Congo: The MOST Brutal and Ruthless European Colony | 2

“A secret society of murderers with a king for a ringleader”.

In 1885 King Leopold of Belgium; an awkward, ruthless, selfish man, was recognised as the sovereign of the Congo. Long determined to carve out his very own private colonial domain, he had alighted upon the Congo - Africa’s vast and unplundered interior. With the help of the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who had found a way to circumnavigate the Congo’s formerly insurmountable rapids, he concocted a cunning scheme to legally make it his own, while casting himself as a civilising saviour. Yet, despite his ostensibly philanthropic motivations, Leopold’s goal was always profit. More specifically, ivory, and later rubber, and before long a thriving hub of industry had been established in the Congo, bustling with soldiers, traders and missionaries. Meanwhile and most significantly, tens of thousands of Congolese people were being beaten, coerced and essentially enslaved into harvesting and carrying the riches of their land for their European oppressors. Their treatment was barbaric, the conditions in which they were made to live grotesque, and their suffering unimaginable. It was there, in King Leopold's Congo, that for years some of the worst violations of human life in all of human history were perpetrated. A terrible, secret heart of darkness, Until, at last, a young shipping clerk in Antwerp stumbled across something that would change the course of history forever...

Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss Western history’s most brutal and barbaric colonial conquest: King Leopold’s exploitation of the Congo Free

0:00 Intro
05:54 Leopold's true motivations come to the fore
18:37 The Force Publique
29:30 The Dawn of Rubber
38:51 The practice of cutting off hands
49:28 The first glimmers of criticism

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Producer: Theo Young-Smith
Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett
Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor