Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

by Siddharth Kara

Imagine for a moment what it was like for an African person to be ripped from her home; separated from husband and children; chained, branded, beaten, raped, and incarcerated—all before being forced into the putrid cargo hold of a slave ship, crammed next to hundreds of agonized men, women, children, and babies. Or what it was like to spend six weeks in this cargo hold without room to sit upright, locked down by flesh-ripping shackles day and night. Or to have to use a bucket for a toilet in front of hundreds of people as the ship crashed through waves. Or to try to comfort an inconsolable child who was frightened, feverish, and seasick. Or to be one of the gravely ill, but still living, who was thrown into the ocean like so much refuse. Or to survive this hell only to arrive in the Americas and be sold into slavery, where the real torture began. Imagine for a moment the toll taken on a person, a family, a people, a continent across centuries of the slave trade, followed by a century of colonization. Empires were built and generations of wealth were amassed across the Western world in this manner. Perhaps that is the most enduring contrast of all between our world and theirs—our generally safe and satisfied nations can scarcely function without forcing great violence upon the people of Africa. The catastrophe in the mining provinces of the Congo is the latest chapter in this unholy tale.