Latest / The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History / The 1928 Ituri Forest Rubber Atrocities: Belgium's Hidden Holocaust
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the rubber atrocities under Leopold II — the red rubber system, the severed hands, the forced quotas that killed millions. But one thing that often gets overlooked is that after the Belgian state took over the Congo in 1908, the rubber terror didn't stop — it just changed shape. Luna: Wait, really? I thought the whole point of the takeover was to clean things up? Lucas: That was the official narrative, yes. And there were reforms — some forced labour was reduced, the worst of the Leopoldian concession companies were dissolved. But in remote areas like the Ituri forest in the northeast, the rubber extraction continued under a new set of players. And in some ways, the violence became even more systematic. Luna: The Ituri forest — that's where the Mbuti live, right? The Pygmy groups? Lucas: Exactly. The Ituri is a vast rainforest, home to the Lese farmers and the Mbuti and Bila hunter-gatherers. In the 1920s, the Belgian administration granted rubber concessions to companies like the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company — ABIR for short. ABIR had actually been active since the 1890s, and it had a reputation for brutality. But after 1908, the Force Publique was still used to enforce quotas. Lucas: What made the 1920s particularly bad was a global rubber boom. Prices were high, and the Belgians wanted to maximise output. So they set impossible quotas for the villages — each adult male had to deliver a certain weight of rubber every two weeks, or else. Luna: Or else what? Lucas: The Force Publique would take hostages — women and children — and hold them in what they called 'prisons' or 'camps'. The rubber wouldn't come in, the hostages would be beaten, sometimes starved. Men who tried to flee were shot. And the chicotte — that braided hippo-hide whip — was used as routine punishment. The Belgians even kept detailed records of how many lashes each person received. Luna: So the chicotte wasn't just a Leopold-era thing. Lucas: No, it continued well into the 1930s. And in the Ituri, there was a particularly brutal commander named Émile de Gheest. He was the head of the Force Publique in the region, and he basically ran the rubber extraction like a personal fiefdom. He'd send out patrols to burn villages that didn't meet quotas, and he ordered the mutilation of those who resisted — cutting off hands, just like under Leopold. Lucas: What brought this to light was a British consul named John Henry Harris. He had been a missionary in the Congo earlier, and he was a key figure in the Congo Reform Association. In 1928, he travelled to the Ituri under the guise of a trade mission, but he was really collecting evidence for a new report. Luna: Was this the same John Henry Harris who exposed the Aruwimi ivory war in 1900? Lucas: The very same. He had been documenting Congo atrocities for decades. In 1929, he published a report titled 'Rubber and the Congo' that detailed the hostage system, the chicotte beatings, the murders. He named specific officers, including de Gheest, and provided testimonies from victims. Lucas: The Belgian government tried to suppress the report. They claimed Harris was biased, that he was exaggerating. But the evidence was overwhelming. Harris had photographs — including one of a Lese man named Kabundi who had both hands cut off. The photo was published in British newspapers, and it sparked a new wave of outrage. Luna: Did anything actually change? Lucas: Slowly. The Belgian colonial minister, Édouard Pécher, ordered an investigation in 1930. But the Force Publique officers were largely exonerated. A few lower-ranking soldiers were punished, but de Gheest was quietly transferred to another post. The rubber quotas were reduced, but they weren't abolished until the mid-1930s, when synthetic rubber started to compete. Luna: So it took a market shift, not a moral one. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the really disturbing part. The atrocities were known — they were documented, they were reported in London and Brussels — but the colonial administration only acted when the economic incentive changed. The victims, the Lese, Mbuti, and Bila, were left with scars both physical and communal. The population in some areas dropped by as much as 40 percent between 1920 and 1935. Lucas: You know, this episode ties into something we've been circling around in a lot of our conversations — the question of who gets remembered. The Leopoldian atrocities are infamous, but the post-1908 violence in places like Ituri is barely a footnote. Partly because there's no single villain like Leopold to focus on — it was a systemic cruelty carried out by a bureaucracy. Luna: And also because the people affected were remote, forest-dwelling communities without a written history. Lucas: Right. Their stories survive mostly in oral tradition and in the reports of outsiders like Harris. But even those reports are hard to find now. The Belgian archives are still not fully open. And a lot of documents were destroyed in the 1960s, during the chaos after independence. Lucas: Speaking of keeping these stories alive — this is actually a good moment to mention something about how we do this show. We deliberately don't run ads on Fexingo History, and that's a choice we've made from the start. We want these conversations to feel like exactly what they are — two people digging into the past without any commercial interruption. Luna: Yeah, and it's really only possible because of listeners who appreciate that approach and choose to support it. Lucas: Exactly. So if you find value in what we're doing, and you want to help keep it ad-free, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure at all — just a way to keep this going for people who care. Luna: And it really does make a difference. Lucas: It does. So back to the Ituri — I want to mention one more thing that Harris documented, which is the use of sentry posts. The Force Publique set up permanent posts in the forest, each staffed by a few soldiers, and they would patrol the surrounding villages continuously. It was a system of total surveillance. If anyone tried to leave, they were caught and punished. Luna: So it wasn't just quota enforcement — it was control over every aspect of life. Lucas: Exactly. And the sentries were often local Africans recruited into the Force Publique, which created a kind of internal division. Some of them were from rival ethnic groups, so there was no solidarity. The Belgians deliberately fostered that. It was a classic divide and rule strategy. Luna: And the rubber itself — what was it used for? Lucas: Mostly for tires and industrial goods. The global automobile boom was in full swing, and companies like Firestone and Goodyear were hungry for raw rubber. Belgian Congo was one of the world's top producers. So the suffering in the Ituri was literally fueling the cars rolling off assembly lines in Detroit. Lucas: It is. And it's one reason why the atrocities were allowed to continue — because there was money and power behind it. The ABIR company had shareholders in London and Brussels, and they lobbied hard to keep the system going. Harris's report was a threat to their profits. Luna: Did Harris face any backlash for his work? Lucas: He did. He was accused of being a 'meddler' and a 'sensationalist'. The Belgian government tried to discredit him by pointing out that he had once been a missionary, implying he had an anti-Catholic bias. But Harris kept pushing. He even testified before the British Parliament in 1930, and his report led to a formal diplomatic protest from London. Lucas: In the end, though, the protest didn't amount to much. Belgium was a key ally, and the British didn't want to strain relations over a distant colony. So the Ituri rubber system continued, in a reduced form, until the early 1940s, when the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia cut off other rubber supplies and actually increased the demand for Congo rubber. So the cycle started again. Luna: So the same pattern repeated during World War Two? Lucas: Yes, but that's a whole other episode. For now, I think the takeaway is that the colonial violence in the Belgian Congo was not a single chapter that ended with Leopold's death — it was a long, grinding system that adapted to changing circumstances. And the people of the Ituri paid the highest price. Luna: And their stories are still not widely known. Lucas: No, they're not. But hopefully, episodes like this help a little. Even if it's just a handful of listeners who now know the name John Henry Harris and the word chicotte, that's something.