Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

This true, astonishing story of what King Leopold II did in the Congo was forgotten for over 50 years. “Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death” describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned the Congo into his private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labour camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber. From the mid-1880s and lasting for nearly 40 years, an estimated 10 million Congolese were killed under Leopold’s reign. The madness only came to an end thanks to the efforts of British journalist and humanitarian E.D. Morel, who exposed the human rights abuses in Congo and published photographs of the mutilated Congolese.