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Discuss the latest article by @Youngmarshall here
As ever @SenatorChickpea that is a fantastic comment. Your responses have been the best thing about writing this series. Especially since you claimed in the comments of the first one that you wouldn't have much to say! As I've said before, I would be delighted to see one of your own articles at some point.
Also I did not know the latest Tarzan movie was about fighting the Free State. Wow, that's certainly a choice.
I knew about the horrific methods of compelling Congolese people to go extract rubber through mass mutilation, hostage taking, rape and killings, and I knew this was because nobody wanted to actually do it, but I figured that the harvesting was something on the level of cotton-picking, not the horror scrubbing rubber off your body must have been like.
Roger Casement was a real hero, I would like to read more about him.
I think a lot of the propaganda for imperial rule, especially in the Congo was due to the religious aspect of it - Leopold was seen as bringing not only Western civilisatiom, but Western Christian civilisation.
Except on the ground, you had the Force Publique beating or worse their subjects who had the temerity to kindly ask if they could go to Mass on Sundays and major holidays.
I remember the story I talked about because one of the people beaten up by the Force Publique has a cause for at least beatification in the Vatican (the young man killed was as staunchly Catholic as many Belgians were at the time, and so perhaps because of that he thought he could get Leopold's officials to give the people a very small break on this, as after all, they were all Catholics here, right? Right?)Tintin au Congo is an interesting document in that regard: the Congolese people are mostly nice, just portrayed as rather silly in how they mimic Europeans in cargo cult-fashion, but the witch doctor is the evil one, resentful of losing his control over the credulous villagers. And the one unambiguously good white character is the missionary.