An 1890 Open Letter to Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo
George
Washington Williams, “An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II,
King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo By
Colonel, The Honorable Geo. W. Williams, of the United States of
America,” 1890
His Serene Majesty Leopold II
Good and Great Friend,
I have the honour to submit for your
Majesty’s consideration some reflections respecting the Independent
State of Congo, based upon a careful study and inspection of the country
and character of the personal Government you have established upon the
African Continent.
It afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me last year, of visiting your State in Africa; and how thoroughly I have been disenchanted, disappointed and disheartened, it is now my painful duty to make known to your Majesty in plain but respectful language. Every charge which I am about to bring against your Majesty’s personal Government in the Congo has been carefully investigated; a list of competent and veracious witnesses, documents, letters, official records and data has been faithfully prepared, which will be deposited with Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, until such time as an International Commission can be created with power to send for persons and papers, to administer oaths, and attest the truth or falsity of these charges.
It afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me last year, of visiting your State in Africa; and how thoroughly I have been disenchanted, disappointed and disheartened, it is now my painful duty to make known to your Majesty in plain but respectful language. Every charge which I am about to bring against your Majesty’s personal Government in the Congo has been carefully investigated; a list of competent and veracious witnesses, documents, letters, official records and data has been faithfully prepared, which will be deposited with Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, until such time as an International Commission can be created with power to send for persons and papers, to administer oaths, and attest the truth or falsity of these charges.
Henry M. Stanley
There were instances in which Mr.
HENRY M. STANLEY sent one white man, with four or five Zanzibar
soldiers, to make treaties with native chiefs. The staple argument was
that the white man’s heart had grown sick of the wars and rumours of war
between one chief and another, between one village and another; that
the white man was at peace with his black brother, and desired to
“confederate all African tribes” for the general defense and public
welfare. All the sleight-of- hand tricks had been carefully rehearsed,
and he was now ready for his work. A number of electric batteries had
been purchased in London, and when attached to the arm under the coat,
communicated with a band of ribbon which passed over the palm of the
white brother’s hand, and when he gave the black brother a cordial grasp
of the hand the black brother was greatly surprised to find his white
brother so strong, that he nearly knocked him off his feet in giving him
the hand of fellowship. When the native inquired about the disparity of
strength between himself and his white brother, he was told that the
white man could pull up trees and perform the most prodigious feats of
strength. Next came the lens act. The white brother took from his pocket
a cigar, carelessly bit off the end, held up his glass to the sun and
complaisantly smoked his cigar to the great amazement and terror of his
black brother. The white man explained his intimate relation to the sun,
and declared that if he were to request him to burn up his black
brother’s village it would be done. The third act was the gun trick. The
white man took a percussion cap gun, tore the end of the paper which
held the powder to the bullet, and poured the powder and paper into the
gun, at the same time slipping the bullet into the sleeve of the left
arm. A cap was placed upon the nipple of the gun, and the black brother
was implored to step off ten yards and shoot at his white brother to
demonstrate his statement that he was a spirit, and, therefore, could
not be killed. After much begging the black brother aims the gun at his
white brother, pulls the trigger, the gun is discharged, the white man
stoops . . . and takes the bullet from his shoe!
Former Confederate Soldier Henry Morgan Stanley
By such means as these, too
silly and disgusting to mention, and a few boxes of gin, whole villages
have been signed away to your Majesty.
When I arrived in the
Congo, I naturally sought for the results of the brilliant programme:
“fostering care”, “benevolent enterprise”, an “honest and practical
effort” to increase the knowledge of the natives “and secure their
welfare”. 1 had never been able to conceive of Europeans, establishing a
government in a tropical country, without building a hospital; and yet
from the mouth of the Congo River to its head-waters, here at the
seventh cataract, a distance of 1,448 miles, there is not a solitary
hospital for Europeans, and only three sheds for sick Africans in the
service of the State, not fit to be occupied by a horse. Sick sailors
frequently die on board their vessels at Banana Point; and if it were
not for the humanity of the Dutch Trading Company at that place—who have
often opened their private hospital to the sick of other countries—many
more might die. There is not a single chaplain in the employ of your
Majesty’s Government to console the sick or bury the dead. Your white
men sicken and die in their quarters or on the caravan road, and seldom
have Christian burial. With few exceptions, the surgeons of your
Majesty’s Government have been gentlemen of professional ability,
devoted to duty, but usually left with few medical stores and no
quarters in which to treat their patients. The African soldiers and
labourers of your Majesty’s Government fare worse than the whites,
because they have poorer quarters, quite as bad as those of the natives;
and in the sheds, called hospitals, they languish upon a bed of bamboo
poles without blankets, pillows or any food different from that served
to them when well, rice and fish.
I was anxious to see to what extent
the natives had “adopted the fostering care” of your Majesty’s
“benevolent enterprise” (?), and I was doomed to bitter disappointment.
Instead of the natives of the Congo “adopting the fostering care” of
your Majesty’s Government, they everywhere complain that their land has
been taken from them by force; that the Government is cruel and
arbitrary, and declare that they neither love nor respect the Government
and its flag. Your Majesty’s Government has sequestered their land,
burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and
children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail.
It is natural that they everywhere shrink from “the fostering care” your
Majesty’s Government so eagerly proffers them.
There has been, to my absolute
knowledge, no “honest and practical effort made to increase their
knowledge and secure their welfare.” Your Majesty’s Government has never
spent one franc for educational purposes, nor instituted any practical
system of industrialism. Indeed the most unpractical measures have been
adopted against the natives in nearly every respect; and in the capital
of your Majesty’s Government at Boma there is not a native employed. The
labour system is radically unpractical; the soldiers and labourers of
your Majesty’s Government are very largely imported from Zanzibar at a
cost of £10 per capita, and from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Accra and Lagos
at from £1 to £1/10 per capita. These recruits are transported under
circumstances more cruel than cattle in European countries. They eat
their rice twice a day by the use of their fingers; they often thirst
for water when the season is dry; they are exposed to the heat and rain,
and sleep upon the damp and filthy decks of the vessels often so
closely crowded as to lie in human ordure. And, of course, many die.
Upon the arrival of the survivors in
the Congo they are set to work as labourers at one shilling a day; as
soldiers they are promised sixteen shillings per month, in English
money, but are usually paid off in cheap handkerchiefs and poisonous
gin. The cruel and unjust treatment to which these people are subjected
breaks the spirits of many of them, makes them distrust and despise your
Majesty’s Government. They are enemies, not patriots.
There are from sixty to seventy
officers of the Belgian army in the service of your Majesty’s Government
in the Congo of whom only about thirty are at their post; the other
half are in Belgium on furlough. These officers draw double pay—as
soldiers and as civilians. It is not my duty to criticise the unlawful
and unconstitutional use of these officers coming into the service of
this African State. Such criticism will come with more grace from some
Belgian statesman, who may remember that there is no constitutional or
organic relation subsisting between his Government and the purely
personal and absolute monarchy your Majesty has established in Africa.
But I take the liberty to say that many of these officers are too young
and inexperienced to be entrusted with the difficult work of dealing
with native races. They are ignorant of native character, lack wisdom,
justice, fortitude and patience. They have estranged the natives from
your Majesty’s Government, have sown the seed of discord between tribes
and villages, and some of them have stained the uniform of the Belgian
officer with murder, arson and robbery. Other officers have served the
State faithfully, and deserve well of their Royal Master.
From these general observations I wish now to pass to specific charges against your Majesty’s Government.
FIRST.—Your Majesty’s Government is
deficient in the moral military and financial strength, necessary to
govern a territory o 1,508,000 square miles, 7,251 miles of navigation,
and 31,694 square miles of lake surface. In the Lower Congo River there
is but One post, in the cataract region one. From Leopoldville to
N’Gombe, a distance of more than 300 miles, there is not a single
soldier or civilian. Not one out of every twenty State-officials know
the language of the natives, although they are constantly issuing laws,
difficult even for Europeans, and expect the natives to comprehend and
obey them. Cruelties of the most astounding character are practised by
the natives, such as burying slaves alive in the grave of a dead chief,
cutting off the heads of captured warriors in native combats, and no
effort is put forth by your Majesty’s Government to prevent them.
Between 800 and 1,000 slaves are sold to be eaten by the natives of the
Congo State annually; and slave raids, accomplished by the most cruel
and murderous agencies, are carried on within the territorial limits of
your Majesty’s Government which is impotent. There are only 2,300
soldiers in the Congo.
SECOND.—Your Majesty’s Government has
established nearly fifty posts, consisting of from two to eight
mercenary slave-soldiers from the East Coast. There is no white
commissioned officer at these posts; they are in charge of the black
Zanzibar soldiers, and the State expects them not only to sustain
themselves, but to raid enough to feed the garrisons where the white men
are stationed. These piratical, buccaneering posts compel the natives
to furnish them with fish, goats, fowls, and vegetables at the mouths of
their muskets; and whenever the natives refuse to feed these vampires,
they report to the main station and white officers come with an
expeditionary force and burn away the homes of the natives. These black
soldiers, many of whom are slaves, exercise the power of life and death.
They are ignorant and cruel, because they do not comprehend the
natives; they are imposed upon them by the State. They make no report as
to the number of robberies they commit, or the number of lives they
take; they are only required to subsist upon the natives and thus
relieve your Majesty’s Government of the cost of feeding them. They are
the greatest curse the country suffers now.
THIRD.—Your Majesty’s Government is
guilty of violating its contracts made with its soldiers, mechanics and
workmen, many of whom are subjects of other Governments. Their letters
never reach home.
FOURTH.—The Courts of your Majesty’s
Government are abortive, unjust, partial and delinquent. I have
personally witnessed and examined their clumsy operations. The laws
printed and circulated in Europe “for the Protection of the blacks” in
the Congo, are a dead letter and a fraud. T have heard an officer of the
Belgian Army pleading the cause of a white man of low degree who had
been guilty of beating and stabbing a black man, and urging race
distinctions and prejudices as good and sufficient reasons why his
client should be adjudged innocent. I know of prisoners remaining in
custody for six and ten months because they were not judged. T saw the
white servant of the Governor-General, CAMILLE JANSSEN, detected in
stealing a bottle of wine from a hotel table. A few hours later the
Procurer-General searched his room and found many more stolen bottles of
wine and other things, not the property of servants. No one can be
prosecuted in the State of Congo without an order of the
Governor-General, and as he refused to allow his servant to be arrested,
nothing could be done. The black servants in the hotel, where the wine
had been stolen, had been often accused and beaten for these thefts, and
now they were glad to be vindicated. But to the surprise of every
honest man, the thief was sheltered by the Governor General of your
Majesty’s Government.
FIFTH—Your Majesty’s Government is
excessively cruel to its prisoners, condemning them, for the slightest
offences, to the chain gang, the like of which can not be seen in any
other Government in the civilized or uncivilized world. Often these
ox-chains eat into the necks of the prisoners and produce sores about
which the flies circle, aggravating the running wound; so the prisoner
is constantly worried. These poor creatures are frequently beaten with a
dried piece of hippopotamus skin, called a “chicote”, and usually the
blood flows at every stroke when well laid on. But the cruelties visited
upon soldiers and workmen are not to be compared with the sufferings of
the poor natives who, upon the slightest pretext, are thrust into the
wretched prisons here in the Upper River. I cannot deal with the
dimensions of these prisons in this letter, but will do so in my report
to my Government.
SIXTH.—Women are imported into your
Majesty’s Government for immoral purposes. They are introduced by two
methods, viz., black men are dispatched to the Portuguese coast where
they engage these women as mistresses of white men, who pay to the
procurer a monthly sum. The other method is by capturing native women
and condemning them to seven years’ servitude for some imaginary crime
against the State with which the villages of these women are charged.
The State then hires these woman out to the highest bidder, the officers
having the first choice and then the men. Whenever children are born of
such relations, the State maintains that the women being its property
the child belongs to it also.
Not long ago a Belgian trader had a
child by a slave-woman of the State, and he tried to secure possession
of it that he might educate it, but the Chief of the Station where he
resided, refused to be moved by his entreaties. At length he appealed to
the Governor-General, and he gave him the woman and thus the trader
obtained the child also. This was, however, an unusual case of
generosity and clemency; and there is only one post that I know of where
there is not to be found children of the civil and military officers of
your Majesty’s Government abandoned to degradation; white men bringing
their own flesh and blood under the lash of a most cruel master, the
State of Congo.
SEVENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government is
engaged in trade and commerce, competing with the organised trade
companies of Belgium, England, France, Portugal and Holland. It taxes
all trading companies and exempts its own goods from export-duty, and
makes many of its officers ivory-traders, with the promise of a liberal
commission upon all they can buy or get for the State. State soldiers
patrol many villages forbidding the natives to trade with any person but
a State official, and when the natives refuse to accept the price of
the State, their goods are seized by the Government that promised them
“protection”. When natives have persisted in trading with the
trade-companies the State has punished their independence by burning the
villages in the vicinity of the trading houses and driving the natives
away.
EIGHTH.—Your Majesty’s Government has
violated the General Act of the Conference of Berlin by firing upon
native canoes; by confiscating the property of natives; by intimidating
native traders, and preventing them from trading with white trading
companies; by quartering troops in native villages when there is no war;
by causing vessels bound from “Stanley-Pool” to “Stanley-Falls”, to
break their journey and leave the Congo, ascend the Aruhwimi river to
Basoko, to be visited and show their papers; by forbidding a mission
steamer to fly its national flag without permission from a local
Government; by permitting the natives to carry on the slave- trade, and
by engaging in the wholesale and retail slave-trade itself.
NINTH.—-Your Majesty’s Government has
been, and is now, guilty of waging unjust and cruel wars against
natives, with the hope of securing slaves and women, to minister to the
behests of the officers of your Government. In such slave-hunting raids
one village is armed by the State against the other, and the force thus
secured is incorporated with the regular troops. I have no adequate
terms with which to depict to your Majesty the brutal acts of your
soldiers upon such raids as these. The soldiers who open the combat are
usually the bloodthirsty cannibalistic Bangalas, who give no quarter to
the aged grandmother or nursing child at the breast of its mother. There
are instances in which they have brought the heads of their victims to
their white officers on the expeditionary steamers, and afterwards eaten
the bodies of slain children. In one war two Belgian Army officers saw,
from the deck of their steamer, a native in a canoe some distance away.
He was not a combatant and was ignorant of the conflict in progress
upon the shore, some distance away. The officers made a wager of £5 that
they could hit the native with their rifles. Three shots were fired and
the native fell dead, pierced through the head, and the trade canoe was
transformed into a funeral barge and floated silently down the river.
TENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government is
engaged in the slave-trade, wholesale and retail. It buys and sells and
steals slaves. Your Majesty’s Government gives £3 per head for able
bodied slaves for military service. Officers at the chief stations get
the men and receive the money when they are transferred to the State;
but there are some middle-men who only get from twenty to twenty-five
francs per head. Three hundred and sixteen slaves were sent down the
river recently, and others are to follow. These poor natives are sent
hundreds of miles away from their villages, to serve among other natives
whose language they do not know. When these men run away a reward of
1,000 N’taka is offered. Not long ago such a recaptured slave was given
one hundred “chikote” each day until he died. Three hundred
N’taka—brassrod-—is the price the State pays for a slave, when bought
from a native. The labour force at the stations of your Majesty’s
Government in the Upper River is composed of slaves of all ages and both
sexes.
ELEVENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government
has concluded a contract with the Arab Governor at this place for the
establishment of a line of military posts from the Seventh Cataract to
Lake Tanganyika territory to which your Majesty has no more legal claim,
than I have to be Commander-in-Chief of the Belgian army. For this work
the Arab Governor is to receive five hundred stands of arms, five
thousand kegs of powder, and £20,000 sterling, to he paid in several
instalments. As I write, the news reaches me that these much- treasured
and long-looked for materials of war are to be discharged at Basoko, and
the Resident here is to be given the discretion as to the distribution
of them. There is a feeling of deep discontent among the Arabs here, and
they seem to feel that they are being trifled with. As to the
significance of this move Europe and America can judge without any
comment from me, especially England.
TWELFTH—The agents of your Majesty’s
Government have misrepresented the Congo country and the Congo railway.
Mr. H. M. STANLEY, the man who was your chief agent in setting up your
authority in this country, has grossly misrepresented the character of
the country. Instead of it being fertile and productive it is sterile
and unproductive. The natives can scarcely subsist upon the vegetable
life produced in some parts of the country. Nor will this condition of
affairs change until the native shall have been taught by the European
the dignity, utility and blessing of labour. There is no improvement
among the natives, because there is an impassable gulf between them and
your Majesty’s Government, a gulf which can never be bridged. HENRY M.
STANLEY’S name produces a shudder among this simple folk when mentioned;
they remember his broken promises, his copious profanity, his hot
temper, his heavy blows, his severe and rigorous measures, by which they
were mulcted of their lands. His last appearance in the Congo produced a
profound sensation among them, when he led 500 Zanzibar soldiers with
300 camp followers on his way to relieve EMIN PASHA. They thought it
meant complete subjugation, and they fled in confusion. But the only
thing they found in the wake of his march was misery. No white man
commanded his rear column, and his troops were allowed to straggle,
sicken and die; and their bones were scattered over more than two
hundred miles of territory.
CONCLUSIONS
Against the deceit, fraud, robberies,
arson, murder, slave-raiding, and general policy of cruelty of your
Majesty’s Government to the natives, stands their record of unexampled
patience, long-suffering and forgiving spirit, which put the boasted
civilisation and professed religion of your Majesty’s Government to the
blush. During thirteen years only one white man has lost his life by the
hands of the natives, and only two white men have been killed in the
Congo. Major Barttelot was shot by a Zanzibar soldier, and the captain
of a Belgian trading-boat was the victim of his own rash and unjust
treatment of a native chief.
All the crimes perpetrated in the
Congo have been done in your name, and you must answer at the bar of
Public Sentiment for the misgovernment of a people, whose lives and
fortunes were entrusted to you by the august Conference of Berlin,
1884—1 885. I now appeal to the Powers which committed this infant State
to your Majesty’s charge, and to the great States which gave it
international being; and whose majestic law you have scorned and
trampled upon, to call and create an International Commission to
investigate the charges herein preferred in the name of Humanity,
Commerce, Constitutional Government and Christian Civilization.
I base this appeal upon the terms of
Article 36 of Chapter VII of the General Act of the Conference of
Berlin, in which that august assembly of Sovereign States reserved to
themselves the right “to introduce into it later and by common accord
the modifications or ameliorations, the utility of which may be
demonstrated experience”.
I appeal to the Belgian people and to their Constitutional Government, so proud of its traditions, replete with the song and story of its champions of human liberty, and so jealous of its present position in the sisterhood of European States—to cleanse itself from the imputation of the crimes with which your Majesty’s personal State of Congo is polluted.
I appeal to Anti-Slavery Societies in all parts of Christendom, to Philanthropists, Christians, Statesmen, and to the great mass of people everywhere, to call upon the Governments of Europe, to hasten the close of the tragedy your Majesty’s unlimited Monarchy is enacting in the Congo.
I appeal to our Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect love, in witness of the purity of my motives and the integrity of my aims; and to history and mankind I appeal for the demonstration and vindication of the truthfulness of the charge I have herein briefly outlined.
And all this upon the word of honour of a gentleman, I subscribe myself your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant,
GEO. W. WILLIAMS
Stanley Falls, Central Africa,
July 18th, 1890.
