Léon Fiévez

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Léon Fiévez
Commissioner of Équateur District
In office
1 April 1893 – 1895
Preceded byCharles Lemaire
Succeeded byGustave-Émile Sarrazyn
Personal details
Born(1855-04-30)30 April 1855
Wallonia, Belgium, Havré-Mons
Died27 May 1939(1939-05-27) (aged 84)
OccupationSoldier, colonial administrator

Léon Fiévez (30 April 1855 – 27 May 1939) was a Belgian official of the Congo Free State. While employed by the Congo Free State, Fiévez became notorious for his cruel methods of enforcing rubber production in his territory, included the wide-scale oppression and killing of local Congolese. Fiévez's actions accrued significant coverage in the foreign press, forcing his removal from office and return to Belgium.

Biography

Fiévez was born to a farming family in Wallonia, Belgium.[1] In 1888 he was recruited into the Force Publique, a military force formed to garrison Leopold II of Belgium's Congo Free State, arriving in the Congo in the town of Boma. Though the conquest of the Congo was well underway by 1888, Fievez quickly became noted as a particular effective soldier, successfully leading military expeditions in the upper Congo. In late 1891 he was forced by illness to return to Belgium, but by 1893 had returned to the Congo. When the commissioner for the crown-controlled district of Équateur, former explorer Charles Lemaire, was wounded in 1893, colonial administrators (who had been dissatisfied with Lemaire's level of rubber production) replaced him with Fiévez.[2][1]

Upon assuming the roll of commissioner, Fiévez implemented a brutal system of oppression on the local Congolese population – the intent of said policies was to intimidate local peoples into giving food and rubber to the Free State as tribute.[3] As part of this campaign, Fiévez and his forces (consisting of Force Publique enforcers and friendly Congolese tribesmen) forcibly requisitioned food from native Congolese, destroyed crops to cause famine, and carried out massacres to exterminate Congolese who resisted the Free State.[3] Villages that were unwilling or unable to provide food or rubber were looted and burned.[4] Most infamously Fiévez, who was under orders to expend as little ammunition as possible, mandated that his soldiers and allies provide him with the severed hands of slain enemies to show that they had not wasted ammunition.[3] According to oral tradition, such actions led to Fiévez being described as "the devil of the Equator" and nicknamed "Ntange" (roughly translating to "nap" or "bed", as Fiévez was known to nap in the afternoon).[4]

Fiévez's brutal methods took a large toll on Équateur – in late 1894 alone, over 160 villages were burned and looted by his forces with thousands of Congolese being killed or captured for use as forced labourers.[5] His policy suppressed local resistance, allowed for his district to cut costs, and resulted in Équateur producing the most rubber (650 tons) out of any Free State district in 1895 – a result which a Free State government source described as "unequalled".[6] However, Fiévez's methods were increasingly seen as overly brutal and as a liability to the Free State; this issue was compounded as word of the atrocities in his district spread and were reported on by British and American missionaries working in the Congo. His position as commissioner was not renewed in 1896 and he returned to Belgium in May of that year.[7] In 1897 he returned to the Congo to become commission for Ubangi district, which had previously been abandoned by the Free State authorities.[8]

In 1899, Fiévez was sanctioned by a Free State court for the execution of two men, the deadly assault of another man, and multiple assaults on several women.[9] This case established legal precedent that it was illegal for the Free State to employ Congolese as forced labourers, but Fiévez himself was acquitted. He returned to Belgium in 1900, dying in 1939.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Reybrouck, David Van (2014). Congo: The Epic History of a People. HarperCollins. pp. 597–618. ISBN 978-0-06-220011-2.
  2. ^ Alix, Florian (2014). "Éric Vuillard. Congo". Afrique Contemporaine (in French). 252 (4): 210–213. doi:10.3917/afco.252.0210.
  3. ^ a b c Hochschild, Adam (1998). King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-395-75924-0.
  4. ^ a b Boelaert, E. (1952). "Ntange". Aequatoria. 15 (2): 58–62. JSTOR 25838183.
  5. ^ Hasian, Marouf (April 2012). "Colonial Amnesias, Photographic Memories, and Demographic Biopolitics at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA)". Third World Quarterly. 33 (3): 475–493. doi:10.1080/01436597.2012.657485. JSTOR 41507182. S2CID 145545796.
  6. ^ Doyle, Arthur Conan (1909). The Crime of the Congo. Doubleday. OCLC 647025072.[page needed]
  7. ^ Lufungula, Lewono (1986). "Les gouverneurs de l'equateur 1885-1960". Annales Aequatoria. 7: 149–166. JSTOR 25836402.
  8. ^ Ngbwapkwa, Te Mobusa (1 September 1993). "L'exploitation du caoutchouc par l'état indépendant du Congo dans le territoire de Banzyville, district de l'Ubangi (1900-1908)". Civilisations. 41 (41): 291–306. doi:10.4000/civilisations.1713. JSTOR 41229835.
  9. ^ Bala, Alain Pholo (1 June 2017). "The Measurement of Institutions and Instability in Democratic Republic of Congo, 1880–2010". Journal of Development Perspectives. 1 (1–2): 139–170. doi:10.5325/jdevepers.1.1-2.0139.
  10. ^ Dall, Nick (27 November 2018). "Was This Real Monster the Inspiration Behind 'Heart of Darkness'?". OZY.
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