Congo
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Much of the history of the relationship between the European powers and Africa is one of rape, pillage, and plunder. This was not always the case, however. The Portuguese explorer Diogo Cao reached the mouth of the Congo River in 1483. Diplomatic and commercial relations were established shortly thereafter. The Africans encountered by the Portuguese were considered primitive to be sure, but not less than human (as they would come to be seen by many Europeans). Despite this relationship, the interest of the European powers quickly turned towards the slave trade.
The notorious Rum Triangle, best represented the trade which took place between the European colonies in the Americas and Africa. Slaves were brought from Africa to the West Indies where they were traded for molasses. This molasses was brought north to New England where it was traded for rum that was being distilled in the New England colonies. The rum was then sent across the Atlantic where it was traded for more slave. Clearly the attitude of Europeans towards Africans had shifted from the late fifteenth century. Instead of Africans being considered a cultural nuance, they were considered a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded.
Opposition to slavery in the Americas and Europe in the early nineteenth century eroded the European powers need to plunder Africa of its inhabitants for the slave trade. This did not lead to the end of their interest in Africa, however. In fact it did not even lead to the end of African slavery, just the most brazen type.
Colonialism in the Congo began with the Berlin Conference of 1884. King Leopold II of Belgium had watched for the past decades as parts of Africa came under the colonial rule of the powers of Europe. His Belgium was small in size, but he had no intention of allowing it to miss out on the last piece of Earth not yet colonized. After trying unsuccessfully to buy colonies from the other European powers, hired Henry Morton Stanley to explore the Congo and help establish a Congo state, ruled solely by Leopold (1879-1884). The Portuguese and the British blocked this claim through treaties. The Berlin Conference was held to establish claims and the rule of “effective occupation” was born. In its essence, this rule means that for a country to claim a territory as its own, it must first establish something of an infrastructure and continued occupancy there. Leopold came away form the Berlin Conference with control of the Congo and called it the Congo Free State.
The beginning of the Congo Free State was marked by the want for ivory. This was the material most sought after by the sentries sent by Leopold. The methods used were violent and unscrupuoulous. The Congolese were tricked into signing over their land for a meager amount of European goods, they were subjected to violent campaigns of village burning and crop razing, and they were enslaved into porterdom. The infrastructure, including railways offices and administrative buildings being built in the Congo needed a way to move its supplies. Indigenous people were taken as porters and suffered the harshest of treatment at the hands of their enslavers. The Congolese fought the Belgians incursion vigorously. Tribal leaders organized rebellions, but the Belgians had superior weaponry that they used to sedate uprisings.
Leopold worked a tireless campaign to promote his incursion into Africa as a humanitarian cause. He spoke of making no profit from it called it a liberation and civilization of a savage people. The cause of fighting Arab slave traders was used despite to involuntary servitude of millions of Africans that he was complicitly allowing. When issues of violence were brought up, generals serving in Africa blamed it on the lazy disposition of the African towards work or the savagery faced by his men, when the source of all the violence in the Congo came from the incursion of a foreign people onto land occupied for millennia before.
The discovery of rubber trees in the Congo escalated the violence in the territory. Rubber became the most profitable commercial product yet. The demand for this good led to even more violent methods used by the Belgian empire to satiate its hunger and bloodlust. The cutting off of hands became an institutionalized method of motivation and retaliation. Instead of clearing a forest when new rubber trees needed to be planted, the Belgian administration sanctioned the burning of entire villages to save them the cost