The story of the Scramble for territory in Africa is full of powerful European countries making game changing moves to outplay and outlast their rivals. An unremarkable monarch of an insignificant little kingdom, however, outwitted them all. Like a tiny yapping watchdog that wakes up the bigger dogs at the slightest sound of a disturbance, Leopold II, king of Belgium, made the first bold imperial move into new territory in the interior of Africa. His bark quickly awoke the bigger dogs in the imperial neighborhood.For decades, most Europeans mistakenly believed that King Leopold spent his considerable fortune funding public works in the Congo and stopping slavery in East Africa. He was the unintimidating King of Belgium, cousin of Queen Victoria of England—a wealthy, noble and philanthropic modern king. But it was all a sham. Underneath the veneer of generosity and graciousness laid a cunning and self-engrossed scoundrel, a duplicitous fraud to rival the evil charm of Iago or Richard III. Under the guise of an international charitable foundation, he personally owned the colony of the Congo, and he ran it as a brutal business investment. His “charity” resulted in the death of ten million people, approximately 50% of the population in the Congo. Leopold hired the famous Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley to serve as the head of the spear in the Congo. Back in 1871, Stanley had made a name for himself by setting out to find the long lost explorer David Livingstone. After many months wandering East Africa, Stanley did finally catch up to Livingstone, and supposedly asked the famous explorer the famous question, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” (Wikipedia). Livingstone died in Africa soon after the meeting so we never learned his side of the story, but Stanley saw himself as the heir to the great explorer and his crusade to open up Africa to Europe. Stanley said that his goal was to “flash a torch of light across the western half of the Dark Continent” (Hochschild 57). The brazen self-promoter returned to London in 1878 as a hero after he mapped most of the Congo River.Unlike Livingstone, who travelled for decades through Africa with few assistants, Stanley explored with a veritable army of porters and soldiers. Also unlike Livingstone, Stanley was quick to resort to violence at the slightest provocation, including when he felt disrespected. “The beach was crowded with infuriates and mockers,” he wrote. “We perceived we were followed by several canoes in some of which we saw spears shaken at us . . . I opened on them with the Winchester Repeating Rifle. Six shots and four deaths were sufficient to quiet the mocking” (Hochschild 49). Stanley seemed uninterested in a peaceful “exploration”. He wrote in his journal: “We have attacked and destroyed 28 large towns and three or four score villages” (Hochschild 49).
