10 Million Lost: The Demographics of Leopold's Congo скачать в хорошем качестве

10 Million Lost: The Demographics of Leopold's Congo

A silent catastrophe unfolded in the heart of Africa. This is not a story of ancient history, but of a systematic erasure that occurred at the dawn of the 20th century. King Leopold II of Belgium turned the Congo Basin into his personal property, the Congo Free State. What followed was not colonization, but extraction—a relentless machine built on rubber, terror, and a chilling accounting of human life. The core calculation, popularized by historian Adam Hochschild, is devastating: the population of the Congo is estimated to have fallen from roughly 20 million to 10 million during Leopold's personal rule. Ten million lives. Gone. This video strips away the drama to focus on the quiet, heavy weight of the numbers. Using archival aesthetics, negative space, and slow, deliberate visuals, it asks a simple, haunting question: What does ten million missing people look like? Note on Figures and Estimates: • The figure of 20 million to 10 million, popularized by Hochschild, is a demographic estimate, not a precise census. It is a reconstruction based on missionary and administrator reports, pre- and post-period population comparisons, and extrapolation from documented mortality rates in specific areas. Some historians argue the figure could be lower or higher, but the scale of the humanitarian disaster and its causal mechanisms (murder, famine, disease, plummeting birth rates) are not academically denied. • The profit figure of 1.1 billion dollars is a modern-value conversion of the estimated profits Leopold extracted from the Congo, as calculated by various economic historians (e.g., in analyses like Stengers'). • The depiction of "baskets of hands" is documented in numerous eyewitness accounts and photographs from the period, which became material for the Congo Reform Association campaign.