in the Belgian Congo, they do support there are other published authors besides Jules Marchal who have concluded that forced labour did in fact occur in the Belgian Congo.

Rich, Jeremy (Spring 2009). "Lord Leverhulme's Ghost: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo (review)". Project Muse. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. Retrieved 17 March 2018.

Hochschild, Adam (1999). "18. Victory?". King Leopold's Ghost: a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa. Boston: Mariner Books.

Buell, Raymond Leslie (1928). The native problem in Africa, Volume II. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp. 540–544.

Zoellner, Tom (2009). "1 Scalding Fruit". Uranium: war, energy, and the rock that shaped the world. New York: Penguin Group. pp. 4–5.

Lewis, Brian (2008). "Sunlight for Savages". So Clean: Lord Leverhulme, Soap and Civilisation. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 188–190.

Edmondson, Brad (2014). "10: The Sale Agreements". Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry's. San Francisco, California: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Makelele, Albert. This is a Good Country: Welcome to the Congo. pp. 43–44.

De Witte, Ludo (January 9, 2016). "Congolese oorlogstranen: Deportatie en dwangarbeid voor de geallieerde oorlogsindustrie (1940-1945)". DeWereldMorgen.be. Retrieved 17 March 2018.

"Lord Leverhulme". History. Retrieved 17 March 2018.

Mitchell, Donald (2014). The Politics of Dissent: A Biography of E D Morel. SilverWood Books.

"Un autre regard sur l'Histoire Congolaise: Guide alternatif de l'exposition de Tervuren" (PDF). p. 14. Retrieved 17 March 2018.

(Placeholder: I reserve the right to add more references here at a later time.)

Ashy Waves (talk) 15:42, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Overall, the article has an extreme pro-European bias. While information about the extensive forced labour regime (post-1908) has been shortened to a single sentence, blatant innaccuracies like "During the economic boom of the 1920's, many young Congolese men preferred working for international companies, because of the attraction of the cities and the higher wages compared to the rural villages" have been re-added. It's well-documented that Congolese workers were forcibly recruited and in many cases forced to work without adequate food or shelter. The 1920s was not a time when higher wages were attracting people to work for international corporations. The 1920s was a time when the death toll from all this forced labour finally started to go down, although the forced labour still did not end. I tried make the healthcare section more balanced, but the previous, completely pro-Belgian one has been restored. Ashy Waves (talk) 00:35, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Any well-sourced content, that's given appropriate weight, should be able to stand within the article on its merits. While there is no policy or guideline against book citations, I would recommend that if you can bolster them with online citations as well, that helps other editors a lot in verifying the content. Other than that, I encourage you to make the changes you describe. If they're reverted, we can make a call for input here on the talk page to come to a consensus regarding balance, weight, notability, etc etc.. Anastrophe (talk) 01:28, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I already have tried to make changes, and almost all of them have been removed. Additionally, it's been strongly implied that I'll be blocked if I try to re-add anything after other people have removed it. Ashy Waves (talk) 01:35, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Like, copy-pasted below is some of the stuff I tried to add. (Not everything.) It was shortened to a single sentence. Ashy Waves (talk) 01:47, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

There are a number of problems here. First, this is a *lot* of content to add to the article in one or even a few edits. Your peers need an opportunity to review additions, and it's hard to do when there's this much content to parse through. It's best to make additions/changes in numerous smaller edits. Secondly, also related to the volume of content - an encyclopedia entry is supposed to summarize the sources. Much of this is large swaths of quoting, which is discouraged. Our job as editors is to take the source material and add it in 'digestible' chunks. The reader can follow the sources for further details. Thirdly is the matter of balance. While I don't doubt the sincerity of the various authors, there are also likely other authors with different perceptions of the matter. The encyclopedia is, again, to summarize these views and perception, and keep them in proportion to their weight in the literature. Again - I don't doubt that much/most of the material is true; the question is, has it been appropriately summarized, and are there reliable sources that either contradict or modify the perceptions of these authors.

My recommendation - edit 'slowly' and in more manageable sizes. Don't over-use quotes. Summarize. Anastrophe (talk) 03:26, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I didn't add it all at once. I made many small edits. However, it was recently deleted wholesale. If I try to re-add it and continue editing slowly, I'll probably just be blocked. The "slavery isn't important" watchdogs are very powerful and seem to be deleting most of my contributions to Wikipedia. I keep expecting to be blocked just for disagreeing with them on talk pages. They are very aggressive. If you would be willing to add it in, assuming you think you can get away with it without being blocked, I can try placing my version somewhere else, on this talk page maybe, I can try to add a greater variety of perceptions on the matter to hopefully meet your standards (slowly, over time). Ashy Waves (talk) 12:49, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I found instructions on the Teahouse on how to make a sandbox article and put my version of the Belgian Congo article here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ashy_Waves/sandbox Anastrophe, if I continue editing my sandbox to try to better conform to your suggestions, do you think that you would be able to add some of my additions and corrections to the real article without getting blocked yourself? Ashy Waves (talk) 14:02, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

On my talk page someone left a comment stating, "Stop spamming your proposed content all over the place and read WP:CANVASS. Also, do not create RFCs with invalid opening statements." This seems to confirm my fears that I may be blocked soon just for disagreeing with people on talk pages. If that happens I hope you will talk to me on my talk page, Anastrophe. Ashy Waves (talk) 14:24, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

However, this was not enforced. The Belgian government continued to impose forced labor on the natives, although it did gradually become less murderous. Natives who failed to do the work demanded of them were punished with prison, and in prison, the chicotte, a type of whip, was still in use in 1959. For a time, the Congolese were still forced to gather rubber, but just before the World War I, the price of rubber fell as rubber plantations elsewhere in the world began producing. By then, the wild rubber vines in the Congo were largely tapped out.

As Dr. Raingeard described the situation, "Entering into the agreement, and then honouring the contract are enforced by means of prison and the chicotte, which are generously administered by government officials, who have been reduced to acting as labour recruiters and as guards supervising convicts on behalf of the companies. I have frequently had to intervene on behalf of sufferers from sleeping sickness, who are summoned because they do not work regularly. I have seen a territorial agent install himself at a trading post, assemble the fruit cutters, among them a good many old and infirm, and have them dealt as many lashes of the chicotte as there are crates short. When a native, remarkably enough, managed to resist the threats and blows of the merchants, I have seen government officers offering him the choice between signing a contract and prison."

[...]

While conditions were improved somewhat relative to rule under King Leopold, reports by various doctors and officials such as Dr. Lejeune, Victor Daco (head of the sanitation service for the Congo-Kasai), Dr. Mouchet, and Dr. Raingeard show the low importance the Belgian government as a whole, in spite of protests from some of their officials, placed on healthcare and basic education of the natives.

According to Dr. Raingeard, in a report published in 1932 in the Revue de Médecine et d’Hygiène Tropicale, a reputable journal published in Paris, "It is of course the case that when an entire population is put to work, in a manner harmful to its very existence, it cannot be a question of voluntary labour." By threats of prison and the chiocotte, workers were forced to work from morning until night. While the work was painful enough for an adult, in the opinion of Dr. Raingeard, it was an intolerable strain for old men and the infirm, who made up the majority of palm cutters. Unable to supply the required quantities of palm fruit by themselves, the men had to call upon their wives to help them. Children were forced to work too. At one post mentioned by Dr. Raingeard, children aged 5 to 14 made up the entire workforce. This intense forced labour regime resulted in a decline of food cultivation. According to Dr. Raingeard, "Formerly, the men would clear the forest so that the women might cultivate it, and by hunting every day they would provide a regular supply of meat. It would be an error to imagine that in equatorial regions everything simply grows without being tended. The women are now simply workers; the children, dirty and covered in vermin, wander listlessly among the ruined huts. There are no cultivated fields, no large livestock, because the tsete fly reigns supreme; no smaller domestic animals, the natives reckoning that there is no point in tempting the whites any further,; and there is no meat to be had from hunting, for there are no hunters. In short, famine has reigned for years in the whole of the Kwango industrial zone."

According to Hector Maertens, laborers were taken from their homes and marched to the mines with ropes around their necks, under the guard of undisciplined soldiers. Upon arrival, they found unhealthy working conditions, a heavy, stamina-draining workload, insufficient food for the output of energy required, and were housed in sheds that, in Maertens' opinion, were worse than pigsties back home in Europe, all of this in contrast to the conditions the natives had enjoyed before being snatched. Maertens wrote that, "A white boss, a perverted, brutal drunkard, will heap insults and threats on them from morning till night. They get slapped here, cuffed there, and kicked to the ground. If their spirits, pushed to revolt, or their bodies, numbed by pain, refuse to work, they will be whipped, because most of our whites cannot tell the difference between a sick man and a malingerer.” Additionally, "If the laborer is accompanied by his wife, and if the wife is passably good-looking, she quickly becomes the target of the white man’s bestial covetousness. If he refuses to hand her over without fuss, he will be subjected to constant harassment." Some men were jailed for complaining to management about their wives being raped, and whipped if they persisted in complaining.

The Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB), a subsidiary of Lever Brothers, was one of the companies that recruited Africans by force, their numerous agents accompanied by armed auxiliaries. The agents encountered increasing resistance during their tours, or else found villages emptied before they arrived. The first clashes between HCB's labour recruiters and villagers took place in July 1914. For example, a recruiter named Buelens was met by a volley of arrows in the village of Kasamba, and was slightly wounded in the chest. A recruiter named Vanherenthals was attacked in the village of Kisimuna, and suffered serious arrow wounds in the arm and chest. A recruiter named Sosson was met by a volley of arrows, and one of the men accompanying him was wounded in the leg. A recruiter named Monard was also greeted by arrows.

Dr. Emile Lejeune, medical officer of the Congo-Kasi province, drafted a report on 8 December 1923, after a six-day tour inspecting the Lusanga circle, run by HCB. He found rations, accommodation, and clothing to be inadequate, and, in his opinion, single, imported workers could not do the work that was asked of them and still remain healthy under the existing conditions. He wrote that, "I can well understand workers shunning work with the HCB, where they find nothing to attract them, and where nothing is done to render their leisure more pleasant." A number of workers were dying, and while Lejeune found documentation of rates of mortality to be inadequate, he found the most frequent causes of death recorded in 1923 to be bronchial infections and pneumonias, with some cases of septicaemias and at least one of tuberculosis. Dr. Lejeune saw one cemetery with about 150 graves, and other with almost 500 graves, but total casualties would have been higher, since many workers, upon falling ill, returned home to die. The HCB provided blacks with just one meal a day, which in his opinion, provided far too few proteins, carbohydrates, fats and calories. Due to lack of pans and utensils, the preparation was often unhygienic and unpleasing. Some workers, such as the Yanzi, were arranging for caravans of provisions to be brought from home, to compensate for the lack of provisions provided by the HCB. Dr. Lejeune wrote that, "Anyone familiar with the abundant portions the blacks ordinarily consume, and the hygienic conditions under which food is prepared in the villages, will not be surprised at their dissatisfaction with the diet offered at the company posts." No clothing or blankets were provided for the blacks. Since the majority of deaths were due to respiratory ailments, Dr. Lejeune regarded blankets as an absolute necessity. Accommodations were crowded. The camp at Leverville lacked latrines, kitchens, and a rubbish pit, and, in Dr. Lejeune's opinion, was large enough only for a very small fraction of the workers who were at the post when he inspected it. The camp of the Yanzi, housing 400 workers, had straw houses in which 10 to 20 men slept in cramped conditions, on pallets which, in Dr. Lejeune's opinion, only 7 or 8 men at the most ought to have been accommodated. He called the camp "little better than a simple night shelter of poor quality." Overall, Dr. Lejeune found unclean, uncared for houses, too small for the number of men living there, to be the norm, and many camps lacked latrines and other basic services. Dr. Lejeune also found medical facilities, medical staff, and services to be inadequate. He saw patients sleeping on the ground, without blankets. At a hospital, the three latrines were only badly build Arab trenches, and rations were inadequate. He noted a worker with a fractured thigh, still not mended after three months, who since his accident had been fed a diet without vitamins. Post 8 lacked even the means to dress a wound.

Interim Governor-General Leon Bureau wrote to the Colonial Minister, in a letter dated 4 January 1924, forwarding Dr. Lejeune's report, along with a commentary, in which he mentioned that, "Bosses in Africa persist in blaming their failure to recruit workers on the indolence of the blacks, when the real cause is sought in the fashion in which they treat those in their employ." Sidney Edkins, the managing director of HCB, submitted a memorandum defending against the Lejeune report, but did not dispute Dr. Lejeune's description of the conditions, instead making excuses. For example, the memorandum blamed the government for failing to send more nurses, and complained that providing blankets would be tantamount to doubling the wages of the workers. As Alphonse Rhodain, a chief medical officer, explained in a note dated 24 January 1924, "In asking the Government for more nurses, here too the HCB is avoiding the issue," and "Up until this point the HCB has in no wise shown that Dr. Lejeune's report is not rigorously accurate. On the contrary, the report is highly accurate, and the HCB cannot contest it. In his report, Dr. Lejeune was supposed to state the facts, and this is what he did. The HCB's proposals were really no concern of his, for they had not even begun to be implemented. In the next 13 pages, the HCB once again does not refute any of Dr. Lejeune's statements of fact, as regards the age of workers (statements iterated by me), children on night shift, accommodation, clothing, or food."

Reply

@Ashy Waves, your edits were blatantly incorrect and disruptive. Like this one "The views expressed in the committee notes are not the views of Wikipedia." and this one "Patients were often hospitalized under duress, and patients were most often subjected to quarantine than to any sort of nursing. Patients were often used as guinea pigs for a variety of new medicines, such as atoxyl, a derivative of arsenic which produced blindness more often than recovery.". The Lazarets were mainly built in the Congo Free State era, there was no cure for sleeping sickness in 1908, apart from Arsanilic acid (atoxyl). If untreated, African trypanosomiasis almost always results in death. To claim that this situation lasted from 1908 -1960 is blatantly incorrect and to claim patients were almost never treated is equally incorrect. Most of this user's contributions were blatanly incorrect and/or disruptive for other reasons (like WP:WEIGHT and WP:SOAPBOX, and Righting great wrongs). Ashy Waves' contributions were deleted because of his/her disruptive editing on many other articles and his/her continued dismissal of wikipedia's values and code of conduct. Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum (talk) 02:26, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Most edits were based on: "Lord Leverhulme's Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo.". This is a review of the book, from the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History "There will be ample time to consider how flawed this work is, ...", "Nancy Rose Hunt has rightly critiqued the simplistic narrative of fiendish officials and companies savaging a powerless and faceless mass of Congolese.", "However, bloc quotes and the micro historical treatment of how different officials and company employees wrote one another do not furnish much insight on..".

The book gives an overview of letters and other correspondence between colonial officials, doctors employed by the colonial government, corporate managers and doctors working for these corporations (like Dr. Raingeard), in a few regions of the Belgian Congo in a well defined time span. Ashy Waves again selected parts of the text (usually the disputed parts, like Dr. Raingeard's publication in a French colonial magazine, after being disgruntled for not being reinstated in the HCB and after taking up employment in a French colony.). This is what the user had to say about his/her interpretation of this work (User talk:Ashy Waves) :"The book Lord Leverhulme's Ghosts is 223 pages long, not included the pages of notes and references, and it is an abridged version of the French language original. It is difficult to summarize because of how it is written. Jules Marchal shows much more than he tells.". The user admits not being able to summarize the book and apparently "told us" what Jules Marchal showed us but didn't tell.. .Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum (talk) 03:26, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

@Ashy Waves, because of your uncontrollable spamming of the same sources over and over, I will bundle my replies, in an attempt to keep some kind of structure. I added a link to the "Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History" myself, so to claim I tried to mislead anyone is obviously false, why else would I have done that. The review obviously supports my comment on your talk page, I based my comment on this review b.t.w., "Nancy Rose Hunt has rightly critiqued the simplistic narrative of fiendish officials and companies savaging a powerless and faceless mass of Congolese.". And to claim that the article on the Belgian Congo denies any forced labour is again false "Already in the 1920s, certain members of the Colonial Council in Brussels (among them Octave Louwers) voiced criticism regarding the often brutal recruitment methods employed by the major companies in the mining districts. The stagnation of population growth in many districts—in spite of spectacular successes in the fight against endemic diseases such as sleeping sickness—was another cause for concern. Low birth rates in the countryside and the depopulation of certain areas were typically attributed to the disruption of traditional community life as a result of forced labour migration and mandatory cultivation."

And as for your edits on sleeping sickness, not adding context and dates is misleading and a clear example of WP:WEIGHT. Also, I have consulted the book you mentioned, "David van Reybrouck. Congo: The Epic History of a People.", and checked the book before adding any comments, the paragraphs about sleeping sickness is about 1908-1920, and on the next page it states that in 1918 large numbers of doctors and nurses were sent to the Belgian Congo,.. To actually claim that healthcare was of a low importance is again one of your distortions.Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum (talk) 13:49, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

A sarcastic comment you left on my talk page shows the low value you place on truth or on actually checking references. "The Belgians were and still are monsters. Hochschild is a hero and finally showed how the weak Congolese were abused by the evil Belgians. Men had to work all day and go find rubber and palm oil and gold and copper and many other resources so their children could eat. When they got home, they only had a few hours of sleep. Also the Belgians abused the poor Congolese all day. They were absolute monsters and the Congolese had to work until they died. All day and every day. Hochschild said these things so they are true. All other evidence is Belgian (aka 'evil') propaganda."

I explained on my talk page how your sarcastic remark was full of strawmans. To repeat, "To list your strawmans. 1. "The Belgians were and still are monsters." and "They were absolute monsters" The evidence shows that some Belgians - in particular Belgians who held power during that time period - perpetrated forced labor. Specific Belgians protested, either asking for better conditions for the natives or the abolition of forced labor entirely. Numerous Belgian citizens were doubtless unaware. 2. "Hochschild is a hero and finally showed how the weak Congolese were abused by the evil Belgians." Hochschild was hardly the first person to point this out. The Congo Reform Association, including such figures as E.D. Morel, was instrumental in exposing the brutalities of Leopold's regime. Hochschild was an excellent historian who went through much of the information left behind by the Congo Reform association and presented it in an easier to read format. Jules Marchal also pored over a great deal of primary source material relating to the Congo under King Leopold and the later Belgian government, information that was left thanks to the efforts of people such as Dr. Raingeard and others who were present at the time. 3. "Men had to work all day and go find rubber and palm oil and gold and copper and many other resources so their children could eat." No, not so that their children could eat, but to avoid prison and the chicotte (or worse during the time of King Leopold). This forced labour in fact resulted in widespread starvation. 4. "They were absolute monsters" The Belgians fell along a spectrum, some perpetrating awful abuses, some recommending a lessening of abuses, some opposing forced labour outright 5. "the Congolese had to work until they died" Some but not all Congolese were worked to death. 6. "All day and every day." Periods of forced labor varied. 7. "Hochschild said these things so they are true." There are a great number of primary sources cited by Jules Marchal and others. People who were actually there. 8. "All other evidence is Belgian (aka 'evil') propaganda." Hochschild built work on the evidence left by others. He is not the only decent historian, and in fact the books I cited were by Jules Marchal. However, the piece of information you repeatedly kept trying to add was clearly in stark contradiction to the facts."

One of the passages you are complaining about is this one. "Patients were often hospitalized under duress, and patients were most often subjected to quarantine than to any sort of nursing. Patients were often used as guinea pigs for a variety of new medicines, such as atoxyl, a derivative of arsenic which produced blindness more often than recovery." And then you proceed to engage in an attack on my ability to summarize Jules Marchal's work. However, if you engaged in basic fact-checking, you could see that I in fact cited a different source for that, specifically:

Van Reybrouck, David (2014). "Chapter 3: The Belgians Set us Free: The Early Years of the Colonial Regime". Congo: The Epic History of a People. Translated by Sam Garrett. Harper Collins.

You also make another strawman argument, "To claim that this situation lasted from 1908 -1960 is blatantly incorrect" I didn't give a date range. You simply alleged, falsely, that I gave a date range. You can complain that I should have given a date range, but it shows an utter disregard for truth to claim that I gave one when I didn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashy Waves (talk • contribs) 13:06, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

You quote the review by Jeremy Rich out of context, here is a longer quotation from it, "There will be ample time to consider how flawed this work is, but one must first recognize the tremendous amount of work required to put this text together and how it complicates common narratives of Central African history. Marchal documents in minute detail correspondence between the Unilever company, various officials at different levels of the Belgian colonial administration, and missionaries during World War I and the interwar period. Unilever concessions established between 1911 and 1918 allowed the company to demand local communities surrender their control over forests, coerced thousands of men to work under brutal conditions with poor health care, and obliged many people to hunt and supply food to nourish these plantations. Just as with forced cotton cultivation in Northern Congo as well as in neighboring Ubangi-Shari (Central African Republic), the complaints of individual officials, traders, and missionaries did little to stop the harsh policies of large companies backed by high levels of the colonial administration. In this light, the excesses of concessionary firms under the Independent State of the Congo were hardly unique in the later history of the Belgian Congo, or even for much of Central Africa. The reports cited by Marchal also show how the struggles between Congolese people and Unilever reflected battles over access to the environment. Forests were as much sites of contestation in the Kasai as they were in the better-documented cases of Kenya and German East Africa. African guards forced many men to hunt wild animals and turn in the meat to them, so that they could in turn profit by selling it to the Unilever concessions desperately seeking to feed workers in this thinly-populated region (72–73). There are similar fascinating insights over access to plants and animals embedded in this study, even though this work is by no means meant to be an environmental history or a social history of food supply."

And here is the more critical part of the review, "All the myriad documents Marchal both cites and reproduces as full texts do practically nothing to consider a basic issue each historian of colonial Africa must wrestle with: the agency of Africans themselves. Rarely even do individual names of Congolese emerge from the unrelenting narrative of exploitation. Nancy Rose Hunt has rightly critiqued the simplistic narrative of fiendish officials and companies savaging a powerless and faceless mass of Congolese. One need only look at the treatment of the Pende revolt (146–169) for how woeful this simplistic manner of treating the African colonial past can be. Despite including lyrics of rebel war songs recorded by officials and giving a list of casualties of Africans, Marchal’s unreflective description simply repeats what different officials wrote about the revolt."

So the reviewer does not appear to be contesting the accuracy of the information that Jules Marchal did include. Instead, this is more of a sensitivity issue: the book lacks any slave narratives, for example. I would say that this is likely because Jules Marchal probably didn't find any slave narratives while searching through the archives. What he did find was incriminating documents from government and company officials who were colluding to force the Africans to work for them, as well as some material which protested against the conditions, and in some cases against the idea of forced labour outright, from European sympathizers. The African perspective is revealed at best indirectly; although Jules Marchal does not quote Africans, it is possible for the reader to guess based on descriptions of the conditions, the African responses, and the writings of their European sympathizers.

I would point out that it is rather hypocritical to cite Jeremy Rich's review of Jules Marchal's work as reason to distrust it when he would likely have even harsher comments for the Belgian Congo page on Wikipedia. While Jules Marchal's work may lack slave narratives, at least it thoroughly documents that forced labour did indeed occur. The current Wikipedia page includes only a single sentence acknowledgement of this, and additionally includes blatantly untrue denialist information like, "During the economic boom of the 1920's, many young Congolese men preferred working for international companies, because of the attraction of the cities and the higher wages compared to the rural villages." If Jules Marchal's work failed to meet up to all of Jeremy Rich's exacting standards, he would like this Wikipedia article far, far less.

You write, "The user admits not being able to summarize" write after you quote where I said it was difficult to summarize, not impossible to summarize. That something is difficult does not mean I am unable to do it. It means it requires time and can't be done all at once. This is further evidence of your lack of regard for truth.

You also linked three webpages you clearly don't believe in. "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." The current version of the article gives "undue weight" to denialist views of forced labour. While I admit that my version did not completely fix this, it was at least an improvement. The article is far too flawed to be fixed all at once.

Regarding the soapbox accusation, I do not believe the first applies. I did my best to avoid expressing my own opinions in the article, e.g. a moral or emotional judgement regarding Belgium's forced labour regime. I simply added referenced material showing what others have written about it. If somewhere my own opinion accidentally slipped in, it would have been possible to correct without deleting almost all my contributions. The second also probably does not apply because again, I did my best to avoid adding my own personal opinions to the article, and even if I made a mistake somewhere, it would not justify the wholesale deletion of everything I added. The third does not apply, because I did not include anything "heard through the grapevine" or gossiping. Everything was referenced. Four does not apply, because I added nothing about myself. There was no self-promotion. Five does not apply either, I believe. Whatever people's opinions on whether Jules Marchal should have spent more time thinking about how the Africans must have felt about the forced labour, at least they acknowledge that his work was thoroughly researched. Therefore, SOAPBOX has little if any bearing on my edits.

The righting great wrongs accusation definitely has no relevance to my edits. "We can record the righting of great wrongs, but we can't ride the crest of the wave because we can only report that which is verifiable from reliable and secondary sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion: even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it. So, if you want [...] on Wikipedia, you'll have to wait until it's been reported in mainstream media or published in books from reputable publishing houses. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought or original research. Wikipedia doesn't lead, we follow. Let reliable sources make the novel connections and statements." Jules Marchal thoroughly proved the problem of forced labour. It turns out that many government officials and company officials admitted to it in the documents that Jules Marchal reviewed. If you scroll above, you can see there are other sources which agree with him that forced labour was a problem, including the review you quoted out of context. To repeat.

Rich, Jeremy (Spring 2009). "Lord Leverhulme's Ghost: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo (review)". Project Muse. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. Retrieved 17 March 2018.

Hochschild, Adam (1999). "18. Victory?". King Leopold's Ghost: a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa. Boston: Mariner Books.

Buell, Raymond Leslie (1928). The native problem in Africa, Volume II. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp. 540–544.::

Zoellner, Tom (2009). "1 Scalding Fruit". Uranium: war, energy, and the rock that shaped the world. New York: Penguin Group. pp. 4–5.

Lewis, Brian (2008). "Sunlight for Savages". So Clean: Lord Leverhulme, Soap and Civilisation. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 188–190.

Edmondson, Brad (2014). "10: The Sale Agreements". Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry's. San Francisco, California: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Makelele, Albert. This is a Good Country: Welcome to the Congo. pp. 43–44.

De Witte, Ludo (January 9, 2016). "Congolese oorlogstranen: Deportatie en dwangarbeid voor de geallieerde oorlogsindustrie (1940-1945)". DeWereldMorgen.be. Retrieved 17 March 2018.

"Lord Leverhulme". History. Retrieved 17 March 2018.

Mitchell, Donald (2014). The Politics of Dissent: A Biography of E D Morel. SilverWood Books.

"Un autre regard sur l'Histoire Congolaise: Guide alternatif de l'exposition de Tervuren" (PDF). p. 14. Retrieved 17 March 2018.

Ashy Waves (talk) 12:42, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

This is an article about the state as a wholeccc ,,,,,,,adding all slave this history with quotes here is simply to much and non encyclopaedic. Perhaps best you start articles on this topic all over. Slavery in Belgian Congo etc. --Moxy (talk) 14:28, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

References

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Date of Capital Change

I have changed the dates on this article for the capital change from 1926 to 1923. There is no evidence anywhere for the claim to 1926. This was the edit that introduced it. Their contributions to site consist almost entirely of this topic, making me believe it may be a case of misremembered personal knowledge. Their knowledge seems detailed enough, but no citations were attached, and other sources directly contradict their statement. Interestingly enough, this claim was also independently produced in Boma article in 2005. Perhaps this is where their information came from? — Preceding unsigned comment added by IceWinds (talk • contribs) 08:32, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Independence

"Belgium had ratified article 73 of the United Nations Charter, which advocated self-determination, and both superpowers put pressure on Belgium to reform its Congo policy; the Belgian government tried to resist what it described as 'interference' with its colonial policy."

"both superpowers" -> Who? 2A02:1812:1126:5D00:F4FA:DB70:27DD:3381 (talk) 17:15, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Map Pronlem

sorry to say but I think Italy somehow got Ethiopia? I think it was independent at that time (or that’s Ethiopia and my mind just messed up) anyways I don’t know if that actually happened in 1935. Yowazzup8282 (talk) 15:48, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Eurocentrist/Belgian propaganda

Why no mention about genocide done by Belgians for years against Congo especially durinf Le**old II's reign ? Meanwhile the genocides done by non eurobeans are well written in wikipedia why there is no thing written about european committed genoicides? 88.254.6.246 (talk) 22:29, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Because this article is about the Belgian Congo, not the Congo Free State, which was a different entity. Its like stuffing a page about the German DDR to the brim with info about Nazi Germany. 82.163.44.156 (talk) 12:10, 1 November 2025 (UTC)