Talk:Charles Lemaire (explorer)

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Deceptively quoted source

"He advised his regime to cut the hands, noses, and ears off of unproductive workers." and the source for this is listed as Confronting Genocide. When you go to the source listed (page 28, citation 87), it itself list as its source for this quote the books Leopolds Ghost by Adam Hochschild and Belgian historian Daniel Vangroenweghe. But in this article by Bruce Gilley in which he is highly critical of the accuracy of Leopolds Ghost, he specifically mentions this quote. The source is from Chalres Lemaires personal diary which is given in its original french as:

"Lors qu'il fut question de caoutchouc, je m’y refusai et écrivis au Gouvernement: "Pour faire du caoutchouc dans le district de l’Équateur, (où nulle preparation n’avait été faite), il faudra couper des mains, des nez et des oreilles, et je ne sache pas que nous ayons chassé les bandits arabes pour nous substituer à eux."

or translated to English as:

"As soon as the rubber question was raised, I stood firmly in opposition and wrote to the government: “We will have to be cutting off hands, noses, and ears if we intend to collect rubber in the Équateur district (where no preparations had been made). And I don't think we drove away the Arab bandits in order to take their place."

In Hochschilds book, this quote is presented as "As soon as it was a question of rubber, I wrote to the government, “To gather rubber in the district…one must cut off hands, noses and ears.”

Bruce also mentions in his article how Vangroenweghe, who is very critical of the Belgian Free State, notes that Lemaire was NOT willing to use brutality against workers in order to achieve production quotas and was expressing this.

TL;DR - Lemaire wrote down that the only way to meet production quotas was to use cruel methods of torture on workers and he was not going to do that. This quote was selectively edited by Hochschild in an attempt to twist his words and make it appear that he was saying the opposite. Friedbyrd (talk) 15:58, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Hochschild has written an article in response to the one written by Gilley and addresses this specific quote with the following:

”Gilley is right, however, that I was misleading in respect to one quotation I cited from another official, Charles Lemaire. I am sorry about that and it should be corrected.”

The article should update on this quote since it is not a stretch to say that Hochschilds book popularized the idea that Lemaire gave this quote.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-ghost-still-haunts/

Friedbyrd (talk) 15:33, 30 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]