Anthony Browne

What Britain should learn from Belgium: history can be reappraised

Royal Museum of Central Africa, Picture credit: Getty

Is it best to erase history, or reappraise history? We haven’t started taking down statues of royalty in Britain yet, but they have in Belgium: statues of King Leopold II were vandalised across the country last week and taken down. It was no surprise – in the bloody history of colonialism, he was one of the bloodiest rulers. He took personal control of the Congo, effectively enslaved everyone, ruled by sadistic brutality (hand and foot removal were a common punishment), killed about half the population, and extracted great wealth. However, the lesson to learn from Belgium is not statue removal, but what they have done to the enormous monument that King Leopold and his successors built to pay tribute to their colonial endeavours.

You don’t have to be Noam Chomsky to think this is a self-serving whitewashing of history

When I became Brussels correspondent for the Times in 2003, I paid the obligatory visit to the Royal Museum of Central Africa, a vast palace on the outskirts of Brussels, which was a completely unreconstructed and unapologetic homage to the glories of Belgium in the Congo. In the vast opening dome, there were four giant statues of strong white men, with much smaller black people in loin cloths paying homage to the white saviours, and plaques which read ‘Belgium brings civilisation to the Congo’, ‘Belgium brings peace to the Congo’ and such like. You don’t have to be Noam Chomsky to think this is a self-serving whitewashing of history. Stories abound that the museum used to contain displays of stuffed pygmies, which I never managed to confirm, but the fact they are credible speaks volumes.

The opening exhibition certainly contained a ‘living zoo’ with Congolese people brought in to live in a remade African village for Belgians to stare at.

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Written by
Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne MP is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Environment. He is a former Europe correspondent at the Times and environment editor at the Observer. He is now MP for South Cambridgeshire and a member of the Treasury Select Committee.

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