Italian Congo

Deleted member 67076

Read "Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer" by Tim Jeal if you want to know a thing or two about cannibals in that area. It was more pervasive than I would personally want to believe, that's for sure.

And how many cannibals were still around by 1960? A lot less % wise I imagine.
There weren't nearly enough cannibals to even make up 1% of the 20 million inhabitants of the Congo. You're describing a number of very fringe tribes and clans that participated in plunder based economies and/or ritualistic slaughter, both things that would have been stamped out once statebuilding begins in the region. If not the Belgians, the Arabs, or any number of native states in the region would have eradicated it.
 
There weren't nearly enough cannibals to even make up 1% of the 20 million inhabitants of the Congo. You're describing a number of very fringe tribes and clans that participated in plunder based economies and/or ritualistic slaughter, both things that would have been stamped out once statebuilding begins in the region. If not the Belgians, the Arabs, or any number of native states in the region would have eradicated it.

The established tradition for thousands of years was to call those you wish to conquer and enslave cannibals, blood cults, and sexual deviants. As far as they were concerned, it was true.
 
The established tradition for thousands of years was to call those you wish to conquer and enslave cannibals, blood cults, and sexual deviants. As far as they were concerned, it was true.
Yes but that doesn't mean that modern people should be praising them for committing monstrous crimes because it civilized these "cannibals."
 
Yes but that doesn't mean that modern people should be praising them for committing monstrous crimes because it civilized these "cannibals."
Seriously? It isnt black and white like your portraying it. Oh, oops, that saying might be construed by you as racist. We deal with facts here, history should be looked at impartially and scientifically. There is no room for emotions or feelings of being hurt or "my civilization is as good as yours". Cannibalism, in any form, is not something you want to encourage, but neither is the Inquisition, or blood libel, or Holocaust. Europe and Africa have had different problems and continue to. People can praise the good that came to Africa at the same time as denouncing the bad that came. You can't defend cannibalism any more than anyone can defend working someone to death in a diamond mine. And seriously statehood and modernization is not a matter of "if we left these people alone without European contact for an extra thousand years they would have invented the steam engine and democracy!" It doesn't work that way.
 
Seriously? It isnt black and white like your portraying it. Oh, oops, that saying might be construed by you as racist. We deal with facts here, history should be looked at impartially and scientifically. There is no room for emotions or feelings of being hurt or "my civilization is as good as yours". Cannibalism, in any form, is not something you want to encourage, but neither is the Inquisition, or blood libel, or Holocaust. Europe and Africa have had different problems and continue to. People can praise the good that came to Africa at the same time as denouncing the bad that came. You can't defend cannibalism any more than anyone can defend working someone to death in a diamond mine. And seriously statehood and modernization is not a matter of "if we left these people alone without European contact for an extra thousand years they would have invented the steam engine and democracy!" It doesn't work that way.
You seem to be projecting a ton of things onto what I said that don't really fit. Like this whole spiel about black and white or the snark about racism. You are even inventing fake quotes that have no resemblance to anything I have expressed.

And I remain unconvinced that cannibalism was such a serious issue that the CFS deserved praise for it considering the context.
 
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