Apparently there were 20 million people living there in the 1890s.
For comparison a larger country like Brazil had a population of 17 million in 1900.
How did they achieve such a high population densit?
Jungles usually have low population density; and a lot of people were taken away by Arab slave traders during that period
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>a lot of people were taken away by Arab slave traders during that period
>Arab
Lol
What is wrong with that statement?
Because it assumes that the only market and provider of slaves in the region+the Great Lakes were Arabs and the fact that many of the so-called Arabs weren't Arab at all through paternal descent, cultural affiliation or actually speaking Arabic. Pretty much any Muslim African was called an Arab or had their Muslim affiliation (100/1000s if years to just recently) be seen as mutually exclusive of being African.
>that the only market and provider of slaves in the region+the Great Lakes were Arabs
The ''Arab'' trade was the main market at the time, and local slave traders acted mostly sold slaves to the ''Arabs''
> the fact that many of the so-called Arabs weren't Arab at all through paternal descent, cultural affiliation or actually speaking Arabic.
You are right, many of those ''Arabs'' were Swahili or other Muslim Africans
>There's a city named "Banana"
Kek
>West
Cassava was a miracle crop with higher yields than yams.
>East
Volcanic soil is perfect for bananas and plantains
>South
The open and relatively dry savanna was good for corn
By corn, do you mean Maize, or other grains?
Maize
These hunter-gathers didn’t know how to farm.
Nah that's weird propagand coming from people talking about the congo genocide to inflate the number. In 1960 the census showed 12 million. Maybe 5 million in 1890
A pop density of 8 per km^2 is pretty tiny after exposure to new world crops.
You do have to consider that large parts of the country were jungles (Usually not very populous due to disease and other factors) and the impact of slave trade
>new world crops
Even with said crops i'd say 20 million is unlikely
Brazil had access to those crops and only reached 17 million (With European mass migration, modern medicine and being in general a larger country)
This, especially how the Walloons were only truly present in a few towns they purposely set up for exploitation. These places were obviously horrible, but early 20th century anti colonial propaganda made it seem like all of the Congo was like such when it was actually reserved to strategic areas and had to actively import labor from far settlements when such a thing should had been easy if the population were acctually 20,000,000+ as claimed
>These places were obviously horrible
no they where the best places to be in Belgian congo because the belgians stopped cannibalism, slavery and tribal feuds on their settlements. All places they didn't directly controlled where heart of darkness tier hellholes
>stopped cannibalism, slavery and tribal feuds
https://clip.cafe/alexander-2004/because-youve-fallen-in-love-with-all-the-things-in-life-destroy-men/
The genocide claim from Hochschild is insane. It takes the total population change over the course of like 80 years and then just implies that these were all unnatural causes by the Belgian colonist.
This is what the "native American genocide" is too. Total population change from 1492 until like 1910 and attributes all population changes to be unnatural deaths from whites.
I have to break the silence. I went to Lubumbashi, Kinshasa and Kisangani, and ALL of them likely had VASTLY inflated populations compared to the reality on the ground. Like, 10 or 20x what the actual populations are. There are almost 0 Whypippo there, and maybe 1/5 of those who aremst are NGO enjoyers, who would presumably (like the state) have STRONG incentives to lie in order to get resources. I do applaud them for withdrawing money from Whypippo tho.
maybe they live in shantytowns around?
How are you able to infer their population number ? I don't know if I can tell if a city has 17 million people like Kinshasa or 10 million or 1.7 million, like how are you able to tell ?
>I went to Lubumbashi, Kinshasa and Kisangani,
what for?
king leopold III wasn't hard enough
>1/4th the population of the whole earth in the time was living in the Belgian Congo
Its incredible how dumb people are, they dont understand logistics, look what Rome needed to feed their capital and yet people pretend native indians or congolese were in the 10s of milions, ridiculous.
Were are the bones?
Nothing.
I dont even buy that belgians cut hands, that was a black people thing.
Probably a belgian said "these people arent working hard enough and some of them steal" and one of the high ranking nigs would cut one hand and say "this how we do it here, they will work harder now" and the belgian would probably be horrifed but also powerless and would just go along.
But no, let's pretend a couple thousand belgians were cuting milions of hands sure.