of about thirty million.

One of the first tasks before the new state was to check the Arab slave
traders. The Arabs had hitherto acted as traders and middlemen along the
upper Congo, and when the English and Congo state overthrew Mzidi, the
reigning king in the Kantanga country, a general revolt of the Arabs and
mulattoes took place. For a time, 1892-93, the whites were driven out, but
in a year or two the Arabs and their allies were subdued.

Humanity and commerce, however, did not replace the Arab slave traders.
Rather European greed and serfdom were substituted. The land was
confiscated by the state and farmed out to private Belgian corporations.
The wilder cannibal tribes were formed into a militia to prey on the
industrious, who were taxed with specific amounts of ivory and rubber, and
scourged and mutilated if they failed to pay. Harris declares that King
Leopold's regime meant the death of twelve million natives.

"Europe was staggered at the Leopoldian atrocities, and they were terrible
indeed; but what we, who were behind the scenes, felt most keenly was the
fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was the desolation and murder
in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction
of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the
introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people
dumb with horror--in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality
overwhelmed the Congo tribes."[29]

So notorious did the exploitation and misrule become that Leopold was
forced to take measures toward reform, and finally in 1909 the Free State
became a Belgian colony. Some reforms have been inaugurated and others may
follow, but the valley of the Congo will long stand as a monument of shame