Commerce in Belgian slavery restarted with colonial racism, not self-interest

Evidence

One would never know from a Museum visit that Belgium had been engaged in one of the more vicious forms of colonial enslavement. And precisely at the time neighboring European colonial societies to the north and south, the Dutch and French, as well as those further afield to the west, the British, Americans, and the relatively late Brazilians, had moved to outlaw the institution. Johannes Fabian quotes Leopold himself announcing as the intentions of the Geographical Conference of Brussels he hosted in 1876 “to scientifically explore the unknown parts of Africa, to facilitate the opening of routes along which civilization can penetrate the interior of the African continent, and to seek means to suppress the black slave trade in Africa” (my emphases). Science, civilization, and penetration serve as the repressive replacements of the black slave trade, not the enslavement of but by blacks. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 901

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘civilizing mission’ rhetoric and its occlusions; echoes themes in Things Fall Apart about the colonial discourse of uplift cloaking exploitation.