King Leopold’s ghost and a post-colonial reckoning

In a recent post about the Middelheim Museum, I started down a (very) slippery slope of thought about Belgium’s difficult reckoning (or failure to reckon) with its colonial past. It prompted a memory of a visit to Brussels almost two decades ago. I no longer remember why, but we took a long tram ride from Brussels to Tervuren, a former royal domain just over the border in Flanders, to visit the Royal Museum of Central Africa.

Apart from shocking photos of colonial officers with collections of human hands, and the Congolese men, women and children whose limbs had been severed, it was the English guide to the museum that I recall. The pamphlet made noises towards acknowledging Belgium’s brutal colonial past, but also claimed that Belgium just couldn’t be responsible for the estimated 10-15 million African deaths under the reign of King Leopold II.

Statue of Leopold II, Place du Trône, Brussels, Belgium

Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Brussels, Belgium

Statue of Leopold II, Musée Royal d’Art & d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium

Statue of Leopold II, Jardin du Roi, Brussels, Belgium

Graves of seven Congolese who died in 1897, Brussels, Belgium

Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Brussels, Belgium

The reason given in the pamphlet was not that the well documented atrocities that led to millions of deaths didn’t happen, but that the number was too high because it had been calculated on a misunderstanding of how many people lived in Congo before Belgians arrived. Then as now, that read more like an excuse for genocide than an acceptance of responsibility.

The decapitation of hundreds of thousands of Congolese hands was a result of a policy of the Congo Free State, King Leopold’s private domain from 1885 to 1908. It imposed rubber quotas on Congolese villages, death and decapitation on those failing to meet the quotas. Proof of punishment was a severed hand of the Congolese victim. Severed hands quickly became a symbol of Leopold’s regime.

The Royal Museum of Central Africa was reopened in 2018 after a period of renovation. Two years later, Belgium’s colonial past, and the continued racism and discrimination faced by Belgians of African descent, was put in the spotlight by protests after the murder of Floyd George in the United States. We made the long tram ride again to Tervuren to see what had changed in the twenty years since our last visit.

Things have undoubtedly improved. Yet, it’s hard not to come away feeling that a major opportunity to fully reckon with the horror inflicted upon the people of Congo, first by Leopold II and afterwards by the Belgian state and Belgian companies, has been missed. Belgium, after all, would not have become one of the wealthiest nations on earth without its exploitation of Congo.

There is a striking juxtaposition in the history told in the museum and the delightful late 19th century buildings that house it, as well as the parkland bordered by the Sonian Forest. It was built by Leopold II specifically for the Brussels International Exposition in 1897. To showcase his ownership of the Congo Free State , Leopold built an African village in the grounds and imported 267 Congolese to inhabit it as a human zoo.

It was an unusually cold summer and seven of the Congolese died and are buried in the village of Tervuren. It’s hard to ignore this history even as you’re enjoying the delightful park with its canals and surrounding forest. This isn’t an isolated case, and every day on my walk to work I pass a large statue of the heavily bearded Leopold II on horseback in Place du Trône, just behind the Royal Palace of Brussels.

Leopold II used his ill gotten gains from the Congo Free State to nearly double to size of the palace, adding new and luxurious rooms to bolster his own image. It’s no wonder the statue is regularly daubed in blood red paint. As was the statue of General Émile Storms in nearby Square de Meeûs, until the city got tired of removing the paint and relocated it.

Storms was part of the exploration in Congo and helped establish the Congo Free State for Leopold II. Given how controversial Leopold is there are quite a number of his statues dotted around Brussels. We came across one in the Musée Royal d’Art & d’Histoire, which benefited from Leopold’s patronage, and another in the Jardin du Roi, a pleasant square below Avenue Louise. It’s a mystery as to why that’s still there.

That’s even before we get to The Monument to the Belgian Pioneers in Congo in Parc du Cinquantenaire with its patronising and racist imagery. It celebrates the ‘civilising mission’ of Belgium in Africa. There’s an ongoing debate over what to do with these inconvenient reminders of colonial crimes, yet little has actually changed and the debate is mired in political grandstanding and definitely polarises public opinion.

Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Brussels, Belgium

Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Brussels, Belgium

Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Brussels, Belgium

Street art, Matongé, Brussels’ ‘African district’ Belgium

Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Brussels, Belgium

Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Brussels, Belgium

A 2020 study carried out by the Museum of Central Africa with the University of Antwerp, found 50% of Belgians believed colonialism had done as much good as bad in Congo. As with other European countries that have never dealt with the harm caused by imperial exploitation, the debate in Belgium goes on. In the meantime, Leopold II statues remain in the nation’s capital, and are occasionally covered in red paint.

 

﹡For anyone interested in Leopold II and the Congo Free State, Adam Hochschild’s excellent history, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa is a good place to start. For a different perspective on a post-Leopold Congo, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is equally enthralling.