Congo Free State
Joseph Conrad’s novel "Heart of Darkness", originally published in 1899 as a three-part series in "Blackwood's Magazine", inspired by his service as a captain on a steamer on the Congo 12 years before, sparked an organized international opposition to Leopold's exploitational activities. In 1900, Edmund Dene Morel, a part-time journalist and head of trade with Congo for the Liverpool shipping firm Elder Dempster, noticed that ships that brought vast loads of rubber from the Congo only ever returned there loaded with guns and ammunition for the "Force Publique". Morel became a journalist and then a publisher, attempting to discredit Leopold's regime. In 1902, Morel retired from his position at Elder Dempster to focus on campaigning. He founded his own magazine, "The West African Mail", and conducted speaking tours in Britain.
International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs
"Heart of Darkness" tells the story of Charles Marlow, an Englishman who took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. The novel is widely regarded as both critiquing the imperialist expansion into Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not give the name of the river, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working a distance into Africa along the Congo river. Marlow, a recurring character and alter ego of Conrad himself, describes that journal as “a beautiful piece of writing” or “vibrating with eloquence”, among others. Kurtz has already been described as a poet, so this description fits the conception of Kurtz as a man of artistic ability. Marlow finds a quotation by Kurtz in which he asserts that whites “must necessarily appear to them in the nature of supernatural beings – we approach them with the might of a deity”, one of a series of suggestions of that Kurtz regards himself elevated to a godlike position. The document is ended with the sentence, handwritten at a later date, “Exterminate all the Brutes!”.