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33	33	* Staged and Misinterpreted Evidence: Some of the most indelible images in *King Leopold’s Ghost* are the photographs of Congolese individuals with severed hands or other mutilations, which Hochschild presents as visual proof of colonial sadism. It is now well-documented that several of these famous photographs were staged or contextually misinterpreted. Missionary photographers like Alice Seeley Harris took shocking pictures to support the Congo reform campaign in Europe – but they did not always explain the true context to modern audiences. A notorious example is the 1904 photograph of a man named Nsala of Wala gazing at the severed hand and foot of his young daughter. [[image:GtvXJzGXwAAmqr4.jpg||alt="Image" data-xwiki-image-style-alignment="end" height="215" width="300"]]
34	34	\\Hochschild captions this image as Nsala “looking at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter, Boali, a victim of the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company (A.B.I.R.) militia.” In fact, the original caption (provided by E.D. Morel when he published the photo) makes clear that this atrocity was the result of cannibalism by rogue rubber sentries, not a punishment for failing to collect rubber. It reads: *“Nsala of Wala in the Nsongo district (A.B.I.R. concession)... photographed with the hand and foot of his little girl of five years old — all that remained of a cannibal feast by armed rubber sentries. The sentries killed his wife, his daughter, and a son, cutting up the bodies, cooking and eating them.”*{{footnote}}E. D. Morel, *King Leopold’s Rule in Africa* (London: Heinemann, 1904), photographic Appendix (caption to Plate: “Nsala of Wala... with the hand and foot of his little girl... all that remained of a cannibal feast by armed rubber sentries.”). Morel’s caption attributes the atrocity to company sentries who killed and ate Nsala’s family, not to a rubber quota punishment. https://archive.org/details/kingleopoldsrule00moreuoft{{/footnote}} This gruesome incident highlights the breakdown of order in the rubber areas – but it was essentially an act of mutiny and barbarity by ill-disciplined soldiers, condemned by the Free State authorities. By not clarifying such contexts, Hochschild leads readers to assume that mutilations depicted in these photos were standard punitive measures ordered by colonial officials, which is a distortion. Historian David Van Reybrouck notes that the ubiquity of these mutilation photographs in literature has created the false impression that dismemberment of living victims was a routine policy; in reality, while some atrocities occurred, they were not as generalized nor as officially directed as often portrayed{{footnote}}David Van Reybrouck, *Congo: The Epic History of a People* (HarperCollins, 2014), pp. 102–105 – Van Reybrouck explains that the iconic images of severed hands have led to misconceptions; most cases of severed hands occurred post-mortem (or on presumed dead) to account for used bullets, and deliberate mutilation of living victims was not a systemic practice. Stengers and Vangroenweghe likewise conclude there was no official policy of cutting off limbs for failure to produce rubber. https://archive.org/details/congoepichistory0000vanr{{/footnote}}.
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36	36	* Death Tolls and Demography: Perhaps the most contentious issue is the population decline in the Congo during Leopold’s rule. Hochschild popularized the claim that roughly 10 million Congolese perished as a result of Free State policies – a figure he derived from one scholar’s casual estimate and Mark Twain’s polemical essays. He and others describe this as a demographic catastrophe of “genocidal” proportions, akin to the Holocaust. Modern demographic research, however, does not support a death toll nearly that high *directly attributable* to Leopold’s regime. It is true that the Congo’s population declined substantially around the turn of the 20th century, but the causes were diverse – and disease was by far the biggest factor. There was no comprehensive census in 1885, so any pre-colonial population figure is an estimate. The first reliable census was done in 1924 (well after the Free State period). Demographers have attempted to reconstruct earlier numbers from village statistics, missionary records, and later growth rates. These studies suggest the total population in 1885 might have been on the order of 10–15 million, and by 1908 (end of Free State) around 10 million (some estimates range up to 12 million).{{footnote}}Jean-Paul Sanderson, *“Du reflux à la croissance démographique: comment la démographie congolaise a-t-elle été influencée par la colonisation ?,”* in I. Goddeeris, A. Lauro, & G. Vanthemsche (eds.), *Le Congo Colonial: Une Histoire en Questions* (Renaissance du Livre, 2020), pp. 115–125. Sanderson’s demographic reconstructions indicate a population of roughly 11–12 million in 1885 and around 10 million in 1908, implying a net decline of perhaps 1–2 million due to all causes during the Free State period.
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38	38	https://archive.org/details/la-demographie-du-congo-sous-la-colonisation-belge_202201?utm_source=chatgpt.com{{/footnote}} One recent demographic study concluded that a population decline larger than 5 million is highly improbable, and the most likely loss attributable to the Free State era (excess mortality over what would have been expected) is on the order of 1 to 2 million people.{{footnote}}J. P. Sanderson, *La démographie du Congo sous la colonisation belge* (Ph.D. thesis, Université catholique de Louvain, 2010) – using backward projection methods, the author finds a modest net decline in population (around 1.5 million) from 1885–1908; see also Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, *Histoire Générale du Congo* (1998), who initially suggested up to 13 million deaths but later revised this downward to \~10 million, acknowledging the uncertainty of early figures.