Horror in the Congo: How The Nightmare Began

The story of King Leopold of Belgium’s brutal regime in the Congo Free State, during the late 19th century, is one of the darkest and most important in global history. It is a story of horror - the murky depths of the human soul pushed to its primal limits, European colonialism and the first Scramble for Africa, royalty and politics, celebrity, and modernity. From that pit of depravity, in which the Congolese people endured unimaginable suffering at the hands of their dehumanising western drivers, the first human rights campaign was born, and one of the most seminal novels of all time. So, how was it that the Congo, Africa’s as yet unplundered, un-impenetrable, and deeply mysterious core in the late 1870’s, became the private financial reservoir of one ambitious monarch, while Europe looked on? What occurred during the reign of terror he unleashed there, and why? And, who was King Leopold himself, the troubled, cunning and utterly twisted individual behind it all?

Join Dominic and Tom as they lead us - following in the footsteps of Henry Morton Stanley, the explorer who first pierced the shadowy veil of the Congo in Africa’s interior, and let it bleed into the hands of King Leopold himself - deep into the heart of darkness. As the curtain is lifted from the Congo’s formerly obscuring unknowability, her people's grotesque future of abominable exploitation is revealed, along with man’s capacity for evil, and the demonic greed of one man in particular…


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00:00 Intro
06:28 Introducing Leopold
14:33 Why the Congo?
24:35 Henry Morton Stanley comes into the picture
32:00 Congo before the Belgians
43:13 Leopold’s plan is sprung into action
57: 06 Leopold finally secures his fiefdom

Twitter:
@TheRestHistory
@holland_tom
@dcsandbrook

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