콩고 자유국(Congo Free State)

[개요]

- The Congo Free State (French: État indépendant du Congo, lit. "Independent State of the Congo"; Dutch: Kongo-Vrijstaat) was a large state in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908. It was ruled personally by Leopold II and operated entirely separate from Belgium, of which he was also king. Leopold II was able to procure the region by convincing other Eurasian states at the Berlin Conference that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade. 

- The Casement Report of the British Consul Roger Casement led to the arrest and punishment of officials who had been responsible for killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1903

- The loss of life and atrocities inspired literature such as Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness and raised an international outcry.

Background

Early European exploration

- Until the middle of the 19th century, the Congo was at the heart of independent Africa, as European colonialists seldom entered the interior. Along with fierce local resistance,^{[citation needed]} the rainforest, swamps, and attendant malaria, and other diseases such as sleeping sickness made it a difficult environment for Europeans to settle. Western states were at first reluctant to colonize the area in the absence of obvious economic benefits. 

Stanley's exploration

- In 1876 Leopold II of Belgium hosted a geographic conference in Brussels, inviting famous explorers, philanthropists, and members of geographic societies to stir up interest in a "humanitarian" endeavor for Europeans to take in central Africa to "improve" and "civilize" the lives of the indigenous peoples.^[10] At the conference, Leopold organized the International African Association with the cooperation of European and American explorers and the support of several European governments, and was himself elected chairman. Leopold used the association to promote plans to seize independent central Africa under this philanthropic guise.

- Henry Morton Stanley, famous for making contact with British missionary David Livingstone in Africa in 1871, later explored the region during a journey that ended in 1877 and was described in Stanley's 1878 novel Through the Dark Continent.^[11] Failing to enlist British interest in developing the Congo region, Stanley took up service with Leopold II, who hired him to help gain a foothold in the region and annex the region for himself. 

[스탠리는 원래 이 지역에 대해 영국이 관심을 갖기를 원했으나, 영국이 별 관심을 보이지 않자, 레오폴 2세와 협력. 유럽 열강들이 이 지역에 대해서 큰 관심을 가지지 않았다는 것을 알 수 있다. 이 당시만 해도 별다른 자원이 있어 보이지 않고 밀림 지역과 말라리아 등의 장애 요인이 많았음. Early 부분 내용 볼 것.]

- While exploring the Congo for Leopold, Stanley set up treaties with the local chiefs and with native leaders.^[12] Few to none of these tribal leaders had a realistic idea of what they were signing, and, in essence, the documents gave over all rights of their respective pieces of land to King Leopold II. With Stanley's help, Leopold was able to claim a great area along the Congo River, and military posts were established

- Christian de Bonchamps, a French explorer who served Leopold in Katanga, expressed attitudes towards such treaties shared by many Europeans, saying, "The treaties with these little African tyrants, which generally consist of four long pages of which they do not understand a word, and to which they sign a cross in order to have peace and to receive gifts, are really only serious matters for the European powers, in the event of disputes over the territories. They do not concern the black sovereign who signs them for a moment."

King Leopold's campaign

- The king launched a publicity campaign in Britain to distract critics, drawing attention to Portugal's record of slavery, and offering to drive slave traders from the Congo basin. He also secretly told British merchant houses that if he was given formal control of the Congo for this and other humanitarian purposes, he would then give them the same most favored nation (MFN) status Portugal had offered them. At the same time, Leopold promised Bismarck he would not give any one nation special status, and that German traders would be as welcome as any other.

("I do not want to risk ... losing a fine chance to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake."

King Leopold II, to an aide in London

(레오폴 2세의 개인적 야욕이 얼마나 집요했는지를 보여주는 말.)

Lobbying and claiming the region

- Leopold was able to attract scientific and humanitarian backing for the International African Association (French: Association internationale africaine, or AIA), which he formed during a Brussels Geographic Conference of geographic societies, explorers, and dignitaries he hosted in 1876. At the conference, Leopold proposed establishing an international benevolent committee for the propagation of civilization among the peoples of central Africa (the Congo region). Originally conceived as a multi-national, scientific, and humanitarian assembly, the AIA eventually became a development company controlled by Leopold. 

- Leopold established the International African Association, a charitable organization to oversee the exploration and surveying of a territory based around the Congo River, with the stated goal of bringing humanitarian assistance and civilization to the natives. 

- In the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, European leaders officially noted Leopold's control over the 1,000,000 square miles (2,600,000 km²) of the notionally-independent Congo Free State

[베를린 회의에서 이 지역에 대한 지배력을 인정받음]

- On April 22, 1884, thanks to the successful lobbying of businessman Henry Shelton Sanford at Leopold's request, President Chester A. Arthur of the United States decided that the cessions claimed by Leopold from the local leaders were lawful and recognized the International Association of the Congo's claim on the region, becoming the first country to do so. 

[1884년 4월 미국이 제일 먼저 The International Association of the Congo의 지배권의 효력 인정.]

Berlin Conference

- In November 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference to submit the Congo question to international control and to finalize the colonial partitioning of the African continent. Most major powers (including Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States) attended the Berlin Conference, and drafted an international code governing the way that European countries should behave as they acquired African territory. The conference officially recognized the International Congo Association, and specified that it should have no connection with Belgium or any other country, but would be under the personal control of King Leopold, i.e., personal union.

International recognition

Eventually,^[when?] the Congo Free State was recognized as a neutral independent sovereignty^[12] by various European and North American states. 

Government

Leopold used the title Sovereign King as ruler of the Congo Free State. He appointed the heads of the three departments of state: interior, foreign affairs and finances. Each was headed by an administrator-general (administrateur-général), later a secretary-general (secrétaire-général), who was obligated to enact the policies of the sovereign or else resign.

The Free State had an independent judiciary headed by a minister of justice at Boma. The minister was equal in rank to the vice governor-general and initially answered to the governor-general, but was eventually made responsible to the sovereign alone. There was a supreme court composed of three judges, which heard appeals, and below it a high court of one judge. These sat at Boma. In addition to these, there were district courts and public prosecutors (procureurs d'état). Justice, however, was slow and the system ill-suited to a frontier society.

Leopold's rule

- To the temporary new capital of Boma, he [레오폴 2세] sent a governor-general and a chief of police.

- The vast Congo basin was split up into 14 administrative districts, each district into zones, each zone into sectors, and each sector into posts. From the district commissioners down to post level, every appointed head was European. However, with little financial means the Free State mainly relied on local elites to rule and tax the vast and hard-to-reach Congolese interior.

- Leopold pledged to suppress the east African slave trade; promote humanitarian policies; guarantee free trade within the colony; impose no import duties for twenty years; and encourage philanthropic and scientific enterprises.

-  Additionally, the colonial administration liberated thousands of slaves

- 

Four main problems presented themselves over the next few years.

1. Leopold II ran up huge debts to finance his colonial endeavor and risked losing his colony to Belgium.^[25]
2. Much of the Free State was unmapped jungle, which offered little fiscal and commercial return.
3. Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minister of the British Cape Colony (part of modern South Africa), was expanding his British South Africa Company's charter lands from the south and threatened to occupy Katanga (southern Congo) by exploiting the "Principle of Effectivity" loophole in the Berlin Treaty. This was supported by Harry Johnston, British Commissioner for central Africa, who was London's representative in the region.^[26]
4. The Congolese interior was ruled by Arab Zanzibari slavers and sultans, powerful kings and warlords who had to be coerced or defeated by use of force. For example, the slaving gangs of Zanzibar trader Tippu Tip had a strong presence in the eastern part of the territory in the modern-day Maniema, Tanganika and Ituri regions. They were linked to the Swahili coast via Uganda and Tanzania and had established independent slave states.

Early economics and concessions

- Leopold could not meet the costs of running the Congo Free State. Desperately, he set in motion a system to maximize revenue. The first change was the introduction of the concept of terres vacantes, "vacant" land, which was any land that did not contain a habitation or a cultivated garden plot. All of this land (i.e., most of the country) was therefore deemed to belong to the state. Servants of the state (namely any men in Leopold's employ) were encouraged to exploit it. 

[생각했던 경제적 수익이 나지 않자 레오폴 2세는 보다 강력하고 억압적인 통치 시작.]

- In October 1892, Leopold granted concessions to a number of companies. Each company was given a large amount of land in the Congo Free State on which to collect rubber and ivory for sale in Europe. These companies were allowed to detain Africans who did not work hard enough, to police their vast areas as they saw fit and to take all the products of the forest for themselves. In return for their concessions, these companies paid an annual dividend to the Free State. At the height of the rubber boom, from 1901 until 1906, these dividends also filled the royal coffers.

[고무 수요가 늘자 고무 채취를 위해 원줌주민을 착취.

- In 1896 global demand for rubber soared. From that year onwards, the Congolese rubber sector started to generate vast sums of money at an immense cost for the local population.

Scramble for Katanga

Stairs Expedition - Yeke Kingdom의 왕과 전투를 벌여 그를 죽이고 영토를 확장. 

-  The expedition cut off Msiri's head and put it on a pole, as he had often done to his enemies. This was to impress upon the locals that Msiri's rule had really ended, after which the successor chief recognized by Stairs signed the treaty.

War with Arab slavers

In early 1887, Henry Morton Stanley arrived in Zanzibar and proposed that Tippu Tip be made governor (wali) of the Stanley Falls District. Both Leopold II and Barghash bin Said agreed and on February 24, 1887, Tippu Tip accepted.^[

In the longer term this alliance was undefendable at home and abroad. Leopold II was heavily criticized by the European public opinion, for his dealings with Tippu Tip. In Belgium, the Belgian Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1888, mainly by Catholic intellectuals, led by count Hippolyte d'Ursel, aimed at abolishing the Arab slave trade.

- Open warfare broke out in late November 1892. Both sides fought by proxy, arming and leading the populations of the upper Congo forests in a conflict. By early 1894 the Zanzibari/Swahili slavers were defeated in the eastern Congo region and the Congo Arab war came to an end.

The Lado Enclave

- After rubber profits soared in 1895, Leopold ordered the organization of an expedition into the Lado Enclave, which had been overrun by Mahdist rebels since the outbreak of the Mahdist War in 1881.

Economy during Leopold's rule

- By 1890, Leopold was facing considerable financial difficulty. District officials' salaries were reduced to a bare minimum, and made up with a commission payment based on the profit that their area returned to Leopold. 

- In direct violation of his promises of free trade within the CFS under the terms of the Berlin Treaty, not only had the state become a commercial entity directly or indirectly trading within its dominion, but also, Leopold had been slowly monopolizing a considerable amount of the ivory and rubber trade by imposing export duties on the resources traded by other merchants within the CFS.

- By the final decade of the 19th century, John Boyd Dunlop’s 1887 invention of inflatable, rubber bicycle tubes and the growing popularity of the automobile dramatically increased global demand for rubber.

- 1891년과 1892년 왕의 칙령

these forced the natives to deliver all ivory and rubber, harvested or found, to state officers thus nearly completing Leopold's monopoly of the ivory and rubber trade

- The Force Publique (FP), Leopold's private army, was used to enforce the rubber quotas.

- Leopold had been actually encouraging the slave trade among Arabs in the Upper Congo in return for slaves to fill the ranks of the FP

- Many of the black soldiers were from far-off peoples of the Upper Congo, while others had been kidnapped in raids on villages in their childhood and brought to Roman Catholic missions, where they received a military training in conditions close to slavery. Armed with modern weapons and the chicotte—a bull whip made of hippopotamus hide—the Force Publique routinely took and tortured hostages, slaughtered families of rebels, and flogged and raped Congolese people with a reign of terror and abuse that cost millions of lives.

[총알 낭비를 막기 위해 시체의 사지를 절단해 오라고 명령]

Humanitarian disaster

Mutilation

- Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting.

Death toll

[이 기간 동안 인구 감소가 5백만에서 천만으로 추정하지만 정확히는 알 수 없음] 

International criticism

-  By the late-1890s, wild rubber had far surpassed ivory as the main source of revenue from the Congo Free State. The peak year was 1903, with rubber fetching the highest price and concessionary companies raking in the highest profits.

Congo Reform Association

Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, originally published in 1899 as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine, inspired by his service as a captain on a steamer on the Congo 12 years before, sparked an organized international opposition to Leopold's exploitational activities.

[콘래드의 소설이 직접적으로 콩고 자유국에서 행해진 비인간적인 행위에 대한 비판의 도화선이 되었는지는 의심스럽다.]

Edemund Dene Morel

Roger Casement

- Congo Reform Association

The Congo Reform movement's members included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Booker T. Washington, and Bertrand Russell. 

Belgian annexation of the Congo Free State as the Belgian Congo

Yielding to international pressure, the parliament of Belgium annexed the Congo Free State and took over its administration on November 15, 1908, as the colony of the Belgian Congo. The governance of the Belgian Congo was outlined in the 1908 Colonial Charter

Genocide question

In the aftermath of the 1998 publication of King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild, where he had written "the killing in the Congo was of genocidal proportions", but "it was not strictly speaking a genocide",^[73] The Guardian reported that the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels would finance an investigation into some of the claims made by Hochschild.

(