why did king leopold want the congo

Leopold was an intelligent and ruthless man who wasn't afraid to lie or kill in order to expand Belgium's power. Furthermore, huge, uncounted numbers of Congolese fled the forced labor regime, but the only refuge to which they could escape was the depths of the rain forest, where there was little food and no shelter; travelers would discover their bones years later. 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. Discipline was harsh; reluctant military conscripts, disobedient porters, and villagers who failed to gather enough rubber all fell victim to the notorious chicotte, a whip made of sun-dried hippopotamus hide with razor-sharp edges. Red Rubber: The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Which Flourished on the Congo for Twenty Years, 18901910. In 2019, the cities of Kortrijk and Dendermonde renamed their Leopold II streets, with Kortrijk council describing the king as a "mass murderer". In later years, Stanley would write that the most vexing part of his duties was not the work itself, nor negotiating with the natives, but keeping order amongst the ill-assorted collection of white men he had brought with him as overseers, who squabbled constantly over small matters of rank or status. He had long wanted a colonial empire, and in Stanley he saw someone who could secure it for him. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. Why did Leopold want the Congo? - JOUNIMARTIKAINEN When Leopold II died in 1909, he was buried to the sound of Belgians booing. "King Leopold II's Exploitation of the Congo From 1885 to 1908 - STARS The Congo Free State was founded by Belgian King Leopold II on February 5, 1885, after he violently annexed the African continent. Other parts of the Congo economy, from road building to chopping wood for steamboat boilers, operated by forced labour as well. Around the BBC. She does not believe it will not be quick or easy. there were "positive aspects" to colonisation, Democratic Republic of Congo country profile, called on Belgium to apologise for atrocities, apologise for the kidnapping of thousands of mixed-race children, MasterChef Australia host Jock Zonfrillo dies, Banana artwork in Seoul museum eaten by visitor, NFL player's daughter, aged two, drowns in pool, Trevelyan relative 'would consider' famine payment, Ding becomes China's first male world chess champion, Indian 'killer' elephant relocated to tiger reserve. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition. Thompsell, Angela. Setting out from Zanzibar, Henry Morton Stanley, a British-born American journalist and explorer aimed to find the famous Dr. Livingstone. He provided for no education or vocational training, which would stunt future Congolese leaders from making sound economic and political policies. It would be "really significant for Congolese people, especially those whose families perished," she explains. Why did Leopold want the Congo? Hundreds of thousands of Africans were put to work as porters to carry the white men's goods, as cutters of the wood needed to fire steamboat boilers, and as laborers of all kinds. [11]:66. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. If you have questions about licensing content on this page, please contact ngimagecollection@natgeo.com for more information and to obtain a license. At the time, his father, Leopold I, was the King of Belgium. They were a newly independent country . States and then all the major nations of Europe to recognize his claim. Leopold II's reign as King of Belgium coincided with the time period of the Scramble for Africa, during which the European powers of the day raced for control of different regions . Shaloff, Stanley (1970). Although Stanley is best known as the man who found Livingstone, his trip across the Congo basin was the greater feat of exploration and had far more impact on history. "Leopold II certainly does not deserve a statue in the public domain," agrees Bambi Ceuppens, scientific commissioner at the Africa Museum. 6.2 Reading Check.docx - Name Ahmed Kamel Date 2/17/22 Name Ahmed Kamel Date 2/17/22 Topic 6.2 Reading Check 1. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. ." The vicious fighting and terror of the Congo Free State is better understood as another example of the incredible capacity of people for incomprehensible cruelty. Vangroenweghe, Daniel (1986). Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. The army become known for its brutality, with the officers and soldiers being accused ofdestroying villages, taking hostages, raping, torturing, and extorting the people. p.20. The first nationwide Congolese political party, the Congo National Movement, was launched in 1958 by Patrice Lumumba and other Congolese leaders. ." The focus of the great powers was still firmly on the lands that had made Europe's fortune: the Americas, the East Indies, India, China, and Australasia. The instructions were direct and to the point: "It is a question of creating a new State, as big as possible, and of running it. He was the architect of one of history's greatest, if lesser known, crimes against humanity. [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. The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. 2023 . Bierman, John (1990). "The rebels displayed a courage worthy of a better cause," (Flament et al., 1952, p. 417) acknowledged the army's official historywhich, remarkably, devoted fully one-quarter of its pages to the various campaigns against mutineers within the army's own ranks. Atrocities in the Congo Free State - Wikipedia 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). The largest mutiny involved three thousand troops and an equal number of auxiliaries and porters, and continued for three years. 2023 BBC. Hochschild, Adam (1998). In 1924 the first territory-wide census, when adjusted for undercounting, placed the number of colony inhabitants at some ten million. William Morrison, a white man, and William Sheppard, the first black missionary in the Congo, were Presbyterians from Virginia whose acts of witness so infuriated Congo colonial authorities that they put the men on trial for libel. Standing close by, one visitor said, "I didn't know anything about Leopold II until I heard about the statues defaced down town". In the far south, for example, a chief named Mulume Niama led warriors of the Sanga people in a rebellion that killed one of the king's officers. 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. Leopold (18351909) had ascended to the throne in 1865. King Leopold II Biography: The Monster of the Congo Why did King Leopold want the Congo ? - Brainly.com Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. To prove that he had not wasted bulletsor, worse yet, saved them for use in a mutinyfor each bullet expended, a Congolese soldier of the Force Publique had to present to his white officer the severed hand of a rebel killed. 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. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. Brussels: Goemaere. Last week a statue of Leopold II in the city of Antwerp was set on fire, before authorities took it down. However, Leopold's rule over the Congo Free State is well known for its cruelty. . He died the following year. I Have a Dream (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) Aware that Belgian neutrality, maintained during the Franco-German War (187071), was imperilled by the increasing strength of France and Germany, he persuaded parliament in 1887 to finance the fortification of Lige and Namur. For all his social shortcomings in European society, he was undoubtedly the right man for the job. says Ms Kayembe. 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. Franklin, John Hope (1985). For decades, colonial history has been barely taught in Belgium. They also sometimes eradicatedwhole villages that failed to meet the quotas as a warning to others. With women as hostages and men forced to tap rubber, few able-bodied adults were left to hunt, fish, and cultivate crops. A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. 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. After Morel orchestrated a protest resolution by the British Parliament, the government, in response, asked its representative in the Congo to investigate his charges. 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. Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? A petition calling on the city for its removal has reached 74,000 signatures. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. But the slashing of the territory's populationthrough a combination of disease, famine, slave labor, suppression of rebellions, and diminished birthrateindisputably occurred on a genocidal scale. VideoThe secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, LGBT troops take love for Eurovision to front line, Why an Indian comedian is challenging fake news rules. The Hidden Holocaust: How King Leopold II - The African Exponent The kings stated goal was to bring civilization to the people of the Congo, an enormous region in Central Africa. Army officers and colonial officials earned bonuses based on the amount of rubber collected in areas under their control. So they outsourced the task to Leopold, who used personal diplomacy to convince the European powers to grant him control of a large portion of the Congo basin. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. This makeover of Leopold's image produced an amnesia that persisted for decades. Renting a missionary steamboat, he spent more than three months traveling in the interior. The couple's first son, Louis Philippe, died in infancy prior to Leopold II's birth. When did George Washington Williams visit the Congo? In 1870 roughly 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara Desert was governed by indigenous kings, chiefs, and other rulers. Detachments of his 19,000-man private army, the Force Publique, would march into a village and hold the women hostage, forcing the men to scatter into the rainforest and gather a monthly quota of wild rubber. The forced-labour system for gathering rubber was swiftly copied by French, German, and Portuguese colonial officials with equally fatal results. Last week thousands in the country of 11 million joined solidarity protests about the killing of US black man George Floyd in police custody. In addition, Leopold's regime faced resistance from within his own conscript army, whose soldiers sometimes found a common cause with the rebel groups they were supposed to pursue. One lucrative source of wild rubber was the Landolphia vines in the great Central African rainforest, and no one owned more of that area than Leopold. The events in King Leopold's Congo also rippled beyond its borders in a more positive way: They gave birth to the twentieth century's first great international human rights movement (see sidebar). A British shipping company had the monopoly on all cargo traffic between the Congo and Belgium, and every few weeks it sent to the port of Antwerp a young junior official, Edmund Dene Morel, to supervise the unloading of a ship arriving from Africa. As rubber prices soared, so did the quotas. Leopold, however, made the Belgian government pay him for his prized possession. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. One particularly notorious practice grew out of the suppression of those rebellions. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. Therefore, King Leopold should be condemned as a criminal for his Read More Thesis Critique Of King Leopold's Ghost There are at least 13 statues to Leopold II in Belgium, according to one crowd-sourced map, and numerous parks, squares and street names. To curry diplomatic favor, he allowed several hundred Protestant missionaries into the Congo. Leopold II and the Congo Free State - HISTORY CRUNCH (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) Why did King Leopold colonize the Congo? - Sage-Advices Leopold II, King of the Belgiansas his coun, c. 1875 Soon after Stanley returned from the Congo, Leopold tried to recruit him. Its report that year to the Belgian king mostly focused on disease, but stressed that forced labor for rubber and other products "subjects the natives to conditions of life which are an obstacle to their increase" and warned that this situation, plus "a lack of concern about devastating plagues ancient and modern, an absolute ignorance of people's normal lives [and] a license and immorality detrimental to the development of the race," had reached "the point of threatening even the existence of certain Congolese peoples" and could completely depopulate the entire region (Bulletin Officiel, 1920, pp. 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. In Britain he founded the Congo Reform Association, and affiliated groups sprang up in the United States and other countries. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Congolese fled their villages to avoid being impressed as forced labourers, and they sought refuge deep in the forest, where there was little food and shelter. Why did the Belgian Congo happen? - Sage-Answer (Colonizing other peoples, regardless of the justification, is wrong. King Leopold II's Colonization Of The Congo | ipl.org In the newly christened Belgian Congo, however, the forced labor system did not immediately end. Initially he was most interested in ivory, a material that was greatly valued in the days before plastics because it could be carved into a great variety of shapesstatuettes, jewelry, piano keys, false teeth, and more. And in 2018, Brussels named a public square in honour of Patrice Lumumba, a hero of African independence movements and the first prime minister of Congo, since renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo. The propensity for violence is . Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement. Hochschild, Adam (October 6, 2005). "In the Heart of Darkness". 2 volumes. King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild Plot Summary | LitCharts On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Nzansu's men fought on sporadically for five years more, and no record of his fate exists. 2, 2022, thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. EUROPEAN EFFORTS TO REINVENT OVERSEA, Kenyatta, Jomo 1891(? Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Like statues of racist historical figures vandalised or removed in Britain and the US, Leopold II's days on Belgian streets could now be numbered. 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. The Atrocities of the Congo Free State Rubber Regime - ThoughtCo 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. [5] None of these schemes came anywhere near fruition: the government of Belgium resolutely resisted all Leopold's suggestions, seeing the acquisition of a colony as a good way to spend large amounts of money for little or no return. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. Belgian Congo | History & Facts | Britannica 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. 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. National Geographic Headquarters 1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036. Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. No one will ever know the precise figures, but, from all these causes, demographers estimate that between 1880 and 1920 the population of the Congo may have been slashed by up to 50 percent, from perhaps 20 million people at the beginning of that period to an estimated 10 million at the end. Leopold acquired the Congo through unethical means and thus took the people's chances away at self-rule. 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. It quickly became a brutal, exploitative regime that relied on forced labour to cultivate and trade rubber, ivory and minerals. Eventually, the strain forced him to relinquish his control of the territory, and in 1908 it became the Belgian Congo. Morel, E. D. (1904). But heat, tropical diseases, and the huge rapids near the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic had long kept the Congo's interior a mystery to Europeans. The effects were devastating. Most made no protest, but some were outraged at the brutal forced labor system. It was the world's only major colony owned by one man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. King Leopold II's rule over the Congo met fierce resistance. 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. 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. DR Congo: King Leopold's legacy - DW - 06/29/2020 In later years he sometimes referred to himself as the Congo's proprietor. 657, 660, 662). 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. Why did King Leopold give up the Congo? La Force publique de sa naissance 1914: Participation des militaires l'histoire des premires annes du Congo. As he headed back to England, Stanley was assiduously courted by King Leopold II of Belgium. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. From the start the regime was founded on forced labor. "King Leopold II and the Congo For a dozen years, from 1901 to 1913, working sometimes fourteen to sixteen hours a day, he devoted his formidable energy and skill to putting the story of forced labor in King Leopold's Congo on the world's front pages. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. When you reach out to him or her, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. The horrors, though, are only one part of the story. Then, as they would be into the 21st century, most of the royal families of Europe were related. Charles Michel, prime minister at the time, declined. If the estimates from varied sources of a 50 percent toll in King Leopold's Congo are correct, how many people does this mean? The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. "King Leopold II and the Congo 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. In the period from 1885 to 1908, many atrocities were perpetrated in the Congo Free State (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) which, at the time, was a state under the absolute rule of King Leopold II of the Belgians.These atrocities were particularly associated with the labour policies used to collect natural rubber for export. He created a baffling series of subsidiary shell organisations, culminating in the cunningly named International African Association (French: Association internationale africaine), which had a single shareholder: Leopold himself. The newly named Belgian Congo remained a colony until the Democratic Republic of Congo gained its independence in 1960. 24 February 2004. Forced labor remained a major part of the Congo's economy for many years after the war. They were the very first royal family of Belgium, because the country was just 5 years old. Several rebellions were mercilessly put down under Leopold's direction. For the earlier Bantu colonization, see. In the early years the main commodity Leopold sought was ivory. Rather than control the Congo as a colony, as other European powers did throughout Africa, Leopold privately owned the region.

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