Yes - the winners write history. If old man Aloizych had won the Second World War, he would have remained in his memory as a great humanist, a fighter for freedom, and blah-blah-blah. Well, the fact that in some places, sometimes his policy was not completely humane …
You know, they would just turn a blind eye to that. Examples of this abound, and they are by no means from the early Middle Ages. Today about the Congo, and if you think that the main character will be some negro, you are mistaken, because today's cannibal is white.
The first people on the territory of the Congo appeared long ago - in the early Stone Age. It is believed that they were some kind of pygmies or relatives of modern Bushmen. And only 3-4 thousand years ago more developed Bantu-speaking Negroes migrated here. They raised the economy to a higher level and launched the formation of the first similar states.
There were about a dozen of these proto-state associations, and around the 14th-15th centuries, the Congo stood out among them. Around the same time, the Portuguese arrived here, who were interested in slaves. The Congolese actively traded in this business and happily sold their race brothers to them.
By the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese had sent their preachers to the Congo. Well, then the classic of the genre: “My God - super! It is written about this in my little book, and your god is a slag, and about this it is also written in my book. Naturally, such activities did not cause delight among the population, an uprising arose and the Portuguese had to minimize their presence, although some seeds sprouted, giving rise to bizarre syncretism.
At the beginning of the 18th century, these seeds bore wonderful fruit in the form of an uprising led by a woman who declared herself Saint Anthony. It's just amazing how she has not yet been made a cult heroine of feminists and supporters of Afrocentrism, because she not only called herself Saint Anthony, but also called Jesus a native of Congo, like all saints. Opposed the Catholic Church. Naturally, the uprising was suppressed.
Leopold II.
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But these were flowers, because at the end of the 19th century, King Leopold II of Belgium became interested in these places. This rogue was a good king for Belgium - a democrat, builder and humanist, and when he organized the International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa, no one suspected anything.
In reality, using this organization, Leopold II actually took control of the Congo. Legally, the country began to be considered a Belgian colony, but in reality - the property of the king. And the only thing he wanted from his mega-garden was money. He was not interested in methods.
To begin with, he filled the Congo with punitive detachments in order to accustom everyone to the fact that now his will is above all. Whole villages were massacred who disagreed. If anyone remembers, such acts are defined as genocide.
When the negroes realized that they had to be obedient, they were driven off to get rubber. Each of them was ahead of the production rate, but it was very high. To prevent the negroes from being lazy, Leopold II ordered that those who did not fulfill the norm were simply killed.
But so that the state cartridges were not wasted, and that there were no fictitious executions, the king ordered that the executed man's hand be cut off. And it doesn't matter whether it was an old man, a woman or a child - they executed and hacked everyone.
But since the executioners received a reward for the executed, they began to chop off their hands for no reason. As a result, a whole marathon of chopping off hands began. Local residents also joined in, chopping off their hands to anyone, and then reselling them to the executioners, who in turn received a well-deserved reward for them.
Severed hands became currency for a while. If a village did not cope with the norm assigned to it, it desperately attacked another village in order to cut off the hands of the inhabitants there and pay off the king. The standard price was that if the village did not fulfill the quota, it must provide the king with two baskets of hands.
It must be admitted that the method of stimulating production turned out to be extremely effective. For 3 decades of such ennoblement of the savages, Leopold II managed to reduce the country's population by half (from 30 million to about 15), while increasing the production of rubber by 40 times!
However, it was not possible to hide the sewing in the sack, especially since Leopold II did not particularly strive. He was generally rather reserved and shy, but not paranoid. He just loved money, but apparently did not consider blacks people. The rest of the man was good! They also talked about Goebbels. However, public pressure grew, and a year before his death, he sold the Congo, which had become a truly Belgian colony.
It was the beginning of the twentieth century. A few decades later, a new tyrant will appear in Europe, in whose shadow Leopold II will remain not a criminal, but a monarch, a bearer of many awards, who lived for 74 years, died a natural death and was buried in the royal tomb. In one of the Belgian cities a monument was erected to him, on which is written the following: "I started work in the Congo in the interests of civilization and for the good of Belgium." Zhzhzhzhzhut …