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 people would rank amongst the most advanced in Africa." Agriculturists, artisans, fishermen, merchants, all plying their various trades, interchanging their products, travelling long distances. "The natives must be imbued with great enterprise," writes another Belgian traveller, "to explain their lengthy business travels and their opening of relations with distant tribes. The inhabitants of the Upper Congo have never seen the Coast. The trading tribes travel 120 to 150 miles north and south of their homes and exchange their produce with other tribes, who, in turn, sell it to others."

The prevalence of well defined customs in the tenure of land, of established institutions and forms of government among the Congo peoples was not only never questioned, it was repeatedly and emphatically affirmed. Indeed, the existence of an indigenous polity all over the Congo formed the basis of justification on which King Leopold relied in claiming recognition for his Congo enterprise from the great Powers. The "450 Treaties" which were flourished in the face of the world were treaties with "legitimate" rulers, holding land in trust for their respective communities, by undisturbed occupation, by "long ages of succession." Early explorers of the Congo: Catholic and Protestant missionaries with long years of experience in different parts of the territory; British consuls, indeed, a whole host of witnesses could be cited in support of the jealous regard of the native population for their rights in land.

It was only after the royal decrees had swept away these rights that the Congo natives were presented to the world by the official defenders of the Congo Free State and by the Belgian Ministers who made themselves its accomplices, as little better than animals, with no conception of land tenure or tribal government, no commercial instincts, no industrial pursuits, "entitled," as a Belgian Premier felt no shame in declaring, "to nothing."

Such in brief was the country in which, such the people among whom, modern capitalistic finance in the hands of a European King and his bodyguard of satellites attained the climax of its destructive potency.

From 1891 until 1912, the paramount object of European rule in the Congo was the pillaging of its natural wealth to enrich private interests in Belgium. To