Draft:Child Colonies Under King Leopold II

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Child Colonies Under King Leopold II From 1885 to 1908, the Congo Free State was privately owned by King Leopold II where he forced the native people to harvest resources, mainly rubber and ivory, for his own profit. The Congolese people worked under horrific conditions including extensive hours, famine, and brutal punishments for not meeting their production quotas. To increase the number of soldiers and labor force of the Congo Free State, King Leopold II instituted child colonies. Child colonies consisted of barracks in “Boma, Leopoldville, and Stanleyville for children between twelve and twenty.” Other colonies were later established by Catholic missionaries who carried out the same practice because these groups were loyal to the king and his regime. Children would live in these barracks and attend school where they learned to become productive workers that would collect these natural resources and ensured loyalty to the regime. This program established a cheap labor force and soldiers that could serve militarily for the Congo Free State and the Force Publique (the militant group overseeing the labor of other Congolese people). Children suffered cruelty through kidnapping, harsh labor, disease, and gruesome punishments under King Leopold.

Background King Leopold II headed a group of European investors looking to profit from the resources of the Congo where, by 1884, he signed 450 treaties with African entities that allowed him to control each of the local governments that collectively made the Congo Free State. The king was immensely interested in colonial expansion to increase not only his wealth but more importantly his power. In becoming the only European to privately own African territory, King Leopold II vowed to bring civilization to a region he believed to be uncivilized. He believed that “forced labor was ‘the only way to civilize and uplift these indolent and corrupt peoples of the Far East.’” These gruesome policies created unbearable conditions and are believed to have caused eight to ten million deaths of the Congolese people throughout his reign in the region. Attempting to control the region, exploit its resources, and civilize the alleged uncivilized, King Leopold II used tactics of forced labor and beatings that ensured quotas would be met. When a Congolese person did not meet the rubber quota, the Force Publique would amputate that person’s hands. These practices did not only affect men and women, but children as well. One observer noted that there were “seven to nine-year-olds each carrying a load of twenty-two pounds” of harvested materials where if they made a mistake they would be severely punished. A Belgian prosecutor describing one of the punishments that he witnessed writes: “‘Some thirty urchins, of whom several were seven or eight years old, lined up and waiting their turn, watching, terrified, their companions being flogged.’” King Leopold II decided to expand on these approaches later by setting up child colonies to maximize efficiency.

Catholic Missionaries King Leopold II relied on the Catholic missionaries to exert power and influence over the region by targeting children. Catholic missionaries were Belgians who were loyal to the king and helped establish systems to increase Belgium’s control of the region and the collection of the Congo’s resources by providing religious instruction, vocational education, and military training. These Catholic missionaries played a large role in creating child colonies outside of the three established by the king and overseeing the day-to-day instruction and discipline within those colonies. The king financially supported the Catholic missionaries, ensuring that they were loyal to him and the goals of his regime. Different from Protestant missionaries who consisted of foreigners and were outside the king’s control, the Catholic missionaries were responsible for setting up colonies that managed and punished these children while producing a labor force and soldiers that the king would utilize if these children survived life in the colonies.

Kidnapping and Transport The barbarous conditions the Congolese children were subjected to in the colonies began with acquiring these children. Children who were believed to be orphans were sent to the barracks and many of these children were orphans because the Force Publique murdered their parents. During the frequent raids of the region, European soldiers and the Force Publique would take children and give them to Catholic missionaries to populate these schools and colonies. Other children were simply kidnapped from their parents and forced to endure the long harsh journey to the established colonies. On a forced march to one of the colonies, 108 boys began the journey, but only 62 arrived at the destination with eight of them dying in the following weeks. Another account recorded by a Catholic colony for girls reads: “‘Several of the little girls were so sickly on their arrival that…our good sisters couldn’t save them.’” Transporting the children to these colonies was a not a question of when, it was if they would arrive, and how healthy they would be. One Catholic missionary group recorded that they had to baptize many of the children upon arrival because so many were dying from conditions endured from their journey to the colony, and the missionaries wanted them to make it to heaven. For those who did survive transport, the conditions did not improve.

Conditions within Child Colonies Children in these established colonies endured inhumane conditions that killed vast numbers of children. Children in these colonies were malnourished and disease rampaged throughout the barracks. Each colony was built to house 1,500 children in cramped tight living quarters which facilitated the spread of disease. In most of the colonies, the death rate was over 50 percent due to disease and malnourishment, and the problem was compounded by the brutal forced labor and punishments of these children. These colonies were ruled by the “chicotte and chain” which was the whip used to beat these children and force compliance. The conditions and lives of the children in these colonies violated today’s human rights standards including rampant disease, forced labor, and physical harm.

Recording the Atrocities Catholic missionaries and some Belgian observers recorded information regarding the atrocities King Leopold II and his regime committed against the Congolese children. The sources are significantly skewed and present the king’s, the Belgian Catholic missionaries’, and other white officials’ point of view with very little information from the Congolese people because “there was no written language in the Congo when Europeans first arrived.” Their history is silenced because of the lack of oral histories or documentation of the atrocities from the perspective of the Congolese; however, “the men who seized the Congo often trumpeted their killings, bragging about them in books and newspaper articles…some [even] kept surprisingly frank diaries.” These accounts do not represent the Congolese perspective, but they depict the human rights violations that occurred.

International Awareness and Response The discovery of the human rights abuses drew international attention. The journalist George Washington Williams found out about the exploitation and suffering of the Congolese people in 1890 along with British novelist, Joseph Conrad, who personally witnessed the atrocities committed. These discoveries sparked an international response where England’s Edmund Morel campaigned against King Leopold II and the violence he exerted against the native people. He used pamphlets, newspaper accounts, books, testimony, and pictures from the Catholic missionaries to demonstrate the horrific crimes committed against the men, women, and especially children of the Congo Free State. This campaign helped establish the Congo Reform Association (CRA), and in 1908, pressure from the CRA forced the Belgian government to take responsibility of governing the Congo away from King Leopold II.

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