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The 1896 Arab War Prisoners: Congo's Forgotten Captives
In 1896, the Congo Free State captured over a thousand Arab and Swahili-speaking prisoners during its war against East African slave traders. Rather than repatriating them, Belgian authorities turned these men into a forced labor battalion, the 'Corps des Travailleurs Arabes,' used for porterage and railroad construction in the eastern Congo. This episode explores the little-known story of these prisoners — their origins in Zanzibar and the Manyema region, their brutal treatment under the Force Publique, and the cultural legacy they left behind, including the spread of Swahili as a…
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