why did king leopold want the congo
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septiembre 28, 2020 Leopold II became the next King of Belgium in 1865 and reigned until his death on December 17th, 1909. The Herero were traditional occupants of the temperate high plains of central Namibia. Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. Leopold's most formidable enemy surfaced in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. They were a newly independent country . As the vines near a village were often drained dry, the men would sometimes have to walk for days to find areas where they could gather their monthly quota of rubber. (April 27, 2023). As the price of rubber soared, the quotas increased, and as vines near a village were drained dry, men desperate to free their wives and daughters would have to walk days or weeks to find new vines to tap. He called it tat Indpendant du Congo, the Congo Free State. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press. This army was composed of White officers and African soldiers. Leopold's reign over the Congo Free State, however, has become infamous for its brutality. [6] For the look of things, he held one more meeting the following year, but from that time on, the International African Association was simply a front for Leopold's ambition. Estimates suggest more than 50% died there. Virtually no information about the true nature of King Leopold's Congo reached the outside world until the arrival there, in 1890, of an enterprising visitor named George Washington Williams. ." Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. In order to enforce the near impossible rubber quotas imposed on villages, agents and officials called on the Free States army, the Force Publique. The history of Colonialism as a policy or practice go, THE CAUSE OF DECOLONIZATION A cointegration analysis, CRE Working paper, n02/10, juin 2010, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colonization_of_the_Congo_Basin&oldid=1117806574, The fever-ridden mangroves of the lower Niger by the brothers, This page was last edited on 23 October 2022, at 17:53. The Force Publique, no doubt, also attracted men who, for whatever reason, felt little compunction about wielding such violence, but this was true of the White officers as well. Tippu Tip had raided 118 villages, killed 4,000 Africans, and, when Stanley reached his camp, had 2,300 slaves, mostly young women and children, in chains ready to transport halfway across the continent to the markets of Zanzibar. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. While Leopold portrayed this as a great humanitarian act, his real purpose was to gain control of the upper Congo River and to acquire more workers. Du sang sur les lianes. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Tippu Tip, the most powerful of the Zanzibari slave traders of the 19th century, was well known to Stanley, as was the social chaos and devastation that slave-hunting brought. If the government of Belgium would not take a colony, then he would simply do it himself, acting in his private capacity as an ordinary citizen. L'tat libre du Congo: Paradis perdu. The King Incorporated: Leopold II in the Age of Trusts. The king's colonial officials quickly set up a brutal but effective system for harvesting wild rubber. The rapids and falls, had they known it, extended for 220 miles (350km) inland, and the terrain close by the river was impassable, and remains so to this day. Bierman, John (1990). In 1908, international pressure forced the king to turn the Congo Free State over to the country of Belgium. King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence. A worldwide rubber boom was under way, kicked off by the invention of the inflatable bicycle tire and spurred on by the rise of the automobile and the use of rubber in industrial belts and gaskets, as well as in coating for telephone and telegraph wires. One by one the other great mysteries had been explored: Though the Congo had been one of the first to be attempted, it remained a mystery. London: George Allen & Unwin. Company agents were paid large concessions on top of their salaries for the profits they generated, creating personal incentives to force people to work more and harder for little to no pay. The couple's first son, Louis Philippe, died in infancy prior to Leopold II's birth. On December 12, 1963, the flag of independent Kenya billowed over the capital city of Nairobi f, Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 In Britain he founded the Congo Reform Association, and affiliated groups sprang up in the United States and other countries. Because the system's effects in the Congo could so easily be blamed on one man, who could safely be attacked because he did not represent a great power, an international outcry focused on Leopold. This makeover of Leopold's image produced an amnesia that persisted for decades. Together with epidemic disease, famine, and a falling . BBC World Service: 50 Things That Made the Modern . "King Leopold II and the Congo 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Presenting himself as a philanthropist eager to bring the benefits of Christianity, Western civilization, and commerce to African nativesa guise that he perpetuated for many yearsLeopold hosted an international conference of explorers and geographers at the royal palace in Brussels in 1876. Many people wonder why these soldiers were willing to do this to their own people, but there was no sense of being Congolese. The boundaries of Colonialism, like those of many literary eras, are difficult to draw. However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. Although Leopold II established Belgium as a colonial power in Africa, he is best known for the widespread atrocities that were carried out under his rule, as a result of which as many as 10 million people died in the Congo Free State. Demonstrations and protests demanded that Leopold end human rights abuses in the Congo Free State. Using a wide variety of local and church sources, Jan Vansina, professor emeritus of history and anthropology at the University of Wisconsin and the leading ethnographer of Congo basin peoples, calculates that the Congo's population dropped by some 50 percent during this period, an estimate with which other modern scholars concur. The bloodiest single episode in Africa's colonization took place in the center of the continent in the large territory, known as the Congo. But in the chaos of the early 20th Century when World War One threatened to destroy Belgium, Leopold II's nephew King Albert I erected statues to remember the successes of years gone by. In his novella Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, who spent six months in the Congo in 1890 as a steamboat officer, gives a searing picture of the brutal and voracious European quest for Congo ivory. Yet, in the most astonishing and improbable way imaginable, he managed virtually single-handedly to upset the balance of power in Africa and usher in the terrible age of European colonialism on the black continent. Red Rubber: The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Which Flourished on the Congo for Twenty Years, 18901910. As a result of King Leopold actions, thousands of African tribes populations decreased significantly. Around the BBC. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. In January 1959, riots broke out in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) after a rally was held calling for the independence of the Congo. Why did King Leopold give up the Congo? 1996 - 2023 National Geographic Society. Regions that were hard to access or lacked profitable resources escaped much of the violence that was to follow, but for those areas directly under the rule of the Free State or the companies it leased land to, the results were devastating. When Stanley returned to Europe in 1878, he had not only found Dr. Livingstone (an event remembered to this day), resolved the last great mystery of African exploration, and ruined his health: he had also opened the heart of tropical Africa up to the outside world. In estimating situations without the benefit of complete census data, demographers are more confident speaking of percentages than absolute numbers. Name Ahmed Kamel Date 2/17/22 Topic 6.2 Reading Check 1. The treaties, some of which appear to have been subsequently doctored to Leopolds liking, were then put to use by the Belgian monarch. Benedetto, Robert, ed. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leopold II was the second son of Leopold I, first king of the Belgians, and his second wife, Marie-Louise of Orlans. Why did Leopold want the Congo? Joseph Conrad, who spent six months in the Congo in 1890, draws a memorable portrait of this rapacious trade in his novel Heart of Darkness. "It's a good thing that everyone is waking up, looking around and thinking 'is this right?'" 2, 2022, thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. Almost the only early visitor to interview Africans about their experience of the regime, he took extensive notes, and, a thousand miles up the Congo River, wrote one of the greatest documents in human rights literature, an open letter to King Leopold that is one of the important landmarks in human rights literature. Nzansu's men fought on sporadically for five years more, and no record of his fate exists. Bulletin Officiel du Congo Belge (1920). He was interested in the Congo river basin because there were many natural resources such as rubber, minerals, ivory, diamonds, and gold. If that figure is accurate and it represents 50 percent of what the population had been in 1880, this would suggest a loss of 10 million people. Because the systems effects in the Congo could so easily be blamed on one man, who could safely be attacked because he did not represent a great power, an international outcry focused on Leopold. The king also faced enemies of another sort. King Leopold's Rule in Africa. The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. "In the Heart of Darkness". Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. The Belgian cabinet of the day was not interested in colonies. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. This was to be his most enduring legacy. When the Belgian King Leopold II acquired the Congo Free State during the Scramble for Africa in 1885, he claimed he was establishing the colony for humanitarian and scientific purposes, but in reality, its sole aim was profit, as much as possible, as fast as possible. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. E. V. Sjblom of Sweden was one of the first and most outspoken missionaries in the Congo. Leopold spoke of bringing civilization to the Africans and sent a small but heavily armed Belgian force into the Congo. In 1876, Leopold II sponsored an international geographical conference in Brussels, inviting delegates from scientific societies all over Europe to discuss philanthropic and scientific matters such as the best way to coordinate map making, to prevent the re-emergence of the west coast slave trade, and to investigate ways of sending medical aid to Africa. Leopold II implemented a forced-labour system in the Congo that was quickly copied by other European colonial powers. On Friday the younger brother of Belgium's King Philippe, Prince Laurent, defended his ancestor saying Leopold II was not responsible for atrocities in the colony "because he never went to Congo". Last year a UN working group called on Belgium to apologise for atrocities committed during the colonial era. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. George Washington Williams: A Biography. The king then embarked on an ultimately successful effort to make a vast fortune from his new possession. Stanley was applauded, admired, decoratedand ignored. POST-1945 HISTORICAL CONTEXTS Morel, E. D. (1904). These men were generally from other parts of the Congo or other colonies entirely, and the orphans and enslaved people had often been brutalized themselves. Although neither figure is well-documented, Hannah Arendt's seminal The Origins of Totalitarianism cites an estimated minimum population loss of 11.5 million, and a Congolese historian writing in 1998, Isidore Ndaywel Nziem, estimates the loss at roughly 13 million. Vocabulary On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Although Belgiums government felt that colonies would be an extravagance for a small country with no navy or merchant marine, that situation suited Leopold perfectly. From the start the regime was founded on forced labor. With women as hostages and men forced to tap rubber, few able-bodied adults were left to hunt, fish, and cultivate crops. Updates? But why was Leopold's Congo so horrific? The people of the Congo did not suffer these injustices without fighting back. All rights reserved. Encyclopedia.com. Four years before, the Zanzibaris had thought the Congo deadly and impassable, and warned Stanley not to attempt to go there, but when Tippu Tip learned in Zanzibar that Stanley had survived, he was quick to act. For five years Stanley traveled up and down the immense waterways of the Congo River basin, setting up trading posts, building roads, and persuading local chiefsalmost all of them illiterateto sign treaties with Leopold. When the ships turned around and steamed back to Africa, however, they carried no merchandise in exchange. Thompsell, Angela. Belgian officers were afraid that the rank and file of the Force Publique would waste bullets, so they demanded a human hand for each bullet their soldiers used as proof that the killings had been done. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities. After Morel orchestrated a protest resolution by the British Parliament, the government, in response, asked its representative in the Congo to investigate his charges. Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. Former President of Kenya If the estimates from varied sources of a 50 percent toll in King Leopold's Congo are correct, how many people does this mean? Under his reign, the Congolese people were terrorized with forced labor and harsh treatment. 2 volumes. "It is indispensable", instructed Leopold, "that you should purchase for the Comit d'tudes[fr] (i.e., Leopold himself) as much land as you can obtain". Exhausted, Stanley returned to Europe, only to be sent straight back by Leopold, who promised him an outstanding assistant: Charles 'Chinese' Gordon (who did not in fact take up Leopold's offer but chose instead to go to meet his fate at Khartoum). Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. official, Major Charles C. Liebrechts, made the same estimate in 1920. He had long wanted a colonial empire, and in Stanley he saw someone who could secure it for him. The great population movements caused by the colonial regime brought these illnesses into areas where people had not built up an immunity to them, and many would have died even under a government far less brutal than Leopold's. p.20. Ascherson, Neal (1963). Brussels: Institut Royal Colonial Belge. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. [1]:333, "There are 40,000,000 naked people" on the other side of the rapids, Stanley wrote, "and the cotton-spinners of Manchester are waiting to clothe them Birmingham's factories are glowing with the red metal that shall presently be made into ironwork in every fashion and shape for them and the ministers of Christ are zealous to bring them, the poor benighted heathen, into the Christian fold. When Leopold II died in 1909, he was buried to the sound of Belgians booing. He is remembered in Belgium for some of what he built with his Congo wealth, such as the monumental Arcade du Cinquantenaire in Brussels, and for his advocacy of strong fortifications in the eastern part of the country, which slowed the advance of German troops in 1914 at the beginning of World War I. Instead, the ships carried soldiers, and large quantities of firearms and ammunition. Brussels: Didier Hatier. L'histoire du Congo 18761900. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. If a soldier fired at someone and missed, or used a bullet to shoot game, he then sometimes cut off the hand of a living victim to be able to show it to his officer. The conference was a sham: at its close, Leopold proposed that they set up an international benevolent committee to carry on, and modestly agreed to accept the chairman's role. Thus was the Belgian Congo created. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Many classrooms still have Herg's famous cartoon book Tintin in the Congo, with its depictions of black people now commonly accepted as extremely racist. 2023
