ShmoopTube

00:04

Economic exploitation, cultural destruction, land theft…these are just some of the greatest

00:10

hits of the European colonization of Africa. [Records of European Colonization of Africa on a shelf]

00:12

It couldn’t possibly get worse, right?

00:15

Wrong.

00:16

How about the systematic mass extermination of African people?

00:19

Yep, we’re talking about genocide.

00:22

Although mass murder was in every European powers’ copy of Colonialism for Dummies…there [Soldiers fighting]

00:27

were two that amped it up to genocidal levels.

00:30

The culprits were Belgium and Germany.

00:33

We’re guessing one of those isn’t so surprising…

00:36

Belgium’s foray into genocide went down in the Congo River basin. [Belgiums path into genocide]

00:40

After trying to stand up to the slave trade, it was demolished by the slavery-addicted

00:44

Portuguese and their African allies.

00:46

Eventually, Belgium’s King Leopold II took over the Congo for humanitarian purposes. [King Leopold claims Congo]

00:51

…meaning that he was going to confiscate all the land and force the people to work

00:55

on plantations.

00:56

Great, so instead of being shipped off to be slaves in other lands, the Congolese now [Congolese man working as slave in homeland]

01:01

had the convenience of being slaves in their homeland.

01:04

But that’s not even the worst part.

01:06

After the ivory trade didn’t turn out as much profit as the Belgians wanted, the rubber [Ivory ships closing]

01:10

trade took over.

01:11

OK, a slow-down on killing elephants might sound like a good thing…and it is… [Elephant shopping]

01:16

…but what most people don’t know is that rubber trees are…practically pure evil.

01:20

The sap is like acid and can blister off flesh in under a minute. [Sap lands on man]

01:24

To get workers, Belgian companies forced almost the entire population to harvest a certain

01:29

quota of rubber.

01:30

If you didn't meet your quota, company mercenaries would cut off your hand or foot with a machete. [Mercenary cuts off mans hand]

01:36

They were NOT fooling around.

01:38

When all was said and done, as many as 12 million people died, making what’s called

01:43

Red Rubber one of the worst genocides in all human history.

01:46

All right, now let’s shine a light on the genocide champs: Germany. [Flash light shines on Germany]

01:50

This bout of ethnic cleansing took place in Namibia and focused on the local Heroro

01:56

and Nama tribes.

01:58

What was their crime?

01:59

They had the audacity to rebel against German rule. [Tribes rebelling against Germany]

02:03

This genocide only wiped out around 100,000 people, which is tiny compared to Red Rubber.

02:07

But it gets extra evil points for being a main inspiration for the Holocaust.

02:12

The Heroro and Nama genocide was full of all the horrific things we’ve unfortunately

02:16

come to expect from genocide.

02:19

They had concentrations camps where prisoners lived in lethal conditions. [Prisoners of tribes in concentration camps]

02:24

Other ghastly atrocities included people being forced into the desert, where they died of

02:29

starvation, dehydration, or the poison Germans put in the wells. [People on a desert]

02:33

Yep.

02:34

Poison in the wells.

02:35

Like being abandoned in the desert wasn’t bad enough.

02:37

There were also rape camps, where women were forced to have sex with German troops. [Woman throws stone at german troop]

02:42

The Germans were already into racial purity, so the children born of these unions didn’t

02:46

fare too well.

02:47

To say the least.

02:49

There was also an industry of sending native skulls and body parts to German scientists [Scientist inspecting skulls]

02:53

for experimentation.

02:55

Heroro women were even forced to clean the skulls of their people with shards of broken

03:01

glass.

03:02

One scientist who benefited from this atrocity was geneticist Eugen Fischer. [Fischer in a lab]

03:06

After studying lots of African body parts, he was inspired to help write a lovely book

03:11

called…The Principals of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene.

03:15

This was full of pseudo-scientific “evidence” that Africans were innately inferior to white

03:22

Aryans.

03:24

Guess who felt inspired by this book? [Hitler reading a book]

03:25

Yep.

03:26

Adolph baby...

03:27

He even mentions it in his own best-seller…Mein Kamph.

03:29

So in a lot of ways, the genocide in Namibia was just a warm-up for what Germany would

03:35

one day unleash back in Europe.

03:37

So there you have it, folks.

03:39

Germany and Belgium—duking it out for the most awful colonial power award. [Germany and Belgium fighting in a boxing ring]

03:42

Red Rubber, the Namibia genocide…both horrific in their own special ways.

Full Transcript