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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Mike111: [QB] The Force Publique (FP), French for "Public Force", was both a gendarmerie and a military force in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1885, (when the territory was known as the Congo Free State), through the period of direct Belgian colonial rule (1908 to 1960). Immediately following independence, the FP was retitled as the Congolese National Army or ANC. Having made use of African mercenaries ever since sending Stanley to stake out his claim between 1879 and 1884, Leopold formally organised them into his state army, the Force Publique, in 1888. Over the next dozen years it grew to more than 19,000 officers and men, the largest army in Africa. In 1901, out of the 12,786 soldiers, commanded by some 350 European officers, nearly 12,500 were foreigners, mainly mercenaries from Zanzibar and the British West African colonies. After this date most recruits were drawn from the Upper Congo district; they included children taken from missionary camps, former slaves and conscripts exacted as tax from local communities. Many others were forcibly conscripted during armed raids on villages, which often targeted children who were then sent to special ‘camps of military instruction'. Even those who volunteered usually did so because, as one soldier explained to a European visitor, he preferred ‘to be with the hunters rather than with the hunted'. Europeans at Stanleyville (c. 1902) [IMG]http://www.bookdrum.com/images/books/171549_m.jpg[/IMG] Force Publique soldiers, Boma (c. 1900) [IMG]http://www.bookdrum.com/images/books/176850_o.jpg[/IMG] Congolese slaves on a Belgian rubber plantation [IMG]http://www.bookdrum.com/images/books/166367_o.jpg[/IMG] The chicotte in use (c. 1900) [IMG]http://www.bookdrum.com/images/books/175623_o.jpg[/IMG] Arthur Conan Doyle in The Crime of the Congo: Page 44. " A nigger was being beaten near by " Corporal punishment in the Congo Free State was administered with the chicotte, a whip made of sun-dried hippopotamus hide. Usually the chicotte was applied to the bare buttocks of victims (including women and children), leaving permanent scars. In ‘Le Congo Français’ (1909), Félicien Challaye records an account given by a Belgian officer of the techniques employed in a typical chicotte lashing: One can hardly believe how difficult it is to administer the chicotte properly. One should spread out the blows so that each shall give a fresh pang. Then we have a law which forbids us to give more than twenty-five blows in one day, and to stop when the blood flows. One should, therefore, give twenty-four of the blows vigorously, but without risking to stop; then at the twenty-fifth, with a dexterous twist, one should make the blood spurt. Force Publique soldiers, taken in 1943. [IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/BelgianCongoSoldiers.gif[/IMG] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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