An informative guide to understanding what's happening in Congo. I do not claim ownership of any multimedia referenced in this book-- attribution and sources provided as always.
Astoria E Greene
Y'all bear with me because this history is a little bit complicated if I'm being honest, but I'm going to try to keep it as straight-forward as possible. Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments— I'll answer to the best of my ability. Also, don't hesitate to point out any mistakes, inaccuracies, or details which you think would be beneficial to add in. We'll get into the current situation in the next section, followed by what you can do to take action. However, it's important to have at the very least, a general understanding of the history of the Congo.
all love,
Astoria <3
[19 November 2023]
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The region now known in modern times as the Democratic Republic of the Congo has a history which is besieged by instability and violence, often at the indirect hand of colonizing powers. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, there were a variety of tribes, ethnic groups, and state systems which controlled the region, the most notable of these being the Kongo kingdom of the west, and the Luba Lunda states of the east. In terms of surface area it is the second largest country in Africa, (the largest being Algeria) and when considering the lands richness and abundance of natural resources, many argue that it should be Africa's wealthiest nation.
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(Map of the African continent, Democratic Republic of the Congo highlighted with red. Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 9 November 2023)
Instead, it is the site of what can be called the 20th centuries first holocaust, when the Belgian King Leopold II seized the landmass as his personal possession with the help of Welsh American explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley served as an agent of Leopold's brutal colonial rule from 1885 to 1908. During this time, millions upon millions of people were slaughtered, mutilated, and forced into labor in a bloodthirsty quest for the materials Ivory (a hard, white material found in elephant tusks) and rubber (harvested from the liquid sap of certain trees and other plants). The Congo Free State is regarded as the single largest private estate owned by any one man, ever in history. And he never even saw it. Leopold ran the entire operation from his homestead in Brussels. Through the Congo river, the transport of slaves, ivory, rubber and minerals was conducted— the commodities upon which modern day Brussels and Antwerp are built.
It was in the 1870's that King Ntendebumaofila, chief of the Wagenia tribe greeted explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley then acted as an agent of Leopold, establishing commercial stations along the Congo river, before ultimately seizing the state as Leopold's property. Congolese men, women, and children were tagged with numbers under Leopold's reign. They were then separated into groups and given production quotas of rubber, ivory and other materials to obtain. If they did not meet these quotas, they were whipped, maimed (as in the severing of hands) or hanged. An estimated ten million people died as a result of the exploitation under the rule of King Leopold II and his functionaries, and by the end of Leopold's twenty year reign, approximately half of the Congolese population at the time was gone.
