Episode 3 - Congo uprisings and the war for independence in Angola turns up the Cold War heat

The scramble for Africa accelerated after the 1884 partition of the continent where European nations agreed to divvy up Africa in a meeting arranged by the Germans. Soon afterwards, King Leopold II of Belgium became frustrated by Belgium's lack of international power and prestige. He tried to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin. But Brussels was ambivalent so Leopold created the colony on his own setting up the Congo Free State in 1885. Eventually by the early 19th Century, the violence of Congo colonial officials against indigenous Congolese and the ruthless system of economic extraction had led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgiums government to take official control of the country, which it did in 1908, creating the Belgian Congo. What these privateers had done in the Congo features in Joseph Conrads’ great work – Heart of Darkness. The large scale mistreatment of the locals included mutilations and the mass murder of men women and children on rubber plantations. Entire villages were razed to the ground. But the most notorious method used by these privateers was chopping off the hands of those who refused to work. We also hear about the formation of Angolan nationalist and separatist groups would be important in in the coming Border War.