the hands he had brought to him. There are photographs of men , women and children whose hands had been chopped off the text also stated that not only were the hands and heads being cut off but noses and ears as well. (p.165) Having already established that he never went to the Congo himself, he must have had a right hand man, and he did. This particular gentleman was a fearless yet insecure explorer by the name of Henry Morton Stanley. Leopold enlisted Stanley, a seemingly murderously natured person, to first chart the territory and set up a rudimentary infrastructure of posts and pathways, to the native guides and porters. Stanley's other tasks consisted of purchasing as much land as he was able to obtain, he was also instructed to, "place successively undersuzeraintyas soon as possible and without losing one minute, all the chiefs from the mouth of Congo tot he Stanley falls" (p.70) Now I know that all of this must sound pretty bad but it's imperative that I continue, because this is the least of the tasks Stanley fulfilled. He was also sent to purchase all the available ivory and establish barriers and tools on the roads he opened up, make land rights treaties should be as "brief as possible and in a couple of articles must grant us everything." (p71) Not to mention that Stanley was a tyrant with a hair-trigger temper who routinely murdered the locals, for no apparent reason. He considered native Africans subhuman and thought nothing of destroying villages and impressing their occupants into his service. What a monster huh? I sure think so. Leopold carved out the boundaries for the huge state and once his ownership of the Congo was secure the rubber boom erupted. Rubber sap was in great demand and the Congo was covered with rubber vines and the abundance of profits from rubber production saved Leopold's colonial empire.To keep his colony under control Leopold developed a military dictatorship over Congo, he paid mercen...
