The history of mass murder in Central Africa has been traced to the colonial era when Belgian colonialists massacred more than ten million people during their occupation and pacification of the Congo in the 1890s. Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost documented this period of genocide, a central aspect of colonial expansion. The European powers defined their mission as the civilization of "uncivilized" peoples, elimination of slavery, redemption of souls through conversion to Christianity, and expansion of international commerce, all the while insisting that the key conflicts in the region related to tribal hostility.

The genocide and mass murder perpetrated within the Congo set the stage for a century of mass slaughter throughout Africa, with the killings in the German protectorate of Namibia in a sense serving as the rehearsal for the Holocaust during World War II. The Nazis' annihilation of some six million...