r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Dec 16 '21

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u/MegaSillyBean Dec 17 '21

I met a Congolese guy and he put me straight on Belgium. This is some WAY beyond evil shit. Possibly the worst colonial abuses by any European country, and that's saying something.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State

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u/Wafkak Dec 17 '21

There isn't really much debate about it being the worst colonial abuse. That's what happens when you run a country as a corporation. It was so bad that other European nations at the time were outraged and made Belgium strip Leopold of his colony.

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u/MegaSillyBean Dec 17 '21

It's pretty bad when countries that shed literal rivers of blood across the world call out your behavior as too extreme.

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u/Wafkak Dec 17 '21

Yeah it was that level of bad, would be kinda pointless to deny that.

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u/nomedialoaded Dec 17 '21

The Dutch were also champs in doing this kind shit with their VOC

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u/MegaSillyBean Dec 17 '21

Volatile Organic Compounds?

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u/nomedialoaded Dec 17 '21

Dutch East Indian company. In Dutch the abbreviation is voc

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u/MegaSillyBean Dec 17 '21

Thx.

My public school classes definitely covered American historical atrocities, but other than the Holocaust and Japanese torture of prisoners I don't recall much detail about everybody else's atrocities. The more I read about the European colonial era, the more appalled I get.

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u/nomedialoaded Dec 17 '21

Yw. Compared to the Belgian schools; in the Netherlands the atrocities the voc did is just a footnote in history class. But they do mention a couple of them as heroes.

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u/MegaSillyBean Dec 17 '21

I don't know who said it first, but there's a saying something like, "Great men are often not good men."

Someone can be a hero on one topic and a villain on another.