Belgian Congo Abolition of Slavery in Belgian Congo - 1947

BELGIAN CONGO on 13 August 1947 issued a set of five stamps to commemorate the abolition of slavery in Belgian Congo, but don't think what followed was any better. These and other Belgian Congo stamps belie the truth. Read on, below.That said, a  run of 7,065,000 'abolition' stamps was printed.

- 1.25 fr - Belgian franc. Arabian slave hunters and their victims.

- 3.50 fr - Belgian franc. Baron Auguste Lambermon (1819 - 1905) took a leading role in the Brussels Conference (1874) on the usages of war, Berlin Conference (1884–1885) on Africa and the Congo region, and Brussels Conference (1890) of Central African affairs and the slave trade. He is best remembered for freeing Belgium from the Netherlands' Scheldt toll which had strangled Belgian trade.

- 1O fr - Belgian franc. King Leopold II (1835 - 1909) organized an anti-slavery conference in Brussels (1890). Rather than being a key moment for abolitionism in Europe, he helped secure the colonial 'carving up of Africa', especially Congo.

- 1.50 fr - Belgian franc. Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie, M. Afr. (1825 – 1892) was a French Catholic prelate and missionary who served as Archbishop of Carthage and Primate of Africa from 1884 to 1892. He crusaded against the slave trade.

- 3 fr - Belgian franc. Baron Francis Ernest Joseph Marie Dhanis (1861 – 1909) was a Belgian colonial civil servant and soldier noted for his service for the Congo Free State during the Congo Arab War and Batetela Rebellion. When the Belgian government decided to put an end to the Arab domination on the Upper Congo, he was selected to command the chief expedition against the slave traders in the Congo Arab War.

REPLACING ONE FORM OF OPPRESSION WITH ANOTHER OPPRESSION

From the 7th century onward, Africa sold slaves to the Islamic-Arabian world in the near-east. In the middle of the 19th century Zanzibar had one of the largest slave markets in the area.

Arabian slave dealers (chiefly from Zanzibar) preyed on African tribes, killing entire villages and sparing only the fittest, whom they then forced to carry the prized ivory down to the coast. Such double dealing (ivory and slaves) cost an estimated 17 million lives.

It was said that African explorers could reconstruct the trade routes from the human skeletons of killed slaves, women sold to harems, men castrated or used as laborers.

After much European deliberation, the Brussels Conference Act of 1890 effectively ended the Arab slave trade in Africa. But historians have argued the agreement did not contain enforcement mechanisms to end slavery – notably forced labor – in which Europeans exploited Africans, especially King Leopold II and his subcontractors.

The number of people who died under Leopold's rule in the Congo is estimated to be about 10 million. The cliché was that guns and chains went in, and rubber and ivory came out.

Vivid scenes of the torture, mutilation and decapitation of hands and limbs of the unfortunate Congo inhabitants as they were forced to harvest rubber and ivory were captured by Roger Casement. In 1903 he was working in the British diplomatic service, and was given the assignment of investigating the alarming reports issuing from the colony.

Joseph Conrad's famous work "Heart of Darkness" was written about his time on a Belgian steamer going up the Congo River into the Congo Free State; he was apparently referring to the madness and butchery in King Leopold II's colony.

The subjugation of the Congo did not end when, to what international embarrassment, Leopold was forced to give his colony to the Belgian state in 1908. It remained a Belgian colony until 1960. The Congolese hero of independence, Patrice Lumumba, became its first democratically elected prime minister, but he was removed from office and executed not long after by Belgian-led troops. The soldiers dissolved his body, but took some of his teeth as souvenirs.

Source: "The Brussels Times"