Edmund D. Morel

“Property and Trade versus Forced Production” by Edmund D. Morel is an essay that draws attention to the “hypocritical arguments drawn from false premises… designed to confuse judgment” (Morel 171) of the Congo State (European colony, not the natives), an illusionist that has transformed its horrendous, ignorant, and evil acts of imperialism into an “act of philanthropy, humanitarianism, and righteousness” (Morel 161), and encourages the members of European society to “[fight the Congo State] until the diseases it has introduced into Africa and the virus with which it has temporarily saturated a portion of European thought are utterly destroyed” (Morel 171). Morel examines three main points: property, labor, and trade to prove his thesis.

Viewpoints of property of the natives vary between Congo and the other European colonial governments, demonstrating both the hypocrisy and ignorance of Congo. Morel begins his argument citing the Doctrine of Forced Production, a general guideline Congo followed that denied the native any rights to his land and products. Subsequently, Morel uses quotes from various respected French and German colonizers, to show how in reality, the
Although Congo State’s official belief is that natives are inherently “idle and lazy” (Morel 164), this is contradicted in the statements of M. Emile Laurent, a pre-colonial Congo official, which explored how people built their own houses and cultivated their own foods – certainly not a people who were “idle” and “lazy”. The later perceived “idleness can be attributed to the intense physical labor had led to death and depopulation of the natives. This argument not only adds to the list of “hypocritical arguments … designed to confuse judgment” (Morel 171) by showing another set of contradicting statements, but also supports the argument that colonization is detrimental to native Congo