In 1888, John Dunlop, an Irish vet, invented the rubber tyre, used on bicycles and soon on motor cars. Leopold’s thugs, wielding rifles, chicotes – hippo-hide whips – and machetes, hunted down any opposition and executed workers who failed to deliver their rubber quotas. ‘As soon as it was a question of rubber,’ recalled a Leopoldine official, Charles Lemaire, ‘I wrote to the government: “To gather rubber, one must cut off hands, noses, ears.” ’ The
