For anyone unfamiliar, the book is named for this poem excerpt, written upon his death:
>Listen to the yells of Leopold's ghost
Burning tonight for his hand-maimed host
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off down in Hell.
King Leopold assigned Congolese natives a quota of rubber production. Failure to meet his quota was punishable by death, as was stealing from the military presence. He ordered his military units to collect the hands from those they killed, to prove they were using any spent bullets to kill Congolese and not to hunt or hoard for rebellion. Instead, military personnel would hunt (to get fresh meat instead of rations), steal and sell supplies, or just hang out instead of collecting rubber dropoffs from the locals, and then kill Congolese for their hands as explanation. This created a black market for hands, where the Belgian troops would pay Congolese raiding parties to kill villagers and collect hands, which became a sort of currency. Initially, non-lethal punishments were all about whipping. After the black market arose, punishment became about hands; if you were a man, they wouldn't want to cut off your hands (else you couldn't produce rubber), they'd cut off your children's hands, to both punish you and score more hands to sell/trade.
The most famous image of the period is Alice Seeley Harris's portrait of a man named Nsala, who sits gazing at the hand of his five-year-old daughter, severed as punishment for low rubber production.
There are more than 20 statues of Leopold in Belgium, and they are now regularly vandalized with the phrase "Hear how the demons chuckle and yell, cutting his hands off down in Hell."
echidna_admirer t1_j6mkc8o wrote
Reply to comment by tmdblya in TIL that between 1895 and 1908 the population of the Belgian Congo declined by between 2 and 13 million due to colonial brutality and diseases caused by colonialism. by hetkleinezusje
For anyone unfamiliar, the book is named for this poem excerpt, written upon his death:
>Listen to the yells of Leopold's ghost
Burning tonight for his hand-maimed host
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off down in Hell.
King Leopold assigned Congolese natives a quota of rubber production. Failure to meet his quota was punishable by death, as was stealing from the military presence. He ordered his military units to collect the hands from those they killed, to prove they were using any spent bullets to kill Congolese and not to hunt or hoard for rebellion. Instead, military personnel would hunt (to get fresh meat instead of rations), steal and sell supplies, or just hang out instead of collecting rubber dropoffs from the locals, and then kill Congolese for their hands as explanation. This created a black market for hands, where the Belgian troops would pay Congolese raiding parties to kill villagers and collect hands, which became a sort of currency. Initially, non-lethal punishments were all about whipping. After the black market arose, punishment became about hands; if you were a man, they wouldn't want to cut off your hands (else you couldn't produce rubber), they'd cut off your children's hands, to both punish you and score more hands to sell/trade.
The most famous image of the period is Alice Seeley Harris's portrait of a man named Nsala, who sits gazing at the hand of his five-year-old daughter, severed as punishment for low rubber production.
There are more than 20 statues of Leopold in Belgium, and they are now regularly vandalized with the phrase "Hear how the demons chuckle and yell, cutting his hands off down in Hell."