DOYLE, Arthur Conan (1859-1930). Creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Long Autograph Letter Signed ("Arthur Conan Doyle") to an unnamed recipient, evidently an American newspaper editor, eloquently condemning Leopld II's exploitation of the Congo, which he describes as a "crime unparalled in its horror."
7 pages 8vo
A fine letter, demonstrating Conan Doyle's humanitarian instincts. King Leopold II of Belgium was the driving force behind the exploration of the Congo in the 1870's, with Henry Morton Stanley as his main agent. In 1885 he gained recognition by America and the leading European powers as personal sovereign of the Congo Free State, an area 80 times the size of Belgium. The chief industry was wild rubber production. The ruthless expoitation and mistreatment of the native population by Leopold's troops and white merchants, already the subject of protests by missionaries, was finally completely exposed in Roger Casement's report of 1904. Britain and America put pressure on Belgium to remove Leopold's personal rule and annex the territory, which became part of Belgium at the end of 1908. In this letter, however, written nearly a year later, Doyle seems uncertain about the Congo's future.
"There are many of us in England who consider the crime which has been wrought in the Congo lands by King Leopold of Belgium and his followers, to be the greatest which has ever been known in human annals. Personally I am strongly of that opinion. There have been great expropriations like that of the Normans in England or of the English in Ireland. There have been massacres of populations like that of the South Americans by the Spaniard, or of subject nations by the Turks. But never before has there been such a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacre, all done under an odious guise of philanthropy, and with the lowest commercial motives as a reason. It is this sordid cause, and the unctuous hypocrisy which makes this crime unparalleled in its horror . . . there is not a grotesque, obscene, or ferocious torture which debased human ingenuity could invent which has not been used against these harmless and helpless people . . . the conscience of England is uneasy and she is slowly rousing her self to act. Will America be behind? . . . Attempts will be made in America (for the Congo has its paid apologists everywhere) to pretend that England wants to oust Belgium from her colony & take it herself. Such accusations are folly. To run a tropical colony honestly without enslaving the natives is an expensive process . . . Who ever takes over the Congo will, considering its present demoralised condition, have a certain expense of ten million dollars a year for twenty years. Belgium has not run the Colony. It has simply sacked it, forcing the inhabitants to ship off everything of value to Antwerp . . . We English who are earnest over this matter look eagerly to the Westward to see some sign of moral support or material leading. It would be a grand sight to see the banner of humanity and civilisation carried forward in such a cause by the two geat English-speaking nations."
Together with a printed booklet of speeches given on the dissolution of the Congo Reform Association, 16 June 1913, paper covered boards (front cover separated), inscribed to Conan Doyle by the founder of the Association E.D. Morel 'In remembrance of a struggle successfully waged for human liberties and in token of your share therein.'
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