Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of enslavement and violence.

Kara gives a brief overview of the history of Congo. In 1482, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão landed on the west coast of Congo in Loango Bay. The Portuguese called the territory Zaire. Loango Bay was a slave post from the early 1500s to 1866. In 1876, Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley travelled with an Arab enslaver, Tippu Tip, throughout the Congo River system and showed it was navigable. King Leopold II of Belgium hired Stanley to help secure Congolese territory for his personal holding company by extracting dubious treaties from the locals. In 1885, Leopold declared himself owner of the Congo Free State. Leopold’s brutal regime pressed the locals into forced labor under threat of violence and death to extract copper, rubber, palm oil, and other resources for export.

In 1960, Congo won its independence from Belgium and elected Patrice Lumumba prime minister. 11 days later, Belgian-backed Moise Tshombe declared the mining region of Katamba’s independence from the new republic. The Soviet Union supported Lumumba’s efforts to reclaim the region. In response, the CIA, United Nations, and Belgian forces conspired to oust Lumumba. He was tortured and killed by Tshombe and Belgian forces.