What Britain should learn from Belgium: history can be reappraised

Is it best to erase history, or reappraise history? We haven’t started taking down statues of royalty in Britain yet, but they have in Belgium: statues of King Leopold II were vandalised across the country last week and taken down. It was no surprise – in the bloody history of colonialism, he was one of the bloodiest rulers. He took personal control of the Congo, effectively enslaved everyone, ruled by sadistic brutality (hand and foot removal were a common punishment), killed about half the population, and extracted great wealth. However, the lesson to learn from Belgium is not statue removal, but what they have done to the enormous monument that King Leopold and his successors built to pay tribute to their colonial endeavours.

When I became Brussels correspondent for the Times in 2003, I paid the obligatory visit to the Royal Museum of Central Africa, a vast palace on the outskirts of Brussels, which was a completely unreconstructed and unapologetic homage to the glories of Belgium in the Congo. In