During Antwerp’s Golden Age in the 16th century the Scheldt River running through the city was one of the largest ports in the world.
Along a street by the docks an inscription on an old, nondescript warehouse dating from the bicycle boom of the late 19th century leapt out at me.
The bicycle boom was the beginning of a surge in demand for rubber. Belgian King Leopold II controlled the Congo Free State in Africa. Congolese workers were forced to extract latex from wild rubber vines. They would slash the vines and smear the sticky latex on their bodies. Once it dried, they painfully peeled it off their skin.
Today, when I was walking underneath the Scheldt River in a pedestrian tunnel I thought would never end, my nerves worn thin by worrying whether I would be hit by two-wheeled traffic rushing up from behind me, I summoned the spirit of Joseph Conrad on his 1890 venture up the Congo River and repeated to myself, “The bicycles! The bicycles!”
Of all the colonial powers, Belgium might have just been the worst. Leopold II especially. There is an excellent book about this entitled “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa” by Adam Hochschild.