Trauma in the Congo

 

A review of Land of Tears – The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa by Robert Harms, Basic Books, NY 2019.

 

This is a definitive history of the greater Congo basin during the latter half of the nineteenth century until about 1908 when the Congo Free State was transferred to Belgium. It is a sad recitation because of the unbridled exploitation of the region first by slavers and seekers of ivory, followed by the misery forced on the inhabitants by rubber barons. The whole epoch reeks of unchecked abuses and atrocities sanctioned by theories of white superiority buttressed by rationales of commerce, Christianity, and civilization.  The abusers were anything but civilized.  

Author Harms traces the history of the region in part by focusing on three principle characters – explorer Henry Morton Stanley, slaver Tippu Tip, and explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza.  Each man was a force unto himself. Stanley as a fiercely determined explorer, the first European to traverse the Congo, and secondly as an operative who secured control of the central Congo for King Leopold II.  Although he was of mixed Africa/Arab heritage, Tippu Tip was culturally an Arab from Zanzibar who controlled the slave and ivory trade for years from his ruling post in Kosongo, eastern Congo. De Brazza came later onto the scene and successfully wrested authority over the western side of the Congo river for France. Stanley and Tippu Tip knew each other and interacted cautiously over the years.

These men notwithstanding, the tragedy of the Congo was written mostly on account of exploitation. First it was slaves sent by Arabs east to the markets of Zanzibar. Villages were raided and captives taken. Life for the people was completely disrupted.  Concomitantly, vast ivory stocks that had been accumulating for centuries in jungle villages were pillaged and also sent east.  Stanley and others in thrall to Leopold contested to acquire and send ivory west to the Atlantic.  The quest for this white gold became extremely violent as stocks were limited.  Slowly the external slave trade and Arab suzerainty were eliminated. However, the system of brutal acquisition transferred easily to rubber, where it became much more prevalent under authorities granted to concessional companies, both in the Congo Free State and in French territory. Villagers were compelled to produce quantities of wild rubber upon pain of death. Many were killed, maimed – hands and ears cut off, hostages taken, men flogged, etc. to compel production.  But like ivory, wild rubber too was an un-replenishable resource. 

The victims of exploitation were the African inhabitants of the region.  Probably more than 3 million perished.  Author Harms goes to some length to acknowledge that Congo basin villages had working political systems based on the rule of a “big man.”  However, the nature of the vast rain forest limited inter connectivity and there were no larger political groupings.  This made outside exploitation easier as villagers could not raise coalitions to combat the interlopers.  Yet, they resisted. Rebellion was brutally suppressed. Harms notes that as the Arabs/Europeans sought to extend control beyond the forest, they encountered better organized local opposition.

Against the backdrop of what was going on in Africa, Harms recounts machinations in Europe regarding the Congo. His detailed history tabulates King Leopold’s quest to own the region, the complex diplomacy of Europe, the justification (and hypocrisy) of anti-slavery motivations, and the corruption involved in it all.   It is a telling indictment of greed, manipulation and narcissism run amuck. Calls for the civilizing mission won over the public until it finally became evident that the exploitation of the Congo basin was based on extreme abuses of the indigenous people.  For this there was little final reckoning, instead the   brutal coercive systems were subsumed into government run colonialism that lasted another sixty years.   

Harms certainly did his homework. This is a well-researched, well documented history.  Sources were not just European diaries and records, but also recollections by Africans. The sum is a definitive study of Equatorial Africa in the time referenced.  Besides that, it is an engaging read of interest not just to scholars, but to a wider readership.