Displaying unwilling humans is just about the oldest civilized activity. Wall paintings and bas-reliefs from earliest Egypt and Sumer depict captives being humiliated. The drive to do this has not noticeably diminished over 5,000 years.
March 20 will be the 100th anniversary of the suicide of Ota Benga, a Congolese Pygmy who was a big draw for gaping Americans at both the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 and, two years later, in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo.
This is not merely a curious episode from a bygone age, when the most eminent figures in American anthropology conspired with a deranged South Carolina racist to kidnap and humiliate and make money from the misery of a small African. Not small only because he was a Pygmy but because he may have been a child. Pamela Newkirk, professor of journalism at New York University, shows that some of the leading institutions of today — including the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Zoological Society, the Smithsonian Institution and elite universities from Chicago to Dartmouth — are still lying, covering up and distorting their shameful part in the affair.
Newspapers, too, performed vilely, for the most part, although a few supported a band of mostly black ministers who fought for the freedom of Ota Benga.
It says a great deal about American morality that when Ota Benga was locked in a cage and shown for two bits a look that thousands of ordinary Americans thought it amusing to burn him with cigarettes, stone him and chase him. And that it did not seem to occur to the elite of New York that slavery was supposed to have been outlawed 40 years earlier.
It took a Scot, Rev. R.S. MacArthur, to point out to white racists what they were doing. Even after he did, many saw nothing wrong with it.
Ota Benga’s personal disaster was an episode of the great capitalist genocide in the Congo, which killed more people than died in Hitler’s Holocaust. Or Stalin’s destruction of the Ukrainian peasantry. Or Abdul Hamid’s slaughter of the Armenians.
All these famous atrocities were smaller (in terms of lives taken) and shorter than King Leopold II’s money-making enterprise; and if there is an omission in Newkirk’s retelling, it is the slight attention she pays to the American businessmen, including famous names like Guggenheim, who — long after a small band of moralists led by the English shipping agent E.D. Morel had exposed the atrocity — scrambled to get in on the slaughter.
On the other hand, Newkirk spends a lot of effort in portraying the educational and cultural infrastructure of African-Americans in the years after Emancipation. It is easy to see why; few Americans know anything about it and she is seizing a teachable moment, but the late pages of “Spectacle” drag as a result.
Still, she holds up a mirror and many an American of today should see himself in it and burn with shame.
[OP:] The drive to do this has not noticeably diminished over 5,000 years.
ReplyDeleteSeriously? Do you mean to say that the drive to humiliate or demonize the enemy, or anyone else for that matter is no different in the US, or the West in general, now than 50 or 100 years ago? (Never mind 5,000)
I'm sure you can remember, and liberally cite, all the humiliation we did of German and Japanese soldiers following WWII. Why, there are entire wall paintings and bas reliefs …
Oh, wait, the exact opposite of that.
Tellingly, you fail to note the self inflicted wound here. There is one realm where humiliation is still a favored activity: SJWs, to include RtO. Robertson, Sacco and Eich are exhibits A, B and C. To that list we can add Joni Ernst, who you groundlessly defamed. (Just last week I saw a show, wish I could remember which, that specifically showed a schoolgirl putting plastic bags over her shoes to protect them from the snow.)
Ota Benga’s personal disaster was an episode of the great capitalist genocide in the Congo, which killed more people than died in Hitler’s Holocaust.
You prove once again that progressives cannot be trusted with numbers. the death toll disputed, and whatever it was, it also took four times longer.
This is not to defend in any way the predations of Belgian colonial administration, which were easily horrible enough. Rather, it is to point out your abuse of statistics.
Oh, and your continued incomprehension of the word "capitalism".
In a post of a month or two ago, you refer to RtO is a "debunking site".
No, the exact opposite of that. This is a bunking site.
Still, she holds up a mirror and many an American of today should see himself in it and burn with shame.
Oh, that is pure bollocks. Why, pray tell, should many an American today burn with shame over things that people did more than 100 years ago?
I know you will hate this, but perhaps you should, you know, study the history of Leopold's enterprise. Capitalism -- or we might even venture, Protestant work ethic -- in its purest form.
ReplyDeleteWell, you say you saw a picture on a website. Somewhere, somewhen. That cinches it.
I know you will hate this, but perhaps you should, you know, study the history of Leopold's enterprise. Capitalism -- or we might even venture, Protestant work ethic -- in its purest form.
ReplyDeleteWell, you say you saw a picture on a website. Somewhere, somewhen. That cinches it.
So let me get this straight. According to you, the Belgian Congo, completely owned by the Belgian government, was capitalism.
ReplyDeleteThat's funny. I could have sworn the definition of socialism is where the government owns the means of production.
That is some serious bunking-fu you have going there.
Well, you say you saw a picture on a website. Somewhere, somewhen. That cinches it.
What the heck are you talking about?
Congo was not completely owned by the Belgian government. It was the personal property of Leopold and he sold shares to his friends.
ReplyDeleteSee, you should read the history.
Leopold was the king, was he not?
ReplyDeleteThe Belgian Congo was entirely a creature of the Belgian government. It, therefore, was not anything like capitalism, but everything like socialism.
I've done a fair amount of reading about the Congo on socialist websites. All of them deplore colonialism and imperialism, not one has mentioned capitalism.
Your invocation of capitalism is bollocks.
You keep saying that, but it isn't correct. I have indicated where the correct information can be found.
ReplyDeleteJust before Leopold died, as a result of a largely Socialist campaign against capitalist genocide, Leopold transferred his interests to the government of Belgium in exchange for, among other things, assumption of his debts.
It is impossible to explain this if the Congo was already part of the Belgian suzerainty.
Given your definition of socialism, it seems possible you were on nazi sites. Who knows? No link
Given your definition of socialism, it seems possible you were on nazi sites. Who knows? No link.
ReplyDeleteI thought the definition was so widely known that adding a link would have been superfluous.
So, here it is: [definition:socialism].
The dictionary is fascist? Wow. Who knew.
You keep saying that, but it isn't correct. I have indicated where the correct information can be found.
No, you haven't.
Here is the correct formulation:
Leopold developed a military dictatorship over a country 76 times the size of Belgium, with only a small number of white official
…
By means of bribes and lobbying, Leopold gained recognition for the Congo in 1884 by the United States, followed by a similar deal with France. By making a web of bilateral agreements at the Berlin conference in February 1885, he carved out the boundaries for this huge state.
…
In Leopold's Congo it was an illegal offence to pay any Africans with money, so other more brutal forms of exhortation were employed.
…
With the industrial scale of murder brought by imperialism ….
Emphasis added to aid the ideologically blinkered. Source, for the ideologically blinkered who do not follow links, Socialist Worker.
[Hey Skipper:] Why, pray tell, should many an American today burn with shame over things that people did more than 100 years ago?
ReplyDeleteNowhere does it say it was part of Belgium, because it wasn't. It was a private corporation.
ReplyDeleteDd you read the review, this part?
'
some of the leading institutions of today — including the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Zoological Society, the Smithsonian Institution and elite universities from Chicago to Dartmouth — are still lying, covering up and distorting their shameful part in the affair.'
Nowhere does it say it was part of Belgium, because it wasn't. It was a private corporation.
ReplyDeleteDd you read the review, this part?
'
some of the leading institutions of today — including the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Zoological Society, the Smithsonian Institution and elite universities from Chicago to Dartmouth — are still lying, covering up and distorting their shameful part in the affair.'
Nowhere does it say it was part of Belgium ...
ReplyDeleteOh for Pete's sake, it was established as a Belgian colony. It was an extreme case of colonialism at its very worst. Even your socialist buddies get that.
But let's take your bizzaro-world definition as both true and useful. If so, then as capitalism has spread across the world, then there should be many, many Congos as we speak.
Oh, wait. There aren't.
Perhaps that could be because what you are calling capitalism wasn't; rather, that it was an instance of something that doesn't happen anymore.
Calling the Belgian Congo capitalism is foolish because it leads to somewhere that doesn't exist.
... some of the leading institutions of today ...
Oh, I read that. I just have no idea how you get from a half dozen institutions comprising maybe several hundred people to "... many an American ..."
I have to laugh, though. Duranty got a Pulitzer for morally grotesque writing about the Soviet Union.
The NYT has never repudiated his Pulitzer.
It was not a Belgian colony. It was a private corporation. You could buy shares, if you were the king's friend.
ReplyDeleteIf a private corporation created to earn profits and financed by going to the capital markets to sell stock isn't capita;ism, I don't know what could be.
Oh for pete's sake. "If a private corporation ..." is where you go off the rails, into the ditch, and end up all over the landscape.
ReplyDeleteThe Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa between 1908 and 1960 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of the Belgians persuaded the government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold's creating a colony on his own account. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885.[4] By the turn of the century, however, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic extraction led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did in 1908, creating the Belgian Congo.
Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial trinity" of state, missionary and private company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo and that individual regions became specialised. On many occasions, the interests of the government and private enterprise became closely tied, and the state helped companies break strikes and remove other barriers raised by the indigenous population.
You have a woodpecker's view of the forest. You focus intently on "private interests" while completely ignoring that the Congo was, in fact, a colony, and it could not possibly have existed as it did without being a creature of government -- which makes it a far better example of socialism than capitalism.
Which really says very little, because it is such a horrible example of capitalism that it would be a better example of almost anything you could think of, including baseball's designated hitter rule.
What the Congo is an excellent example of, is colonialism at its worst. Seeing for what it is makes clear how bad colonialism was, and why that sort of thing has been relegated to the history books.
Insisting it is what it manifestly is not only makes you appear the most blinkered of Marxists, it leaves you completely unable to explain reality. I hate repeating myself, but your memholing seems to require it: Let's say the Congo was an example of capitalism. Capitalism is, save for a few benighted Marxist hellholes, worldwide. If your incantation was anything but religious, than there should be Congo-esque horror shows everywhere we look.
There haven't been, and aren't. Well, I should qualify "haven't been". Except for collectivism's travesties, there haven't been.
[Hey Skipper:] Why, pray tell, should many an American today burn with shame over things that people did more than 100 years ago?
Did you notice the date 1908? One year before Leopold died. You prove that what I have said all along is correct.
ReplyDelete'there should be Congo-esque horror shows everywhere we look'
Look harder. Look at India.
Harry, you don't see anything you don't want to see, do you?
ReplyDeleteColonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century.
The Belgian Congo was a creature of the Belgian Government. It does not happen otherwise.
Look harder. Look at India.
I have no idea why I should look at India, when China is right next door, with, what, 60 million dead from socialism?
[Hey Skipper:] Why, pray tell, should many an American today burn with shame over things that people did more than 100 years ago?
ReplyDelete' It does not happen otherwise'
ReplyDeleteIt happened in India and in Virginia and in several of the other 13 Original colonies. Don't you at least know the history of your own country?
Harry, what happened in India (I know where you are going with this; your "analysis" will have nothing to do with actually happened, and will be particularly lacking when it comes to having any insight into what India is like. But that's OK, in your world, inconvenient facts do not exist.)
ReplyDeleteIt does not happen otherwise.
I know you are a journalist, so grammar is a bit of a challenge, but "it" clearly refers to the Belgian Congo itself. So how you can get from that to India or the 13 colonies brings the art of non sequitur to a whole new level.
Which makes your snotty parting shot, ummm, ironic. You'd think that after all the times you've been called for bollocks and shenanigans, you'd avoid the catty taunts.
Guess not.
I doubt you know 'where I am going,' but when in your history book did India become a British colony?
ReplyDeleteI doubt you know 'where I am going ...
ReplyDeleteLots of things happened in India, so how about putting an end to your coy nonsense and make your point?
In India and Virginia and several other places, the government issued a charter to private capitalistic ventures to exploit the area of interest. It is curious (and I have not seen it remarked elsewhere though it is, as we say at RtO, obvious) that in the Latin nations (Spain, France, Portugal, Venice, Genoa, Pisa) colonization was always a matter of state initiative and control; while in the Protestant nations (England, Holland, Hamburg, Sweden Denmark), the practice was to issue corporate charters to private ventures. (The exception being, for England, places where royal arms acquired the colony: Jamaica, Minorca, Gibraltar and, especially, Ireland).
ReplyDeleteBelgium did not exist until 1830, but once it did, it followed the Protestant approach of issuing a private charter.
In practice, private colonies were a disaster for all concerned and sooner or later governments took over the colonies, but while they were in private capitalistic hands, the governments had no control over and did not participate in management.
Conservatives ought to understand this well, given Burke's role in the impeachment of Hastings, but conservatives have this sort of genetic indisposition to know history.
Sigh.
In India and Virginia and several other places, the government issued a charter to private capitalistic ventures to exploit the area of interest.
ReplyDeleteThe term you are looking for here is "crony capitalism", which, while having some of the forms of capitalism, is distorted nearly beyond recognition by being a creature of government.
Conservatives, and free marketeers understand crony capitalism quite well enough to not only hate it, but also recognize it on sight.
Unlike you.
In practice, private colonies were a disaster for all concerned ...
In practice, colonialism, regardless of how it was conducted (and the Belgian Congo was colonialism pure and simple, and had no more relation to capitalism than a bird to a dog), was frequently a disaster for the colonised. However, there is no doubt that it made a difference which country was the colonialist.
If you had ever been to Singapore, India, or Hong Kong (among other places), you would know this.
Of course, the ridiculousness of your bizarre insistence that the Belgian Congo (or the East India Company, et al) amounts to capitalism is that it completely fails to explain reality.
Colonialism is gone; so are colonialist abuses.
Yet capitalism is alive and well. If what happened during colonial days was due to capitalism, then those same things would be going on today.
They aren't -- your repeated application of a hammer to a screw is making you look foolish.
BTW, enquiring minds really want to know: Why, pray tell, should many an American today burn with shame over things that people did more than 100 years ago?
Or is that just more bollocks?
So, GE has a charter from the government of Delaware. Crony capitalism?
ReplyDeleteFact is, governments in Europe started issuing charters in the 6th c. In the case of India and Congo, the government had no management or control over what went on. It did not police the area, residents could not appeal to courts in Britain or Congo. No government nominees sat on the boards of directors.
Not only was Congo capitalism, it was capitalism in its purest form. Most times and places, capitalist ventures are limited in what they are allowed to do or restricted by rights of appeal to government to intervene.
That wasn't the case in Congo.
Harry, you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts, or to abuse the concept of capitalism in whatever way your Marxist blinders see fit.
ReplyDeleteThat you can say "capitalism in its purest form" gives the game away. That is every bit as conceptually foolish as "airplane in its purest form".
The other thing that gives the game away is that your abuse yields nothing. When you eliminate the distinction between capitalism and socialism -- you could just as easily be talking about the Soviet Union as the Congo, which means your "definition" defines nothing.
That puts you on the same intellectual plane as climate changeists.
What about it was not 'capitalism'? I have, several times now, listed how it was organized like other capitalist ventures.
ReplyDeleteIf most capitalist firms behave less badly, that would be due to oversight, regulation and government.
Because, as I mentioned above, not only do you misapply the term "capitalism" (critical elements of any form of capitalism are missing), invoking capitalism explains absolutely nothing.
ReplyDeleteYou are completely unable to account for Spain, Portugal, Italy, Holland, etc, because your ideological blinders stop you seeing is explanatory: colonialism. The domination of a region by another country for the purpose of extracting wealth.
Colonialism is explanatory. Capitalism isn't. If capitalism was explanatory, then the abuses of which you speak would be far more prevalent now than then, because capitalism is far more prevalent.
But that isn't the case, is it?
For all manner of reasons, colonialism has been essentially a dead letter for more than seventy years. Belgian Congos, et al, are no longer possible because colonialism is no longer possible. Capitalism has nothing to do with it -- you are quibbling about implementation details.
BTW, enquiring minds really want to know: Why, pray tell, should many an American today burn with shame over things that people did more than 100 years ago?
That's really funny. If capitalism isn't explanatory for Congo, then it isn't for anything and you can stop contrasting it to whatever you like to contrast it to -- collectivism for example.
ReplyDeleteAlso, colonialism isn't a definition of an organizational principle, which capitalism is. You have it just backward
Also, colonialism isn't a definition of an organizational principle ...
ReplyDeleteLemme see, hmmm, you accuse me of a definition of an organizational principle, when nothing in what I said had anything to do with organization at all.
But there's no need to believe me.
Colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition, and expansion of colony in one territory by a political power from another territory. It is a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous population.
That describes the Belgian Congo, the Spanish exploitation of the New World, and on, and on, and on. Even better, it is a definition with explanatory power. Colonialism no longer exists, but capitalism does. If the predations were due to capitalism, then those predations would still exist.
But they don't. Therefore, the causes must lie elsewhere. At best, you are the one quibbling over an organizational detail. Colonialism certainly didn't depend on capitalism for its existence, since, even using your tortured definition, there were plenty of colonies that weren't "capitalist". (Scare quotes bolded for not nearly sufficient emphasis.)
But it's worse than that. You insist that the Belgian Congo was capitalism in its purest form.
That's funny, I can't find where government awarded monopoly to dominate another country is found anywhere in any definition of capitalism.
Like I said, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own dictionary.
And I take it, from your utter lack of response, that your assertion that many an American today should burn with shame over something that happened 100 years ago is bollocks, and destroyed another one of your hats.
I did respond. You didn't like the answer. I cannot help that.
ReplyDeleteAs for colonialism, you've been grasping at straws for a while now. There are, obviously, non-capitalist forms of colonialism; as there are capitalist ones. Colonialism, by my definition and the one you quote, is geographical.
You could move Leopold's methods back to Brussels and it would no longer be colonialism but it would still be capitalism.
I did respond. You didn't like the answer. I cannot help that.
ReplyDeleteHere is what you said in the OP:
Still, she holds up a mirror and many an American of today should see himself in it and burn with shame.
Your justification:
some of the leading institutions of today — including the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Zoological Society, the Smithsonian Institution and elite universities from Chicago to Dartmouth — are still lying, covering up and distorting their shameful part in the affair.
Ok, let's take that as completely true.
And I walk down the streets of any, or every, city in the US. How likely am I to run into anyone from some of the leading institutions today?
Approximately zero.
According to my dictionary, many means a large number of.
Of course, as a journalist you are apparently no more beholden to word meaning and tense than you are to factual accuracy.
But for the rest of us, "some of the leading institutions of today" doesn't even come close to "many Americans".
Of course, you could have written the sentence to convey accurate meaning. But you didn't.
Just like you could use an accepted definition for capitalism, in which case it wouldn't apply to the Belgian Congo, or any other instance of colonialism because capitalism never consists solely of a government created monopoly.
Socialism does -- that whole nationalized means of production thing. But no matter how bad socialism's record is, or how much closer colonialism was to socialism that capitalism, no one who is even remotely objective attribute colonialism's manifest abuses to socialism.
And if you think the definition I supplied is geographical rather than situational, then your analytical deficits are even worse than I imagined. The second sentence in that definition? Take it on board.
'capitalism never consists solely of a government created monopoly.'
ReplyDeleteCoulda fooled me. I guess as a libertarian (free rider) you don't cotton to no patents and copyrights
Coulda fooled me.
ReplyDeleteYou fooled yourself. Let me help you with some personal debunking:
capitalism never consists solely of a government created monopoly.
BTW, I am not a libertarian precisely because of free-rider problems. I am also not a progressive because I am not analytically, numerically, or reading impaired.
Harry replies with: [crickets]
ReplyDeleteWhy do I have to reply? I never said it consisted solely of a government monopoly.
ReplyDeleteYou have yet to tell me what about Leopold's business was not capitalist.
I already have: it was a colony, a creature of government, under the control, and existing at the pleasure of the government, which awarded a monopoly to extract resources from the government.
ReplyDeleteIt was colonialism, pure and simple.
Your insistence upon this as an example of capitalism, rather than what it was, colonialism means you have created an artificial distinction with all the rest of colonialism, instead of saying anything useful, all it does is to, in your mind anyway, advance an ideological point.
Worse, than that, your definition is so worthless, it encompasses anything -- it isn't worth having because it does nothing useful.
Proven by your inability to anything useful with it.
Which is of a piece with your definition of "many Americans". It is both wrong, and useless.
... resources from the Congo.
ReplyDeleteOne more thing ...
ReplyDeleteYour schema would apply just as well to the Soviet Gulag. That's as sure a sign as is possible that you are completely blinkered.
I'm pretty sure the gulag didn't issue shares in exchange for infusions of capital and pay dividends, so, no, not just the same
ReplyDeleteWow, it is difficult to unpack all the misapprehensions in that sentence. First, it would have been the USSR -- not the gulags -- just as it was King Leopold, not the Belgian Congo.
ReplyDeleteSecond, as usual, you miss that what you call capitalism has nothing to do with capitalism. In capitalism, what entity issues shares? Pro-tip: it isn't the king.
And continuing to compound your errors, you have an obsessive focus on irrelevant detail -- shares -- and utterly fail to see what really was going on: colonialism. And I doubt anyone would think "shares" as being a meaningful difference between the gulag and the Belgian Congo.
Which, as ever, is the problem with your continual bunking of the term "capitalism". You invent a definition that doesn't even amount to a caricature, then in application prove it is meaningless, because it explains nothing.
Would the Belgian Congo not have existed without "shares"?
First, it wasn't the Belgian Congo. It was a set of interlocking private companies. The shares were not issued by the king but by the companies, of which he was chairman and principal shareholder. But this was his personal property, not part of the crown estate. (Just as Queen Elizabeth's riches are legally separate between her personal wealth and those held by the duchy of Lancaster.)
ReplyDeleteOriginally, there was so little 'state' there that it didn't even have a name. Congo Free State came later as a PR subterfuge.
So, with that factual background, the answer is, no 'Belgian Congo' would not have existed 'without shares.' Had it been a colony, it would have had courts, public administration, an army or constabulary, perhaps a civil service etc.
First, it wasn't the Belgian Congo.
ReplyDeleteHistory says otherwise.
So, with that factual background, the answer is, no 'Belgian Congo' would not have existed 'without shares.' Had it been a colony, it would have had courts, public administration, an army or constabulary, perhaps a civil service etc.
Here is where again you miss the point entirely, while assuming as true that for which you have no proof. The Belgian Congo could not possibly have existed as it did without colonialism in general, and King Leopold in particular.
As I have noted above, and you haven't responded to, you do not get to have your own definition for capitalism. If you can find a commonly accepted definition that includes "personal colony", or untwist the word salad that is The shares were not issued by the king but by the companies, of which he was chairman and principal shareholder (Translated, the King owned the companies) and fit all that in, then by all means, do so.
Until then, you are engaging in self-fluffery.
(Oh, and I can't help but notice that Had it been a colony, it would have had courts, public administration, an army or constabulary, perhaps a civil service etc. is an excellent example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.)
The Congo Free State, recognized as such in 1885 would not have existed without King Leopold wielding the power of government in an era of colonialism.
Worse, your "classification" gains you nothing. It doesn't explain why British colonialism, far more commercial than Leopold's, was so relatively enlightened, the Spanish, not commercial, was more brutal, or the Soviet Union was far more brutal, for longer: how was Ukraine not a colony?
I tried real hard to find a definition of capitalism that includes shares issued by a King who is the principal share holder.
Couldn't manage it.
I'm sure you can help. If not, and I'm going with not, you are heavily engaged in the intellectually vacuous exercise of thinking you are winning and argument based upon stuff you have made up.
I see you read only the first 3 words of the Wiki article. A littler further on, you'd have seen the words 'personal account' and the date '1908.'
ReplyDeleteLeopold died in 1909.
I see you read only the first 3 words of the Wiki article. A littler further on, you'd have seen the words 'personal account' and the date '1908.'
ReplyDeleteSo we can add reading comprehension to your list of logical and definitional problems.
Pro-tip: in a web page, you can find the occurrences of a word or phrase by hitting ctrl-f, and then typing the search term.
Which I did, after reading, and failing to notice the words 'personal account'.
No wonder. Ctrl-F, [personal account] = null. (How appropriate.)
However, the third sentence does contain the sentence Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold's creating a colony on his own account.
Which has a specific meaning you may very well try, but fail, to abuse beyond recognition. Never mind that -- your professional dedication to factual accuracy is on prominent display.
The next sentence? With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885.
Emphasis for glaringly apparent reasons.
As before, I'm standing by for an accepted definition of the word capitalism that not only includes shares issued by a King who is the principal share holder, but also rules a personal colony.
When are you going to stop digging?
So, even Wiki says it wasn't part of the Belgian state.
ReplyDeleteI believe any definition of capitalism that has complexified beyond medieval methods will include shares issued in exchange for investment money. I don't know any definition that says kings cannot invest. Queen Juliana would be most surprised.
The international recognition, by the way, was one country (guess which) that passed a law based on bribery of a racist senator.
I believe any definition of capitalism that has complexified beyond medieval methods ...
ReplyDeleteI am sure you believe that, because it is convenient for you to make stuff up.
So, as before before, how about supplying an accepted definition of the word capitalism that not only includes shares issued by a King who is the principal shareholder, but also annexed territory as a personal colony.
No squirrels, no supersonic goalposts, just the definition.
The international recognition, by the way, was one country (guess which) that passed a law based on bribery of a racist senator.
Oh for pete's sake. Stop it with these silly guessing games and point hiding -- provide a link.
Link: Adam Hochshield, "King Leopold's Ghost.'
ReplyDeleteYou are flailing. I defined capitalism as issuing shares in exchange for ownership. That business about kings: You added that. It is meaningless.
Harry, that's wonderful for you, that you are branching your pronunciamentos out into the exciting and fun new world of making up your own definitions. (And IIRC, this is the second time you have done so; the last one was nothing like this.)
ReplyDeleteBut for the rest of us, definitions are like facts: you don't get to have your own.
Which is why you won't provide an accepted definition, because it would become immediately apparent, perhaps even to you, about how woefully inadequate it is.
And you don't get to reject inconvenient facts, either. The Belgian Congo was a creature of King Leopold, and would not have existed otherwise. So the concept you are really looking for is colonialism. I know that doesn't allow you to scratch your marxist itch. Sorry.
Oh, and "Link: Adam Hochshield ..." is as worthless as your definition.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYou keep referring to something that didn't exist, the 'Belgian Congo.'
ReplyDeleteTake it up with history.
ReplyDelete“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.” — Walter E. Williams
ReplyDelete