African Entrepreneurship Record

June 2, 1898.

Pointe-Noire, the capital of the Belgian Congo.

Nales, an employee of Dongbi Trading Company, and his team completed this trading activity with the Belgians. As an East African employee who has been engaged in trading activities in the Belgian Congo since 1886, Nales discovered a very surprising thing during his trip. fact.

After returning to Luanda, he reported to the company in detail what he had seen in the Belgian Congo, which subsequently attracted the attention of the East African government.

In order to determine the accuracy of this news, East Africa once again organized personnel to enter the Belgian Congo in July to conduct secret investigations.

So in 1898, the East African government came to a surprising conclusion. The East African government discovered that the Chinese population in the Belgian Congo had accounted for an absolute majority. Although there was no data to support it, when the East Africans penetrated deeply into the Belgian Congo, no one could would deny this fact.

That is, the local indigenous people are likely to be completely extinct. From 1897 to 1898, the staff of the East African colony in Belgium did not find a single indigenous person.

This shows that the local black people have been completely wiped out by the Belgian colonists. Of course, except for the black people transported from East Africa to the Belgian Congo, they are also aliens and are not considered indigenous.

In other words, the indigenous people of the Belgian Congo may have become extinct today, and the current population of the Belgian Congo comes from other areas, including Belgians, Chinese and Angolan slaves.

After the East African government occupied Angola, it sent hundreds of thousands of diehards who were loyal to Portugal during the South African War to the Belgian Congo. These diehards have now become the main black population in the Belgian Congo. However, in just a few years, they From the initial number of more than 100,000, it dropped to 20,000 to 30,000.

However, with the start of various projects in East Africa, East Africa is in urgent need of a large number of laborers. Under such circumstances, East Africa has suspended the export of black slaves to the outside world. Now there are not enough black slaves in East Africa, let alone driving out the only stock. , so before 1892, Dongfang officially stopped the slave trading business for more than 20 years.

The reports of Nales and some East African personnel attracted Ernst's attention, especially Nales's diary.

"February 7, 1898, today is the twenty-third day since I entered the Belgian Congo. I have gone deep into a local colonial stronghold called Kalabi, which is in the eastern part of the Belgian Congo. I heard the local Belgians say that going east Less than sixty kilometers away is our East Africa. This colonial stronghold is mainly engaged in the mining industry. The main mineral is tin ore, which is also one of the main purposes of my trip.”

"I have arrived here before, in April 1892 and May 1895, but today I found that there was not a single black person among the workers in the mine. You must know that when I came last time, there were at least Sixty percent of the people were black slaves.”

"Out of curiosity, I asked the local Belgians, but most Belgians were hesitant, their answers were mostly vague, and they were reluctant to answer this question."

"However, this did not trouble me. Through a pack of cigarettes, I got the answer I wanted, that is, the local indigenous people have been exhausted in the past three years."

"Thinking about it carefully, I really didn't see many black people along the way, except for Point Noire. This aroused my interest. Of course, I can pay more attention to the specific results on the subsequent journey."

From here on, the rest of the diary contains the details of Nales' census results of Belgium, and Ernst flipped through them page by page.

“On February 8, 1898, after spending a day in Calabi, I found that not only were the black people there completely devoid of reality, I think most of them had been physically exhausted, but the local Chinese laborers also lived a very difficult life. The situation is only slightly better than that of black people. Although many people in East Africa also come from the Far East, I know nothing about Chinese. However, the local Chinese workers also learned some French under the rule of the Belgians. The Belgians can speak German and French, so the Belgians It's very stupid. They deliberately placed the German and French people on the border of East Africa and France respectively. Karabi is closer to East Africa, so most of the Belgians here speak French. But this doesn't bother me. After all, I do business with Belgians. French is also a compulsory subject.”

"Through communicating with the local Chinese in simple French, I have some understanding of their living conditions. I can only describe them as horrific. They have to do a lot of manual labor every day, don't get enough rest, and their meals are also mixed. All kinds of weird stuff.”

"However, compared to the black people here, the black people are still better. The Belgians don't treat black people as human beings at all. Of course, their private attitude towards the Chinese is similar. It's just because of the existence of East Africa that they leave the Chinese behind." Leave some room.”

"Furthermore, because the Belgian Congo is now severely lacking in population, the Belgians' governance strategy has undergone a great change. In the past, the Belgians often cut off the arms or other parts of black slaves, or directly executed them. Now they have restrained themselves a lot. Because the local population is too small, it is obviously impossible for Belgians to do these heavy physical tasks themselves.”

The authenticity of the records in Nales's diary is quite different. East Africa has stabilized its national system, so the Chinese are also very influential in East Africa, the most typical of which are the military and education circles.

Of course, this influence will eventually dissipate after the death of the first generation of Chinese immigrants, and the second generation is basically mixed-race.

“On February 13, 1898, during my trip, I specifically focused on the situation in the Belgian colonies and conducted an in-depth investigation. Through local observations and the narratives of Belgians and Chinese, I can basically confirm that the Belgian Congo is now Most of the black indigenous people have disappeared. Of course, this only represents what I saw and heard on the route I traveled. I don’t know whether it is different in other areas..."

"On June 2, 1898, I finally returned to Pointe-Noire. Here I finally saw a large number of black people again. However, these black people seemed to be provided to Belgium by East Africa. Now Pointe-Noire is the most important port in the Belgian colony, so these black people are mostly Some of them worked here, and I heard that they originally numbered more than 100,000, but now there are less than 20,000 left. This also gave me a deeper understanding of the cruelty of the Belgians. "

"The black population provided by East Africa to Belgium alone is half of the original local indigenous people in Belgium. Because most of the Belgian Congo has a tropical rainforest climate like Cabinda, the original number of local indigenous people is insufficient. According to our estimates, in Belgium Before colonization, the local population was probably only 200,000 to 300,000 people, and could not exceed 400,000 people. With the Belgians depleting the land, this number of indigenous people was simply not enough for Belgium to consume.”

The fact is as Nales said, the Belgian Congo is probably part of the French Congo and Gabon in the previous life, with an area of ​​about 300,000 square kilometers. Since there is no specific data on the border between Belgium and the French Gabon colony, the specific territory of the Belgian colony It's hard to calculate the area clearly, but it's pretty much the same as Congo (Brazzaville) in its previous life.

In the previous life, Congo (Brazzaville) had a population of just over two million when it became independent from France. That was already in the 1960s, so using this data to analyze the local population before Belgian colonization was what Nales said. The scale of two to three hundred thousand is relatively reliable.

In his previous life, Leopold slaughtered at least five million people when he harmed the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Therefore, the population of the Belgian Congo is now even a fraction of that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These indigenous populations are simply not enough to harm Belgium.