Exposing the dark pit of human suffering, cruelty and corruption that had long been secretly festering in King Leopold’s Congo, would reveal one of the greatest abuses of human rights in all history, and instigate a human rights campaign that would change the world. Having established it as what was essentially his own private colonial fiefdom in 1885, Leopold had grown rich off the vast quantities of rubber and ivory that his congolese labourers reaped and transported in unimaginably brutal conditions. The man to finally discover the horrendous scheme, and Leopold’s personal corruption, was Edmund Dene Morel, a young shipping clerk who noticed something deeply suspicious about the exports being sent back to the Congo from Belgium. With the backing of a wealthy tycoon, and in tandem with extraordinary individuals such as the magnetic Roger Casement who had personally experienced the horrors of the Congo, Stanley would for the next decade and more of his life embark upon an excoriating attack on Leopold and his regime. He interviewed countless first hand witnesses, published an outpouring of articles detailing the truth of what was going on, spoke convincingly at public gatherings, and set up an influential organisation, all of which served to attract much popular support and attention to the campaign. Soon, the question of the Congo had become an international political affair. But would it be enough to quell the horrific treatment of the Congolese people and discredit Leopold once and for all? Join Dominic and Tom as they describe the discovery, expose, and excoriation of King Leopold’s appalling human rights abuses in the Congo, resulting in one of the most important human rights campaigns of all time. Did it succeed? And, with some of Europe’s major colonial powers clamouring to condemn Leopold, what were the long term implications for European imperialism overall? _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Editor: Jack Meek Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who was Edmund Dene Morel and why is he significant?
Well, the one thing that was missing – so two things that were missing. Morel was born in France, and his father was French, and then he went to boarding school in England. So you should have done an accent that was a cross between... Oh, like Theo Young-Smith. Right, like Theo Young-Smith. That's the voice you should have done. Theo has many qualities, but he's not barrel-chested.
He's not barrel-chested. He's not barrel-chested. So yes, I think you captured the barrel-chest very nicely there, Tom. Congratulations. Thank you, Dominic.
The reason we're talking about this guy, Edmund D. Morell, is that basically he is the hero of today's episode, isn't he? He is the man who draws the crimes of King Leopold's Congo Free State to the world's attention. and is probably the most effective human rights campaigner of the 20th century. He establishes the template for all the human rights campaigns that have followed.
Yeah, he absolutely is. He is the link between the abolitionist movement that fought slavery in Britain, America and elsewhere a generation before and the human rights campaigns of the later 20th century, the anti-apartheid campaign and so on and so forth. And today's episode really is the story of how he and his friends and his allies bring down Leopold's regime.
Last week, we heard about how since 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium has presided over this reign of terror in the Congo Free State in pursuit of ivory and rubber and, of course, money. And this is the story of how he loses his grip. The Congo doesn't become independent or free, of course. It passes into Belgian government hands.
But Leopold loses this prize that he has spent all his life trying to seize and then trying to sort of hide from the world's gaze. So, yeah, this is Edmund de Morel's story, really. So let's talk a little bit about him, Tom. He is born in Paris in 1873. Father French, mother an English Quaker, which may be relevant. His father died when he was young. He went to boarding school in England.
He ended up becoming a British subject and becoming a clerk. And he's an obscure man. When he's 18 years old, he starts work for a Liverpool shipping company called Elder Dempster. And... As luck would have it, this shipping company has the contract for the steamship trade to the Congo. They have a monopoly. So they handle all the steamships that go to and from the Congo.
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Chapter 2: What suspicious activities did Morel uncover in the Congo Free State?
And that is very much dependent on the company retaining the favor of Leopold II personally, isn't it?
Exactly. They have been given the contract by the Congo Free State, and obviously they don't want to lose it. It brings them in a lot of money. Now, by the late 1890s, at which point Morel is in his mid-20s, they are sending him often every month to Antwerp because, of course, he speaks French. So, you know, he's a useful employee.
He's the ideal person basically to stand there at the quayside supervising the arrivals and departures of all these steamships. He's already interested in Africa. Why wouldn't he be? You know, Africa is a very exotic and exciting subject in the 1890s. He thinks the Congo Free State is brilliant. He believes what he reads in the newspapers about its civilizing mission.
He actually writes articles about Africa and about the Congo Free State for industry magazines because he fancies himself as a bit of a writer. And he says, it's got a great future. King Leopold, what a tremendous fellow, all of this kind of thing.
But also, I suppose, because he's investing his future in the company. Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't you want to read up about business that you're involved in?
Absolutely. Absolutely. But he's standing there on the quayside at Antwerp and he's watching that scene that we described earlier. And he starts to become suspicious of the ships that he sees. Because as we described at the end of last week's episode, he sees all this rubber and ivory being unloaded from the ships. But nothing is going back the other way.
So he kind of thinks, well, what are we trading for? Four, what are we giving them in return? Now, at one point, he's called in by the Secretary of State of the Congo, who describes as a man thin to emaciation, inhuman, bloodless, petrified. I mean, there is a quality of Bram Stoker to quite a lot of what he's writing about. Sinister things in crates. Exactly.
I was about to say there was something of the Hollywood melodrama, but actually the comparison with Dracula is a really nice one. This man calls him in and he's absolutely furious. He says the newspapers have reported what was in one of our recent shipments back to the Congo, a huge consignment of guns. And this sort of stuff shouldn't be appearing in the newspapers.
Make sure it doesn't happen again. And Morel is confused by this. He thinks, well, why are we shipping so many guns back to the Congo? And why can't the newspapers report it? Why is it such a big deal? I mean, it's interesting that the guy assumes that Morel would understand. Yes, exactly. Isn't that so interesting? Well, I think a lot of people perhaps would not have been curious.
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Chapter 3: How did Morel's findings lead to an international human rights campaign?
And it becomes obvious to him that there's a lot of fraud going on. Somebody is skimming off the top. And the answer, of course, is King Leopold. King Leopold is lying about the amount coming in and about how much money he's making. But the other thing that becomes obvious to him once he starts going through all these kind of dusty ledgers is that consignment of guns was not the exception.
It was the rule. They are sending thousands and thousands of guns and rounds of ammunition to the Congo and nothing else. And we ended last week's episode with his great moment of revelation, a very kind of Hollywood scene. I was giddy and appalled at the cumulative significance of my discoveries. It must be bad enough to stumble upon a murder.
I had stumbled upon a secret society of murderers with a king for a ringleader. I mean, it would make a great film, wouldn't it? It would, absolutely. Tabby, our assistant producer, said it reminded her of the Robert Harris novel about the Dreyfus case. An officer and a spy. And it very much has that quality. Yeah. Yeah, kind of whistleblower. Exactly.
So Morel goes to see the head of the company, who's a man called Sir Alfred Jones, the head of the shipping magnate. So he must be thrilled. Of course. Sir Alfred Jones is horrified when Morel says, I found all these discrepancies and I'm extremely concerned. Jones says, well, listen, I'll go to Brussels myself and I'll talk to the king about it.
Then Jones calls in Morel a few weeks later and says, well, I've been to Brussels. I saw the king. The king said, yes, he's very disturbed about what you've discovered. He'll set up a commission. Exactly. Reforms will be carried out. And Sir Alfred says to Morel, don't worry. The Belgians are doing great things, and we have to give them time to get their African house in order.
In the next few months, Morel finds that he's being frozen out. He's not going to Antwerp as much as he was. Then he's offered a promotion. Great news, you've done so well, and you're going to be posted overseas. And then he says, no, I don't want to go overseas. I want to stay in Britain. And then he is offered another promotion to become a consultant, pushed up the ladder of the company.
And it's very clear to him that the company are now trying to shut him up. Or to offer him a bribe. Effectively, both. I mean, that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to either get him out of the picture or push him upstairs, push him into a back office, well-paid, stay quiet.
So in 1901, at the age of 28, he resigns from Elder Dempster and he resigns to become a full-time writer, but not just any writer. As he wrote himself, his goal was, and I quote, to do my best to expose and destroy what I then knew to be a legalized infamy, accompanied by unimaginable barbarities and responsible for a vast destruction of human life.
In other words, he has quit the company to become a full-time campaigner, to become an activist. effectively. Now, the real puzzle is why? What is it in him? that makes him want to do this. See, I don't think it's a puzzle at all. I know what you're going to say.
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Chapter 4: What role did Roger Casement play in exposing the Congo atrocities?
I mean, there is, of course... A lot going on there. There's a lot going on there. But just to point out that, of course... Britain's preponderance in the anti-slavery campaign, and now as is being proposed in the campaign against the depredations in the Congo, is dependent on her global power. Yes, of course. Dependent on the Navy and dependent by implication on the possession of her empire.
And so essentially what is being offered is a kind of form of liberal imperialism, isn't it? Absolutely it is. That the British Empire exists as a force for good. And I mean, this is something that has been manifest in the campaign against slavery right from the time of Napoleon. So the Congress of Vienna, it is mass demonstrations in Britain.
that forces Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, to go to the Congress of Vienna and say, guys, I'm really sorry. We've got to write in all this anti-slavery stuff. And kind of the same thing is happening now because the motion is carried in the Commons and it is proposed that all the countries that had been participants in the Berlin Conference should get together and press...
for a Congo state that is governed with humanity.
Exactly, exactly. So its supreme irony is that it's Britain's imperial position that allows it to take this view, which, of course, some listeners may say is rank hypocrisy, but others may say is an example of the kind of ambiguity of empire, right? Well, we'll be talking about this, won't we, in our bonus episode. Exactly. Now, the Foreign Office, when it hears about this debate, says, OK...
You know, let's not rush into anything. Let's actually try to get some hard evidence ourselves rather than relying on this activist. We have a man on the ground in the Congo and we'll ask him to find out exactly what's going on. And now we come to the other great hero of this story. And this is a man called Roger Casement.
And next week, Tom, I know you're going to be talking to the Irish novelist, the great prize-winning novelist, John Banville, about Roger Casement's story. He's an extraordinarily interesting figure. There's a richly fascinating life.
So John Banville will be talking about him because, in John Banville's opinion, Roger Casement is the greatest of Irishmen. Right. Right. High praise.
Because we should mention he's the British consul, but he is Irish. Yes. So just very quickly on Casement, because we'll be doing him next week. Casement's born to a Protestant family in Dublin. He went to the Congo when he was 19 years old. He is implicated. He had worked for Henry Morton Stanley as a surveyor. He'd worked on the route for Leopold's Railway.
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Chapter 5: How did the British government respond to the Congo Free State abuses?
Morell said in his memoir, you know, I often see him, Casement, now in imagination, as I saw him at that memorable interview, crouching over the fire in the otherwise unlighted room, unfolding in a musical, soft, almost even voice, in language of peculiar dignity and pathos, the story of a vile conspiracy.
And as Casement talks in this beautiful voice of his, Morel said, I believe that I saw those hunted women clutching their children, flying panic-stricken to the bush, the blood flowing, the ghastly tally of severed heads, and all this kind of thing. You know, Casement's skill as a storyteller is so important. This voice that everyone talks about. Exactly.
Now, Casement says to him that night and afterwards, look, I think we should set up a big new organization devoted to the Congo. And Casement says to him, you know, the Congo is different from other campaigns. The Congo is a unique evil. And if we can rouse the British people, the world might be roused. Britain had played that part before, meaning in the campaign against slavery.
Could we raise a throbbing in that great heart of hers? This is a tremendous story. It's about kindness, but it's also about how brilliant Britain is.
But this will become the key point of divergence between Morel and Casement. Because for Morel, Congo is sui generis. It's hideous. It has nothing to do with the broader imperial context. And Casement will come to a very different conclusion.
Yeah. And listeners will discuss this in the bonus episode. Is the Congo unique or is the Congo symptomatic of the crimes of imperialism? And this is an issue for historians to this day. And indeed for moralists and theologians. Exactly. Ongoing debate at the moment. Very, very, very bitter debate, I think it's fair to say.
So anyway, Morel says, look, I mean, the new organization, I don't really have the money to set this up. Casement says, here's a check for £100, which he can't afford. It's more than a month's salary for Casement, a lot of money. Morel uses this to buy a typewriter, and the Congo Reform Association is born, one of the great human rights campaigning organizations.
Now, after this, Casement slightly drops out of the story. The Foreign Office give him a promotion. They promote him to consul in Lisbon. So off he goes to Portugal. Which he doesn't like because he finds it too civilised. Yes, it's boring. He and Morel are still great pals. They had a code. They had nicknames for each other. So Casement was Tiger. Morel was Bulldog.
And Leopold was the King of Beasts.
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Chapter 6: What was the impact of Morel and Casement's campaign against King Leopold?
He writes 600 letters a month, which is 20 letters a day on average. He's a brilliant speaker. He will talk without notes to audiences of thousands week after week after week. He's great at tailoring his message to different audiences. So to businessmen, he will talk about Leopold as monopoly betrays free trade. To bishops, he says, it's our Christian duty.
To audiences of the sort of common people, he says, it's Britain's responsibility as top nation to lead the world. He always makes sure he has MPs from different parties sitting on the platform, as well as all the local bigwigs. He's great at wooing rich supporters. So the Cadbury's Chocolate Family, we did a podcast about them last year. They're Quakers.
They see themselves as great philanthropists. He gets loads of donations from them. He likes a celebrity. So Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes creator. He gets Conan Doyle to rallies. He gets him to write his own book on the Congo, The Crime of the Congo.
I mean, the thing about that is Conan Doyle is very keen, say, on the war against the birds in South Africa that the British are fighting. So he sees no contradiction between supporting British imperialism in South Africa and excoriating Belgian imperialism in the Congo.
What a perfect recruit. Probably the most famous writer of the day. Very patriotic. You know, you can't write him off as a do-gooding, bleeding-hearted. You know, he loves a campaigning cause, Conan Doyle, but there's no doubt that he also loves Britain. So the perfect, perfect person to have. And Morell also knows the value of the modern image.
So it's Morell who really pioneers the use of slideshows with all these pictures of people with their hands cut off. And this is, in a way, the highlight of his rallies. It's the bit that everyone's been waiting for and that everyone will remember. He shows them the pictures, and that's the thing that really, really has an effect. A.J.P.
Taylor, the great historian, himself from a dissenting background, said that Morell was, in his view, the single best historian most effective activist, most effective leader of a campaign in British history. And I don't think he's wrong, actually.
I mean, the thing is that he is kind of going with the grain of British public opinion. Part of their patriotism is a sense that this is the country that abolished the slave trade, they're on the side of the angels, all of that. But in government, there is still a kind of a slight cynicism, a slightly more Machiavellian approach to things.
So there's a Belgian newspaper editor who is quoted by Hochseld, who once shrewdly remarked that Lord Salisbury, who was prime minister throughout much of this period... is, and I quote, is not a man to care much about the fate of the blacks any more than that of the Armenians or the Bulgarians.
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