Conrads Heart of Darkness

Valeria Micu
Conrad's Heart of Darkness

or Where to Look for the
Roots of Violence still Affecting
Congo Nowadays
Valeria Micu
Conrad's Heart of Darkness

or Where to Look
for the Roots of Violence
still Affecting Congo Nowadays
Editura Centrului tehnic-editorial al armatei

Bucureşti, 2016
3
Valeria Micu
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Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Where to Look for the Roots of Violence
still Affecting Congo Nowadays: Valeria MICU
Editură recunoscută de către CNCS/CNATDCU - Panel 4 -

„Domeniul ştiinţe militare, informaţii şi ordine publică“
Copyright © 2015
Toate drepturile şi responsabilitatea pentru conţinutul prezentei lucrări revin
în totalitate autorului.
Reproducerea integrală sau parţială a textului sau a ilustraţiilor din această

carte este posibilă numai cu acordul prealabil scris al autorului.
4
Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Where to Look for the Roots of Violence still Affecting Congo Nowadays
With love and appreciation for my husband

and children Crina and Theo, who offered me
all their love and support giving me the strength
to accomplish this study.
Eternally grateful for my late parents’ knowledge
of raising me in love, harmony and honesty.
The autor
5
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 9
PREFACE 11
FOREWORD 15
INTRODUCTION 19
PART I 33
CHAPTER I. Violence Studies 35
I.1. Psychological mechanisms of violence 35
I.2. Types of violence and its tools 43
CHAPTER II. Postcolonial Studies 55

II.1. From the humanist principles of the Enlightenment
to the colonisation of Africa 55
II.2. Colonialism and Imperialism 62
II.3. The colonial discourse, main source for post-colonial writing
and debate 69
CHAPTER III: An Anthropological Perspective upon Africa 87

III. 1. Historical and anthropological background 87
III. 2. Pre-colonial Black Africa 93
III. 3. Pre-colonial Congo and its first encounters with Europeans 112
III. 4. The Africans in the European imaginary 125
CHAPTER IV: “Visiting” Congo/Colonising Congo 136
IV.1. The Congo Free State, a colony of horrors 136
IV. 2. Leopold II, the “philanthropic” monarch of great designs 140
IV.3. Henry Morton Stanley, more than a famous explorer 147
IV. 4. Robert Casement, the official witness 150
IV. 5. International endorsement for a personal fiefdom 153
IV. 6. Human drives help colonial desires come true 157
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Valeria Micu
PART II 165
CHAPTER V: Heart of Darkness, the metaphor of a revelation 167
V. 1. Conrad, “the British imperialist agent” 167
V. 1.1. Some Victorian principles and a perfect hero (Livingstone) 167
V. 1.2. Conrad, a British liberal nationalist 174
V. 2. A psycho-analytical perspective 184
V. 3. From childhood dreams to adult achievements 189
V. 4. Conrad the writer 193
V. 4. 1. Writing as healing 193
V. 4. 2. Conrad’s moral vision 197
V. 4. 3. Conrad’s revelation 202
Chapter VI. Going beyond Conrad’s revelation 213
VI. 1. Kurtz as representation of white atrocities 213
VI. 2. Conrad’s ‘cannibals’ as representation of a different image of the native
220
CONCLUSIONS 233
BIBLIOGRAPHY 245
8
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work of research taught me how the seemingly solitary process of
study and writing depends on many people.
My first steps as well as further research and correction were
professionally guided by my coordinator, Professor Monica Bottez;
Professor Radu Surdulescu and university lecturer James Christian Brown
from University of Bucharest gave me some specific advice and support
whenever requested. They also made some recommendations concerning
the most helpful materials and directions of approach and so did Cheikh
Thiam from the Department of African American & African Studies of the
Ohio State University, US and Professor Nazmy Agîl from Koçh University
of Turkey.
During my study I received illuminating information about the present
situation in Congo from some officers who spent some time there being
appointed on specific NATO missions. I thank them, but I cannot give their
names for reasons of security.
The final form of my writing is due to the useful advice I received
from the group of teachers I have already mentioned who also encouraged
me to publish it, as well as Professors Lia Hanţiu and Emil Sîrbulescu who
backed my effort with their praising appreciations.
I also owe thanks to some very special friends who had the patience to
deal with a long period of absence and turmoil, but had the interest and the
competence to read through my work and give me sensible advice.
Without the support and understanding of my chief of department,
Professor Ioan Deac, as well as of some of my colleagues of the Faculty
of Security and Defence of the ‘Carol I’ National Defence University, the
accomplishment of this book would have been delayed and rendered even
more difficult.
My gratitude and thanks also go to the Editor in chief, together with
the group of people who made possible the publication of this book.
9
PREFACE
VALERIA MICU’s book Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Where to Look
for the Roots of Violence Stiill Affecting Congo Nowadays discusses a topical
question from the perspective of postcolonial studies, namely it argues that
imperialist practices applied on colonised people during the colonial rule
triggered psychological transformations resulting in the former colonised
people’s violent behaviour very similar to the colonial agents’ behaviour
perpetrated in ex-colonised countries against their own kin nowadays. In
order to demonstrate the validity of her argumentation she has chosen to
study Congo, the former Belgian colony, the present Congo Democratic
Republic, a country where the terrible humanitarian problems range with the
most serious humanitarian crises of the 21st century. The violence committed
here during interethnic conflicts reached the dimensions of genocide, where
mass murder and rape were used massively in order to intimidate as well as
physically and psychically destroy the population.
These acts of unprecedented violence have determined the author’s
thorough study of the psychological mechanisms that develop and trigger off
violent conduct. She starts from the premise derived from John Locke’s and
J. J. Rousseau’s ideas which have been corroborated by the Peace Studies
researchers that individuals are not born violent but become so in society.
Such researchers as B.E. Schmidt and I.W.Schröder, J. Atkinson, J.Nelson
and C. Atkinson and I.I.Blanco have found that violent conduct appears after
exposure to violent practices and is manifested for several generations in
actions that are blatantly similar with the models that have thus actually
become patterns of violent behaviour. These patterns, as Helvetius şi Piero
Giorgi maintain, can lead to downright violent conduct more frequently and
at a faster pace when they are superposed on innate inclinations.
Drawing on theories put together from various fields , such as neuro-
biology, anthropology, psychology, psycho-analysis , philosophy and history,
Valeria Micu’s study centres round the analysis of Joseph Conrad’s famous
short novel Heart of Darkness read in parallel with Roger Casement’s
Report on the situation in Congo, a number of official documents discovered
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Valeria Micu
and published by historian A. Hochschild in his book King Leopold‫׳‬s Ghost

(1998), the picture drawn by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe of his tribe
Igbo in three of his novels and the Senegalese historian Cheick Anta Diop’s
study entitled Precolonial Black Africa ( 1987). From these books the author
draws arguments that attest of the century-long existence of indigenous
African populations organised in powerful kingdoms or even large empires
whose specific cultures were well-known from antiquity even beyond the
shores of Africa.
It is noteworthy that Valeria Micu pays attention to Romanian
contributions in the field: she mentions Simona Corlan-Ioan’s doctoral
thesis that explores the impact of African journeys upon the European
imaginary in the 19th century (Inventarea Africii negre, /Inventing Black
Africa, 2001), a newspaper article by Nicu Pârlog published in Cultura /
Culture (4 April2013) and some most interesting travel notes by Romanian
authors who were in Africa, some in the Congo, right at the period Conrad
refers to. Thus Sever Pleniceanu, an officer in king Leopold II’s Belgian
colonial army, but an explorer and cartographer at the same time, published
in his study about the ”Congo Independent State” (1902) information quite
simililar to that appearing in European newspapers at the time. He even
wrote about cannibal tribes. Likewise Aurel Varlam, a magistrate in Congo
(1900-1902), published upon his return a volume Nopţi şi zile în Africa
ecuatorială. Amintirile unui fost judecător în Congo Belgian/Nights and
Days in Equatorial Africa. Memories of a former judge in Belgian Congo,
which contains severe remarks on the Belgian colonial system that he
illustrates with incidents from his activity and which testify to the violence
of the system.
The book is written in two parts, the first discussing the problem of
violence at a theoretical multidisciplinary level. In chapter I it uses concepts
from Violence Studies (Hobbes, Spencer, Freud versus Locke, Rousseau,
Piero Giorgi; René Girard, Eliade, Stănciugelu, Noica, Gayatri Spivak,
Fanon, Wieviorka, Surdulescu, Tilly, A. Bottez , Hannah Arendt, Zizeck), and
from Postcolonial Studies (Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Tzvetan Todorov,
Bill Ashcroft, Gayatri Spivak, Aimé Césaire, Chinua Achebe, Robert Young
) in chapter II.
The author emphasises how the discourse of nationalism interacted
with philosophy, natural sciences, sociology and politics giving impetus to
12
competitive colonising usually manifest in violent invasions. The „civilising

mission” sonorously preveiling in the public discourse was more often than
not just a cover up for brutal and undisimulated greed for material profit as in
the case of king Leopold II’s colonialism . He applied a policy of enforced
labour under unbearable conditions that led to the disastrous depopulation of
the country to half of its initial number of inhabitants
The colonial agents and the officers of the ”Forces Publique” and
of the militias brought by the colonial system committed acts of atrocious
cruelty that have become an intergenerational traumatic model which can
still be identified in the present as after Congo got its independence in 1960
its indigenous leaders, such as the well-known Mobutu Sese Seko, have
behaved very similarly to the colonial rulers. In support of her demostration
the author puts forth arguments from the psychoanalytical studies of Frantz
Fanon and Robert Young’s book entitled Colonial Desire.
Using well documented historical and anthropological evidence
derived mostly from Sheikh Anta Diop’s Civilization or Barbarism (1981)
and John Reader’s Africa:A Biography of the Continent (1997) Chapter
III refutes the ideea that in Africa there were no civilizations and statal
formations advanced enough to be historically attested. She also foregounds
Gustave Le Bon’s opnion that the Europeans’ ”civilising” project would
have a negative impact on the African peoples, and will only create a cultural
and social imbalance as, being on a different stage of human evolution the
respective peoples were not prepared for such an abrupt change.
In Chapter IV the author dwells on the schemes and the ingenious
humanitarian philanthropic discourse Leopold II used in order to become
the owner of an African territory 70 times larger than his small kingdom,
that he ironically called the Free Congo State, on how he changed it into
an immense enforced labour camp in order to achieve an unprecedented
economic flourishing of Belgium. The author also evidences the remarkable
role Henry Stanley played in the implementation of the king’s project.
Part II of the book focuses on a deep-going presentation of Conrad, the
naturalised British writer of Polish background and the complex analysis of
his masterpiece, Heart of Darkness. The author foregrounds the therapeutic
function that recounting his traumatising nightmarish Congolese experience
had on a young exile whose sensibility was already wounded by being
born and growing up in a country divided into nonexistence by the three
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Valeria Micu
rapacious neighbouring empires. Through a detailed analysis of Kurtz and

Marlow Valeria Micu reveals the former’s corruption by greed and the
latter’s complicity. Refusing to believe in Kurtz’s moral decay, the truthful
Marlow gets tainted himself as he takes refuge into silence and even lie.
The author also dwells on Marlow’s bewildered surprise when he grasps
the moral supriority of his cannibal crew who could manage self control
although terribly hungry.
Relying on a vast bibliograpghy that the author has digested and
filtered through her own synthetical mind and anlytical sensibility Valeria
Micu’s book makes an important Romanian contribution to the study of
cruel practices in colonial empires, particularly the Belgian one, as well as to
the subtle analysis of Conrad’s metaphor of darkness from the perspective
of violence studies.
Monica Bottez
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FOREWORD
“A step back enables us to identify a violence that sustains
our very efforts to fight violence and to promote tolerance”.
(S. Zizek)
A step forward may be taken by people who have seen with their own
eyes a certain reality; I think I am among the privileged ones who had the
opportunity to live in a different environment for a while, and that helped
me enrich my soul and my mind equally enabling me to forge a peculiar
understanding and approach of other cultures. Fate pushed me towards
Africa, although not exactly to Black Africa, as I spent six years as a teacher
in Fes, Morocco. I still have wonderful memories, but also the impulse to
search more and bring to light several aspects about this continent, which are
less known or maybe just ignored for various reasons.
Many researchers speak today about a general incapacity to unravel
the motivations behind the acts of unequalled brutality still taking place in
Africa with samples of unbelievable cruelty manifested in an incessant chain
of conflicts arising in some of its countries. The same researchers admit that
in spite of being a very important issue it has not been sufficiently studied so
far, although “violence needs to be connected to modernity and to problems
of identity formation and not only to personal or collective risk” (Wieviorka
42). Consequently, specialists from different domains are still questioning
and hypothesizing upon in a clear, international attempt to find the right
answer, which could help decrease the amount of violent behaviour and its
psychological, social, economic, political effects supposed to be responsible
not only for the situation in some states, but for the whole of Africa, “the
only continent on the planet where the normal rules of human development
and advancement simply don’t apply” (Butcher 2008: 4). This is a general
judgement related to a continent which keeps trying to make its way toward
a normal life, but the results are still insignificant with too many spots of
interethnic wars or permanent violent conflicts where rape, killing, atrocities
have become ‘normal’ manifestations of everyday life inspiring visitors
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Valeria Micu
to make up in their minds questions and answers similar to the ones hinted at
by Butcher: “Why are Africans so bad at running Africa?” (310) “They may
be in some way inherently evil” (5).
After having read Butcher’s travelogue meant to remake a long
dangerous journey accomplished a century before by the journalist-explorer
H.M. Stanley to Congo, I became very interested myself in the fate of
this intriguing country, considered “a lost cause” in spite of having “more
potential than any other African nation, more diamonds, more gold, more
navigable rivers, more fellable timber, more rich agricultural land. … [I]
t is exactly this sense of what might be that makes the Congo’s failure
all the more acute” (7). I tried to find out more about the country crossed
by the huge Congo River whose waters became the colour of blood, “the
indisputable symbol of violence” (342), several times in its history, because
hundreds of dead people were carried downstream in times of slavery,
colonialism or interethnic wars still making hundreds of victims. This cruel
reality inspired Butcher to choose such a significant title, Blood River, for
the book describing his Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart (the title in full).
Congo or The Democratic Republic of Congo, as it is called today, may
serve as the best example for what represents nowadays the worst situation
in Africa, being categorised as one of the greatest humanitarian crisis of the
21st century, the place where we can speak about “endemic violence” (344),
“a totem for the failed continent of Africa” (7). All kinds of organizations
and people have got involved in this complex issue, some of them making
genuine efforts to help. Congo is ranked as “the costliest conflict since
the Second World War” (5). There are some research works in progress
analyzing the conflict related issues in Sub-Saharan Africa, which published
reports concerning either certain countries or certain aspects of the main
problem represented by an extremely violent behaviour of Africans towards
Africans during war or armed conflicts affecting soldiers and civilians -
mostly women and girls because of thousands of sexual assaults and gender-
based violence. Newspaper articles and reports launch serious warnings
related to the disastrous consequences that rape and other violent acts have
upon the victims’ psychosocial, intellectual, and economic functioning, as
well as upon the whole social group because of physical and psychological
suffering (Watts and Zimmerman, 2002).
Among the voices claiming that the present social, economic and
political situation of Africa, the permanent state of conflict and instability
16
have deep roots in history, there are some analysts who push their assumptions
further speaking about a shocking resemblance between colonial practices
and some patterns to be noticed today in the violent behaviour of the ex-
colonized, also suggesting comparisons between the colonial ‘style’ and the
present manifestation of different African peoples during conflicts towards
their enemies, either soldiers or civilians. The mass killings from the past
caused by specific colonisers resemble the mass killings which took place
many years after the Africans became independent.
The saddest aspect of this international state of things may be inferred
in what A. Shorter wrote about foreign implications nowadays: “Much of the
violence in contemporary Africa serves the interest of foreign powers and is
fomented by them” (347).
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INTRODUCTION
The overall aim of this book is to demonstrate that imperialist
practices were capable of inducing specific patterns of violent behaviour
to the autochthonous population of the colonised territories. I will bring
under analysis and discussion some suggestive examples of such practices
which are mentioned, inferred, or described in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
and in some other non-fictional discourses from colonial and post-colonial
times taking into account that “literature and literary study in the academy
have been crucial sites of political and cultural struggle with the most far-
reaching results for the general history and practices of colonisation and
de-colonisation” (Ashcroft, 2003: 3).
I took over from studies of different disciplines in order to attempt an
interpretation meant to help support my hypothesis. I have made my research
in order to find some general historical and anthropological information and
also specific reference to Africa and Congo, provided by some works of
European, American and also African historians and anthropologists, such
as Adam Hochschild, Peter Hulme, René Girard, Cheikh Anta Diop, Didier
Gondola, Robert Johnston, Mahmood Mamdani, Bettina Schmidt, Andrew
Roberts, Sigbert Axelson, Simona Corlan-Ioan.
I have also used the philosophical and psychoanalytical approaches
of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Franz Fanon, Max Weber, Achille Mbembe,
Valentin Mudimbe, and the neuro-biological research and interpretation
of Piero Giorgi, which I compared and contrasted with the colonial and
postcolonial theories related to the issue. In this respect I consulted
multicultural sources in order to get a more complete and balanced overview
from critics such as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Tzvetan Todorov, Bill
Ashcroft, Gayatri Spivak, Robert Young, Jean Paul Sartre, Aimé Césaire,
Chinua Achebe. Violence studies works of scholars such as Hanna Arendt,
Michel Wieviorka, J. and C. Atkinson, Ali Behdad, Belachew Gebrewold,
Radu Surdulescu were of paramount importance for a thorough research
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Valeria Micu
and theoretical approach of the roots of colonial violence and its long term
consequences upon entire populations.
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness represents the central point of this work,
a symbolic source of reference for all that Africa, and more precisely
Congo suggested to Europeans of Victorian times. It is a metaphoric piece
of fictional writing, very deeply rooted in an imperialistic reality, which it
renders in such minute, gruesome details that it borders on naturalism. My
attention was focused on the most significant suggestions Conrad provides
in his novella, which in spite of the metaphoric appearance are hinting at
the violence perpetrated upon the indigenous people, as it is described in
many adventure books of colonial times or in other sources, such as letters,
diaries, newspaper articles, official documents. They depict the acts of
violence from different perspectives providing the appropriate material that
historians, anthropologists, writers, biographers used for their research and
I also used to exemplify with horrible acts of violence and atrocities, in
some cases presented by the perpetrators as acts of courageous behaviour
and commendable achievements.
The big challenge of this research was also given by the total lack of
similar academic studies of the Congo issue in Romania. However, I have
discovered that we had a brave representative in the colonial Belgian Army,
between 1898-1901, lieutenant, explorer and cartographer Sever Pleniceanu,
who, after having crossed more than 3000 km of central Africa, in the area
where Congo or ex-Zair and Sudan lie today, published the results of his
researches in a brochure specifying the place of his endeavours, entitled
“On the Independent State of the Congo”1. This paper is not only a source
of biological, geographical and climatic data, but also of very interesting
and valuable information about the indigenous cultural habits and tribal
organisation even for the almost unknown tribes of pigmies and cannibals.
At about the same time (1900-1902), another Romanian, Aurel Varlam,
a law graduate from a Paris university, tempted his luck as a magistrate
in Leopold’s Congo. Some information about general aspects of his life
1
The paper “Asupra Statului Independent Congo”/“On the Independent State of Congo”
was published in Târgu-Jiu by Nicu D. Miloşescu Printing Press in 1902 (cf. Elisabeta
Gina Saliu on http://ecouriistorice.weebly.com/ecouri-istorice/personalitati-plenita-sever-
pleniceanu, accessed November 2014).
20
in Leopoldville was published in a letter he had sent to his father while

carrying out a two-year contract working for the Congolese law court2,
most of his African impressions, personal judgements, real judicial cases,
depiction of imperialist practices, very impressive because of their stunning
similarity to those of Conrad and other contemporary witnesses I mentioned
in my paper, were shared some years after his coming back to Romania, in
guise of instalments published in a journal of his time3. He also delivered
public lectures for the Romanian public, according to a letter from his family
archive4 and received warm encouragement from the great Mihail Sadoveanu
to put everything in a book, which unfortunately did not occur (Anghelescu
53). Journalist Ioan Catina was another African traveller who spent six years
on the black continent (1900-1906) in search of a property, a family, or
another way to make an honest living on his own. Instead, he discovered the
real nature of the black natives whom he praised in letters and dispatches
sent to the same contemporary newspapers which had made his predecessors
known (Anghelescu 57-8). Some of his journalist’s observations about
the indigenous way of life and high moral principles I have mentioned in
chapter III are very similar to the ones described by African historians and
philosophers such as Diop, Mudimbe or Rodney.
The Romanian interest in the international exploration of the globe
is also proved by Victor Anestin’s book, The Life and Work of Famous
Explorers, published in Bucharest, in 19215. Beside well known travellers
and explorers of America and Asia, he also provides interesting and valuable
information about David Livingstone’s life as missionary and explorer
in Africa.
There were also some famous Romanian writers who travelled to some
countries of Africa and penned their experience in short essays depicting the
2
“Scrisoarea unui magistrat român din Congo” in Ziarul călătoriilor [“Letter of a Romanian
Magistrate in Congo” in Journal of Travels] IV (1900), nr. 184 of 22 Nov., pp. 1455-1456
quoted in Mircea Anghelescu, Călători români în Africa, 1983: nota 51/p. 53.
3
Epoca newspaper from Bucharest (Anghelescu 53).
4
Letter of thanks and gratitude “for the great and instructive conference” Varlam held in
Iaşi on March 24th, 1902, signed by Elena Mârzescu, President of the Romanian Women’s
Committee of Iaşi (Anghelescu 54).
5
V. Anestin. Viaţa şi opera celebrilor exploratori. Librăria nouă, Carol P. Segal, Bucureşti,
1921.
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Valeria Micu
specific African landscapes and weather, people’s habits and appearance, the
way their artistic sensitive eyes perceived them. Vasile Alecsandri shared
his memories from Morocco6, Alexandru Rosetti depicted Nigerian customs
and habits of the inhabitants of Lagos and Cotonou7, Eugen Popa issued an
interesting and documented Egyptian Diary, a short monograph of old and
modern Egypt8.
The first Romanian academic approach of Africa was accomplished by
Simona Corlan-Ioan in her PhD thesis defended in 1998, then published as a
very documented and attractive book in 2001, The Invention of Black Africa9.
In 2009 another PhD thesis was given the form of a very well documented
book published in two volumes entitled The Giant Is Waking Up, by the well
known journalist Nicolae Melinescu10. His work is an analysis of the last
thirty years of Africa’s history based on a deep study of the primary sources,
and also on the author’s personal experience in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The gravity of the events taking place in Congo furnished the material
for a case study published in 201311, while the whole story of Congo’s drama
inspired journalist Nicu Pârlog to write in 2014 an article entitled “Regele
Leopold al Belgiei şi genocidul uitat din Africa”12/“King Leopold of Belgium
and Africa’s Forgotten Genocide” [my translation].
The international public have always been informed about external
problems, but the impact and immediate reaction are not always of the same
force in spite of the gravity of the approached topic. There often exists a
connection between public reaction and the degree to which that public could
be affected by a certain humanitarian concern. We can often speak about total
indifference, which is one of the most dangerous violent manifestations that
6
V. Alecsandri, “Călătorie prin Africa. De la Tanger prin munţii Uadras” in Drumuri şi zări.
Şt. Cazimir (coord.), Ed. Sport-turism, Bucureşti, 1982: 41-45.
7
Al. Rosetti, Călătorii şi portrete. Ed. Sport-turism, Bucureşti, 1983: 87-90.
8
E. Popa, Jurnal egiptean. Ed. Sport-turism, Bucureşti, 1988.
9
S. Corlan-Ioan, Inventarea Africii Negre: călătorii în imaginarul European al sec. al XIX-
lea. Ed. Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 2001.
10
N. Melinescu, Uriaşul care se trezeşte. CA Publishing, Cluj-Napoca, 2009.
11
“Cum au ajuns Congolezii la sapă de lemn” / “The Way the Congolese have been
brought to Beggary”, October 20th, 2013 on http://www.money.ro/cum-a-ajuns-republica-
democrata-congo-la-sapa-de-lemn_1255240.html accessed November 2014.
12
Ziarul Cultura, April 4th, 2014.
22
could be compared to the same distant attitude people generally had while
crimes and genocides were perpetrated somewhere in the world during well
known regimes of oppression such as slavery, colonialism, imperialism,
communism. In 2008 Slavoj Zizek was writing in the introduction to his
book Violence, about the impact different pieces of information may have
upon the audience, as a starting point for identifying certain types of
violence. He chose the cover story of Time magazine of 5 June 2006, “The
Deadliest War in the World”, which “offered detailed documentation on how
around 4 million people died in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a
result of political violence over the last decade” noticing that “[n]one of the
usual humanitarian uproar followed, just a couple of readers’ letters – as if
some kind of filtering mechanism blocked this news from achieving its full
impact in our symbolic space.” His logical conclusion is that “Time picked
the wrong victim in the struggle for hegemony in suffering” in spite of a
cruel reality put in front of the readers: “The Congo today has effectively
re-emerged as a Conradean ‘heart of darkness.’ No one dares to confront it
head on” (Zizek 2-3).
Very often the writers had a decisive role in disseminating hidden truths.
Conrad was such a writer as well as some other of his contemporaries (Mark
Twain, Conan Doyle, Anatole France). There are many cases of shocking
revelations nowadays and the inspiration for my research came out of such
a book. It is about Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, an extremely well
documented account which reveals the colonial past of Congo in its full
ugliness causing loud reaction and public Belgian response with various
impacts. First of all, relatives of some of the incriminated persons who had
been Belgian representatives, colonial agents, even officers involved in bloody
conflicts with the indigenous population, broke the silence in different ways,
in some cases showing curiosity for more information and trying to contact the
author. In the following years thousands of documents kept hidden for almost
a century were made accessible to the public who was given the opportunity
to find out about the real face of King Leopold II and discover a different
version of a segment of their history. At the same time the well known Royal
Museum for Central Africa from Tervuren, Brussels, housed for some months
(February 4-October 9, 2005) an exhibition called “The memory of Congo”,
which was meant to show how Congo was before colonisation.
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Valeria Micu
In 2014 I tried to visit this museum and see if anything had really
changed, but I discovered that in December 2013 the whole museum had
been closed for works of renovation and enlargement, and also, hopefully,
for some fundamental changes to be made upon the story so far presenting to
the public the “harmonious” Belgian-Congolese relationship, otherwise full
of “distortions and evasions” as Hochschild claimed in one of his articles
approaching the Congo topic [“In the Heart of Darkness”. The New York
Review of Books, (52) 6 October 2005]. All I could see with my own eyes
were the sumptuous buildings which still impress the local population as well
as the curious tourists, few of them knowing the real price such investments
requested.
Hochschild’s book is one of the most poignant non-fictional sources
depicting the incredible atrocities which took place in the Congo Free State
during Leopold II’s reign perpetrated by the Belgian government almost in
the same manner after 1908 when Leopold was forced to “sell” the African
country to the Belgian state. The title of the book implies that the evil is still
there embodied by the king’s ghost, which has always been hovering and
inspiring the ex-victims to behave according to their new identities. Social
psychologists and historians initiated deep, careful studies at the beginning
of the 2000s meant either to clarify how societal dynamics permeate the
individual psyches, which may consequently, influence social mechanisms,
or to discern the degree to which colonialism is responsible for the present
situation in the Congo (Ndaywel e Nziem 2005; Vellut 2005 quoted in Licata
and Klein 2010: 47).
Hochschild also mentions other writers or simply colonial agents,
journalists, explorers, missionaries, government representatives, who evoked
unspeakable cruelties in their fiction, travel books, letters, diaries, or official
reports, which had constituted the basis for an international humanitarian
campaign at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was another strong
reason for reaction, especially from the former colonialists’ side. Apart from
the indignation expressed in different newspapers or on specific websites,
some even demanded the banning of any available proof, which could still
influence the public opinion. It is worth mentioning here, that a huge amount
of documents related to all kinds of activities carried out in Leopold’s Congo
between 1885-1908 were burnt immediately after the official decision was
24
taken in the previously mentioned respect, that the Congo should become
the state’s colony: “The furnaces burned for eight days, turning most of the
Congo state records to ash and smoke in the sky over Brussels”. It seems that
Leopold felt like explaining what was happening to Gustave Stinglhamber,
one of his military aids: ‘I will give them my Congo, but they have no right
to know what I did there’ (Hochschild 212).
For a number of Belgians who felt pure revelation after having read
Hochschild’s book, indignation came in a different guise: they could not
understand and accept such a long silence, or rather downward lie, on the
part of the authorities who had created the beautiful story of King Leopold
II, in which the great protector is still worshiped by the Congolese people,
and put it in history books to be read by generations of Belgian children.
Paradoxically, the young generations showed “higher levels of collective
guilt and support for reparative actions” than members of older generations
(Licata and Klein 46). Some of them, members of an anarchist group (De
Stoete Ostendenoare), acted more radically by severing “a bronze hand” of a
Congolese figure which was part of “an imposing statuary group stand[ing]
by the sea in Ostend, Belgium…to honor the city’s ‘genial protector’, King
Leopold II”. It was anonymously explained in an interview that the deed
was meant to repair the text erroneously describing the Belgian-Congolese
relationships written on a plaque in order to explain the artist’s message,
which had nothing to do with the cruel truth (46).
The fact that evil has always been causing suffering to the Congolese
in many cases perpetrated by indigenous people on their kin was also
suggested by Michela Wrong who published another significant book
(2000) about Congo with a loud speaking title: In the Footsteps of Mr.
Kurtz. She brings into discussion the same mechanism of violent behaviour
implemented by years of cruel treatment and all types of abuse applied by
the colonial regime symbolized here by Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz, who was not
only a fictional character in a novella still haunting sensitive Westerners and
arousing discussions on racial issues, but the very embodiment of a station
agent Adam Hochschild discovered in his research. Wrong implies that more
African leaders carried on Kurtz’ style the way Congo’s president Mobutu
Sese Seko did for thirty-two years. He is the main character of the book, the
kleptocrat who had sublimely learnt the imperialists’ lesson.
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Valeria Micu
Sometimes writers take high risks in order to get closer to the source
of their inspiration. It is precisely what Tim Butcher did to be able to write
his Blood River (2007), after having succeeded to remake Stanley’s track
through Africa, but also because he had been intrigued during his childhood
by Conrad’s many-faceted novella, which he tried to unravel. Butcher gives
a detailed account of historical events going back in time as far as 1482,
analyzing the colonial era and the post-independence troubled years, then
the long periods of war between some African nations or tribes, in an attempt
to understand, and at the same time to make his readers understand, where
the tragedy of these people started, and to what extent different human
practices affected a whole nation which still cannot recover after centuries
of humiliation.
Many writers have been intrigued by Conrad’s novella and felt
pushed to make more thorough research. Others just experienced similar
feelings with Conrad’s. I will mention here another Romanian feat, that of
Roxana Valea, a journalist, who had her book published (2008), after having
accomplished an African journey, carried out from north to south through
The Democratic Republic of Congo. She confesses it was a hard try but it
helped her accomplish the dream of discovering “the place where the sun still
rises in an explosion of colours and the stars still sparkle at night”. She also
speaks about “that holy land which we carry deep in our hearts and where
we can look for our lost souls” (Through Dust and Wind13, book cover, my
translation). I mentioned this example in order to spotlight the feelings Valea
had at the end of her journey, which almost erased all unpleasant moments
she had experienced in most of the places, one of them being while traversing
Congo. For Conrad it was “the blankest of all blank spaces”, but it was also
much connected with a voyage into the self, almost in the same way Carl
Jung compared the voyage to Africa with the opportunity of discovering
one’s own ‘shadow’, which had to be perceived and accepted.
The present book attempted to accomplish an imaginary voyage in
Congo’s past in order to better understand its present. It comprises two
distinct parts. Part I deals with general theoretical information from different
scientific accounts meant to support my demonstration, while Part II deals
with Joseph Conrad’s complex, ambivalent and sensitive personality, whose
13
R. Valea, Prin praf si vise.
26
trauma caused by his personal experience in Congo triggered the metaphoric

revelation of a hidden truth in guise of the famous novella Heart of Darkness.
Chapter I (Violence Studies) brings the theoretical information
necessary for a better understanding of the psychological mechanisms of
violence, analysing some types of violence and its tools, which could be
distinguished in the Congo case and generally in many other colonised
countries. The main point was to bring more explanations, examples and
arguments in the same vein with the large group of scientists who argue
that humans have a nonviolent inborn nature (Locke; Rousseau; Giorgi;
Kropotkin, Fromm, Montagu, Barash, Sponsel quoted in Giorgi). These
scientists maintain that the cultural environment strongly influences the
individuals’ behaviour. I have presented the main types of violence which
could be distinguished in colonial environment (founding violence, epistemic
violence, collective violence, instrumental violence, violence as non-sense),
responsible for inducing patterns of violence that are to be exemplified in
the following chapters. Girard’s Mimetic Theory of Desire, or acquisitive
mimesis, which seems to be the general reason, in Girard’s acceptation, for
the violent behaviour in any human community seemed to me the essence of
colonial relationships where everybody wants to be like everybody else for
different reasons, an aspect approached by Fanon as well.
Chapter II (Postcolonial Studies) displays the background created by
the humanist principles of the Enlightenment for a colonial project, eventually
materialised into violent interference in many newly discovered areas of the
globe and the institutionalisation of colonial and imperial systems. The whole
process was continually backed up by the justifying colonial discourse which
became a source of vivid and almost endless debate in the post-colonial
era. I have also tried to explain such concepts as mimicry, ambivalence
and hybridity, mainly handled and applied on colonial realities by Homi
Bhabha. I have approached Frantz Fanon’s psychopathologic analyses of
the white-black relationships with a specialised view upon the complex
and complicated sexual dimension. One of the main concerns in Fanon’s
books and studies is related to the victims who will become perpetrators
as a logical consequence of the huge quantity of violence inoculated in the
black people’s collective memory; so renewal can only come after violent
and uncontrollable acts, contrary to Girard’s scapegoat theory; thus, the
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Valeria Micu
mimetic desire has disastrous consequences in the interracial general

and sexual relationships because everything becomes perverted and
impossible to restore. Fanon also counteracted Jung to a certain extent,
maintaining that a travel to Africa does not mean a travel to anybody’s
childhood but to that of the Europeans. Another aspect helpful for my
argument is that of ‘colonial desire’ approached by Robert Young in a book
with this title (Colonial Desire 1998) explicating that more than anything
colonialism was a kind of “machine of desire” at the same time disturbed
by fears of miscegenation and hybridity. He exemplified with Gobineau’s
theories related to interracial sexual relations and also with Bhabha’s and
Bakhtin’s common view theorising about a degree of intentionality to be
distinguished in this type of relations, aiming at a reversal of the position of
domination. I have as well remarked in this chapter the great impact some
colonial discourse had upon what was to come in Europe, wars where issues
of race, miscegenation and nationalism played a decisive role for the fate of
some nations (Gobineau’s theories influenced the Nazi).
Chapter III (An Anthropological Perspective upon Africa) provides
historical and anthropological data I have tried to put together from very
old and more recent sources, about pre-colonial black Africa and pre-
colonial Congo, in an attempt to support the theory of historical perpetuity
of civilisations, according to which different social groups of the world are
not at the same level of development in the same moments in time. Thus,
their encounters were followed by cultural clashes with deep consequences
on both sides and also with the creation of the image of the Other, a rather
distorted one in most of the cases. Relying most on Diop’s historical accounts
I provided some samples of old African life, trying to cover the most
important areas of some communities known everywhere for their richness
and military strength given mainly by gold mineral which was a reality in
kingdoms such as Ghana, Songhai and Sudan. Old accounts attest slavery
as a very old practice, but I have tried to make the distinction that changes
everything: slaves of very old times seemed to enjoy some rights; their
treatment was much different from what Europeans brought: chains, rifle and
the chicotte although not in this order. I have shown that everybody feared
the Arab raids in spite of Diop’s milder view upon this matter. He claims
that Arab tribes mixed with the black tribes in a long and quite harmonious
28
process mainly because of a certain resemblance in spiritual beliefs. There

were large discrepancies between huge and wealthy empires and small, quite
backward tribes. This reality was discovered by the Portuguese who first set
foot on Congo land in 1482. They also introduced fire arms in the Bakongo
kingdom, a violent act which seems to have hurried the social metamorphosis
of the indigenous societies. The exaggerated Portuguese claims, and then the
raids for slaves, village plunder and fire destabilised even more the internal
balance of the Congolese communities.
Chapter IV (“Visiting” Congo/Colonising Congo) remakes the almost
unbelievable story of king Leopold II’s appropriation giving the most
important details of a political manoeuvre, which helped the Belgian king
reach his goal of becoming the sovereign of Congo, an area about 80 times
larger than his tiny kingdom, due to his remarkably shrewd skills and mostly
to the excellent performers of his almost perfect design. This process of
acquisition of huge lands was skilfully carried out with all the necessary
preparation and deceitful discourses of philanthropic designs by the famous
journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley who had been sent to track
the missionary Livingstone and managed to impress the whole Europe with
his strength, resistance and tenacity. Leopold was equally impressed; soon
he lured Stanley into his design which he accomplished magisterially. I
have mentioned the fact that both characters had some traits in common:
they had both missed parental warmth and were thirsty for love, respect
and authority. When the ‘business’ was settled as the Congo Free State the
Europeans brought rifles and the chicotte14 in order to push the indigenous
people to work. Very soon, Congo was transformed into a labour-camp,
source of huge profits for Leopold and also for some foreign companies. I
have shown that all the system of forced labour was kept under control by
the help of soldiers who were either local young conscripts, or mercenaries
from all Africa and Europe tempted by promises of good salaries to work
for La Force Publique15. A second source meant to enforce discipline were
14
The French name for whip, the most used tool for punishment, often used in excess for
trifles with no fear that the victim could even die.
15
La Force Publique was conceived in 1885 as a military and police force to work for the
Congo Free State, by direct order of Leopold II; the officers of this entity were entirely
Europeans.
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the militias, another fatal innovation for Congo, as those simple men who
suddenly felt strong and important, killed people around at random any time,
similarly to what has been happening since then.
In Part II, Chapter V (Heart of Darkness, the metaphor of a revelation)
approaches Conrad from a complex perspective in an attempt to demonstrate
that there is always a connection between a writer’s psychological structure
and his personal experience, which can deeply influence his literary
achievement. This chapter deals with such an outcome in the case of Heart of
Darkness, whose writing represented a real therapy meant to heal Conrad’s
Congolese trauma, as the author was able to reveal to the world the truth
of the most horrible atrocities he had been a witness of, although many
critics were misled by their metaphoric representation. I have given some
biographical data of Conrad in order to spotlight the special conditions he
had as a child living in exile with his parents and soon remaining orphan. He
was a sensitive teenager, not very willing to study or obey rules. He made
all the necessary efforts to reconstruct himself as a British liberal-nationalist
with clear political beliefs, but mainly sharing the British pride of being
an exemplary nation supposed to serve as role-models with high physical
and intellectual qualities for the less endowed representatives of the human
race. Conrad’s disillusionment was even greater because he had trusted the
system and the discovery he made in Congo was rather far from the truth he
thought he knew.
Chapter VI (Going beyond Conrad’s revelation) is the result of a careful
research of the most suggestive texts that could help ‘translate’ Conrad’s
metaphoric language. I had to choose from a multitude of examples found
in Stanley’s adventure books, diaries, letters, autobiography, interviews
and conferences, in Ward’s adventure books, in Casement’s official report
written for the British government, many letters sent to family and friends by
missionaries, officers and other colonial agents, open letters or reports sent
to the Belgian government in an attempt to stop the horrors perpetrated by
the king’s colonial agents and militaries. I have mentioned some real persons
who could have provided Conrad’s inspiration. He tailored such a complex
and mysterious character that we can hardly grasp Kurtz, the real man. He
could be simply a clerk who had a job to accomplish being devoted to the
system and to his own dreams of civilising natives. And here I suggested that
30
Kurtz is also the symbol of the Europeans who did not know how to deal
with a new situation; one applied solution was to behave violently. Besides,
they had to make some profit and to make themselves obeyed and respected,
and they chose to act aggressively for better results.
In this last chapter I have also tried to present the cannibal issue from an
anthropological perspective, also connecting it with real facts and information
provided by people who really met cannibals. It seems that Sever Pleniceanu
was one of them who brought some information about the cannibal tribes
similar to what I have discovered in Ward’s book; nonetheless, he expressed
his preference to be with native people rather than with Europeans. He seems
to have grasped more of the natural order at work in those tribes than many
other Europeans interested only in making profits: “I’d be more satisfied if
I were only with black people. Most of the white people do their best to get
rich by any means” (Pleniceanu quoted in Anghelescu 51, my translation).
31
PART I
33
CHAPTER I. Violence Studies

The horrid reality about Congo can be grasped from Conrad’s metaphor
in spite of its controversial interpretations. I will try to spotlight this reality
the way it is expressed by each of the three actors of the act of violence – the
perpetrator, the victim, or the observer – in the written or verbal testimonies
picked up by some tireless researchers and brought out to light in the form
of travelogues, historical or scientific accounts for the ordinary readers, who
do not always choose to be disturbed from their comfortable life. This very
attitude of lack of action is categorized as a dangerous act of violence itself,
because of the “often catastrophic consequences of the smooth functioning
of our economic and political systems” (Zizek, 2).
I.1. Psychological mechanisms of violence

The preoccupation for understanding the mechanisms of violence
comes in the first place from the human basic instinct of preservation.
Violence means conflict, conflict means danger, danger means fight (to
defend and preserve one’s property, which in many cases is one’s own body
or life). It has become more and more obvious that solutions are not to be
found without appropriate research of the hidden elements causing such
behaviour, which differs from culture to culture as direct consequence of
specific experience. “Conflicts are mediated by a society’s cultural perception
that gives specific meaning to the situation, evaluating it on the basis of the
experience of past conflicts, stored as objectified knowledge in a group’s
social memory” (Schmidt and Schroder 4).
The voices arguing that colonial practices influenced the colonised
people to such extent that we can speak about induced patterns of violent
behaviour with a clear bend towards cruelty and sadism, thus in total
accordance with the thesis I will do my best to demonstrate, start from the
theory that human beings do not have a genetic inclination toward violence.
I totally agree with this theory and I will bring arguments in order to support
it after having looked for proofs in some documents, some fictional and
non-fictional pieces of writing issued during the colonial regime in Africa
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Valeria Micu
about current practices applied in Congo. I will also back up the conclusion
according to which violence is not a question of genes or hormones, by
invoking some research accounts published in books, reports, studies, or
even anthologies issued by people who work in different domains such
as neurobiology, sociology, anthropology, psychology and psychiatry,
philosophy, history and political science.
Almost all these researchers agree that “no violent act can be fully
understood without viewing it as one link in the chain of a long process of
events each of which refers to a system of cultural and material structure
that can be compared to similar structural conditions anywhere else” (7).
The same authors insist that violence never limits itself to just one instance:
Violence is never a totally isolated act. It is – however remotely– related to

a competitive relationship and thus the product of a historical process that
may extend far back in time and that adds by virtue of this capacity many
vicissitudes to the analysis of the conflictive trajectory. Violence is more than
just instrumental behaviour. As historically situated practice, it is informed
by material constraints and incentives as well as by historical structures and
by the cultural representation of these two sets of conditions. (3)
All studies are important, useful, but reliable only up to a certain

point, consequently more vulnerable, especially after too long a period when
researchers agreed upon the fact that congenital violence in humans is the
real source of any conflict, opinion still shared by a great number of people
in the world we live. That is why I reckon useful to start by presenting the
scientific results obtained in neurobiology, which have provided material
proofs more difficult to be contested. I rely on Origins of Violence, a book
written by Piero Giorgi after a long period of research in the field and also
in some other fields in tight connection with the violence issue within an
international group, Peace Studies, which have been focusing on the world
peace matter for several years.
In an attempt to counteract some well known theories still accepted
by a large number of scholars and average lay people Giorgi gives a very
sensible argument to Freud’s intuitive conclusion that humans were born
violent and they feel constraint by the general social rules forcing them not
to let free their wild subconscious drive. Giorgi explains:
According to Freud, humans would find themselves locked between Eros

and Death, in a vicious circle of eroticism and aggressiveness that needs
36
to be controlled by an educated consciousness able to suppress the wild

subconscious. The suppression of these natural instincts by civilized society
would cause a general malaise in the community, and even neuroses in severe
individual cases. […] We would like to suggest that the cause of the malaise
of civilization is more likely to be the opposite of that suggested by Freud:
we feel uncomfortable in a violent society. A congenital predisposition
toward living in a nonviolent community is still there in contemporary Homo
sapiens. (Giorgi 198/187)16
Giorgi reformulates what Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau claimed related

to human nature, which, in their theories is generally in search for social
order and submission to sovereignty precisely for avoiding conflict and war.
They created the basis for political science later challenged by scholars like
Spencer and Freud, who approached the biological implications in political
sociology. Thus, we can consider this last assumption as an urgent reason for
all scientific, empirical, official, or private research and debate targeting the
violence manifested at such a frightening scale in our society.
For the sake of a better general understanding not only of the origins
of violence, but also of its psychological mechanisms Giorgi insists on a
correct use of terminology bringing some necessary clarifications upon the
concepts of aggression, aggressiveness and violence. First of all he clarifies
that these words cannot be considered synonyms because aggression and
aggressiveness are basic concepts, while violence should be approached
as a complex concept. Besides, aggression and violence mean behaviour,
while aggressiveness is an inborn predisposition, which may or may not
develop in aggressive or violent behaviour. He gives some practical
examples in order to prove that any predisposition is closely influenced
by the post-natal development of an individual. At this point I would like
to connect this assumption with the main interest of this work, namely to
prove that the striking level of violence still manifested in Congo today is
directly connected to the Belgian colonial practices applied on all Congolese
people for several decades. This statement is also meant to give an answer
to all those specialists who still motivate the present African, and mostly
Congolese chaos speaking about inborn violence demonstrated, they say,
16
The first number represents the page in the pdf ebook /the second number represents
the page in the paper book. In most of the cases there is a difference of many pages which
makes the checking difficult.
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Valeria Micu
by aggressive pre-colonial behaviour meaning bloody inter-ethnic conflicts,

cruel rituals and cannibalistic native practices. But neurobiological research
states that a higher innate predisposition toward aggressiveness is always
aggravated by the post-natal every day model:
When considering the relationship between aggressiveness and aggression

it is important to notice that in practice a congenital predisposition is only
responsible for delaying or accelerating the acquisition of behavioural traits
which are, eventually, bound to be acquired by cultural transfer in any
case. This is an important aspect of the difference between the quantitative
character of congenital factors and the qualitative character of post-natal
learning factors. (Giorgi 128/117)
In the Congo case we cannot even speak about cultural evolution as

a consequence of post-natal learning, but on the contrary about cultural
involution or about an “underdeveloping country” (Butcher: interview
2007), after the brutal interference of totally different cultures functioning
on the basis of different laws and rules specific to societies found at a certain
level of social and historical evolution.
Giorgi uses generally accepted concepts familiar in the field and brings
neurobiological and anthropological evidence in order “to support the purely
cultural essence of violence” (Giorgi 192/103). He refers to congenital factors
and post-natal learning borrowing the terms nature/nurture from much older
debates on the same topic. Helvetius was one of the first who insisted upon
the stronger role of what a brain can gain by learning than what the brain is
primarily endowed with (cf. Todorov 1999: 223). Writing in the same vein as
Locke, the first who had spoken about the new born baby’s brain as a tabula
rasa element, where knowledge could be acquired only by means of personal
experience derived from sense perception (cf. Baird; Kaufmann 527–29),
Helvetius issued his philosophical work, De l’esprit (On Mind) in 1758,
arguing that he had noticed the great power nature and education have upon
the human mind, consequently education being responsible for what we are.
The atheistic, utilitarian and egalitarian doctrines were so daring for his time
that the Church and the State declared his issued philosophical achievement
heretical and decided upon burning the book as a public act of banning and
rejection (Helvetius quoted in Todorov: 223).
A century later, in 1894, Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist,
sociologist, anthropologist, inventor and physicist came with some new
38
conclusions concerning the nature/nurture issue in Les lois psychologiques

de l’evolution des peuples (The Psychology of Peoples). In spite of the long
lapse of time and multidisciplinary studies, his opinion is situated on the
opposite side from the previously mentioned position: education is supposed
to have little chance to change the inborn amount of information in humans
and the changes are supposed to be only of a superficial nature. He chose
to exemplify with representatives of different races arguing that it would be
possible to teach a black person or a Japanese so as to make him become a
high school graduate or a lawyer, but it would only be a superficial lustre
with no effect upon their mental structure. Such a person could never reach
the intellectual level of an ordinary European (Todorov 1999: 223). He
maintains that European education cannot have a positive influence on non-
European peoples; on the contrary it would rather bring them corruption
because it would destroy the old cultural background without replacing it
with something valuable in accordance with their capacity of reception. It
would only manage to disrupt their basic moral laws and their intelligence
pushing them backwards even from the level they had already acquired on
their own (Todorov 1999: 224). I think that apart from the racialist mentality,
which was a general characteristic of the time, we can distinguish some
valuable assessment of the situation, especially from the perspective of
the twenty-first century when we can see the consequences of European
colonialism upon some non-European peoples.
Giorgi tries to prove that the qualitative factor is of extreme importance
for the individual’s future behaviour. He claims that almost any amount of
inborn aggressiveness can be addressed in a favourable cultural environment
especially when such nurture element is available from very early stages in
somebody’s life, the result being the same when the child is raised in a violent
culture and the chances are the same for the mind to copy on the violent
model irrespective of the degree of inborn aggressiveness. This becomes not
only a matter of time, but also of quality, or as Giorgi puts it “the concept of
time factor implies a qualitative and not just a quantitative difference in the
relative contribution of congenital components and cultural components of
our social behaviour: nature may well predispose, but nurture finally defines
behavioural traits” (132/121) and that is why there is such a diversity in
present and past human behaviours.
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Valeria Micu
Another important aspect supporting the theory that in spite of their

non-violent nature many people still behave in extremely violent manners,
especially in the case of Congolese people who are the main concern of the
present research, is the way in which behavioural traits are transmitted from
one generation to the next. In this case it is necessary to clarify that this
happens through cultural transfer which is “so effective and conservative
(in a stable environment) as to be easily confused with the inheritance of
congenital behaviour; several analogies existing between the mechanisms
of biological and cultural evolution make the confusion even more likely”
(110/99). The fact that scholars have repeatedly made analogies between
the two, “encourage[d] erroneous biological deterministic interpretation”
(110/99). What makes the great difference is that “the inheritance of acquired
characters occurs only in cultural evolution, which explains the exceptional
swiftness of this process as compared to biological evolution” (110/99).
Giorgi specifies that this type of transformation was considered by some
anthropologists to be of the Lamarckian type, as Lamarck had made the
assumption that any need for a new organ could determine the necessary
change in the body of an animal, giving the example of the giraffe growing
a longer neck in order to reach the leaves on taller trees. That happened
half a century before Darwin accepted the idea that acquired characters are
inherited and adapted it to what he called the natural selection.
One of the most prominent contemporary supporters of a similar
view upon the origins of violence is René Girard whose radical theory of
violence is based on the concepts of acquisitive mimesis and rivalry, which
are supposed to be the starting point for any violent manifestation (Girard
1965). He argues that violence is always in search of a victim whose role is
to appease hostility. It is what he calls the surrogate victim.
“[C]ultural evolution corresponds to a true inheritance of acquired
characters.[…] If this cultural inheritance becomes transmitted faithfully
from one generation to the next, the new behaviours become part of the
characteristics of that population” (Hinde 1974 quoted in Giorgi 102/91).
Unfortunately sometimes the acquired characteristics are not meant to
help a population really advance, because the new experiences are traumas
caused by aggressions and other violent acts, which dictate specific response
behaviour adopted in order to defend oneself, to protect one’s own body and/
or one’s family and wealth.
40
“The effects of experiencing trauma are transmitted within and across

generations, and whole communities can be affected by a single experience
of trauma by a single member of community” (J. Atkinson, Nelson and
C. Atkinson 135). This is the conclusion reached by another group of
researchers who have closely worked with different groups of indigenous
communities in an attempt to address the serious psychosocial problems
they encounter because of violent behaviour. Their situation is similar to that
of the Congolese in many respects, which I will mention here and analyse
later in my study. The main source of worry is that the members of these
communities are inflicting violence causing extreme suffering and even
death to their kin. They perpetrate violent personal assaults, which in Congo
are almost always of a sexual nature, against men, women and children,
kidnapping and keeping women hostage most of the times as sexual slaves,
torturing, maiming, and too often killing them, sometimes with almost no
clear reason. It is why most of these people are considered psychologically
affected by what psychiatrists call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
or Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) and why “the cycle of violence is repeated
and compounded, as trauma begets violence, with trauma enacted through
increasingly severe violence and increasing societal distress” (137). C.
Atkinson (2008) had already focused on the obvious relationship between
being a victim and becoming a perpetrator and upon the importance of an
appropriate approach to the matter, when such dangerous men have to be
incarcerated in order to break the vicious circle of violent and offending
behaviour. She insisted on the direct connection between “the number of
traumatic stressors or cumulative degree of traumatic exposure and the
likelihood of displaying PTSD symptomatology” focusing on the present
perpetrators who in almost all cases were victims of severe sexual abuse
during their childhood, sometimes until maturity (137).
This vicious intergenerational chain of transmission of trauma was
researched by Blanco (in Levine & Kline, 2007 quoted by Atkinson et al.,
2010) who “developed a five-generation account of the effects of violence
on subsequent generations in South America that can be mapped onto the
history of Indigenous Australia” (137) and which could also be compared
to the Congo situation. It is clearly explained how the cruel treatment of
killing, enslaving, beating, humiliating applied on conquered males of the
first generation also affected the members of their families who shared their
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traumatic experiences by witnessing the horrors. The members of the second

generation, especially men were then inclined towards alcohol and/or drugs
overuse, which could help them face inner feelings of lost identity and lack
of self-esteem. Consequently, their behaviour became violent with their own
family and friends in the form of spousal abuse and domestic violence (137).
The situation in Congo was complicated by the combination of direct
and indirect rule, which had lasted during both Leopoldian and Belgian
colonialism, thus creating the local conditions for corruption at almost all
levels, interethnic conflicts, international economic robbery and violent
treatment from local or foreign militias acting chaotically in a lawless state.
These specific conditions damaged the social fabric adding more traumas
to the post-colonial traumatized population. This can explain the disastrous
situation of the country where families are terrorized, displaced, split,
humiliated and kept in poverty. The traumas became deeper and multiplied
from one generation to the next, violent reaction became normal, thus creating
the background for the horrors taking place today. A similar social scape is
mapped in J. Atkinson’s (2002) “six-generation traumagram” (137), which
spotlights the legacy left by colonisation in the Aboriginal lands, which again
can be compared to what the Congolese people suffered. The line Atkinson
traced across six generations this time, on the basis of inquiries made among
family members who had sad memories of having been victims of sexual
and/or physical abuse, having been perpetrators of violent acts or having
had other health or psychological problems, provided more proofs that “the
presence of unacknowledged or unresolved trauma in previous generations
was linked to dysfunction in later generations of an extended family” (138).
We get closer to the main aspect of the problem: the bad treatment
came with the foreigners from the outside: outside of the family, outside of
the community, outside of the community’s culture, outside of the continent.
The new input caused traumas creating the subjective experience which
was to be transmitted further through more generations as historical trauma.
The fact that historical trauma “becomes embedded in the cultural memory
of a people and is passed on by the same mechanisms by which culture
is generally transmitted, and therefore becomes ‘normalised’ within that
culture” (138) was suggested by a larger number of researchers who also
spoke about this psychological mechanism as being the main cause of the
“dysfunctional community syndrome” (Duran et al., 1998; Muid, 2006;
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Ralph et al., 2006; Robertson, 2006; Whitbeck et al., 2004). A definition of

this syndrome was given by Memmott et al. (2006); it is assessed as “[a]
situation whereby multiple violence types are occurring and appear to be
increasing over generations, both quantitatively (numbers of incidents)
and in terms of the intensity of violence experiences” (quoted in Atkinson
et al. 138).
The climax of violence was reached when some African countries
became the victims of their own genocidal impulse, a situation analysed
among many others by Mahmood Mamdani (2001) in his book When Victims
Become Killers, and in his article “Making sense of Political Violence in
Postcolonial Africa” (2002), which focus on the Rwandan genocide, but also
approach the similar situations of Congo and Uganda, arguing that in all
three countries the problem is created by an old interethnic conflict between
the Tutsi and the Hutu tribes. In his approaches Mamdani goes beyond
the analysis of the mechanisms of violence enlarging the historical and
geographical context and exploring possible solutions for reconciliation. He
comes with important historical details about the colonial past of the three
countries so as to counteract the official discourse which keeps blaming
the internal political situation for the perpetual crisis and the drive toward
mutual slaughtering.
I.2. Types of violence and its tools

“Violence is a basic form of social action, that occurs under concrete
conditions, targets concrete victims, creates concrete settings and produces
concrete results” (Schmidt and Schröder 6). The authors maintain, as we
have already stated above, that the complexity of this behavioural act can
only be understood in the context of a long process where each violent act
is perpetrated in close connection with previous and future violent acts, or
with parallel violent performance; whenever applied as a long-term strategy
able to shape “a group’s psychological proneness to the use of force in the
evolutionary process” (Abbink quoted in Schmidt and Schroder 3), but also
“limit[ing] the development of people’s potentials and deny[ing] people’s
aspiration to be in control of their body, their behaviour and their social
environment” (Galtung 1969 quoted in Giorgi 126/115).
This combined definition covers the main types of violence that
have so far been depicted by anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists,
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and which will be taken into account in my analysis of the Congo situation:
structural (indirect) violence, cultural violence and personal (direct)
violence. These types have been analysed by Galtung who reiterated that
“the essence of structural violence was – and still is – represented by those
values and institutions that enable a minority of individuals to control the
majority of the members of the same community” (Galtung quoted in Giorgi
167/156). Giorgi’s further insight into the cultural evolution of structural
violence could be of real use for us to understand why historical events
had such a heavy and long-term impact upon the African communities
which were actors in the cultural clash with members of totally different
communities who eventually imposed their institutions and values enabling
their minorities to control African majorities.
He argues that “material progress and violence evolved in
parallel and so did the malaise of those Homo sapiens living in a social
environment that was not in harmony with their hunter-gatherer neurologic
imperatives, which did not change at the same time as the emergence of
violent cultures“(169/158). He further explains that “people’s malaise in
food-producing cultures finds its most interesting expression in religion;
pre-agricultural and contemporary animism and shamanism are spiritual
expressions of unity with nature” (Noss 1974 quoted in Giorgi 172/161). In
the case of polytheistic religions “the different gods represented role models
for specific social aspects” and “instructions on how to behave were indirect
and implicit” (172/161). Gradually the relationship established between
people and their environment took dependency size, the main reason for the
sedentary communities to look for the best ways to appease the angry gods.
They created rituals of sacrifice, sometimes mild, when incantations were
used or plants and flowers were offered as gifts, sometimes cruel gestures of
killing animals and even humans to satisfy the supposed divine anger. Such
rituals could take strange dimensions, when the community had to find the
appropriate “scapegoat” every time in order to stay in good relationships
with the divinity and with themselves. This is what people have been
hypothesizing ever since acts of cultural violence provided enough hideous,
bloody, odd examples of sacrifice, cannibalism still representing the scariest
of ritualistic practices. Most of us are tempted to call them “barbarous”
proceedings in spite of much more cruel manifestations of our so called
civilized contemporaries. It may appear even stranger that ritual sacrifices
44
represent what some famous scholars call founding violence or “good

violence” (Girard, Noica).
Ştefan Stănciugelu (Violenţa, mit şi revoluţie 1998) approaches the
rational-irrational dimensions of the sacrificial ritual in contemporary
interpretation. He spotlights the limits of the modern layperson that is not
prepared to accept such a ritual as a piece of collective founding violence of a
traditional community meant to structure, protect, and most important, put a
temporary end to the collective violent behaviour. He admits that our violent
world where the State has a monopoly on legitimate violence and the access
to the sacred world is almost entirely denied offers tangible reasons for
rejecting any type of violence, narrowing at the same time people’s capacity
of comprehending cultural practices closely related to sacred archaic rituals.
However, he criticizes the limits manifested in the J. Frazer’s approach, a
well known ethnologist who assimilated the witches and magicians of old
times to harmful and dangerous persons that most communities had to get rid
of by burning them alive. Stănciugelu also mentions C. Noica who overtly
accused Frazer of having missed the true meaning of sacred facts and events
of human history when he declared they represented a row of crimes and
stupidities.
In the same vein with Mircea Eliade who saw ritual violence as
meaningful social manifestations, Noica insisted that any violent act of the
archaic people had its special significance and belonged to the sacred world,
a good reason for the contemporaries to give more sensible interpretations
to such specific cultural acts (C. Noica quoted in Stănciugelu 25-7). He adds
that our contemporaries became too rational to be able to integrate collective
violence and transform it into good or founding violence (Stănciugelu 53).
The general curiosity which always pushed people to make researches
in order to find the deepest possible roots of violence is well expressed by
Jensen who approaches the issue from the position that human beings have
a nonviolent nature:
Man must have been subjected to some particularly overwhelming experiences

to have been led to introduce such cruel practices into his life. What could
have been the reasons? What could have persuaded men to kill their fellow-
beings--not in the wanton, amoral manner of barbarians succumbing to their
instincts, but as a reflex of the awakened consciousness of the creator of
cultural forms, seeking to comprehend the innermost nature of the world
and to transmit this knowledge to future generations by means of dramatic
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representations? . . . Mythological thought always returns to what happened

initially, to the act of creation, justly assuming that this occurrence sheds the
brightest, most revealing light on a given subject. ( Adolphe Jensen quoted
in Girard 91)
French anthropologist René Girard as well as philosopher Mircea

Eliade and professor Ştefan Stănciugelu come with similar theories regarding
the above questions and hypotheses, inspired by the common thread to be
found in almost all old stories and myths about Creation, which almost
invariably start with a violent event generally representing Primordial Birth.
I will rely mainly on Girard’s approach largely displayed in Violence and
the Sacred first published in 1972. In this book he speaks about violence,
which generally appears as a consequence of mimesis and of the cathartic
function of sacrifice, issues similarly approached by Plato and Aristotle in
their philosophical works. But unlike Aristotle who gives no explanation for
the source of violence and the causality of emotions, or unlike Plato who
was among the first to mention that imitation is an intrinsic part of human
reality specifying at the same time that imitation is inferior to the original
source, Girard is mainly preoccupied to demonstrate his Mimetic Desire
Theory according to which violence is triggered off by rivalry and rivalry is
the consequence of the imitation of the Other’s desire.
The supposition that any human being may become desirous of
anything which is desired by somebody else and ultimately desirous of
anybody’s desire because of a subconscious mechanism of imitation that
Girard calls acquisitive mimesis goes quite close to Giorgi’s neurobiological
demonstration I have previously outlined. Girard’s theory about desire was
first published in 1961 and his intuitive vision upon a preconscious capacity
of acquisition and reaction was later praised by one of his disciples who
mentioned a group of specialized researchers having reached the same
conclusions on the basis of psychological and neurological evidence.
Experiments carried out on very young children showed more precisely
the importance of empathy and of some mirror neurons responsible for a
behaviour similar to that revealed by Girard on the basis of his study of
contemporary fictional texts and mythology (Hamerton-Kelly 2008).
In Girard’s vision all members of a community become violent as
a consequence of mimesis, desire and rivalry, their life is affected, “evil
violence runs wild” (Girard 1989: 101), but religion comes with its healing
46
rituals as the only source of metamorphosing violence. “The ritual process

aims at removing all element of chance and seeks to extract from the original
violence some technique of cathartic appeasement. The diluted force of
the sacrificial ritual cannot be attributed to imperfections in its imitative
technique. After all, the rite is designed to function during periods of relative
calm” (102). Many rites have violent aspects, but even the most violent ones
are meant to put an end to violence. Thus, ritual violence becomes the good
violence as long as it stimulates reconstruction, regeneration, stability:
[T]hese always involve a lesser violence, proffered as a bulwark against a far

more virulent violence. Moreover, the rite aims at the most profound state of
peace known to any community: the peace that follows the sacrificial crisis and
results from the unanimous accord generated by the surrogate victim. To banish
the evil emanations that accumulate within the community and to recapture the
freshness of this original experience are one and the same task. (103)
The surrogate victim or scapegoat is supposed to die for all community

members (Jesus representing the Christians’ chance to be saved and forgiven
for their primeval sin could be taken as the most well known example for
this theory); the mutual hatred of the mob and their aggressive behaviour turn
against the sacrificial victim who should be neither from within the community
nor a total stranger (war prisoners generally played this cathartic role).
Girard shows that in spite of its violent beginning human society was
able to access the sacred violence by means of sacrificial rites which had
the essential role of keeping wild violence under control. Girard argues that
religious rituals helped human kind organize themselves as social human
beings functioning on the basis of a cultural institution. He, to be sure, refers
to archaic religion, a very different institution from what it came to represent
for people when it started to impose its dogmas dictating clear rules of
behaviour and applying cruel punishments, or as Hamerton-Kelly (2008) put
it “Mimetic Theory explains religion as successful human behaviour rather
than failed human thought” (2).
Communities made technological progress and the amount of structural
violence increased as “an inescapable consequence of food surplus (leading
to division of labour and social hierarchy) and community size” (Giorgi
168/157). Religion became institutionalized, representing a real support for
the dominant minority who could invoke the religious commandments in
order to compel obedience and submission. It was the case of “monotheistic
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religions and Confucianism; [later] of Christianity [which] provided direct

and explicit behavioural instructions” (172/161).
Sociologists also came with specific classifications and rationalizations
of violence in an attempt to unriddle complex and unspeakable acts of
aggression taking place nowadays almost everywhere around. We can find
the same label put to different types of violence or different labels for the
same type of violent manifestations. I will choose some examples which
could be better applied to the Congo case and I will count mainly on Michel
Wieviorka’s study, one of the most remarkable sociological approaches
to violence and closer to my own target. Speaking about the same label
for different types of violence I bring under analysis the term of founding
violence used by Wieviorka as “the factor that triggered off subjectivation”
in the case of young people who engage in different social, cultural, political
and religious activities, which sometimes become violent only because they
wanted to change a monotonous, even absurd everyday life (47). He spotlights
the similarity with psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon (1964), who
had urged the Algerian people to fight against the colonizers arguing that “it
is in the violent rupture with the colonizer that the colonized cease to be mere
things and become human beings” (48). In both cases violence represents
the founding element which can help the subject regain dignity, recreate
himself as a subject. Wieviorka wants to make things clear and delimits his
theory from that advanced by the anthropologists who developed the idea
of founding violence referring to that violence manifested during sacrificial
rituals as being necessary for the foundation of the community, such as
Girard implied in his theory I have just discussed above.
African philosopher Achille Mbembe (2001) uses the same term almost
literally while speaking about the process of colonization. He maintains that
“colonial sovereignty rested on three sorts of violence. The first was the
founding violence [which] underpinned not only the right of conquest but all
the prerogatives flowing from that right […] starting by creat[ing] the space
over which it was exercised”. He compares the whole process of colonization
with “converting the founding violence into authorizing authority” (25) by
introducing an endless number of changes concerning what was previously
right and then it became wrong. As a matter of fact “in regard to colonial
sovereignty, right was on one side.[…] Anything that did not recognize this
violence as authority, that contested its protocols, was savage and outlaw” (26).
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It seems to me that I could superpose on this exemplification of

the concept a more sophisticated one, epistemic violence, which was first
developed by Indian philosopher Gayatri C. Spivak (1988) in “Can the
Subaltern Speak?” a well known postcolonial essay. This is approached as
a particular type of symbolic violence in the colonial context encompassing
the same characteristics with those spotlighted by Mbembe. She formulated
this concept in an attempt to counteract famous scholars like Michel
Foucault and Giles Deleuze who have developed their postcolonial theories
by projecting a Western epistemology upon an ex-colonized world. In her
paper she wonders whether “the oppressed, if given the chance […] and on
the way to solidarity through alliance politics […] can speak and know their
conditions”. At the same time she invites to finding an appropriate answer to
the final question: “…inside and outside the circuit of the epistemic violence
of imperialist law and education supplementing an earlier economic text, can
the subaltern speak?” ( Post-Colonial Studies Reader 2003: 25) Then she
comes with a clarification asserting that the subalterns’ text “articulates the
difficult task of rewriting its own conditions of impossibility as the conditions
of its possibility” and she insists by going deeper into the subject matter and
putting forward another question: “With what voice-consciousness can the
subaltern speak?” (27) It is the moment when she admits that in this respect
Foucault makes a pertinent clarification too:
Foucault is correct in suggesting that ‘to make visible the unseen can also
mean a change of level, addressing oneself to a layer of material which had
hitherto had no perti-nence for history and which had not been recognized
as having any moral, aesthetic or historical value.’ It is the slippage from
rendering visible the mechanism to rendering the individual, both avoiding
‘any kind of analysis of [the subject] whether psychological, psychoanalytical
or linguistic,’ that is consistently troublesome. (Foucault 1980: 49-50 quoted
in Spivak 27-28)
If the subaltern has continuously been a victim of this lack of interest

and analysis “the track of sexual difference is doubly effected” because
“both as object of colonial historiography and as subject of insurgency, the
ideological construction of gender keeps the male dominant. If, in the context
of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the
subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow” and she keeps being
treated as such nowadays especially in communities with a “phallocentric
tradition”(28) like Congo.
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The essence of the concept is outlined by Alina Bottez (2011), as being

“a key element in the process of colonial domination, [which] presupposes
the imposition of Western categories of thought and perception onto the
colonized cultures”. She specifies that “colonial domination is accomplished
not only through economic, political and military control, but also through
the construction of epistemic frameworks that subsume local traditions,
cultural diversity, and alterity under a coherent, essentialist and totalizing
system of representation” (A. Bottez “Violence” 341).
In my paper I will use the Girardean concept of founding violence to
approach cultural violence in pre-colonial Congo. For the particular type of
symbolic violence perpetrated by the Western agents upon colonized people
I will apply Spivak’s concept of epistemic violence.
Apart from the above mentioned types of violence Wieviorka brings
under analysis the concept of instrumental violence, which had already been
delimited by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and served as strong basis
for discussions about trade union activities and different types of revolt, or
severe violent acts of the Nazi type, which have forever wounded humanity
in the twentieth century (Wieviorka quoted in Surdulescu 28). Professor
Radu Surdulescu comes with some important specifications regarding this
type of violence where classical sociology distinguished “the instrumental
action (carried out in order to reach a certain goal) and the expressive action
(whose aim is to convey a message that defines it): hence two types of
violence” (28). Surdulescu mentions some instances when these two types
of violence “intermingle”, one of them the 1994 Rwanda genocide, which,
I have to add, was in close relationship with the Congo genocide whose
disastrous consequences are still in place today. Surdulescu explains that
such atrocities were possible and may still happen when “hot feelings of
rage or exasperation” specific for expressive violence interact with “cold”
instrumental violence, generally “built around a doctrinal discourse” (29).
Wieviorka insists on the fact that “all these theories seem to omit or
avoid some essential aspects of the phenomenon, such as the instances of
barbarian acts, of self-destruction or ideological sliding, when no meaning is
present anymore”. He gets deeper with his analysis concluding that in such
horrible situations we can speak about “loss or excess of meaning” when
“the actor is all the more violent as the system of relationships which might
have given sense to his action is more deteriorated” (Wieviorka quoted in
Surdulescu 28).
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Surdulescu quotes Wieviorka again referring to acts of “gratuitous

pleasure and pure cruelty which took place in former Yugoslavia (30) and
where interethnic and religious conflicts have much in common with the
same type of conflicts and similar barbarous manifestations still happening in
Congo. This is a good opportunity to emphasize that yes, indeed, there is a close
connection between criminal violence and the specific features of a culture,
but speaking about Congo it is of main importance to specify that we cannot
invoke the influence of pre-colonial culture. We have to think again about
colonial influence, about a culture which has been totally disturbed, where
ritual violence was remoulded and reoriented to such extent that today we are
witnessing its monstrous outcome. This is quite clearly expressed by Wieviorka
himself who argues that “violence can destroy or negate subjectivity, but also
in the long run produce elements of the antisubject, forms of personality
that will themselves be tempted to reproduce the type of violence to which
they have been subjected” (49), reiterating a conclusion reached by several
researchers, some of whom I have previously quoted myself.
It is also true that the cruellest manifestations with sadistic and
gratuitous inflections are to be found in cases of collective acts which have
specific features according to some specialized scholars. Such forms of
collective violence “include war, terrorism, genocide, political repression,
torture, and violent crimes such as banditry or gang warfare” (A. Bottez
“Violence” 339). These are instances when the perpetrators behave as in “pure
delirium” manifesting what some anthropologists called “pure jouissance”,
or opportunities for some actors to eliminate or violently humiliate the Other
in order to gain subjectivity. Charles Tilly (2003) concludes that “collective
violence resembles weather: complicated, changing, and unpredictable
in some regards, yet resulting from similar causes variously combined in
different times and places” (4). A. Bottez comes with a selection of the most
important reasons generally taken into account by sociologists enumerating
the political factors (a lack of democratic processes and unequal access
to power), the economic factors (unequal distribution of and access to
resources), and the societal factors (inequalities among various groups and
national, ethnic or religious fanaticism), which are responsible for such
violent reactions as a consequence of acts that may have taken place long
before the act proper (A. Bottez “Violence” 339). All of these are to be
reckoned as the most plausible causes for the Congo crisis.
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In spite of being rejected by Wieviorka I will try to apply as a

methodological tool what Hannah Arendt formulated as “the banality
of evil” and Wieviorka paraphrased with violence as non-sense. Arendt
carried her study upon the case of Nazi barbarism hypothesizing that “the
extreme violence of the Nazis was the outcome or expression of a culture
of obedience” (Wieviorka 2003: 44). The idea was not new or singular as
other theorists dealt with it as well. One of them is Stanley Milgram (1974),
who carried out a well known experiment meant to prove that some people
found in the position to accomplish tasks imposed by a legitimate authority
were capable of applying cruel forms of punishment only as executioners
manifesting passivity, indifference, being reduced to the position of an “agent
of bureaucratic instructions”. […] “The executioner does his duty[…]; he
is not stupid; he is incapable of reflexivity, of distancing himself from his
acts” explains Wieviorka using Arendt’s judgment in the case of the Nazi
officers and drawing a parallel with Milgram’s experiment, at the same
time bringing some arguments against it. “The thesis of the banality of evil
makes of violence a rational, cold, instrumental form of behaviour” (44),
this being also in accord with Hobbes’s older thesis, which claims that
violence is implicit in the condition of man in society (cf. Hobbes Leviathan,
1651). Nevertheless, countless documents, maintains Wieviorka, challenge
Arendt’s theory according to which the Nazi assassins were not by nature
assassins, ‘were not sadists’, but simple perfomers of authoritarian orders.
He insists that there must be at least hatred felt towards the victims if the
agents are not inherently cruel or sadistic. (45)
At this point I would like to transfer the debate to the colonial context
and argue that in those circumstances there were situations which could serve
as good examples for both theories. I will present some clear cases from the
books and documents I used for my study relying on different testimonies
that I took for granted especially when the same pieces of information
could be found in several sources. Arendt’s position will not be used as an
excuse for those agents who applied the colonial rules and regulations as
an expression of their capitalist formation without manifesting violence in
excess, but on the contrary to put under question the fact that too many
‘normal’ people were not capable of a clear judgment of the situation, of
distancing themselves from their acts. From Wieviorka’s hypotheses I will
52
apply mainly those implying either the sadistic, cruel nature of the perpetrators
or their psychotic manifestation of pleasure while gratuitously harming the
Other and reducing him to ‘nothing’, although there were also cases of real
mental disturbance, which inappropriately were categorized as cases of
‘going native’, thus attributing the Europeans’ psychotic manifestations to
the abominable examples they had from the natives.
It is the right place to make the distinction that Europeans seem to
have not all been able to, between the violent native behaviour manifested
during sacred rituals or after war traditional acts, where the killing and in
some tribes even eating of the prisoners (scapegoats) were specific cultural
manifestations at a certain moment of their evolution, in certain tribes of the
Congo area as in all Africa and the rest of the world (cf. Girard; Schmidt
and Schroder), and the imitation of such behaviour by the representatives
of a so called civilised society for no clear reason, in many cases the
perpetrators behaving normally with other people than the natives. There
are testimonies that those natives called cannibals, who really existed, as in
many discovered or still undiscovered places on the globe, behaved in a non-
violent way in their everyday life, even manifesting tender gestures towards
the closest members of their family, such as their wife or children (cf. Ward
1891: 140-1). The risk Europeans ran when getting into close contact with
such people was precisely the fact that most of them were shocked and could
not control their reactions caused by almost total lack of understanding of
a completely different culture. Consequently, there were indeed cases of
Europeans who were severely affected by the new experiences and lost the
normal use of their rationality being diagnosed as having gone native. The
distinction that should be made here is between voluntary and involuntary
violent manifestation on the part of the European perpetrators upon the
local natives. One of the most horrible examples is that of an officer from
a Stanley expedition, who bought an indigenous girl from one tribe to give
her to a group of cannibals in order ‘to enjoy’ the show of that poor thing
being killed and eaten by other native human beings. The source mentions
that Stanley only found out about it when it was too late to intervene and it
was implied that the officer was supposed to have lost his reason, because of
many other barbarous acts perpetrated upon other members of the expedition
before and after that episode with the native girl (Jeal 2007).
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***
This first chapter has provided complex theoretical background
in order to clarify psychological mechanisms deeply influencing human
relationships, cultural evolution or involution as may sometimes happen.
I have brought under analysis results of specific research, which attempt
to prove the huge importance of the social environment for the direction
a certain genetic predisposition can take. I have relied on neurobiologist
Piero Giorgi’s conclusions in order to establish the position claiming that
humans have a non-violent nature, which counteracts many critics of older
or more recent times, who support the opposite theory. There have always
been supporters who claim that example and education can change a lot in
humans on condition that the cultural legacy and environment cooperate
in this direction. When the model is violent it can create a violent pattern
especially when there is a genetic aggressive bend in an individual. At the
same time the impact of traumas caused by violent treatment can have long
lasting effects even on several generations, on the viewers as well as on
the victims. One decisive aspect of the intercultural colonial interaction
was the lack of understanding of the real state of things, because of a poor
knowledge of the Other, but mainly because of a flagrant lack of interest in
the Other’s state of being, level of understanding, necessities, desires, culture.
The economic interest which tailored the European behaviour towards the
colonised was always in the first place. The saddest aspect is a too often
proved incapacity of treating the Other as a human being and of manifesting
restraint in situations where there were no restrictions and almost no laws
and no rules, which as a matter of fact, is considered as part of the general
pattern of human behaviour according to some scholars’ theories similar to
Girard’s ‘Mimetic Desire’.
The first chapter also displays some types of violence related to the
colonial environment and analyses the tools violence uses in order to reach
its goals, as it has been proved that violence generally has precise objectives.
There have also been shown cases of ‘banality of evil’ in a comparative
example between colonial atrocities, even genocides, and what was to follow
during the Nazi era, theorized by Michel Wieviorka and Hannah Arendt, of
‘collective violence’ and also of ‘founding violence’ in Girard’s acceptation
of violence manifested during sacrificial rituals when it has the precise role
of recreation of people’s dignity, even identity, through a release of the evil.
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Chapter II. Postcolonial Studies
II.1. From the humanist principles of the Enlightenment

to the colonisation of Africa
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries travel, research and
philosophy, human nature and human relationships represented the main
scholarly preoccupations. The French Revolution was promoting the natural
human rights issued in a Declaration of Human Rights (Déclaration des
Droits de l’homme et du citoyen, 1789) which was a synthesis of previous
similar texts (Bill of Rights, 1689; Habeas Corpus, February1789 in Britain,
the American Constitution) and of the political ideals of the Enlightenment.
Article XI of this Declaration stated everybody’s right to free expression,
which could have been an encouragement for different scholars to express
their opinions sometimes controversial or contradictory, sometimes even
dangerous as I am going to exemplify below.
European thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provide
long discourses of justification for the colonial project bringing arguments
on the basis of scientific research, logical assumptions or even empirical
experiments meant to legitimize political domination. An important
representative of the Scottish Enlightenment, philosopher and historian David
Hume, generally categorised as a British Empiricist and “widely regarded as
the greatest [philosopher] who has ever written in the English language”
(McGee 146), gave a new direction of analysis for the psychological basis
of the human nature. Counteracting rationalists like Descartes, he claimed
that human behaviour was primarily governed by desire more than by reason
(Encyclopedia Britannica: “Hume”), thus announcing in a certain respect
Girard’s Mimetic Theory of Desire. He strongly believed that feelings were
more important than abstract moral principles in conceiving one’s ethical
position, asserting that “power and necessity...are...qualities of perceptions,
not of objects...felt by the soul and not perceived externally in bodies”
(Hume 168), arguing that events are always causally conjoined (56). This
could explain different human drives targeting greater or smaller designs
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drawn during the Enlightenment. Philosophers of those times were regarded

with much interest and respect as they were the first who felt authorised in
putting forward drastic judgements in spite of their lack of scientific support.
In 1748 Hume published an essay (“Of National Characters”) where he
displayed the ‘characteristics’ of the main categories of people in the world,
also adding in a footnote to the original text that there is a deep connection
among a person’s character, skin colour and his intellectual capacity, thus
making a good preparation for the colonialist and imperialist discourses to
come:
I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all the other species of men...
to be naturally inferior to the whites There never was a civilized nation of
any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in
action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no
sciences. . . . Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in
so many countries and ages, if nature had not made our original distinction
betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro
slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symptoms
of ingenuity; ... In Jamaica, indeed they talk of one negro as a man of parts and
learning [Francis Williams, the Cambridge-educated poet who wrote verse in
Latin]; but ‘tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a
parrot who speaks a few words plainly. (Hume 3: 252)
This theory had a large echo and approval from important personalities
of the time. Immanuel Kant, who admitted that Hume greatly influenced his
views and who also shared Hume’s deterministic theory at the beginning
of his career, issued an analysis of Hume’s text claiming that the difference
between the black and white races of man is fundamental, highlighting the
fact that mental capacities are mostly influenced by skin colour:
The Negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling.
Mr. Hume challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has
shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks
who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them
have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented
anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even
though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble,
and through superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the
difference between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great in
regard to mental capacities as in colour. […] The blacks are very vain but in
the Negro’s way, and so talkative that they must be driven apart from each
other with thrashings. (Kant 111)
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Although Kant makes a correlation between “blackness” and

“stupidity” it has been repeatedly claimed by some critics that his earlier
writings revealing racist views changed into a different way of approaching
colonialism as it is suggested by his Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics
of Morals, where he displays progressive views regarding European
attitude vis-a-vis non-European societies (Williams 2014). Kant as well as
Diderot counter-acted colonialism supporters invoking the main principle
of Enlightenment which states that each human being is capable of reason
and self-government. There were instances of invoking the Europeans’ lack
of civilisation while being in the colonies, far from home thus far from
any legal institution which could apply punishments or sanctions. It is also
argued that in such contexts man is tempted to reveal his full instinct for
violence (Diderot in Raynal’ s Histoire des deux Indes). At the same time
the newly discovered cultural practices of the indigenous peoples seemed
irrational and savage, consequently difficult to be accepted as products of
the previously asserted human reason. In order to maintain the direction
of universalism and equality philosophers came with the solution of a
“civilising” intervention supposed to be carried on up to the point where the
newly “civilised” indigenous people would be able to take their life in their
own hands helped by ready-made institutions and all the rest of an advanced
culture.
In order to have a more comprehensive outlook upon some important
philosophical theories issued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
I took as a reliable guide historian and essayist Tzvetan Todorov, whose
insight into the work of some political and moral philosophers, sociologists,
naturalists and politicians of the epoch helps a better grasp of the impact
they had upon the fate of the world.
There have always been genuine supporters for the ‘civilising mission’
that some peoples such as the French, the British and then the Americans
self-assessed as the most developed in any field, the most educated and
civilised on the discovered surface of the globe, had the urgent duty to help
other humans climb the unique scale of civilisations as high as a certain
degree of rationality, sociability and technology could push them to reach.
A good example is the French philosopher, mathematician and political
scientist Nicolas de Condorcet, whose ideal was a progressive unification of
the Universe, aiming at universal laws for a homogenous population on the
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globe, which could only be achieved by disseminating the Enlightenment

principles and technological progress. He argued that the European nations
had the noble mission to civilise without subjugating them, all savage
nations still living on large areas of the earth and the task was to be fulfilled
by wise colonisers able to disseminate European principles of freedom,
light and justice into Asia and Africa. He specified that everything was to be
accomplished only for those peoples’ interest and desire. This could be taken
as a real colonisation project, but its principles are far too different from
what this process finally became (Todorov 1999: 348-9).
In the same vein the linguist, philosopher and pioneer in anthropology
Joseph-Marie de Gérando issued his Considérations sur les diverses
méthods à suivre dans l’observation des peoples sauvages (Considerations
upon Different Methods of Approach in Observing Savage Peoples), in an
attempt to awake the audience’s interest to the importance of study of savage
peoples who could be nothing else than our own ancestors. His philosophical
account is close to that of Conrad’s Marlow when he argues that a journey
to the savages’ land would be similar to a travel back in time in our own
history. De Gérando is certain that their careful analysis would bring a lot
of useful information for our own interest and development. He invites to
philanthropic behaviour by sharing our knowledge in every field thus making
friends with people living in wonderful countries which could also become
good markets for our goods. He also makes a good point in advising his
contemporaries to share their arts not their vices (Todorov 1999: 349-351).
Hierarchical categorization was a common preoccupation for different
types of scholars of the Enlightenment on the basis of scientific research and
humanist principles. As I have just mentioned in some cases the researchers
started from humanist principles and had ideal plans for mankind’s future.
However, they were continuously counter-acted by contemporaries whose
world outlook was tailored on different principles. We can argue that many
of these principles are sometimes very contradictory, but it seems that the
audience was capable to accept theories and action projects which sound
unacceptable today, as they came from famous personalities who were
speaking the language of praise and interest for the nation. It was the best
exemplification for how ‘to pave the road to hell with good intentions’. We
can also understand and accept that many of the decisions which were to
change the fate of a whole world on a long term, or better said forever,
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were taken unwittingly and all we can do at present, apart from judging
and trying to find the main responsible characters for the most atrocious
deeds would be to understand the mechanism that worked in that direction
so as to become capable of preventing it from making new victims. Todorov
argues that “the story of the invention of modernity with its main characters
– their adventures, conflicts and alliances” is worth telling in spite of the
‘dwarf perched on the shoulders of giants’ picture where the giants seem
to have signed a pact with the devil. He gives the example of “humanists
[who] might be more helpful than the others in thinking about our present
condition and overcoming its difficulties” (Todorov The Imperfect Garden,
2002: 6/17).
This mechanism has a deep psychological dimension as it is in tight
connection with humans’ vanity and material interest triggered by humans’
drive for fulfilling any possible desire. A close study of human nature reveals
that any human being may become desirous of anything which is desired
by somebody else and ultimately desirous of anybody’s desire because of
a subconscious mechanism of imitation. It is what Girard calls acquisitive
mimesis and goes quite close to Giorgi’s neurobiological demonstration as I
have outlined in the first chapter. The mechanism was, and still is, at work in
any possible human society, but the way it works triggers different systems,
different solutions and obviously different results and human attitudes and
relationships in time and space. As it has already been stated the religious
and “secular theories of the alleged stages that any people has to experience
in its path from primitivism to civilization which proposed that enlightened
peoples had to step into the life of ‘savages’ and teach them how to lead
civilized lives and how to govern themselves” served in most of the cases as
“ideological screens to conceal baser interests and to justify such atrocities
as genocide or slavery” (Ştefănescu “Colonialism”: 64).
From the first encounters with different indigenous populations the
Europeans perceived the Other as different but intellectually inferior and
physically ‘uglier’ than their contemporaries. A lot of work and study on
the human body and its environment went in the direction of hierarchization
of human types by establishing a number of quite well distinguished races.
Although the word race first appeared in 1508 (used by the poet William
Dunbar), it was only in 1684 that François Bernier used the word with its
modern significance speaking about distinctive traits given mainly by facial
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characteristics and skin pigmentation, but the first who used explicitly the
phrase ‘races of mankind’ was Immanuel Kant in his Observations on the
Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764). One of the most debated
issues all through the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries was the real
cause of human diversity (Ashcroft et al. 1998: 199-200). George-Louis
Compte de Buffon was one of the first who implied that people inherit physical
traits from their parents, which was later confirmed by the biologists of the
nineteenth century. He largely influenced natural sciences for generations to
come in spite of his rigid hierarchization of humans and his sceptical views
related to education. He argued that black people are inferior creatures who
have to be subjected and enslaved for their transformation through education
would be too long to reach a satisfactory end. We could categorize this
argument as one of the most influential in maintaining and extending the
intercontinental slave trade (Todorov 1999:151).
Buffon was very successful in imposing his racialist doctrine due to
his already acquired large fame as a prodigious naturalist, cosmologist and
encyclopaedic author (he published thirty-six volumes of his Histoire naturelle
during his life and some more volumes were published posthumously). The
echo of his theories travelled far in time and worked upon the mind of some
well known French personalities, philosophers and sociologists of the second
half of the nineteenth century. Arthur de Gobineau, Ernest Renan, Gustave
Le Bon are the ones whose works and principles could be considered as
having changed the world history and implicitly millions of people’s lives.
These scholars agree upon the same point as Buffon: inferior races are
generally exterminated when they come into contact with a superior race.
They give various examples from the old history, but they do not bring any
scientific explanation or motivation, they do not mention a certain method of
accomplishing such a deed. It rather sounds as if it may take place any time
as part of a natural process, which the intruder could even facilitate without
manifesting any feelings of guilt, insists Le Bon who gives no details about
how this work has ever been, or is supposed to be carried out. For Renan the
inferior race represented by the Africans, the Australian indigenous people
and the American Indians, has no chance to make progress, all of them
being ‘uncivilizable’ individuals destined to immobility. That is why the
superior races, the Aryan and the Semitic ones, are destined to conquer the
world and to homogenize its peoples (L’Origine du langage). He has a final
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solution for the poor creatures who could ultimately be helped to change
by being inoculated with a little pure blood from the superior races. It is
considered a eugenic project which goes hand in hand with the imperialist
one everything being at the same time grounded in Darwin’s The Origin of
Species (1859). However, Gobineau who considered the Germans the real
Aryans and the French a ‘pollution of races’, spotlighted that imperialism
could lead to a degenerative process for the European civilization. It is well
known that Hitler and Nazism were much influenced by Gobineau who,
ironically, had declared himself philosemitic. However, he was but setting
the basis for the scientific racism by stating his total disagreement for the
mixing of distinct races (Todorov 1999: 157-165; Young 2005: 93). To be
more accurate we should admit that his theories and works written in this
respect are often contradictory or better said the concepts are used with a
particular meaning that can be understood only after a thorough study of his
principles. Relying on some similar analyses I could mention that Gobineau
was against miscegenation mostly because it implied the loss of the purity of
races. At the same time he admitted that the phenomenon had already taken
place during other periods of conquering and empire building, the process
of inter-racial mixture being unstoppable. Thus, he tries to emphasise a good
aspect of miscegenation, that of the specific qualities each race could bring
in such genetic combinations, making clear, however, the superiority of the
white race (cf. Young 94; Rampersad 42).
In spite of the tenets of French Enlightenment thought, which had
crossed the borders towards other European nations and even to the young
Americas carrying with it urges to create a Universal vision sustained by a
universal set of principles (the ‘Rights of Man’), the old “link between nation
and expansion” proved to stay inseparable even in France where during the
Second and Third Republics “the popular will was increasingly tied, not to
a declaration of the struggle for universal human rights, but to a national
vision of power and world expansion […] Imperialism became an extension
into the wider world of the ideology of a ‘national’ formation based on the
unifying signifiers of language and race” (Ashcroft et al. 1998: 152-3).
The way philosophy, natural science, sociology and politics have
always interacted is quite clearly exemplified by the spectacular ends
reached in the manifestation of nationalism considered the engine of
colonialism and imperialism. Thus, starting from the humanist principles of
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the Enlightenment the theoreticians and eventually artisans who supported,

then started applying those principles got quite far from the original idealist
projects of Condorcet and equally de Gérando, who had urged people upon
acts of unifying the Universe in the sense of homogenising humanity in
order to accelerate its progress [Condorcet in De l’influence de la révolution
d’Amérique sur l’Europe (On the Influence of the American Revolution upon
Europe)]. It was an attempt to support the integration of some social groups
in a universalist design supposed to be carried out by “skilful people” who
would exert “a mild and useful influence upon those abandoned peoples”
(Todorov 1999: 349-350, my translation). One of the scholars, J. M. de
Lanessan, claimed that each and every people have a desire of expansion,
aiming at accomplishing physical and intellectual satisfaction through
victories and conquest, thus fulfilling their need for domination and glory
(from Principes de colonisation/Colonisation Principles in Todorov 1999:
351). Acknowledging such views and mainly their nationalist dimension
which implies the necessity to disseminate everything that is rich and
valuable from a spiritual perspective, scholars such as Maurice Barrès utter
explicit phrases about an industrial cooperation and a rich source of work
(354), which were to be materialised in colonising projects founded on
inconsistent ideologies.
In Victorian England Edmund Burke as well as some other British
personalities claimed the importance of English institutions, viewed mainly
through “the unique character of English liberty not to English constitutional
arrangements but to the physical constitution of Englishmen”. In their case
it was the Englishmen’s “energy, their civilization, their religion and their
freedom” that had to be “[spread] throughout the habitable globe” (Lewis in
Bloom 69/60-70/61).
II.2. Colonialism and Imperialism
From a large range of definitions and approaches, some misleading

or contradictory, some very general encompassing too long a history of
this world, or too specific focusing on special conditions or practices, I
have chosen the formula which gets closer to my topic in a complex and
sophisticated approach, the definitions given by Bogdan Ştefănescu (2011)
for both, colonialism and imperialism and I will also take his point of view
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upon the matter as a leading thread for my own approach. He states that:
In a restricted sense, colonialism is the organized and systematic exercise of

domination (whether political, economic, military, cultural or otherwise) over
a far-off population that is ethnically and racially unrelated to the colonizer
and whose culture and historical development are abruptly disrupted and
considerably altered by the colonizer. (Ştefănescu “Colonialism”: 63)
He adds that in spite of the almost synonymous resemblance

spotlighted by numerous scholars we can safely consider colonialism and
imperialism “two types of domination and exploitation with relatively
different aims and techniques” (63). We could, however, specify that the
term colony comes from the Latin term colonus, with the English translation
of farmer, while the origin of the word imperialism is to be found in the
Latin term imperium, translated with the verb to command. The etymology
of the two words also guides us to the distinction Edward Said formulated
arguing that “imperialism means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes
of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory; colonialism,
which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of
settlements on distant territory” (Said 1993: 8).
The true aims, “to reap material and political benefits” (Ştefănescu
“Imperialism”: 156) are almost never revealed, while justifications and high
goals are arduously proclaimed for the large audience in order to receive
consent, support and even praise. People invoked different reasons and even
legal rights for their endeavours: apart from the old Roman law using the
expression Terra nullius to describe any territory which can be occupied
because it is under no sovereignty and which is still used in the international
law system, there were other “instances of the religious legitimation of
colonialism, [like] the Petrine mandate and the licence given by Pope
Innocent IV for Christian intervention whenever non-Christians supposedly
lived in violation of ‘natural law’”. These religious doctrines gave in some
cases almost unlimited rights to popes regarding the right of property and
sovereignty over any ‘free’ land or granted similar rights to Catholic kings
upon islands or lands ‘discovered’ and ‘yet to be discovered’ (64).
All of the above enumerated ‘reasons’ encouraged people of different
times and spaces to arrogantly take foreign territories into possession
and behave like supreme holders of virtues, knowledge, power and truth.
Colonisation has a long history of conquest and control from antiquity to the
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present time, which turned too often into violent treatment and plunder of
the indigenous lands and populations, but I will mainly discuss here about an
accepted historical delimitation of these acts of expansion into three major
waves trying to clarify the different types of dominance that Europeans
exerted upon the colonised peoples and the disastrous consequences such
unfortunate intrusions have left behind. It can be argued that the main
distinction between the two types of colonialisms that scholars generally
define is correctly motivated by the Marxist theory according to which in
earlier times there was no capitalist urge considered responsible for the
major alteration of Europeans’ behaviour in contact with the Other during the
modern colonialism. That is why in some cases there are critics who agree
upon a reversal between the two concepts, colonialism and imperialism,
which otherwise are frequently used interchangeably. In older times the
acquisition of colonies was the basic condition for an empire to be created and
generally speaking such an attempt was rarely culturally invasive, whereas
in more recent times it is argued that the imperialist ideology, interests and
resources were the most important drives to European colonisation of new
territories overseas, which is also called “the Europeanization of the globe”
or Western Imperialism (Ashcroft et al 1998: 123).
The year 1415 when Ceuta, a north-African fortress, was captured by
the Portuguese could be considered the starting point for the first period of
colonisation also called the Age of Discovery, which lasted for more than
two centuries and was of decisive importance to what was to come after
Africa was circumnavigated as well as the rest of the world, the New World
was discovered, the two Americas were conquered and the great powers
of the time, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and Britain established their
empires almost all over in the newly discovered areas.
The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 is reckoned to have closed the
epoch of the most important discoveries across the globe and Cromwell’s
Navigation Act of 1651 to have given the appropriate levers for trade as the
seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries represented what scholars generally
call “the age of mercantilism”. It was an important period of complex
development and expansion of Britain and France over North America also
implying decimation of the indigenous population and the transformation
of the American colonies into a major enterprise. The French Revolution
and the Napoleonic Wars were not of big help for maintaining or recreating
the French Empire. The American Revolution and the First Industrial
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Revolution impacted the end of the Spanish Empire in North and South
America as well, while Britain flourished as a consequence of its previous
overseas possessions which facilitated industrialization. Large quantities
of outlets needed more available markets and economic penetration of the
new discovered lands seemed to be a good alternative to military conquest
(Ashcroft et al. 1998: 123-5).
The age of imperialism or rather what has been called by many
historians New Imperialism (1860-1914), was a predicted consequence and
the last stage of capitalism, also called its ‘highest stage’ in Lenin’s analysis
of imperialism (1916), when new modern states like Italy and Germany
were created, the Second Industrial Revolution made possible ‘an enormous
superabundance of capital’ and the “Scramble for Africa” (1885) embodied
the ideal solution for profitable investments. The old and new nations had
already learnt from the previous colonial experience that some important
changes were necessary in the new imperial approach. The colonies had
to represent more than simple sources of goods, raw materials and cheap
work. As John A. Hobson argued “colonialism is a natural overflow of
nationality, its test being the power of colonists to transplant the civilization
they represent to the new natural and social environment in which they
find themselves” (Hobson in Ashcroft et al. 1998: 124). A different kind of
competition started, triggered by the visible rise of nationalism, intolerance,
racism, which represented the opposite of the claimed Enlightenment urge
toward humanism and equality for all people. It is generally accepted that
“from the 1880s imperialism became a dominant and more transparently
aggressive policy amongst European states for a variety of political, cultural
and economic reasons” (Ashcroft et al. 122). Robinson and Gallagher also
place colonial annexation before the development of markets, but on the
basis of clear cut political projects:
It was not the businessmen or missionaries or empire-builders who launched

the partition of Africa, but rather a set of diplomats who thought of that
continent merely as a function of their concerns elsewhere…Only at the end
of the process did the businessmen arrive…Imperialism was not the cause of
the partition. It was the result. (Robinson and Gallagher quoted in Wolfe 400)
Sometimes the diplomat was the emperor or the king in person as in the
case of Leopold II king of Belgium, who made all possible efforts to build
a rich and strong state on the basis of the huge profit he made by ruling his
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private colony he ironically named The Congo Free State, from the distance
of his huge ambitions and arrogance. It was a particular case of imposing old
colonial rules by applying new imperial directions and practices. The belief
in a ‘superior right’ to explore Congo’s resources was as huge as his greed
for pure profit. The imposition of national culture, the French language and
the Catholic religion seem to represent good memories and the best legacy
for the native inhabitants of Congo compared to the brutal practices applied
by his colonial agents and secured by the first created ‘militia’ in the new
born country in order to exhaust higher quantities of ivory and rubber. Not
only wealth and money, but also international power and recognition were at
stake for Leopold II. His own country was a ‘new born’ one, created in 1830
with his father Leopold I as the first emperor of the Belgian nation. Leopold
II had witnessed his father’s numerous and unsuccessful attempts to get at
least an important colony and more European admiration, which served
as a good political school and drew the main directions for his consequent
imperial behaviour among famous European leaders, some of them Leopold
II’s close relatives. This king’s peculiar involvement in imperial expansion
was also closely related to his character compared at a certain moment
of his childhood by his own father with that of a cunning fox. Here is the
portrait Peter Forbath makes to Leopold:
A tall, imposing man enjoying a reputation for hedonistic sensuality, cunning

intelligence (his father once described him as subtle and sly as a fox),
overweening ambition, and personal ruthlessness. He was, nevertheless,
an extremely minor monarch in the realpolitik of the times, ruling a totally
insignificant nation, a nation in fact that had come into existence barely four
decades before and lived under the constant threat of losing its precarious
independence to the great European powers around it. He was a figure
who, one might have had every reason to expect, would devote himself to
maintaining his country’s strict neutrality, avoiding giving offence to any of
his powerful neighbours, and indulging his keenly developed tastes for the
pleasures of the flesh, rather than one who would make a profound impact
on history. Yet, in the most astonishing and improbable way imaginable,
he managed virtually single-handedly to upset the balance of power in
Africa and usher in the terrible age of European colonialism on the black
continent. (Peter Forbath, The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration and
Exploitation of the World’s Most Dramatic Rivers. 1977: 374)
The Berlin Conference (1884-1885) was organized as a necessity to

mediate the competition rising among the strongest powers of Europe and
gave a free start to ‘effective occupation’ and ‘direct rule’ in Africa, which
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were to be achieved through armed force in most of the cases. As Achille

Mbembe (2001) put it:
In the African experience there is close relation between occupation and

appropriation. […] Because the territory that [became] the colony has been
regarded as territorium nullius, […] the settler inherits no real responsibility.
[…] Therefore, colonial occupation is not simply marked by the vice of
violence; it is marked by the vice of spoliation. (183)
In Africa, Europeans having political and economic justifications, at

the same time pushed by religious, nationalist and racist drives quite skilfully
wrapped in humanitarian and generous offers of salvage, help and education,
violently and tenaciously imposed their cultures upon people having totally
different cultures, different socio-political structures, who spoke different
languages and dialects.
Competition finally turned into imperialistic rivalry which is held to be
the main cause of World War I in 1914, the moment which formally closed the
third age of imperialism. Meanwhile, “hundreds of thousands of colonists,
merchants, missionaries and adventurers permeated the non-European
world”. Ashcroft et al. spotlight the importance of the phenomenon of “this
general Europeanization of the globe [on which] European imperialism
is grounded [and which was achieved by] ordinary travellers, explorers,
missionaries, fortune hunters and settlers over many centuries” (124).
At the beginning of their encounters Europeans did their best to learn
various native languages and dialects in order to get closer to the indigenous
tribes they had discovered while travelling around the world. Then, gradually
they proceeded to introducing European languages to the natives making
use of all possible means, sometimes causing even physical pain because of
the punishments applied for not properly complying with the tasks. Totally
aware of the possibility of controlling people by imposing one’s language
upon them the colonising powers used it as a powerful instrument upon the
natives who most of the times felt as if “history has forced it down their
throat” (Achebe 1975:3).
‘The repressive state apparatus’ as Foucault repeatedly called other
institutions that were imposed in the same forceful way upon the colonised
people, was used as useful tool of constraint, oppression, exploitation.
History had repeatedly proved that such institutions represent the source
of total control of any society: institutions of law, government, military and
police agencies, religious and educational structures, each of them showing
that “clearly, violence can be interpreted as an instrumentally rational
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strategy of bargaining for power” (Schmidt and Schroder 8). The scars they
have left are not only visible but extremely painful still acting like brakes in
peoples’ normal development,
[a]s imperialism is an act of aggression, being subjected to imperialism

always damages the victim. Anti- and postimperialist attitudes should be
acknowledged as post-traumatic. The typical anti- or postimperialist subject
remains hypnotically attracted by the hostility and violence against one’s
authenticity and cultural identity. The power of imperialism resides in its
ability to take possession of its subjects (not just the physical beings) and
inoculate them. Imperial subjects are reduced to the mere reproduction or
mimicry of imperial behaviour, whether in compulsive remembering or in
anguished retaliation – perhaps both concurrently. The psychology of this
strained and painful relationship between aggressor and victim produces
paradoxical twists and quite often the victims will become contaminated
by the aggression and will internalize the discourse and viewpoint of the
perpetrator, unwittingly reproducing it in the very process of their liberation
and recovery. (Ştefănescu “Imperialism”: 159)
The New World provided not only raw materials, cheap or even unpaid
work, large markets for European goods, but also the necessary human
‘material’ for more scientific or pseudo-scientific experiments. The most
disastrous consequences were not the perpetual reinforcement of reasons and
justifications for European intervention, violent as it was, the humiliation,
or the aggressive appropriation of almost everything the indigenous people
possessed – including their body, but the long-term interethnic conflicts,
which triggered the genocidal wars waged in the twentieth century. Most of
them are the direct result of the division of Africa without tribal considerations
and of ‘scientific experiments’ meant to establish classifications among
the local population in close relationship with the scientific (biological)
determinism for so long theorized ‘at home’ without proper physical
application. It was the perfect opportunity for the colonising agent to get
material ‘proofs’ in order to demonstrate that races could be distinguished
and categorized according to clear physical traits and that subcategories also
existed within a race. Subordination had to be established not only between
the black and the white races, but also between subcategories as there were
obvious connections between physical traits, character traits and intellectual
capacities, which could dictate the right place for each individual according
to his ethnic roots within a certain social group.
Liisa H. Malkki wrote about the detailed physical descriptions of Hutu
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and Tutsi ethnic groups found in the colonial records of Burundi in most
cases associated with observations about the differences of character, life-
style and work habits. She explains that “in the colonial record, the markers
of bodily difference were closely linked with and superimposed on moral and
social difference […] [The maps of bodily difference] became symptoms and
proofs for claims reaching far beyond the body” (Anthology…2004:130).
The perpetual conflict between the Tutsi herders and the Hutu cultivators
gave birth to the genocides of 1965, 1969, 1972, 1994, and the conflictual
and murderous situation extended to the neighbouring countries, Rwanda
and Congo (131). The author gives some accounts from both ethnic groups
in an attempt to prove that all evil and violence are triggered by desperate
efforts to establish an ‘authentic’, harmonious ‘nation’ of the Hutu where
there is no place for the ruling Tutsi, who are “the impostors from the north,
the foreigners, morally unworthy of membership in the nation because of
their parasitism, thievery, and trickery” (134). We can easily distinguish here
the ‘European model’ transferred during the long process of colonisation
to the colonised found under the spell of mimetic acquisition, for “[t]he
objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonised as a population
of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest
and to establish systems of administration and instruction; […] colonial
discourse produces the colonised as a fixed reality which is at once an ‘other’
and yet entirely knowable and visible (Bhabha, 1983: 23). After a couple of
years it was also Bhabha who argued:
The exercise of colonialist authority, however, requires the production of
differentiations, individuations, identity effects through which discriminatory
practices can map out subject populations that are tarred with the visible and
transparent mark of power. Such a mode of subjection is distinct from what
Foucault describes as ‘power through transparency’: the reign of opinion,
after the late eighteenth century, which could not tolerate areas of darkness
and sought to exercise power through the mere fact of things being known and
people seen in an immediate, collective gaze. What radically differentiates
the exercise of colonial power is the unsuitability of the Enlightenment
assumption of collectivity and the eye that beholds it. (Post-colonial Studies
Reader 1998: 29)
II.3. The colonial discourse, main source for

post-colonial writing and debate
The colonial discourse, a Saidian concept tailored on Foucauldian
philosophy, encompasses “a system of knowledge and beliefs about the world
within which acts of colonization take place” (Ashcroft et al. 1998:”Colonial
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Discourse” 42). In the 1980s it became a field of study of all theories, concepts,
mentalities which had kept working upon the European mind for many years
before and after the moment of colonisation, thus creating enough more or
less genuine supporters of the above mentioned acts of colonisation perceived
by too many as civilising acts arduously carried on European shoulders in
guise of the “white man’s burden” as Kipling would say.
Mentalities have always been fed by the information found in written
sources as old as antiquity. The Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop
(1981), quotes the Greek physician Galen (second century A.D.) who
described a black man as being “an hilarious human being with oversized
genitalia” (216) and argues that “the caricatured identifications of Blacks
starting from some psychological traits, more or less wrongly construed, will
be pursued up to our days by authors badly in need of definitions, via Count
Arthur J. Gobineau, the ideological ancestor of the Nazis” (216). As I have
already mentioned, in spite of his objective theory, also developed by several
other theoreticians concerning some good results issued from different
combinations among races, Gobineau was totally against miscegenation.
Nonetheless, Diop claimes that one of these remarkable outcomes had long
lasting echoes in the European mind. He quotes Gobineau who maintained
that the source of all art is “the result of the marriage between the vegetative
sensibility of the Black, an inferior quality, and the Apollonian rationality of
the White, a superior quality”, but then argues that the “grandiose art of the
Egyptian civilization, entirely due to a Black people, is the most categorical
refutation of Gobineau’s ‘scholarly’ inanity.” Diop mentions that this kind
of writing “strongly conditioned the first definitions that the Negro-African
thinkers of the period between the two World Wars had tried to give to their
culture.” He explains that “the ‘Negritude’ poets did not have at that time
the scientific means to refute or question these types of errors; scientific
truth had been White for such a long time” (217). As a confirmation of
his statement he quotes L. S. Senghor who wrote that ‘Emotion is Negro
and reason is Greek’, then motivates that the slippery slope of studies
concerning the psychic issue, also considered the third constituent factor of
personality, “which everybody else simply calls national temperament, and
which varies from the Slav to the German, from the Latin to the Papua, is
due to the fact that this last factor is traditionally grasped in a qualitative way
through poetry: all peoples have sung their own virtues; whereas the other
two factors, historical and linguistic, are susceptible only to a rigorously
scientific approach” (218). This may help the observer understand that a
generally noticed behaviour of a social group of people almost always has
deeper roots than what we are tempted to imply after a quick assessment:
[the] communicative gaiety, which goes back to Galen’s epoch, instead of
being a permanent trait due solely to the sun, is a result of the reassuring
communally securing social structures that bog down our people in the
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present and in a lack of concern for tomorrow, in optimism, whereas the

individualistic social structures of the Indo-Europeans engender anxiety,
pessimism, uncertainty about tomorrow, moral solitude, tension regarding
the future, and all its beneficial effects on the material life. (218)
Diop approaches the aspect of the spiritual transformation, a

phenomenon closely related to historical events and he gives a very
interesting example of African personality traits perpetuated by memory.
Once more he spotlights some characteristics that black people inherited
from the past: “goodness, gaiety, optimism, social sense” noticing at the
same time that “nothing is fixed or permanent about them, but that they
change with the conditions: Africa is beginning to experience some strongly
individualistic consciousness, with all of the usual consequences” (218).
On the other hand, and here is the interesting example, he speaks about
the Blacks of the diaspora for whom “the historic bond remains stronger
than ever, perpetuated by memory, as the cultural heritage of Africa” has
been transferred to the White American whose “Negro laugh, so pleasant,
inherited from the household slave who raised his children, attests to the
continuity of cultural customs” (219). Change went into both directions
and we can argue that this was and still is the mechanism at work all over
this world, but it manifested in a specific way in Africa during colonization
causing the unfortunate replacement of the “pleasant Negro laugh” with sad
looks on bewildered faces stunned by the lack of comprehension of the real
source of their unhappiness.
Anthropologists have shown that violence, aggressiveness, conflict,
are part of any social group behaviour, but historical and cultural context
have to be taken into account for a more correct interpretation of facts.
Colonialism and imperialism were historical instances of cultural clash when
not only new countries were drawn on the world map, but also new identities
were remoulded upon the Other’s pattern. As we have already seen the
Other was said to be savage, uneducated, uncivilized, with little knowledge
to live a good life; consequently the change was supposed to go into one
direction only: from the civilised European colonists towards the indigenous
populations who were supposed to absorb every bit of knowledge and good
behaviour in total acceptance and reward:
The objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a
population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify
conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction; […]
colonial discourse produces the colonized as a fixed reality which is at once
an ‘other’ and yet entirely knowable and visible. […] It employs a system
of representation, a regime of truth that is structurally similar to Realism.
(Bhabha 1983: 23)
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Distorted images turned into “terrifying stereotypes of savagery,

cannibalism, lust and anarchy which are the signal points of identification
and alienation, scenes of fear and desire, in colonial texts” (25). Critical
theorist Homi Bhabha tries to clarify the source of diminished impact of
power and knowledge in the ambivalent relation coloniser - colonised
bringing under discussion the “function of the stereotype as phobia and
fetish that, according to Fanon, threatens the closure of the racial/epidermal
schema for the colonial subject and opens the royal road to colonial fantasy”
(25). We really need some scientific information and we can count on Fanon
who, as a specialist, comes with the results of his research concerning the
psychopathology of colonisation corroborated with his experience in the
anti-colonial and political arena as well as with his philosophical studies, all
of which attempting to prove that contrary to what Freud, Jung, Hobbes and
many others argued, “the collective unconscious is cultural, which means
acquired” (Fanon 2008: 145) and “society, unlike biochemical processes,
cannot escape human influences. Man is what brings society into being”
(4). He gives a multitude of examples in order to support his theory and he
warns his readers that they “must move softly [as] there is a whole drama
in having to lay bare little by little the workings and processes that are seen
in their totality”. As a result of all these workings and processes “in Europe,
the black man is the symbol of Evil” (145). Fanon incriminates the European
culture for having created an “imago of the Negro which is responsible for
all the conflicts that may arise” (130). Here is a part of this invented image:
The torturer is the black man, Satan is black, one talks of shadows, when
one is dirty one is black – whether one is thinking of physical dirtiness or of
moral dirtiness. It would be astonishing, if the trouble were taken to bring
them all together, to see the vast number of expressions that make the black
man the equivalent of sin. In Europe, whether concretely or symbolically,
the black man stands for the bad side of the character. As long as one cannot
understand this fact, one is doomed to talk in circles about the “black
problem.” Blackness, darkness, shadow, shades, night, the labyrinths of the
earth, abysmal depths, blacken someone’s reputation; and on the other side,
the bright look of innocence, the white dove of peace, magical, heavenly
light. (146)
When he was thus arguing, the size of the African disaster was
far from what it has become lately in some of the countries and none of
the genocidal interethnic conflicts had taken place yet, but Fanon often
manifested a visionary gift. We cannot call it premonition for he brings
appropriate arguments in most of the cases according to scientific, historic
or simply logical patterns. We should take into account that he was very
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well positioned to understand the subtleties of the colonial system, but also,
I would dare suppose, to have become a victim of the mentioned system
himself. This is how he explains his approach:
As I begin to recognize that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself
hating the Negro. But then I recognize that I am a Negro. There are two
ways out of this conflict. Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin,
or else I want them to be aware of it. I try then to find the value for what is
bad—since I have unthinkingly conceded that the black man is the colour of
evil. In order to terminate this neurotic situation, in which I am compelled to
choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies, hostile, inhuman
in short, I have only one solution: to rise above this absurd drama that others
have staged round me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable,
and, through one human being, to reach out for the universal. (153)
He was also saying that “it would be easy to prove or to win admission,
that the black is the equal of the white. But my purpose is quite different:
what I want to do is help the black man to free himself of the arsenal of
complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment” (19).
It is well known that we can best understand somebody’s feelings when
we have similar experiences and this would be enough to facilitate deeper
comprehension of his black patients from the part of the black psychiatrist
all of them having experienced the complicated colonial relationships. Fanon
spoke about complexes because he felt them growing into his own mind
and soul; this personal experience was the source of his predictions – in his
opinion the yesterday victims of violent acts will become the perpetrators
of tomorrow. According to the same pattern he felt fury growing into his
own body while watching acts of aggression and being himself a victim of
injustice and racism:
Native violence was the violence of yesterday’s victims, the violence

of those who had cast aside their victimhood to become masters of their
own lives. […] He of whom they have never stopped saying that the only
language he understands is that of force, decides to give utterance by force.
[…] The argument the native chooses has been furnished by the settler, and
by an ironic turning of the tables it is the native who now affirms that the
colonialist understands nothing but force. […] The colonized man finds his
freedom in and through violence. (Fanon in Mahmood Mamdani, “Making
sense of Political Violence in Postcolonial Africa”, 2002: 5)
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Professor Mamdani’s comment upon Fanon’s argument is that “the

native who embraces violence to safeguard his and her freedom is the
victim-turned-perpetrator”, violence “belonging to the script of modernity
and progress, [and being] indeed a midwife of history”. There is, however, a
big difference between the colonisers’ and the natives’ goals: “the native kills
not just to extinguish the humanity of the other, but to defend his or her own,
and the moral ambivalence this must provoke in other human beings like us”
(Mamdani 2002: 5-6). Then Mamdani comes with some examples meant to
show exactly what this mechanism can generally trigger, what it has already
accomplished and what should be done in order to change something in this
crooked order of things. He makes use of Lenin’s metaphor related to the
world of the rat and the cat where,
for the rat there is no animal bigger in the presence of the cat, neither lion,
nor tiger, nor elephant. For the cat, there is none more delicious than the
rat. […] In a world where cats are few but rats are many, one way for cats
to stabilize rule is to tag rats by tapping their historicity through a discourse
on origins, indigenous and nonindigenous, ethnic and racial. This is why in
a world where rats have belled cats, it is entirely possible that rats may still
carry on living in the world as defined by cats, fired by the very identities
generated by institutions created in the era of cats. My point is simple and
fundamental: you can turn the world upside down, but still fail to change it.
To change the world, you need to break out of the worldview of not just the
cat, but also the rat; not only the settler, but also the native. Unless we break
out of the worldview of the rat, post-colonialism will remain a purgatory
punctuated by nonrevolutionary violence. (16-17)
The big question here is to what extent the native is able to break
out of the worldview of the rat when he has already become a different
person as “the oppressor, through the inclusive and frightening character
of his authority, manages to impose on the native new ways of seeing, and
in particular, a pejorative judgment with respect to his original forms of
existing” (Fanon, Toward the African Revolution 1967: 38). Fanon did his
best to explain that this kind of changes in the native’s personality took
place at two levels, the conscious and the unconscious of the individual. It
was a long process of remaking the African personality: “having judged,
condemned, abandoned his cultural forms, his language, his food habits,
his sexual behaviour, his way of sitting down, of resting, of laughing, of
enjoying himself, the oppressed flings himself upon the imposed culture
with the desperation of a drowning man”. The colonial discourse was thus
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appropriately labelled by Frantz Fanon as “an act of violence” (39) and by

Homi Bhabha as “the discourse of post-Enlightenment English colonialism
[which] often speaks in a tongue that is forked, not false” (Bhabha 2005:
265) and which “required immense expenditures of psychic and intellectual
energies of the West” (Robinson in Kelly 1972: 22). In spite of its artificiality
the discourse about “the discrete, racially pure Europe, solely responsible
for modernity, on the one hand, and the fabrication of the barbaric Negro
on the other” (Kelly 1972: 22), stood as indisputable proofs that “between
colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance” as Aimé Césaire
claimed (1972: 2), who otherwise agrees with the intercultural contact,
but also highlights the differences which can be easily noticed between
civilising and colonising a group of people, explaining at the same time
“how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the
true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to
covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism” (2).
In the same vein Fanon displays the effects such behaviour generally
had upon one hidden part of the black man: ” White civilization and
European culture have forced an existential deviation on the Negro…what is
often called the black soul is a white man’s artefact” (Fanon 2008: 6). Fanon
attempts “a psychopathological and philosophical explanation of the state of
being a Negro” (6) not because “black men want to prove to white men, at all
costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect” (3), but
because “[he] believe[d] that the fact of the juxtaposition of the white and
black races has created a massive psychoexistential complex. [He] hope[d]
by analyzing it to destroy it” (5). His analysis went deep into the human
psyche of both black and white patients in order to reveal to what extent the
changes operated at each level, conscious and subconscious, but mostly to
discover the reasons which triggered these changes and the psychological
mechanism at work in colonial and postcolonial circumstances.
In Fanon’s philosophy of violence the black people manifest their
desire to be like the white people first and foremost because the white people
have the power which generally signifies freedom. This theory is very close
to the Girardian Mimetic Theory of Desire, according to which any human
being becomes desirous of whatever a different human being owns or simply
desires. Girard also states that by imitating somebody else’s desire the two
persons become rivals and the conflict can only be solved when the tension,
generally manifested through violent behaviour, is released. Both Fanon and
Girard speak about the important role of the scapegoat supposed to solve
the violence problem by attracting violence towards it with the essential
purpose of annihilating the initial bursts of violence. Girard calls it founding
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violence, as I have mentioned in a previous segment of this chapter, and

illustrates it with numerous examples from literature and history arguing
that this is a general human behaviour pattern, which helps human societies
regenerate, while Fanon gives palpable examples issued from the colonial-
colonised relationship in order to support the same principle of violence
having re-creational strength, which could help the colonised reconstruct a
new identity in an attempt to develop harmonious social relationships as a
basis for a more humane society. Sartre made his point upon Fanon’s thesis
arguing that for the Martiniquan psychiatrist “violence is neither sound
and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of
resentment: it is man recreating himself” (Sartre 21).
The main difference between Girard’s and Fanon’s views upon violence
as a source of renewal for the human being and for an entire social group is
the way the accumulated fury is finally managed, irrespective of the source
of the negative feelings. Girard explains that the act of release of violence
should be a sacred one guided towards a victim (the scapegoat) generally
designated by the sacrificial system with a clear goal: to re-establish the
balance of justice and peace within a social group where everybody feels
anger against everybody. The ritual represents a culturally “safe” act able to
break the violence chain. Girard argues that this is where religion and culture
started and it represents a phase of human society development. “It may
be that a basic difference exists between a society like ours and societies
imbued with religion—a difference that is partially hidden from us by rites,
particularly by rites of sacrifice, that play a compensatory role; this difference
would help explain why the actual function of sacrifice still eludes us”
(Girard 1989: 12-14). He insists upon the essential role of sacred sacrificial
rites which serve as preventive measures in the struggle against violence
quoting Malinovski: “The means of restoring a disturbed tribal equilibrium
[are] slow and cumbersome....We have not found any arrangement or usage
which could be classed as a form of ‘administration of justice’, according
to a code and by fixed methods” (Malinovski, Crime and Custom in Savage
Society, in Girard 1989: 17). Girard wants to emphasise that “our ignorance
engages us in a false line of thought” (16). In judicially structured societies
where we generally speak about guilt and wrongdoers punished by more or
less efficient authorities, people generally think that religion is of no use in
dispensing justice:
We have no need of religion to help us solve a problem, runaway vengeance,

whose very existence eludes us. And because we have no need for it, religion
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itself appears senseless. The efficiency of our judicial solution conceals

the problem, and the elimination of the problem conceals from us the role
played by religion. The air of mystery that primitive societies acquire for us
is undoubtedly due in large part to this misunderstanding. It is undoubtedly
responsible for our extreme views of these societies, our insistence on
portraying them alternately as vastly superior or flagrantly inferior to our
own....No one can asses with certainty the amount of violence present in
another individual, much less in another society. We can be sure, however,
that in a society lacking a judicial system the violence will not appear in the
same places or take the same forms as in our own....In primitive societies the
risk of unleashed violence is so great and the cure so problematic that the
emphasis naturally falls on prevention. The preventive measures naturally
fall within the domain of religion, where they can on occasion assume a
violent character. Violence and the sacred are inseparable. (18-19)
Girard explains that sacrifice functions like a “cathartic appeasement”

solving problems that generally escape man’s control. In spite of its violent
aspect the final goal is to protect the members of the given community of their
own violence (102). He appreciates that “to see these rites as expressions of
man’s pathological morbidity is to miss the point” (103) and also suggests
that “in the absence of any collective structuralization, our only recourse is
the psychological interpretation” (101).
Fanon comes close to this vision with his psychological analysis of
a mechanism which functions almost in the same way Girard implied, any
time problems of wealth and power bother the ordinary life of a community
as well as in conditions of exploitation and colonialism. In the same vein
with Girard who argued that “scapegoat effects are more deeply rooted in
the human condition than we are willing to admit” (96), Fanon declares that
during the colonial encounter the whole black race represented the scapegoat
for the white race:
[E]ach individual has to charge the blame for his baser drives, his impulses,
to the account of an evil genius, which is that of the culture to which he
belongs (we have seen that this is the Negro). This collective guilt is borne
by what is conventionally called the scapegoat. Now the scapegoat for white
society—which is based on myths of progress, civilization, liberalism,
education, enlightenment, refinement—will be precisely the force that
opposes the expansion and the triumph of these myths. This brutal opposing
force is supplied by the Negro. (Fanon 2008: 150)
Fanon counters Jung who wrote about the archetype of evil that can be
found in any human being and which he exemplified with “the uncivilized
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savage, the Negro who slumbers in every white man. He claims to have
found in uncivilized peoples the same psychic structure that his diagram
portrays” and “locates the collective unconscious in the inherited cerebral
matter” the way other scholars and scientists have done. Fanon explains
that individual experience “is purely and simply the sum of prejudices,
myths, collective attitudes of a given group” having nothing to do with the
genes but with culturally acquired behaviour (144-5). He agrees with Jung’s
experiment of travelling back into a patient’s childhood in order to reveal
certain psychic realities, but he makes an important correction arguing that
Jung did not go back to the childhood of the world but to that of Europe and
there he discovered “in the remotest depth of the European unconscious an
inordinately black hollow in which the most immoral impulses, the most
shameful desires lie dormant” (146). Jung’s theory according to which black
people represented the evil, the obscure was in perfect accordance with the
European invented image as I have previously shown. Fanon totally accepts
Jung’s position explaining it through the classic psychoanalysis mechanism
according to which any human being tries to get rid of their bad drives or
reprehensible feelings by projecting them on somebody else. It becomes
fairly obvious how racism has been perpetuated in the Europeans’ collective
unconscious and how easily the Negro became the symbol of evil. At this
point I would like to mention that the Jungian journey into one’s soul could
be perfectly illustrated by the Conradean experience in Africa, which was
metaphorically suggested to the Victorian European public by his famous
novella Heart of Darkness.
Speaking from the colonised people’s position Fanon helps us
understand other peculiar psychopathological aspects of the black people’s
experience as a consequence of “the unreflected imposition of a culture”
which took place in almost any colonial environment. He presents the
situation from the point of view of the colonised black child who was taught
the coloniser’s language, literature, history, who enjoyed reading stories
with white people where the bad character was always black and for whom
he, as a black child felt contempt and disapproval. During his activity as
a psychiatrist in an Algerian hospital Fanon had the opportunity to make
up an overview related to the colonised or ex-colonised patients’ neurotic
state, which had much in common with his own feelings. He understood
that the black person identified themselves with the white coloniser to such
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extent that they became Negrophobes instinctually feeling contempt toward

their kin. He concludes that a black person “is made white by the collective
unconscious, by a large part of his individual unconscious, and by the virtual
totality of his mechanism of individuation. The colour of his skin, of which
there is no mention in Jung, is black. All the inabilities to understand are
born of this blunder” (149). The inferiority complex turns into the negation
of one’s identity for moral reasons:
Moral consciousness implies a kind of scission, a fracture of consciousness

into a brighter part and an opposing black part. In order to achieve morality,
it is essential that the black, the dark, the Negro vanish from consciousness.
Hence a Negro is forever in combat with his own image. (150)
The very title of Fanon’s book Black Skins White Masks, where he
developed these theories by approaching real psychiatric cases, represents
the essence of this psychological crisis: the black person has grown white
inside by having been inoculated the white culture, but any time they are
confronted with a white person the colour of their skin betrays them. It
represents the crucial moment when the Black person would rather wear
a White mask. And this metamorphosed soul of the black person guides us
to Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry, hybridity and ambivalence. In the 2008
edition of Black Skins White Masks the readers may benefit from Bhabha’s
critical approach issued and published as a foreword in the 1986 edition of
Fanon’s book. He tried to grasp the complexity of Fanon’s work found in
“an area of ambivalence between race and sexuality; out of an unresolved
contradiction between culture and class; from deep within the struggle of
psychic representation and social reality” (xxii). Analysing Fanon’s almost
impossible mission as a colonial psychiatrist Bhabha asserts that all the cases
he used to illustrate his book help “illuminate the ‘madness’ of racism, the
pleasure of pain, the agonistic fantasy of political power” (xxiii). They are
but proofs of the worrying state of the human subject, either black or white,
who became more and more disturbed at both social and psychic levels,
thus “reveal[ing] the deep psychic uncertainty of the colonial relation itself”.
At this point Bhabha admits his figurative language needs clarification in
order to help a proper “understanding of the process of identification in the
analytic of desire” of the subject in specific historical conditions and also
that the “bizarre figure of [this] desire” was the main reason why Fanon
approached the matter from a psychoanalytic perspective (xxvii-xxviii).
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Fanon’s psychoanalytic approach was a great support in my attempt

to unravel the issue of violent colonial behaviour transferred to the colonial
subjects and perpetuated in most post-colonial societies up to the present
days. Although he seems to be quite assertive in his answers and he comes
with differentiated documentation meant to support his statements there were
some theorists who countered them as well as others who enthusiastically
approved him. The concern of my study is to clarify the most important
aspects of this violence issue, namely what were the real reasons that
triggered the colonisers’ violent behaviour towards the colonised in the first
place and to what extent and by what means this violence was transferred to
the colonised. I have already dealt with the economic aspect of the colonial
act dictated mainly by the imperialist ideology, which seems to have given
a satisfying answer to many people, either Victorians or belonging to other
historical phases of human society, but there are insights which go much
deeper into this complex coloniser-colonised relationship also compared to
journeys into the dark side of the human body and soul.
Fanon argues that “if one wants to understand the racial situation
psychoanalytically, not from a universal viewpoint but as it is experienced by
individual consciousness, considerable importance must be given to sexual
phenomena”. In his opinion “in relation to the Negro, everything takes place
on the genital level” (121), the Negro is attacked in his “corporeality” for
the simple and clear reason that the coloniser always felt “fear of the sexual
potency of the Negro” (126). This is part of the invented image of the black
native described from very old times as I have already mentioned like “an
hilarious human being with oversized genitalia”. Fanon brought diversified
testimonies trying to show “that reality destroys all these beliefs” but the
white mentality quite suggestive in Fanon’s words is the consequence of
a different reality, that of the whites: “What do you expect, with all the
freedom they have in their jungles! They copulate at all times and in all
places. They are really genital. They have so many children that they cannot
even count them. Be careful, or they will flood us with little mulattoes” (121).
Besides, “our women are at the mercy of the Negroes” (122). He carries on
by speculating on how the above mentioned fears might have worked upon
the coloniser’s mentality and his consequent behaviour: “Since his ideal is
an infinite virility, is there not a phenomenon of diminution in relation to the
Negro, who is viewed as a penis symbol? Is the lynching of the Negro not
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a sexual revenge? We know how much of sexuality there is in all cruelties,

tortures, beatings” (123). Then, according to this logic Fanon considers that
the white man having projected his own desires onto the Negro “behaves
as if the Negro really had them”....”The Negro symbolizes the biological
danger“(127). Moreover, “the black man is the symbol of Evil and Ugliness”
(139).
Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that “they all rest on the level of the
imagined, in any case on that of a paralogism” (136), the white man who
perceives the black person as different, “needs to defend himself. In other
words, to personify The Other. The Other will become the mainstay of his
preoccupations and his desires” (131). Fanon attempts to find out what the
white man wants and equally what the black man wants concluding that
“the Negro enslaved by his inferiority [and] the white man enslaved by his
superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation” (xxvii).
Although Fanon accepts that the racial inferiority complex comes from older
times he asserts that the only solution for the black man’s anguish is “to
furnish proofs of his whiteness to others and above all to himself” (167).
Applying the Hegelian dialectic he motivates the black man’s need “to make
himself recognised by the other” in a context where the specific situation
was created by the colonisers. This pushes Fanon to consider the effect of an
imposed as well as wished mimicry:
I wonder sometimes whether school inspectors and government functionaries

are aware of the role they play in the colonies. For twenty years they poured
every effort into programs that would make the Negro a white man. In the
end, they dropped him and told him, “You have an indisputable complex of
dependence on the white man.” (169)
The concept of mimicry was given extensive importance in post-

colonial theory, most of the times being associated with Bhabha’s
philosophical approaches of the coloniser-colonised relationships together
with two other equally important terms, hybridity and ambivalence, also very
helpful for the main concern of this research. I will start from a description
of the term provided by Ashcroft et al who clarify Bhabha’s philosophical
and metaphorical terminology.
Mimicry has come to describe the ambivalent relationship between coloniser

and colonised. When colonial discourse encourages the colonised subject to
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‘mimic’ the coloniser, by adopting the coloniser’s cultural habits, assumptions,

institutions and values, the result is never a simple reproduction of those
traits. Rather, the result is a ‘blurred copy’ of the coloniser that can be quite
threatening. This is because mimicry is never very far from mockery, since it
can appear to parody whatever it mimics. Mimicry therefore locates a crack
in the certainty of colonial dominance, an uncertainty in its control of the
behaviour of the colonised. Mimicry has often been an overt goal of imperial
policy. (Ashcroft et al 1998: “Mimicry” 139)
In Bhabha’s theory (2005: 266-8) “colonial mimicry is the desire for

a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost
the same, but not quite;...the discourse of mimicry is constructed around
an ambivalence” which makes “that mimicry is at once resemblance and
menace....Mimicry conceals no presence or identity behind its mask....The
menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence
of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority”. Fictional characters of
colonial literature are mentioned as examples of “appropriate objects in
the colonial chain of command, authorized versions of otherness” who also
represent ”the part-objects of a metonymy of colonial desire”. This desire
partially reverses “the colonial appropriation producing a partial vision of
the coloniser’s presence, a gaze of otherness”. Out of such gaze of otherness
were issued similar fictional characters in the post-colonial African literature
embodying colonisers and colonised as well, one of the most representative
writers being the Nigerian professor Chinua Achebe. His African Trilogy
became, ironically, more famous outside Africa than inside the “dark
continent” precisely because its author benefitted from the white language
and knowledge. Apart from fiction there are also some real personalities, who
became emblematic African figures; they are still haunting Africans from
photos, which represent testimonies of a long and sad post-independence
interval of time, when these African leaders proved to be as bad for their
own peoples as the colonisers used to be. Names such as Mobutu Sese Seko,
Idi Amin, Sani Abacha or Moammar Gadhafi still chill numerous Africans’
back be it from incredible stories told by their parents or grandparents or
because of personal memories of dictatorship.
This ambivalent behaviour reveals attraction and repulsion at the
same time, but also leaves some space for “the desire of colonial mimicry—
an interdictory desire [which] may not have an object, but it has strategic
objectives” (Bhabha 2005: 269). It leads to the situation that both white and
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black subjects are involved in this ambivalence of the colonial discourse,

although the colonisers had some clear objectives to accomplish, such as to
give a practical use to colonial subjects, in spite of the risk they ran to ‘go
native’; this was the name they used to give to their “fear of contamination by
absorption into native life and customs” as well as “of the threat particularly
associated with the temptation posed by inter-racial sex, where sexual
liaisons with ‘native’ peoples were supposed to result in a contamination
of the colonizers’ pure stock and thus their degeneracy and demise as a
vigorous and civilized (as opposed to savage or degenerate) race” (Ashcroft
et al 1998: “Going native” 115).
Fanon, Bhabha, Robert Young, Ashcroft and other scholars claimed
that “complicity and resistance exist in a fluctuating relation within the
colonial subject”, this ambivalent behaviour “[being] related to hybridity
because, just as ambivalence ‘decentres’ authority from its position of power,
authority may also become hybridized when placed in a colonial context
in which it finds itself dealing with, and often inflected by, other cultures”
(Ashcroft et al 1998: “Ambivalence”12-14). Apart from its horticultural
use referring to the cross-breeding of two species, hybridity, this very often
used concept in post-colonial criticism, “commonly refers to the creation of
new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization”.
Bill Ashcroft also mentions Bhabha’s analysis which spotlights “the third
space of enunciation” reckoned to be a contradictory and ambivalent one,
but useful in an attempt “to overcome the exoticism of cultural diversity in
favour of the recognition of an empowering hybridity within which cultural
difference may operate”. Some criticism has been made related to specific
local situations and locations, which are dealt with in an abstract, globalized
and obscuring manner (118-119).
Historian Robert Young is one of the scholars who came with some
well supported opinions in this respect (1995), approaching the concept of
hybridity in its close connection with race and miscegenation by tracing it
in well known Victorian discourses like those of Matthew Arnold, Count
Gobineau, Robert Knox, and equally claiming that postcolonial discourse
should take into account these racial implications which will always be
triggered when speaking about hybridity. At the same time he displays an
insight into other philosophers’ view and use of the concept, trying to clarify
the difference between the unconscious process of hybrid mixture also called
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creolization, and the politicized and intentional appeal to inter - racial sexual
relations meant to achieve a reversal of “the structures of domination in the
colonial situation” (Young 22). In his opinion, Bhabha as well as Bakhtin
approaches the issue of intentionality of the process, which represented
“an active moment of challenge and resistance against a dominant colonial
power” having the clear goal of depriving “the imposed imperialist culture,
not only of the authority that it has for so long imposed politically, often
through violence, but even of its own claims to authenticity” (Bhabha
quoted in Young 21). Ashcroft comes with a very pertinent assessment of
this different model of resistance, “locating [it] in the subversive counter-
discursive practices implicit in the colonial ambivalence itself and so
undermining the very basis on which imperialist and colonialist discourse
raises its claims of superiority” (Ashcroft et al 1998: 121).
Young emphasized that “the debates about theories of race in the
nineteenth century, by settling on the possibility or impossibility of hybridity,
focussed explicitly on the issue of sexuality and the issue of sexual unions
between whites and blacks. Theories of race were thus also covert theories
of desire” (Young 8) or rather of colonial desire which triggered so much
violence. He theorised the sexual aspect of the colonial environment in
his Colonial Desire arguing that the colonial discourse was pervaded by
sexuality. Ashcroft asserts that Young employed the term “colonial desire”
in his study trying to exemplify that “colonization itself is grounded in
a sexualized discourse of rape, penetration and impregnation, whilst the
subsequent relationship of the colonizer and colonized is often presented in
a discourse that is redolent of a sexualized exoticism” (Ashcroft et al 1998:
“Colonial desire”40-1), while Ali Behdad claims “that the body is ultimately
the site where the desire to dominate is articulated” (Behdad “Eroticism,
Colonialism and Violence”1997: 207).
The sexual dimension of the colonial relationships was a very sensitive
issue from both coloniser and colonised perspectives severely altering
cultural stability still impeding on the present situations. In many cases
people are affected by sexual traumas, Congo representing an extreme case.
It is claimed that women were treated like objects, or better said like bodies
at the free disposal of white men. This used to be another colonial practice
which created a pattern of behaviour and also triggered the mechanism of
Mimetic Desire. The phenomenon is very complex with deep consequences
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in the nowadays behaviour of indigenous men towards indigenous women in

the Congolese perimeter, where different militias have been activated since
colonial times, some from the neighbouring Rwanda as well, and where
raping became a tool of intimidation.
Young’s assessment of the sexual connotation of colonialism
illuminates the readers upon the main concern of his book. He claims that
“colonialism was always locked into the machine of desire...folded within
the scientific accounts of race” (171). He explains the colonial relationships
from a different perspective:
Nineteenth-century theories of race did not just consist of essentializing

differentiations between self and other: they were also about a fascination
with people having sex-interminable, adultering, aleatory, illicit, inter-racial
sex...[but also preserving] the older commercial discourse that it superseded.
For it is clear that the forms of sexual exchange brought about by colonialism
were themselves both mirrors and consequences of the modes of economic
exchange that constituted the basis of colonial relations; the extended
exchange of property which began with small trading-posts and the visiting
of slave ships originated, indeed, as much as an exchange of bodies as of
goods, or rather of bodies as goods: as in that paradigm of respectability,
marriage, economic and sexual exchange were intimately bound up, coupled
with each other, from the very first. The history of the meanings of the word
‘commerce’ includes the exchange both of merchandise and of bodies in
sexual intercourse. It was therefore wholly appropriate that sexual exchange,
and its miscegenated product, which captures the violent, antagonistic power
relations of sexual and cultural diffusion, should become the dominant
paradigm through which the passionate economic and political trafficking of
colonialism was conceived...The fantasy of post-colonial cultural theory...is
that those in the Western academy at least have managed to free themselves
from this hybrid commerce of colonialism, as from every other aspect of the
colonial legacy (R.Young 171-2).
***
The second chapter of this study has accomplished an overview of the
main humanistic principles of the Enlightenment issued and supported by
important figures of philosophers, historians and scientists, representing the
main source of human rights charters in Europe but also an encouragement
of assumptions based on empirical experiments and scientific research which
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started to find justifications for intervening in the life and territory of peoples
considered uncivilised and helpless in the way of managing their lives. Thus,
I have tried to explain how a large part of civilised European nations initially
animated by humanist drives finished by drawing colonising projects fed
by racialist and nationalist theories, in many cases as an exemplification
of the same psychological mechanism of ‘Mimetic Desire’ also called by
Girard ‘acquisitive mimesis’, thus, in close connection with the human wish
to possess mainly what the Other possesses.
The process of colonisation as a systematic exercise of domination
applied on almost every area of life revealed its economic interest from the
very beginning in spite of its proclaimed good intentions. I have carried out my
research in order to demonstrate how ancient this European procedure is as it
manifested its acquisitiveness from the very first encounters with indigenous
people on new lands. In all situations as well as during the colonial times
the economic interests triggered imperialist practices. European intervention
was violently invasive during the whole period of time it was present on the
Others’ territories, and it also left permanent scars on the inhabitants of those
lands for the reasons I have also mentioned and exemplified.
During the long years of reciprocal influence a lot changed from
physical and also mental perspectives. Fear of loss of pure races gave rise to
many racialist theories, then to discourses and even laws trying to prohibit
interracial sexual intercourse, which did not change much from the natural
flow of interpersonal relationships. I have thoroughly examined the main
colonial and postcolonial approaches to issues which were to have a great
impact upon the history of the world, taking into account that not only
economic interests, but also race, nationalism and miscegenation were at the
basis of almost all conflicts on the globe. I have relied on some significant
theories supported by Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, Robert Young, in order
to clarify the psychopathological dimension of the colonial issue which
expresses some of these ideas.
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CHAPTER III: An Anthropological

Perspective upon Africa
III. 1. Historical and anthropological background

“African historians were saying that even if conventional sources
were silent on Africa, this could not be taken as evidence that nothing had
happened in Africa” (Feierman 172).
Africa represented a mysterious and challenging destination for
travellers of very old times and in spite of being visited and revisited by
people coming from different corners of our world, European discoveries
concerning geographical objectives, its impressive vegetation, wild animals
and mainly its huge and diverse mineral resources, attained their climax
only during the nineteenth century when rich Africa consequently became
the main concern for colonial plunder. “The Dark continent” was not an
easy target for traders, explorers, missionaries, and even conquerors, who
paid with their lives, in many cases for reasons which were to be retold and
often recorded by witnesses of frightening episodes of ferocious attacks of
wild animals, poisonous bites of unknown insects, or tropical diseases. Such
experiences encouraged Western minds to imagine Africa in many fantastic
ways in some cases closer to horror tales than to attractive exotic places to
be visited, generally meant to spotlight the great difference existing between
Europeans and the Others:
[F]rom early on in history, the encounter with other cultures, languages and
customs has been governed by selective perception, which inspires curiosity,
stimulates the imagination and evokes fascinating images in people’s minds.
Valorizing the Other is, of course, nothing but a reflection of one’s own point
of view. In the European tradition, images of self and other appear already in
the early testimonials of ancient Greek literature: stereotypes concerning the
demarcation between Greeks and Barbarians. (Beller 6)
This important demarcation which was going to stay forever in the

human minds appeared “when the Great Kings of Persia tried to subjugate
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Greece, devastating the country with their vast armies and destroying Athens
and the temples on the Acropolis, the Persians and all oriental peoples who
followed their campaign were definitively fixed in their role as barbarians”
(Diller 1962; Hall 1989 in M. Beller 2007: 267). A decisive shift took place
in the invaded people’s mind: from the former significance of the word, that
of “foreigner, culturally inferior, incapable of speaking Greek to the cruel, the
destructive, and the despotic” (267). At first the word barbarian signified simply
a foreigner as the Greeks used to call ‘barbaros’ all non-Greek speakers. “The
Greek view of all strangers, with its default ethnocentrism, predetermined the
negative connotation of the word ‘barbaros’ in subsequent usage. There existed
also a neutral or even positive appreciation of remote peoples, nourished by
curiosity and by the exoticist or primitivist idealization of a more natural way
of life” (Lund 1990 in M. Beller 2007: 266), but historically known invaders
like Teutons, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Avars, Tartars, Turks, Moors, Vikings
and others emphasized the perception of foreigners as being “uncivilized,
rapacious, brutal, drunken barbarians” (267).
All these peoples invaded other territories, plundered foreign lands
and households, committed atrocious acts upon the local inhabitants who
thus, were absolutely right to perceive them as being uncivilized and brutal.
Consequently, it seems rather awkward that the same label was applied to the
indigenous peoples from different corners of the world after they had been
invaded, plundered, humiliated, treated in unspeakable manners, dislocated
from their native places, killed in unknown numbers. Europeans used it for
too long for the African peoples as well, probably because, as Montaigne
wisely remarked in his essay Des Cannibales (1580) “chacun appelle
barbarie ce qui n’est pas de son usage” [“one calls barbarous whatever is not
in their habits” (my translation)] (268). In an attempt to give scientific value
to their assessment and intervene for the total benefit of the ‘barbarians’
Western peoples tried to find the appropriate tools for investigation meant
first of all to confirm the general view, that of backwardness of the newly
discovered people on other continents, but mainly to support their laudable
initiatives of giving a hand in the huge work of civilizing those poor
natives. Some important tools were provided by anthropology, whose stated
goal was:
[to establish] adequate, empirically-based views of humankind’s diversity
[trying to strip] away comforting but misplaced stereotypes [by] the study
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of images… However, as has become clear in the course of the discipline’s

history, it has itself been an expression of, or even trapped in Western or
North-Atlantic cultural identity, articulated in terms of the very images
of others it sets out to study. The history of the discipline has been and,
arguably, continues to be, a constant struggle to deal with this dialectic.
(Corbey “Anthropology” in Beller & Leersen 263)
As I have already stated most Enlightenment anthropological views

had started from the presumption that Europe was “the pinnacle in the
progress to civilization…[while] other, ‘brute’, ‘savage’ peoples were
considered to have originated from the same ancestral couple but representing
earlier, or decadent, stages of history and thus occupying lower positions in
creation” (263). In spite of that monogenist view a great number of scholars
supporting the polygenist theory provided the necessary arguments and even
material proofs that people on the globe have different origins, as it can
be easily seen from their physical appearance. It was a great success and
even a revelation when new disciplines like “physiognomy, phrenology, and
craniometry” seemed to give “a key to the inner and moral characteristics of
independently created races, and to their degree of ascent on the scale which
stretched from bestial beginnings to full humanness” (Corbey 263). The case
of colonial Rwanda, Burundi and Congo where the big issue of the Hutu and
Tutsi ethnical groups mentioned in the first chapter gave rise to genocidal
conflicts along the years and the conflict has not been solved yet, to name
only one of the numerous conflicts initiated because of this racialist view in
the whole world, in some cases as we know, this being the main reason for
bloody international wars.
At the beginning of the twentieth century for anthropologists like
Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski “sustained tolerance for diversity in
physical constitution, language, values, and culture became a hallmark of
anthropology as a discipline”. It became obvious that cultural anthropology
“was conceived as a human science, in search not primarily of universal
natural or ecological laws but of local, linguistically articulated cultural
meaning” (264). It has been argued that “anthropology is not just ‘the most
humanistic of the sciences’ but also ‘the most scientific of the humanities’”
(Wolf 1964 quoted in Corbey 265). Although the twentieth century was very
much under the influence of Boas, Durkheim and also of the British neo-
Durkheimian anthropology, the biological paradigms according to which
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“human behaviour is not primarily determined by symbolic culture, but by

the same laws that govern the behaviours of other organisms, and have to
do with survival, genes, ecosystems, and proteins”, made progress due to
research in disciplines like cognitive neuroscience and psychology (265).
The beginnings of anthropology could be located very far in time as
the Greek historian and writer Herodotus of Halicarnassus, known as “the
father of history” was also called “the father of anthropology” in more recent
times, taking into account that his well known written work describing the
above mentioned Greco-Persian wars represented not only historiography,
but also an anthropological study; important parts of his nine books
contain geographical and ethnographical information, related to religion
and customs, such as for instance sexual and funerary practices or ways
of dressing and eating of “those people with whom the Persians in course
of their expansion came into conflict and contact, from Egypt to Scythia
and India”. Herodotus also provided the most complete written information
about Africa in the fifth century BC (Nippel in Leersen & Beller 2007: 35).
More information about Africa came at large distances in time from the elder
Pliny (first century AD)… or from Ptolemy (second century AD). Travellers
and scholars of the Middle Ages brought more information, some of it about
the Moors and their environment, occasionally making negative connections
between the dark colour of their skin and their behaviour, while Renaissance
authors seemed to appreciate the Africans for their resemblance with the
Maghrebinians’ Orientalist traits. In the mid-sixteenth century Leo Africanus
wrote Descriptio Africae, an ambivalent account of praised qualities together
with emphasized bad traits of the Africans, in spite of all the admiration for
the mythical education centre of Timbuktu the author is even paying homage
to (Riesz “Africa” in Leersen & Beller 79).
Information about the organization of African societies and the
people’s specific manifestations, customs and traditions was recorded in
verbal, visual, and written art forms having been stored for the benefit of the
community:
Records and narratives kept by African historians are among the most
informative sources for the reconstruction of precolonial history of the
continent. Epics about heroic warriors and kings performed by jeliw (sing.
jeli), a hereditary class of singers in the western Sudan, provide a detailed
political history of this region that has been corroborated by contemporaneous
Arabic texts. (Bortolot “Ways of Recording…” 2003)
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Bortolot gives more information in his article about the different ways
of transmitting historical data, either orally, some stories being adorned by
musical performances and the personal “verbal artistry of the narrator”, some
being learned by heart and accurately transmitted from one generation to the
next with correct information about “legal matters or dynastic lists, in which
verbal accuracy was of paramount importance”, or inscribed on “intricate
visual memory devices [like] the lukasa used by the mbudye association of
the Luba peoples from what is now Democratic Republic of Congo…To the
uninitiated, a lukasa appeared to be nothing more than a flat piece of wood
covered with pins and brightly colored beads”. Other memory devices to be
found in some museums’ collections are “intricately carved human heads
and incised geometric patterns” or some “brass plaques produced until the
mid-eighteenth century that originally hung from the columns and rafters
of the royal palace”. All of these contain “a wealth of information about the
history of the chiefdom, genealogical records of the ruler and titleholders,
medicinal practices, and information about geographic landmarks of social,
political, and religious importance”, reason why “sometime in the nineteenth
century they were taken down and utilized as an archive that was consulted
on matters concerning courtly ritual and regalia”.
The same article speaks about some written historical sources which
may serve as proofs that there were “traditions of scholarship and literary
production throughout sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle Ages [due to]
major centres of religious learning [in] both East and West Africa, [which]
hasten[ed] the spread of literacy and promot[ed] reverence for the power of
the written word“. Bortolot mentions the ”illuminated manuscripts of great
refinement and beauty written in Ge’ez, the indigenous written language of
the royal court” produced in monasteries that were to be found throughout
Christian Ethiopia and also about the existence of “autobiographical accounts
and other writings of a secular nature”, together with a whole library that has
survived for some hundreds of years in Timbuktu, which as well as Jenne
(Djenne) was not only a centre of trade but mainly an “early outpost for
the spread of Islam in the western Sudan”. The reader is informed about
the “400-year-old volumes of poetry, manuscripts on the sciences and
history, and Qur’anic texts”, which probably served as learning source
for the “thousands of students [who] travelled to Timbuktu to study at the
university at Sankore Mosque, where they learned astronomy, mathematics,
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and medicine”. Nowadays “Qur’anic schools associated with mosques still

educate younger generations of scholars in Muslim philosophy and the art
of calligraphy”.
Muslim scholars were also prominent recorders of history along the Swahili
Coast of East Africa and on the island of Madagascar [i]n the seventeenth
and eighteenth century [when] scribes at the courts of both indigenous and
Arab-Malagasy rulers produced royal records written in Arabic script called
sora-be… [containing] mostly religious formulae, but [also] in later decades
political accounts and clan genealogies. (Bortolot 2003)
In spite of having been written some hundreds of years ago, most of

the information was not accessible to the large public because Arabic was
not a commonly used language. However, pieces of those scripts circulated
in guise of stories disseminated by Muslim traders in larger regions of
Africa and outside the continent as well and at the same time there were
travel diaries or simply notes of Europeans who visited Africa in quite old
times and brought back home valuable pieces of information, which kept
influencing the general perspective of the public upon an almost totally
unknown place. Thus, Antoine Malfant who had left for Sudan in 1440 in
search for gold did not find the precious metal, but discovered Timbuktu and
made it famous through his praising stories enriched by the Arabian traders.
Although not all pieces of information were favourable to the visited places,
like for instance, Benedetto Dei’s account after having travelled to Africa in
1469, which shows he was not so pleasantly surprised by the already famous
city, people still kept fancying that Timbuktu was some perfect place to live
(Corlan-Ioan 69-70).
Leo Africanus’ Latin edition of Descriptio Africae issued in 1556
provided the most reliable source of information still used in the nineteenth
century, in spite of other Arab sources written almost at the same time but
inaccessible because of the language barrier until the end of the nineteenth
century. The old Arab chronicle of Tarikh el Fettach written in the sixteenth
century and translated for the large public as late as in 1913, gives a lot of
interesting details about Timbuktu, which was described as a unique city,
the only place of Africa, from Mali to Maghreb, with reliable institutions,
political freedom, high social morality and security, where people manifested
clemency and compassion for poor people and foreigners. From Tarikh es
Soudan chronicle written in the seventeenth century by Abd al-Sadi and
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published only in 1898, the public could find out numerous details related
to the cultural centre of Timbuktu, a place where scientific debates and
scholarly exchanges of Muslim personalities from the whole Islamic world
were regular manifestations as it had been recorded by Leo Africanus some
time before (Corlan-Ioan 70-71). That religious type of teaching coming
from the North of Africa had a lot in common with the mediaeval European
curricula, although it is argued that the Arabs were more advanced than the
West in their teaching of sciences, and in spite of a certain regression that
system of education lasted until the last part of the nineteenth century (Diop
1987: 203/180).
III. 2. Pre-colonial Black Africa

Written accounts about Africa helped historians, anthropologists and
other researchers remake a lot of a past quite ignored and later belittled by the
Europeans. In spite of the general assessment of backwardness and lack of
knowledge, it has been proved that there were very old human communities
indeed, which John Reader (1998) called “cities without citadels” (219),
discovered near Djenné on the inland Niger delta in the empire of Mali as
old as 800 AD. Other researchers attest to many other inhabited places of
Africa:
Sophisticated kingdoms and empires existed such as Kush, Nubia, Aksum

(Axum), Fulani, Mali, Songhai, Ghana, Sudan, Kanem-Bornu and Hausa
States, Luba and Lunda States, Ethiopia, Benin, Yoruba, Ashanti, Dahomey,
Benin and Zulu. Smaller city-states also developed, often linked to trade, such
as Lamu, Malindi, Mombasa and Mwene Mutapa (Monomotapa) (Figure
1.1). These societies were well structured with organized and functioning
systems of governance. Armies served to protect and expand their realms
of influence and controls access and management resources. (Degeorges &
Reilly 1/93)
A rich documentation supports the theory according to which there

was a continuum of life on the African continent, demonstrating “that vibrant
civilizations existed, rich in culture, both written and oral history, strong
military forces, lucrative trade, and well developed urban centers, some on
pair with anything found in Europe at that time” (54/146). The mediaeval
kingdoms of the savannah region were in a process of migration from the
north and east “becoming absorbed into Negro kingdoms that held the reins
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of government during the apogee of powerful Sudanic states such as Ghana,

Mali and Songhay” (54/146). A process of racial intermixing followed:
with villages of completely different tribal and cultural backgrounds

peacefully co-existing (e.g., Fulani pastoralists of mixed Caucasian/Negro
blood intimately linked to Sudanic communities, grazing during the dry
season on farm residue while manure from livestock helped fertilize the
Bantu farmers’ soils)…The Sudanic civilization’s ability to adopt, absorb
and utilize outside influences is best exemplified through the spread of Islam,
which was integrated into animist religions, by the Fulani along trade routes
in the thirteenth century AD. (54/146)
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Figure 1.1: Africa’s pre-colonial kingdoms and empires

Source: ANON (2002a) in P. A. Degeorges & B. K. Reilly (2008)
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Cheikh Anta Diop, historian and anthropologist, largely explains how

and why this process of conversion took place in a rather peaceful manner
with only isolated exceptions in hundreds of years. The first reason Diop
mentions related to this process of Islamization is the peaceful type of
approach of “solitary Arabo-Berber travellers to certain Black kings and
notables, who then spread [that new religion] to those under their jurisdiction”.
He mentions the name of a Mandingo king, Baramendana Keita (1050) who,
according to the legend, was convinced that his kingdom escaped famine
only due to a Mohammedan traveller’s prayers able to bring rain upon his
extremely dry land. Believing that the new religion was very powerful and
helpful he decided to convert to it. Generally people used to imitate their
chiefs, or in some cases they were forced to do it, sometimes because of holy
wars always “conducted by Black chiefs”. Diop gives some names of such
religious conquerors who waged similar battles during several centuries
up to the nineteenth century when Ahmadu Ahmadu conquered Sudan in
1884 (Diop 1987: 186/163-187/164). Another very important reason for the
successful Islamization of the black world would be, “a certain metaphysical
relationship between African beliefs and the ‘Muslim tradition’…[the]
conception of a dual world [which] is to be found, in various forms, in the
beliefs of Africans to such a point that they feel completely comfortable in
Islam. Some of them do not even feel they have changed their metaphysical
horizon” (188/165-189/166).
Diop insists on the political and social strength of the religious belief in
precolonial Islamic Africa, which left an imprint still visible on the present-
day life of numerous African peoples. He also displays a very interesting
theory concerning the issue of slavery, which apart from being much older
than generally estimated was regulated by very clear and strict rules. Thus
Diop gives an example of what education signified for social relationships
and the extent to which it could change a slave’s status:
The power of Islam was such that it might have eliminated or attenuated
slavery in the Middle Ages if it had decreed that the enslavement of one man
by another was a mortal sin. But the Koran’s point of view on this question
is shaded. One may have a slave under the following conditions: to begin
with, if he is a prisoner of a holy war—but then he must be educated, cared
for, and converted; but, on the other hand, it is forbidden to take as a slave
a Muslim as well educated as oneself; so a slave must be freed as soon as
he reaches the intellectual level of his master. Be that as it may, during the
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period under consideration, it is quite clear that it was the fear of Hell which
kept the faithful within the moral discipline of religion. (191/168-192/169)
It is also mentioned that although the slaves were the most important
component of a king’s army those soldiers who chose to convert to Islam
could not be sold as slaves. These rules are known to have been applied in
the Islamized empires of Songhai, Mali and Ghana during a long period of
time, domestic slavery being a common practice in African societies where
for centuries Berber and Arab merchants became rich dealing with this
affair quite peacefully like with any other domestic bargain. There are many
details to be found in different sources mentioned by Diop, as for instance
those provided by the geographer and historian Al Bakri at the beginning of
the eleventh century and used by the Senegalese historian nowadays:
[O]ne could sell his fellow man to another citizen or a foreigner. Which
explains why Berber and Arab merchants, grown rich since settling at
Aoudaghast, though still vassals of the Black sovereign, could acquire Black
slaves on the open market. Some individuals in the city owned as many as a
thousand slaves. This shows the peaceful means by which the white world
could possess Black slaves. It was not through conquest, as has often been
asserted. These empires, defended when necessary by hundreds of thousands
of warriors, and having their centralized political and administrative
organization, were much too powerful for a single traveler, thousands of
miles from home, to try any sort of violence against them. (cf. Al Bakri in
Diop 1987: 113/91-114/92)
Although it is generally accepted that slavery was one of the

cruellest instances of inhuman behaviour of humans towards other humans
irrespective of place or time, Diop makes a distinction between white slaves
and black slaves who were not deported, arguing that the living conditions of
the latter were much better and giving some examples taken from different
“documents available” to support his opinion. He mentions again the slaves
of the kings of Mali or those of the Askias of Gao, who “enjoyed complete
liberty of movement [being] able to carry out a pilgrimage to Mecca without
his master’s knowledge, [or occupying] a whole territory whose soil they
cultivated for their own account, giving only a predetermined share of their
crops to the sovereign”. Some historians stated that “the slave might be
of a religion other than that of his master”. Besides, the king “selected his
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domestic servants from among them [and] when one of the men wished to
marry, the king would furnish a dowry of forty thousand cowries (seashells
used as coins) to the parents-in-law of the groom” (153/176).
Diop argues that “in the precolonial period the entire continent was
covered by monarchies and empires. No spot where man lived, even in the
virgin forest, escaped monarchic authority”. He also admits that their political
regime and their cultural level were different to a large extent “some [living]
in a scarcely shaken or liberalized clanic organization, whereas the large
numbers in the cities were detribalized” as was the case of the great empires
of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai (95/73), quoting for exemplification from
reliable ancient scholars such as Moroccan geographer and cartographer
Muhammad al-Idrisi who was writing at the beginning of the eleventh
century about the appearance, customs and occupations of black people
living at that time in the regions of Ghana and Mali:
Blacks who went about totally naked, got married without dowries, and were
prolific goat and camelherds with tattooed faces, lived to the west of Mali.
The other, more highly developed inhabitants of Ghana went slavehunting in
this region, which must have covered part of Lower Guinea and the southern
part of present-day Senegal. (Idrisi quoted in Diop 95/73)
Here Diop makes a comparison with people living “at the borders of
the Roman Empire at the time of its decline and fall, when the Romans
were already completely detribalized” stating that the same politico-social
situation was to be found in Africa at the moment of the first encounters
with the West in the sixteenth century. He speculates that the imposition of
colonial rules determined in many cases a phenomenon of retribalisation:
The Africans gradually lost their ability to decide their own fates. The local
federating authority dissolved, or was at any rate diminished and rendered
powerless. Internal evolution was consequently thrown off balance. In the
cities where detribalization had already taken place, a return to the past was
out of the question: individuals would continue to be united by social bonds.
But where clanic organization still predominated, where social limits were
still determined by the territory or the clan or tribe, there would be a sort of
turning inward, an evolution in reverse, a retribalization reinforced by the
new climate of insecurity….But, such clans were far from being as primitive
as one might offhand have thought. (95/73-96/74)
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We understand that there was a monarchic Africa and a tribal Africa,

but in both cases “the reflexes of accumulation of material wealth remained
very slight in [the African]”; people did not stay tied to a certain piece of
land, not even to a hut, still manifesting a ”clanic collectivism, justice [being]
more immanent within the clan and the repressive political apparatus less
crushing” (97/75). We find out that traditional kings, Islamized kings, and
emigrant non-Islamized kings were appointed in accordance with tradition
and the “requisite qualities”:
[T]he king has a precise function, a definite role: he must be the one with
greatest vital force in the whole kingdom. Only in this way he can serve
as mediator—he being sacrosanct—with the superior universe, without
creating any break, any catastrophic upheaval within the ontological forces.
If he is not a legitimate king fulfilling the exact conditions of established
filiation, and appointed according to the rites of tradition, all of nature will be
sterile, drought will overtake the fields, women will no longer bear children,
epidemics will strike people. As long as the tradition was carried on in
isolation from external influences, the king fulfilled a function in which no
usurper could replace him. (83/61)
Everything necessary had to be accomplished in order to achieve

universal harmony and the conditions were not ordinary ones as the king
was considered “a sacrosanct authority who linked the two worlds, so that
order might be maintained in the universe and nature continue to be fruitful”
(86/64).
Recorded data state that tropical Africa was ruled according to a
constitutional monarchy, which, in the case of the Mossi constitution implied
that the king coming by heredity from a family of kings was not automatically
nominated, but “chosen by an ‘electoral’ college of four dignitaries, presided
over by the Prime Minister, [a representative of the people]…who actually
invested [the king] with power” (65/43-66/44). The constitution of Cayor, a
former province of Ghana which is mentioned as a kingdom by the author of
the Tarikh es Soudan in the sixteenth century, “was in effect until 1870 [with]
certain transformations only in the cases where the royal branch became
Islamized” like in Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. Its general principles state
that “the government council which invested the king was constituted of
representatives of free men, men of castes or without castes, representatives
of the Muslim clergy, and representatives of the Tieddos (individuals attached
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to the king, whether as soldiers or courtiers) and of prisoners of the crown”

(cf. an example given in the Tarikh es Soudan for the autonomous kingdom
of Cayor, which also contains the proper names of those representatives:
(68/46-69/47).
Authority did not seem to be exercised in an abusive manner
“considering its religious character…design and spontaneity were playing
an important role within the framework of life at court”, a clear distinction
being made between certain professions and the obligations they compelled.
“These first professionals, by caste, were the forerunners of the future
government ministers, whose functions, considering the emoluments
involved, quickly became hereditary”. Each caste had a representative at
the court in a council with great importance for a wise behaviour from the
part of the king whose power could be restricted by a procedure initiated
by the Prime Minister, a representative of the freemen as we have already
seen, especially of “the grandees of the kingdom”. It is quite obvious that the
only goal of the system was to prevent abuses. “The Prime Minister was the
one who could initiate the procedure which…would lead to the deposing of
the king, if the latter disagreed with him, that is, with the people; if, in fact,
he ceased to rule wisely” (98/76). A lot of details are to be found related to
the crowning ceremonial when “generals, soldiers, all the people, even the
clergy had to swear on the Koran an oath of faithfulness and obedience” to
the new king. Diop maintains that “there are some indications that the oath
was not purely a matter of form, and that the masses of people…truly felt
themselves bound by it” (100/78). All rituals and ceremonial of court life
seem to be similar in different places throughout Black Africa:
On approaching the king, one had to cover one’s head with dust, as a sign of
humility. The chief, in Africa, is by definition the one who must not raise his
voice: his rank and dignity require him to speak very softly, whether he be a
spiritual or a temporal leader…Listening to the orders of a king, even if he
was not present, one had to remain standing, provided one had recognized
his authority….Obviously, one also bared one’s head in the presence of a
king. In traditional African monarchies, the king alone wore a headdress in
early times, as was the case with the Pharaoh of Egypt. (102/80)
Secular and religious powers which, “in pagan antiquity, as in

traditional Africa were long identified one with the other, [a]s a consequence
of Christianity and Islam were separated in both places, in the sense that the
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king no longer performed religious services…In Black Africa, the social

order remained practically as it had been before Islamization” (88/66).
Diop argues that “there is agreement on the fact that the African variety of
organization is indigenous” and the only possible source of inspiration could
have come only from “the administrative centralization of Pharaonic Egypt”
(122/100).
He approaches once more the very specific aspect of private ownership
as “land possession never polarized the consciousness of political power”,
to a certain extent due to religious principles that prevented the king from
such temptations:
Neither king nor lord in Black Africa ever truly felt he possessed the land…
[t]he African peasant’s situation [being] therefore diametrically opposed
to that of the serf bound to the soil and belonging, along with the land he
cultivated, to a lord or master…Even the poor worker, the navetane, who
possessed only the strength of his own arms, could not be reduced to slavery.
(125/103)
We find out from the same old records that the royalty and the nobility
had other sources of revenue in guise of taxes, customs duties, pure gold
from the gold mines, which had been exploited in different African areas
from antiquity to modern times, customary fees for appointments to various
offices, and also the properties which were acquired as booty from the
defeated territories in case of war expeditions. Details are given especially
for the western states of precolonial Africa already presented above, where
gold represented indeed the main source of wealth for those African kings
for many centuries. The author even mentions an anecdote supplied by
Herodotus, meant to suggest that “the abundance of gold in Nubia (Sudan)
was such that even the prisoners’ chains were forged of this metal” adding
that “the etymology of Nubia is said to signify ‘gold’ [and besides],
historically, Nubia was the country from which Egypt acquired all her gold”.
The gold mines of Bambuk, which “[had been] explored by the Romans
after the destruction of Carthage by Scipio Africanus” were inherited by
Mali (127/105). The Niger area is also known as very rich in gold as well as
the south of Africa, which provided enough revenue to the respective states
that “it quite certainly meant the sovereigns did not have to overwhelm their
people with taxes and tariffs” (128/106).
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However, taxes existed, “first conceived as a tithe, a ritual deduction

on the wealth of all subjects” and they were collected in all the empires,
either in guise of goods or later in currency or even gold currency in places
where the precious metal was plenty. There were instances of greedy chiefs
and they were recorded as impressive amounts of gold pieces found after the
death of the respective leaders stood as irrefutable proofs of such practices
(126/104). The same importance had the customs duties:
A strict customs system established as early as the Ghanaian period [then]

retained by the emperors of Mali and Songhai; duty was collected both on
imports and on exports. According to Bakri, the Tunkara of Ghana took a fee
of one gold dinar for every salt-laden mule entering his country, and two gold
dinars for every load of salt exported. For a load of copper the rate was five
mitkals, and ten for a load of miscellaneous goods. (126/104)
Travellers across Africa also wrote about different amounts of goods

or money they had to pay in order to receive permission to cross different
kingdoms, sometimes the demands being very different from one chief to
another, but mandatory as the collectors did not hesitate to fumble one’s
baggage and take whatever they pleased.
There were two circumstances where Diop insists on the special
aspect of the African social structure and moral behaviour, for in one case,
the caste system supposed that fees should be paid directly to the skilled
workers for certain offices and not to the king or other notables of the
community, which make things very different indeed compared “with the
feudal system in which the lord kept everything”. This happened in case of
“fees connected with assuming administrative offices”. A similar situation
was noted in case of war expeditions when the booty appropriated after
gaining a victory upon foreign territories was to be shared with the vassals.
Anytime the leader proved to be greedy and did not accomplish the sharing
according to some unwritten moral rules new conflicts arose among his
subjects (129/107-130/108).
Very interesting information is provided in relation to the government
and administration system applied for hundreds of years in certain African
kingdoms much of it on the Egyptian pattern known from the Pharaonic
times. Thus, by analyzing some of these mechanisms we can understand
how carefully everything was conceived so as to be efficient in strengthening
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the political relationships with other kingdoms. We are given the example of
Sudan where the hostages system supposed that the vassals’ children had to
spend a variable number of years in the king’s palace in guise of mandatory
term of service. The young princes treated according to their rank could have
very different fates depending on their capacities and the sovereign’s interests.
Some became leaders of the given kingdom as a natural consequence of the
accomplished goals of the system which practiced a policy of faithfulness
toward a given kingdom in an attempt of strengthening relationships among
provinces:
During this period of raising the sons of their vassals, they hoped to bring
them to share their own ideas, to get them to identify closely with the interests
of the kingdom, so that they would no longer feel themselves strangers
obligated to fight against them out of filial devotion. This was a farsighted
pursuit of a policy of strengthening the bonds between the various provinces
and the cradle of the realm, an effort of integration after the annexation of a
province. In exactly the same way in an earlier period, the Egyptian Pharaohs
acted toward the sons of Asiatic princes who were their vassals from the
time of the Eighteenth Dynasty onward, after the conquest of Thutmose III.
(131/109)
Many of the important personalities of the kingdom could be chosen

from among those young men considering the very long list of political and
administrative positions given as an example of a well structured African
system of organization. There were sultans or fari who governed a certain
province, then a farba, a mondzo, or a koi who governed a city. In every city
there were police commissioners, traditional judges appointed from a certain
clan which held the position hereditarily, as well as a certain number of other
judges. At the province level there were different ministers, administrators,
superintendents, as well as administrative and military chiefs of cities and
regions. In spite of this corruption existed; historical sources account for
situations when any position could be attained not only as a personal merit,
but also as a consequence of one’s luck or intrigues especially because “one
important notion would seem to have vanished: that of legitimacy. Any
victorious leader is legitimate, as the facts prove: the numerous coups d’état
throughout the history of Songhai. The people immediately recognized his
authority; they held no rancor toward him” (132/110-134/112). I would
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mention here an interesting etymological detail related, as we will see, with

English, noticed by Delafosse who pointed out a peculiar lexical aspect:
In many parts of the Sudan the following terms were and still are in use: Fari,
Farima, Farhama, Fama (Mande), Faran (Songhai), Fara (Haussa), Far-Ba
(Wolof), all of which may derive from the root Far, meaning summit, apex,
chief, prince, from which also derives the title of the Pharaohs. (Delafosse
quoted in Diop 135/113)
It is of great importance for the topic of my book to have a thorough

image of what precolonial Africa used to be, an important segment of this
image being represented by the military organization. Diop provided a very
clear account of this issue relying on the above mentioned sources and on
many others. Thus, he recreated a complex picture displaying details about
the structure, the components, the weapons, the strategy, and even the tactics
of the imperial forces whose size was huge, sometimes of hundreds of
thousands of soldiers. We are given details about that military organization:
The king who appointed the generals was himself the commander-in-chief
of the army and personally directed military operations…In each kingdom,
each nation, the army was divided into several corps assigned to the defense
of different provinces, although under command of the civil authority…
Thus, each provincial governor had at his disposal a part of this army to
which he could assign tasks under the orders of a general whose powers were
purely military. (137/115)
Where did all these soldiers come from? Diop explains that there were
kings at certain times and in certain kingdoms who used the mass conscription
system, “all able-bodied nationals [being] subject to enlistment”, as well as
there were kings who preferred to have a permanent army. In both cases “the
major divisions of the army were: knights, cavalry, foot soldiers, auxiliary
bodies of Tuaregs, elite infantry regiments, the royal guard, and an armed
flotilla” (138/116). It is rather weird to find out that in spite of the climate
and of cases of death by suffocation because of armor, “those princes of
Black Africa who could afford to outfit themselves in complete or partial
armor like that of the knights of the Western Middle Ages” kept wearing it
till more recent times as it is recorded by some explorers (e.g. “The explorer
Barth saw such knights in the kingdom of Bornu [around] 1850”). Although
more modestly outfitted only with shields and javelins “the cavalry was
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terrifyingly powerful, [judging] by the panic that the clashing of its weapons
caused in the Moroccan ranks during the war against Morocco (June 1609)”
as a quoted illustrative description asserts. “Foot soldiers were armed mainly
with bows and arrows. The infantry included a special elite corps, which was
distinguished by the wearing of gold bracelets. Whatever the fortunes of
war, the members of the elite corps could not turn their backs on the enemy”
(Sâdi qt. in Diop 140/118). The African fighting force was quite impressive
taking into account the existence of a flotilla, which seemed to be of real
help:
There existed on the Niger an entire flotilla no doubt composed of small

boats equipped with outrigging—hence uncapsizable—like those found
today on Lake Chad, Lake Victoria, and other large lakes of Central Africa.
In case of war, this fleet was used for military purposes; the director of the
port of Timbuktu or some other place where the battle took place then played
a leading role. (141/119)
Using the same historical sources Diop gives interesting information

about “strategy and tactics [which] were quite different from one country to
another; there were different ways of combining the attacks of cavalry and
infantry. The use of scouts and encampments with tents was common”, as
well as sieges of several years, “in no way less expert than that of Agamemnon
before Troy”. He gives the example of Sonni Ali who, according to the
Tarikh es Sudan chronicle, “laid a siege which lasted seven years and some
months” to conquer the fortified city of Djenné. The applied strategy was in
close connection with the rainy season and the specific construction of the
city which was surrounded by water during the mentioned season making
the walls unapproachable. Tenacious Sonni Ali was using the dry season for
daily battles at the gates of the city and the rainy season for cultivation of the
soil to get the necessary food for his troops. After seven years the people of
Djenné surrendered, chiefly because of lack of supplies (143/121).
Diop mentions that other sources indicate a different length of the
above mentioned siege and we all know that older resources were inclined
to exaggerations, but the data found in more written accounts giving almost
the same pieces of information could be taken as reliable according to
several historians. Among such data were those related to the commonly
used “effect of surprise” as war strategy as well as the secret missions, or a
war of harassment of the guerilla type, generally applied when the mobile
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war was introduced in certain regions, while the technical level of the troops
was not of high performance. If we add to all these elements the military
demonstrations, where different leaders were deploying their forces “for
the sole purpose of impressing [their] neighbours and take away any desire
they might have to venture into the interior of [their] lands” sometimes also
accompanied by drums and trumpets, we have an almost complete picture of
what wars were like in the precolonial times (144/122-146/124).
The judicial structure was another very well organized domain
especially “in the traditional empire [where] justice was inseparable
from religion”. Even after Islamization when the tendency was toward a
secularization of justice, the Koran was adopted as a civil code. “However,
there had always been throughout history two types of justice: royal justice
and the justice of the cadi, a Muslim judge appointed by the king” (146/124).
There were tribunals where justice was rendered: in cases of murder, or
other crimes the punishments were administered only after confession; that
was generally achieved by applying quite rudimentary methods upon the
accused, such as “the ordeal by water” or “the ordeal by fire”, compared by
the author with “barbarous methods employed in the Middle Ages, mainly
in the Germanic judicial system” (147/125). Diop argues that ”the cadis’
intellectual level was very high, their sense of duty very acute”, people
were first and foremost devoted to their work and not necessarily interested
in occupying high positions (147/125-148/126). It also seems that judges
had certain reasons why they frequently refused appointments. First and
foremost such persons were not very popular in those times; besides, their
responsibility was very high, they being given, “like the cadis in certain
holy cities, the right of pardon or punishment (life and death) over the
accused” (150/128). A frightening punishment practiced in more African
communities since the beginning of the lucrative slave trade consisted in
“selling the appellants who lost their case at the last court of appeal” to
the slave traders; this is recorded as having regularly happened in the Igbo
judicial system where slavery was a very old customary practice, but also
in some other African regions. Francis Moore, a slave trader dealing his
business in Gambia in the 1730s noted some of these aspects:
Since this Slave-Trade has been us’d, all Punishments are chang’d into
slavery; there being an Advantage on such Condemnations, they strain for
Crimes very hard, in order to get the Benefit of selling the Criminal. Not only
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Murder, Theft and Adultery, are punish’d by selling the Criminal for a Slave,
but every trifling Crime is punish’d in the same manner. ( Moore quoted in
Reader 402)
There are some other significant details suggesting the intellectual

level and the high morality state of, at least a number of pre-colonial African
people, like for instance what Ibn Batuta was describing related to the spirit
of justice in people and also the safe conditions foreigners could find while
travelling in 1352-53:
Acts of injustice are rare among them; of all the peoples, they are the one least
inclined to commit any, and the Sultan (Black king) never pardons anyone
who is found guilty of them. Over the whole of the country, there reigns
perfect security; one can live and travel there without fear of theft or rapine.
They do not confiscate the goods of white men who die in their country;
even though they may be of immense value, they do not touch them. On the
contrary, they find trustees for the legacy among white men and leave it in
their hands until the rightful beneficiaries come to claim it. (Batuta quoted in
Diop 1987: 149/127-150/128)
From the author of Tarikh es Sudan we find out that “the use of notarized
documents was widespread” (150/128) and that “the Sudanese scholars of
the African ‘Middle Ages’ were of the same intellectual quality as their
Arab colleagues; at times, they were even better”. One of them was really
impressed by the Sudanese legal experts he found in Timbuktu admitting
that “they knew more than he in legal matters” (204/181). But apart from
this centre of culture and science made famous by very old accounts as I
have shown, where many Africans from the northern and western parts of
the continent accomplished their studies, Diop mentions some other places
which deserve to be known for their pure African art and civilization:
Alongside Islamized Sudan, in the region of Benin, another, strictly

traditional centre of civilization shone with incomparable brilliance: one can
say, without exaggeration, that the “realistic” art of Ifé and of the Benin, with
its harmonious proportions, its balance, its serenity that makes one think
of certain Greek works of the sixth century, represents African sculptural
“classicism”. The Yoruba had been civilized just as well as the Islamized
Africans…Black Africa developed its own scripts. In the Cameroon there is
a hieroglyphic script, the systematic development of which may be of recent
date, but not so its origin. The syllabic script of the Vaï in Sierra Leone
and the cursive of the Bassa have been studied by Dr. Jeffreys. The Nsibidi
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system is alphabetical. In Sierra Leone, these scripts have been used for the
writing of some modern texts. (208/185)
The intellectual and educational development could be put in close

connection with the economic development, which, to be sure could not
have flourished without an appropriate road network. These two aspects of
human progress, trade and means of transport which can move freely and
safely across an entire continent, are closely dependent on each other. There
are very old maps, as cartography had made progress during the Middle
Ages; they attest to the existence of long used roads, either larger ones for
caravans, which transported for centuries salt from the mines of the Sahara
Desert generally traded for gold and slaves provided in different other areas,
or narrow paths for porters and animals carrying lighter loads.
The fact that ”Africa, in the eyes of the specialists, is depicted as a land
which prior to colonisation was only at the level of a subsistence economy”
pushed many Africans to achieve complex studies of their own history based
mainly on anthropological research, in an attempt to bring as many and
irrefutable proofs that things are a lot different. Diop is one of them, who did
his best to show that “seldom has an opinion been so little founded on fact,
[as] this one arose from a preconceived idea of African societies [which]
had to be specifically primitive” with “exchange relationships governed
by barter” and where “notions of money, credit, stock market, thrift, or
accumulation of wealth by individuals [belonging] to a type of commerce
connected with a higher economic organization could not have been found at
the alleged level of African economy” (152/130). He argues that this barter
type of trade specific for the beginning of humans dealing with goods and
property was to be found only in some areas of the continent such as:
[a]t the periphery of the African kingdoms, [in] some backward tribes, such
as the Lem-Lem in Southwest Ghana, perhaps on the banks of the present-day
Falémé River, [who] had been carrying on barter trade since the Carthaginian
period, [as] Herodotus attests. That situation remained inflexibly unaltered
until the twelfth century, as corroborated by the accounts of Arab travelers,
e. g., Ibn Yakut. (152/130)
There are other sources of information which explain the whole

mechanism of this very old trade system which pushed people to specialize
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in a certain activity like fishing, farming, herding, later even in more specific
skills in order to supply the barter of most important items. This process led
to a diversification of occupations and the development of more complex
societies with different types of commercial activity “much more extensive,
covering all of the kingdoms, carried on by the best organized and most
dynamic elements of society, by those who were already detribalized”
(154/132). The most eloquent proofs that a really modern type of trade
was well functioning long before Europeans put their foot on the continent,
are to be found in some examples meant to show that “the characteristics
of modern economic activity could already be detected in the existence of
money, a well-defined tariff system, and cosmopolitan commerce centers
throughout each country” (154/132). There are documents attesting to the use
of “imprinted gold coins” in Black Africa, a situation which Diop compares
to “that of the Greco-Latin city kingdoms after the invention of money by
the Lydians in the sixth century B. C” (157/135). Mentioning again the old
Arab chronicles he states that “according to the Tarikh el Fettach, Askia
Daud ‘was the first to build financial depositories and even libraries’, [while]
the Tarikh es Sudan records, in describing the poverty resulting from the
Moroccan occupation of Timbuktu, the existence of a ‘stock exchange’ in
that city” (157/135).
The import-export activity has already been mentioned earlier, but
there are some more details which could help enlarge the picture of this
economic activity and also confirm the fact that in the tenth and eleventh
centuries “commerce between East Africa and India and China” was very
active. It thus happened especially because “contrary to common opinion,
the tribal stage was outgrown” and there was a merchant class in conflict
with the Arab immigrants, situation rendered by Burueg Bin Shariya in
his book Of the National Pride of Negroes and Their Disputes with White
Men (cf. Jaspan 1955 in Diop 1987: 158/136-159/137). West Africa was
developing commerce with European countries and with the rest of the
world where they were sending, among many other specific items, “whips
of worldwide reputation made of hippopotamus hides” (cf. Al Bakri quoted
in Diop 159/137). We suppose those manufacturers had never imagined
what purpose those whips were going to accomplish in a remote future –
flogging – one of the most violent acts perpetrated upon the black people
during slavery and colonialism.
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This pre-colonial overview aims at giving some hints of what real and
important, well organized African civilizations looked like along centuries
taking into account that these civilizations flourished and vanished exactly
like anywhere else in this world. The life span was not interrupted on the
African continent, but the living standards alternated in close connection
with the ups and downs represented by the historical cycles specific to the
development of any civilization. Many examples are given in older or newer
chronicles in an attempt to persuade the readers of the high levels of progress
made in different domains. In spite of the exaggerations or erroneous pieces
of information most of the times clarified due to similar sources dealing with
the same issues they are very useful as they recreate a more realistic picture
of old Africa and its ancient inhabitants. John Reader accomplished such
a complex piece of writing entitled Africa, a Biography of the Continent
(1998), based on a rich documentation and diversified amount of data.
Among many other aspects Reader approaches African traditions, customs
and human relationships as far as they could be assessed by advanced
historical, archaeological, anthropological and sociological studies. At the
same time, the author focuses on some well delimited geographical areas,
and then goes deeply with his analysis into those people’s habits, providing
real samples of pre-colonial life in Africa.
We are given a general perspective of the basic traditional African
societies structured according to a certain social order generally applied
throughout Black Africa as we have already seen, in smaller or larger
communities such as kingdoms and even huge empires. We are told about
“the emergence of a hierarchical system [which] could in turn signal the
emergence of lineages to whom the principle of precedence granted
status above the rest of the community” and this is how “the institution of
chieftaincy” was created. Here are some important details regarding an old
but quite wise and fair system meant to keep conflicts under control:
Chiefs had status, but little authority or power over the community in general,
beyond the respect they may have earned in their everyday dealings. Indeed,
as though to counter the frictions likely to arise if authority and power were
vested in certain chiefs and lineages and thus flowed vertically, from the
few at the top to the majority at the bottom, a system emerged whereby
authority and power were spread horizontally throughout the group as a
whole, touching every lineage and family. This was the age-grade system:
a political structure uniquely suited to the social and economic conditions
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of sub-Saharan Africa. The age-grade system divided all males into groups,
each of which included all individuals within a particular range of ages…
Each group was allocated a standard set of social and political duties. As
individuals advanced in years they changed duties until those surviving had
progressed through the complete set. Thus the system sustained no permanent
or hereditary rulers or office-holders. (Reader 258-9)
This system was also making an appropriate selection among the age-
set group according to “the individuals’ qualities of leadership and astute
judgement”. Thus, there were cases of advancement as a consequence of
really useful support for the community, which could propel an individual to
the status of wise man whose advice was “universally respected”:
With its respect for the wisdom and judgements of the oldest members in
a group, the age-group system established gerontocracy as the dominant
form of political organization in sub-Saharan Africa. Since it was mutually
recognizable among different groups, regardless of their origin or present
status, the age-group system deposed the vertical authority of family lines,
transcended the divisive nature of ethnic bounderies, and even provided
a basis for compatible interaction between groups speaking different
languages. Gerontocracy was in fact a unifying characteristic of sub-Saharan
Africa, holding in its thrall the numerous distinct groupings that had emerged
among people living in generally hostile and fickle environments. Respect
for the elders and their way of doing things was the essence of the principle.
(259-260)
This process of appointment on the basis of individual merit and

communal consent helped a natural imposition of authority upon “aggressive
and avaricious behaviour”, while the reduced number of weapons and
warriors diminished the risks of conflict with neighbouring communities
in certain parts of Africa. Reader quotes historian Leonard Thompson who
asserts that “there are no traditions of devastating warfare among the mixed
farming people in Southern Africa before the nineteenth century” (Thompson
quoted in Reader 260). Nevertheless, Reader claims that “this unfamiliar
aversion for death-dealing conflict does not imply that the indigenous people
of sub-Saharan Africa were universally peaceful, [as] raiding was evident
across the continent and throughout the first millennium, raiding for cattle,
for goods, and possibly for women” (260). At the same time he explains that
the vertical stratification of sub-Saharan societies, where the gerontocratic
authority had prevented for quite a long period of time conflicts and inequities
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triggered by individual ambition, led to “the centralization of authority and

the exercise of coercive power by a ruling elite”. The most powerful became
the traders who had special opportunities to become wealthier than the other
inhabitants of a community by selling not only the goods but also the porters
who had carried them for long distances to various markets (273).
There were communities which preserved an egalitarian level of
social development in spite of a greater importance given to social positions
and the prestige manifested by the members of a community towards their
kin who became richer and thus, acceded not only to higher positions, but
even to certain secret societies. Reader exemplifies this situation with the
Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria whose “subtleties and strengths are
expressed beautifully in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1958)”
(274-5).
III. 3. Pre-colonial Congo and its first encounters with Europeans

Contemporary Congo, this huge and extremely rich country covering
most of central Africa has an unbelievably long history with numerous ups
and downs, historical turmoil and too much violence in its present life,
perpetrated by Congolese people on their kin almost daily. Different theories
have been issued concerning the roots of this violence as I have already
argued in the first chapter. The above overview of pre-colonial Africa was
meant to confirm that African history and civilization are very much similar
to European history and human behaviour. Nevertheless, specificities exist
everywhere and they give the cultural heritage to be taken into account in
different circumstances of intercultural encounters:
The Kuba of Zaire [DRC] dazzled the first foreigners and all the ethnographers
who later entered…the royal court…Clearly this culture has proven
fascinating…But even in comparison with others there was something
quite distinctive and extraordinary in this civilization…The pomp of public
receptions and the ubiquitous art first arrested the attention of visitors, who
next marveled at the poise and delicate manners of the people, the intricacy of
the political system, and finally, the sophistication of Kuba legal procedures.
It is true that the complexity of its political organization matched that of
any in Africa, while its judicial organization was unique in the whole of
the continent (Jan Vansina, The Children of Woot: A History of the Kuba
Peoples, 3-4).
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I will try to outline briefly the main historical events and lifestyle of
these complex ethnic Congolese people. “Successive migrations resulted in
the blending of various groups, as the newcomers freely mixed with the
groups that preceded them as well as with the indigenous populations. This
created a fusion of languages, lifestyles, and religious beliefs”. The Bantu
population coming from the north of the continent influenced the whole of
Africa with their farming skills much improved by their supposed innovations
in the metallurgical technology. Their advanced agricultural techniques
pushed them towards appropriate environments, mainly in the vicinity of
large rivers like the Niger or the Congo where the soil and the climate were
suitable for extensive crops, thus “allowing for higher density populations in
some areas, notably the savannas, and triggered the expansion of trade based
on food surpluses”. The iron tools and artifacts discovered in the 1970s and
1980s in the Katanga region and in the Lower Congo area confirm this
theory and locate this process at the beginning of the first millennium AD,
also supporting the idea that a progress in agriculture and hunting, promoted
trade, communication, general development of new social communities
“organized around ethnicity or common language rather than village or
kinship” (Gondola 24-6).
It is claimed that “by around 1400 AD, pastoralists had entered
the savanna regions to the east and southeast of the forest [and] through
interaction between pastoralists and agriculturalists, institutionalized states
were formed” (cf. ANON 2002a in Degeorges & Reilly 2008:202/110).
Among these central African communities there were some which developed
at different moments in history, either successively or in parallel on a very
large area covered today by the Congo state as well as by some of Congo’s
neighbours. Some historians left information about the Bakongo Kingdom,
where “in the mid thirteenth or fourteenth century Kongo kings organized
mostly matrilineal agricultural settlements surrounding the mouth of the
Congo River, into provinces, collected taxes, and established an official
currency of shells”. Almost two centuries later “south of the Bakongo
people” the centralized Ndongo Kingdom “[was controlling] the trade in
salt and iron”, while Kongolo Mukulu was founding “the first great Bantu
Kingdom, the Baluba [Luba] Empire, in the fifteenth century, [which] lasted
two hundred years and at its apogee was larger than Belgium, Holland
and Luxembourg combined”. It is also recorded that “later in the sixteenth
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century, the Lunda formed a kingdom in the grasslands of the upper Kasai
River, which began to eclipse the Baluba…It became an arch enemy of the
Baluba Kingdom” (cf. Hempstone 1962 in Degeorges & Reilly 202/110).
The first Bantu community, the Bakongo Kingdom, on its original
name Kongo dya Ntotila or Wene wa Kongois was located on the actual
surface of northern Angola, Cabinda, the Republic of the Congo, and the
western part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The kingdom was
large enough to be considered an empire; it had six provinces, all of them
ruled by Mani Kongo, the general denomination of a king ruling over
the Bakongo people as the indigenous people of Kongo were called, and
having his residence in Mbanza Kongo, the capital of the kingdom (Kudee
2013). There are very old oral accounts about its rich history, but written
recorded data came from the first Europeans, Portuguese “missionaries,
mainly Jesuits and Capuchins, traders and officials”, who first set foot on the
African coast of this kingdom in the late fifteenth century and “left behind
a vivid description of the development of the kingdom which permitted a
detailed reconstruction of the daily lives of its inhabitants at a time when
their civilization was at its peak” (Balandier 1965).
Diogo Cão and his crew sailed down to the Kongo region where they
discovered ”an immense river mouth, guarded by two long spits of sand
reaching far out from the mainland like the mandibles of a giant insect”;
it was the Congo River. In spite of having seen some curious natives, the
Portuguese sailors “turned [their] small caravel towards the river mouth and
cautiously nosed [their] way up Africa’s mightiest rivers….After battling a
few kilometers upriver from the mouth, he put ashore on the left or southern
bank of the river, and his crew’s landing party became the first Europeans
ever to set foot on Congolese soil”. They were carrying a big stone column
they called padrão, which they implanted in the newly discovered land, the
way the Portuguese explorers used to do, leaving the following words as an
indisputable proof of their deed and mostly to confirm Portugal’s consequent
rights upon that land, indigenous people never suspected : “In the year 6681
of the world and in that of 1482 since the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
most serene, the most excellent and potent prince, King John II of Portugal
did order this land to be discovered and this pillar of stone to be erected by
Diogo Cão, an esquire in his household” (Butcher 2008: 31-2). They had
discovered one of the greatest empires of Africa and soon the two empires
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established diplomatic relations on an equal and fair basis, as is recorded by

several sources:
In 1484 AD, the Bakongo monarch, Nzinga Ntinu, sent ambassadors to

Lisbon to request technical assistance in masonry, carpentry and religion.
The king converted to Catholicism in 1484 AD and his son and successor
Don Afonso and eventually the king’s grandson son Don Alvaro were made
bishops. Ambassadors were sent to both Spain and the Vatican and a Papal
Nuncio was sent to reside in Mbanza (Degeorges & Reilly 203/111).
Consequently, it is not surprising that king Afonso I (1506-1543)

“opened up Kongo to the activities of Portuguese merchants and missionaries
[establishing] Catholicism as the state religion under the direction of his son
Henrique, who had studied theology in Rome and had been consecrated as a
bishop by the pope”. Other students were sent to Portugal and the missionary
schools functioning not only in Mbanza Kongo but also in other cities “were
teaching basic literacy, Christian doctrine and, Latin” (Gondola 31). But
behind these good aspects of the Kongo-Portugal complex relationships
mainly nurtured by a very active trade of goods, the continually increasing
demands of slaves pushed Afonso I to write dozens of letters addressed to
the king of Portugal and also to the Pope of Vatican. His literate “secretaries
recorded his decisions, including matters of internal politics and declarations
of war”. A lot of historical information is revealed by his letters, which
represent a very clear “evidence of Kongo’s unique position as the only
precolonial sub-Saharan African state to have had political relations with
Europe” (Gondola 26), but also very clear references to the slave trade,
which had started even before the Portuguese had established their first
contact with the Kongo kingdom (Axelson 1970).
A lot of slaves were used as porters on the trans-Saharan routes serving
as the oldest means of transport for people and all kinds of goods, some being
very heavy and causing many such porters to succumb under overwhelming
loads. Others were usually deported, at first to Europe as domestic workers,
as labourers on the Mediterranean sugar plantations or for sale in the Islamic
Empire. All this type of trade was controlled by Muslim merchants for
centuries when the Portuguese alerted by rumours of the exceptionally rich
west African coast, made different attempts to extend their influence in Africa
(Mali had become famous when its king Mansa Musa made his pilgrimage
to Mecca in 1325, with 500 slaves and 100 camels – each carrying gold).
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The Portuguese first arrived on the western African coast in the 1430s. Their
economic interests became bigger and bigger as they had started to supply
work force not only for the island of São Tomé, off the coast of Gabon, but
also to the large plantations of Brazil and other places of the New World.
King Afonso was the main supplier of slaves as slave trade was an old local
practice, although the conditions were much different. For centuries the
slave trade had been practiced all over the world according to some rules,
some of them even harsher than the ones applied in African communities
as I have already mentioned. In Kongo for instance, the slaves had almost
the same treatment with the serfs without being subjected to violence or
humiliation. “It is important to emphasize the fact that slavery in the Congo
was an organized institution within society and not an uncivilized practice…
The Portuguese and especially those on São Tomé, had a completely different
view of the slave... The slaves were continually ill-treated, handled as cattle
or worse” as they were not even fed and given water when they needed, but
forced to supply for themselves. Another very sensitive aspect of the slaves’
treatment, that of the dead ones, also led to increased tensions between the
two kingdoms, especially because it became more and more obvious that
Kongo’s interests were given no consideration.
In Africa slaves were acquired in different manners for both internal
and external demand. “These were warfare, market supply, raiding and
kidnapping, tribute and pawning” (Perbi 2001). In spite of all measures taken
by the ruling king of the time, the kidnapping practice of the local inhabitants
was applied instead of buying the slaves for trade and transport (Axelson 74-
5). An interesting testimony about this long used practice was left by one of
its victims, who had been kidnapped when he was a child together with his
sister, but later had the chance to get free from slavery and to write one of
the most convincing and moving accounts about a slave’s misfortunes and
suffering. Thus, Olaudah Equiano, the son of an Igbo farmer living in the
south-east Nigeria at the beginning of the eighteenth century described the
long ordeal he was submitted to by African traders from a different tribe
who did not even speak his language. The fact that within some days he was
separated from his sister added to this child’s frightening experience and to
the rough treatment he had to endure from the traders and causes the modern
reader to feel what millions and millions of human beings had to live for
centuries as their everyday life (cf. Equiano 1789).
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There are different other scholars and written materials arguing that no
rules or human rights were observed in the new circumstances:
Before the Portuguese arrived, the buying and selling of slaves was
customary in Kongo. Slaves were mostly a product of war, as evidenced by
the fact that the same Kilongo word meant both ‘slave’ and ‘war captive’.
Slaves were captured in war or bought. They served their masters as status
symbols and also as additional kin-group members, domestic servants,
courtiers, and advisers to powerful Kongo aristocrats. But the intervention of
the Portuguese slave traders affected the economic and social role of slaves
profoundly. Slaves became the staple of an international commerce that first
linked Kongo to São Tomé and Europe, and then to the New World, once
the Portuguese had moved their sugar plantations from São Tomé to Brazil.
(Gondola 2002: 32)
The Kongo kingdom became more and more weakened because of

the great number of slaves shipped to remote places and this was one of the
main issues of Afonso’s letters. He tried in vain to establish a reconsideration
of the problem from the part of the Portuguese monarch or a diplomatic
intervention of the Pope. Nothing changed as the European rules were
totally different and unknown to Africans, who were taking advantage of the
business themselves:
A slave-trade company was established in Lagos (Portugal) and on 8 August

1444, Captain Lanzarote arrived with a cargo of more than two hundred-
and-thirty slaves. This date can be regarded as the beginning of the European
slave-trade in Africa. Prince Henry saw his plans realized, and gradually
endeavoured to procure Papal recognition to Portugal’s right to the newly
discovered areas. According to Pacheco Pereira, Henry thought that these
regions must become the common property of all Christian countries,
Respublica Christiana, and doubted that they could belong exclusively to
Portugal. There was no other international authority at this time than the
Pope, and his word had to be taken as law. In the Bull Rex regum 1436,
Eugene IV answered Henry’s request and urged all Christian rulers to support
the Portuguese in their struggle against the Moors (muslims). He added, that
“all the lands newly conquered would belong to the King of Portugal”. After
the promising “discoveries” during the middle of the century, Portugal’s hold
on the West Coast strengthened, due to Nicholas V’s bull, Dum diversas,
1452, which gave the king the right to make war against the heathens and
reduce them to serfdom, if they did not voluntarily convert to Christianity;
and the Bull Romanus pontifex, which gave the king of Portugal the right
to the sea-route to India: the legal right to land and sea, islands and ports.
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Thereby, Portugal had acquired the monopoly of the lucrative sea-route to

India. The “heathen” Africans should be under the Christian and civilizing
Portuguese influence ( Axelson 1970: 38-39).
In spite of this European policy we find out from old chronicles, letters
and different other documents that “a certain degree of mutual cordiality
between Lisbon and Mbanza Kongo” lasted for quite a long period of time,
when the African monarchs and ambassadors were the ones who asked for
more “missionaries to the Congo to spread the teachings of Christ”. It was
the moment when “baptism was instituted as a Christian habit of replacing
the Congolese name with a new name and a new identity, both Christian
and Portuguese” (45). The special honour represented by the “pomp and
splendor [which] enveloped baptism” was much unbalanced by the banning
of polygamy and the replacement of idol houses with churches, crucifixes
and the cross. These were reasons for several popular revolts, some of
war proportions, but the Portuguese interests and strategies were stronger,
the Congolese monarchs being confronted in many cases with difficult
diplomatic crises, internal conflicts and military weakness, which forced
them to accept not only Christianization but also “Portugalization” (50).
The European education system had been introduced in the kingdom
in “1509 considered the starting point [in this respect, when] about a dozen
missionaries arrived, together with eight stonemasons to build a large
boarding-school to cater for four hundred pupils”. In a few years there were
“over a thousand pupils in schools, nearly all of whom belong[ing] to the
royal clan or ‘court’ [and hoping] that they might receive training in a useful
skill” (58). Little by little the most important sectors of the socio-political
life of the Kongo were affected especially after The Regimento 1512, then
by a later, similar document issued by the Portuguese court, imposing
“instructions concerning the Portuguese nobility, [but which were] ‘going to
be copied in Africa’ [so that] the Court was to function in the same way as in
Portugal, but with Congolese ‘noblemen’” (61-2).
It is argued and recorded that “the Portuguese missionaries sent to
Kongo to gain souls for Christ, soon realized that transforming their own
flocks of followers into slaves allowed them to reap huge profits”. Thus, they
found the best solution to provide the work force for farming and herding in
order to have a comfortable life, but “this work was accomplished through
the use of an inhumane form of slavery previously unknown to the region”
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(Gondola 32). The general view upon this situation is “that the hunting down
of men—justified in the name of economic necessity, sanctified, practiced
one way or another by all ‘foreigners’ and their native agents, was one
factor in the destruction of the old Kongo. It perverted social relations…
it wounded the population of the Kongo in its very substance” (Balandier
1969: 82). All these aspects, slavery, interference in the social-political
order of Kongo kingdom affecting the different monarchs’ authority as well
as their diplomatic relationships with other nations, but mainly “Christianity
itself, which had been promoted to the status of a royal cult [and] became
a powerful force of disunity as different Portuguese religious factions,
Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, Carmelites, Augustinians, and Capuchins,
vied for influence within the court…caused rifts within Kongo society”
(Gondola 33). There were ups and downs in the history of the kingdom after
the death of king Afonso I (1545). Generally the king was elected in the
same manner I have already mentioned in the case of other African empires,
but there were situations in the Kongo kingdom when the kings tried to
choose their successor, not always successfully, the succession of power
being one of the central problems of Kongo history and one more reason for
the country to be troubled by civil wars and revolts.
There were also attacks from outside the kingdom when the Portuguese
provided military assistance. This last aspect was differently mentioned in
the written sources; Afonso I was complaining in a letter of 1514 about the
low fighting capacities of the Portuguese mercenaries, most of them Kongo-
mestiços offspring who provided the largest number of warriors in those
armies, while some dozens of years later an anonymous author wrote about
king Alvaro II (1587-1614) that “[he] greatly esteem[ed] the Portuguese in
[that] city for they [taught] him to live civilly and [aided] him against his
enemies. They [were] so important to him that it [was] understood that he
would already have been destroyed if his enemies had not feared [those]
Portuguese”(34). It is obvious that the incessant slave trade had importantly
diminished the king’s military strength in spite of the weapons the Portuguese
brought to Kongo, which the African leaders badly wanted to get, sometimes
in exchange for slaves; that caused more and more complications in their
relationships with their kin and also with the Portuguese, who tried to keep
this type of trade under control out of a double fear: first the indigenous
people did not know how to handle those fire arms and they could produce
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accidents dangerous for the white people, but mainly they could learn and
use them on purpose against the very providers who had realized they still
had a lot to plunder from Africa.
The seeds of colonial segregation had already been implanted
according to a description of the capital São Salvador and depicting the way
it looked at the end of the sixteenth century, when “there [were] more than
one hundred Portuguese merchants and more than a thousand others born
in Portugal; their houses [were] in an area of the city separated from the
blacks” (Cuvelier & Jadin 1954: 137).
So, as early as the end of the sixteenth century, Mbanza Kongo had the look
of a colonial city, with two cities co-existing: the European city, built to
last, commercial, with six or seven churches, an Episcopalian see, students
and the indigenous city, a sort of fragile ‘village-city’ which had grown like
a giant village much in the same way the African suburbs around modern
African towns. (Kudee 2013)
The slaves and goods trade issues caused great tensions in the region
mainly when at different moments in time greedier and more violent
Portuguese governors of certain provinces devastated the villages around
using mercenary African groups. After the Portuguese established the
colony of Luanda new trading routes were developed; “as early as 1627, the
settlement became the center of the Portuguese colonial administration and
base from which missionary expansion could take place” (Barry Munslow
in Encyclopedia of African History 2004: 852), thus inflicting important
economic loss to the already destabilized kingdom of Kongo. These types
of conflicts were the main reasons for some Kongo-Portugal wars waged
during the seventeenth century, in which the Dutch also participated getting
involved to support the Kongo people against the Portuguese, being guided,
to be sure, by the same economic interests in slaves and other goods trade
and material advantages (Axelson 1970; Gondola 2002; Kudee 2013). The
Dutch succeeded in taking over Luanda from the Portuguese in 1661 AD,
but did not protect Kongo enough from being defeated in 1665 in one of the
most devastating Kongo-Portugal wars. Consequently, “weakened by the
war and the slave trade, the Bakongo Kingdom saw a rapid decline, which
by 1885 AD resulted in it being divided by the French, Belgians and the
Portuguese” (Hempstone 1962 in Degeorges & Reilly 204/112).
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Kongo left its major cultural influences upon some modern countries
as I have mentioned at the beginning of this survey, to the same extent Lunda
and Luba did:
[They] affected cultural developments across a region that today includes

parts of a number of central African nations. This kingdom spread into the
southern grasslands, over a vast area stretching from the Kwango River to
the Zambezi River, into parts of contemporary DRC, Angola, and Zambia.
This pattern clearly demonstrates the artificial nature of colonial boundaries.
In many cases, colonial authorities disregarding precolonial histories divided
communities with common cultural and linguistic roots”. (Gondola 35-6)
Recent anthropological studies provided enough arguments to support

the theory according to which these two central African communities
developed out of the same Songye group “that invaded the area and founded
[first] the Luba Empire during the sixteenth century, [then] moved further
west and established a second state, the Lunda Empire”. It is argued that the
two empires interconnected through trade and marriage affairs, “carried their
political organization further east and south. By the middle of the eighteenth
century, the Luba and Lunda kingdoms [which] held sway over the entire
area west of the upper Lualaba and north of the Katanga lakes…had created
a vast culture area in southeastern Congo” (36).
It seems that the special success in the development of Luba Empire
was greatly due to a form of government “based on the twin principles of
sacred kinship and rule by council”, which proved to be so efficient that
the Lunda Kingdom adopted it, as well as the other provinces in the region
representing contemporary northern Angola, northwestern Zambia and
southern DRC. According to the Mbudye tradition all the rulers of the Luba
Empire were descendents of Kalala Ilunga, a mystical hunter whose heirs
were said to become deities after death. This Mbudye tradition represents
a special group of people who were responsible with keeping an account
of all oral histories about kings, their villages and the customs of the land,
similar accounts having been kept for other kingdoms around. It was “a
secret society [which] seems to have played an important role in propagating
Luba ideology and mythology throughout the region”. It is recorded that the
Luba kings having a very good economic situation were also good diplomats
who “pursued a politic of conquest setting up Luba dynasties” (Pierre Petit
in Encyclopedia of African History 2004: “Luba”, 855). In the interior of this
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kingdom covering very large territories the kings were ruling in a system
adjusted to a peculiar situation and to their traditions:
[They applied] a system of loose governance, control[ling] the remote areas

through a political ideology of rule by proxies arranged in hierarchical
order…All of Luba society was ordered hierarchically. Patrilineal relations
among individuals and households dominated at the village level. Even
small-scale villages were made up of several patrilineages, which included
slaves and clients. (Gondola 37)
The Luba kings were considered endowed with a mystical aura, ruling
as divine monarchs who appointed chiefs and village heads in spite of an
old custom which allowed hereditary chiefs. Nevertheless, in Luba like in
almost all other African kingdoms the monarch was prevented from being
a tyrant for “institutional checks guaranteed that he exercised his power
for the well-being of the community. If he did not, his half brothers could
always rise against him with the backing of their patrilineages and with the
support of the court” (38).
The native inhabitants of Lunda, “the Ruund [people], inhabit
northwestern Katanga Province of DRC and adjoining areas in Kasai
Province and Angola. At least, such is the modern ethnic group with its
specific language (uRuund), political system, ethnic consciousness, and
bilateral kinship system relatively rare in Africa”. They represent a half to
one million people at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In a broader
sense “peoples from northeastern Zambia to southwestern Congo, including
a broad swath of Congo, northwestern Zambia, and eastern Angola, are
identified by the generic name of ‘Lunda’” (Jeff Hoover in Encyclopedia of
African History 2004: ”Lunda”, 859-60).
“The far-flung Lunda political tradition developed in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. It was perhaps the largest precolonial state in
Central Africa, although in disorder by the time Leopold II sent agents to
claim the area for his Congo Independent State”. Here again history relies on
oral tradition with its “Lunda Love Story” according to which this huge state
started as “a simple village community along the Nkalany [valley where]
Nkond, the presiding elder, left his emblems to his daughter Ruwej rather
than to disrespectful sons”. The consequent development of the community
led to a political model including “a sovereign chosen from among a
hereditary group, but among the bilateral aRuund, any descendant by male
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or female line is eligible; and with chiefly polygamy this ensures a wide
field of candidates…The royal court was intricately organized, with spatial
residence corresponding to political functions and state geography” (860).
There were some other specific aspects in the Lunda society which have left
important influences upon the modern generations:
The social system of the Ruund, at the heartland of the Lunda Empire is
interrelated with political development. The Ruund lie along the northern
edge of the ‘matrilineal belt’ across Africa in the savanna lands south of the
forests among agricultural peoples not heavily involved in cattle-raising…
Ethnic groups to the north and east tend to be strongly patrilineal; groups to
the south are matrilineal…As with other societies having bilateral kinship,
there is no defined lineage or clan able to practice social solidarity…
The extended family is incapable of resolving routine social conflicts to
the degree normal in most Central African societies, and recourse to state
institutions becomes more attractive. (861)
A good reason for the greater success and expansion of the Lunda
kingdom is considered to be the mechanism according to which “a successor
inherited not only the political office but the personal status of the deceased,
including his name, his wives, and his children and other dependents…
It allowed the Lunda rulers to assimilate foreign chiefs into their own political
system”. It is also known that “the capital of the kingdom (musumba) was not
only a center of government but also a military hub, ready to move soldiers
swiftly and in an orderly way against an enemy”. Historians also claim
that the kingdom was actively involved in slave-trading which “appears
to have been a by-product of this militaristic style of government” (Gondola
2002: 39).
The same disastrous effects the slave trade had had upon the Kongo
kingdom many years before, deeply affected both Luba and Lunda mainly
at the beginning of the nineteenth century when their “political and military
effort was halted by the arrival of slave and ivory traders whose superior
arms brutally ended their expansion” (Pierre Petit in Encyclopedia of African
History 2004: “Luba”, 855-6). “By the time the first Belgian-led expedition
reached Luba land in 1891, the empire had lost most of its territories and
regional clients to slave merchants [who] intruded into the hearts of the
empire”. I have already mentioned the long lasting commerce the Arabs
had carried on with slaves and later with ivory, to which Ovimbundu
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traders joined from Angola as well as many other international traders

(Gondola 39).
The painful treatment millions of people had to endure for such a long
time left traces on generations of Africans who manifested their resentments
in many different ways. Among the numerous written accounts dealing with
this problem issued in the academic environment, Achille Mbembe’s On
the Postcolony is one of those which strike the readers with the plain truth
revealed about Africa’s fate. Here is an instance of the author’s perception
related to the most disturbing historical periods in the life of this continent’s
peoples having close connection with any other place in the world where
power shows its real face:
The slave trade had ramifications that remain unknown to us; to a large
extent, the trade was the event through which Africa was born to modernity.
Colonialism also, in both its forms and its substance, posited the issue
of contingent human violence. Indeed, the slave trade and colonialism
echoed one another with the lingering doubt of the very possibility of self-
government, and with the risk, which has never disappeared, of the continent
and Africans being again consigned for a long time to a degrading condition…
It was through the slave trade and colonialism that Africans came face to face
with the opaque and murky domain of power, a domain inhabited by obscure
drives and that everywhere and always makes animality and bestiality its
essential components, plunging human beings into a never-ending process of
brutalization” ( Achille Mbembe 2001: 13-14).
Power and violence travel together as has been proved too often. It
could be argued that violence is part of human condition characterizing each
and every age of human history; it is justified or unjustified, manifested
during warfare, punishments, interpersonal relationships, or in specific
sacrificial rituals. As we have just seen “Africa was the victim of violence
perpetrated by the European powers during the centuries of the Atlantic
slave trade” and as I am going to show further during “the period of colonial
annexation, which violence was resisted violently in many cases by Africans
[although] within the traditional societies of Africa there was relatively little
violence when compared to societies in other parts of the world. Where
public sanctions and social control were concerned, Africans seem to have
preferred non-violent solutions” (Shorter 347).
Could this have been the reason why the politico-social balance of
Africa was broken at the contact with an external influence as many scholars
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argue? Diop and many others argue that traditional African communities
structured upon a certain social order had become detribalized to a large extent
a long time ago, but have been pushed back to the status of ‘tribalism’ when
“the colonizers claimed that they were merely confirming the significance
of existing traditions” without taking into account that everywhere in the
world and in Africa for sure, traditions persist as long as they prove to be
functional:
The paradox is painfully evident: by creating an image of Africa steeped

in unchanging tradition, the colonizers condemned the continent to live
in a reconstructed moment of its past, complete with natives in traditional
dress, wild animals, and pristine landscapes. The paradox could not stand
unresolved forever, but it hindered development for decades (Reader 608-9).
III. 4. The Africans in the European imaginary

The process of imagining things about Africa started quite long ago
when Europeans’ imagination was fed by information provided by different
scholars who used to share the ‘scientific’ results of their studies accomplished
far from the observed continent with an audience who had no chance to
check upon their statements. In many circumstances the lack of information
was supplied with the oddest possible creations of the mind; even Herodotus,
the first who provided the most complete written information about Africa
in the fifth century BC, was also among the first who suggested that the
almost unknown continent was a huge piece of land populated with fantastic
creatures, half human-half animals, some having dog heads or goat feet (cf.
Corlan-Ioan 13). More information about Africa came much later from “The
elder Pliny (first century AD) [who] used imagined marvels to describe the
population of [Africa’s] interior” or from “Ptolemy (second century AD)
[who] was the first to relay some factual information”. It is argued that “in
all these cases, the black African was a projecting screen for domestic ideals
or phobias” (Riesz in Leersen & Beller: “Africa” 79). Similar fantastic
information about an almost supernatural land was furnished in the middle
of the fourteenth century, then a hundred of years later by some religious
scholars:
Ranulf Higden, a Benedictine monk who mapped the world at about 1350
claimed that Africa contained one-eyed people who used their feet to cover
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their heads. A geographer in the next century announced that the continent
held people with one leg, three faces, and the heads of lions. In 1459, an
Italian monk, Fra Mauro, declared Africa the home of the roc, a bird so large
that it could carry an elephant through the air (Hochschild 14).
From Middle Ages sources readers find out that the black skin of
the Moors symbolized negative attitudes and bad character, while new
strange information about fearsome creatures living in a horrible world kept
nourishing the mediaeval imagination. Africa seemed to be “a region of
uttermost dread”:
where the heavens fling down liquid sheets of flame and the waters boil…
where serpent rocks and ogre islands lie in wait for the mariner, where the
giant hand of Satan reaches up from the fathomless depths to seize him,
where he will turn black in face and body as a mark of God’s vengeance
for the insolence of his prying into this forbidden mystery. (Peter Forbath in
Hochschild 14)
Europeans have written many books about Africa; at the beginning

the authors had no direct contact with the described environments or people;
there were different scholars taking their information from simple travellers
to such remote places. Then there were traders, explorers and missionaries
who left letters, diaries, adventure books meant to share from their
experience and personal judgement not only with a curious public who did
not have the opportunity, the means, or the wish to travel, but also with other
travellers who might use the precious information for safer journeys or more
successful expeditions. There are many such examples of recommendations
for certain indigenous people who can be trusted as porters or safer routes
to be followed, that explorers of those times really valued and took into
account in their endeavours to make new discoveries, as they often mention
it in their travel writings. Each piece of writing represents an illustrative
piece of the huge puzzle attempting to recreate a more or less accurate image
of the Africans, an image swinging between the praised good savage to be
imitated in his natural way of living and the frightening barbarian to be
avoided and despised. The more barbarous he was, the greater the need to
go and civilize him; a reason good enough to nourish the general perception
with more and more proofs that a whole black population was ‘waiting’ for
the good Christian guidance and a model of morality and civility.
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As soon as the transatlantic slave trade started deploying hundreds,

then thousands and finally millions of Africans to all corners of the world, the
black people became a common presence not only on the large plantations
of the New World, but also in port cities, or as servants at different European
courts and even in rich noble houses. “Renaissance authors saw in Africans
an extended category of Maghrebinians represented in Orientalist terms of
refined sensuality” (Riesz in Leersen & Beller: “Africa” 79).
The exotic beauty of the Negro physiognomy impressed famous
artists like Dürer and Rubens, who left some beautiful paintings with black
characters as central figures. In the mid-sixteenth century Leo Africanus
wrote Descriptio Africae, an ambivalent account of black Africans whose
hospitality and carefree lifestyle are praised, the mythical education centre
of Timbuktu is paid homage to, while “the lack of rational, moral or legal
restraint on a lifestyle dominated (animal-like) by physical urges” is equally
denounced. “This ambivalent attitude was to determine perceptions of Black
Africans for the next two centuries” and all negative qualities attributed to
Africans were emphasized in order to justify and even legalize “the inhuman
but lucrative enterprise” of shipping millions of Africans to different places
of the world to the unique purpose of providing work force for free (e.g.1685
Code noir). These people “were degraded to the status of beasts of burden
and to the disenfranchised property of their masters” during the shameful
process known as the transatlantic slave trade, which lasted more than two
hundred years (Riesz in Leersen & Beller: “Africa” 79).
Among the famous travellers to Africa there was Antoine Malfant;
he hoped to find gold, like the Portuguese, as we have already seen, and
like many other Europeans generally lured by well known stories about rich
African kings, who used to display large amounts of the precious metal on
their journeys throughout Africa. That hope guided him towards Sudan in
1440, but the lack of success in his search for gold pushed him farther to
Timbuktu. He was very impressed by the unexpected discovery of such a nest
of culture and education as his notes reveal; later he added details brought
by the Arab traders to the already created image of a fascinating city and
wrote stories which were the first to make that old civilized society known
to Europeans. Some years later Benedetto Dei, a very thorough traveller
who left a detailed account of his 1469 voyage to Africa, did not find so
many reasons to praise the same Timbuktu, in spite of its being a very active
trading centre (cf. Corlan-Ioan 69-70).
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The most influential information left by a traveller to the black continent

was to be found in Leo Africanus’ Descriptio Africae (1556) as mentioned
above. Some more books about Africa were issued after the European
contact was established with the ‘dark continent’ through general but mainly
slave trade, but “a European classic was the Naukeurige beschrijvinge
der Afrikaensche gewesten (Amsterdam 1668) by the Dutch author Olfert
Dapper, which offers remarkably precise and differentiated information,
and which was translated into many languages” (Riesz in Leersen & Beller:
“Africa” 79). Dapper was among those scholars who had not visited Africa
himself but relied on complex information supplied by Dutch sailors and
traders as well as on different other sources like Pigafetta’s accounts. One
of his most interesting observations was related to an ambivalent behaviour
of the Soyo people who, in spite of having adopted Christianity, were still
relying on their old religious practices:
‘They usually have two arrows to their bow: namely the Roman religion and
their idolatry, or so-called fetishes…To all outward appearances, the Soyo
people are Christians, but behind the back of the European missionaries they
practice their old rites’. Dapper’s description of this duplicity tells us two
things, first of all that he himself expected uniformity in religious practices,
and secondly that his informants were sufficiently observant to note the
Soyo people’s adherence to two religious systems which were incompatible
in the eyes of the missionaries, but not in theirs (Dapper quoted in Axelson
1970: 125).
The Enlightenment brought a radical change in the European views

upon “the lack of rational, moral or legal restraint on a lifestyle dominated
(animal-like) by physical urges” of the savage Africans as Leo Africanus
had argued two hundred years before. The information provided by authors
like Jean-Baptiste Labat (Nouvelle relation de l’Afrique occidentale) and
the French naturalist Michel Adanson (Histoire naturelle du Sénégal, 1759)
“offer the first hints of a ‘Noble Savage’ image as applied to Africans: a life
in harmony with nature, of simple manners, easy contentment, a placid and
cheerful disposition” (Riesz in Leersen & Beller: “Africa” 80).
Bernardo da Gallo, a missionary who worked for nine years in Kongo
wrote a report in 1710 in which he presented some interesting observations
and opinions concerning the indigenous people: “Congolese are no fools,
they are intelligent people. One merely has to become familiar with their
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language, customs, and traditions to establish contact with them” (Axelson

1970: 139). More scholars and missionaries portrayed the West African
societies in favourable colours like for instance the Scottish philosophers
John Millar and Lord Henry Kames. Although there were numerous other
reports and letters published in missionary journals, very often revealing
positive pieces of information, different from those previously brought by
travellers and traders, they had a weak impact upon the audience as travel
writing was much more to the public taste. In 1799 when Mungo Park
explored the Niger region and published his travel accounts people found
out more about atrocious acts upon the African natives on the part of the
slave traders, but also about “a population having well-established political
structures [which] contradicted the traditional view of [that] population
as uncivilized”. More and more similar writings became available in the
late eighteenth century when “a more balanced and informed depiction of
Africa” stimulated the “abolition campaigners such as Anthony Benezet”
(Abbatista 7).
Other travel writings like those of “René Caillié, Livingstone, Savorgnan
de Brazza and Heinrich Barth offer a detailed account of encounters with
indigenous populations [which] should not be conflated with the ethnocentric
supremacism of latter-day conquistadors like Henry Morton Stanley, who
represent Africans purely as savages fit only for colonial subjection” (Riesz
in Leersen & Beller: “Africa” 80). More and more humane manifestations of
empathy came from the protestant missionaries who were rejecting the cruel
slave trade but also any heathen practice considering them the source of all
evil and a hindrance on the progress track claiming that the only way out of
the Africans’ desperate situation was that of Christianity in any of its rites
together with an appropriate adoption of the western values considered, as
we have repeatedly heard, the best among all known in the recorded history.
That image of the cruelly treated ‘Noble Savage’ gave birth to many literary
creations with a great impact upon the antislavery movement:
Montesquieu was the first to formulate critical queries concerning the slave
trade, in L’esprit des lois. An anti-slavery movement developed in Britain in
the later eighteenth century, which exhibits some characteristics of a modern
large-scale consciousness-raising movement, and which (channelled and
given impetus by the intervening French Revolution) led to a ban on the
slave trade at the Congress of Vienna (1815) – a ban honoured more in the
breach than in the observance until well into the second half of the nineteenth
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century. Abolitionism inverted the causality of older slavery justifications

and argued that it was only as a result of the slave trade that the Africa’s
indigenous population had become brutalized and bestial. In his Littérature
des nègres (1808) Henri Grégoire demonstrated their capacity to intellectual
and artistic achievement. (80)
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the audience had the

opportunity to read more and more favourable descriptions of indigenous
people, who were living in some specific areas of Africa. Gaspard Mollien
who travelled to Africa in 1820 wrote about the natives’ courage, their pure
soul and great sensitivity giving the example of the Ouolof people who
were treating their slaves with kindness, or that of the Peuls, a generous
and hospitable tribe. Vaillant described the Hotentots as good parents taking
good care of their children who were respectful to them in their turn. Caillé
depicted some more positive traits visiting the people of N’pal who were
temperate and hardworking, or the herders of Bagos who were receiving
their guests with much respect and hospitality, while the polygamous men
of Bagaraya were treating all of their wives with a lot of love (cf. Corlan-
Ioan 38).
“The information gathered by travellers was transmuted into adventure
narratives in books like Jules Verne’s Cinq semaines en ballon (1862)” (Riesz
in Leersen & Beller: “Africa” 80), where the author accompanies his reader
in a voyage above Africa combining pictures taken from various sources not
necessarily in close accordance with real Africa, or L’Île mysterieuse (1874)
among whose characters the reader can find a model of the ‘good negro’, a
frequent presence in the literature of the nineteenth century, different from
the ‘Noble Savage’ who had been created by the European imagination in
the previous centuries on the basis of the information brought by different
travellers, similar to that previously mentioned. Nevertheless, Jules Verne like
other writers of the epoch also created characters who represented combinations
between the ‘Noble Savage’, a native living according to the natural laws,
manifesting simplicity, kindness, sometimes savagery, and the ‘good negro’, a
hybrid between the original savage and the educated European, who enjoyed
living in a Western environment, either in Africa as servant in a European
household, or anywhere abroad taking advantage of the European civilization.
Langa, the child found by some European explorers in Verne’s Le village
aérien is the perfect embodiment of such a character (cf. Corlan-Ioan 39).
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More numerous, the black characters whose nature and behaviour

were but a sumum of all possible negative human traits inoculated the
general feeling that apart from the continent’s natural resources there was
no African merit; everything had to be brought from outside the continent
by the more civilized white representatives of humanity. Besides, there was
the racist and racialist wave menacing to wipe away any African history and
civilization. The favourite European tune was ‘to be black is to be bad’ (my
emphasis), reverberating in too many white ears mostly as a consequence
of what those ears had heard in centuries about the Africans, and of the
numerous books of every kind, even comics for children, where the big
negro was always the bad character of the story or at least somebody to be
despised or mocked at because of his funny clothes or his silly smile. As
Fanon argues, “in the [European] unconscious there is the firmly fixed image
of the nigger-savage. I could give not a dozen but a thousand illustrations”
(Fanon 2008: 154). These illustrations first came from non-fiction literature
but easily moved into fiction books. Taking into account that “fiction is a
social product [which] also produces society” it becomes quite obvious that
“it plays a large part in the socialization of infants in the conduct of politics
and in general gives symbols and modes of life to the population” (Joan
Rockwell quoted in Logan xiv).
The impact an image thus created can have upon the human mind and then
behaviour is theorized by different scholars such as Manfred Beller who makes
an analysis of the philosophical theories of imagological representation by
approaching the Aristotelian pictorial theory. This describes the mental images
as ‘inner pictures—pictures in the mind or in the soul’ (Scholz 2004 quoted in
Beller 2007: 4). Beller explains that these ‘mental pictorial representations’ as
they are called in cognitive sciences, influence valorizations which ‘originate
from the interpretation of images, rather than from objective experiences’
(Gottschling 2003 quoted in Beller 2007: 4). An image represents ”the mental
silhouette of the other, who appears to be determined by the characteristics of
family, group, tribe, people or race. Such an image rules our opinion of others
and controls our behaviour towards them” (Beller 2007: 4). In this situation
the big issue which has been bothering scholars since antiquity, is the degree
of truthfulness of the acquired images taking into account that “for the most
part we do not first see, and then define, we define and then see” (Lippmann
1922 quoted in Beller 4).
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Beller’s conclusion reiterates that “our way of seeing and judging is

conditioned by preconceived notions, prejudice and stereotypes”. According
to different historians and social psychologists “we transform our perceptions
into images; and that selective perception results from suppressed tensions
between self-image and the image of the other”. There is a close connection
between personal perception and consequent judgement. “Our images
of foreign countries, peoples and cultures mainly derive from selective
value judgements (which are in turn derived from selective observation) as
expressed in travel writing and in literary representations” (4-5).
A similar mechanism led in some cases to controversial situations like
that of Africa’s image in the European collective memory, which at a certain
moment combined “two contradictory myths; namely the ‘Hobbesian picture
of a pre-European Africa, in which there was no account of Time; no Arts;
no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continued fear, and danger
of violent death’; and ‘the Rousseauian picture of an African golden age of
perfect liberty, equality and fraternity’” (Hodgkin 1957 quoted in Mudimbe
14). Very often the public ‘demand’ a certain type of image and the writer is
interested in meeting such demands, thus altering the information according
to his literary gift, the richness of his imagination and a personal inclination
either towards revealing the ‘truth’ or in favour of satisfying the audience’s
expectations. When the author is a novelist his freedom is absolute and the
readers cannot easily infer the border between reality and fiction anymore,
but the impact is almost the same: every descriptive word will add a new
piece to the big puzzle which is a picture of Africa or of the African natives
(cf. Corlan-Ioan 51-3).
Georges Mounin confessed in a well known journal that “[he] had
the good luck not to discover the Negroes through Lévy-Bruhl’s Mentalité
primitive read in a sociology course; more broadly, [he] had the good luck to
discover the Negroes otherwise than through books—and [he was] grateful
for it every day” (Mounin quoted in Fanon 2008: 154). For “those who
explored neither the seas nor the sky” (Césaire quoted in Diop 1991: 224)
could be understood by a foreigner in their manifestations only by exploiting
their riches and treasures from “the specific cultural nucleus” (Diop [1981]
1991: 225) of the type I have outlined earlier in this chapter.
The European image of Africa and of the Africans kept changing
according to the Europeans’ capacity of understanding what kind of
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life those ‘peculiar’ Others were carrying on in a ‘peculiar’ climate and

landscape, but it did not reach that level of objectivity which would admit
who has always been ‘carrying the burden’. From the very first encounter
the blackness of those people influenced the Europeans’ perception as we
have seen stated in Leo Africanus’ travel accounts and consequently by
many others, which ‘imagined’ that a dark skin was the irrefutable proof of a
bad character and limited intellectual capacities, thus conducting to theories
developed by “Buffon and, in more racial terms, in Hume and Edward
Long” and others who have already been mentioned. That image made up
of old stereotypes claiming that the black African is “uncivilized, barbarian,
indolent, unreliable, mentally and materially enslaved and lacking any of
the virtues, especially religious virtues” (Abbatista 7) served as the most
appropriate emblem first on the slavers’ flag, then on that of the racists
and colonizers, and is still floating in many peoples’ minds confirming the
theory according to which “the stereotype combines minimal information
with maximum meaning” (Stanzel 1997 in Beller 8-9). “It extrapolates from
details into generalizations, by turning a single attribute into the essence of
an entire nation” (Pageaux 1981 in Beller 9). African scholars repeatedly
manifested their bitter helplessness in front of such generalizations which
keep supplying humiliating pictures of the Africans who ended by feeling
that they are what the Others said they were. The Others depicted their
continent in the gloomiest colours as well. For them Africa was the image
of chaos:
[A] headless figure threatened with madness and quite innocent of any notion
of center, hierarchy, or stability…a vast dark cave where every benchmark
and distinction come together in total confusion, and the rifts of a tragic
and unhappy human history stand revealed: a mixture of the half-created
and the incomplete…in short, a bottomless abyss where everything is noise,
yawning gap, and primordial chaos. (Achille Mbembe 3)
Africa has not become what was promised and expected, first of all
by its benefactors. Almost everything goes wrong for the Africans and they
are made almost entirely responsible because they have been continually
thrown to face the same clichés to be taken as the only reasons for their failure.
Meanwhile, scholars have become aware of the importance of the study
of these images in an attempt “to single out the significantly active prejudices,
stereotypes and clichés from the total complex of imaginary images”.
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It has been argued that “political conflicts and even wars sink into oblivion
more easily than the images of others and foreigners, which apparently are
locked up in deeper strata of consciousness” (Beller 11). The solution might
come by approaching “a fresh way of asking a long-standing question, which
may involve philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and literary scholars”.
This is the definition Beller gives to imagology which should make appeal to
this “interdisciplinary import” (7) in order to attain its goal:
It is the aim of imagology to describe the origin, process and function of

national prejudices and stereotypes, to bring them to the surface, analyse
them and make people rationally aware of them. But it would be illusory to
think that we can remove the affective reasons for our prejudices; like the
Hydra’s heads, they grow back again continually. (12)
Beller appreciates that “the best way to proceed might be to show how
these images have originated, how little they often have in common with the
actual, mutual understanding of peoples, in one word, their fictionality” (11).
Although “this appeal to clarify prejudices and images (be they consciously
fabricated or latently present in unconscious mentalities) [is] a forward step
in our understanding;…imagologists have to start from the subjectivity of
images and must try to analyse their motivation and function by concentrating
on this very subjectivity” (11-12). It means that the imagologist has to
understand and explain the psychological coherence of the author of the
information and not that of the culture of the country he evokes (Fink 1993
quoted in Beller 12). At the same time Beller admits the primary importance
of textual and literary sources, but spotlights the contribution of most
concepts provided by “the pioneering studies of sociologists, ethnologists,
social psychologists, political scientists and historians” (13).
***
In the third chapter of this book I presented an overview upon some

famous pre-colonial black African societies, which had reached a high level
of civilization and development at different moments in time, existing in
parallel with tribal societies living their life sometimes in close vicinity,
still separated by impassable forests, or mountains, or rivers. This detailed
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display of the African cultural and social evolution is meant to support the
theory according to which everywhere on the terrestrial globe the rules for
social and cultural development have always been working in the same way.
I have relied on historical and anthropological information in order to give
correct information and counteract the largely supported theory, especially
in colonial times, according to which Africa has no history.
I have also brought some information about pre-colonial Congo and
its first encounters with Europeans using as documentary material scientific
information to be found in reputed publications and also the information
brought to Romania by some co-nationals (Ioan Catina, Aurel Varlam,
Sever Pleniceanu), who wrote and shared their experience in letters, articles,
and conferences after having lived their own African adventure during the
colonial times.
This chapter has also approached the mechanism which is responsible
for the creation of a certain image of the Other in accordance with our
capacity of processing the received information, our experience, as well as
the previously acquired information. It seems that this image keeps changing
the way the European image of Africa has changed and also the Africans’
image about Europe. [not clear!!!]
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Chapter IV: “Visiting” Congo/Colonising Congo
IV.1. The Congo Free State, a colony of horrors

The true story of ‘the Congo Free State’ was brought to light by Adam
Hochschild’s book, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and
Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998). It was the only colony detained by a
single owner, King Leopold II of Belgium (1865-1908), where the most
horrifying atrocities took place for some decades. The publication of the
book triggered various reactions: most of the people worldwide simply
could not understand “why these deaths were not mentioned in the standard
litany of our century’s horrors” and mainly how it was possible that such
mass slaughtering stayed hidden for so long (Hochschild 1998: 10). Besides,
when the truth was unveiled revealing what was behind the ridiculously
beautiful stories about a common history of friendship and cooperation
between Belgium and Congo, to be found in Belgian history books or told to
the visitors of Tervuren Royal Museum for Central Africa, the most affected
and eager to react were the members of younger generations not the ones
closer by age to the mentioned events. If we add the indifference manifested
by the large international public when reading news about atrocities taking
place in contemporary Congo (Zizek 2008: 3), we may understand better
that some deeper studies and assessments should be carried on in order to
clarify the psycho-social mechanisms at work in colonial and post-colonial
relationships.
Hochschild claims that he wrote about a story which moved Victorian
Britain “so strongly and so vehemently” as no other external issue had
done in thirty years (Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary quoted in
Hochschild 1998: 9-10), mainly in order to help people remember. In spite
of the “mass killings” that took place for too long (starting with the slave
trade), the world has almost forgotten what happened in Africa, incriminating
the Africans for their political and economic instability, for the deep poverty
in which they live today. Hochschild’s historical account is a well informed
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‘remember’ for all people involved in this true story. It is not by hazard that
the author proceeds to revealing the most important stages of this huge “play”
with a eulogistic introduction for “a young man’s flash of moral recognition”
(9). A man who spent great energy for more than a decade mainly to ”put the
horrors taking place in King Leopold’s Congo on the world’s front pages” so
that people were informed, bishops and members of Parliament reacted and
speeches about Congo were held “as far as Australia”. This “impassioned,
eloquent” person, Edmund Denis Morel, “a trusted employee of a Liverpool
shipping line…insisted to President Theodore Roosevelt that the United
States had a special responsibility to do something about the Congo” (9).
As a representative of the Liverpool company at the docks of Antwerp,
Belgium, Morel’s first merit was to have paid attention to facts having
passed almost unnoticed by many people and then to have made the logical
connection between those facts. “He began to uncover an elaborate skein
of fraud” making a deduction more far-reaching than Sherlock Holmes, the
character created at the epoch by Conan Doyle whom Morel befriended
at a certain moment in his life (133). One of Morel’s work tasks was “to
supervise the loading and unloading of ships on the Congo run”, which gave
him the possibility to compare what kind and amounts of merchandise was
loaded and sent to Congo and what was coming back to Belgium. The ships
for Congo were carrying “mostly army officers, firearms, and ammunition”
and brought back loads of rubber and ivory (9):
As Morel watches these riches streaming to Europe with almost no goods

being sent to Africa to pay for them, he realizes that there can be only one
explanation for their source: slave labor. Brought face to face with evil,
Morel does not turn away. Instead, what he sees determines the course of his
life and the course of an extraordinary movement, the first great international
human rights movement of the twentieth century (9).
There had been other witnesses from abroad scandalized by what they
saw with their own eyes going on in Congo, who had initiated an informing
campaign before Morel, who had even interviewed Africans about their
sad stories, such as the black American journalist and historian George
Washington Williams, who visited Congo in 1890 and saw many of the
atrocities Morel only supposed that existed:
A keen observer and experienced interviewer, he had the ability—as rare
among journalists as it is among historians—to be uninfluenced by what
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others had already written. And in the villages and state posts and mission
stations along the banks of the river, he found not the benignly ruled colony
described by Stanley and others, but what he called ‘the Siberia of the African
Continent’. His impressions were distilled in the remarkable document he
wrote at Stanley Falls, when he could contain his rage no longer (85).
He wrote an Open Letter addressed to king Leopold II which expresses

clear feelings of horror caused by what he had seen, but also the great
sadness and disapproval for “how thoroughly [he had] been disenchanted,
disappointed and disheartened after all the praiseful things [he had] spoken
and written of the Congo country, State and Sovereign”. Williams claims
that all charges he is bringing in the mentioned letter against the king’s
government in Congo were carefully investigated, while a “faithfully
prepared” list of “competent and veracious witnesses, documents, letters,
official records and data” is waiting to be used (85). The letter was a long list
of pertinent accusations invoking for the first time the gross encroachment
of human rights and also representing “the first comprehensive, systematic
indictment of Leopold’s colonial regime written by anyone” (85-86). Very
soon Williams sent “A Report upon the Congo-State and Country to the
President of the Republic of the United States of America” where besides
the same charges mentioned in the Open Letter he emphasized the “special
responsibility” that President Harrison had toward the Congo, because it
had ‘introduced [that] African Government into the sisterhood of States’.
The printing of the Open Letter as a pamphlet in 1890 when Williams was
still in Africa triggered many different reactions, which would have certainly
increased if the ardent and tenacious black American had not prematurely
died, thus offering Leopold and his supporters some relief and also some
time to counteract (87).
It is worth mentioning here that “by the time [Williams] went to the
Congo in 1890, close to a thousand Europeans and Americans had visited
the territory or worked there, [but] Williams was the only one to speak out
fully and passionately and repeatedly about what others denied or ignored”
(89). Hochschild’s observation emphasizes once more two important aspects
of the colonial issue. The first is about the high level of ruse that some great
imperialists were able to use in order to accomplish their goals, and the
next speaks loudly about a general naivety combined with indifference on
the side of the large public who repeatedly proved how easily it could be
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manipulated. The following examples as well as the whole Congo story

come to reinforce these statements.
In the same year 1890, William Sheppard, another black American
who was sent as the first black missionary to Congo, also witnessed scenes
of colonial brutality, which he recorded in letters, magazine articles and even
in books he wrote in the twenty years he spent in Leopold’s colony. The
hazard made that almost at the same time Joseph Conrad was spending some
miserable moments sick with malaria, in the same American mission station
outside Matadi, where Sheppard’s white religious companion, Reverend
Samuel Lapsley was sheltered. The Reverend was writing home about “a
gentlemanly fellow [who was] sick in a room at the other end of the court”,
thus giving some of the first information about Conrad’s traumatizing
experience in the Congo (116). Joseph Conrad, the sea captain who was
expecting to discover “the exotic Africa of his childhood dreams but [found]
instead what he would call ‘the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured
the history of human conscience’” (10).
Turning back to Sheppard’s discoveries which had been seen by
numerous people before him and would be seen by even more after him, I
have to rely again on Hochschild’s apt remark concerning the great impact
of Sheppard’s articles upon the international audience:
Sheppard was not the first foreign witness to see severed hands in the Congo,
nor would he be the last. But the articles he wrote for missionary magazines
about his grisly find were reprinted and quoted widely, both in Europe and
the United States, and it is partly due to him that people overseas began to
associate the Congo with severed hands. A half-dozen years after Sheppard’s
stark discovery, while attacking the expensive public works Leopold was
building with his Congo profits, the socialist leader Émile Vandervelde
would speak in the Belgian Parliament of ‘monumental arches which one
will someday call the Arches of the Severed Hands’ (123).
Almost in the same period of time a Swedish Baptist missionary, E.

V. Sjöblom, having witnessed unspeakable acts perpetrated by white agents
and also by some black members of the African Force Publique, because
they were rewarded for killing the native workers uncommitted to their hard,
almost unbearable work tasks, became “perhaps Leopold’s most forceful
critic in the late 1890s, speaking to all who would listen and publishing a
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detailed attack on the Congo’s rubber terror in the Swedish press in 1896”
(129). Hochschild further mentions that he published harsh testimonies
which brought him threats from the State officials working in Congo, and
counterattacks in the Belgian and British press.
IV. 2. Leopold II, the “philanthropic” monarch of great designs

The whole world had heard from European newspapers about “the
philanthropic monarch [who had] invested his personal fortune in public
works to benefit the Africans [and also] welcomed Christian missionaries to
his new colony”, or about “his troops [who had] fought and defeated local
slave-traders who preyed on the population” (9). What few people knew or
suspected was how carefully and cunningly, years before he attempted to
literally colonize the land, the well known monarch had drawn the script
meant to help him become the single owner of a huge African colony.
His interest in geography and finance as well as his attentive study of the
international situation helped him assess the possibilities and the methods
he had to use in order to accomplish his dream, which had also been the
unaccomplished dream of his father. Many people having crossed Leopold
II during diplomatic affairs or simply watched him while working to reach
his goals must have thought that he was “subtle and sly…like a fox” as his
own father had said once about his eldest son. Hochschild also admits that in
spite of not being always so cautious his style resembled that of a fox:
[T]here was something foxlike about the manner in which this constitutional
monarch of a small, increasingly democratic country became the totalitarian
ruler of a vast empire on another continent. Stealth and dissembling would
be his trusted devices, just as the fox relies on these qualities to survive in a
world of hunters and larger beasts (34).
At the beginning of his reign (1865) he did not bother to be very

subtle, mainly when speaking about his colonial ambitions, the way
European leaders were concealing their true intentions in discourses about
Christianization and civilization of heathen, savage peoples. He was heard
saying to one of his advisers that “Belgium doesn’t exploit the world. It’s a
taste we have got to make her learn”. He did not care about the source of the
profit, “what mattered was the size of the profit”, and also the power such
a colony would represent for him in an epoch when the royal authority was
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diminishing because of the elected parliament (37). The king also confessed:
“I intend to find out discreetly if there’s anything to be done in Africa”. And
he launched in this ample project by “carefully comb[ing] the Proceedings
of the Royal Geographical Society for information about the continent and
closely followed the treks of white explorers”. His first important move was
a substantial contribution offered when Scottish explorer Verney Lovett
Cameron attempted to cross Africa from east to west in 1875 (39). At that
time he had also heard about Stanley’s first successful expedition meant
to find another famous missionary and explorer, dr. David Livingstone
(1871-1873), followed by what was to become a famous publication, the
two-volume account How I Found Doctor Livingstone. Stanley was then
in the middle of his second attempt to make new geographical discoveries
in Africa, but nobody had news from the daring explorer at the moment
Leopold would have also liked to contact him.
Meanwhile, Leopold had understood that “a colonial push of his
own would require a strong humanitarian veneer. Curbing the slave trade,
moral uplift, and the advancement of science were the aims he would talk
about, not profits”. Thus, he started preparing his second move: hosting of
an international geographical conference. He took advantage of his royal
international connections and of any other useful acquaintances he could use
admitting that he had to moderate “his raw lust for colonies” as in each and
every step he was going to take “he must depend on subterfuge and flattery”
(39). Hochschild magisterially depicts the slightest details of Leopold’s
huge endeavour concerning the colonization of Congo, which is even more
difficult to apprehend as the king obtained the unanimous approval to be the
unique owner of an immense surface of populated land in one of the richest
African areas. Following the line of research in his book I will try to explain
how an astute and tenacious monarch was able to indirectly ‘discover’ and
appropriate tribe after tribe as personal fiefdom turned afterwards into a
camp of forced labour for his own profit without having put his foot in the
Congo. His obvious merit was to discover and use the perfect man able to
fulfil such a task: H. M. Stanley.
Leopold’s Geographical Conference held in 1876 was meant to inform
about the king’s philanthropic concern in Africa and also to give him the
possibility to feel the European pulse concerning exploration projects and
economic interest, but mostly to establish each possible detail to his own
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advantage in total trust and European acceptance. His welcoming speech

was conceived so as to leave no shadow of doubt about the noble intentions
of the hosting king and his people. We can easily distinguish between the
lines, the British or French already claimed honourable intentions meant to
bring only ‘good’ changes in the life of the poor natives in need for help, but
mainly Leopold’s gift in manipulating a whole audience:
Gentlemen…
The subject which brings us together today is one of those which deserve
to take a leading place in engaging the attention of the friends of humanity.
To open up to civilization the only part of our globe which it has not yet
penetrated, to pierce the darkness in which entire populations are enveloped,
is, I venture to say, a crusade worthy of this age of progress… Need I say
that in bringing you to Brussels, I have not been influenced by selfish views?
No, gentlemen, if Belgium is small, she is happy and contented with her lot.
I have no other ambition than to serve her well…[But] I should be happy
that Brussels became, in some sort, the head-quarters of this civilizing
movement…I have allowed myself then to entertain the thought that it might
fall within your convenience to come and discuss, and, with the authority
which belongs to you, unitedly to decide the roads to follow and the means
to employ for definitively planting the standard of civilization on the soil of
Central Africa…Great progress has already been made, and the unknown
country has been assailed on many sides…My desire is, to help on, in the
manner that you may point out to me ,the great cause for which you have
already done so much. With this object, I place myself at your disposal, and
bid you a hearty welcome. (Banning quoted in Reader 523-4)
A clear plan of exploration and research was shared with the audience
establishing the best methods to approach the natives by setting up “a line
of stations extending across the continent from coast to coast, ‘for purposes
of relief, of science, and of pacification…as a means of abolishing slavery,
of establishing harmony among the chiefs, and of providing for them just
and disinterested arbitrators’” (524). The details of Leopold’s project, which
supposed that roads would be built and each station would function as a
research base and be staffed by specialized researchers such as astronomers,
medical naturalists and other skilled artisans, were precisely aiming at
giving all the data for a feasible act meant to be “primarily in the service of
science, and secondarily, for the advancement of commerce, industry, and
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civilization”. The references to “a military presence” which by no means was

necessary taking into account the high humanity supposed to characterize all
people who would participate in the project are in ironic contrast to what the
Leopoldian regime would eventually become in the Congo. “The stations
would have ‘recourse to gentleness, persuasion, and that natural ascendency
which emanates from the superiority of civilized man’. Thus the stations
were expected to become centres from which the influence of European
exploration and scientific research would radiate across the surrounding
countryside, ‘diffusing the light of civilization among the natives’” (525).
The guests were very creative in mentally building what seemed for most
of them a palpable design, although some others described it as “gloriously
impractical and absurd” (Severin quoted in Reader 524).
In his feigned modesty Leopold invited the Russian geographer Pyotr
Semenov to be the chair person, as his limited knowledge of Africa let free
way to Leopold’s manoeuvres. Thus, he was able to get endorsement from the
participants for the thoroughly described chain of bases to be set up “across
the unclaimed territory of the Congo River basin that interested Leopold
most”. Besides, he “was elected by acclamation as the International African
Association’s first chairman” with headquarters established in Brussels
by the king’s magnanimous volunteering. The newly founded association
perfectly served Leopold “to convince everyone that his interest was purely
altruistic”. There were several voices praising “the greatest humanitarian
work of [that] time” (Hochschild 41), which in a dramatic irony was to turn
into “one of the great mass killings of recent history” (10).
How could all this happen? Any human action is initiated by a more
or less subtle personal drive, most of the times combined with some other
drives, and as in the case of Congo it thus happened that more people
having similar drives were capable of accomplishing astonishing deeds.
They functioned like a very strong engine able to carry huge loads on
almost endless distances. As it has already been suggested by the previous
information Leopold’s main drive was his greed in an almost ordinary
combination with his wish for fame and power. “Always a shrewd judge
of people” (51) he perfectly used his capacities to find the most appropriate
persons motivated by similar drives with his own, consequently able to reach
his goals by almost merging their drives with his. They were indeed able to
carry the heavy load of colonization on the endless road of imperialism,
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but also because most of these drives were doubled by a psychological

dimension. We cannot generalize this aspect but I will try to distinguish
some specific conditions that generally have almost the same impact upon
human personality. In Hochschild’s opinion:
[T[he adventurers who carried out the European seizure of Africa were
often not the bold, bluff, hardy men of legend, but restless, unhappy, driven
men, in flight from something in their past or themselves. The economic
explanations of imperial expansion—the search for raw materials, labor, and
markets—are valid, but there was psychological fuel as well. (114)
It has been argued by famous psychiatrists and other researchers that

one’s childhood may have disastrous impact upon the adult’s personality. One
of the persons involved in the Congo case, who could easily be categorized
as having been influenced by unpleasant reminiscence of their childhood is
Leopold II. He was known as having spent his childhood and teenage in
“a cold atmosphere”, where his eldest sister and brother seemed to be more
appreciated by their parents than him, “the gangling child, ill at ease in the
world” and manifesting little interest for other studies than geography. He
did not have proper and direct communication with his father but “through
one of his secretaries”, while the “court officials proved eager to befriend the
future monarch” this having helped him to acquire a lot of information and
knowledge about his future duties and also about the international situation
from multiple perspectives (34), but could not replace parental warmth. It
seems that young Leopold kept looking all his life after something to fill the
void left in his soul by this lack of affection, which was not to be found in a
premature and totally disastrous marriage either (35). Historians speculate
that the tragic death of his nine-year-old son in 1869 pushed the king even
harder on the way of fulfilling dreams of wealth and power (37). Meanwhile,
other tragedies taking place in his family, such as “the collapse of his sister’s
and brother-in-law’s empire” in Mexico, followed by the latter’s execution
and his sister, Carlota’s, almost total mental alienation, as well as the
mounting European interest in acquiring new lands and greater profits in
“a new age of colonialism [when] the future South African politician and
diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes would say, ‘I would annex the planets if I
could’”, warned Leopold II once more to keep his attention focused on each
and every possibility to get his own colony in Africa (39). It is precisely
what he did disguised as an altruist:
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He had learned from his many attempts to buy a colony that none was for
sale; he would have to conquer it. Doing this openly, however, was certain
to upset both the Belgian people and the major powers of Europe. If he was
to seize anything in Africa, he could do so only if he convinced everyone
that his interest was purely altruistic. In this aim, thanks to the International
African Association, he succeeded brilliantly. (41)
Not only the king’s attempts of buying a colony had been declined,
but also his former strategy of drawing Cameron in his conquering design;
Cameron, being “the first man who is known to have crossed the continent
[Africa] from east to west”, did not serve Leopold as expected. However,
the information extracted from Cameron’s letters and made public in The
Times helped Leopold make more precise plans of conquering some lands in
Africa, and also aroused the king’s interest in meeting Cameron to find out
more about Britain’s intentions. Consequently he found out that “[Cameron]
had made numerous treaties with amenable chiefs and on the strength of
these had even declared a British protectorate over the Congo basin by
a proclamation of 28 December 1874. The treaties and the proclamation
were duly submitted to the Foreign Office for approval” (Reader 521).
The published report gave much hope to the enterprising monarch as fabulous
riches and trade possibilities were clearly designed:
The interior is mostly a magnificent and healthy country of unspeakable

richness. I have a small specimen of good coal; other minerals, such as gold,
copper, iron, and silver, are abundant, and I am confident that with a wise
and liberal (not lavish) expenditure of capital, one of the greatest systems of
inland navigation in the world might be utilized, and in from thirty to thirty-
six months, begin to repay any enterprising capitalists that might like to take
it in hand…Nutmegs, coffee, semsem [sesame seed], groundnuts, oil palms,
rice, wheat, cotton; all the productions of Southern Europe, India-rubber,
copal, and sugar-cane are the vegetable productions which may be made
profitable. A canal of from twenty to thirty miles across a flat level country
would connect the two great systems of the Congo and the Zambezi, water in
the rains even now forming a connection link between them. With a capital
of from one million to two million pounds to begin with, a great company
would have Africa open as I say in about three years, if properly worked.
(News report in The Times, 11 January 1876, quoted in Reader 522)
The fact that Britain did not accept Cameron’s proclamation of a

Congo protectorate, taking into account Portugal’s priority conferred
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by its long-lasting relationships with chiefs of different Congolese tribes

established after Diogo Cão’s discovery of the Congo estuary in 1483,
gave Leopold more hope for freedom of action in the region. After having
heard Cameron’s confirmation of the horrors represented by the slave trade,
already made public by Livingstone’s last journals in 1874, Leopold knew
what he was supposed to do in the first place: to obtain approval and support
from his cousin, Queen Victoria. He had to persuade her first and foremost,
of his entirely altruistic intentions to “finance a crusade for the suppression
of the slave-trade and the enlightenment of Africa” (522-3).
The above quoted report is a confirmation for the authoritarian and
materialistic approach of the colonial issue by the European powers who
were mentally and eventually practically delimiting the world in two: on one
side there were the economically developed and powerful nations who could
and even had to “take care” of the other side of feeble, naïve, uneducated
peoples who did not know how and as a matter of fact were not technically
able to appropriately use the rich resources of their own lands. Reading
Cameron’s assessment someone may simply reckon that he is speaking
about an unpopulated land. It creates the feeling that there is nobody from
whom some foreigner “discovering new lands and resources” should ask
permission of appropriation, while the very name of “protectorate” for such
foreign lands is used like the guarantee for help and protection of the given
region its inhabitants included. There is no word mentioning human beings,
while the word “chiefs” might have been used several times in diplomatic or
business discussions representing the only little impediment for any foreign
enterprise.
We can infer from Britain’s attitude of acceptance of Portugal’s
priority in managing the Congo area that at least the most significant
historical events had been registered somewhere in the world historical
compendium for some previous hundreds of years so that the existence
of different indigenous populations with their more or less developed
cultures was not something new or totally unknown to Europe. For various
reasons it behaved as if such facts were of little importance for the rest of
the world. Africa represented a vast territory rich in resources where easily
manageable peoples populated regions which could be appropriated on the
basis of European documents and agreements endorsed by Europeans for
the direct European advantage. It is important to mention that there was no
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African representative in the International African Association founded and

chaired by Leopold II, but nobody raised this issue as being inappropriate;
on the contrary the situation served Leopold perfectly in making his dreams
come true, in spite of a total lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Belgian
government.
IV.3. Henry Morton Stanley, more than a famous explorer

While the most famous geographers and explorers of Europe were
designing the scheme of civilizing Africa at the Geographical Conference
taking place in Brussels “in September 1876, Henry Morton Stanley, the
man who found Livingstone and whose proven abilities were certainly
deserving of the king’s attention and royal hospitality, was in the depths of the
continent itself, west of Lake Tanganika, marching determinedly towards the
headwaters of the Congo River”. Many observers of the time finally admitted
that “Stanley’s expedition was the most ambitious in Africa yet undertaken: a
traverse of the continent through hitherto unexplored equatorial regions, from
Zanzibar to the mouth of the Congo”. He accomplished great deeds having
been financed by both the New York Herald and the London Daily Telegraph,
“but at tremendous cost [for] all three of Stanley’s European companions
succumbed to the rigours of the expedition, as did 173 Africans”. The report
issued in November 1877 made public a lot of Stanley’s discoveries, one of
them confirming “that the Congo was navigable from the coast to the heart
of the continent”, which had also been inferred by Leopold. This second
complete report about the tremendous possibilities the king was fancying
already fuelled his next decisive step: to meet Stanley and draw him in his
design, which he wrote “bluntly” in a clearly outlined plan to the Belgian
Ambassador in London (Reader 526). It took Leopold some time and trouble
to co-interest Stanley in that plan, but he finally succeeded mainly because
the Irish naturalized American explorer did not rouse the expected interest
and enthusiasm from the British or American governments. It thus happened
in spite of having enjoyed “a hero’s welcome…in Britain in late January
1878” and also after having issued his next “two-volume account of the
trans-Africa expedition Through the Dark Continent”. He expressed his
deep disillusionment in his specific style:
I do not understand Englishmen at all. Either they suspect me of some self-

interest, or they do not believe me. My reward has been to be called a mere
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penny-a-liner. For the relief of Livingstone I was called an impostor…for

trying to kindle them to action I am called…a hare-brained fellow totally
unused to business. (Lady Dorothy Stanley quoted in Reader 527)
A five-year contract was finally signed by Stanley in December 1878

after having promised to keep secret the details of the agreement. However, it
seems that Stanley was almost as good at reading people’s minds as Leopold
had repeatedly proved to be. When he arrived at the mouth of the Congo
“with the novel mission of sowing along its banks civilized settlements, to
peacefully conquer and subdue it, to remould it in harmony with modern
ideas into national states within whose limits…justice and law and order
shall prevail, and murder and lawlessness and the cruel barter for slaves
shall forever cease” (528), he wrote in his diary:
The king is a clever statesman. He is supremely clever…He has not been so
frank as to tell me outright what we are to strive for. Nevertheless it has been
pretty evident that under the guise of an International Association he hopes to
make a Belgian dependency of the Congo basin. (Hird quoted in Reader 528)
The first part of the journey which did not pose too many obstacles to
his endeavour to set up the first stations was described in his third two-volume
adventure book The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State (1885). In his
style “heavy and luxuriant” very much like the atmosphere in the Congo
(Emerson quoted in Reader 528), Stanley made detailed descriptions of the
exotic nature and also of the beginnings of instituting a new regime within
the centuries-old culture of the place. Not only Leopold’s project but mainly
Stanley’s task and achievement were impressive. Speaking about material
and human costs figures can only be approximated. During the first two
years of hard work Stanley recorded to have lost six Europeans and twenty-
two Africans because of disease and exhaustion:
[He] and his men had trekked 2,300 miles back and forth along thirty-eight
miles of road, built three bridges, filled a score of ravines and gullies, [and]
cut through two thick forests of hard wood…A station at Malebo Pool
(subsequently named Stanley Pool), where the cataracts ended and the fully
navigable Congo river system began, would be the key to the economic
exploitation of the Upper Congo. (528-9)
All that “Herculean” work of “building a road and hauling boats and
heavy equipment” from one location to the next woke a bunch of suspicions
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among the “members of the French National Committee of Leopold’s

International African Association”, which seemed to have started an enterprise
much different from its initially declared philanthropic commitment:
Reports of a commercial organization designed to exploit the wealth of the

Congo leaked through the veil of secrecy which Leopold had endeavoured to
draw over his initiatives. Prominent businessmen from Holland, France, and
Britain were said to have invested money which, curiously, was later repaid
by Belgian interests who were believed to be acting on behalf of Leopold. If
these reports were true, then Stanley was not leading a philanthropic crusade
on behalf of the IAA, he was carving out a colony for the Belgian king. And
if Leopold could use the IAA as a front for his private enterprise, why should
not the French committee of the IAA be a front for French initiatives of a
similar nature? (cf. Pakenham in Reader 529)
Consequently “in the spring of 1880 France sent an expedition to Gabon,

[which seemed to be] ostensibly a civilizing mission under the leadership of
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, an Italian-born French naval officer” and which
became a threat to Leopold’s plans and Stanley’s advancement to Malebo.
Leopold urged him to hurry, but Stanley reminded the Belgian monarch about
the big charge represented by “50 tons of goods, boats and other property”
he and his companions were supposed to carry on a difficult trajectory and
implying a longer time than Brazza eventually needed to cover the same
route. “In a heady, four-week round of negotiations with local chiefs Brazza
acquired a strip of territory about fifteen kilometers long on the north shore
of the Pool (where the city of Brazzaville now stands), exclusive trading
rights, and a treaty which placed the region under the protection of France”.
Although Stanley tried to renegotiate Brazza’s arrangements with the local
chiefs, they turned him down one by one also refusing to supply him and his
men with any food, thus pushing him to the south bank where, ”acceding to
the extortionate demands of a chief whose status rivalled that of the men with
whom Brazza had negotiated, he acquired rights and territory to match the
French concession. The station his men constructed on the site was named
Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), and trading began there on 5 March 1882”
(Reader 530-1).
Trading with local chiefs in exchange for lands and different other
agreements was not a new practice at all as we have seen it happened since
very old times; even Cameron and Brazza had used the same means to get
access to the newly discovered African territories and considered them as
being already under British or French protection. Stanley’s proceedings
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were quite different from what had already been done before; he used a lot
of trickeries when dealing with the chiefs as he humorously depicted in his
travel and adventure books; the main purpose was that of impressing the
indigenous population who were supposed to see the white people as human
beings with supernatural powers and to surrender without resistance. At the
same time Stanley was said to be harsh while pitilessly exploiting the local
inhabitants; his manners were not always civilized, his negotiations and the so
called diplomatic transactions were far from legality and even from common
decency. In spite of strong public disapproval of such methods most of the
people reacted long time after everything had happened. Leopold had found
the most appropriate person to stick to his instructions clearly demanding “to
secure as much land as could be obtained and place it under the sovereignty
of the king’s enterprise ‘as soon as possible and without losing one minute’”
(Hird quoted in Reader 531).
IV. 4. Robert Casement, the official witness

Much was written about Stanley’s deeds, the most part by himself as
I have already mentioned, but one of the most interesting accounts related
precisely to the expedition he was sent on by the Belgian king between 1879-
1884 could be read in the ”meticulously researched fictional biography and
clever psychological novel” The Dream of the Celt (cf. The Economist’s
review17) of Mario Vargas Llosa (2012), who succeeded in remaking the life
trajectory of Robert Casement, another controversial character of Victorian
times, very much connected to Stanley and the Congo issue. Carefully looking
in the archives, travelling to the Congo, Amazonia, Ireland, the United
States, Belgium, Peru, Germany and Spain in order to gather testimonies and
advice, Llosa accomplished one of the most valuable books, which revives
interesting facts, situations and people by means of the precious information
only somebody like Casement could have provided after having spent some
time close to Stanley, “the hero of his childhood”. Llosa reveals that the
twenty-year old Irishman was deeply persuaded by the truthfulness of the
evoked European projects Leopold also used to mention in his discourses,
in 1884 when “in an outburst of idealism and a dream of adventure” he left
Europe to go to Africa and help fulfilling “the emancipation of Africans from
backwardness, disease, and ignorance” (Llosa 2012: 28). Some years later,
17 The Economist, 7th July 2012. www.economist.com/node/21558238
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in 1903, Roger Casement was travelling to the Congo as the British consul
who had been charged to make researches in the Congo Free State in order
“to verify on the ground how much truth there was in the denunciations of
atrocities committed against natives in the Congo of His Majesty Leopold
II King of the Belgians, made by the Aborigines’ Protection Society in
London, and some Baptist churches and Catholic missions in Europe and
the United States” (27-8). At that moment he was trying to understand what
exactly had turned him into a blind witness of a pure act of colonization
carried out under his and many others’ eyes. Casement recalls how “Stanley
and his companions had to explain to the half-naked chieftains, tattooed and
feathered, sometimes with thorns in their faces and arms…the benevolent
intentions of the Europeans: they would come to help them improve their
living conditions, rid them of deadly plagues…educate them” (33). At the
time of the expedition he, like almost the whole Europe, was persuaded
that Leopold was “a great humanitarian monarch bent on exterminating the
social degradation of slavery and cannibalism and freeing the tribes from
paganism and servitude that kept them in a feral state” (32).
The strong feeling and hope people sometimes have that the others’
feelings and hopes are similar to their own is capable of totally twisting
somebody’s capacity of understanding what is really going on. Casement
became aware of such an effect that Stanley had on him with “his charisma,
his affability, his magic, that mixture of temerity and cold calculation with
which the adventurer accumulated great feats” (34). While the process of
appropriation of African lands was in full progress Casement realized that
the treaties meant to be ‘signed’ by the chiefs and witch doctors were written
in French and the detailed and benevolent explanations were carried on
by interpreters who did not care of how much or how little the indigenous
people understood, but he kept trying to find logical explanations for some
acts which had to be made legitimate in order to become useful for the
Congolese:
They don’t know what they’re doing, but we know it’s for their good and that
justifies the deceit, the young Roger Casement thought. What other way was
there to do it? How could they give legitimacy to future colonization with
people who could not understand a word of those ’treaties’ in which their
future and the future of their descendants was placed under obligation? It
was necessary to give some legal form to the enterprise the Belgian monarch
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wanted to realize by means of persuasion and dialogue, unlike others carried

out with blood and fire, invasions, assassinations, and plunder. Wasn’t this
peaceable and civil? (34)
The logical argumentation he was making up in his mind enabled him

to find the funny side of the peculiar way both Europeans and natives solved
the ‘slight details’ of miscommunication in a mild attitude of acceptance
of something that was not only illegal but also irrational. Casement and
many others contemplated rather cynical episodes when native chiefs
“[were signing] with Xs, lines, blots, drawings, without knowing what they
were signing or what signing was, amused by the necklaces, bracelets, and
adornments of colored glass they received and the swallows of liquor with
which Stanley invited them to toast their agreements” (34). However, it seems
that young Casement dared approach Stanley with a question that “burst
from [his] lips in an unpremeditated way” in his attempt to better understand
what was behind that presumably artificial kindness of Stanley and his men
towards the indigenous people, compared to testimonies of a generally
different behaviour the same Stanley manifested during his two previous
expeditions to Africa. Casement was simply and humanly wondering what
was going on with such people’s conscience; if they ever felt remorse for
having literally trapped numerous ignorant people by making them willingly
sign official papers which they could not read or understand, therefore
approving to “place their lives, their villages, everything they [had], in the
hands of the International Congo Society”, besides, totally agreeing “to
provide manual labor, lodging, guides, and food to the officials, agents, and
employees” (34-5).
Llosa attempted to remake the dialogue which presumably took place
between the two, thus giving some hints about an attitude many colonialists
manifested as a natural consequence of their convictions very much similar
to what Stanley could have uttered then:
“Don’t you sometimes feel remorse, have a bad conscience because of what
we’re doing?”
“Remorse? A bad conscience? For what?”
“For the contracts we have them sign…Not one of them knows what he’s
signing because none of them speaks French.”
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“If they knew French, they still wouldn’t understand those contracts…I don’t
even understand what they mean.”
“I do, though it’s true the rigmarole they’re written in seems intentional, so
they won’t be understood. It comes down to something very simple. They
give their lands to the International Congo Society in exchange for promises
of social assistance. They pledge to support the construction projects: roads,
bridges, docks, factories. To supply the labor needed for the camps and public
order and feed the officials and workers for as long as the work continues.
The society offers nothing in return. No salaries, no compensation. I always
believed we were here for the good of the Africans, Mr. Stanley. I’d like you,
whom I’ve admired since I was a boy, to give me reasons to go on believing
it’s true. That these contracts are, in fact, for their good.” (35-6)
After having treated him as weak for the place and the times they
were both in, Stanley reiterated the well known European clichés about the
Europeans’ good intentions, about “missionaries [who] will come to lead
them out of paganism and teach them that a Christian shouldn’t eat his
neighbor”, about the European doctors who would be able to save them out
of any plague with their vaccines and pills better than their witch doctors,
and mostly about schools and teachers who would teach them “civilized
languages” instead of “those monkey dialects”. He was convincingly
speaking about the true God they will have to pray to and many other
civilized habits they were to be taught, so that “little by little their barbaric
customs will be replaced by those of modern, educated people”. He seemed
to believe himself that most of the supposed changes would take place and
in a number of years the poor ignorant natives would be so very grateful to
their benefactors that they would “worship Leopold II the way they worship
their fetishes and hideous objects” (37).
Casement recalls the precise moment after the above mentioned
conversation when he felt that “his personal holy trinity of the three Cs
began to fall apart”. He confesses that “until then he had believed they
justified colonialism: Christianity, civilization, and commerce”. He was one
of a majority who shared exactly the same belief, but for whom the truth
came to light much earlier: “life in Africa was showing him that things were
not as clear as they had been in theory” (38).
IV. 5. International endorsement for a personal fiefdom

Stanley returned to Europe in the summer of 1884. His five years on the
Congo had provided Leopold with access to the resources of the Congo basin
and the territories of central Africa that lay beyond. Stations and steamboats
were positioned to reap the rewards. But the cost had been enormous…
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By 1885 Leopold had spent a total of about 11.5 million francs (£460,000) on
his Congo enterprise. (Jean Stengers 1988, quoted in Reader 531)
The king had carefully weighed his courageous investment so as to be

used as a strong argument while demanding international endorsement for
private appropriation of such a huge land, taking into account that he had
also taken out some important loans and the Belgian nation felt it like an
unnecessary impoverishment: “Leopold required international recognition,
not simply for the philanthropic ideals of the International African
Association he had founded, but more pressingly for the economic realities
of an enterprise he had established at his own personal expense” (531-2).
He also operated a seemingly “minor reorganization” by dissolving the
International African Association and founding the International Association
of the Congo which, as a matter of fact “was neither international nor an
association, but a euphemism for a one-man enterprise” (cf. John S. Galbraith
in Reader 532). Every detail was fruitfully taken care of in the same astute
and deceptive manner: “Leopold called in the favours due from an old friend
and confident, the former US Ambassador to Belgium, ‘General’ Henry S.
Sanford…[who] ranked highly in the American establishment, well-placed
to present Leopold’s case for recognition of the IAC to the United States”
(532). Together with a personal letter from the king containing tempting
promises for the American citizens who “would be free to buy land in the
Congo” and also guarantees that “American goods would be free of customs
duties there”, Sanford backed up his eulogy of the rightful arrangements
established with the local chiefs by showing President Arthur a copy of such
a treaty ‘signed’ with a Congo chief. “The copy, however, had been altered
in Brussels to omit all mention of the monopoly on trade ceded to Leopold,
an alteration that deceived not only Arthur but also Sanford, an ardent free-
trader who wanted the Congo open to American businessmen like himself”
(Hochschild 64).
The deception was to come later for persons like Sanford who worked
for lobbying at high standards trying to win “congressional support for
Leopold’s claim to the Congo”. He discovered that many Southern politicians
of that time were “frightened by the specter of millions of freed slaves and
their descendents harboring threatening dreams of equality” (65). Among
those politicians there was a very influent person upon whom the already
created image of the black person had deeply worked as his discourse proves:
Senator John Tyler Morgan of Alabama, a former Confederate brigadier

general, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [was
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thundering] ominously about the dangers of ‘enforced negro rule’ as blacks

were ‘foisted into…white families’, where they might inflict ‘a worse fate
than death upon an innocent woman’. Morgan fretted for years over the
‘problem’ of this growing black population. His solution, endorsed by many,
was simple: send them back to Africa! (65)
Leopold’s new state seemed the perfect solution for the above
mentioned problem and besides many other economic issues could find a
favourable approach in a fruitful cooperation between the Congolese and the
American black people: “Africa was prepared for the negro as certainly as
the Garden of Eden was prepared for Adam and Eve…In the Congo basin we
find the best type of the negro race, and the American negro…can find here
the field for his efforts” (Fry quoted in Hochschild 65). Sanford received
the draft of the resolution introduced in the Senate by Morgan, which he
did not waste the opportunity to adjust and to multiply in the form of a
long report on the Congo under Morgan’s name: “It may be safely asserted
that no barbarous people have ever so readily adopted the fostering care
of benevolent enterprise as have the tribes of the Congo, and never was
there a more honest and practical effort made to…secure their welfare”. The
following steps were almost predictable after the above mentioned document
circulated in a thousand copies and comments of praise were published in the
most popular American newspapers. Soon “the secretary of state declared
that the United States of America recognized King Leopold II’s claim to the
Congo. It was the first country to do so” (66).
Meanwhile Leopold used similar means of persuasion in France which
“did not feel threatened by tiny Belgium or by the vast size of Leopold’s
claims…[but] was willing to draw the boundaries [of that territory] on a
map, where they included most of the Congo River basin”. On the other hand
Chancellor Bismarck did not let himself deceived by Leopold’s maneuvers
as can be inferred from what he confided to one of his men: “His Majesty
displays the pretensions and naïve selfishness of an Italian who considers
that his charm and good looks will enable him to get away with anything”
(67). Not surprisingly, Leopold finally succeeded in his attempt simply by
touching the most sensitive side of any enterprising leader, economic and
political power:
Bismarck let himself be convinced that it was better for the Congo to go to
the king of weak little Belgium, and be open to German traders, than go to
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protection-minded France or Portugal or to powerful England. In return for

guarantees of freedom of trade in the Congo (like everyone else, Bismarck
did not know the full text of Leopold’s treaties with the chiefs), he agreed to
recognize the new state… In Europe, the thirst for African land had become
nearly palpable. There were some conflicting claims to be resolved, and
clearly some ground rules were needed for further division of the African
cake. Bismark offered to host a diplomatic conference in Berlin to discuss
some of these issues. To Leopold, the conference was one more opportunity
to tighten the grip on the Congo. (68)
The famous conference of Berlin, where the most influential European

powers were represented by their most appropriate representatives, managed
to solve the thorniest issues obviously related to bilateral agreements
regarding international trade facilities in the recently discovered African
areas. Although it has often been argued that a clear partition of the
black continent was equally fulfilled during the conference (1884-1885),
Hochschild attests that things did not happen as such for “the spoils were too
large, and it would take many more treaties to divide them all”. Paradoxically,
the greatest winner of all agreements concluded, Leopold II, was absent; his
representatives and informers had accomplished a very good deed. Stanley
was among them and he proved to be one of the most helpful participants
not only for Leopold but also for the audience mainly due to his authority
in the subject matter of Africa as “he had just spent five years in the Congo
for the king” and he was able “to engross the interest of every delegate”.
Hochschild spotlights that “Europeans were still used to thinking of Africa’s
wealth mainly in terms of its coastline, and there was little conflict over
ceding to Leopold the vast spaces he wanted in the interior” (69). Besides,
the obvious greed and economic interest prevented them from seeing the big
picture the way the visionary king had long before done:
More than anyone, Stanley had ignited the great African land rush, but even
he felt uneasy about the greed in the air. It reminded him of ‘[his] black
followers used to rush with gleaming knives for slaughtered game during
[their] travels’. The Berlin Conference was the ultimate expression of an age
whose newfound enthusiasm for democracy had clear limits, and slaughtered
game had no vote…Not a single African was at the table in Berlin. (68)
For the second time, Leopold reached his goals by applying a clever
design similar to that which had perfectly worked in the United States of
America, being helped by the most appropriate person, Stanley, in this case.
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Consequently, many representatives took for granted “the major agreement

that came out of Berlin [according to which] a huge swath of central Africa,
including Leopold’s territory in the Congo basin, would be a free-trade
zone”, admiring and applauding him in absence for having already invested
in something that many saw like “a sort of international colony—under the
auspices of the King of the Belgians, but open to traders from all of Europe”
(69). 1885 could be considered the year when “the Congo Free State [was]
legally born” (Llosa 43).
What happened during the famous Conference of Berlin had various
echoes in the international press of the time, which revealed different
faces of a process meant to change the fate of the world. Aurel Varlam,
a Romanian magistrate who had the opportunity to work in the Belgian
Congo for a couple of years, sent several letters to family and friends, one
of them, addressed to his father, being published while he was still in Congo
and giving some information about the realities he had found there. Most
of the details about the numerous inequities he had often witnessed in his
work were published after several years of his coming back to Romania in
guise of instalments sent to the Epoca newspaper; his observations reveal
how indignant he was at seeing the violent regime imposed on the natives
who “used to live quite peacefully, happy with their lives, well organized in
large tribes with orderly villages led by respectful kings and chiefs”. Varlam
claims they were skilful hunters, fishers and farmers, also mastering iron
extraction and manufacture (Anghelescu 54 – my translation). Thinking
back to the Conference of Berlin, a moment when crucial decisions were
made, all concerning a whole continent populated by numerous peoples who
had not asked for help, Varlam wonders: “What was the danger threatening
those people of Congo and against whom were they to be protected” as
many voices had argued before, during and after the conference in order to
motivate the European involvement. The Romanian magistrate spotlights
the duplicity manifested by the high representatives of various European
states: “Humanity, protection for the black race! I think they must have been
at pains not to burst into laughter while giving their accord to king Leopold
II to set the International African Association, which preceded the settling of
the Congo Free State” (54 – my translation).
IV. 6. Human drives help colonial desires come true

Stanley, one of the most controversial colonial explorers who still raises
hot arguments in his own birth-place Denbigh , has some traits in common
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with king Leopold, but there is one major point which most critics tried to
distinguish between the two men. It is very well expressed by journalist and
writer Tim Butcher who relied on biographer Frank McLynn’s assessment
of the famous explorer:
Stanley’s role was that of ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’. He might have created

something that went on to do awful things, but that happened years after he
left. Perhaps he deserves opprobrium for hoodwinking chiefs into ceding
sovereignty. If that is the standard, then just about every early American
president should be pilloried for conning native Americans out of their land.
(Butcher 26 Aug. 2010 in The Telegraph, 25 September 2014)
Butcher admitted that the most important reason why he chose to

revisit Congo in 2005 after having accomplished several war-correspondence
missions in Africa and becoming acquainted with the frequency of death and
suffering in this continent, was a curious feeling of admiration and respect
he felt for Stanley, “[his] Telegraph predecessor” (Butcher 2007: 333). “The
cocky chancer...who sought wealth and status through one of the most high-
profile, lucrative but risky career paths of his time, African exploration” (334)
was the one who changed the course of history after having accomplished his
three-year long trip along the Congo river (1874-1877), proving that it was a
navigable one. Thus he turned on the European economic powers for a still
unknown part of the world, consequently manifesting quick interest in more
exploration but mainly appropriation as it has already been shown. Besides,
he was a decisive figure for Congo’s fate as everything that was going to turn
wrong started soon after Stanley so diligently fulfilled the big task Leopold
appointed him for. He can be labelled a pure colonizer, although he cannot
be made responsible for the way colonial agents and officers behaved even
as participants in his expeditions.
It is well known that Stanley’s expeditions were made up of hundreds
of people organized in smaller groups generally having European leaders
who were in charge of the good management of the African carriers and
other members having different responsibilities and sometimes travelling
with their families. All those people were moving in several- mile-long
lines, the groups being often separated for weeks; it was almost impossible
for Stanley to know what was going on in further segments of his expedition.
Members of the journeys who spent longer time close to the explorer spoke
about his bursts of rage and violence when he could shoot a tribesman only
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because he was in his way, or his ruthless and insensitive behaviour when
faced with hardship and suffering. These were the main reasons why people
generally had a negative image of him, although Casement who knew him
better than many others depicted some quite touching instances revealing
a different Stanley. He admitted that whenever “[he] thought of Stanley he
was hampered by contradictory feelings...He had seen him carry in his arms
children whose faces and bodies were eaten by smallpox, offer water from
his own canteen to natives dying of cholera or sleeping sickness, as if no one
could infect him” (Llosa 41).
Stanley’s feats brought him huge admiration and praise from people
who had similar ideals and hopes, but who were quite far from the place
where Stanley and other colonial agents were trying to make those ideals
come true. Most of them blindly believed the extraordinary adventures
Stanley retold in his books or in the dispatches he kept sending from Africa to
different newspapers all through his journeys. They were impressed for good
reasons by all his geographical discoveries and mainly by the outstanding
resistance he proved to have in such unfriendly and dangerous environment.
Almost all of the white members accompanying him died reinforcing the
general opinion about his “determination, stamina and spirit” (Butcher 2007:
333), but also reducing the number of witnesses for the fantastic deeds he is
describing in his travelogues.
Although Casement who lived some time near Stanley called him “a
walking mystery” (Llosa 38), and argued that “the mystery would never be
revealed and his life would always remain hidden behind a spider’s web
of inventions” (41), some biographers who were not his contemporaries
tried to unriddle the explorer’s life and personality on the basis of his
Autobiography, his books, his diaries and thousands of letters he wrote, the
interviews he gave at the epoch or the private talks he had with his family,
his friends, collaborators and other personalities. As Casement predicted,
almost nothing can be taken for granted in Stanley’s case. Moreover,
biographers like Jacob Wassermann (1932), Frank McLynn (1990) or Tim
Jeal (2012) insisted that the more light new and relevant data could bring
upon certain episodes of Stanley’s life and his real way of being, the less
we could trust each of Stanley’s piece of information upon Africa, Congo
and the Congolese. However, there is an aspect I took into account, which
is also what Stanley had in common with Leopold II to a certain extent: his
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sad childhood when he totally missed parental love and warmth as he was
left by his Welsh mother in his grandfather’s care, who did not live long and
consequently left the five-year old boy to some relatives. The boy who had
never seen his father, as it is only supposed who he could have been, was
finally educated in an orphanage which seems to have left many traces on
his personality and behaviour. That is why I argue that such circumstances
could have strongly influenced some people who became main actors in
the complicated colonization process where many instances seem unreal
and certain acts perpetrated upon the colonized inhabitants have almost no
logical support, mainly from the twenty first century perspective.
Considering the above information about Stanley’s childhood but
mainly his ‘bastard’ status in a morally demanding British Victorian
society, it becomes obvious that a great part of Stanley’s actions and stories
concerning his past were meant to rebuild a new personality and give him an
important status in a society which had treated him unfairly. As a matter of
fact the seventeen-year old Stanley left for the United States hoping to find
that new position in a more democratic environment. According to his own
stories, which have not been entirely confirmed by the repeated research of
biographers and historians, he started the process of recreating his identity
by finding a new name. It was the moment when the so called John Rowlands
(on his birth name) became Henry Morton Stanley.
It has often been speculated that much of Stanley’s behaviour in the
colonial context was influenced by his unhappy, frustrating even cruel
childhood followed by a dangerous adolescence and youth when he looked
for any possible way of getting out of his anonymity. He joined in turn both
the South Secessionist and then the North Armies in the United States where
he was made prisoner, but then succeeded in deserting. He started to travel
and send information from some hot spots of Europe where wars were being
waged, thus making himself remarked by some famous newspapers’ editors-
in-chief and then sent to be war-correspondent; Stanley became known to
the world as a famous and resourceful American journalist. Consequently,
he was appointed to different complex missions like that of finding Dr.
Livingstone or of exploring new territories of Africa in order to ascertain and
even make new geographical discoveries. Victorian documents attest what
Stanley repeatedly complained about, namely that the British Geographers’
Society as well as the British public manifested the admiration he thought
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he was entitled to receive quite late, only after he made proof of really
extraordinary deeds. It could be taken as one of the reasons why Stanley
skilfully developed a writing style appropriately adjusted to the Victorian
audience’s taste and demands.
In the five years he worked for Leopold II Stanley was involved as
the king’s representative in “opening the caravan trail” (Llosa 42) and
founding stations in order to create “a commercial reality to which European
businessmen [were to have] access from the Atlantic” (43). Stanley’s behaviour
towards the indigenous population during his four journeys was depicted as
contradictory: “The things said about him were always contradictory, so it
was impossible to know which were true and which false and how much
exaggeration and fantasy were in the true statements. He was one of those
men incapable of differentiating reality from fiction” (38). Bursts of fury and
acts of cruelty alternated with manifestations of humane warmth and even
tenderness as it is to be found in Casements’ accounts mentioned above and
also in some of their contemporaries’ comments or those of tribesmen and
other people having also participated in his expeditions:
[Some] old associates of Stanley feared him and accepted his reprimands
in silence and with their eyes lowered [remembering] the expedition of
1871-2 in search of Dr. Livingstone [when] villages [were] decimated,
chiefs decapitated, their women and children shot if they refused to feed the
members of the expedition or provide them with porters, guides, and men to
cut trails through the jungle... But they had blind confidence in his decisions
and spoke with religious reverence of his famous 999-day journey, between
1874 and 1877, when all the other whites and a good number of the Africans
had died. (Llosa 38-9)
Casement admired many of Stanley’s accomplishments, one of the

most appreciated being the road built between 1879 and 1881, which had
opened a way for trade “from the mouth of the great river to the pool, an
enormous fluvial lagoon that, as years passed, would be named for the
explorer: the Stanley Pool” (42). But finally, he understood what the real
motivation was for such impressive and costly designs:
[He] discovered [that] was another of the farsighted operations of the King
of the Belgians to create the infrastructure that would permit the territory
to be exploited following the Berlin Conference of 1885 [and] Stanley was
the audacious executor of that design...When Roger came to Africa, bold
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merchants, the advance guard of Leopold II, were beginning to go deep into
Congolese territory and take out the first ivory, skins, and baskets of rubber
from a region filled with trees that oozed black latex, within reach of anyone
who wanted to gather it. (42-3)
As years passed truth became more and more obvious for Casement.
In 1900 “when he had been named consul in Boma by the Foreign Office”
(44) he had two opportunities to speak to Leopold II in person and to read
some of the King’s personality, which helped him change his suspicions
into certitudes: the king was not only “a pompous narcissist...but also
a statesman of cold, Machiavellian intelligence” (45-6). He had been the
perfect designer of Congo colonization and had succeeded in getting a
huge personal colony in Africa, 76 times bigger than his Belgian kingdom,
because he had the inspiration and maybe the chance to use the perfect
achiever. The King’s drives were much similar to the explorer’s drives. I can
say that their thirst for public admiration and international recognition was
on the first place. They both hoped to get wealthy as well, but in this respect
things change significantly because their means of getting rich were totally
different: Stanley put his life at big risk several times enduring numerous
hardships and illness; then he worked hard to produce thousands of pages of
adventure books, he travelled around the world to share his experience and
help people make a more truthful image of Africa by delivering numerous
speeches and participating in conferences, while Leopold II never put foot
in his Congo Free State, but found the way to extort it of huge amounts of
natural resources and of millions of human lives by assigning other people
to accomplish his lucrative design which brought him very important profits.
***
I have used the term ‘story’ for what happened with pre-colonial
Congo as a consequence of the huge wave of European traders, missionaries,
explorers and adventurers who had discovered Africa as the most appropriate
place for their exploits, in order to emphasise the almost unbelievable aspect
of a very pragmatic design. I reckoned of great importance to approach this
issue in detail aiming at offering a sample of colonising strategy, which
also represents one of the most daring projects of the kind. Leopold’s
“philanthropic” discourse is also a sample for the numerous discourses that
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were delivered in all kinds of lectures, interviews and conferences where

the important issue of civilising poor sub-human creatures seemed to be
a genuine drive. The discovery of new lands, possible future markets for
European merchandise and also numerous work places for Europeans
desperately looking for a better paid job, but mainly the discovery of
extremely rich minerals such as gold, copper, diamonds and a diversity of
other natural resources, made of Africa a very attractive place. The explorers
were capable of gaining fame and money after delivering not only lectures
but also adventure books, very much on the Victorian public’s taste. I have
tried to spotlight the impact that such a state of things eventually had upon
the fate of far-living peoples who had never asked for help or cooperation,
who were living their lives peacefully, in well-established communities
functioning according to ancestral laws and customs. I have also brought as
an argument a similar Romanian point of view expressed by Aurel Varlam
at the beginning of the twentieth century, when he had the opportunity to
work in Leopold’s Congo as a magistrate. He published indignant remarks
related to his Congo experience in the context of savage imperialist regime,
insisting on the falsity of the colonial discourse heard in the International
Conference of Berlin, where the fate of the black continent had been decided
without even taking into consideration the natural demarcations between
the ancestral local tribes who, as a matter of fact, had not even a single
representative, thus, no possibility to agree or disagree with the Europeans’
project.
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PART II
165
CHAPTER V: Heart of Darkness,

the metaphor of a revelation
V. 1. Conrad, “the British imperialist agent”

V. 1.1. Some Victorian principles and a perfect hero (Livingstone)
The European fever of exploring, colonizing, extending, building,
putting in place Western rules was manifested in almost the same way
by all nations taking part in the partition process of the black continent.
Their clear goal of creating conditions for international trade but mostly for
specific economic advantages in larger and larger African territories was to
be accomplished by means of specific approaches more or less related to
national specificities and projects. Consequently, we can find references to
British, or French, or German, or Belgian imperialism and others, because
the countries involved in the largely theorized processes of colonization
and imperialism purported to well defined politics of interrelating with the
colonized peoples. The close connection between imperialism and culture
gave rise to such specific features from the very beginning both in the mother
country and in its colonies. Focusing upon Britain some critics define this
relationship putting it in a new post-modern light:
[C]ulture is undoubtedly a feature of the imperialist landscape that stretches

far beyond the narrow horizons of language and power. Culture helped to
define British imperialism as distinct from other European versions. It was
an agency for propagating support for the imperialistic enterprise. It also
created idealized notions of the British themselves. Moreover, it raised the
concept of adventure, chivalric duty and sacrifice. The culture of imperialism
promoted ‘Britishness’ but also embraced aspects of the civilisations it came
across. Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern designs became part of the
British imperial culture. There was a cultural exchange on a global scale,
often accompanied by greater population mobility and migration…it is more
difficult to find where British culture was imposed successfully. (Johnson
221/204)
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The diversity of goods coming from all corners of the world “made the
British feel that they commanded a world-wide system; it transferred their
identity from an island nation to a cosmopolitan Great Power”. Although
people could not benefit this British expansion to equal extents given the
clear class distinctions impacting upon social relationships and economic
advantages, a general feeling of patriotic pride helped cementing popular
bonds in an attempt to “support expansion of the Empire” (222/205). The
Victorian British people were keeping informed about the events taking place
in the colonies from newspapers famous for their art of selling sensational,
frightening, even horrifying pieces of information so as to augment their
profits, and also from the extraordinary adventure books generally issued
by well known and praised explorers and missionaries. “Imperialism often
gathered a popular following because of the way that colonial wars and
events were reported in the press” (223/206). Even children’s books were
sources of dissemination of the same racialist principle of British superiority
over any other race:
As an educational tool, historical fiction, romances and children’s books were

similarly affected by themes of patriotism and the modernist superiority of the
British race…British characters were stereotypically heroic and moral, with
courage, deference to tradition, and decorum. Their opponents, regardless
of race, were often untrustworthy, savage, brutal, effeminate, cowardly and
immoral. (225/208)
Too many British people like numerous other Europeans genuinely

believed that their compatriots were carrying “the white man’s burden” while
“exercising a trusteeship over violent and savage people or populations as
yet unable to resist the rule of native tyrants”. Besides, it has often been
underscored that “the British ruled with minimum force, under Christian
and paternal ethics and [their] long term aim was the improvement of the
land they inherited, with other European powers…Missionary work, with
its roots in the nineteenth century, illustrated the ‘good works’ of Empire
too” (226/209). Missionaries and explorers were worshipped personalities
in the Victorian society as people knew from adventure books and the kind
of sensational news the contemporary journals were providing, how much
courage and endurance were needed in order to visit such a dangerous place
as Africa.
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David Livingstone was the perfect type of Victorian hero, a remarkable

personality who had succeeded in impressing the British with his first
crossing of sub-Saharan Africa from east to west and mostly by revealing
the outrageous Arab slave trade still making numerous victims mainly in the
eastern part of the continent close to the Zanzibar slave market. He was also
among the ones who visited Congo and spent there some time during his
African experience. Some of the previous British explorers of Africa had lost
their lives or got wounded or severely ill because of Africa’s real dangers. In
1806 Mungo Park, one of the first explorers of the black continent died while
travelling for the second time to Africa, drowned in the “terrible rapids down
the Niger” (E. W. Bovill 1966). He had already published a very successful
book, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa. His descriptions of different
tribes and landscapes, of cruel scenes of slavery I have already mentioned
in the previous chapter had made him very famous and contributed to an
increase of the public and even government interest in discovering new
areas of the African land. He had an analytical and sympathetic outlook
on the natives. One of his remarks proves his humanistic approach of the
Other: “whatever difference there is between the negro and European, in
the conformation of the nose, and the colour of the skin, there is none in the
genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings of our common nature” (Park
1799: 82). There were some other British explorers who had lost their lives
in Africa: Richard Lander and Gordon Laing were murdered, while James
Tuckey and Hugh Clapperton succumbed to African diseases. John Spieke
and Richard Burton got severely wounded by the natives’ spears, whereas
five of Henry Stanley’s European companions were to die because of disease
or drowning in the dangerous Congo River.
Having survived to similar dangers, Livingstone, the great missionary-
explorer and doctor who spent half of his life in Africa and eventually died
there, received state funeral, a grave in Westminster Abbey and celebrations
in his native Scotland and equally in Africa, which tells much about celebrity
in Victorian times:
He exemplified the virtues that the Victorians most valued: bravery, moral
rectitude, industriousness, endurance, modesty and willingness to sacrifice
his life for a cause—epitomising for later imperialists the hugely reassuring
ideal of selfless ‘service’ given to the ruled by their white rulers. (Jeal “Dr.
Livingstone...” 2013b)
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Tim Jeal, the biographer who first wrote about Livingstone’s life
in 1973 when he was only 26 years old, felt like “revisiting [revising and
expanding] his book” thirty years later (2013), aiming at sharing some
peculiar information; among other aspects the readers can find out that the
famous missionary was less appreciated by his contemporaries for what his
twentieth century admirers often emphasized: the way he treated Africans,
with kindness and comprehension; the Victorian public was more impressed
by his “glorification of trade, and his insistence that without commerce
Christianity could make no headway, [in spite of his] feeling that individual
traders were exploiting Africans scandalously”. This represents one of “a
bewildering range of paradoxical views: many of them contradictory, some
naïve, often prescient beyond his times” (Jeal 2013a: 2). It is worth having
an examination of these paradoxes for I would argue that they were present
in the case of numerous British and other Europeans of the epoch when
issues of colonialism were in discussion. It is also important to specify that
Livingstone’s views are also clearly expressed in the large collection of
letters he exchanged with friends and family, which are partially available
even for the large public. Jeal consulted more than these letters so that we can
fully trust his claims which I will try to summarize regarding Livingstone’s
paradoxical views.
From his child worker experience in the cotton mills he knew exactly
what the great industrialization meant for the large masses of people; he also
knew about the overcrowded cities of his native Scotland with their starving
inhabitants from where “he begged his parents to emigrate” (2013b), but
he kept the illusory hope that those precarious conditions could represent
the marvelous chance for the Africans to climb one or more steps on the
progress scale. It can be speculated upon his way of judgement regarding
the appropriate conditions for progress that could have worked for very
backward people who did not need much, in his and many others’ opinion,
to feel that they advanced a lot. Those people who were full of joy at the
simple sight of a mirror and of some coloured beads would have felt happy
and fulfilled with some clothes and food. They did not even need money
as long as they did not have money but ‘cowries’ or ‘rafia’ or other weird
banknotes or coins. For that reason the colonizers used to ‘pay’ them with
equally strange items like lengths of wire or cloth as we can read in Stanley’s
adventure books or in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
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Not only once did Livingstone express his opinion related to the bad
influence Europeans had upon the natives who perverted their behaviour
after a while spent in close contact with them, but in different circumstances
he manifested the belief that such contact could improve the Africans’
manners. Here again things can be understood and interpreted from the
Europeans’ perspective: the natives’ manners were so wild that any European
could teach them something new to count for a little progress in their huge
backwardness. Nobody thought about the bad model the white colonizer
could provide as some Enlightenment philosophers had already forewarned
and as things have eventually happened.
Livingstone’s way of action was frequently in contradiction with his
manifested opinions. Thus, he approached the natives differently being able
to go beyond the superficial kind of relationships generally created between
Europeans and Africans, mainly when it was about preaching Christianity.
In 1841 when he went to Botswana as a medical missionary he understood
why previous missionaries failed in converting the local people: those tribes
were practising polygamy, which had been condemned as adultery; they
also had initiation and circumcision rites, which were taken as barbarous
black magic practice; besides, they wanted to know the dead stayed dead
as resurrection represented a threat for them especially when it referred to
wars and enemies. It was the reason why he was the missionary with almost
no convert but with many friends among the natives, who did not know
their adulated missionary was advocating new methods to bring Christianity
to Africa. For them Livingstone was the doctor and missionary genuinely
willing to help but not through the generally practised European way of
imposing by force and sometimes by violence new cultural values. It is an
accepted belief that his way of thinking about commerce as an equal and
necessary partner for the Gospel helped the advancement on introducing
both Christianity and other Western institutions in Africa undermining the
tribal system which he seemed to understand better than many others.
He had plenty of European supporters, especially after having
published his Missionary Travels sold in a huge number of copies. In spite
of manifesting several paradoxical convictions and having some failures in
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his expeditions and geographical discoveries, Livingstone is still considered

a national hero. Jeal appreciates that:
More than any of his contemporaries, he had become a myth of his own
lifetime.It was not simply that he could be admired as exemplifying bravery,
endurance, modesty and self-sacrifice – all the virtues Victorians wished to
possess – or even that he had been a humanitarian and a Christian. It was
more subtle. By praising him, the British public could feel pride without
guilt, reconciling seemingly contradictory elements in a soothingly self-
righteous combination of patriotism and Christianity, recalling for many the
sense of moral superiority and national virtue experienced when Britain led
the fight against slavery. The parallel was certainly there, since Livingstone
had devoted the latter part of his life to the extermination of the East African
slave trade. (2013a: 3)
His revelations about the Arab and African Muslim slave trade causing
bloody episodes with hundreds of deaths and extreme violence “compelled
the British government to use the Royal Navy to stop slave dhows reaching
the Gulf and, in 1873, to close the Zanzibar slave market”. This stayed like
a great feat in the British minds together with Livingstone ‘s appreciation
for his countrymen whom he called “the most philanthropic and freedom-
loving in the world” (Jeal 2013b). Nevertheless, Jeal, who is also one of
Stanley’s biographers, claims that the main role in the creation of this long
lasting fame was played by H. M. Stanley, the other famous colonial figure
of Victorian times, Welsh-American journalist and explorer. After having
accomplished his first assignment in Africa, that of discovering Livingstone
who was lost from the public view for some years, Stanley had the literary
ability to depict the missionary making use only of admiring and praising
phrases, which culminated with the one claiming that Livingstone was “a
man as near an angel as the nature of living man will allow” (Jeal’s review
to “Explorers of the Nile” 22 Sep 2011).
There are some hints in Jeal’s accounts about the two explorers which
leave place for various interpretations. Facts are also significant and can
be interpreted in order to support different theories related to what was
deep in such people’s mind and soul and pushed them on a certain way
of approaching the colonial issue. In my opinion the fact that Livingstone
stopped sending news about his state of being and about his discoveries, and
then he refused to go back to England after Stanley had found him, is much
related to his deeper understanding of the whole story of Europeans’ good
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intentions regarding a real positive change in the natives’ lives. I would not
say that he was an idealist; on the contrary, he was a very practical man
who thought, like many others as a matter of fact, that human nature can
be helped to improve, which is absolutely true, but he did not imagine what
means would be put in practice in order to achieve this great goal. And
precisely because he was able to understand more of the Africans’ culture
and personality he might have also realized something that the majority of
Europeans were not interested to see, namely the impossibility of burning
several phases of development of a human society in a very short lapse of
time and moreover by making use of violence. He obstinately kept going
on exhausting expeditions hoping to finally find the source of the Nile and
also to put an end to the Arab slave trade, in spite of his very bad health state
which caused his death in 1873 only one year after Stanley’s departure and
attempt to take him back home.
The way Livingstone died, kneeled and praying, is also symbolic
for the genuine Christian who kept hoping that a divine solution was to
come for something he could not comprehend. Meanwhile, he did his best
to be useful to both the Africans by healing them when necessary and to the
Europeans by carrying on his explorations in the attempt to facilitate trade.
His biographers claim that many of his actions were triggered by vanity
and self-righteous drives; yet I perceive him as the opposite of what Kurtz
embodies: the idealist visionary fancying that imperialism could really
help civilizing people, but who first went native and afterwards went mad
when he realized his hopes related to the great capacity of human nature to
improve was far from the cruel reality. In his desperate design the human
creatures that could not be civilised had to be ‘exterminated’. At the same
time it should be specified that at the moment Livingstone died, colonialism,
and precisely the Belgian type, had not yet shown its hideous face, whereas
Conrad created his emblematic character, Kurtz, after having seen most of
the horrors implanted by the Leopoldian rule in Congo.
In Victorian England, there were also political groups “[who] saw little
benefit in the Empire and many were struck by the contradiction of imperial
rule and the British democracy. Imperialism, nationalism and militarism
were regarded as partners that had caused the First World War” (Johnson
2003: 228/211). Distinctions were to be made also in the way the British
monarchs “adapted to the changed circumstances of greater democracy and
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placed service to the country before self-interest” (230/213) compared to the

Belgian king, Leopold II, who, as we have previously shown, made use of
all possible means and people in order to achieve the acquisition of the huge
Congo as a personal fiefdom, which he then, indirectly approached with
maximum ruthlessness and greed mainly aiming at gaining personal profit.
V. 1. 2. Conrad, a British liberal nationalist

The above mentioned aspects together with certain political views
manifested by the members of a given nation and also their definite cultural
characteristics led to a distinct type of rule in the British colonies mainly on
the African territory as compared to the French type of rule, but mainly to
the Belgian way of ruling. Both the indirect British system and the direct
French system of rule were much different from the Belgian system applied
by Leopold II in the Congo Free State. This aspect is very important in
developing my argument at this point where I intend to explain how a
certain cultural and ideological formation of a writer can influence his work,
focusing on the controversial Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad
after having worked for several months in the Belgian Congo as a steamer
officer.
Eduard Said (1994) approached the differentiation Conrad instinctively
suggested with his story between “British rationality” and “Belgian
rapacity” in his well known essay dealing with the Two Visions in Heart of
Darkness. Said argued that “what makes Conrad different from the other
colonial writers who were his contemporaries is that, for reasons having
partly to do with the colonialism that turned him, a Polish expatriate, into
an employee of the imperial system, he was so self-conscious about what
he did” (Said 1994: 23). In Said’s opinion “Conrad had an extraordinarily
persistent residual sense of his own exilic marginality [as] he quite carefully
qualified Marlow’s narrative with the provisionality that came from standing
at the very juncture of this world with another, unspecified but different”. In
spite of having ”scrupulously recorded the differences between the disgraces
of Belgian and British colonial attitudes, he could only imagine the world
carved up into one or another Western sphere of dominion”. For Said and
many other scholars Conrad was an imperialist, even though “not a great
imperialist entrepreneur like Cecil Rhodes or Frederick Lugard” (24), but
one who understood the mechanism of “an unending process of expansion”
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and who knew he had to comply with a system “he [was] supposed to serve
in order to keep the whole process in motion [thinking] of himself as mere
function, and eventually consider such functionality, such an incarnation of
the dynamic trend, his highest possible achievement” (Hannah Arendt quoted
in Said 1994: 24-5). According to Said there is no hope in Conrad’s vision,
for independent natives to become able of managing self-governing; there
is no other solution than “European tutelage” (25), there is no alternative
to imperialism, at least for a while. Nevertheless, “since Conrad dates
imperialism, shows its contingency, records its illusions and tremendous
violence and waste, he permits his later readers to imagine something other
than an Africa carved up into dozens of European colonies, even if, for his
own part, he had little notion of what that Africa might be” (26).
In spite of these arguments we cannot reduce Conrad to the position
of an agent executing bureaucratic instructions as in the Nazi officers’
case theorized by Hannah Arendt, but we can argue that he was one of the
numerous British Victorians guided in their endeavours by clear principles
and political convictions; people who were trying to be faithful to their beliefs
without turning into cold instruments applying the imperialist rules in guise
of violent acts of correction upon all those uncivilized representatives of
the human kind to the precise goal of helping them make progress. He was
among the few who made the distinction between the imperialist theories
put forward in many British circles and the shocking reality he discovered
in Leopold’s Congo, the same way Roger Casement or Edmund Morel did.
It is not surprising they met and tried to find a way out of that unbearable
situation for the Congolese people as has been previously mentioned. They
discovered there were too many imperial agents “incapable of reflexivity, of
distancing [themselves] from [their] acts”, for whom violence was a “non-
sense” act (Wieviorka 44) and evil had become a banality, as Arendt had
initially formulated (1966).
Some critics made different assumptions regarding Conrad’s behaviour,
principles and political views much related to his childhood experience.
Cedric Watts considers that Conrad’s “keen sense of the price in human
terms exacted by political idealism [as well as] idealism of various kinds
[and] his marked sense of isolation” (Watts in Bloom 31/22) were natural
consequences of some strained years when he lived in exile with his parents
oppressed by the imperialist Russian authorities because of their manifested
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patriotism while living in their native Poland. The difficult conditions and
continuous persecutions shortened the two Korzeniowskis’ lives and the ten-
year old Joseph was sent to be raised by his uncle. “The romanticism of his
father, Appolo Korzeniowski, and the astutely sceptical advice of his uncle
and guardian, Tadeusz Bobrowski” created the psychological background,
in Watts’ opinion, for Conrad’s “sense of paradox and ethical conflict”
manifested in his “ethic of work and duty” (31/22). Heart of Darkness
represents a perfect opportunity for Conrad to express the indignation he felt
at the sight of so much violence and injustice enveloped in hypocrisy and
obvious lack of comprehension of the proper state of things from the part
of the colonial agents. In the Congo environment where Conrad discovered
so much “inefficiency and incompetence” (32/23) everything seemed to be
different from what the naturalized British had built in his mind during his
scholar formation in Victorian England but partially similar to what he then
discovered while working in some other colonized parts of the world as a
seaman. In Watts’ opinion the novella is a proof of Conrad’s ”antipathy to
imperialism: an antipathy that, for many readers, the text seemed to echo
(though in course of time other readers disputed this)” (33/24). Conrad’s
ambivalent attitude towards colonialism has often been an issue in the realm
of criticism coming from the most diverse ideological groups. Watts brings
the example of the Marxist Terry Eagleton who stated:
Conrad neither believes in the cultural superiority of the colonialist nations,

nor rejects colonialism outright. The ‘message’ of Heart of Darkness is
that Western cilvilisation is at the base as barbarous as African society—a
viewpoint which disturbs imperialist assumptions to the precise degree that
it reinforces them. (Eagleton quoted by Watts in Bloom 36/27)
Then Watts brings into analysis “a far more damaging political attack”
launched by the well known Nigerian professor and novelist Chinua Achebe
in a lecture of 1975, which had a strong and long lasting impact as a post-
colonial scholarly approach. Achebe invoked the way in which Conrad
wrote about the African continent as being an almost frightening landscape
resembling “a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity,
into which the wandering European enters at his peril”. The effect of such an
“offensive and totally deplorable book”, in Achebe’s opinion is to promote
racial intolerance (Achebe quoted in Watts 2008: 36/27). Watts also mentions
some other non-European writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wilson
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Harris, Frances B. Singh, and C. P. Sarvan, all of them bringing arguments in

favour of a rich and poignant piece of writing, Sarvan “[arguing] that while
Conrad was certainly ambivalent on racial matters, ‘Heart of Darkness’ was
progressive in its satiric accounts of the colonialists” (38/29). These scholars
represent that category of people who understood that almost any literary
masterpiece, as Heart of Darkness has often been assessed to be, will always
carry the marks of its time transferred from its creator’s formation within a
definite epoch. Consequently, Conrad’s way of approach to different kinds
of imperialist business carried on in the Congo was a clear signal for the
British Victorians that imperialist activities were not at all “an admirable
enterprise”. We can assert that Heart of Darkness proved in time to be “the
most powerful thing ever written on the subject” as Morel argued when
working as a leader of the Congo Reform Association (39/30).
A group of feminist critics claimed that Conrad “belittled women” and
allowed Marlow “[to bring] truth to men by virtue of his bringing falsehood to
women” (Nina Pelikan Straus quoted in Watts 36/27). For Johanna M. Smith
the tale “reveals the collusion of imperialism and patriarchy” (Smith quoted
in Watts 37/28). These observations are as much related to the aspect I have
just dealt with as the use of the word ‘nigger’ incriminated by Achebe and
other supporters of the same judgement. They express their disappointment
for issues which represented the norm, the ordinary in the 1890s when the
novella was created and published. That explains the visible change in
the critical views and argumentation that have been produced at different
moments since the book was written. To put it in Watts’ words, “[as] the text
moves through time, the changing historical and cultural circumstances will
variously increase and reduce its cogency” (41/32).
A more careful look into the principles that served as good guide
for the British in Victorian times could bring some light upon Conrad’s
status in the Victorian society and mostly upon his attitude toward British
imperialism which seems to be more complex than the above mentioned
critics claimed. Pericles Lewis focused precisely on the role England played
in the relationships created between Europe and Africa during colonial
times and on Conrad’s way of revealing it in his Heart of Darkness (Lewis
in Bloom). Lewis explicates how “the crisis of liberal nationalism” was
hinted at by Conrad by the help of Marlow who may be perceived as the
embodiment of multiple Victorian and also Conradean paradoxes:
Both Marlow and Conrad seem eager to defend the idea of England, which
they associate with the values of a liberal, civilized society: ‘efficiency’,
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‘liberty’, ‘sincerity of feeling’, ‘humanity, decency, justice’. Marlow is

careful to distinguish the efficient and humane English who rule by law and
get ‘some real work’ done from the other European imperialists, who plunder
their dependencies purely for their own material advantage while treating the
natives indiscriminately as ‘enemies’ and ‘criminals’. (61/52)
In the 1890s there were frequent political debates between opponents

of “crasser forms of social Darwinism and [those of] the New Liberalism with
its internationalist aspirations” (62/53). The national diversity of characters
in Heart of Darkness was Conrad’s way of alluding, paradoxically again,
both to the conservative insistence upon Englishness or Britishness, and
also to the “English liberalism [which] cannot offer an adequate account
of the role of cultural differences in shaping political beliefs”. Kurtz and
his followers, none of them purely English but “products of biological or
intellectual miscegenation” are meant to suggest “Englishness gone wrong,
a misinterpretation of liberal English values”. Conrad wants his readers to
infer that “Kurtz’s imperfect Englishness makes him such an extremist in
the application of the putatively English values of pity, science, progress,
and virtue” (62/53), contrasting with Marlow, whose Englishness is
repeatedly referred to, able to discern “among the many lies and illusions
of the Company” (63/54) and also to perceive the cannibals’ capacity to
restrain from attacking the ‘pilgrims’ in spite of being hungry and much
more numerous on the steamer’s board as a promise and possibility to let
themselves be civilized.
Conrad’s political position was that of a liberal nationalist who claimed
“that England and English system of government were uniquely well suited
to the development of individual liberties”, this triggering criticism mainly
from the late twentieth century scholars’ point of view which situates
liberalism in opposition to nationalism (Lewis 67/58). Many of Conrad’s
concerns related to Victorian liberal nationalism were expressed in his 1899
correspondence with his friend Cunninghame Graham where some other very
important ideas related to his Heart of Darkness are to be found as he was
in full process of writing and publishing his novella in the form of separate
instalments. “Conrad’s faith in nationalism was shaped by his parents’
involvement in the struggle for Polish nationhood, but he also applied his
trust in the ‘national idea’ to his adoptive motherland, England—and it was
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through the figure of Marlow that he explored the peculiarities of the English
national character”. It has to be mentioned that all through the nineteenth
century liberalism and nationalism had as common target a replacement of
“multinational empires within Europe with self-governing nation-states”
(68/59). The problem seemed to be much complicated for empires outside
Europe where the interests of European imperialists thus became threatened,
although there were cases when the liberal idea of founding free states on
grounds of principles of freedom, equality, and justice deceived the true
believers and led to hideous situations like that of Leopold II’s founding his
own Congo Free State which eventually became a forced-work camp in spite
of its liberal denomination.
The nation-state was to serve the liberal goals of rule by law and peaceful
competition among individuals, and mid-Victorian liberals such as John
Stuart Mill defended imperialism as a stage on the road to representative
government and a world of liberal nation-states. In the wake of Darwinism
and the disillusionments of the scramble for Africa, however, nationalism
and liberalism came increasingly to appear as opposed principles, with
nationalists embracing theories of racial determinism and liberals looking
toward a future of universal government. (68/59)
It may seem rather odd that after his Congo experience in spite of
having undergone deep changes in many regards as he confessed in various
circumstances, Conrad stayed faithful to his liberal nationalist principles
although characterized by certain particularities shared to friends or political
debate partners. He “spoke the language of this English liberal nationalism,
treating faith in the nation-state as the necessary corollary of a belief in the
fundamental egoistic and individualistic character of human nature” (66/57).
One of the reasons why he rejected the idea of “a political system based
purely on rationality and equality” could have been his belief that within a
civil society “people are capable of overcoming their more brutish instincts
and creating a meaningful social order” (69/60). Although Conrad had to
face the racial determinist opponents as well as many others’ faith in the
Enlightenment view of universality of human nature he magisterially found
the means “to present liberal values as the fragile products of historical
accident that seem destined to develop successfully only in a particular
cultural context” (71/62).
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His visiting Congo had given him new reasons to write in a letter to
his friend C. Graham that “l’homme est un animal méchant; [sa] méchanceté
doit être organisée” [human being is a bad animal; his bad nature should be
adjusted] (Collected Letters, II, 159 quoted by P. Lewis in Bloom 68/59;
my translation). In the same letter he made reference to the possibility of
stimulating the development of certain qualities like self-sacrifice, abnegation,
fidelity in the context of the nation-state which encourages solidarity among
individuals. This was in the vein of “many late-Victorian liberals [who]
turned to the shared sense of nationhood as a source of forms of sociability
that would mitigate the potentially antisocial effects of an economic and
political system based on competition; [t]hey described such forms of
sociability with words like ‘altruism’, ‘sympathy’, ‘character’, ‘culture’,
and ‘civilization’” (69/60). Many social thinkers understood what impact
culture, institutions and historical context can have upon people’s characters
and manifested their “skepticism about the possibility of exporting English
institutions, such as rule by law and representative government, to other
nations” mainly because in their judgement “the English had a propensity for
liberty that other nations lacked”. The aspect which triggered many unsettled
debates was related to some people’s conviction that some “nationalities,
from French to Indians and Africans, could [not] eventually benefit from
English institutions and customs [because] elements of their ‘characters’
made them permanently unsuitable for liberty” (69/60). Unfortunately, as
has been shown in the first chapter of this paper, “[t]oward the end of the
nineteenth century, the idea of national character began to harden in political
discourse; [r]ather than referring to what the twentieth century has come
to call ‘culture’, national character increasingly meant what we today call
‘race’” (70/61). English people were not only endowed with special qualities
making them capable of enjoying freedom; their physical constitution was
a strong enough argument for the British theorists of imperialism to express
their genuine “desire of spreading throughout the habitable globe all [these]
characteristics of Englishmen—their energy, their civilization, their religion
and their freedom” (Charles Adderley quoted by Lewis in Bloom 70/61).
Another very important idea was that stated by the liberal Darwinist
T. S. Huxley (1898), who admitted that “the evolution of society was a
process of an essentially different character from that of the evolution of
species” (Huxley quoted by Lewis in Bloom 2008: 70/61). He also invoked
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the ethical standards which should impose a totally different behaviour of

people in a civilized society from that manifested in social groups governed
by natural selection. Referring to a perpetual growth of positivism within
the late-Victorian society Pericles Lewis claims that:
[T]he discourse of national character tended to fade into a strict determinism

with distinctly pro-imperialist and authoritarian overtones [while] on the
political left, democrats and Fabian socialists generally maintained their
faith in the rationality of human nature and paid relatively little attention to
the problems of cultural difference and historicism that were associated with
the notion of national character and its Burkean heritage. (71/62)
Although Conrad might have felt stuck “between the two extremes
of racial determinism and an unbounded faith in the universality of human
nature, in Heart of Darkness he offers an almost allegorical account of the
conflict between these two perspectives”. From the first lines of the famous
report for ‘the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs’
the readers can perceive an optimistic Kurtz who wrote that “we whites…
’must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural
beings…By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good
practically unbounded’” (71/62). It is hard to imagine the total change in
Kurtz’s state of mind and soul which made him write the famous urge in the
postscript of the same report, “Exterminate all the brutes!” (Conrad 1995:50).
It seems that Conrad’s purpose was to represent Kurtz as the embodiment of
the failure of keeping himself in the limits of morality while exercising his
free will upon the savages supposed to be civilizable. Things happened the
other way round for Kurtz who eventually went native; then the incapacity
of fulfilling his idealistic plans of civilizing the natives guided him toward
the extreme solution of eliminating whatever could not be mended. As the
acceptance of one’s own failure is not an easy task, Kurtz simply cracks
under its weight like a confirmation of warnings previously formulated by
other people who experienced similar situations and felt “the white man’s
burden” bend their will. As in a desperate attempt to save other Europeans
from the same threat and failure Kurtz gives the only possible way out:
“Exterminate all the brutes!”
Conrad comes with his nationalistic solution in guise of the pure
Englishman, Marlow, who is continually preoccupied by the ethical aspect
of facts and tries to find moral solutions for the problems encountered
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throughout the story. In contrast to Kurtz’s idealism regarding human nature,

Marlow is a good observer of human behaviour and makes sensible remarks
about the impact of ‘character’, ‘innate strength’, and ‘restraint’ upon certain
situations, more or less related to historical events. It seems that the other
pure Englishmen in the story, the listeners on board of the Nellie, have the
role of living proofs of what a well functioning society means for real human
progress. But Conrad attempts at triggering a different point of view as well
by comparing the ‘restraint’ manifested by the group of educated Englishmen
to the absolutely surprising ‘restraint’ on the part of the group of cannibals
Marlow had in the steamer crew he was leading on the Congo River and also
to Kurtz’s lack of ‘restraint’. It is one of the writer’s hints at the possibility
of manifesting the same moral attitude in a given situation irrespective of
one’s level of education. “He draws attention to the potentially disturbing
thought that ‘savage’ customs originate in the same impulses as ‘civilized’
ones”. The episode of “the savagery of pre-Roman Britain seems to call into
question the fairly conventional nationalism and historical optimism of the
primary narrator, [while] Marlow’s account of his ‘choice of nightmares’
in Congo will itself problematize his more sceptical account of English
culture” (Lewis 76/67).
The character issue is permanently approached from different
perspectives. Marlow speaks of a ‘hidden something’ that makes the difference
among people’s characters, but he does not accept the racial differentiation
implied by the biological determinism plainly expounded by the Company
Doctor through his racialist theories. Yet Marlow reassesses his judgement
when failing to make himself understood and obeyed by a group of natives
and feels proud of his being English, admitting that the Doctor could have
had good reasons for his theory. Lewis claims that “Marlow seems to result
largely from [Conrad’s] desire to portray his own life experiences through
the filter of an English version of himself” (80/71), although, in spite of
the similarities between some episodes of Conrad’s life and those retold by
Marlow, their inner beliefs are different:
Marlow, in his remarks about the ‘hidden something’, identifies nationality

closely with race and therefore puts an unbridgeable gap between each nation
and her neighbours; Conrad implies that nationality, while it determines
character and is beyond the conscious control of the individual, can be
acquired, and it is thus primarily a matter of upbringing—nurture rather than
nature. (80/71)
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These two perspectives come very close to the theory and concepts
I have developed in the first chapter of this book. I have also tried to
demonstrate the utmost importance nurture has in moulding the individual
character. Conrad brings his own example in order to prove that he, a Polish-
born individual developed in an almost perfect English citizen by the force
of change which worked upon his character “almost automatically and
without any conscious choice on his part” (Lewis according to Conrad’s
claims in A Personal Record). He had “a strange and overpowering feeling”
that English has always been “an inherent part” of himself (Conrad quoted
in Lewis 80/71). It could be taken as that ‘hidden something’ Marlow
repeatedly mentions, or as a particular cultural context that made Conrad’s
successful development possible. Or from a historical perspective the events
that took place in Conrad’s life created that ‘historical accident’ which
brought him at the right time in the right place where Englishness worked
upon his character to such extent that he became a true British nationalist.
Any of these assumptions may help us understand that similar phenomena
are only specific cases and not universal ones and the fact that Marlow is not
able to find solutions and answers suggests that the situation Conrad found
in Congo was one of those existing in the world with no answer or solution.
It happened as a consequence of a failure to understand several aspects.
Lewis clarifies Conrad’s intention to suggest a liberal English crisis:
By making Marlow so incapable of explaining his own attachment to Kurtz,

Conrad suggests that the liberal English nation-state represented by Marlow
and his listeners faces a crisis it cannot comprehend. Its values—humanity,
decency, justice, efficiency, liberty, and devotion to ideals—are culturally
specific and on the verge of being outmoded. Since they depend so completely
on a particular English character, which is the product of historical accident
(or good luck), they are incapable of being exported to the rest of the world.
When the devotees of an English-style liberalism attempt to apply it to places
and peoples unsuited by character to liberal self-government, the result is
either a fanatical idealism tinged with egalitarianism (à la Kurtz) that tears
down all institutions, or a bureaucratic and hypocritical nightmare (like the
Company’s) in which the strongest take advantage of the weakest while
cloaking their motives in the forms of law and liberalism. (81/72)
Although Conrad lets us understand his suspicion related to

imperialists’ good intentions concerning a real progress of the first visited,
then appropriated human communities, he persists in believing that the
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British are capable of nobler feelings and more decent, fair treatment of
the colonised, in spite of England’s perpetual campaign of colonising more
and more territories in Africa and in the rest of the world. One of Conrad’s
regrets is that because of lacking that ‘hidden something’ the Africans will
not be able to take advantage of the treasure English culture would represent
for them as not even members of other civilised nationalities will succeed.
Comparing Conrad’s position to similar political principles and philosophical
beliefs of his British contemporaries or of other European countries we can
have the picture of a Europe in total misunderstanding of reality, or perhaps
people who did not have time and disposition to understand being too busy
to follow their pragmatic impulses.
V. 2. A psycho-analytical perspective
In order to make clear my point of view related to this general
misinterpretation of the whole state of things, attitudes and practices carried
on during colonialism I relied on some of Freud’s conclusions after having
analysed how deeply cognitive and affective interests are intertwined,
thus affecting people’s actions and reactions. Freud highlights the fact that
our intellect is not an independent force but on the contrary, very much
dependent upon our emotional impulses. According to his studies, psycho-
analytic experience confirmed that “logical arguments are impotent against
affective interests” (Freud “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death”,
1915), which was repeatedly proved in the colonial context. Freud focused
on the causes and impact of the permanent state of conflict that has always
existed between different human communities leading to smaller or larger
wars and death of too many innocent people, colonialism representing such
a situation where Freud’s reasoning perfectly applies.
It can be argued that the emotional impact affected both the colonizer
and the colonized although for different reasons and triggering different
effects. Freud invokes the initial hope “that the extensive community of
interests established by commerce and production [would help] the educative
factor of an external compulsion towards morality” (Freud 1915) be more
effective than it eventually proved to be, at least in the case of African people
and other human communities that were colonized. “But it would seem that
nations still obey their passions far more readily than their interests. Their
interests serve them, at most, as rationalizations for their passions; they put
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forward their interests in order to be able to give reasons for satisfying their
passions” (Freud). It could be an explanation for the fact that they have
never really tried to understand why the native peoples they attempted to
civilize did not reach their expectations. Besides, they manifested their
dissatisfaction in the worst possible ways: by applying cruel punishments,
threats, impositions, restrictions, overwhelming tasks and taxes, humiliation,
injustice, totally overlooking and belittling their cultural values and family
habits. The natives were considered sub-human, uncivilized and mostly
incapable of receiving and acquiring the Western achievements:
We had expected the great, world-dominating peoples of the white race upon
whom the leadership of the human species has fallen, who were known to
have worldwide interests as their concern, to whose creative powers were
due not only our technical advances toward the control of nature but the
artistic and scientific standards of civilization—we had expected these
peoples to succeed in discovering another way of settling misunderstandings
and conflicts of interests. (Freud 1915)
Although Freud seems certain that only the white race would be able
to lead the world his disappointment is even greater as this failure is for him
“irreversible and definitive”. He claims that the main reason for such an
effect was the Europeans’ incapacity of perceiving some significant traits
“in the historical behaviour of those societies”. They should have been fit
and willing to participate “in the common work of civilization” (Freud).
For the Europeans civilization means work. We have already heard it in
Livingstone’s claim “Christianity, Commerce and Civilization” and in
Marlow’s discourse of “efficiency”. The general Western remark is that
Africans are lazy. Consequently, they needed correction and discipline;
especially because they had to work for the Westerners’ profit. When it is a
matter of profit who would waste time to come to know and understand the
Other? Or reassess the situation? Referring to a different possibility beyond
the intellect-affect relationship Freud suggests new possibilities:
Having once more come to understand our fellow-citizens who are now
alienated from us, we shall much more easily endure the disappointment
which the nations, the collective units of mankind, have caused us, for the
demands we make upon these should be far more modest. Perhaps they are
reproducing the course of individual development, and today still represent
very primitive phases in the organization and formation of higher unities.
(Freud 1915)
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In my opinion this is the main reason for the total failure of the white-
black encounter which was severely worsened by the imperialist practices.
The high expectations and demands from the height of European civilization
represented total nonsense for the black communities who were indeed in
an incipient phase of individual development. I do not imply that was the
beginning of civilization in Africa, for I have already explained that several
great empires flourished and then faded in Africa in history in parallel with
tribal communities following their natural course in other parts of the black
continent. The intervention of white people was at any moment in history
rather brutal and with painful consequences for the Black Africa. The
natural reaction in such circumstances is defence and rejection of something
that was already implanted in the affective memory as danger. It is more
precisely the effect of experiencing trauma that I have developed in the first
chapter of this study. According to several experiments it has been proved
that such traumatic experiences can be transmitted within and across several
generations affecting entire communities because of violent behaviour.
That is why we can infer that there were already certain predispositions
for violence and aggressive reactions on the part of certain members of the
African communities. It has also been proved that there is a cycle of violence
where violence stimulates more violent reaction, this being exactly what
happened when demands were not fulfilled and the natives were cruelly
punished.
The human intellect has huge capacities for learning and improvement,
but the methods to stimulate these capacities are of paramount importance.
Taking into account the special situation created by the great disparity which
was a reality at the moment of the colonial encounter the approach should
have been totally different. Moreover if we think about the obvious injustice
of violently intruding into a human community taking advantage of this
disparity we cannot be astonished by the result.
Obviously bothered by the feeling that something was missing from the
great picture represented by “the common work of civilization”, which people
like him driven by genuinely good intentions tried to help keep in motion,
Conrad did his best to descend into the unknown in an attempt to discover
more about the truth of the disaster he found. His own journey into Congo
helped him discover not only the core of the Earth but also the depth of the
human soul; the same feeling was manifested after some years by Jung who
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had his own journey to Africa; he assessed the experience “not as something
real, but rather as a symptomatic or symbolic act” (Jung 1989: 272).
It was accepted by several critics that Conrad’s experience was
majestically transposed in a heraldic metaphor of Carl Jung’s theory developed
some years later, on the basis of extended experiments and research, as the
journey of individuation. Jung wrote about the archetype of the shadow we
all have in our selves and argued that our most important duty in life is to
discover and accept whatever lies hidden in our subconscious: “As far as
we can discern the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the
darkness of mere being” (326). For both Conrad and Jung it became more
and more clear that something worked upon the European psyche at the
contact with the African reality. That something supposed to change the size
of the head hinted at by the Company Doctor and first rejected by Marlow
could be caused by the strong and uncontrollable reaction at the discovery
that the source of all civilizations might be in the Heart of Africa and also
by the astonishing revelation that man keeps hidden in the Self everything
the new comers despised in the natives’ behaviour, or to be more precise
that whatever the white man proved capable to inflict to the black man was
much worse than what the natives were doing because it was not innocent.
It could be called an identity crisis triggering remorse of a Kurtzian type.
Jung’s analysis presents the following picture:
In travelling to Africa to find a psychic observation post outside the sphere

of the European, I unconsciously wanted to find that part of my personality
which had become invisible under the influence and the pressure of being
European. This part stands in unconscious opposition to myself, and indeed
I attempt to suppress it. In keeping with its nature, it wishes to make it more
conscious. (244)
Jung’s study of his own psychic transformations on his way back to

Europe via Egypt reaches a conclusion similar to whatever Freud suggested
when he implied that certain social groups may be in a process of reproduction
of the course of individual development:
I glided on the peaceful waters of the Nile toward the north—toward Europe,
toward the future...Thus the journey from the heart of Africa to Egypt became,
for me, a kind of drama of the birth of light. That drama was intimately
connected with me, with my psychology...I had wanted to know how Africa
would affect me, and I had found out. (273-4)
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In the same vein Marlow claims that “going up that river was like
travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation
rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings” (Conrad 30). For Jung “it
was as if [that] moment [he was] returning to the land of [his] youth, and as
if [he] knew that dark-skinned man who had been waiting for [him] for five
thousand years” (Jung 250), while Marlow’s pilgrims are “wanderers on a
prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet”
(Conrad 31). The hardships caused by the voyage downstream make him
think of a return in time:
We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an

accursed inheritance...We could not understand because we were too far
and could not remember, because we were travelling in the night of the first
ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign—and no memories.
(Conrad 32)
The contemplation of the natives carrying on their rituals and other

cultural customs inspires in both Conrad and Jung almost the same feeling of
repulsion doubled by the fear of resemblance with what each of us could have
been at a certain moment in history. To Jung “the people [who] ran around in
a great state of excitement, shouting and gesticulating, [l]ooked savage and
rather alarming” (Jung 241), whereas Conrad perceives the group of natives
like “a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet
stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling” (32) everything being depicted
by Marlow, who in this case as well as in many other moments depicted in
the novella seems to be Conrad’s spokesman. Thus, we find out Conrad’s
feelings of worry while realizing that those wild people were as a matter
of fact humans like him and like all of us in spite of their being so “ugly”.
Yet they inspire manliness, which compared to his white kin he would not
expect, as manliness also supposes an acceptance of the truth:
They howled and leaped and spun, and made horrible face; but what thrilled
you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your
remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly
enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there
was in you just the faintest trace of a response of frankness of that noise, a
dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from
the night of the first ages—could comprehend. And why not? The mind of
man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well
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as all the future. What is there after all?—who can tell?—but truth—truth
stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows,
and can look on without a wink. But he must be as much a man as these on
shore. He must meet the truth...(32)
Here is the big issue: the capacity of accepting the truth. For Jung this
means the acceptance of one’s own shadow, which could be achieved only by
descending into the unconscious. This may be successfully paralleled with
Marlow’s journey which, as several critics claimed, has three dimensions:
spatial, temporal and psychological. The psychological voyage into one’s
deep, dark self meant to illuminate one’s personality by accepting that hidden
truth which we all have in common with the prehistoric beings or with less
civilized ones or sub-human as they were generally called, is precisely
what Jung was to theorize at the beginning of the twentieth century as ‘the
process of individuation’. Having a more careful insight into Jung’s theory
we understand that individuation was supposed to lead to an enrichment of
one’s psychological life as a consequence of consciousness development (cf.
Jung, 1989); this cannot be implied about Marlow who only managed a self
introspection and a certain spiritual elevation at the end of his journey “back
in time” by repeatedly asking his listeners for answers he could not find on
his own, or for approval whenever he was making suppositions related to
huge existential problems of mankind. His perpetual hesitations and lack of
solutions reveal Conrad’s perplexity when faced with “the Horror”.
There is also Kurtz’s reaction when faced with the truth, which
we have already assessed as extremist on Marlow’s suggestion and that
symbolises not only his incapacity of understanding the truth, but a universal
incapacity of dealing with the African reality representing at the same time
the incapacity of communication between representatives of different phases
of individual development.
V. 3. From childhood dreams to adult achievements

It was not only the Congo experience that was to be shared with the
large public through Marlow’s story, but also some other significant details
of Conrad’s life such as his childhood dream of travelling to remote places.
Little Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was not simply dreaming, but
almost promising to himself in a loud voice, while pointing to the centre of
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Africa: “When I grow up I shall go there”, as he wrote in A Personal Record

(1912: 13) and later told to some of his friends. He did not know he had
pointed to the Heart of Darkness. Similarly, Marlow tells his listeners on
the Nellie where his call for Africa came from and gives some more details
about his first attraction to geography and voyage thus unveiling Conrad’s
feelings:
When I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours
at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories
of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and
when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map I would put my
finger on it and say ‘When I grow up I shall go there’. The North Pole was
one of those places…Other places were scattered about the hemispheres. I
have been in some of them…But there was one yet—the biggest, the most
blank, so to speak—that I had a hankering after. True, by this time it was not
a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and
lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery…It
had become a place of darkness. (Conrad 1995: 7-8)
Conrad’s route from Russian Poland to Leopold’s Congo was drawn

by destiny where a number of circumstances helped little Joseph’s dream
become true. He had no idea that his dream was to turn into a nightmare; the
worst of his life, the one which triggered very deep and complex changes
in his body, mind and soul. The changes he admitted his entire personality
underwent and were essential in the decision he took to leave sailing and
become a writer. It was an attempt to let people know about some of the
many mysteries of the world and of human nature. Unfortunately, they were
unpleasant revelations about a reality many tried to hide.
The thread of his life passes from the very beginning through the
turmoil of political conflicts, injustice, physical and emotional suffering,
exposing little Joseph too early to that perplexity he was to feel later in
life as well, when confronted to almost impossible situations which several
times caused his physical and psychic resistance to bend.
His parents’ resistance and fight against the Russian occupation
brought them persecutions and then the family’s exile in the cold northern
Russia, which meant illness and death, first of his still young mother, and
four years after, that of his father. The twelve-year-old Joseph had at least the
chance to be tutored by a wealthy and loving maternal uncle who did his best
for the rest of his life to help his nephew build an intellectual personality,
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in spite of the boy’s reluctance to imposed discipline. At the age of fifteen

his uncle sent him to attend the courses of a small boarding house whose
owner’s daughter recalled that teen-aged Josef was “intellectually extremely
advanced but [he] disliked school routine, which he found tiring and dull;
he used to say…he…planned to become a great writer…He disliked all
restrictions…He suffer[ed] from severe headaches and nervous attacks”
(Najder 2007: 43-44).
We cannot assert which was precisely the reason for sending the
sixteen-year-old Josef to make a career at sea, but the information provided
by different documents attest that his own dreams of becoming a seaman
had been doubled by some medical advice recommending to spend more
time in fresh air because of his poor health condition supposed to be of
nervous causes. Consequently, in spite of not having accomplished his
secondary studies, the young Pole who was fluent in French and also
had some knowledge of Latin, Greek and German together with basic
instruction of history, geography, maybe even physics, left for Marseille to
start his apprenticeship on a French vessel. He is known to have suffered
from depression and even to have had an unsuccessful attempt at suicide.
Biographers still make different speculations concerning the real causes
of his nervous problems and the reasons that had pushed him to desperate
acts like suicide; there are also some facts revealing Conrad’s inclination
towards adventure and irresponsible behaviour, which used to put him in
uncomfortable, even very dangerous situations, causing troubles to his aging
uncle as well (Najder 2007; Encyclopedia Britannica).
After a four-year apprenticeship on French ships he applied for the
British merchant marine in whose service he was for almost fifteen years.
Meanwhile, he also learnt English, became a British subject in 1886,
and adjusted his long Polish name to Joseph Conrad not only because it
created problems for foreigners’ pronunciation, but also as an attempt to
escape the Russian military conscription. His merchant-marine career led
him to various destinations all over the globe most of his future writing and
characters being closely related to his seafaring experience (Najder 2007;
Encyclopedia Britannica).
The call of adventure and also a better paid work promise led him to
Brussels to sign a three-year contract as a steamboat officer in Congo. In
1889 he started his journey to the heart of Africa, more precisely toward
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the four-year old colony bearing the promising name of Congo Free State,
found under direct and caring government of Leopold II, king of Belgium.
In June, 1890, he arrived in Matadi where he met an important person, the
chief of the station, who was also chief of the Société Anonyme Belge pour
le Commerce du Haut-Congo. During the two weeks spent there, he also
met Roger Casement, who produced a very good impression on him being
“a well spoken and intelligent” person, in total contrast to other white people
who made him feel quite uncomfortable (Najder 1978: 7).
The journey he made on land to Kinchassa with a thirty-two-man
caravan crossing the Pataballa Mountains proved to be unexpectedly harsh.
In his diary he mentioned “mosquitoes, fatigue, black rocks”, dirtiness and
lack of water (7). One of his companions, a Belgian officer, became more
and more feeble, eventually needing to be carried in a hammock which
overwhelmed and irritated the carriers to the point of organizing a mutiny.
What happened is very similar to the episode Marlow describes in Heart of
Darkness when he had to find the way of making himself understood by a
group of natives to whom he spoke more by gestures because of having no
common language to use: “Had them all called and made a speech which
they did not understand.; they promised good behaviour” (14). Conrad’s last
diary recording is very short but suggestive: “Harou [the Belgian officer]
not very well. Mosquitoes. Frogs. Beastly. Glad to see the end of this stupid
tramp. Feel rather seedy” (15). The following events are very similar to what
he was to present as Marlow’s story lived in that “vast country [which] had
become a place of darkness” (Conrad 1995: 8). In Kinchassa he met the Vice-
Manager of the port whom he disliked; then he found out that the steamer
he was supposed to manage, ‘the Florida’ had sunk and needed some time to
be fixed. It was the moment when he found the offer as second in command
on ‘Roi des Belges’ whose commander soon became sick and Conrad was
asked to replace. He also started recording very specific data related to his
new experience of managing a steamer on fresh water as he still was very
focused on issues to learn and prepare for his promised appointment as
captain on ‘the Florida’:
Once he reached the river at last, he filled his diary with the notes of a
businesslike seaman, making long entries about shoals, refueling points, and
other items not included on the primitive navigational charts available. It
would be almost a decade before the aspiring steamship captain managed to
get down on paper the other features of the Congo not shown on the map,
and by that time, of course, the world would know him as Joseph Conrad.
(Hochschild 107)
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After a thousand-mile journey on the Congo River, from Stanley

Pool to Stanley Falls, which proved dangerous and tricky because of the
dry season having caused “sandbars and shallow water” Conrad wrote in
his diary: “The subdued thundering mutter of the Stanley Falls hung in the
heavy night air of the last navigable reach of the Upper Congo…and I said to
myself with awe, ‘This is the very spot of my boyish boast’….What an end
to the idealized realities of a boy’s daydreams!” (107)
“Several [other] bitter disappointments punctured Conrad’s dreams”
(108): at the moment of taking over the firstly appointed ship, ‘the Florida’, his
worsening health condition did not recommend him anymore as appropriate
for command. Besides, he felt he had had enough of Africa and the best thing
to do was to go back to Britain, after having gathered such an unexpectedly
shocking experience: “I arrived at that delectable capital Boma, where before
the departure of the steamer which was to take me home I had the time to
wish myself dead over and over again with perfect sincerity” (Conrad 1912:
14). He mentioned several times his worsening health in letters addressed to
friends or in short entries of his diaries. Indeed, he had to spend some weeks
in hospital as soon as he arrived home in order to recover at least partially
from “a long, long illness and a very sad convalescence” (Jean-Aubry 73).
It is hard to guess why Conrad, who had experienced colonialism
during his childhood in Russian Poland and found out more about slave
trading in the Malay Archipelago, chose to work in the colonialist conditions
established by Leopold through Stanley’s “hard efforts” to set trading stations,
but there are assumptions that “the first denunciation of the brutality of the
ivory-grabbing pilgrims was not written until Conrad was already there,
and it was not published until shortly after Conrad had returned to Europe”
(Gene M. Moore, Introduction to Heart of Darkness,1999: xi). In one of
his letters Conrad literally accepts that “before the Congo I was just a mere
animal” (Jean-Aubrey 141), thus hinting at his deep and complex change.
V. 4. Conrad the writer

V. 4. 1. Writing as healing
His whole life was marked by the Congo experience for ”attacks of
fever and gout” (Jean-Aubry 73) as well as different other troubles caused
him suffering up to the end of his existence, but also pushed him to reveal
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that turmoil in writing: “Conrad’s Congo experiences were the turning-point

in his mental life and their effects on him determined his transformation
from a sailor to a writer” (Garnett 8).
Najder, one of his biographers, claims that his general knowledge of
some new and old foreign languages, history, geography, his rich readings
of Polish Romantic literature as well as all the lectures he had during his
childhood when his father used to translate Shakespeare, Hugo and other
great European writers, made of Conrad a member of a social class called
Intelligentsia, which was to play a significant role in the Europe of his
time. Besides, the biographer, a Polish emigrant himself, makes some very
pertinent remarks related to some specific aspects marked by Conrad’s
taking part in some important historical and political events, which helped
him build a very complex outlook upon the world:
Living away from one’s natural environment—family, friends, social group,

language—even if it results from a conscious decision, usually gives rise to…
internal tensions, because it tends to make people less sure of themselves, more
vulnerable, less certain of their…position and…value…The Polish szlachta
and…intelligentsia were social strata in which reputation…was felt…very
important…for a feeling of self-worth. Men strove…to find confirmation
of their…self-regard…in the eyes of others…Such a psychological heritage
forms both a spur to ambition and a source of constant stress, especially if [one
has been inculcated with] the idea of [one]’s public duty. (Najder 2007: 47)
Recent psychopathology studies came with new information about

“how memories are stored in the mind and continue to affect day-to-day
perceptions and interpretations of reality, [but] over a century ago, the very
foundation of modern psychiatry was laid with the study of consciousness
and the disruptive impact of traumatic experiences”. Thus, Jean-Martin
Charcot, Pierre Janet and William James were all claiming that human mind
is very flexible, but also that “certain memories [become] obstacles that
[keep] people from going on with their lives…[They] were fully aware that
some memories are not evanescent”, while Janet was specifying that “certain
happenings would leave indelible and distressing memories—memories to
which the sufferer was continually returning, and by which he was tormented
by day and by night” (van der Kolk and van der Hart 158).
All those studies revealed the long-effect consequences traumatic
memories could have upon consciousness, while “Janet noticed that there
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were marked temperamental differences between people in such areas as

‘psychological force’ (overall energy level) and psychological tension (the
capacity to focus on relevant information and utilize available data for
appropriate action)” (159). A very interesting aspect developed by Janet helps
us better understand the mechanism at work in Conrad’s transformation. He
spotlights the importance of “narrative memory, a uniquely human capacity
[which] consists of mental constructs people use to make sense out of
experience” (160). Here, Janet distinguishes between the familiar and new,
special experiences, which are not stored in the same way, at the same time
triggering a different behaviour on the part of the subject:
[F]amiliar and expectable experiences are automatically assimilated without

much conscious awareness of details of the particulars, while frightening
or novel experiences may not easily fit into existing cognitive schemes and
either may be remembered with particular vividness or may totally resist
integration. Under extreme conditions, existing meaning schemes may be
entirely unable to accommodate frightening experiences, which causes the
memory of these experiences to be stored differently and not be available for
retrieval under ordinary conditions: it becomes dissociated from conscious
awareness and voluntary control. When that occurs, fragments of these
unintegrated experiences may later manifest recollections or behavioral
reenactments. (160)
Janet also adds that for the sake of convenience this type of memory
is generally called “traumatic memory” and it can be revived by particular
circumstances. The behavioral pattern is automatically reenacted each time a
single element of the traumatic episode appears in the subject’s environment.
We have already seen that Conrad had a long period of mental turmoil,
when we can only suppose what was happening in his mind, although there
were instances when his wife or visiting friends gave some hints about
that psychologically complicated period of his life. Some years later after
having discovered that writing was a good therapy, he was assessing his own
situation saying: “it was infinitely more likely that the sanest of my friends
should nurse the germ of incipient madness than that I should turn into a
writer of tales” (Conrad 1912: Ch. 5), thus confirming what the others were
suspecting or even claiming and what psychopathology proved on the basis
of numerous cases’ study.
In Janet’s theory the subject becomes “attached” to his trauma, or
“fixated” in Freud’s terminology, the term describing the same behaviour
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of the individual who cannot overcome the traumatic event, manifesting

“the compulsion to repeat the trauma [this being] a function of repression
itself” (166). This cycle which starts automatically when similar conditions
are created is a very pertinent explanation for the Congolese’ behaviour
perpetuated from colonial times to nowadays; it also exemplifies Freud’s
theory: “because the memory is repressed, the patient ‘is obliged to repeat the
repressed material as a contemporary experience, instead of…remembering
it as something belonging to the past’” (Freud quoted in van der Kolk and van
der Hart 167). Unfortunately in such cases of perpetrating violent imperialist
practices the pattern was culturally transferred through several generations as
I have already explained in the first chapter; nowadays everything resembles
to a horror movie which is incessantly replayed.
The therapies applied in cases of ‘traumatic memory’ are very much
related to ‘narrative memory’, for psychiatrists have been claiming that words
are of paramount importance to help the subject reproduce the story of the
event or events having caused the trauma in order to release it. Janet argued
that “it is not enough to be aware of a memory that occurs automatically in
response to particular current events: it is also necessary that the personal
perception ‘knows’ this image and attaches it to other memories” (Janet
quoted in van der Kolk and van der Hart 167). It is claimed by both Janet
and Freud that “the crucial factor that determines the repetition of trauma is
the presence of mute, unsymbolized, and unintegrated experiences”, while a
more precise formulation states that “a sudden and passively endured trauma
is relived repeatedly, until a person learns to remember simultaneously the
affect and cognition associated with the trauma through access to language”
(van der Kolk and Ducey quoted in van der Kolk and van der Hart 167).
It seems that this theory about a possible healing method was intuitively
and very successfully applied by Conrad and it also led him on the road of
other psycho-analytical anticipations already mentioned in chapter III.3. :
The person must not only know how to do it, but must also know how to
associate the happening with the other events of his life, how to put it in its
place in that life-history which each one of us is perpetually building up and
which for each of us is an essential element of his personality. A situation
has not been satisfactorily liquidated, has not been fully assimilated, until
we have achieved, not merely through our movements, but also an inward
reaction through the words we address to ourselves, through the organization
of the recital of the event to others and to ourselves, and through this recital
in its place as one of the chapters in our personal history. (Janet quoted in van
der Kolk and van der Hart 170-1)
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As we have already seen Conrad had experienced traumas since

early childhood, which caused him various nervous problems and could
have been a reason for a higher sensitivity when apprehending the reality
about Congo’s atrocities. On the other hand, his entire prior experience and
knowledge, but mainly a special gift for writing made of him one of the
greatest British writers. “After brooding about his Congo experience for
eight years, Conrad transformed it into Heart of Darkness, probably the
most reprinted short novel in English” (Hochschild 108). He appropriately
chose to write fiction, and we discover that some of his fiction can serve for
historical documentation as well, the connection between the two genres
having been drawn by Conrad himself, who claims that “fiction stands on
firmer ground, being based on the reality of forms and the observation of
social phenomena, whereas history is based on documents…and second
hand impressions”. He also argues that a historian “may be an artist too, and
a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder of human
experience” (Conrad in Notes on Life and Letters 17).
Many merits and interpretations have been given to the most well
known of Conrad’s writings, Heart of Darkness; Hochschild for instance,
spotlights that its most important aspect is the almost painful connection the
novella has with the historical moment of imperialism applied in the Congo
in the Belgian style, or better said in the Leopoldian manner:
High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book
in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud,
Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original
sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism. European
and American readers, not comfortably acknowledging the genocidal scale
of the killing in Africa at the turn of the century, have cast Heart of Darkness
loose from its historical moorings. We read it as a parable for all times and
places, not as a book about one time and place…But Conrad himself wrote,
‘Heart of Darkness is experience…pushed a little (and only very little)
beyond the actual facts of the case’. Whatever the rich levels of meaning
the book has as literature, for our purposes what is notable is how precise
and detailed a description is of ‘the actual facts of the case’: King Leopold’s
Congo in 1890, just as the exploitation of the territory was getting under way
in earnest. (Hochschild 108-9)
V. 4. 2. Conrad’s moral vision

Although Conrad wrote his short masterpiece relying on precise facts
that he had seen with his own eyes, being a direct witness, or at least he
saw the consequences of horrible acts perpetrated by Leopold’s agents
and officers, he put everything in the form of one of the most impressive
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metaphors in British literature, but also quite hard to unriddle. It had been
Conrad’s project to write something with “a tonality of its own, a continued
vibration that, [he] hoped, would hang in the air and dwell on the ear after the
last note had been struck” as he wrote in his author’s note to the 1917 edition
of the novella. Totally aware of the deep subtlety of his writings, he was
confessing in one of his letters to his good friend Graham, that every time he
had written a novel since they became friends and was sometimes worrying
about the audience’s capacity of getting the real message of the writing,
he was imagining that he, Graham, would understand (Conrad quoted in
Lackey 2005). There were several reasons for which Cunninghame Graham
represented the ideal reader for Conrad’s fiction, also suggesting that only
certain people were meant to perceive different moral and psychological
aspects implied in his books in accordance with their own moral and
psychological background; however, when he published the first instalment
of Heart of Darkness, in 1899, he also warned his friend that “the [main]
idea [of the novella] is so wrapped up in secondary notions that You—even
You—may miss it” (Conrad quoted in Lackey).
Graham had published a very poignant essay, “Bloody Niggers”, that
dealt from a theological perspective with the same racialist issues, “that
justified ‘exterminating whole tribes of’ Africans, or, as Kurtz puts it, to
‘exterminate all the brutes!’” (Lackey). Conrad read it some time before
writing his novella and appreciated it as being “very good, very telling”, but
too direct. He explains to his friend the importance of subtlety which may help
a message become more effective (Conrad quoted in Lackey). Comparing
the impact the two pieces of writing had upon the audience in the long term,
Conrad’s initial assessment seems very sensible as reality confirmed; we
have already mentioned the large echo and publicity his novella had, both at
the moment of its publication and mainly along the years up to now, in spite
of its various and not always appreciative critical interpretations.
Interpretation is a very delicate issue having much to do with

objectivity, subjectivity, readers’ and writers’ background, their moral and
political principles, writing style, psychological and intellectual capacity
of comprehension. All these aspects are important when someone tries to
apprehend the real message Conrad intended to send to the world ‘wrapped’
in multiple metaphors and finally wearing the title of Heart of Darkness,
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a metaphor itself, which can be given several interpretations. Taking into

account the above mentioned conditions necessary for a more or less correct
interpretation of a piece of fiction, or better said closer to the author’s
intention, we can easily understand why the literary critical analysis has
always been controversial upon the novella; Conrad himself was aware it
thus might happen with his small but very meaningful literary creation about
which he had warned Graham. The aspect that may help my own approach
to the metaphorical dimension of Heart of Darkness is very much connected
with the moral condition of both the writer and his work. Conrad’s letters are
a good source for a better understanding of his principles and his personality,
although, here again, critics have to be very careful with his paradoxical,
ambivalent nature, which makes the interpretation of his principles rather
tricky. I tried to back up my own view upon the moral issue approached in
the novella relying on Michael Lackey’s article which deals with this aspect
of Conrad’s writing.
In the first place, Lackey explains that Conrad’s main goal was to
prove “that morality is an empty signifier, a semiotic vacuity that dominant
political powers can strategically manipulate in order to justify crimes against
humanity”. Some references Conrad made in different letters speaking
about morality can be totally misguiding if we do not know anything about
his life and about his work. On the contrary, when we have got an overall
perspective upon these issues we can come closer to the truth when we
read about Conrad’s conviction that: “There is no morality, no knowledge
and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us
about a world that whether seen in a convex or a concave mirror is always
but a vain and fleeting appearance” (Conrad quoted in Lackey). Or, his
confession: “I still have some pretensions to the possession of a conscience
though my morality is gone to the dogs. I am like a man who has lost his
gods” (Conrad quoted in Lackey), which should be understood as Conrad’s
preoccupation to take personal responsibility for one’s actions, the way a
possessor of conscience generally does with no influence and connection
with the fact that he is a Christian believer or not. There are enough claims
and proofs that Conrad was closer to atheism than to Christianity, the clearest
being his own words: “from the age of fourteen [I] disliked the Christian
religion, its doctrines, ceremonies and festivals” (Conrad quoted in Lackey).
He also comes with a logical explanation for this position: in his opinion
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Christianity “has brought an infinity of anguish to innumerable souls on this

earth” (Conrad quoted in Lackey), the closest cruel and convincing example
being the genocidal intervention in Africa supported from the beginning by
Christian doctrines. His consciousness pushed him to accomplish the writing
of Heart of Darkness in such a special manner that many were not able to
get all subtleties of the message, but those who did declared that it is a piece
of writing which has reached a high style level very close to perfection.
Everything was put in the right place: the characters, their discourse, their
way of being, their psychological turmoil and their perplex wondering and
wandering onto philosophical lands, even the sombre colours of the landscape
and the speechless natives, who are meant to suggest they are simple tools
in the hands of the great European builders (my emphasis). And if they are
tools they do not feel the pain, they do not cry, they do not complain about
anything, not even when they are extremely hungry, for they are capable of
‘restraint’. What a big surprise with almost no logical explanation: how could
those “cannibals” refrain from attacking and eating some white men when
they were more numerous and besides, extremely hungry because they were
paid in “three pieces of brass wire [a week] each about nine inches long”
which served for nothing as they did not have the possibility “to buy with
that currency in riverside villages” because for various reasons the steamer
did not want to stop (Conrad 1995: 41). Here Conrad created one of those
circumstances when the answer could be so easily inferred and Marlow’s
almost philosophical way of analyzing the case without reaching a clearly
expressed conclusion is but an example of a general misunderstanding and
misinterpretation of facts in the colonial environment. What else could be
a better proof of morality than restraint from an extreme act in the given
condition of extreme hunger?
The proof that Christian morality is but an empty word is Conrad’s
permanent hint at the theological mentality relying on a special interpretation
of the Bible according to which the Europeans, but mainly the British, are
God’s chosen nation endowed with all necessary qualities to carry out the
holy task, that of building the house of God on earth. This supreme goal
gives them the freedom to act upon any land and any people they consider fit
for change, thus even the method to be used would be in perfect accordance
with the importance of the goal, for they are spiritual beings as Conrad
suggests several times in the novella in order to make clear who is in the
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superior position and why. He speaks about “savages” to whom Europeans

appear like “supernatural beings”, about individuals endowed with the
power “of a deity” (50) or about the supernatural capacities of both Marlow
and Kurtz who can see and understand more than other people, but mainly
they can understand the truth, that “truth stripped of its cloak of time”, that
is of the “surface-truth”; they both have the ability to know even things that
are “impenetrable to human thought” (36). The supreme proof is that Kurtz
can understand the “roaring chorus” of natives shouting (67) for “you can’t
judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man” as the Russian, his great
admirer claims (56). It is Kurtz again who helped Marlow see “the appalling
face of a glimpsed truth” (70).
It is this ‘appalling face’ of Congo which affected Conrad forever and
pushed him on the road of literature as the ultimate solution for healing his
deeply implanted trauma. In order to speak his mind he created a Marlow
who sometimes expresses some racist points of view, but also displays some
existentialist dilemmas, which are but human doubts, many of them receiving
no answer up to the end of the novella, the way things happen so often in real
life. From the very beginning the narrator of the story warns his readers that
Marlow “[has a] propensity to spin yarns” (5) sharing from his “inconclusive
experiences” (7), so that we should not expect a very clear display of events
or answers to questions sometimes clearly uttered, sometimes only implied.
Conrad also created a Kurtz, the embodiment of the perfect imperialist
whose main drive toward Africa was his moral philosophy, a mixture of
ideal dreams about civilizing the “savages” doubled by economic interests.
It cannot be implied that Conrad’s drives were the same with Kurtz’ when
he made up his mind to choose a steamer on the Congo River as his next
work place; instead the writer spotlights some similar points of view he had
with some other idealist theorists of imperialism, with some colonialists
who ‘went native’ for reasons that are still debatable and mainly with so
many other agents and officers known to be decent people of unstained
morality, but who turned into cruel and violent imperial agents. A very close
analysis of Kurtz may lead to unexpected discoveries concerning his total
transformation suggested by the final remark written in the famous report:
“Exterminate all the brutes!” (50)
Conrad created the perfect balance between what was to be shown
and what to be implied, what to be criticized and what to be beckoned for
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criticism. He likewise created a suspense background, each time unveiling

one more layer of the many layers concealing the truth, a truth which seems
to stay forever concealed in the same way Congo reality was not known
to the world. That is why both Marlow’s and Kurtz’s behaviour have often
been misinterpreted and not always appropriately connected with Conrad’s
principles, judgements and the real aims of his writing. Marlow is generally
undecided in many situations showing little ability to make the correct
guesses for sometimes quite obvious facts. That was interpreted as Conrad’s
lack of direct criticism and racist approach, which was, to be sure, the
author’s precise goal, thus depicting the very attitude of those implied in the
colonial process. At the same time it represented his way of admitting that he
had not been aware himself of what imperialism was able to achieve in the
name of morality, persuading so many ‘men of virtue’ to engage in its game.
V. 4. 3. Conrad’s revelation
Congo attracted Conrad from the perspective of a well paid job in
the first place, but eventually it proved to be an opportunity mainly from a
spiritual perspective, as it offered him the chance of a revelation. He chose
to write Heart of Darkness in order to free his mind and his soul of the
heavy burden of that revelation. In my opinion he created Marlow to speak
in his place, to make the descriptions of the horrors he saw, to comment
what Conrad had at times thought, but also to be the spokesman of the
ordinary British individual with his mind full of Victorian stereotypes and
principles and his soul tuned to Christian morality, sometimes confused by
the inconsistency of those principles, and still in awe of people like Kurtz.
Conrad issued this other character, Kurtz, as an embodiment of Europe’s
philanthropic ideals, “an emissary of pity, and science, and progress, [who]
had come with moral ideas of some sort” (Conrad 1995: 25). As a matter
of fact Kurtz is a metaphoric expression of imperialism created by Conrad
as if by a painter’s skilful hand, with layers of colour that have to be wiped
off in order to get back to the canvas and understand something of the basic
simplicity of a human being. Unfortunately, human ugliness is to be revealed
all through and up to the end of the story.
Kurtz’s portrait is a complex masterpiece where several artists (my
emphasis) contributed with their gift and resources or in Marlow’s words
“all Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz [as] his mother was half-
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English, his father was half-French”, and he had received some English
education (49). We have to speak about a portrait and less of a character
for his voice is to be heard so little and only at the end when the fabulous
portrait had already made its effect upon the viewers (my emphasis hinting
at the superficial approach of such an important issue related to the lives of
millions of people). Everybody is deeply impressed by Kurtz’s personality
including Marlow, who is supposed to finally meet him and learn from the
magnificent person Kurtz was said to be. “[He] had been essentially a great
musician. There was the making of an immense success” (Conrad 1995:72),
according to somebody claiming he was one of his cousins, although Marlow
confesses: “And to this day I am unable to say what was Kurtz’s profession,
whether he ever had any—which was the greatest of his talents. I had taken
him for a painter who wrote for the papers or else for a journalist who could
paint—he was a universal genius” (72). A journalist having met him adds
to his description claiming that “Kurtz’s proper sphere ought to have been
politics… He electrified large meetings” (72), while Kurtz’s Intended comes
with a passionate remark, which had burst up out of her pain of having lost
him. She tells Marlow: “Who was not his friend who had heard him speak
once? He drew men towards him by what was best in them… It is the gift
of the great” (75). She also mentioned “all his promise, all his greatness, his
generous mind, his noble heart” (76).
Reading these short but very significant paragraphs revealing important
personality traits, we can infer their symbolic value for the description of
many actors on the stage of imperialism. The closest and well known for
this research could be Leopold II who used to deliver such ‘electrifying’
speeches and knew how ‘to draw men towards him’ in order to achieve his
imperialistic goals, how to lure people in the perverse colonial adventure.
The welcoming speech he held in 1876 for the audience of the Geographical
Conference organized in Belgium, from which I have quoted some lines in
a previous chapter (III.1.2), is a very good example of manipulation and
demagogy when hypocritically idealistic goals and methods of accomplishing
them were presented in a deceiving discourse of humanitarian projects.
The description Leopold was making for the future stations to be built in
Congo had given so many false illusions of what to expect, to people like
Conrad, and Marlows, and Kurtzes, who left for Africa with their heads full
of Leopoldian-like discourses.
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Marlow sets off on the road of discoveries which reproduces the

process Conrad passed through during the months spent in Congo; and the
discoveries were of the most horrifying kind he could have ever imagined
from the beginning of his route on land around the rapids, where “a slight
clinking behind made [him] turn the head”. The black men advancing in
a file “were erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their
heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps…[He] could see every rib,
the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope, each had an iron collar on
his neck and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung
between them, rhythmically clinking”. They passed in a row “without a
glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages” (15).
Marlow becomes suspicious and he does not seem very comfortable that
“[he] also was part of the great cause of [those] high and just proceedings”.
He tries to guess the project for which so many workers were supposed to
dig a huge artificial hole, but the only logical explanation that passes through
his mind is that “it might have been connected with the philanthropic desire
of giving the criminals something to do” (15). What Conrad does not reveal
is known from other sources: the great amount of work was for Leopold’s
railway, which indeed cost the lives of many people, white workers and
engineers, the largest number being represented by black labourers. The
landscape was sinister all around resembling with “the grove of death” (16):
Black shapes crouched, lay, set between the trees, leaning against the trunk,
clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced, in all the attitudes of pain,
abandonment and despair. Another mine on the cliff went out followed by a
slight shudder of soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And
this was the place were some of the helpers had withdrawn to die. (16)
Marlow is in a state of total confusion when he finds out from the

Company’s Chief Accountant that Mr. Kurtz is “a first class agent… [who]
sends in as much ivory as all others put together” (18). Some questions start
to bother him; some flashbacks help him make suppositions:
I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot
desire; but, by all stars! These were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed
and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that
in the blinding sunshine of that land I could become acquainted with flabby,
pretending, weak-eyed devil of rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious
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he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand
miles farther. (16)
His confusion augments the moment he finds the report written by the
same praised Kurtz for the International Society for the Suppression of the
Savage Customs. Though “vibrating with eloquence” (49), the report I have
mentioned before (III.2.3), was meant to be read by people who did not have
direct contact with the very practices of imperialism, but with its ideology,
which, as Marlow could then judge, was rather far from the truth. He could
grasp a new meaning for phrases that were nothing but “[magnificent]
peroration”, which gave him “the notion of the exotic Immensity ruled by an
august Benevolence” and sounded rather like shallow words to him, but not
to so many others who let themselves persuaded by such idealistic rhetoric:
This was the unbounded power of eloquence—of words—of burning noble

words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases,
unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much
later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method.
It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic
sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning
in a serene sky. (50)
This time we are faced with Kurtz’s revelation: it seems that the savages
supposed to be civilised, by the simple ‘exertion of the power for good’, as
the rhetoric of imperialism always claimed had not acted the way they were
expected to. According to Marlow’s assessment, the four words scrawled by
Kurtz at the end of his “pamphlet” represented “a method” meant to solve
the problem. Several interpretations have been given to these words and also
to the psychological process which could have triggered Kurtz’s attitude,
almost all inferring they represent an urge to genocide coming from the part
of a mad man. Generally speaking we cannot get worried because of words
uttered by mad people no matter how dangerous and misplaced they may
seem as long as they are supposed to be received by sane people. We do
not have to worry too much either for the reasons which pushed the insane
person to utter or write such words in guise of an absolute and urgent task
to be carried out by an entire race against another reduced to mere animals
(‘brutes’). But Marlow worries. Consequently, he makes the decision to tear
off the note from the report and keep secret Kurtz’s madness.
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Here again there is enough place for speculations, but the closest
to my point of view would be that Marlow is in a process of denial
trying to destroy any proof of Kurtz’s degradation. This act like many
others has a symbolic value, for Kurtz’s degradation represents human
degradation when faced with temptation, and not because he went native
as the circumstances created by Conrad imply, in an attempt to recreate the
Victorian anthropological perspective upon the phenomenon. This is part of
the same aesthetic approach the writer used when he chose certain words
to describe African people, which were so criticized by Chinua Achebe and
other supporters of the same discourse. Those words were not only under the
direct influence of the Victorian racialist terminology, but mainly an ironic
view of the image Victorians had forged of the Africans, as I have explained
in sections I.5 and II.4. They were chosen on purpose to speak the Victorian
English of imperialism, although they would have been more appropriate
to speak about the European perpetrators able to inflict atrocities upon ‘the
savages’, Kurtz representing such a perpetrator of abominable acts carried
out in an attempt to civilize the savage, who, in his mind, were the only
responsible for his violent drives (my emphasis). Civilising meant in most
of the cases, forcing the natives to ‘mimic’ the white: to learn their language,
their habits, but mainly to turn into obedient servants and ‘efficient’ workers
for almost no reward; to become a European ‘but not quite’ in Bhabha’s
words I have mentioned in section II.3 of this paper. In spite of the whites’
great endeavour, in spite of the natives’ own efforts to succeed, as Fanon
largely explained in his psychopathological approaches (II.3.), sometimes
as the only escape from cruel punishment and even death, changes occurred
in both directions: the natives became ‘mimic men’, as Naipaul called them
(1967), often behaving in an ambivalent way in order to survive or as simple
mockery, while many people turned into hybrids as a result of miscegenation
or involuntary imitation (my emphasis).
In my opinion Marlow is facing a complex doubt, almost a frightening
one in relation to the human quality of humans. Here we can speak about
Marlow’s revelation, which also hints at Conrad’s revelation, to be sure.
Part of his hopes about the colonizers’ noble duty to help and civilise the
‘savages’, vanished at the sight of the consequences obvious everywhere
around in that place of horrors, Congo, of which he had seen quite a lot, but
mainly when he discovered Kurtz’s station. Kurtz, who in Marlow’s mind
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represented one of the chosen persons meant to accomplish the imperialist

tasks (economic and civilising), opinion which had continually been backed
up by different characters he met on his way to Kurtz, revealed a totally
different kind of person, not even able to fulfil his dreams; paradoxically,
the closer Marlow got to Kurtz, the more different, alarming and confusing
became the pieces of information he had received.
Scholars compared this charismatic individual to many real persons
and personalities, more or less important on the imperialist arena; I will
choose some who, in my opinion are very close to Kurtz and at whom
Conrad gave quite clear hints. Kurtz, as a whole, represents a symbol of the
nineteenth century imperialists; his ability to perform ‘electrifying’ speeches
as well as his capacity of “getting himself adored” (57) by entire native tribes
may recall Leopold’s gift of influencing people around him, as I have already
mentioned, whereas his long wanderings when “he had discovered villages,
a lake too…but mostly [looking] for ivory” (56) remind the readers about
the numerous explorers, such as Livingstone and Stanley so very proud each
time they succeeded in clarifying one more African geographical mystery.
It seems they had acted according to a similar pattern, but obviously with a
different epilogue, when Stanley was sent on his famous expedition in search
of Livingstone, in 1871. Other colonial agents and officers who were mainly
interested in getting huge amounts of ivory and whose names are mentioned
in Morel’s newspaper articles, in Casement’s famous government report and
in several twentieth century books of authors such as Hochschild, Wrong,
Butcher, as well as in many documents and documentaries available today
on different web sites, could have also served as good sources of inspiration
in the creation of Kurtz’s personality.
Sometimes the hints are more precise, such as the ones related to
shooting, sometimes for defence but in an excessive, uncontrolled way, no
matter how many natives were killed, as in the short fight episode between the
‘pilgrims’ on the steamer and the tribesmen in the bush, when “[those] chaps
firing from the hip with their eyes shut…began to howl at [Marlow] with
indignant protests” because of his having caused the retreat of the attackers
“by the screeching of the steam whistle” (52), or in case of any interfering
with the economic aspect of the ivory issue. Thus, the Russian tells Marlow
about one such incident when Kurtz “declared he would shoot [him] unless
[he] gave him the ivory…, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it,
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and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well
pleased. And it was true, too; [he] gave him the ivory” (56). Kurtz no longer
“traded” for ivory but raided and plundered the area together with groups
of natives who worked for him. This was exactly what Conrad eventually
understood from the way things were going on in the Congo: ‘there was
nothing on earth to prevent’ any of the imperialist agents, or officers, or
any other European after all, ‘killing whom [they] jolly well pleased’, as
it has often been claimed about Stanley and his men or was even declared
by the perpetrators themselves, sometimes the events being presented as
insignificant or fair acts of defence or action in the name of ‘efficiency’.
There are numerous examples like the one mentioned by Hochschild about
a young officer who was writing in an 1894 letter to his family: “We have
liberty, independence, and life with wide horizons. Here you are free and not
a mere slave of society…Here one is everything! Warrior, diplomat, trader!!
Why not!” (Hochschild 103)
There are notes in Conrad’s diary with reference to the consequences
of violent acts perpetrated by such Europeans who felt free to behave without
any restraint of their criminal impulses, which he put in contrast with the
astonishing attitude of the cannibals’ restraint, in the very suggestive scene
on Marlow’s steamer. Here Conrad approaches another Victorian cliché,
the cannibals, about whom there had been given enough horrifying pieces
of information by missionaries, explorers or simple adventurers since the
very first contacts with peoples of unknown lands, some of whom wrote
diaries notes, books or later in history dispatches for newspapers, being in
search of fame and publicity. The Victorian explorers and missionaries,
such as Stanley and Livingstone, did not reveal much of this issue for
fear of discouraging a profitable approach of the black continent and the
chance of taking advantage of any available resources. Stanley made some
declarations manifesting his disappointment at the high interest manifested
by the Victorian public for the adventure books dealing with such topic and
was not at all pleased when Ward, one of his expeditions’ partners published
his Five Years with the Congo Cannibals (1891).
I am not going to deny the real existence of cannibal tribes, which
had always existed in Africa and other regions of the world, unfortunately
still hidden in less explored areas of our globe. My point here is the one I
have already developed in chapter I.1.1 and 1.2 dealing with psychological
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mechanisms of violence and types of violence and its tools, more precisely
with the huge difference existing between violence triggered by specific
circumstances, such as “material constraints and incentives as well as by
historical structures and by the cultural representation” (Schmidt and
Schröder 3) in certain types of living conditions on the one hand, or violence
manifested during sacred rites and sacrificial rituals (cf. Girard, Stanciugelu,
Eliade, Noica) on the other hand, and violent acts which could be put in
theoretical categories such as the banality of evil (cf. Arendt, Wieviorka)
on the one hand, or instrumental violence, which aims at clearly defined
goals (cf. Wieviorka, Surdulescu) on the other hand, in order to be analysed,
compared and eventually understood.
Conrad’s revelation in this case is expressed by Marlow, who manifests
his astonishment noticing that ‘the savages’ had a morally correct attitude in
a situation where ‘the civilised’ generally behaved savagely. The emphasis
on the fact that the native workers of the crew were cannibals, although the
author provides no evidence of this reality which the readers are supposed
to take for granted, is meant to show that even in a situation of advanced
hunger induced by the colonial conditions of work and mostly of payment
I have previously mentioned, the cannibals manifested “restraint” as a
supreme proof of their humane quality, in spite of being “big powerful men,
with not much capacity to weigh consequences” and also outnumbering the
‘pilgrims’ on the steamer (41).
I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their
impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an
inexorable physical necessity. Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it
superstition, disgust, patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour? No
fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does
not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may
call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze…Restraint! I would just
as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses
of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me—the fact dazzling, to be
seen. (41-2)
We may infer that this episode is ironically counteracting the generally

spread Victorian stereotype image of the Africans who were sub-human, bad,
underdeveloped creatures and in many cases cannibals, which continued to
be fed by books like Five Years with the Congo Cannibals and some other
similar publications.
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The climax of Marlow’s revelation was the moment when he got closer
to Kurtz’s station and saw clearly what were “the round carved balls” (52) he
had first seen through his “glasses” ornamenting the upper ends of the posts
serving as fence for Kurtz’s hut. When he had “a nearer view” it made him
“throw [his] head back as if before a blow” (57):
I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake.
These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive
and puzzling, striking and disturbing—food for thought and also for vultures
if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all events for such
ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been
even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been
turned to the house. (57)
They are symbolic indeed for all the unspeakable atrocities committed
by white people in Africa and precisely in Congo in recorded history with the
most horrible acts perpetrated by imperialist representatives. Unfortunately,
there are testimonies asserting that the use of human skulls meant to scare
the natives into obedience and at the same time complete African collections,
was a horrifying practice recorded by journals and retold by travellers to the
Congo as I am going to exemplify in the next section of this chapter.
Such a view turns into ‘food for thought’ to be sure, especially for
people who had been fed with a totally different type of ideology and
philosophic food before going to Africa. Therefore Marlow becomes once
again confused, although not completely shocked, for the atrocities he saw
before had in some way prepared him for such surprises. Little by little he
understood the huge difference which then became very obvious, between
something that seemed a very simple goal—to civilise the uncivilised—and
which as a matter of fact, proved to be a very complicated state of things—
the unpredictable behaviour of the “civilised-to-be” and that of the “would-
be” civilisers during the clash of their encounter. What could have been
the easiest escape for Marlow, hinting at a general escape, to be sure? It
was their fault, because of their savage rituals and scary dances he once
would have been tempted to be part of in order to get a deeper insight in the
African experience. At that moment he really understood where the African
experience could lead to: when the civilised get very close to ‘the horror’,
they get contaminated, become ‘the brutes’. Human nature is so very fragile
it cannot fight against any evil, any temptation and find the most appropriate
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solution for defence. But Marlow made up his mind: he will keep the secret
of his revelation for himself. That is why he chose to tear off the last note
of the report and also to tell a lie to the Intended, in spite of his very great
disrespect for liars. It was his way of showing loyalty to Kurtz. This could be
called complicity and acceptance to a certain extent because he understood
that the evil he had discovered became unavoidable and people needed not
know about that. It can be inferred that Marlow took it as Kurtz’s incapacity
of resistance when faced with the evil. Thus his last words before dying
symbolized for Marlow the ‘horror’ of what Kurtz had seen and which drove
him mad. In my opinion this is an irony Conrad used to hint at the Europeans’
incapacity to understand a reality which remained cryptic to a certain extent
for him too. These words – “The horror! The horror!” – received different
interpretations, as they may be taken either as full of meaning or rather
vague. The interpretation which is closest to my argument claims that the
‘horror’ was the expression of Kurtz’s revelation. He understood how deep
he had sunk into the evil represented by his own degradation similar to the
general decay to be found in the human soul which Jung compared to our
interior ‘shadow’. Before death, Kurtz got horrified by his own despicable
acts which were passing before his eyes darkening his mind: death was the
only escape from a generalised evil.
Conrad’s attitude is nevertheless, different. He chose to reveal the
truth, although he chose to make it very abstruse and in real life he refused
to give a direct support to the Congo Reform Association (cf. Katkin and
Katkin 2004). He endowed Marlow with a limited capacity of judgement,
enough to infer that Europeans are guilty of crimes against the indigenous
population in several places on the earth, but not that much as to clearly utter
what contribution the British had in the imperialist march around the world.
***
This chapter has attempted to give a complex account of Jozef Teodor

Konrad Korzeniowski’s metamorphosis from the little Polish boy living with
his parents exiled to Russia to the British liberal-nationalist who always tried
to adjust to the British way of life and mostly to the Victorian principles and
mentalities as a consequence of his genuine belief in the English system of
government. He was acting in the same vein with his British contemporaries
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regarding their high self-esteem that made them feel they had the right and
even the obligation to disseminate the British culture in the world. His efforts
to work in Congo as a steamer officer is much related to this mentality as
well as what followed and pushed him to reveal what he had discovered. It
had been a shocking experience which left severe scars on his body and soul,
but helped him gain spiritual elevation. I have approached the issue from a
psycho-analytical perspective attempting to make clear that Conrad wrote
his novella being pushed from the inside by the truth which had to be shared.
That truth was very far from his initial hopes and beliefs and he realised that
too many other Europeans were living in the same state of false beliefs and
trust into a system and they had to be awaked. The fact that his Marlow was
not capable to accept and reveal the truth, in spite of having grasped it is, in
my opinion a mirror for the numerous employees of the system who were
blindly carrying out their imperialist jobs. Both Marlow and Kurtz were
created as symbolic figures for masses of people who acted in the same vein
not necessarily in Africa.
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Chapter VI. Going beyond Conrad’s revelation
VI. 1. Kurtz as representation of white atrocities

Conrad’s major revelation was when he managed to perceive, at least
partially, the true face of imperialism and tried to make Kurtz its embodiment.
Different testimonies and documents assert that there were individuals
Conrad met during his Congo experience, who provided enough material to
inspire him create Kurtz and even choose the character’s most appropriate
name. For instance Georges-Antoine Klein, who was “a French agent for
an ivory-gathering firm at Stanley Falls” (Hochschild 109) travelled on the
‘Roi des Belges’ steamer, at that moment under Conrad’s command, and
fell ill and died during the trip the way Kurtz dies in the novel. Besides, it
can be speculated that the German name Klein meaning “small” could have
suggested the German name Kurtz meaning “short”.
Another source of inspiration for Kurtz could have been the atrocious
behaviour of “Major Edmund Barttelot, the man whom Stanley left in charge
of the rear column on the Emin Pasha expedition...who went mad, began
biting, whipping, and killing people, and was finally murdered” (109). He
was also responsible for the unspeakable episode with the native girl given
to a group of cannibals I have mentioned in chapter I.1.2, which makes us
better understand what kind of behaviour overwhelmed Conrad’s and other
people’s consciousness and pushed them towards looking for an explanation.
The most convenient explanation they found was that of certain Europeans
‘going native’ as a consequence of their direct contact with the ‘wild’ natives
and their fragile psyche. Hence Conrad’s irony in implying whatever almost
a whole Europe believed, that Kurtz, ‘a genius’, an exceptional person of
high expectations, ‘an example’ for any other agent to go to Africa, was
not able to resist to the pressure of the appalling ‘wilderness’ all around,
but by behaving in the same manner. It was only the bad example offered
by the natives that triggered the Europeans’ violent approach, their cruel,
unspeakable imperialist practices (my emphasis). I have already used the
word ‘unspeakable’ several times, for there are acts which can but hardly
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be described and also because I do not intend to give such examples, too
shocking to be shared; I will try to use only the examples which can help my
study reach its goal.
The black woman described as an incredible and impressive African
beauty who proved to be Kurtz’s lover, is a hint at another European
prototype, the white man taking advantage of any black woman he pleased,
sometimes proving his lust in that direction too and owning more women
only for their exclusive use and pleasure; Arthur Hodister is mentioned
by Hochschild as being “famed for his harem of African women and
for gathering huge amounts of ivory, [who] eventually muscled in too
aggressively on the territory of local Afro-Arab warlords and ivory-traders,
who captured and beheaded him” (109). Many Europeans behaved in similar
ways, not necessarily owning more black women, but using them as sexual
slaves in spite of Victorian restrictions deploring this attempt on the purity
of the white race. The information to be read in Casement’s report, later
fictionalised by Llosa about female hostages confirms what many considered
mere exaggerations about the white men’s behaviour in Africa vis-a-vis the
black women, which has also been approached in chapter I.2.3 of this book.
It seems that all discourses related to race and miscegenation (cf.
Arnold, Gobineau, Knox) did not weigh too much for the white colonisers
freed from any rules and laws, far from their families and friends, but mainly
in full power of entire territories and people. The sexual behaviour they
manifested towards millions of black women and men in numerous cases, led
to a very high sensitivity on both sides, colonised and colonisers, every time
the sexual issue in colonial environment is approached. I have also outlined
its psycho-pathological dimension in the aforementioned section of the book
, largely studied and theorised by Fanon, a psychiatrist and a writer who also
fought for the colonised Algerians in spite of being a native of Martinique.
He was himself a member of a mixed-race family. The fact that the body of
the colonised was treated as an object which could be appropriated or treated
in any imaginable way stays as one of the greatest traumas for millions of
ex-colonised (cf. Fanon, Young, Behdad, Mbembe).
The climax of this violent approach to the Congolese people was
attained during the ‘rubber rush’ when the imperial agents invented all
sorts of methods meant to force the natives into collecting larger and larger
amounts of rubber, demanded by Leopold II for his own profit, but also being
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motivated by important payments they were supposed to receive in case of

gathering the imposed ‘quotas’ and even more. The activity of gathering
rubber was very unpleasant as some lines in a diary describe:
No payments of trinkets or brass wire were enough to make people stay

in the flooded forest for days at a time to do work that was so arduous—
and physically painful. A gatherer had to dry the syrup-like rubber so that it
would coagulate, and often the only way to do so was to spread the substance
on his arms, thighs, and chest. ‘The first few times it is not without pain
that the man pulls it off the hairy parts of his body’, Louis Chaltin, a Force
Publique officer, confided to his journal in 1892. ‘The native doesn’t like
making rubber. He must be compelled to do it’. (Hochschild 120)
One of these compelling methods was to keep women as hostages the

time their husbands gathered the necessary amount of rubber. The women
were kidnapped during violent raids in the villages and any attempt at
resistance could mean death. In 1899 the British vice consul was describing
such an act of aggression perpetrated against the free Congolese:
‘An example of what is done was told me up the Ubangi [River]...This

officer’s...method...was to arrive in canoes at a village;...the soldiers were
then landed, and commenced looting, taking all the chickens, grain, etc.,
out of the houses; after this they attacked the natives until able to seize their
women; these women were kept as hostages until the Chief of the district
brought in the required number of kilogrammes of rubber. The rubber having
been brought, the women were sold back to their owners for a couple of
goats apiece, and so he continued from village to village until the requisite
amount of rubber had been collected’. (120-1)
During the captivity the situation was often complicated by frequent

cases of rape, as it is written by “Georges Briscusse, a Force Publique
officer in his diary on November 22, 1895”, complaining that “the sentries
who are supposed to watch [the women] unchain the prettiest ones and
rape them” (121). Although the hostage system was not officially accepted
in Brussels “a semiofficial instruction book...Manuel du Voyageur et du
Résidant au Congo” had been issued and was given to any agent that was
sent to a Congolese station, so as to respond to all the problems that might
arrive during the service. As Hochschild spotlights this five-volume manual
represents the written proof of a very detailed scheme meant to help the
“carrying out of a regime of terror” (121). Ironically enough, one of the
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members of the editorial group was Léon Rom, another very important
person for the making of Kurtz (121), as testimonies claim that he was a real
collector of African skulls.
This Léon Rom, a captain in the Force Publique and a station chief agent
at Stanley Falls in 1895, became known to the British public from a short
but shocking newspaper article, issued by a British explorer-journalist who
passed through that station and witnessed such a savage landscape as “the
aftermath of a punitive military expedition against some African rebels”. The
article was published by both Century Magazine and later by The Saturday
Review, “a magazine [Conrad] admired and read faithfully” as Hochschild
claims, inferring he also read the December 17, 1898 issue, “within a few
days of when [he] began writing Heart of Darkness”. Hochschild equally
gives some convincing details meant to prove that Conrad might have met
Rom before and had some idea about his cruelty, as some appalling details
in the aforementioned article displayed: “Many women and children were
taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to the falls, and have been used by
Captain Rom as a decoration round a flower-bed in front of his house” (110).
Such episodes took place mainly because of the freedom the agents had to
apply almost any possible compelling method in order to get the demanded
amount of rubber, which brought large profits to many other people besides
the king. The difficulties the natives were supposed to encounter in many
cases meant death for reasons that I have already showed and for some
others that will be depicted further.
After gathering the rubber, the natives had to walk for many miles,
sometimes twenty or more “carrying baskets of lumpy gray rubber on their
heads...to assemble near the houses of European agents, who sat on their
verandas and weighed the loads of rubber”. They were even paid for their
work “with a piece of cloth, beads, a few spoonfuls of salt, or a knife”,
which they needed anyway for their work. A 1901 record reproduces a short
dialogue revealing the fact that it happened at least once that a chief, Liamba
in the recorded case, was paid in human beings for his good work of having
forced his people into gathering more rubber. The chief claimed that he was
given six women and two men “to eat them, or kill them, or use them as
slaves—as [he] liked” (Quoted in Hochschild 122).
The villagers did not have many alternatives in spite of the dangers
the gathering of rubber represented, as the officials did not care that the
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demanded quantity could be gathered only if the person spent a whole

month in the forest with almost no food, no shelter against the leopards
which frequently made victims, and also in danger to fall from the tall vines
and break their bones, which was recorded as a frequent accident, witnesses
having declared that in such cases the victims were left to die. The villages
which tried to refuse working for the state were burnt and their inhabitants
killed by the soldiers of the already militarized system, in order to serve as
example and urge not to resist the demands anymore.
The soldiers being black people were very carefully checked for any
possible theft or waste, the most outrageous in history being the demand of
cutting the right hand of any killed person as a proof that the cartridge was not
wasted. In cases when the soldiers really wasted the cartridges they severed
hands from living persons in order not to be punished by their superiors
(Hochschild, Vangroenweghe). I will not give more details of this disgusting
imperial practice which was made known to Europe and the whole world
as soon as the camera was invented. The missionary Alice Seeley Harris, a
very active member of The Congo Reform Association, took the first photos
with young people having their right hand missing. In 1904 those photos
shocked many people, but it still took four years to mobilize Europe against
Leopold’s atrocities, which unfortunately became so deeply rooted in the
collective memory that maiming is perpetrated today by the Congolese
against other Congolese.
The regions where rubber was collected resembled any other forced-
labour camp known in history, as everything was very strictly supervised.
The new and very important element introduced by the Leopoldian regime,
which had and still has devastating consequences upon the Congolese’s
life, is represented by the ‘militia’ each company was supposed to possess
in guise of sentries. From the beginning of Congo’s colonisation different
foreign companies had been encouraged to invest as they were given entire
surfaces of land in concession for very long periods of time. For mutual
advantages they were also supplied with Force Publique members to work
as their ‘militias’. It can be easily understood and documents attest that the
cruel raids perpetrated in the villages were carried out by soldiers of all those
military forces, whose members were often compelled to join, as among the
laws and rules permanently issued by the state, one was imposing military
conscription. The commissioned officers and several sergeants working in
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those formations were white people coming from Belgium but also from
other European countries, whereas the soldiers were black mercenaries
from some of the British colonies of western Africa, from Zanzibar and
many from Congo, precisely because they were conscripts. Their regime
was poorly paid and very tough, as they were ”flogged with the chicotte for
the slightest offense [and] many tried to desert”. In order to prevent early
desertions the conscripts were sent as far as possible from their villages. “As
a soldier finishing [his] seven-year term, [he] might then face a journey of
several hundred to a thousand miles to get home. Sometimes even then [he]
would not be allowed to go”. During their service they were badly fed and
treated, sometimes even killed by over-sized punishments for mere trifles,
generally meaning tens and even hundreds of chicotte lashes, which pushed
soldiers into organizing mutinies (97-8).
Many of those conscripts were also used as porters together with any
other natives more or less strong and even with children able to carry “a load
of twenty-two pounds” (93):
‘A file of poor devils, chained by the neck, carried my trunks and boxes toward
the dock’, a Congo official notes matter-of-factly in his memoirs...’There
were about a hundred of them, trembling and fearful before the overseer,
who strolled by whirling a whip. For each stocky and broad-backed fellow,
how many were skeletons dried up like mummies, their skin worn out...
seamed with scars, covered with suppurating wounds...No matter, they were
all up to the job’. (93)
Hochschild gives several examples of atrocious treatment of the

porters, even of the children-porters applied, as in the case of the soldiers,
for any trifle which was interpreted as offence. We find out about a recorded
case of whipping all the children in a town as an exemplary punishment
for some of them who “had laughed in the presence of a white man”. They
were supposed to be given fifty lashes and they even received the half of the
whipping, before “Stanislav Lefranc, a devout Catholic and monarchist,..
Belgian prosecutor who had come to the Congo to work as a magistrate...
managed to get [it] stopped, but was told not to make any more protests that
interfered with discipline” (94). Having seen several such cruel punishments
accomplished with the chicotte, the most hated colonial tool “closely
identified with white rule as the steamboat or the rifle”, Lefranc attempted to
cause some reaction in Belgium where he sent descriptions of such scenes
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in pamphlets or newspaper dispatches. Unfortunately, the only reaction his

initiative caused was a bad assessment from the part of the governor general
who wrote in a record of evaluations: “[He] shows an astonishing ignorance
of things which he ought to know because of his work. A mediocre agent.”
At the same time “officials ordered that executions at his post be carried out
in a new location instead of next to his house” (94).
This type of reaction brings to our attention the very truthful
observation that Primo Levi made after having lived through Auschwitz
horror: “Monsters exist. But they are too few in number to be truly dangerous.
More dangerous are...the functionaries ready to believe and to act without
asking questions” (Levi quoted in Hochschild 94). We get very close here to
Arendt’s theory I have approached in I.1.2 referring to the same Nazi moment
and type of behaviour, which I applied to the colonial moment that had taken
place before, as an appalling prelude of the two world wars to come. In my
opinion, this was a very important part of Conrad’s revelation as well: he
realised he was part of a system that he was too small to change. He felt the
danger of any kind of possible repression from the authorities; consequently,
he chose to keep a low profile and to write about all the horrors he saw in the
form of a very intricate metaphor, to which, as we can still notice, scholars
keep giving new interpretations.
He had been a witness to what the theorists called ‘the banality of
evil’. In that place of horrors, Congo, too many workers for a system of
terror, for different reasons were participating in all those evil acts, as if
everything was normal and even necessary in order to educate and civilise an
inferior race. They had become so very used to such practices that they were
not able to see and understand the real dimension of their acts. As a matter
of fact, they were not always the perpetrators. The Nazism—imperialism
parallel can be extended speaking about the way the most horrible tasks
were transferred to a restricted category of the victims’ group. Thus, with
some exceptions of really sadistic personalities who declared they enjoyed
applying punishments, most of the white people involved in imperialist
approaches chose to transfer such horrid chores to the natives, if possible
from the same clan with the victims:
‘At first I...took upon myself the responsibility of meting out punishment
to those whose conduct during the previous day seemed to warrant such
treatment’ recalled Raoul de Premorel, who worked for a company operating
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in the Kasai River basin. ‘Soon...I found it desirable to assign the execution
of sentences to others under my direction. The best plan seemed to be to
have each capita [African foreman] administer the punishment for his own
gang’. (95)
This practice caused even worse damages to the collective memory of

the Congolese people, who lost their trust in their kin, became enemies of
their friends, sometimes lost all confidence in members of their own families
and filled their souls with hatred and remorse. It forged the clear basis for
the atrocities inflicted by natives upon other natives that had been forced
by the colonial regime, as I am going to exemplify, leading to the twentieth
century wars and genocide in several African countries, but mostly related
to the Congo region.
VI. 2. Conrad’s ‘cannibals’ as representation of a different image

of the native
There are many documents which have been made public only after
Hochschild published his book triggering many reactions in Belgium and
even in the rest of the world. A lot of research of what had really happened
in the Leopoldian Congo started in the last part of the twentieth century, for
the Belgians wanted to find out what was behind the stories their history
books and even fiction for children had taught them for so many years. They
wanted the truth and they discovered many of those atrocities about which
they decided to speak in conferences and lectures, or to write academic
articles. They also initiated different humanitarian activities or manifested
their indignation demanding moral reparations and adjustment of fragments
of their history in order to get a truthful account in school history books
or at the Royal Museum of Central Africa of Tervuren. Such a remarkable
act was the international conference on “Colonial Violence in the Congo”,
organised in 2005 by The Belgian Association of Africanists, precisely
in the Royal Museum I have just mentioned, where the lecture professor
Daniel Vangroenweghe of Ghent University delivered on the topic, revealed
some of the most atrocious acts perpetrated by Belgian representatives upon
Congolese people18.
18 Daniel Vangroenweghe, Department of Contemporary History (Ghent University.

Belgium). This is an essay based on part III (pp.271-366). D. Vangroenweghe: Voor
rubber en ivoor. Leopold II en de ophanging van Stokes.”Colonial Violence in the Congo
220
Vangroenweghe argues that apart from the king who “had a heavy
political, juridical and moral responsibility even according to the moral
standards of that time, the director in Africa had plenary power [which]
included police power...the district commissioners and the commanders
of the Army [collaborated and] helped indirectly to activate the rubber
production” (2). These people received huge amounts of money only as
bonus when the rubber quantity was the demanded quota or higher than
expected. Vangroenweghe explains the close connection between violence
and the directors in Africa, who thus financially motivated were capable of
acts similar to what I have just presented before and of many others from
which I will pick up some to back up my theory.
The documents he used show that sometimes the violent acts were
so revolting that certain directors had to be repatriated or in other cases
the natives made justice themselves and killed some of such characters, as
happened to Louis Liebrechts who was eventually murdered “as a retaliation
for his violent acts”. The director of justice wrote about him: “Liebrechts
is an animal and a brute. He is covered by the personality of his brother
and his trustees. He is a vulgar murderer who killed with his revolver the
village chiefs who did not bring enough rubber. Many reports were made
upon him not because of the acts themselves but because of their stupidity
that troubled the area” (2).
Another African director is mentioned, Hubert Lothaire, who
cooperated with Hanolet, Verdussen and Fiévez, district commissioners
greatly stimulated to activate the rubber production on the basis of “a circular
letter of 24 of July 1899 by the state procurator [which] approved for the
society the right for armed operations against the natives if the permission
was given by the district commissioner” (3). Lothaire recruited and also
fired personnel having as main motivation their behaviour in the process of
rubber collecting. There were many ancient criminals among the recruited
ones, but the most important reason for the outrageous acts perpetrated
against all categories of people, even women, children and old ones was
given by “the Leopoldian system of exploitation [meaning] monopoly,
maximum collecting with the lowest costs as possible, minimum salary and
bonus and promotion according to the production”. Besides, “there was a law
Independent State and the ‘Société Anversoise du Commerce au Congo’”. Edited by Van
Halewyck. Louvain, 2005.
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of silence applied for agents of the state and the [Anversoise] society. The
labour contract of the Anversoise enclosed a fine of 3.000 francs (18.000 €)
for revealing affairs or other information on the Anversoise. The bonus was
only given when they were back in Belgium. In fact they had in Belgium
no legal right to claim their bonus” (5). It becomes obvious that the main
condition for general profit out of such a system was to keep silent. That
situation allowed the unspeakable acts which stayed hidden for so long.
Reports containing lists of hundreds and even thousands of killed
natives were written by different agents who wanted to motivate the waste
of bullets. One of them was Fiévez, who also explained that “162 villages
were plundered and the huts fired, the plantations were devastated in order to
starve the population” (6). At a certain moment there were some complaints
that broke the well kept silence by being published in Belgian newspapers of
the time, then in “foreign newspapers in Great Britain and Germany [which]
picked up the gruesome stories” (7) most of them being later confirmed
by the courts. It appeared that in those cases of hostage method more than
starvation and frequent rape happened:
55 women taken hostages by a white agent were hanged because their

husbands had not brought rubber. 25 women and two children were killed
because the rowing-boats for rubber transport arrived too late. Another white
man killed 250 men and cut off 60 hands. Another agent hanged women,
children and men. He exposed of their genitals and heads on a palisade. (7-8)
In order to keep the events under control the same deceptive and violent
methods were used, which affected more and more the natives’ behaviour.
Information about those practices started to leak from different agents who
felt they could not watch everything indifferently anymore. Therefore,
people at large could find out “how agents spread discord”, as an article
reproducing a whole story revealed by an agent of the Anversoise was very
explicit about the colonial strategy applied in those special circumstances
(cf. ‘La Réforme’ of April 13, 1900 [Belgian newspaper] quoted by
Vangroenweghe [8]). It was the very old technique, ‘divide and rule’, used
by other politicians and dictators in history, that reached its goal in almost
all cases, and which had obvious long-lasting effects upon the Congolese’
future. At that very moment the most important goal of such a technique was
“[to prevent] that tribes unify against the white man [favouring] the good
issue of palavers” (8). In their attempt to accomplish it quickly, the white
222
men in charge of the issue used to give rifles to groups of natives from the
favoured tribes, among whom there were very young people, even boys,
made very attractive promises, but mainly induced them the feeling they
were very important persons and good friends of the white men because
they were already soldiers. “It happen[ed] that they overact[ed] with their
albini rifles and the so called soldiers kill[ed] a rebellious or recalcitrant
village (that means a village that refused to bring rubber). The white men
put in a great effort to maintain hostility among different tribes”. Besides,
the orders, instructions, or personal examples were all in the direction of
a very clear conduct on the part of the agents, who were supposed “not
to take in consideration the rights, the property and the life of indigenous
people”. There was no restriction in the use of weapons and soldiers against
the natives that they, theoretically had to protect. Everybody’s aim was
more and more obvious: profit. The means did not matter. Therefore, “they
[forced] the natives to bring their products and to work for the Society and
to chase as rebellious and outlaws the people who tried to escape the forced
labour” (8).
At this moment of his essay Vangroenweghe raises a very sensitive
aspect of the native-colonial relationship: anthropophagy as a method
of terror. He emphasises the extent to which the whole situation was
aggravated because of “the hostile and savage character of the barbarian
and anthropophagous population” living in some areas. At the same time
he demystifies the long vehiculated cannibal stories arguing that “the man
eating myth was not a myth in the pre-colonial and in the early colonial
period in certain areas in the Ubangi, Mpoko (French Congo), Uele and
Mongala. The ritual anthropophagy is not treated of, but only men eating
killed enemies or slaves, or people, even relatives, killed in a battle” (9).
He brings some very well documented examples extracted from official
papers of the Foreign Office archives of Brussels (Ministère des Affaires
Etrangères. Brussels. Tribunal d’Appel. N° 302 Zengo. Boma 7th of May
1903 in Vangroenweghe 9).
There were different publications in the 1890s as well, asserting the
same aspect. The Romanian Sever Pleniceanu was among the few Europeans
who penetrated into the feared cannibal tribes and got an insight which
he wrote about in the research paper he published in1902. In his work he
wrote about different tribal customs and also gave details about the rituals
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Valeria Micu
accompanying the cannibalistic acts. One of his remarks is similar to what

Ward wrote about the same tribes at about the same time. Pleniceanu claimed
that in the upper Congo almost all men ate human flesh, but women did not
and could not be eaten by men (Pleniceanu 35).
The most detailed account in this respect not always on the public
taste is to be found in Herbert Ward’s books issued after having lived a
personal experience in Congo. Peter Edgerly Firchow (2000) comes with
some more information about Ward’s weird curiosity: “Herbert Ward, who
had paid his last of many visits to Stanley Falls a year before Conrad first
came there, took pains to learn three different African languages spoken in
the Congo: ‘the Kikongo, spoken by the lower Congo tribes; the Kibangi, of
the Upper Congo; and Kiswahili, the language Tippo Tib’s Arab followers at
Stanley Falls’” (207). This explains how he was really able to get so close to
many native Congolese tribes and find out a lot on their way of being, their
customs, superstitions, tactics of war and attacks, many details he left being
unique for that time, especially because he completed his books with a lot
of good drawings of natives’ portraits and landscapes or different specific
habits, due to his well known gift for arts. However, one of his reviewers
notices that not all these drawings are pleasant to look at, in spite of their
artistic quality arguing that “the realism of Mr. Ward’s narrative would [not]
have suffered by the omission of them”. Besides, the author of the article
admits he can hardly understand “how Mr. Ward endured his life among
those people” taking into account that it is very obvious from the detailed
depiction of cruel scenes sometimes related to cannibalism, that he did not
feel at ease in such circumstances, although he makes quite clear he was not
a direct witness (“The Congo Cannibals” in The Spectator, 20 December
1890: 21).
In the preface of his first book Ward explains: “With pen and pencil
I collected, from 1884 until 1889 a few details and phases of everyday life
among the uncivilised races of Congo-land” (1891: 2). A part of that time
he was one of the four senior officers accompanying Stanley on the Emin
Pasha Relief Expedition (1887-1889). He left a lot of valuable information
about several Congolese tribes and also about Stanley’s behaviour vis-a-vis
the natives, as well as about the general treatment and imperialist practices
applied on the local population in different circumstances, one such situation
being the building of Leopold’s railway, which gave Conrad the appalling
224
perspective upon colonisation and imperialism I have described so far.

Ward’s analysis is detailed and it seems quite objective as testifies
the clear distinction he makes between the tribes especially related to the
sensitive issue of cannibalism. He writes for instance that: “the Bakongo
tribes, inhabiting the cataract region of the Lower Congo, are a mild-
tempered and unwarlike race in comparison with the savages of the interior.
Cannibalism is unknown among them, and they shudder with repugnance at
the mere mention of eating human flesh” (Ward 1891:37). Later in his book
he claims that the Bakongo “reason well and are born debaters, have few
vices”, are superstitious and selfish (46-7). At the same time he offeres his
own opinion about what was going on in that area, which was quite different
from the colonial and imperialist perspective, in spite of having made it
known at about the same time with Leopold’s and Stanley’s proceedings,
when a whole international group of imperialists and entrepreneurs were in
full action:
Mr. Stanley told to the world another tale; and, moved by the story of the
great explorer, and actuated by the highest motives of patriotism and a desire
to benefit others besides his own countrymen—to give the poor savages of
the Congo the means of coming in contact with the enlightened influences of
civilization, as well as to find another outlet for the products and energies of
the white man, His Majesty King Leopold II, of the Belgians, commissioned
Mr. Stanley to return to the scene of his explorations at the head of a well
equipped expedition, and to undertake the work of founding stations along
the course of the Congo, which should prove the means of opening up that
great highway to the advance of commerce, and of winning the tribes along
its banks to a condition of peaceful industry, and a desire to obtain the benefits
they beheld the white men possessing in their midst”. (128)
Stanley had also published his own travel books of adventure, which
depicted many aspects of the native life, but we can hardly find details similar
to the ones in Ward’s books, especially the ones referring to cannibalism. I
have already mentioned one reason for such omissions from some of the
colonial adventure books about Africa, very much dictated by the economic
projects which could have been discouraged, but this was not the only
explanation, as scientists and scholars have argued.
Howard Malchow (1996) for instance, claimed that his book attempted
“to demonstrate how the representation of the presumed cannibal nature of
the primitive nonwhite—by missionaries, explorers, and ethnologists—was
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itself a gothic discourse, a fearful and sensational imagining of the unnatural

and the unseen” (6), insisting that “it is precisely this apprehension of the
unseen that is fundamental to the 19th c gothic discourse on cannibalism—an
eternally unviewable act that has to be imagined, not witnessed” (52). He
makes the analysis of several such books bringing examples and arguments
for the ambivalent positions. He maintains that “In Africa, earlier reports
of cannibalism had been discounted by Thomas Winterbottom, and at mid-
century David Livingstone was, at first, careful not to spread the cannibal
libel, stressing that the blacks he knew were much more likely to suspect
the white man of cannibalism than to practice it themselves”, although “his
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa contains dark references
to unexplained ‘depravities’ and a detailed account of premature burial—the
cliché of 19th c gothic and in his last, terrible years of wandering in central
Africa, Livingstone, too, came reluctantly to embrace a fully Gothicized belief
in a savage cannibalism of appetite” (54). This change in the missionary’s
view is motivated by personal failure, declining health and hopes, in a
context of high difficulty and danger of any attempt of penetration of the
swampy, thick forested area hiding the unknown. Malchow appreciates that
the African explorers’ rhetoric significantly changed from “the calm and
measured discourse of a Mungo Park or a Thomas Winterbottom [into]
a Gothicized narrative of adventure” in the second half of the nineteenth
century (54). He exemplifies with some fragments from Ward’s Five Years
with the Congo Cannibals, which he assesses as being “a piece of popular
sensationalism” giving some examples of those that had also horrified his
own contemporaries and critics as I have mentioned above (51).
Malchow’s type of argument like many others’ is approached by Bettina
Schmidt’s study (2001), which relies on some reputed theories. She specifies
the tremendous importance that narratives have upon social memory, which
“can be easily capitalised upon by state elites and elaborated into a hegemonic
ideology of violence” (10). It may be inferred here that this rejection of
cannibalism as narrative topic, as well as the audience’s repugnance at cruel
scenes and violent details represent a kind of self-defence when faced with
the unknown. There is also the opposite type of reaction that of inventing
even worse situations than the retold ones. This happened with “cannibalism
[which] has inspired the European imagination for centuries [and which]
rather than being regarded as culturally constructed acts of violence...have
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been instrumentalised by Europeans...for establishing fault line between

‘civilisation’ and ‘savagery’” (76). She claims that “literary historians often
deny its existence because of the way cannibalism was abused in the colonial
discourse”. It served very well to motivate the imperialists’ atrocious acts as
representing the only way to counteract the ‘inhuman’ behaviour of “eating
one’s kind” (85).
In the same vein with the theories I approached in sections I.1.1
and I.1.2, more precisely with Girard’s approach to the sacred rituals and
founding violence, Schmidt also argues that “cannibal acts have, nearly
always, fulfilled a social function for the community” (77). Unfortunately,
cannibalism was perceived by too many people and by some critics as “an
elementary form of institutionalised aggression” (Sagan quoted by Schmidt
78), thus “[reducing] the whole religious system [of a social group] to
one single aspect, that of violence” (78). Nevertheless, Eduardo Viveiros
de Castro, a Brazilian anthropologist, has a totally different approach; he
chooses the Amazonian area for his demonstration in an attempt to show
that “[cannibalism] can have meaning beyond the violent act and even
beyond metaphor”. After comparing the position of several tribes towards
the cannibalism issue he chooses the same tribe, the Tupinamba, that Girard
also used as an exemplification for his theory some years before. Viveiros
de Castro claims that “we can recuperate the meaning of cannibalism as
a sacrificial structure without resorting to the notion of communion with
the ancestors...Through cannibal consumption, the community incorporates
the Other, and therefore, transforms itself into the enemy...’the victory over
death [is] achieved’” (Viveiros de Castro quoted in Schmidt 78).
In Girard’s view the violence manifested towards the prisoner, in the
first place attributed the role of the ’scapegoat’ or ‘surrogate victim’ and
then killed during sacred ritual is meant to bring communal cohesion. It
is what he called ‘founding violence’ because it has a basic role in the
relationships between society and human nature (Girard 1979: 275). He
mentions Mircea Eliade who “makes the acute observation that the sacred
precedes cannibalism, that cannibalism may be said not to exist in a ‘natural’
state. In other words, the victim is not killed to be eaten, but eaten because
he has been killed” (277). It is spotlighted that the same ritual takes place in
cases of animal sacrifice and as a matter of fact, all animals we eat should
normally be killed within a ritual. This ancestral practice could explain even
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more mysterious rites:
The eating of sacrificial flesh, whether animal or human, can be seen in

the light of Mimetic desire, once frustrated, seeks at once to destroy and
to absorb the violence incarnated with the model-obstacle. This explains
why cannibals are always eager for their victim to demonstrate by a show
of courage that he is the incarnation of supreme violence. And of course, the
victim is eaten only after he has been killed, after the maleficent violence has
been completely transformed into a beneficent substance, a source of peace,
strength, and fecundity. (277)
Girard argues that ritual cannibalism could be consequently understood

like any other form of sacrificial rite. “These rites may be defined as rites
of stability” having as purpose “the maintenance of the status quo”. He
speaks about “the institution of ritual cannibalism based on the principle
of permanent war and designed to perpetuate domestic tranquillity” (280).
He asserts “that primitive practices [do not] stem from a mode of thought
that is entirely different from our own” (290) and brings complex examples
from literature and history making a very long incursion in antiquity and
suggesting that human sacrifices had their place in different other human
societies at moments for long forgotten. Girard also mentions “trustworthy
witnesses [who] testify that as late as fourth century religious ceremonies
on Mount Lyceum in Arcadia included acts of ritual cannibalism involving
the eating of an infant’s flesh”. His aim is to emphasise the complexity of
the problem and the fact that sacrificial rituals with their surrogate victims
have always existed (294). He explains that “the purpose of the sacrifice
is to restore harmony to the community and to reinforce the social fabric.
Everything else derives from that” (8).
Speaking about changes that may occur in a human community he
makes a very important remark that may illuminate any person who is still
speculating upon the real reasons which affected so deeply the African
natives after their encounter with the European people. Girard claims that
“the slightest loss of difference, no matter how isolated the case may be,
is capable of plunging the entire community into a sacrificial crisis. The
slightest tear in the social fabric can spoil the whole garment if not promptly
attended to” (281). By ‘loss of difference’ Girard implies the situation where
“violence engulfs all the participants” (111). Applying his theory to the
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colonial moment in Congo we can clearly understand what subtle psycho-

behavioural and social mechanisms were unleashed from the first intrusions
of the white man in the native cosmogonies.
Chinua Achebe wrote about his own people, the Igbo tribe of southern
Nigeria, in a very successful book (1958)19, which gives a very detailed
and realist picture of what African tribes were like before the white people
discovered them. We learn from Achebe’s writings that the native African
tribes used to have cruel rituals of punishment and killing, but everything was
done in conformity with the faith in their gods’ will or the tribal judgement
upon what was right and what was wrong according to their customs, rules
and laws. What seemed to be part of a well-functioning system was to be
perverted in many ways by the European intrusion. It did not last long until
the natives themselves became cruel agents who fulfilled dirty jobs for the
Europeans in order to benefit minimal advantages from their white masters,
an effect of the ‘mimicry, ambivalence and hybridity’ phenomena I have
approached in the second chapter on basis of Bhabha’s and Fanon’s theories.
It is worth mentioning here that Ioan Catina’s notes published in some
journals at the beginning of the twentieth century provide some information
about the natives of some African countries which resemble much what
African scholars maintain related to their own old way of life and of being.
The Romanian journalist seems very impressed of the high moral standards
at work in the African communities he visited as well as by their lack of
interest for any property, information similar to that provided by Diop
(III.2.). Thus Catina remarks that “morality is not less vivid among them
as a consequence of their respect for elementary principles and sociability,
which makes them our superiors”20 (my translation). The black communities
seemed to him populated by peaceful people living in a kind of primitive
communism similar to the Utopian republics of the eighteenth century
philosophers as “there is no private property other than the hut for the time
it’s inhabited. The land is a common property”21 (my translation).
19
C. Achebe, Things Fall Apart
20
“Morala nu este mai puţin însă vie printre ei. Principiile elementare, simţul de sociabilitate
au creat această morală şi astfel, sub acest punct de vedere, ne sunt cu mult superiori nouă”
(Catina quoted in Anghelescu 57).
21 “Nu există proprietate individuală imobilă pentru populaţiile negre, afară de vatra casei,
atât cât nu e părăsită. Pământul e al tuturor” (Catina quoted in Anghelescu 58).
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Valeria Micu
There were several critical remarks related to the failure of

communication caused precisely by a total lack of understanding of different
indigenous groups’ manifestations, a superficial perception of the Other
followed by European or native overreaction as a consequence of reciprocal
misinterpretations. Referring to this single aspect of cannibalism we can
distinguish three types of reactions on the part of the outsiders, who either
exaggerated the few second hand information they received from, arguably,
witnesses of cannibalistic practice; others totally denied such possibility
within a human community, or took advantage of the rumours and used them
for a better argumentation of colonial and imperialist type. Hardly could any
of those people get as close to such communities as to be able to perceive
the logic of their behaviour, or rather we can hardly believe that there were
real cases of cultural interest guided by genuine drives of finding ways to
help the so called uncivilised natives. There was curiosity, to be sure, such
as in Ward’s case and perhaps in the case of other adventurers and there were
also reports giving interpretable information, in spite of the unfavourable
conditions for deep observations, especially in tribes where cannibalism
really existed, but the colonial strategy was not interested in those aspects
which would have hindered their plans. There was either exaggeration of the
phenomenon or total denial dictated by the economic interest of the place
and of the moment.
Schmidt argues that “archeological studies suggest that Caribbean
cannibalism did actually exist as ‘a limited, ritual act associated with
victory in battle and funerary customs’” (Whitehead quoted in Schmidt
78), specifying that the information come from Spanish and non-Spanish
sources. She adds that there are Spanish reports mentioning “the prevalence
of endocannibalistic funerary rites and the exocannibalism of war captives”
(Schmidt 78), which suggest that theories similar to those of researchers like
Girard had been inferred long before.
Peter Hulme, literary historian who also carefully studied the colonial
reports “demonstrates how cannibalism was used as an excuse for the
destruction of indigenous cultures... In the colonial discourse cannibalism
became inextricably linked to resistance against European colonisation” (cf.
Hulme quoted in Schmidt 80). Hulme insists on this aspect of the colonial
230
discourse which was able to produce large parts of the non-European world
by putting forward a series of “questions and assumptions, methods of
procedure and analysis, and kinds of writing and imagery, normally separated
out into the discrete areas of military strategy, political order, social reform,
imaginative literature, personal memoirs and so on” (cf. Hulme quoted in
Schmidt 81-2). In the same vein Bhabha also approached the racial aspect
of the colonial discourse, spotlighting the insistence the colonisers also
manifested upon “the degenerate” type that the colonised represented, “in
order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and
instruction” (Bhabha quoted in Schmidt 82).
Schmidt argues that “the indigenous cultures are marginalised within
both concepts, whether they have included cannibalism or not” emphasising
some aspects I have just explained:
The unconscious horror toward cannibal acts triggered two different reactions
that were based on the same misunderstanding of a strange violent practice.
What can be extracted from Hulme’s study is not the existence or non-
existence of cannibalism, but the European system of ideas at the margin of
our own community. It is within this framework, but without the possibility
of any real dialogue between Europe and the Caribbean, that the Indians’
behaviour has been interpreted, first by Columbus and now by Hulme.
There never existed – and there still does not exist – any real interest in
understanding the Caribbean cultures beyond their relevance as an argument
in our own discourse. For Columbus as well as for Peter Hulme, trying to
understand cannibalism from within is out of the question. (84)
Although Schmidt’s and some other researchers’ studies mentioned

mainly other colonised areas of the globe they have also analysed the African
situation in the same respect. Many other studies also brought evidence and
arguments emphasising the dimension of the impact the colonial approach
had upon the direction on which the ex-colonised engaged after centuries
of cultural clash. It is well known and recorded that the colonial strategy
led to the extinction of numerous people on the globe, inflicting traumas to
numerous others and precisely creating the mental pattern of violence in the
collective memory of once-colonised people that shows its horrid face in
their behaviour of today.
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***
I have considered that the symbolic Kurtz so magisterially painted by

Conrad embodies thousands or even millions of people living peacefully
with their nationalist or liberal or even racialist beliefs that Europeans were
capable of great designs on no condition. It was what Kurtz wrote in his
famous ‘report’. The metamorphosis Kurtz underwent totally deceiving
Marlow is part of the general phenomenon that many Europeans had fallen
victim of. I have tried to explain this process on the basis of some specialised
opinion arguing that on the one hand Europeans had not been able to grasp
the reality and on the other hand that they did not care much about that
reality.
The cannibal issue could be put under the same way of reasoning. It
paid more to turn more or less well known facts into sensational news which
could keep curious people far from attractive resources or as alternative
people should not approach this issue as cannibalism is a shame for the
humans. Anthropological studies have shown that cannibalism existed, and
to the great European disappointment it existed almost everywhere on the
globe in certain phases of human development. I have emphasised that this
was the big European problem, the incapacity of a realistic assessment of the
situation, which triggered inappropriate action and reaction, which caused
so much trouble mainly in cases of cultural clash.
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CONCLUSIONS
This study has attempted to demonstrate that imperialist practices

applied on colonised people during the colonial encounter triggered
psychological transformations resulting in a violent behaviour of the people
in ex-colonised countries perpetrated against their kin nowadays, very
similar to the colonial agents’ behaviour.
Considering the gravity of the issue I have made use of some scientific
results issued by specialists in different domains such as neurobiology,
psychopathology, anthropology, which I have reckoned appropriate and
reliable. That is why I have compared and contrasted theories advanced
at different moments in time, thus emphasizing that basic concepts
and principles had preoccupied scholars from antiquity as cultures and
civilizations have very deep roots and also their ups and downs. The issue
of violence is a very old concern, supporters of both sides always finding
arguments not always backed by scientific research. Some theories claim
that human beings have a genetic inclination toward violence (Hobbes,
Spencer, Freud), others support the contrary theory that human beings do
not have a congenital violent predisposition, such as Locke and the idealist
Rousseau, but mainly contemporary psychologists, anthropologists and other
researchers working in the Peace Studies (Kropotkin, Fromm, Montagu,
Barash, Sponsel quoted in Giorgi 22/11). It seems that the biological
implications in political sociology, as previously claimed by Spencer and
Freud and presently manifesting its effects, have triggered more studies
in this direction. Examining such effects from the perspective of repeated
aggressions upon the same social group, scholars maintain that traumas work
upon the affected persons by transforming them into perpetrators as Fanon
argued and Mamdani exemplified with cases of Rwanda, Congo, Uganda.
It can be argued that these violent acts take place according to some
patterns of violent behaviour which have been induced in the long years
of violent treatment applied with the only goal of accomplishing economic
advantage and profit. In order to exemplify this theory I have chosen Congo,
or The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as it is called today.
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It was also known as Zaire for thirty-two years when Mobutu Sese
Seko, the well known kleptocratic president renamed it (1971) as part of his
program of “national authenticity”.
Nowadays DRC represents one of the greatest humanitarian crisis of
the century in spite of its huge natural resources, or perhaps just because
of that, as the Congolese themselves have repeatedly argued (Kambale
2012), trying to counteract repeated accusations implying that they are the
only responsible for their disastrous situation. However, there are many
people, committees and associations in the world who make efforts to help
the Congolese22. This is a natural reaction of people who have probably
realised that there is much truth in the theory advanced in time by some
philosophers and scientists whom I have just mentioned, and which also
represented the main goal of my study: human beings in general and the
Congolese in particular do not have a genetic inclination towards violence. I
have carried out my work relying on the results of these researchers’ studies
and experiments, and also on the examples I discovered during my own
research in order to support my argumentation.
The careful analysis of the psychological mechanisms of violence
emphasises the importance of cultural environment for the subsequent
development of an individual, the role of the nature/nurture relation
(Helvetius quoted in Todorov, Giorgi) upon a new born baby’s brain
supposed to be tabula rasa (Locke; Baird and Kaufman), and also the great
impact education can have upon individuals (Helvetius quoted in Todorov,
Giorgi). At this point I also introduced Gustave Le Bon’s theory, which
brings arguments against the Europeans’ efforts to educate the Africans,
sensibly motivating that by destroying the old cultural background and
trying to replace it with totally new elements in great discrepancy with the
Africans’ capacity of reception, the only possible outcome would be a push
backwards from the point where they were. At that time his theory was
contested by the humanists who were persuaded that the black race could be
educated, considering Le Bon’s and some other scholars’ beliefs as based on
racialist and deterministic theories.
22
“Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Human Rights Organization, UNICEF,
Medecins du Monde, MONUC”; “Human Rights Watch Submission, MONUC Supporting
Street Children” ; “The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child
Labor”; “Child Soldiers and Visitors from US”
234
Today, from the twenty-first century perspective, we know that Le Bon

was right in this respect. Tim Butcher expressed it very clearly when during
an interview he assessed Congo as “an underdevelopping country” (2009).
We still wonder how it was possible that so many other scholars could not
understand this logical argumentation, which could have helped them have a
different approach to the indigenous people in general. As a matter of fact, this
is the very core of my work, which I have tried to support by bringing some
psychological and psychoanalytical explanations based on various theories,
such as those advanced by Frantz Fanon, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Robert
Young. They helped me demonstrate that the general misinterpretation of the
whole colonial situation – difference of cultures which also meant different
items of reference, different capacities and abilities developed in a specific
natural environment, different attitudes in given situations and also different
practices in many respects – triggered totally misplaced reactions, which in
most of the cases caused disproportionate punishments. Whipping with what
was called in Leopold’s Congo la chicotte became a symbol of European
evil together with maiming23. Freud for instance manifested his deep
disappointment that the civilised and well educated Europeans on whose
shoulders, in his opinion, the task of guiding all the peoples had fallen, did
not find a different way of solving their problems and interests, thus proving
a misuse of all their knowledge (1915).
On the other hand Girard explained the general tendency towards
violent behaviour through his Mimetic Theory of Desire, which implies
that any human being becomes desirous of anything the Other owns as a
consequence of the psychological mechanism of mimesis, desire and rivalry
also called acquisitive mimesis, which triggers violence. The accumulated
violence should be released and this is another aspect the Europeans
misunderstood and misjudged. In pre-colonial Africa as well as in some
other tribal communities in the world the ‘evil’ violence is kept under
control by the help of sacrificial ritual manifestations. A surrogate victim
is chosen, usually a war prisoner or somebody who should be from outside
23
“The Arch of Severed Hands” from Brussels was built in 1905 out of the profit Leopold
made in Congo, which meant innumerable severed hands from dead but also living people,
irrespective of sex or age, in guise of punishment but also to justify the wasted bullets.
The Belgian people did not know where all the money came from and mostly which was
the human cost for such profit. www.tripadvsor.com/ShowUserReviews...Cinquantenaire_
Park-Brussels.html on September 19, 2014.
235
Valeria Micu
the community, and who is supposed to die because everybody guides their
hatred towards that victim and want it to die. In this case violence helps the
reconstruction of the community; it is good, founding violence in Girard’s
theory.
I have also approached the phenomenon of accumulated violence
from a different perspective taking over Frantz Fanon’s theory according
to which sooner or later victims will become killers as a consequence of
the amount of acquired violence. In 2001 Mahmood Mamdani published a
book with this very title relying on Fanon’s perception of violence. Fanon
maintains that the whole black race represents the scapegoat for the white
race; consequently, the scapegoat needs to take revenge. Thus, in Fanon’s
theory violence is meant to help reconstruction too, but it also implies fight
and uncontrollable violent acts on both sides, those of the perpetrators and
the victims. I have emphasised the crucial difference implied by Girard, who
specifies that rituals are sacred and their purpose is to help the community
rebuild, thus spotlighting the important role played by religion in a human
community. This is another aspect which was not properly grasped by the
external world, especially when the sacrificial rite ended in cannibalistic
manifestations. Related to this situation I have pointed out an aspect clarified
by Mircea Eliade, which we could understand better if we compare it to
sacrificial rituals still practised in some religions when animals are killed and
then eaten. Both Girard and Eliade emphasise the importance of the order in
which these two actions are fulfilled: the victim or animal is eaten because it
was killed. It was not killed to be eaten (Eliade quoted in Girard 1979: 277).
This is clearly related to how the delicate problem of cannibalism existing in
certain tribes of Congo was and still is dealt with.
Homi Bhabha’s use of the concepts of mimicry, ambivalence and
hybridity were also of great support to my argumentation. He approached
the coloniser-colonised relationships from the perspective of imposed,
consented, intentional and non-intentional behaviour on both parts,
distinguishing different situations and stages of these relationships, whose
result is the embodiment of a new Other. The general phenomenon of
mimicry which, in many cases means mockery, a mild way of revenge
for the indigenous people, can take disproportionate dimensions. Apart
from fictional characters such as Conrad’s Kurtz or Naipaul’s Mimic Men
(1967) and also “the President” (1979), who embodies Mobutu, there were
236
African personalities that are still haunting the ones who knew them, as their
ambivalent behaviour had transformed them into good imitators of the violent
and rapacious colonisers. Mobutu Sese Seko represents a striking copy of
greedy Leopold II who horrified the Congolese during his sovereignty. He
can also be compared to Conrad’s Kurtz in a switching game where Mobutu
mimicked the colonisers, while Kurtz got contaminated by the natives’
savage customs, or ‘went native’ to put it in colonial terminology.
Another delicate issue of the colonial environment is represented by
the sexual dimension of interracial relationships approached by numerous
European scholars and also by intellectuals of ex-colonised countries (Fanon,
Mbembe), this topic representing one of the most painful traumas for the
victims and also a permanent exotic temptation for the colonisers. This
fascination for the Other’s beauty has been giving trouble to philosophers
and scientists worried by the issue of racial degeneration. Hybridity
represented a major threat mainly for its potentiality to ‘reverse the structures
of domination’ (Young), but also for older fears such as Gobineau’s who
had theorised upon miscegenation and purity of races, which seems to have
largely influenced the Nazi politics and actions.
Both Young’s perspective (1995), as well as Fanon’s psychoanalytical
analysis of the white and black people relationships (2008) were of great aid
for my study in grasping the complexity of the interracial sexual relationships,
which greatly influenced the situation nowadays. In the same vein with their
assumptions and also on the basis of more specialised opinions I concluded
that the colonial treatment of native women who were used as sexual slaves,
more as objects than as human beings, as well as the sexual assaults on young
men, which is still a practice within various militia groups, represented the
distorted model triggering similar behaviour on the part of Congolese men
to Congolese women and also to young men, boys and girls. Rape and sexual
aggressions are of an extreme violence especially in the eastern Congo
which has been described as “rape capital of the world”24. The pattern was
transmitted within and across generations as the theories related to cycles of
violence (J. Atkinson, Nelson and C. Atkinson) or intergenerational chain of
transmission of trauma (Blanco quoted in Atkinson et al.) are exemplified
by repeated and worse cases such as during Mobutu’s regime when sexual
24
Stephanie McCrummen (2007). “Prevalence of Rape in E. Congo Described as Worst in
the World”. The Washington Post
237
Valeria Micu
abuse represented a torture method25 or during the Rwandan Genocide when

Hutu extremist militias crossed the border to eastern Congo and practised
raping as a tool of intimidation.
Relying on historical and anthropological research of Cheikh Anta
Diop, Didier Gondola, John Reader, I have shown that the course of life
was not interrupted on the African continent, people of pre-colonial Black
Africa were organised from very old times in societies with different levels
of development ranging from tribal communities to large and powerful
kingdoms; in some cases the kings and even the people were very rich due to
great quantities of gold mineral they were able to collect from the soil of their
kingdoms. The indigenes living on vast territories situated along the Congo
River were very well organised functioning according to well established
rules ranging from cannibal tribes in the upper Congo regions to kingdoms
of various strength and fame such as the Bakongo, Baluba and Lunda
empires living from ancient times in the Lower Congo and Katanga area.
Very old documents attest that all these social groups structured according to
a certain social order applied throughout Black Africa were living according
to egalitarian principles, were not interested in acquiring properties, although
they were preoccupied to reach higher social status within the community,
hierarchy being established according to specific lineage principles and a
system of age and/or merit appropriate selection. The status of chief and
that of wise man were universally respected. Intertribal conflicts and wars of
supremacy and conquest always existed on the African territory as elsewhere
in the world, but they took place according to clear rules and customs, the
warriors using traditional weapons.
The Portuguese encounter of 1482 considered the moment when
Europeans first set foot on Congolese land, meant the beginning of a long
series of changes in the Congolese societies. I have explained how the initially
limited exchange of goods and people gradually turned into violent raids
when natives were captured and used for different tasks or sold as slaves, thus
leading to a weakening of what used to be great and flourishing kingdoms.
Even members of important Congolese families became slaves in spite of
the king’s international complaint. Thus the social balance of the indigenous
25
Claude Kamemba (June 2001). “The Democratic Republic of Congo: From Independence
to Africa’s First World War”. UNHCR Centre for Documentation and Research. Paper No.
16/2000.
238
societies was destabilised. One of the most famous Congolese kings, Afonso
I (1506-1543) was fluent in Portuguese, converted to Catholicism and had
a good relation with the Pope of Vatican; his son studied theology in Rome
and was consecrated bishop of Kongo, but all these did not help him find
international support. Unfortunately, even Portuguese missionaries who had
disseminated Christianity among the Congolese and brought them skills and
knowledge, sometimes combined their illuminating work with economic
interests and fight for supremacy among different religious factions. In
many cases the once well established prospering towns and villages were
plundered and their inhabitants kidnapped in order to be used or sold. That
caused very important changes in their behaviour as the tribes owning fire
arms (brought by the Portuguese and sometimes bartered for people) felt
more powerful and consequently became more violent.
The European-African contact was thus a matter of centuries of contact
and mutual influence a reason strong enough for both sides to have made up
an image of the Other. I have brought some examples meant to display the
evolution of the African in the European imaginary, at the same time proving
that many images were creations of people’s imagination on both sides. The
information was generally provided by travellers, traders, explorers and
missionaries who were tempted in many cases to alter reality. These altered
images had a psychological impact upon people who were not able to see
that reality with their own eyes, consequently taking the information for
granted. The Victorian age of exploration also brought numerous and very
successful adventure books, sensational newspaper articles and lectures
delivered by famous missionaries and explorers like David Livingstone
and Henry Morton Stanley. These were nurturing the public’s imagination
and had a great impact upon the Europeans’ attitude towards Africa and
the Africans as well as upon the way the history of some countries, in this
case of a whole continent, totally and definitively changed. Tim Butcher
who admits the personal link he felt with Stanley because of their common
employment as journalists for the same British newspaper, The Telegraph,
at an interval of a century, also highlights that Congo’s “turbulent history”
had been started by Stanley’s remarkable deeds (2007: 5). Butcher got so
impressed that he decided to remake the same track down the Congo River;
it must have been the same feelings that many of Stanley’s contemporaries
had, some being able to imagine great and almost impossible designs for
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Valeria Micu
Africa’s future. One of these contemporaries was the obscure king Leopold
II of Belgium who was desperately looking for a colony which could help
him gain more political respect among the European monarchs, some being
his close relatives. All these details are important for my demonstration as
they are meant to show how political strength, influential relationships and
wealth, combined in his case with an outstanding capacity of imagining and
also accomplishing daring designs contributed to accomplish the process of
permanent change in Africa’s fate.
The numerous tribes and kingdoms existing for centuries on the huge
area along the Congo River were organised for the first time as a clear
political entity in 1885, when The Congo Free State was legally born and
‘baptized’ with an almost cynical inspiration by its skilful ‘creator’, Leopold
II, king of Belgium. Leopold was the designer of the project, but the most
important person in the process of discovering and acquiring huge areas
of inhabited land on basis of legal papers ‘signed’ by illiterate chiefs was
Stanley. There are many witnesses who admit that Stanley had many merits,
in spite of his violent conduct, which is also controversial as more recent
biographers have tried to emphasize (Jeal 2007).
I have tried to give an account of the king’s international manoeuvre,
which helped him make of Congo a personal property and then transform
it in a forced-labour camp where violence and atrocities perpetrated upon
the Congolese became almost ordinary behaviour. The perpetrators were
the colonial agents and soldiers of the Force Publique, representing the
newly conceived state’s military forces, or of the first militias issued on
the European model and working under the deceiving role of sentries. The
militias were made of native conscripts of Congo and mercenaries of other
African colonies who were promised attractive payment. The establishment
of military forces and of other security formations in guise of those militias
is an important detail for my demonstration because of the long-lasting
changes they produced into the existent cultural environment severely
affecting human relationships initially based on cooperation and trust within
a community.
The members of those forces represented a permanent threat. They
were always armed and instructed to burn and plunder villages, kill, rape and
maim the local people in case of recalcitrant behaviour, lack of submission
to their masters’ orders, failure to accomplish their quotas, or simply in
240
order to cover the bullets wasted on hunt. This kind of behaviour ignited
intertribal conflicts which have been causing mass killings and atrocities
ever since. The genocide which was perpetrated in Rwanda in 1998, then
moved to Congo where daily killings take place as a direct consequence of
that colonial initiative.
I have discovered numerous significant examples of violent behaviour
in colonised Congo, many of them difficult to read because of the extreme
and often gratuitous acts of cruelty manifested as ordinary treatment of any
native, irrespective of age, sex or social position. There were numerous
witnesses of such acts who kept silent for many years, but eventually broke
the silence. Apart from a silent consent generated by a lack of thorough
understanding of the colonial situation or by very clear economic goals,
silence was also a matter of fear. Working contracts were very attractive,
the rules and regulations clearly stipulating material rewards for very ‘good
work results’ and serious sanctions for any public revelation of any data
which could cause prejudice to the king on the national and international
political arena. I have mentioned several such documents which had the very
clear role of keeping secret the whole Congo matter. This could have been
one of the reasons why Joseph Conrad made use of such cryptic metaphors
when he wrote his well known novella Heart of Darkness.
Conrad is considered among the first who ignited the public interest
in the Congo matter in spite of doing it in a very special way. His Congo
experience turned into an intricate metaphor whose significance I have
attempted to unveil by making different parallels and comparisons between
the main characters of the novella and colonial figures that were famous
for the horrors they perpetrated. I have also distinguished the sometimes
striking resemblance between some scenes depicted by Conrad and the
horrors hidden beyond, the way they appear in official documents of the
time. The use of metaphors also suggests that reality kept staying hidden
from the European public.
Many pieces of additional information were discovered only in the
1990s by Adam Hochschild who read hundreds of letters, diaries, newspaper
articles and official documents, which had been kept secret from the public
eyes. The publication of his book, Leopold’s Ghost caused international
reaction which helped the revelation of more information. I used some of
this information for my study in order to show that there were also people
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Valeria Micu
who tried to unveil the whole situation or to help stop the atrocities and
the horrible treatment of the indigenous population of Congo, but at that
moment Leopold’s status, ability and strength were able to discourage such
actions or to categorically counteract them. Hochschild mentions a small
but very suggestive detail for the claim mentioned above related to the great
impact of Conrad’s novella: he only knew about Congo from the study he
had had in school of Heart of Darkness and which he judged to be some
exaggerating fiction, not fact. Later, when he found out more about Africa
and Congo he understood that Conrad’s metaphors had been the ones that
lured him into looking for the truth.
This is what I have also attempted by searching into Stanley’s
adventure books and diary as well as Ward’s, which reveal cruel scenes
of cannibalism I could hardly read, especially at the beginning when I did
not know much about Girard’s sacred rituals and many other illuminating
accounts ( Eliade, Schmidt, Malchow, Hulme). Such information may
seem unreal to any people who have never heard about such practices. I
have relied on these anthropologists’ studies in order to be able to clarify
this delicate topic and then try to make it clearer for my study. It was of
paramount importance to understand that the cannibals were normal human
beings, warm and sensitive in circumstances when the members of other
tribes did not show much empathy for their kin, even for close members of
their families (Ward), who in Conrad’s book show ‘restraint’ in a situation
of advanced hunger, totally confusing Marlow’s Victorian mentality and
knowledge about Africa.
I have also attempted to analyse the psychological and
psychopathological dimensions of the colonial situation, relying on different
theories related to the interest of my research. The general psychological crisis
is given by trauma. When reading anything about Congo one could hardly
feel at ease, both as a European or as an African. It is thus understandable
that all Europeans who ‘visited’ Africa felt the effects not only while they
were there and suffered from typical Equatorial diseases, having to face
the threat of wild animals and unknown insects or the danger of drinking
unhealthy water, of eating inappropriate food or bearing the excessive heat
(Mbembe), but also when they went back home and meditated upon the
“shadow” in their souls (Jung) or upon their incapacity of adjusting to harsh
living conditions in spite of all their knowledge and civilisation. Besides,
242
they had to assess their incapacity of civilising the ‘uncivilised’ up to the

standards they had designed.
Conrad’s trauma was known by his family and friends who had not
only once worried for him. I have explained in my study that Conrad’s Congo
experience represented one of his worst nightmares which he revealed
through writing. He had attempted to write before but he also admits that
the real change took place in his mind and soul only after coming back
from Africa. He confessed that he was “a mere animal before”. Writing
books helped him get rid of the horrors gathered in his soul and memory;
the therapy recommended by several psychiatrists, which meant retelling
the story of your traumatising experience as the only healing method (Janet,
Freud) had been intuitively used by Conrad.
Haunted by his own imperialist experience in Congo, Conrad transferred
his dilemmas and judgements to the main characters of his book. He created
an ‘inconclusive’ Marlow who symbolises a general misunderstanding of the
situation but also the incapacity of accepting the truth even when the truth
becomes rather obvious as in Kurtz’s case. Thus, finally Marlow chooses
to tell a lie in spite of his great disapproval of lying and he turns into an
accomplice of the whole imperial situation in the same way all European
colonial agents, officers, missionaries were involved in the system. My
argumentation used here Hanna Arendt’s concept of banality of evil also
analysed by Wieviorka in situations where people are simply executing
orders or doing their job without implication or personal judgement.
Kurtz is an embodiment of the Europeans for whom ‘the burden’
proved to have been too heavy: ‘they went native’ in the generally used
phrase which also served as an excuse for the atrocities many perpetrated
on the black people. I have shown that the horrors displayed by Conrad in a
rather explicit way really existed; one of them is the frightening picture of
the impaled heads, which is still practised as a tool of intimidation the same
as rape is26.
This research has been an attempt to analyse to what extent the brutal
imperialist practices were applied in the Belgian Congo. Leopold had
pompously and ironically named it The Congo Free State, a state which did
not become free at all not even after the Belgian government took it over from
26
“Kisangani marks the spot”—Telegraph Blogs 26 July 2006 blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/
davidblair.
243
Valeria Micu
Leopold II as a consequence of the intense public efforts Edmund Morel and

Roger Casement, as well as many others carried on for several years (George
Washington Williams, William Sheppard, E. V. Sjoblom — missionaries;
Conan Doyle, Mark Twain). Conrad had an important contribution to
revealing the truth with the publication of his Heart of Darkness, which
has been influencing the audience since then, in spite of the controversial
criticism it triggered. I tried to unravel some of its metaphors in an attempt
to balance the racist judgements initiated in the 1970s by Chinua Achebe or
the ambivalent interpretations given by some other scholars (Said).
244
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Valeria Micu
APRECIERI CRITICE PT PUBLICARE

Valeria Micu’s study is replete with lots of thought-provoking information
that proves most useful for those readers interested in the history of colonialism,
particularly in its “New Imperialist” phase, around the turn of the 20th century. On
a theoretical level, her synthesis encompasses the main positions (especially the
critical ones) referring to the mechanisms of the colonial system, while historically
the book is to be praised for disclosing as well the contributions of some Romanian
explorers and ethnographers who were present in Africa at that time. The second
part of the text comments at length on a well-known literary representation of the
colonial agents’ experience in the “Congo Free State” (what an ironical name!), in
their confrontation with the climate, the wilderness, and the horror of the forced
labour to which the natives were subjected: the focus is on Heart of Darkness,
Joseph Conrad’s novella which sounds so very relevant today.
Radu Surdulescu, University of Bucharest
In her work of research on Congo, Valeria Micu boldly brings a variety

of approaches—drawing on violence studies, postcolonial studies, cultural
anthropology, and both Freudian and Jungian analysis—to bear on the horrific
colonial history of Congo under the rule of King Leopold II of the Belgians and its
representation in the metaphorical “heart of darkness” of Joseph Conrad’s novel—
which Micu sets firmly in the context of Conrad’s own experiences there. Alongside
the discussion of Conrad himself, and of such well-known figures as David
Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley, and Roger Casement, it is interesting also to
find reference made to the experiences and impressions of number of Romanian
visitors to the region around the turn of the twentieth century.
James Christian Brown, University of Bucharest
A difficult topic approached in a diligent introspective manner that guides

the reader to an open end triggering multiple questions, sometimes too hot to
handle. All in all the present work written in an intellectually flexible style, rich
in information, remarkable for its clarity and concision, represents a reliable
theoretical contribution to the Cultural Studies field.
Emil Sîrbulescu, University of Craiova
The imaginary voyage the author accomplishes across colonial Congo,

where whipping, raping, maiming and murder were routine, has perfectly reached
its goal, that of facilitating comprehension of the abominable present when the
level of violence has touched a frightening point.
Ecaterina Hanţiu, University of Oradea
256

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Valeria Micu

Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Conrad's Heart of Darkness

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With love and appreciation for my husband

CHAPTER II. Postcolonial Studies 55

CHAPTER III: An Anthropological Perspective upon Africa 87

and published by historian A. Hochschild in his book King Leopold‫׳‬s Ghost

competitive colonising usually manifest in violent invasions. The „civilising

rapacious neighbouring empires. Through a detailed analysis of Kurtz and

in Leopoldville was published in a letter he had sent to his father while

trauma caused by his personal experience in Congo triggered the metaphoric

mimetic desire has disastrous consequences in the interracial general

process mainly because of a certain resemblance in spiritual beliefs. There

CHAPTER I. Violence Studies

I.1. Psychological mechanisms of violence

Violence is never a totally isolated act. It is – however remotely– related to

All studies are important, useful, but reliable only up to a certain

According to Freud, humans would ﬁnd themselves locked between Eros

to be controlled by an educated consciousness able to suppress the wild

Giorgi reformulates what Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau claimed related

by aggressive pre-colonial behaviour meaning bloody inter-ethnic conﬂicts,

When considering the relationship between aggressiveness and aggression

In the Congo case we cannot even speak about cultural evolution as

conclusions concerning the nature/nurture issue in Les lois psychologiques

Another important aspect supporting the theory that in spite of their

“The effects of experiencing trauma are transmitted within and across

traumatic experiences by witnessing the horrors. The members of the second

Ralph et al., 2006; Robertson, 2006; Whitbeck et al., 2004). A deﬁnition of

I.2. Types of violence and its tools

represent what some famous scholars call founding violence or “good

Man must have been subjected to some particularly overwhelming experiences

representations? . . . Mythological thought always returns to what happened

French anthropologist René Girard as well as philosopher Mircea

rituals as the only source of metamorphosing violence. “The ritual process

[T]hese always involve a lesser violence, proffered as a bulwark against a far

The surrogate victim or scapegoat is supposed to die for all community

religions and Confucianism; [later] of Christianity [which] provided direct

It seems to me that I could superpose on this exempliﬁcation of

If the subaltern has continuously been a victim of this lack of interest

The essence of the concept is outlined by Alina Bottez (2011), as being

Surdulescu quotes Wieviorka again referring to acts of “gratuitous

In spite of being rejected by Wieviorka I will try to apply as a

Chapter II. Postcolonial Studies

II.1. From the humanist principles of the Enlightenment

drawn during the Enlightenment. Philosophers of those times were regarded

Although Kant makes a correlation between “blackness” and

globe, which could only be achieved by disseminating the Enlightenment

the Enlightenment the theoreticians and eventually artisans who supported,

II.2. Colonialism and Imperialism

From a large range of deﬁnitions and approaches, some misleading

In a restricted sense, colonialism is the organized and systematic exercise of

He adds that in spite of the almost synonymous resemblance

It was not the businessmen or missionaries or empire-builders who launched

A tall, imposing man enjoying a reputation for hedonistic sensuality, cunning

The Berlin Conference (1884-1885) was organized as a necessity to

were to be achieved through armed force in most of the cases. As Achille

In the African experience there is close relation between occupation and

In Africa, Europeans having political and economic justiﬁcations, at

[a]s imperialism is an act of aggression, being subjected to imperialism