Three hundred thirty-five Europeans administered a 20-million-person territory

Evidence

The Congo Free State ~ a more arrogant misrepresentation in naming a state does not exist — was ruled directly from Brussels, through the arms of a small number of European personnel, contracted bureaucrats, and mercenaries from Britain, Romania, and America, in addition to the majority of former Belgian military men, Guy Barrows, an American administrator in Leopold’s employ, reports that in 1896 there was a total of 1,678 Europeans residing in the Congo, of whom a mere 335 served to administer a territory of 700,000 square miles populated by nearly 20 million indigenous people. — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 69

Categorization

• SHARE: A striking ratio a colonial/imperial history friend would relish.