Congo River

Summary

Short History Of… Congo River

Podcast: Short History Of…
Host: NOISER
Episode: Congo River
Date: October 15, 2023

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode offers a sweeping historical journey along the Congo River, exploring its pivotal role in Africa’s natural, cultural, and political history. The story unfolds from prehistoric settlements and ancient kingdoms, through the horrors of colonization and exploitation, to its continued significance in global industry and environmental health. The Congo is painted not only as a natural wonder, but as the setting for some of humanity’s darkest moments and greatest struggles for autonomy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Congo, Heart of Africa

• The episode opens with a vivid narrative — French pastry chef Gaston Lenotre landing in Zaire’s jungle, where Mobutu’s opulent palace (the "Versailles of Africa") stands as a symbol of wealth siphoned from the Congo’s resources.
• The Congo River is described as the world’s deepest and most powerful, sustaining Africa’s second largest rainforest and teeming with unique biodiversity.

2. Early Human History & Indigenous Life

• The Congo basin’s first known inhabitants, the "pygmies" (Mobuti), remain semi-nomadic and isolated until waves of migration bring new cultures.
• Quote:

  “For tens of thousands of years… the original were the pygmy communities who were in the Congo basin and had been for centuries. The rainforest doesn’t make for large population development.”
  — Historian/Travel Writer Tim Butcher [09:42]

3. Kingdom of Kongo & First European Contact

• The Kingdom of Kongo was a significant African superpower by the late 14th century, thriving on ivory and copper.
• 1482: Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão arrives, naming the river after the Kongo kingdom. The scale of the river is so immense that he tastes fresh water miles out at sea:

  “Five leagues off the coast of Africa, I could scoop up the seawater and taste it, and it was sweet.”
  — Historian/Expert [11:49]

• The arrival signals the beginning of European exploitation but true incursion into the interior is delayed by the Congo’s treacherous geography.

4. The Slave Trade: Arab and European Incursions

• 1750–1860: Arab slavers establish routes from East Africa, using Zanzibar as a base:

  “The trans Indian ocean slave trade was considerably more established than the transatlantic slave trade. It was longer and older.”
  — Historian/Expert [18:25]

• Portuguese and then European involvement in the west boosts the transatlantic slave trade.

5. Explorers and the ‘Scramble for Africa’

• The quest for the Nile’s source brings famed explorers:
  • David Livingstone: Fails due to illness and suspicion from locals scarred by the slave trade [23:01].
  • Henry Morton Stanley: Ruthlessly completes the navigation of the Congo River (7,000 miles, losing 200 of his 300 porters), proving its course to the Atlantic.

    “Stanley… loses a third of his body weight. He had dark hair when he started. He finishes with snow white hair.”
    — Historian/Expert [27:15]

6. King Leopold II and the Congo Free State: Atrocity and Exploitation

• Inspired by Stanley’s tales, Belgium’s King Leopold II seizes the Congo as a vast private estate, not a government colony.

  “He would claim 1.1 million square miles, the largest piece of real estate privately claimed by anyone ever.”
  — Historian/Expert [33:18]

• The global “rubber boom” turns the Congo into an industrial hellscape. Mass atrocity ensues:

  “To terrorize communities… they cut people’s hands off. It happened systemically.”
  — Historian/Expert [37:18]

• Death toll estimates range from 4 to 10 million Congolese [39:57].
• Outrage leads to the first major international human rights campaign and eventually forced Leopold to cede territory to the Belgian state [1908].

7. Struggles for Independence & The Cold War

• The DRC achieves independence in 1960, led by charismatic Patrice Lumumba.

  “He is iconic, recognizable, calm, level headed, hyper educated… the thing that he wins is doomed from the beginning.”
  — Historian/Expert [42:01]

• The DRC’s uranium-rich mines had supplied critical materials for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs, making it a Cold War hotspot.

  “The Americans… tried to give Lumumba poison toothpaste. And the Americans basically do a nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the Belgians and say, this guy, get rid of him… He is assassinated. But it’s not just Lumumba who dies. The entire possibility of a coherent, cohesive Congo dies with him.”
  — Historian/Expert [44:20]

8. Mobutu’s Kleptocracy & Ongoing Turmoil

• Mobutu seizes power, renames the country Zaire, and enriches himself extravagantly.
• Notable symbol: Mobutu’s airstrip and palace in his home village, built to land the Concorde jet.

  “What do you do if you’re a kleptocratic squillionaire…? You build yourself a Versailles… He built a strip of tarmac long enough outside a bush village for Concorde to land.”
  — Historian/Expert [46:29]

• Mobutu’s fall in 1997 leads to new leaders, but the cycle of exploitation and violence continues.

9. Modern Congo: Paradox of Riches, Climate Significance

• Despite vast resource wealth (rubber, gold, uranium, cobalt, coltan), Congo remains one of the world’s poorest nations.
• The rainforest is critical for global climate, absorbing eight times more carbon than the Amazon.

  “If we would damage the Congo at our peril.”
  — Historian/Expert [49:26]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “To call it a river is to almost undersell it because it’s a force of nature.”
  — Tim Butcher, travel writer [08:12]
• “The Congo Free State [was] a hideous structure of sordid wickedness.”
  — Quoting journalist Edmund Dene Morel [38:12]
• “Estimates of the dead vary between 4 and 10 million Congolese.”
  — Historian/Expert [39:57]
• “Lumumba... The entire possibility of a coherent, cohesive Congo dies with him.”
  — Historian/Expert [44:20]
• “If we would damage the Congo at our peril.”
  — Historian/Expert [49:26]

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Timestamps for Crucial Segments

• 01:05 — Gaston Lenotre lands in Zaire, introduction to Mobutu’s palace and the Congo’s geography
• 08:12 — The scale and biodiversity of the Congo River basin
• 11:49 — Diogo Cão’s arrival and the naming of the river
• 18:25 — Rise of the East African Arab slave trade
• 23:01 — David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley’s explorations
• 33:18 — King Leopold II's personal land grab
• 37:18 — Atrocities of the rubber boom; hand amputations
• 39:57 — Death toll and international outcry over Leopold’s regime
• 42:01 — Independence and Patrice Lumumba’s brief leadership
• 44:20 — US/Belgian coup and Lumumba’s assassination
• 46:29 — Mobutu’s era, “Versailles of Africa,” kleptocracy
• 49:26 — Modern Congo’s environmental impact and global significance

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Tone & Style

The episode combines compelling, immersive storytelling (using narrative vignettes and dramatized historical scenes) with expert commentary to build a narrative that is at once epic and deeply tragic. The language is vivid and direct, often meditative, and frequently drives home the enormity of Congo’s history and its place in the world.

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In Summary

The Congo River, from its geological birth to its continuing influence on world affairs, is both the engine of a continent and a site of immense suffering. Its richness has attracted centuries of outsiders—first for its people, then its natural wealth. Despite independence, the curse of resources and foreign intervention has often outweighed their promise. Today, as its rainforest becomes critical for planetary health, the fate of the Congo remains tied to both Africa’s destiny and the world’s future.

Transcript

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[Narrator]

It is October 1985, and an Air France Concord aircraft is beginning its descent towards its destination. Gaston Le Nocha, a renowned pastry chef from Paris, fixes his seatbelt. The flight has been swift and luxurious, barely time to get through the caviar and four types of champagne. The signature gateau for dessert was excellent, but then he did design it himself. As the Concord drops through the clouds, he peers down at the unfamiliar landscape of central Africa. It's a carpet of green and black, a jungle cut in two by a muscular caramel colored snake. The Congo River. From above, the water looks peaceful. It is hard to reconcile its beauty with its bloody reputation, a place that so traumatized the author Joseph Conrad that he dubbed it the Heart of Darkness. Now Le Notre is distracted from his thoughts by stewardess collecting his glass. The Concorde is coming in to land. Once they're on solid ground, Lenotre turns his attention to his luggage, which today comprises a single large cardboard box. He follows an attendant as the box is carried for him out of the cabin into tropical heat that licks his skin. As he crosses the Runway, he glances back at Concorde, its famous pointed nose incongruous against a backdrop of teeming jungle. Though the iconic aircraft is a familiar sight in New York or London today, it has been chartered for a special trip to Badolite, a remote town in the north of Zaire. Beyond the Runway, which is over 3,000 meters long to accommodate the supersonic aircraft, is a thatched building, the airport terminal. Lenotre's documents are Given a cursory glance. And then he and his box are waved through the Mercedes Benz. Its diplomatic flag fluttering, sweeps him into town. Lenotre cannot believe his eyes. It's the middle of the jungle, but here are tarmac roads, streetlights, wide boulevards. Badolite, 700 miles from the capital of Kinshasa, is the ancestral home of its leader, President Mobutu. Although it is located deep in the rainforest, Mobutu has spent millions here. Money plundered from the exports of copper, timber, cocoa, rubber. All shipped down the Congo river and sold to the world. Soon they arrive at an imposing entrance to a walled compound from the modernist style concrete guardhouse. Armed soldiers inspect the visitors before opening the metal gates and letting them inside. This is the jewel in Mobutu's crown. A palace known as the Versailles of Africa. Carrying the box, Lenochra marvels at the decadent residence. Outside, it's adorned with statues and fountains. But as he passes through the huge doors, the interior is something else. It's an overdose of marble and guilt. Plush velvet chairs beaded with humidity, all made the more imposing by the harmonious sound of Gregorian chanting blasts through the palace speakers. In this strange atmosphere of forced calm, the palace bustles with servants preparing for a banquet. Le Notre hand delivers the cardboard box to the kitchens. The chef unpacks the delicacy of pastry and white cream, relieved that it has arrived intact after its transcontinental flight. Because this confection is a tribute demanded by President Mobutu himself to celebrate his own birthday. Paid for by riches drained from the Congo. The Congo river is the world's deepest and most powerful waterway. It flows 3,000 miles from east to west through the heart of Central Africa. Its waters fertilize the Congo basin, home to our second largest rainforest, the so called lungs of Africa. In a wilderness bigger than Alaska, natural resources abound. Oil, gold, diamonds, rubber. Not to mention the human resource of its people. But the history of the Conger shows that raw materials can be a curse as well as a blessing. This river, more than any other, is linked with some of the darkest times in human history. With slavery, war and corruption. But what do we know of the early communities who lived on the shores of the Congo? Why did it take Europeans so long to explore the river? And what role did the Congo play in the development of motor cars, the atomic bomb and mobile phones? I'm John Hopkins from Noiza. This is a short history of the Congo River. Today, the river snakes its way down the full length of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Though the vast nation covers two time zones, there's no single road from east to west. Instead, its backbone is the Congo river, renowned for its canyons, rapids and whirlpools. In wet season, the deluge is so powerful that it is forced back on itself flowing upstream. But this river started life running in the other direction 200 million years ago. Geologists believe the Congo connects to the Amazon in the days when Africa and America are joined as part of the Gondwana supercontinent. Fast forward to the pleistocene age, only 2 million years ago, and the continents are now separated by ocean. The Congo and the Amazon face off across the Atlantic. And on the African side, the Congo settles onto its current course. Its formation isolates flora and fauna which evolve differently to anywhere else. Bonobo monkeys, the common chimpanzee and the Cross river gorilla are all endemic to the Congo basin. The forest is home to the okapi, a unique type of giraffe, the size of an antelope, but striped like a zebra. The river itself hosts 90 types of fish that live nowhere else. The Congo is a melting pot of biodiversity. Tim Butcher is a travel history writer and author of the book Blood river, based on his journey down the Congo.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

It is an extraordinary system. It is one river and it drains an area bigger than India. It bestrides the equator. That's important because it means it never runs dry. The northern hemisphere is in the rainy season where the southern hemisphere is dry and reverse as the seasons change. So the flow is always prolific. Not like the Amazon. The Amazon is massive, but it's dissipates and it comes and goes. To call it a river is to almost undersell it because it's a force of nature. So I have a mental image having traveled there a thousand miles from the ocean on a river a mile across, pumping water, but without a single bit of riverbank, because Mother Nature is just encroaching on it all the time. It's just a great tangle of vegetation.

[Narrator]

Around 60,000 years ago, during the middle Stone Age, a group of anatomically modern humans settle in the Congo. Today, their descendants are known as Mobuti, or Pygmies. A diverse ethnic group of nomads. Their lifestyle makes it hard to measure. The population estimates range from 500,000 to 2 million. They are noted for their short stature, with males usually standing under 5ft tall. This is partly because pygmies go through early puberty and often reach adulthood by the age of 12. For a long time, they are the Congo's only human residents.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

So the Congo Is settled by humanity for tens of thousands of years. The indigenous. The ultra indigenous community, the original Were the pygmy communities who were in the Congo basin and had been for centuries. And then they were influenced by waves of African migration. But the defining characteristic Is that the rainforest doesn't make for large population development. And so even though it was on a huge scale, There weren't large cities.

[Narrator]

There are many rival kingdoms along the Congo. Their battleground is the river. Where war canoes loaded with warriors Settle scores on the water. One of the oldest civilizations Is the Bokongo. A matrilineal society with kinship Passed down the female line. It is strictly hierarchical. With a monarchy and an aristocracy who intermarry to retain power. There is also a middle class of traders. And a working class of farmers, Fishermen and craftspeople. And there are the enslaved people Taken from other kingdoms. By 1390, the Kingdom of Congo Is an African superpower. It comprises six provinces around the river and forest. And a capital located in modern day Angola. Its wealth comes from the trade in ivory, Raffia and copper. The Bokongo are the first to make contact with outsiders. In 1482, a Portuguese explorer named captain Diogo Kao Arrives in a sailing ship. He is 4,000 miles from his home port of Lisbon, the first European to venture this far south. Without backup or friendly ports where he can seek sanctuary. Kao crosses the equator and pushes on. He has no idea how big Africa is, Where it ends, or what he will find. His mission is to establish an outpost at the furthest reach of the Portuguese empire. In early August, he spots the widest estuary he has ever seen.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

He finds this extraordinary river on the west coast of Africa. They've already climbed down Past Sierra Leone, Past Freetown, Past Nigeria, Past the Cameroon. They find this river, and it is a stonker. It's a massive river. And this is 1482. So how would you measure how big and impressive this river was? He had a wonderful way of doing it. He says in his diary, Five leagues off the coast of Africa. I could put my cup, Scoop up the seawater and taste it. And it was sweet to the taste. Why? Because the outflow of fresh water Was so extraordinarily powerful, it literally pushed back osmosis and diffusion of salt.

[Narrator]

It's a blistering August day in 1482. On the deck of his four masted ship, Captain Diogo Cow barks an order to turn into the massive estuary. By his estimate, it's over two leagues wide, More than five modern miles. His crew haul ropes until the sails catch the breeze. Thanks to the light, agile design of the ship, suited to rivers as well as open seas. Soon they are sailing inland. The crew lean over the sides, fascinated by the landscape. At the shoreline, rainforest tumbles into the water and strange, glistening creatures slide into the shallows. Captain Kao urges them on. In Portuguese, his name means dog, Diogo the dog. And his master is King Joo ii. Obsessed with finding a route to India to access the spice trade, the king is also fascinated with a legend of Prester John, a mythical monarch believed to rule a lost Catholic empire. Could a river this size support such a large civilization? Flocks of pelicans circle as they push up river. Men point in fear at crocodiles and hippos. Some whisper the Lord's Prayer. But it's not just the wildlife they're afraid of. West Africans taken as slaves have told them terrifying tales of the Mami Wata, a spirit or siren believed to lurk in the water. But soon they reach a more tangible obstacle ahead. The the river is impeded by a barrier of low lying rocks and separated into two raging waterfalls, split by a central island of granite. Kao's heart sinks. It's impossible. They drift back to calmer waters and drop anchor. Kao lowers a rowboat and ventures ashore. Behind the green wall of the jungle, they spy rusty forest settlements. Soon Kao encounters a delegation of people dressed in palm cloth wrappers. The two groups greet each other cautiously, but once it's clear that everyone is peaceful, they communicate with enthusiasm. Kao learns that the falls are named Yalala. These people are Bokongo. On the other shore live the Loango. They exchange gifts, and Kao is impressed by the quality of the woven raffia baskets. And there is ivory too, which further whets his appetite. But then, something even more exciting. He learns that the Bakongo have a great king who lives upriver. A plan forms in Kao's mind. Could this be Prester John? He sends a delegation of four North Africans picked up earlier on the journey to travel inland to meet this king. The men are converted Christians, part of his crew, but also considered expendable. Captain Kao retreats to his ship. Weeks pass, the rains come, and the crew are plagued by mosquitoes. One spikes a high fever, then another. Both men die within a day. After months pass, it is clear to Kao that his ambassadors are not coming back. He cannot risk his entire crew for the sickness. As more men succumb to fever, Diogo Khao raises his sails and flees the safe haven of the Congo has turned to horror. Captain kao takes the name from the kingdom of congo. And gives it to the river. Before he leaves, he erects a stone pillar. At a place called shark point, which claims the territory for the Portuguese king. After venturing as far down the coast as angola, where he plants another marker, Kao comes back to the Congo for his envoys. They still haven't returned from the forest, so he seizes four bokongo men as hostages. They sail with him Back to lisbon. Kao is given a hero's welcome. One of the Bokongo hostages, Named kokoto, Thrives on the adventure. He learns portuguese and returns to Congo On a later voyage. To facilitate trade between the nations. The most lucrative export now. Is enslaved people. The bokongo use forced labor in their own society, Usually people taken prisoner from rival tribes. They hope that by supplying these people to the foreign slavers, they can prevent their own community Being enslaved. It is estimated that some 5,000 people. Are sold like this each year. But the bokongo cannot stay Immune to the trade forever. Forty years later, the chief will write to the Portuguese monarch. Begging him to stop depopulating his homeland, Though it's a request that is ignored. The Portuguese arrival in West Africa in 1482. Occurs 10 years before Christopher columbus Begins the colonization of the Americas in 1492. But while that continent Is rapidly invaded, it will be another 400 years. Before outsiders Reach the interior of the congo. Because of the perilous nature of this river. However, Although european incursion Is still a way off, A threat comes from another direction. Three thousand miles away, at the eastern end of the river, Slavers move in from oman,

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

they moved down the coast of east africa. And they took zanzibar, Effectively as an aircraft carrier, As a military base that was safe and defensible. And then they raided into africa. They grabbed ivory where they could, they grabbed humans where they could. And so the first outsiders. To meet Congolese people. Were arab slavers. And they didn't get on. The Arab slavers Came with muskets. They were slavers. You could imagine. We're talking 1750 to 1860, that sort of period in this brutal time, you, could turn up as an arab slaver. And get two for the price of one, Shoot elephants, Take their ivory. But how do you carry it out? You give it to slaves who you chain together, and they walk all the way out. Because let us remember that the trans Indian ocean slave trade. Was considerably more established. Than the transatlantic slave trade. It was longer and older.

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[Narrator]

In the first half of the 19th century, the transatlantic slave trade is finally abolished across most European countries. But outsiders remain fascinated by what else they might find in Africa. A European craze for exploration grows coinciding with the invention of new medicines that make it marginally safer to travel. The fear of disease has always loomed large in the minds of explorers. In 1816 the entire crew of a Royal Navy ship called HMS Congo is wiped out on the Congo. But now, 20 years after that ill fated trip, quinine is made into pill form for the first time. The medicine, derived from the bark of a Peruvian tree, is a natural remedy against malaria. In 1840 the Scottish missionary doctor David Livingstone sets sail for Africa with quinine in his luggage. Determined to make his name as an explorer, he charts the course of the Zambezi river, walks across the continent and survives a lion attack. His next adventure is to discover the source of the River Nile. Instead he ends up on the Congo.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

Livingstone gets to the river and the locals attack him. Even though he was a peace loving Christian. But they said clearly you're a harbinger of slavers. It was a hostile place.

[Narrator]

For people living on the Conger river, outsiders are associated with one the violence of the slave trade. Livingstone is personally opposed to slavery, but because he needs transport and protection, he's willing to accompany a troop of Arab slavers into the African interior in search of the source of the Nile. Reaching the outer edge of the Congo basin after a long westward hike across Tanzania, he identifies a river flowing west out of Lake Tanganyika. But before he can explore further, he falls ill. Despite the quinine that eases but does not cure malaria, he cannot travel any further. No news of Dr. Livingstone reaches London for six years and many give him up for dead. But then Welsh born journalist Henry Morton Stanley is tasked with finding the missing adventurer. Stanley writes to his editor that he will return with Livingstone's story or his bones. In 1869 Stanley sails for Africa and marches into the interior. Though he's ravaged by dysentery, malaria and smallpox. On 10 November 1871 he hears rumors of a white man living in a remote village. Stanley enters a hut to find a sick man with a ragged beard. According to legend, Stanley greets him with the words Dr. Livingstone. I presume. Thanks to fresh medical supplies, Livingstone is able to continue on his quest for the source of the Nile, only to die a year later. As one pioneer departs, another arrives. But they are very different characters. Henry Morton Stanley is curious about the river that Livingstone found flowing towards the west. It is called the Lua Laba and it's the only river flowing out of Lake Tanganyika. All the others flow in. It's clearly not the source of the Nile. So where does this Lualaba lead? In 1874, Stanley embarks on a journey down the river. He travels with Mohammed bin Hamad, better known as Tippu Tip, the richest Arab slaver on the continent. Tippu Tip has amassed a fortune by plundering people and ivory. He dominates the eastern end of the Congo with a militia 50,000 strong. Later, his autobiography will be considered a classic of the Swahili language. But even Tippu Tip is daunted by the prospect of venturing out of his own territory into the unknown heart of the Congo. When his men reach the perimeter of their domain, they refuse to continue. Stanley ventures on with his own crew, but without a guide.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

I don't like Livingston. He's not a man of patience. He's old school, big right boot and lots of guns. And so when he gets to the river, he doesn't mess around. He asks for boats. The locals say no, and he pulls out guns, steals boats. Stanley also took Zanzibar bearers with him. He took 300 souls from Zanzibar. It's like a little army. He had Europeans with him, he had guns, he had animals, and he had 300 bearers. By the time he gets to the mouth of the river, they're down to 109. So that means almost 200 have either died, bled, abandoned, or got lost.

[Narrator]

Stanley's riverboat is a ten oared vessel called the Lady Alice, named after his fiance back in London. His crew travel in a flotilla of pirogues or dugout canoes. The Lady Alice can be broken into five sections, meaning that along with the canoes, she can be lifted out and carried around waterfalls or rapids, or marched through tribal territories. But for Congolese people traumatized by centuries of slaver raids, this is an incursion they're not willing to take.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

They didn't have the capacity to stop him traveling on the river. They probably had the capacity to stop him settling, going up their rivers and into their area. And they basically sent him a signal, which is, we know that outsiders in this part of the world, they come for slaves, they come for us. We're not going to roll over. We're going to fight you. We're going to come at you hard, whoever you are. We presume you're a slaver. And if you float past us, rather than coming up by a river, we might just about leave you alone. I think that was the nature of it. He wasn't there to claim it. He was there to explore it. And he basically pushed through anything that got it in his way. And those river communities that fought back had good reason, really good reason. He had to be enterprising, change plans. He had to be ruthless to be tough. He loses a third of his body weight. He had dark hair when he started. He finishes with snow white hair. It was tough. They were eating a shoe leather at the end. And it takes him about a year and a half to go from the headwaters of the river in a massive sweeping arc. Emerging at the mouth of the Congo and solving that mystery.

[Narrator]

Stanley survives, but only by using brute force. He later earns the dubious nickname Bulla Matare, or Breaker of rocks. In early August 1877, Stanley is within reach of the Atlantic coast. He has traveled 7,000 miles over three years, but collapses with exhaustion in a town called Nisanda. Standing on the wooden veranda of his residence, looking out over the Congo estuary, another man is far from home. He is a trader for Hatton and Cookson, a British company from Liverpool who've had a trading post at the mouth of the Conga river for decades. After a long day overseeing shipments to and from the port, the trader is enjoying a sundowner. As he finishes his gin and tonic, he hears the sound of running feet. A young man appears. He is a stranger, a black man who doesn't look local. In fact, his clothes have a distinct Arabic style. He introduces himself in perfect English, explaining that he is a Zanzibari who has walked all the way across the continent. Then he hands over a scrap of paper. The Englishman opens the letter somewhat suspiciously. In all his years on the Congo, new arrivals have always come from the sea. No one who speaks fluent English ever comes from the interior. The letter is from Henry Morton Stanley. It says, I am the man who rescued Dr. Livingstone. But of course the trader has heard of Stanley. The man is a legend. The note requests urgent help. It says, I am 990 days out of Zanzibar and down to my last moments. The trader immediately leaps into action. He instructs a servant to pull together some supplies while he pulls on his walking boots and fetches a gun with some ammunition. The servant comes running back with a bag containing pots of rice and vegetables and several bottles of beer. Soon the Englishman and a small entourage are en route to the place where Stanley claps. They take a boat as far into the estuary as they can travel and then hike through the forest. Three days later, the Englishman finds the explorer slumped under a tree. But Stanley rouses at the sight of a rescue party tearing into the supplies. He grabs a Bottle and pops the the cork. Downing the amber colored beer in great gulps. Restored by food and drink, Stanley gets to his feet and walks the last few miles of his epic journey. He will later write in his diary that the finest moment of his trip was that bottle of pale ale. Henry Morton Stanley establishes the source of the Congo River 3,000 miles away and proves that it is navigable. He achieves the renown he so desired. But personal fame is not his only legacy.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

Stanley changes the history not just of the Congo. He changes the history of the continent because prior to that, outsiders, the European outsiders did not go beyond ports. He is like the driver, he's like the catalyst. And that's why the Congo has not just a geographical importance for the continent. It has this historical importance because it was the opening after the Congo that fires the starting gun for the outsiders.

[Narrator]

Coming though, Stanley returns an instant celebrity. His fiance has already married someone else. And it appears that's not the only boat he missed. The British government don't share his enthusiasm for further commercial ventures. They have lucrative colonial territories spanning the globe. But the army is also caught up in a conflict in South Africa that will develop into the Zulu war. While Stanley sees opportunities in the Congo, London isn't minded to invest any more than it already has in a challenging continent. Deflated, Stanley writes two best selling books that focus on his journey. But it's his daily Telegraph pieces about his travels that make their way to one particular reader across the channel. In Belgium, King Leopold II rules over a young nation, independent from the Netherlands for just 50 years. But he knows that if Belgium is to compete with other European superpowers, he needs a colony. After reading about Stanley's exploits, the king sends for the explorer who joins him at his castle outside Brussels.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

And Stanley, who's a vain man, loves him. Suddenly someone's taking it very seriously. Tell us more about what you found. And he is employed by the Belgian king, not by the Belgian state. He wasn't setting up a Belgian colony. He was setting a private estate, a safari lodge for this Belgian king who would never step one foot in africa ever. Leopold II. And yet when Stanley went back, he would claim 1.1 million square miles, the largest piece of real estate privately claimed by anyone ever. And the reason? There were no other rivals at the time. No other European rivals at the time. And Stanley could turn up with guns. He knew what he was doing. And this extraordinary exercise in land grants took place. To call it colonialism isn't quite right. It was a land grab for a king.

[Narrator]

This may on the Noiser podcast network. Real Vikings concludes as the epic excursions of the Norsemen culminate in a monumental showdown on short history of we'll witness the world changing events of the Spanish civil war and uncover the James Bond on real Survival stories, a remarkable tale

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China and an extraordinary encounter with a humpback whale. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, we're amidst the misty expanse of Dartmoor for one of Conan Doyle's most beloved works, the Hound of the Baskervilles. Get all of these shows and more early and ad free on noiserplus. And by the way, a short history of of ancient Rome. Noyes first book is out now in paperback, available in all good bookshops. Back in Europe. Leopold wants his claim to the Congo formalized in 1884. He invites delegates from 14 nations, all white men, to attend the Berlin conference where they carve up Africa like a giant game of risk. Many territories have already been claimed and some go home with nothing, including the United States. But the Berlin conference without a single African representative at the negotiating table signals to the world that Africa is now the stamping ground of Europeans. At first, what King Leopold calls the Congo free state is a mere status symbol, the world's largest private park. But he soon discovers that the rainforest of his new personal estate contains a natural resource with enormous potential in the form of a vine called Landolfia ovariensis, better known as the rubber plant.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

It was a strange coincidence. A land that the Belgian king could take and claim as his own. What can he get out of it? He could get a bit of ivory. Okay, fine, ivory is still valuable, but we're talking 1880s and 1890s. Over in America, our friend Mr. Henry Ford, he's invented the Model T Ford. The world is about to go bananas and what do they need to drive a car? You need a tire? Mr. Dunlop has galvanized rubber, made it an industrial commodity. And guess where on the planet you'd find rubber in Congo. So the Belgian king having made it as a vainglorious thing to think, I just want land for myself. Suddenly find, oh, actually there's cash to be made here.

[Narrator]

It is nasty and dangerous work to get the latex SAP from the rubber plants. So who's going to do it? King Leopold claims to be a humanitarian. The slave trade has long been banned in many parts of the world. It rages on in Central Africa. And though the Belgian king pledges to wipe out the Arab slave trade, rubber is about to become highly profitable. Leopold Wants it at any human cost.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

The methods that the Belgians used were extraordinarily brutal. To get this rubber, it was cruelty at its most venal. It was unleashing brutal, white, frankly, mercenaries. I mean, these were soldiers and cutthroats and prisoners. They emptied the prisons. They sent them out on boats with guns from Antwerp, and they landed them on the coast of the Congo. And they said, go inland and just get us rubber. And this terrible, terrible, very important to remember. Iconic process evolves where to terrorize communities. In order to produce rubber, they cut people's hands off. So they didn't just murder people, they mutilated them. And it didn't happen once or twice. It happened systemically to terrorize the others, to encourage the others. And this was the reality of the Congo Free State.

[Narrator]

The Congolese are forced to labor for nothing, driven by an army of enforcers known as the Force Publique, who threaten workers and their families unless quotas are met. The industry becomes known as red rubber due to the bloodshed. British journalist Edmund Dene Morel travels to Congo as a clerk on a ship. He writes about what he witnesses there, calling the Congo Free State a hideous structure of sordid wickedness. Even in a world accustomed to the brutalities of slavery, imperialism, and war, the treatment of the Congolese causes outrage around the world, as well as the brutality of hand and foot amputations. Millions of people are worked to death. Rubber collectors are executed for failures to meet quotas. Any attempt to fight back is violently crushed with widespread reprisals for rebels and their communities. Epidemics and malnutrition claim thousands more. Some half a million die of the parasitic infection known as the sleeping sickness. Estimates of the death toll are unreliable due to a lack of record keeping, but it is thought that half the population of the Congo Free State dies during the 23 years of Leopold's occupation. In 1904, a group called the Congo Reform association is launched in the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's first pressure groups and orchestrates a global publicity campaign. Activists use celebrity endorsements, graphic photographs, and magic lantern projectors, an early form of film, to show evidence of the atrocities to the public around the world.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

Estimates of the dead vary between 4 and 10 million Congolese. In 1900, there was a very impressive early NGO focus on the Congo that basically said, we've seen what's going on, and this is awful. Christians were involved, Anti slavers were involved, and just decent humans. 1901, we have Joseph Conrad physically going out on the river as part of this industrial effort to gather rubber. And it freaked him out, what he saw. It burned in his soul so deeply that he would write a novella nine years later, Part of Darkness. A very short novella, but so, so powerful. In 1908, the Belgian king was forced to give up his land because of the outcry. It was so horrible what they were doing.

[Narrator]

King Leopold hands over the private playground of the Congo Free State to his government. In theory, governments are bound by international conventions on human rights, so the worst excesses of brutality are somewhat curbed. But in reality, forced labor continues by other means. By the 1950s, revolution is brewing. The Belgians concede to local government reform and then agree to an election in the Congo, hoping to appoint a puppet president. But civil unrest escalates. In January 1959, rioting in the capital of Leopoldville leaves scores dead and forces Belgium's hand. Soon independence follows. In 1960, the former Belgian colony becomes the Democratic Republic of Congo, or drc, with its capital in Kinshasa on the south bank of the river. Its neighbor, the Republic of Congo, often now called Congo Brazzaville, comprises the area occupied by the former French colony. In the much larger drc, there is confusion about who will lead the vast new nation, which is the size of Western Europe. The man who has chosen to unify disparate communities based on ancient kingdoms is called Patrice Lumumba.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

He is iconic, recognizable, calm, level headed, hyper educated. Lumumba came from a town called Kisangani. So on 30 June 1960, Lumumba as a winner of an election as the democratically selected Prime Minister, the thing that he wins is doomed from the beginning. It's doomed for this primary reason. The Belgians never really want to hand these over. They actually want to hand over all the boring bits. But the wealthy bits where the copper comes from will just hold onto those. The Belgians manipulated it from the get go.

[Narrator]

It's not just the Belgians moving against Lumumba. It's also the Americans. Once again, the tension is caused by Congo's natural resources. The DRC sits on the world's largest source of uranium used in nuclear weapons. The bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II contained mostly uranium from the Shinkolobwe mine near to where the Congo river rises. Though the mineral is found elsewhere in the world, the Xinkolobwe mine is unique. There are uranium mines in the US or Canada where the rock contains less than half a percent of uranium. In Congo, it is 65% pure. During the Second World War, the mine was exploited in secret. Its location was obliterated from maps and the ore described on export documents as gems. When Congo gains independence, the mine is closed and the entrance filled with concrete. But the first Congolese president, Patrice Lumumba, steps onto the world stage in 1960, at the height of the Cold War. Global political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union has created a race to build more nuclear weapons. In the decade from 1955 to 1965, the number of atomic bombs owned by the two superpowers swells from 3,000 to 37,000. And Lumumba has the keys to the uranium. He's being courted by Americans and communists from the Soviet Union. Everyone wants to keep him under their control or get rid of him altogether.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

The CIA in America is seriously jumpy about the Cold War. Cuba has just fallen. They're absolutely petrified. They tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar. A man called Larry Devlin, who was the CIA head of station in, in Chasa, he lived out for the rest of his life bragging about what they tried to do. And they tried to give Lumumba poison toothpaste in the Congo. So that was the period where the CIA were particularly jumpy that the Soviet Union was making moves towards Lumumba and that Lumumba was minded to accept their approaches. And if he accepts their approaches, he might then give the uranium access to them. And the Americans basically do a nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the Belgians and they say, this guy, get rid of him. And there's an actual memo from Eisenhower in the White House saying, get rid of him. He is assassinated. He's murdered, as are his people. But it's not just Lumumba who dies. It's the entire possibility of a coherent, cohesive. Congo dies with him. And the point was that the Congo, even though it's a piece of real estate in Africa, it had reached beyond Africa. Because of this Cold War dimension,

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the

[Narrator]

DRC needs a new president, one the United States can get behind. Joseph Desiree Mobutu steps forward and gets elected president. Mobutu launches an authenticity campaign renaming African towns so that Leopoldville becomes Kinshasa, Elizabethville becomes Lubumbashi. In 1971, he also renames the country the Republic of Zaire. Around this time, he ditches his military uniform and begins sporting his signature leopard skin hat. But despite his claims to be the liberator of his nation, Mobutu sets about siphoning wealth from the country's natural resources. He forces his people into brutal labor regimes reminiscent of the Belgian colonists. And as he cruises the Congo river on his yacht, he has a palace built in his home village, which he nicknames Versailles.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

And that's Mobutu's era. And that's why the Congo, having been the epitome of so much potential good and development in Africa, it's become a synonym for corruption or plutocracy, for disappointment, failed opportunity and for loss. What do you do if you're a kleptocratic squillionaire with more money than you could imagine? You build yourself a Versailles. Louis XIV wasn't alone. It was a Versailles and it was insane. He built a strip of tarmac long enough outside a bush village for Concorde to land. So he would charter Concorde from Paris. As you know, there were several Concordes Air France. Once he used to bring them down with load of his champagne. It was taken to excess. Now streaming Disney plus invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six episode docu series.

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[Historian/Expert Commentator]

the book the end of an era. And don't miss Taylor Swift. The Eras tour the final show featuring for the first time the tortured Poets department.

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Now streaming only on Disney plus.

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See full [e-mail] President Mobutu's dictatorship continues until 1997, when his armed forces cause him to flee from the country. He dies later that year in exile in Morocco. His successor, Laurent Desiree Kabila, reverts to the name Democratic Republic of Congo. But the nation's woes are unchanged. It suffers another decade of conflict and genocide, sometimes called the Great War of Africa. So widespread is its impact on the continent. Now the DRC is still listed by the World bank as one of the five poorest nations in the world, a fact that is all the more tragic considering how much its riches have fueled global advancements. The 20th century car industry rolled out on its rubber. The 21st century electric vehicle revolution needs its cobalt. Your mobile phone may contain coltan mined in the Congo. And its rainforest is one of the last of the world upon which humans rely more than they know.

[Historian/Expert Commentator]

So the river is a result a fluvial superhighway. And the environment, the strange blessing it is still, it's still sealed off. And in this era of climate change, we're lucky that this strange history has not allowed logging roads. But it does have this power. And as an absorber of carbon, it is eight times more powerful than the Amazon today. That defines its place in Africa in terms of what it contributes to the humans who live there. And also on a global scale. If we would damage the Congo at our peril.

[Narrator]

Next time on Short HISTORY of We'll bring you a short history of Jane Austen.

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It is remarkable how a young woman rose to be a rival to William Shakespeare today in terms of her brand and her name recognition. She has become kind of a Hollywood darling and people adore her. The manner by which she did that is due to her own merit. Yet it took quite a while for her reputation to build and for her talent to be recognized. She didn't make a career out of her writing. That was something that is only happening now. And, boy, is it happening.

[Narrator]

That's next time.