Born Then1885–1908
Life during the Atrocities in the Congo Free State
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
King Leopold II of Belgium ruled the Congo as a personal possession and forced its people to collect rubber and ivory, enforced by hostage-taking, mutilation and killing. Together with famine, disease and falling births, the population fell sharply. International outrage forced Belgium to take over the colony in 1908.
Deaths: estimates range widely, from about 1 million to 10 million or more; most deaths were from disease, hunger and flight.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from our model, estimated from the sources.
Around the same time
- Atlantic slave trade, final decades 1800–1866
- Slavery in the United States 1800–1865
- Slavery in Brazil 1800–1888
- British emigration to the colonies and America 1815–1913
- Cultivation System in Java 1830–1870
- Indian indenture system 1834–1917
- German emigration to the Americas 1840–1893
- Chinese emigration from Guangdong and Fujian 1845–1913
- Victorian gold rush 1851–1869
- Irish emigration after the Famine 1852–1913
- Third plague pandemic 1855–1930
- French conquest of Vietnam 1858–1887
- American Civil War 1861–1865
- Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance) 1864–1870
- Meiji Restoration 1868–1889
- Polish emigration "za chlebem" 1870–1913
- Persian famine of 1870–1872 1870–1872
- Franco-Prussian War 1870–1871
- Long Depression 1873–1879
- Reforms of King Chulalongkorn 1874–1910
- Northern Chinese Famine 1876–1879
- Great Famine of 1876–1878 1876–1878
- Anglo-Zulu War 1879
- Great Italian emigration 1880–1913
- Pogroms in the Russian Empire 1881–1906
- Anglo-Egyptian War and British occupation 1882
- Eruption of Krakatoa 1883
- Third Anglo-Burmese War and annexation 1885–1887
- Atrocities in the Congo Free State 1885–1908
- Great Ethiopian Famine 1888–1892