Talk:Atrocities in the Congo Free State

Crimes against humanity category removal

Crimes against humanity is a specific legal concept. In order to be included in the category, the event (s) must have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, or at a bare minimum be described as such by most reliable sources. Most of the articles that were formerly in this category did not mention crimes against humanity at all, and the inclusion of the category was purely original research. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

This article is mentioned and linked in Crimes against humanity § Origins of the term, so I don't think the category removal (which I reverted) was justified in this case. Gawaon (talk) 08:23, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Use of Bruce Gilley

@Smefs, I have potential concerns about your presentation of Gilley vis a vis Hochschild in this article in the context of Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view. While you have attributed Gilley's ideas to him, there are statements you've added in Wikipedia's own voice that seem much closer to Gilley's views than those of the average scholar, as far as I'm aware. This may be undue weight. Gilley is a very controversial figure, to say the least, to the point where I would not be immediately comfortable presenting his work here at face value. Remsense诉 06:20, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I do not quite see what you mean. I don't think I made any conclusive statements. All I said was that it is not definitive that the violence was a result of Leopold's active rule, which seems fair considering the large amount of time dedicated to giving favor to the positive argument. It is also not a very long paragraph, about two (long) sentences, half of the paragraph on Hochschild. Maybe adding more "allegedly"s to the last sentence in order to clarify that these are not definitive facts could help clarify? Smefs (talk) 06:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I think it would help a considerable amount to also note the critiques that have been made of Gilley's work in kind, so that no one appears to get "the final word", in a literal textual sense. Remsense诉 07:04, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I have reverted @Smefs's edits. Gilley's article is not a scholarly source, but an distinctly POV magazine article from The American Conservative, a decidedly conservative and paleoconservative publication. We should limit this article to reliable, preferable peer-reviewed sources, which this one clearly is not. I also don't get the point the author seems to be trying to make: "that the atrocities which occurred in the Congo were a result of colonial mismanagement, not moral failings". – So what? How would that make them better? Moreover, much of what Hochschild and other historians say refers to the fatal effects of colonial mismanagement, so presenting that as somehow novel and a break with the accepted theories doesn't make sense. Gawaon (talk) 07:55, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I would tend to agree that, as represented by Smefs' edits, it does not seem that Gilley is making any novel observations, just weaving them together in a more polemical fashion. Also Smef's changed "Historians generally agree that a dramatic reduction in the overall size of the Congolese population occurred" to "Some historians believe that a dramatic reduction [etc.]" which is actually misrepresenting Gibbs 1991 p. 46, which has quotes including "Most sources note a remarkable decline in population during the era of Leopold" and "There is general agreement that Leopold's rule devastated the Congo". Smefs said in their edit summary "Both sources cited in the original first paragraph of the Causes section did not actually back the argument made, which is that many historians agree with Hochschild." Gibbs actually references several things including a Belgian government report and two other historians by name (none of them Hoschild), which leads me to conclude that either Smefs did not closely review the sourced material before changing it or was more concerned with making the rest of the text flow with Gilley's arguments over others and didn't care what they actually said. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:42, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I have made an edit addressing your first criticism. Smefs (talk) 06:12, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Does it matter? King Leopold's Ghost also gives a distinct opinion obviously motivated by Hochschild's progressive tendencies. It's a pop history book with significant failings. Smefs (talk) 06:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

That is squarely your original research, unfortunately. Remsense诉 06:28, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Smefs, what exactly is your critique of Hochshild and how his work is used in this article? There is a lively historiographic debate concerning this history of the Congo Free State, and frankly, Hochshild seems to fall somewhere in the middle on it. Van Reybrouck tends toward the side of less devastating and a camp including some such as Olusoga which favor more devastating (and use the "genocide" descriptor, which Hochsild refuses to do). It's already mentioned that when King Leopold's Ghost was released it was criticized by some as exaggerating. I'm not seeing what Gilley's opinion piece in an openly-partisan news magazine really adds to here. Among Gilley's critiques are that:

• The book is "narcissistic guilt porn for white liberals" (a politically partisan jab),
• that Hoschsild conducted research from that evil liberal hell hole known as California (because geographic bigotry automatically means you're right),
• Tthe work is held up as representative of Western colonialism as a whole (which—while offensive to Gilley's project to defend Western colonialism—really isn't relevant here and isn;t quite Hochshild's doing, since this Wikipedia article is talking about the history of the Congo, we're not using this book to describe the history of Western colonialism),
• the Congo Free State wasn't run by the Belgian government (a red herring, this Wikipedia article makes this very well clear, and even Hochshild says this, Gilley just doesn't like the way he says it).
• The chopping off hands thing was exaggerated (already critiqued here by Van Reybrouck, a historian of the Congo)
• The Congo Free State isn't given enough credit for "its life-saving interventions against disease, tribal war, slavery, and grinding poverty" (I guess Gilley is trying to have his cake and eat it here on whether the CFS was really representative of benevolent Western colonialism. Also this claim seems to sit in stark opposition to almost about every other description of the Congo during this time from other sources. Whatever the state of the Congo before this time, warfare still occurred, disease was endemic, and the people were poor by modern definition. Arab slavery obviously was combatted by the CFS, but the CFS in turn taxed Congolese labor, so make of that what you will.)
• Gilley characterizes the violence in the CFS as "native-on-native conflict over rubber harvesting" (despite earlier conceding how the demand for rubber was imposed by the CFS itself).
• Hoschshild misuses the testimony of a CFS official (ok)
• The photographs of victims of mutilation were staged by using diseased persons with amputations instead of Congolese workers who had been attacked by soldiers (this is genuinely interesting and would have implications on this article but I'm not seeing how Gilley is supporting this claim)
• Some gripe about trade balances and how it did or did not benefit the average Congolese (ok)
• "In fact, the most knowledgeable estimates today suggest that the general population of the Congo rose slightly during the EIC era and that any deaths attributable to the limited abuses in the rubber areas were far outweighed by the lives saved and created by the EIC’s direct interventions in other respects." (Gilley doesn't cite those projections, but this would be genuinely interesting if we could find what he's talking about. Most sources plainly state the opposite. Also once again trying to have his cake and eat it.)
• "Léopold’s regime was a monumental achievement in saving and promoting black lives" (and Hitler was a famous advocate for Jewish well-being)
• "He was highly motivated from the start to “find” a genocide" (Hochshild did not call this a genocide and once openly criticized a newspaper for calling it that when citing his work)
• Generic complaints about demographic measures and death toll claims (this is already hotly debated by historians)
• Lack of mentions on fighting the Arab slave traders (ok, and the CFS doing this was totally benevolent surely and had nothing to do with preserving its own labor force)
• Most of the violence was done by the Africans themselves (ok)
• "It is for future generations to re-colonize history using the precious intellectual resources of the Enlightenment. Until then, we do well to fight the progressive warlords like Hochschild who enslave formerly colonized peoples in distorted victimization narratives that rob them of agency, all the while keeping the white man front and center."

In conclusion, Gilley makes some strong claims in an op-ed in a partisan media piece and backs up a few of them with evidence. Most are not novel; those that are border on the outrageous as far as the window for typical debate goes in this area. In my personal opinion, Gilley in this piece is simply trying to support his larger argument in other media that Western colonialism was good for the rest of the world, and since the CFS history is rather inconvenient for that narrative, he wants to deride it. Long story short, if you want to change the way this article is written, you can do much better than Gilley's diatribe against the woke. And I say that as someone who probably falls on the more conservative side of this debate, look at this articles talk page archive history for yourself. -Indy beetle (talk) 09:09, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I will go through these individually:

Criticisms 1-6 just sort of your distaste for Gilley's writing style and statements which do not seem entirely relevant here. It goes beyond the scope of the Congo. I don't see why Gilley's criticism of California is at all relevant here for example, it's just an incidental line in an article otherwise entirely divorced from it. Furthermore, the hands thing is not what we are talking about here, is it? It is about general population decline in the Congo. Again, totally irrelevant. Six is the same: We aren't talking about whether Leopold or the Belgian govt ran the Congo, that isn't the part of Gilley's article that's relevant.

Number 7 is where something interesting starts to be brought up. Yes, the Congo is actually not given enough credit for its life saving interventions. As you say yourself, "Arab slavery obviously was combatted by the CFS." Oh, but the EIC taxed the Congolese. But could the same not be said about American slaves in the 1860s? "Oh, they were freed, but now they had to pay taxes, so sort of a mixed bag"? No! Of course not! Paying taxes which, for the vast majority of Congolese was easier and better living than acting as a slave to some Arab psychopath is far better than slavery!

Number 8: So? The rubber harvesting was necessary to keep the conflict afloat. It is not the fault of a law's imposition for those enforcing the law acting poorly. Ridiculous.

Number 9: This type of thing is actually incredibly prevalent throughout the book. In scouring sources to use in my edit, I found one especially egregious example by myself: One of Hochschild's most commonly cited lines is that in retaliation for fleeing their villages, "soldiers often took their animals and burned their huts and crops, leaving them no food." What is Hochschild's source for this? A Swedish travel log called "Tre år i Kongo." This took a few hours, but here's what the log actually says: A Swedish lieutenant saw Belgian officers attacking a village after they murdered a man for human sacrifice, after telling them repeatedly not to engage in human sacrifice. Incredibly misrepresentation. So this isn't something that just deserves an "ok"

10: Very easily found: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/humanitarian-photography/limits-of-exposure/DF481839B27CCE2C3E4DB3F10E848EF9

11: Again, not really relevant to the topic of population decline.

12: I believe they exist in his book The Case for Colonialism which I am currently reading

13: This is what everything else in his post has been to back up.

14: Tomato, tomatoe. When the description of the book on Amazon is "Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million—all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian" the implications are clear.

15: Ok

16: Doesn't really matter why, they stopped slavery and instituted a far more humane system. Seems pretty cut and dry.

17: It literally was

Smefs (talk) 19:35, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

So, you've re-characterized each of Indy beetle's points, but in so doing you've not provided an actual reason why we should treat a polemical op-ed as a reliable source in this article. It would put the kibosh on a lot of our disputes over tone if we had something peer-reviewed to work from. From what I've read about The Case for Colonialism, the original article had some form of double-blind peer review, but was retracted by Third World Quarterly instead due to the death threats surrounding the investigation of whether there was peer review, so all we can say is there was an investigation due to substantial potentials for deficiency that I also intuit. For example, it's irresponsibly broad in scope. People don't write histories coming to conclusive aphorisms about giant epochal phenomena anymore, because it always results in ridiculous errors. For this reason, plus the nigh-unanimous rejection of Gilley's work by the rest of the academic community to date, I will insist that the claims made in The Case for Colonialism are not WP:DUE in this article. The valid claims you want to make are likely to be found elsewhere, though. Remsense诉 19:55, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Smefs, I will respond to a few of your points. I should have said this more explicitly: I would be much more interested in work by Gilley (or others) that has been published in peer-reviewed journals or other more reputable settings than in a partisan/politically-motivated publication. The mocking of California that I highlight suggests to me that this article was written just as much to advance a political line of attack suitable to American conservatives as it was to advance a genuine attempt at constructing an alternative historical narrative. If the journalistic article on the photo falsification was so easy to find and so easily supports Gilley's claims, why did you not cite that instead of the op-ed? You're analogy about Congolese labor taxes and American slave liberation I must admit I find quite silly for reasons obvious to anyone who actually knows anything about either the Congo or American Reconstruction. And re "they stopped slavery and instituted a far more humane system. Seems pretty cut and dry." Yes, that is Gilley's argument, and it's very much in WP:FRINGE territory, especially without the strength of academic peer review. Also important to note that it was chattel slavery that they did away with, not slavery as whole (cough cough forced labor). To say "a far more humane system" was put in place is erm, dubious, to say the least. -Indy beetle (talk) 06:29, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Indy's points here: Gilley's article leans toward political dialectic at wide variance with well-attested historical accounts. In particular, fighting Arab slavers was a convenient talking point for Leopold, but he spent few resources on it and didn't make much of a dent in the slavery trade. The horrors resulting from his forced labour regime had a much bigger impact on the native population. -- Elphion (talk) 19:45, 28 February 2024 (UTC)