User talk:Brigade Piron/sandbox6

Cliftonian comments[edit]

I'll list thoughts on User:Brigade Piron/sandbox6 as I read through:

Lead

You do quite well to keep to NPOV here but the statement "Individual white administrators were also free to indulge their own sadism." is problematic. perhaps switch this out for an attributed statement for a historian or something.
You'd also probably want to attribute the claim for disease being the main cause for the drop in population as this is likely to be challenged
Ditto the assertion that the chopping off of hands was done by "rogue" askaris
copyedited a bit here
You'd probably want the lead image to be something more than just a picture of Leopold—perhaps the one of the missionary holding the young man's handless arm. File:Victim of Congo atrocities, Congo, ca. 1890-1910 (IMP-CSCNWW33-OS10-19).jpg

Background

I see some "z"s in here where there should in BrE be "s"s—colonisation, organisation, etc

I'll come back later — Cliftonian (talk) 09:16, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed I never wrote you a message to thank you for your comments here, for which I'm very sorry. They've certainly been noted, though. I hope I've addressed some of them already - the pic is an interesting point in particular. I know Leopold is not the most engaging first photo, but I wanted a picture of him somewhere and the lead was all that was available. I'm dead against using "shock" photos though - I know we're not a censored website, but I feel such pictures should only be used where they actually help to illustrate the text. I think the one you refer to is already imbedded further down in the article. —Brigade Piron (talk) 15:40, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Elphion comments[edit]

(comments moved here from the previous section to start a new section)

I would amplify on that a bit. Much of the draft is well done, and I do not doubt you are trying hard for NPOV. But I have to say it still feels overall like an exculpation of Leopold, an attempt to gloss over and defuse the true enormity of the disaster he set in motion. It starts with the uncritical description of the Berlin conference and Leopold's "private charitable organisation" -- both carefully orchestrated by Leopold as PR ploys to hide his true intent, as virtually all modern historians agree. You portray Leopold as protesting the atrocities, yet he did nothing to stop them in this territory over which he had total administrative control. (See plausible deniability.) While he gathered detailed reports from the Congo, he deliberately kept even his officials in the Congo in the dark, with the result that only he had a good idea of all that was going on. And of course, there is his final conflagration of all the records at Laeken before he relinquished control to Belgium.

The whole section on population decline feels like special pleading. Of course disease has always been a problem, especially in the tropics, but the abnormal incidence in the Congo during the Free State period was clearly due to the hardships occasioned by the colonial regime. (Just as your other example in Latin America was the direct result of colonialism.) You have found Vansina backtracking (an interesting point I was not aware of); but what of the other sources mentioned by Hochschild? It's important not to leave Vansina's second thoughts seem like the final verdict. You downplay the one hard contemporary datum (the 1924 census), and end with "historians agree that it is impossible to accurately predict the size of population fall or the number of deaths", as though any attempt to gauge the order of magnitude is an attempt to smear the Free State regime. (I know you didn't say that, but that's how it reads to me.) Similarly, stating baldly that "Most of the violence perpetrated in the Congo was inflicted on Africans by other Africans" hides that many of those Africans were acting for the regime, and many others simply desperate from the ensuing economic collapse.

Having gotten that off my chest, I applaud the much better organization and detail of your account. It gives a much better view of what actually happened in the Free State. It just needs a bit more tweaking so that Leopold's responsibility is clear.

-- Elphion (talk) 16:19, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Elphion, I know it's some months now since you made your suggestions above, but please be assured I've read them carefully. I wondered if you might be interested in making some of the tweaks you suggested yourself on the draft? —Brigade Piron (talk) 09:58, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, limited time at present. The treatment at Congo Free State of Leopold's role in setting up and running the Free State is currently reasonably accurate -- ~~and the version there already owes much to your editing~~ (correction: I was confusing this with Royal Question, which you improved significantly). Regarding the "Death toll", I have some time ago added a paragraph there specifically to balance the disingenuous hand-wringing that "nothing can be known". (Naturally, I feel my addition renders this "fair and balanced" :-) I have seen no source more recent than Hochschild, so I can't judge properly how the most recent scholarship is handling this; but the previous track record of several Belgian scholars (though by no means all) shows a general (and understandable) unwillingness to face this period in a truly unbiased way. It is therefore important to include balancing viewpoints. And of course, fairly evaluating this exceptionally capable but complex monarch will always be problematic. -- Elphion (talk) 21:26, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments. I wonder if Elphion or Cliftonian think that it might be worth totally culling the "responsibility" section? Initially I only created it to house the Stengers quotes about Leopold which I thought worth including, but re-reading your comments I do see that the creation of a whole section on the issue does look a bit like apologism. Do you think it might be better incorporated elsewhere? —Brigade Piron (talk) 09:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]