This Image Of A Slave Father Looking At His Daughter's Severed Hand And Foot Has Haunted Generations

The man in the photograph was named Nsala. His only crime was failing to fulfill a rubber collection quota installed by the Belgian rubber company militia. For that, he was punished through his daughter, who had her hand and foot cut off and presented to him. According to the photographer, Alice Seeley Harris, Nsala's daughter was killed after being maimed, as was his wife, and they were then both cannibalized.

Chopping off extremities was a typical punishment in the Congo Free State. Leopold II's reign of terror over the Congo began in 1885 and ended in 1908.      

Alice Seeley Harris, pictured here with her husband, was stationed as a missionary in the Congo in 1898. During her years in the Congo, Harris taught English to the locals and took photographs as she became increasingly horrified and disgusted at what she saw happening there. In 1904, she took the now-famous photograph of Nsala staring at his daughter's severed extremities.

In one of her many books, Don't Call Me Lady: The Journey of Lady Alice Seeley Harris, Harris's description of Nsala became a scathing rebuke of Leopold II. She wrote:

All of this filth had occurred because one man, one man who lived thousands of miles across the sea, one man who couldn’t get rich enough, had decreed that this land was his and that these people should serve his own greed.

The Anglo-Belgian Rubber Company, later known as the Compagnie du Congo Belge, was the company in charge of fulfilling Leopold II's demand for rubber; he never actually set foot in the Congo. The company boomed in the late 1890s at an exorbitant cost to human rights. With the extensive exploitation of the native Congolese came high profits for the Belgians, and the company, later known as the Abir Congo Company, flourished for decades until its downfall in 1905.

A commission of inquiry was sent to the Congo Free State and discovered the inhumane treatment of the Congolese people. That, and falling profits, led to the end of the Abir Congo Company, but the damage had already been done. 

Leopold II managed to fool all of Europe while taking over the Congo. In 1876, he hosted a conference during which he convinced explorers and politicians to found what he described as a charitable foundation, the International African Association. This private holding company, disguised as a philanthropic endeavor, allowed Leopold II to swiftly send explorers to the Congo.

Leopold II's machinations led directly to the foundation of the Congo Free State and his exploitation of the native people, all under the guise of exploration and colonialism. 

The brutality of the Belgian militia stationed in the Congo Free State was systematic, and it was premised on the threat of extreme bodily harm to all those who committed an infraction of any kind. The military force, known as the Force Publique, was a mercenary force comprised of Belgian commanding officers with African soldiers. These mercenaries were required to cut off the hands of those they murdered for not fulfilling the rubber quota. 

A stockpile of hands meant good things for a soldier, and hands became a sort of currency for the Force Publique. This led to mass mutilation of innocent victims who often died as a result. Some slaves managed to play dead by not moving after having their hands chopped off.

The Congolese suffered immensely under Belgian rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Not only were their hands chopped off for failing to meet their rubber collection quota, but enslaved Congolese people also endured many other hardships as well.

In order to fulfill entirely unrealistic rubber collection quotas, enslaved Congolese workers were forced to venture deep into the forests and often ended up covered in the extracted rubber, which would then harden on their skin and have to be painfully scraped off.