For all his social shortcomings in European society, he was undoubtedly the right man for the job. Leopold II and the Congo Free State - HISTORY CRUNCH This article is about the European colonization of the Congo region. Ascherson, Neal (1963). On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State as his personal possession. However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. Encyclopedia.com. Marchal, Jules (1996). It would be "really significant for Congolese people, especially those whose families perished," she explains. European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State and Its Aftermath. No one owned more land like this than King Leopold II, for equatorial rain forest, dotted with wild rubber vines, comprised half of his Congo state. 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. Demonstrations and protests demanded that Leopold end human rights abuses in the Congo Free State. Around 20,000 children born to Belgian settlers and local women were forcibly taken to Belgium to be fostered. (2022, June 2). Having established a beachhead on the lower Congo, in 1883 Stanley set out upriver to extend Leopold's domain, employing his usual methods: negotiations with local chiefs buying sovereignty in exchange for bolts of cloth and trinkets; playing one tribe off another; and if need be, simply shooting an obstructive chief and negotiating with his cowed successor instead. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. . He attributes colonial crimes to the king himself, rather than the Belgian people or state. Dark Safari: The Life behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley. It was not until 1867 that the Congo was explored by Europeans, and even then it was not from the sea, but from the other side of the African continent. He became duke of Brabant in 1846 and served in the Belgian army. The bloodiest single episode in Africa's colonization took place in the center of the continent in the large territory, known as the Congo. [3], As a constitutional monarch, Leopold was charged with the usual constitutional duties of opening parliaments, greeting diplomats, and attending state funerals. Leopold acquired the Congo through unethical means and thus took the people's chances away at self-rule. Belgium's education minister announced this week that secondary schools would teach colonial history from next year. With women as hostages and men forced to tap rubber, few able-bodied adults were left to hunt, fish, and cultivate crops. In two ways the Congo's rubber boom had lasting impact beyond the territory itself. Men who did not fulfill their quota were killed or mutilated. ." 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. Army officers and colonial officials earned bonuses based on the amount of rubber collected in areas under their control. At various times, he launched unsuccessful schemes to buy an Argentine province, to buy Borneo from the Dutch, rent the Philippines from Spain, or establish colonies in China, Vietnam, Japan, or the Pacific islands. t. e. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 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. 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. Seeing what profits Leopold was reaping from forced labor, officials in these colonies soon adopted exactly the same systemincluding women hostages, forced male labor, and the chicottewith equally fatal consequences. Leopold, however, made the Belgian government pay him for his prized possession. Leopold II, French in full Lopold-Louis-Philippe-Marie-Victor, Dutch in full Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, (born April 9, 1835, Brussels, Belgiumdied December 17, 1909, Laeken), king of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. Morel, E. D. (1904). 60 years after independence, traces of the system of exploitation and violence that Leopold II and colonial-era Belgium created still remain in DR Congo. 24 February 2004. Why did the Belgian Congo happen? - Sage-Answer To avoid discovery, materials and workers were shipped in by various roundabout routes, and communications between Stanley and Leopold were entrusted to Colonel Maximilien Strauch. Stanley was lionised across Europe. 2023 BBC. Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf as a personal union with Belgium. 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 results of this rule were very uneven. Nzansu, a chief in the region near the great Congo River rapids, led rebels who killed a hated colonial official and pillaged several state posts, although they carefully spared the homes of nearby Swedish missionaries. At the time, his father, Leopold I, was the King of Belgium. 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. . 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 established his control over the colony through the use of brute force in an attempt to wean the Congolese into submission. Leopold (18351909) had ascended to the throne in 1865. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. The horrors, though, are only one part of the story. 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. Reform in Leopold's Congo. On December 12, 1963, the flag of independent Kenya billowed over the capital city of Nairobi f, Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Du sang sur les lianes. La Force publique de sa naissance 1914: Participation des militaires l'histoire des premires annes du Congo. The museum is largely protected by heritage law but, in the streets outside, monuments to a monarch who seized a huge swathe of Central Africa in 1885 have no such security. In the early 1890s, Leopold's private African army, the Force Publique (Public Force), drove the powerful Muslim slave traders out of the Congo. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Oasis Kodila Tedika et Francklin Kyayima Muteba, The sources of growth in DRC before independence. Leopold II became the next King of Belgium in 1865 and reigned until his death on December 17th, 1909. CONGO.docx - Why did the King of Belgium Leopold II want William Roger Louis and Jean Stengers. Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo. (1952). Leopold II of Belgium - Wikipedia 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. 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. 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. Renting a missionary steamboat, he spent more than three months traveling in the interior. In return European leaders, gathered at the Berlin Conference, granted him 2m sq km (770,000 sq miles) to forge a personal colony where he was free to do as he liked. The children sent to a 'holiday camp' never to come back, Russia launches pre-dawn missile attack on Ukraine, Chaos at port as thousands rush to leave Sudan. Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition. The New York Review of Books. Instead, the ships carried soldiers, and large quantities of firearms and ammunition. He persuaded first the United States and then all the major nations of western Europe to recognize a huge swath of Central Africaroughly the same territory as the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congoas his personal property. The people of the Congo did not suffer these injustices without fighting back. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. ADAM HOCHSCHILD. The only way to do that was through the use of terror. He wrongly justified his actions by saying that the people of the Congo were inferior, and deserved the treatment they received. POST-1945 HISTORICAL CONTEXTS A detachment of soldiers would march into an African village and seize the women as hostages. EUROPEAN EFFORTS TO REINVENT OVERSEA, Kenyatta, Jomo 1891(? The king's colonial officials quickly set up a brutal but effective system for harvesting wild rubber. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. But rumours of abuse began to circulate and missionaries and British journalist Edmund Dene Morel exposed the regime. A petition calling on the city for its removal has reached 74,000 signatures. Although he played a significant role in the development of the modern Belgian state, he was also responsible for widespread atrocities committed under his rule against his colonial subjects. . They were the very first royal family of Belgium, because the country was just 5 years old. 2 volumes. Dec 14, 2022. They were a newly independent country . [12] At the end of his physical resources, Stanley returned home, to be replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Francis de Winton, formerly a British Army officer. When you reach out to him or her, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. However, the date of retrieval is often important. 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. As he headed back to England, Stanley was assiduously courted by King Leopold II of Belgium. Around the BBC. A Bantu people, they had moved south into this region f, King of the Bingo Game by Ralph Ellison, 1944, https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo. "It's a good thing that everyone is waking up, looking around and thinking 'is this right?'" The couple's first son, Louis Philippe, died in infancy prior to Leopold II's birth. Morel, E. D. (1919). Leopold agreed and in deepest secrecy, Stanley signed a five-year contract at a salary of 1,000 a year, and set off to Zanzibar under an assumed name. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Shocked by recent local census statistics that showed less than one child per woman, the official Commission Institue pour la Protection des Indignes made a similar reckoning in 1919. 2 volumes. Inside the palatial walls of Belgium's Africa Museum stand statues of Leopold II - each one a monument to the king whose rule killed as many as 10 million Africans. He did however apologise for the kidnapping of thousands of mixed-race children, known as mtis, from Burundi, DR Congo and Rwanda in the 1940s and 1950s. 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. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. Combining gift-giving with a show of military force, he persuaded hundreds of illiterate African chiefs, most of whom had little idea of the terms of the agreement to which they were ostensibly acceding, to sign away their land to the king. Leopold II | Biography, Facts, & Legacy | Britannica Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press. He was, nevertheless, an extremely minor monarch in the realpolitik of the times, ruling a totally insignificant nation, a nation in fact that had come into existence barely four decades before and lived under the constant threat of losing its precarious independence to the great European powers around it. In later years he sometimes referred to himself as the Congo's proprietor. After all, destroying the iconography of Adolf Hitler did not mean the history of Nazi Germany was forgotten, she points out. Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities. Statues of Leopold II should now be housed in museums to teach Belgian history, suggests Mireille-Tsheusi Robert, director of anti-racism NGO Bamko Cran. Meanwhile, Leopold had already begun the job of persuading first the United Morel, in his mid-twenties at the time, noticed that when his company's ships arrived from the Congo, they were filled to the hatch with enormously valuable cargoes of rubber and ivory. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. 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. But for Leopold this posed no problem; he would acquire his own. Read about our approach to external linking. 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. Harper & Row. Several years later he hired the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to be his man in Africa. A Lasting Legacy Of The Builder King In Brussels - Culture Trip "King Leopold II and the Congo oliviall Answer: Since the consequences of the scheme in the Congo could too easily be blamed on one man who could comfortably be targeted because he did not serve a great power, a Leopold-focused foreign uproar. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Africans also died in two decades' worth of unsuccessful uprisings against the king's regime. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. Forbath, P. The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration, and Exploitation of the World's Most Dramatic River, 1991 (Paperback). Brussels: Didier Hatier. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild Plot Summary | LitCharts In actuality, Leopold wanted to get his hands on Congo's natural resources. In 1908, international pressure forced the king to turn the Congo Free State over to the country of Belgium. After leaving Livingstone, Stanley sailed for 1,000 miles (1,600km) down the Lualaba (Upper Congo) to the large lake he named Stanley Pool (now called Pool Malebo). The country of Belgium itself was only about five years old at the birth of Leopold II, who became the eldest surviving son of Leopold I, first king of the Belgians, and his second wife, Louise-Marie of Orlans. Among those who weren't killed, many were punished by having a hand and/or foot amputated. There seemed no economic sense to investing energy in Africa when the returns from other colonies were likely to be both richer and more immediate. 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. Throughout the 1870s, Leopold cunningly established a reputation as a great philanthropist and humanitarian who wanted to spread Christianity and civilization to Africa. Leopold II implemented a forced-labour system in the Congo that was quickly copied by other European colonial powers. Is climate change killing Australian wine? Charles Michel, prime minister at the time, declined. 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. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. "[2]:145. In January 1959, riots broke out in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) after a rally was held calling for the independence of the Congo. 13(May 15). Thus was the Belgian Congo created. He made further progress toward realizing his objective at a diplomatic conference in Berlin in 1884 and 1885 that the major European powers attended. "Leopold II certainly does not deserve a statue in the public domain," agrees Bambi Ceuppens, scientific commissioner at the Africa Museum. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. E. D. Morel contre Lopold II: L'histoire du Congo 19001910. Votin, Herero All rights reserved. official, Major Charles C. Liebrechts, made the same estimate in 1920. Civil rights leader Forced labor remained a major part of the Congo's economy for many years after the war. For many years Leopold II was widely known as a leader who defended Belgium's neutrality in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war and commissioned public works fit for a modern nation. He spoke contemptuously of Belgiums small size, could not speak proper Dutch, the native language of more than half of its citizens, spent long winters in luxurious quarters on the French Riviera, and was estranged from two of his three daughters. She was not unique - chopping off the limbs of enslaved Congolese was a routine form of retribution when Leopold II's quotas were not met. 2, 2022, thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. When the 1860s explorers focused attention on Africa, Leopold schemed to colonise Mozambique on the east coast, Senegal on the west coast, and the Congo in the centre. Leopold was an intelligent and ruthless man who wasn't afraid to lie or kill in order to expand Belgium's power. Army officers often demanded of their men a severed hand from each rebel killed in battle. Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. Alice Harris, a British Baptist, took photographs of the atrocities she witnessed. To secure their Thompsell, Angela. 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. 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. 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. A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. In a TV debate this week, a former president of the Free University of Brussels, Herv Hasquin, argued there were "positive aspects" to colonisation, listing the health system, infrastructure, and primary education he said Belgium brought to Central Africa. They also sometimes eradicatedwhole villages that failed to meet the quotas as a warning to others. 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. . Throughout the tropics, people rushed to sow rubber trees, but those plants could take many years to reach maturity, and in the meantime there was money to be made wherever rubber grew wild. Some writers, almost entirely in Belgium, claim that such estimates are exaggerated. Why did Leopold want the Congo? - JOUNIMARTIKAINEN The army become known for its brutality, with the officers and soldiers being accused ofdestroying villages, taking hostages, raping, torturing, and extorting the people. Bennett, Norman Robert. In the newly christened Belgian Congo, however, the forced labor system did not immediately end. The Atrocities of the Congo Free State Rubber Regime - ThoughtCo It is at this point that Leopold II of Belgium took a part. Flament, F., et al. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Other parts of the Congo economy, from road building to chopping wood for steamboat boilers, operated by forced labour as well. Having found the new ruler of the upper Congo, Stanley negotiated an agreement with Tippu Tip to allow him to build his final river station just below Stanley Falls (which prevented vessels sailing further upstream). To curry diplomatic favor, he allowed several hundred Protestant missionaries into the Congo. "I will dance if it comes down. Omissions? 8 Disturbing Facts About King Leopold II, the Butcher of Congo Therefore, King Leopold should be condemned as a criminal for his Read More Thesis Critique Of King Leopold's Ghost Leopold II, it seemed, was the only European willing to finance Stanley's dream: the building of a railway over the Crystal Mountains from the sea to Stanley Pool, from which river steamers could reach 1,000 miles (1,600km) into the heart of Africa. "Civilisation" was at the core of Leopold II's pitch to European leaders in 1885 when they sliced up and allocated territories in what became known as the Scramble for Africa. 6.2 Reading Check.docx - Name Ahmed Kamel Date 2/17/22 This was to be his most enduring legacy. The British consul, an Irishman named Roger Casement, later famous as an Irish patriot, took the assignment seriously. The horrific consequences of rubber's toxic past - BBC News A hundred lashes of the chicotte, a not infrequent punishment, could be fatal. Interestingly, a longtime high colonial "In the Heart of Darkness". Imperialism in Africa Assignment and Quiz Flashcards | Quizlet When did George Washington Williams visit the Congo? As the realities and suffering within the Congo Free State became more widely known, many European people spoke out against these abuses. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. Last year a UN working group called on Belgium to apologise for atrocities committed during the colonial era. 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". "We run the risk of someday seeing our native population collapse and disappear," declared the permanent committee of the National Colonial Congress of Belgium in 1924, "so that we will find ourselves confronted with a kind of desert" (Hoornaert and Louwers, 1924, p. 101). One visitor to the Africa Museum, where an outdoor statue was defaced last week, disagreed with the idea of removing them - "they're part of history," he explained. They refused to surrender, and when troops finally entered the cave three months later, they found 178 bodies. View 6.2_Reading_Check.docx from HISTORY 2109320 at Coral Reef Senior High School. But why was Leopold's Congo so horrific? 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. Jolle Sambi Nzeba, a Belgian-Congolese poet and spokesperson for the Belgian Network for Black Lives, says the statues tell her she is "less than a regular Belgian". Europeans were interested in Africa for its abundance of natural resources (ivory, rubber, gold, etc.) Standing close by, one visitor said, "I didn't know anything about Leopold II until I heard about the statues defaced down town". 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. However, as he approached Stanley Falls at the junction between the Congo proper and the Lualaba (close to the general vicinity of Central Africa where he had found Livingstone six years before), it soon became clear that Stanley's men were not the only intruders. 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. The royal palace is yet to give its own response. LEOPOLD II (18351909; ruled 18651909), king of Belgium and personal sovereign of the Congo Free State. Soldiers were also reportedly promised their freedom or given other incentives for killing the most people as proven by supplying the most hands. For thousands of years, that territory had been conquered by nearby Netherlands, France, Germany, and Luxembourg. He provided for no education or vocational training, which would stunt future Congolese leaders from making sound economic and political policies. "Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities." 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. 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. Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. 06/29/2020. Eventually, the price fell and wild rubber supplies began to run out, but by that time World War I had begun, and large numbers of Africans were forced to become porters, carrying supplies for Belgian military campaigns against Germany's African colonies. Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? Marchal, Jules (1996). 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. Estimates suggest more than 50% died there. Why did King Leopold colonize the Congo? - Sage-Advices Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). 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.
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