why did king leopold want the congo

Army officers and colonial officials earned bonuses based on the amount of rubber collected in areas under their control. Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets. 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. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. 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. 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. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. There are at least 13 statues to Leopold II in Belgium, according to one crowd-sourced map, and numerous parks, squares and street names. "When I walk in a city that in every corner glorifies racism and colonialism, it tells me that me and my history are not valid," she explains from the capital. He made further progress toward realizing his objective at a diplomatic conference in Berlin in 1884 and 1885 that the major European powers attended. 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. Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. . Ascherson, Neal (1963). 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. 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. 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. Beyond removal of statues, far more work is required to dismantle racism, protesters and black communities argue. 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. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) 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. 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. Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. Livingstone had not been heard from in several years and was, in fact, exploring the upper reaches of a great navigable inland river called the Lualaba, which Livingstone hoped was connected to the Nile, but which turned out to be the upper Congo. 2 volumes. On 29 May 1885, after the closure of the Berlin Conference, the king announced that he planned to name his possessions "the Congo Free State", an appellation which was not yet used at the Berlin Conference and which officially replaced "International Association of the Congo" on 1 August 1885. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. 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. Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. These were an incentive for ruthless, devastating plunder. Several rebellions were mercilessly put down under Leopold's direction. Charles Michel, prime minister at the time, declined. Leopold II, Williams declared, was guilty of "crimes against humanity." Morel, E. D. (1904). 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. (Colonizing other peoples, regardless of the justification, is wrong. The results of this rule were very uneven. 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. Votin, Herero Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps, Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. In DR Congo itself, no-one has really noticed the Belgian protests, says Jules Mulamba, a lawyer in the south-eastern city of Lubambashi. 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. In order to enforce the near impossible rubber quotas imposed on villages, agents and officials called on the Free States army, the Force Publique. 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. Morel, E. D. (1919). After all, destroying the iconography of Adolf Hitler did not mean the history of Nazi Germany was forgotten, she points out. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. 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. He established his control over the colony through the use of brute force in an attempt to wean the Congolese into submission. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Published in many American and European newspapers, it was the first comprehensive, detailed indictment of the regime and its slave labor system. Stanley made his way back to Europe with a sheaf of signed treaties in 1884. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. 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. 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). To secure their This brutal practice was a catastrophe for the population of the Congo, and Leopold was eventually forced to give up his hold on the colony. Retrieved September 22, 2017. Soldiers were also reportedly promised their freedom or given other incentives for killing the most people as proven by supplying the most hands. European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State and Its Aftermath. It was the worlds only private colony, and Leopold referred to himself as its proprietor.. But new rubber trees often require fifteen years of growth before they can be tapped. First, the system of exploitation established there became a model for colonial rule in other parts of central Africa. 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. It was too lucrative, for the price of rubber was still high. Stanley was applauded, admired, decoratedand ignored. All rights reserved. The treaties, some of which appear to have been subsequently doctored to Leopolds liking, were then put to use by the Belgian monarch. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Statues have been daubed with red paint in Ghent and Ostend and pulled down in Brussels. Last year a UN working group called on Belgium to apologise for atrocities committed during the colonial era. After Morel orchestrated a protest resolution by the British Parliament, the government, in response, asked its representative in the Congo to investigate his charges. A detachment of soldiers would march into an African village and seize the women as hostages. Unfortunately, for the Congo, it was one of the only places in the world to have a large supply of wild rubber, and the government and its affiliated trading companies quickly shifted their focus to extracting the suddenly lucrative commodity. Leopolds reign over the Congo Free State, however, has become infamous for its brutality. L'tat libre du Congo: Paradis perdu. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. The bloodiest single episode in Africa's colonization took place in the center of the continent in the large territory, known as the Congo. Europeans were interested in Africa for its abundance of natural resources (ivory, rubber, gold, etc.) 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. For some years ivory was a principal source of the great wealth that Leopold and his associates drew from the new colony. 06/29/2020. Instead, he found what he called "the Siberia of the African Continent." 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. Then, rather than perish in the impenetrable country of the cascades, Stanley took a wide detour overland to come within striking distance of the European trading station at Boma on the Congo estuary. Hochschild, Adam (October 6, 2005). Throughout the 1870s, Leopold cunningly established a reputation as a great philanthropist and humanitarian who wanted to spread Christianity and civilization to Africa. 2023 BBC. Many of the surrounding colonies also had rain forests rich in wild rubberPortuguese-controlled northern Angola, the Cameroons under the Germans, and the French Congo, part of French Equatorial Africa, across the Congo River. At the time, his father, Leopold I, was the King of Belgium. 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. He attributes colonial crimes to the king himself, rather than the Belgian people or state. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. One particularly notorious practice grew out of the suppression of those rebellions. More than one thousand mass meetings to protest slave labor in the Congo were held, mostly in Britain and the United States, but also in Europe and as far away as Australia and New Zealand. Why did King Leopold give up the Congo? Therefore, King Leopold should be condemned as a criminal for his Read More Thesis Critique Of King Leopold's Ghost Rather than control the Congo as a colony, as other European powers did throughout Africa, Leopold privately owned the region. By the end of the 19th century, the Basin had been carved up by European colonial powers, into the Congo Free State, the French Congo and the Portuguese Congo (modern Cabinda Province of Angola). Did this woman die because her genitals were cut? 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. Is climate change killing Australian wine? Leopold II, King of the Belgiansas his coun, c. 1875 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). 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. 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 quickly became a brutal, exploitative regime that relied on forced labour to cultivate and trade rubber, ivory and minerals. 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. Most of the monarchs in western Europe had been forced to largely yield political power to the electorate by the late 19th century, so Belgiums parliament and cabinet were the real locus of power, but Leopold used the prestige of the monarchy to lobby for pet projects. "It's a good thing that everyone is waking up, looking around and thinking 'is this right?'" [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. 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. London: George Allen & Unwin. 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. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. "[2]:145. . But numerous surviving records from the rubber-bearing land in the adjoining French Congo, which closely followed the model of the Leopoldian forced labor system, also suggest a population loss there of around 50 percent. 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. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Among those who weren't killed, many were punished by having a hand and/or foot amputated. Corrections? The forced-labour system for gathering rubber was swiftly copied by French, German, and Portuguese colonial officials with equally fatal results. For decades, colonial history has been barely taught in Belgium. 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 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. London: Heinemann. In two ways the Congo's rubber boom had lasting impact beyond the territory itself. London, Curzon Press, p.27. I Have a Dream Thus was the Belgian Congo created. Men who did not fulfill their quota were killed or mutilated. 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. On December 12, 1963, the flag of independent Kenya billowed over the capital city of Nairobi f, Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 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. Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. Franklin, John Hope (1985). He died the following year. Rather than control the Congo as a colony, as other European powers did throughout Africa, Leopold privately owned the region. 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. Within three years, his capacity for hard work, his skill at playing one social group off against another, his ruthless use of modern weaponry to kill opponents, and above all his relentless determination opened the route to the Upper Congo. says Ms Kayembe. Benedetto, Robert, ed. The army become known for its brutality, with the officers and soldiers being accused ofdestroying villages, taking hostages, raping, torturing, and extorting the people. 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. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. ." 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. Thompsell, Angela. State troops pursued them, trapping Mulume Niama and his soldiers in a large cave. E. V. Sjblom of Sweden was one of the first and most outspoken missionaries in the Congo. They refused to surrender, and when troops finally entered the cave three months later, they found 178 bodies. Omissions? "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. The British consul, an Irishman named Roger Casement, later famous as an Irish patriot, took the assignment seriously. Updates? Around the BBC. He was a veteran of the American Civil War, a historian, a Baptist minister, a lawyer, and the first black member of the Ohio state legislature. For instance, Leopold II was a first cousin of Queen Victoria of Britain. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Oasis Kodila Tedika et Francklin Kyayima Muteba, The sources of growth in DRC before independence. In 1870 more than 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara was under the rule of indigenous chiefs or kings. 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. And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. 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. Moreover, he had a well-known penchant for teenaged girls, and, when he was age 65, he began a liaison with a teenaged former prostitute who bore him two additional children. Last week thousands in the country of 11 million joined solidarity protests about the killing of US black man George Floyd in police custody. Writing in the same year, R. P. Van Wing, a Belgian Jesuit missionary, estimated that the population of the Bakongo people, one of the territory's largest ethnic groups, had been reduced by two-thirds. Former President of Kenya Alice Harris, a British Baptist, took photographs of the atrocities she witnessed. The relentless pursuit of profits in the Congo by King Leopold II resulted in one of the worst levels of moral decadence for mankind. However, disease of any kind always takes a far greater toll on a traumatized, half-starving population, with many people already in flight as refugees. That would be absurd."[9]. 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. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. In 2019, the cities of Kortrijk and Dendermonde renamed their Leopold II streets, with Kortrijk council describing the king as a "mass murderer". Encyclopedia.com. Because his only son had predeceased him, Leopolds nephew Albert I succeeded to the throne. who owned land where rubber grew wild. Leopold II established a colony in the Congo to gain natural resources for Belgium and wealth for himself. National Geographic Society is a 501 (c)(3) organization. LEOPOLD II (18351909; ruled 18651909), king of Belgium and personal sovereign of the Congo Free State. Then, as they would be into the 21st century, most of the royal families of Europe were related. A man of great charm, intelligence, ruthlessness, and greed, he was openly frustrated with inheriting the throne of such a small country, and in doing so at a time in history when European kings were rapidly losing power to elected parliaments. Although the domestic affairs of his reign were dominated by a growing conflict between the Liberal and Catholic parties over suffrage and education issues, Leopold concentrated on developing the countrys defenses. 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. Now, Stanley discovered, Tippu Tip's men had reached still further west in search of fresh populations to enslave. I never imagined this happening in my lifetime," Ms Kayembe adds. All failed. In later years he sometimes referred to himself as the Congo's proprietor. Forty years later virtually all of it had been transformed into European colonies, protectorates, or territories ruled by white settlers. Demonstrations and protests demanded that Leopold end human rights abuses in the Congo Free State. official, Major Charles C. Liebrechts, made the same estimate in 1920. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. GENEALOGY OF THE TERM DECOLONIZATION In 1870 roughly 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara Desert was governed by indigenous kings, chiefs, and other rulers. 27 Apr. Leopold continued his action, even after the Belgium Parliament refused to annex the Congo. As a result of King Leopold actions, thousands of African tribes populations decreased significantly. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. 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. 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. Vocabulary On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. 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. The people of the Congo did not suffer these injustices without fighting back. [11]:66. 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. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. The results of this rule were very uneven. Around 20,000 children born to Belgian settlers and local women were forcibly taken to Belgium to be fostered. Obtaining more precise statistics is difficult, for in 1908 King Leopold ordered the archives of his Congo state burned. In Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, Leopold II's statues were moved to the National Museum. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. The only way to do that was through the use of terror. Many people wonder why these soldiers were willing to do this to their own people, but there was no sense of being Congolese. Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number. At a Glance Bennett, Norman Robert. In articles in church magazines and in speeches throughout the United States and Europe on visits home, they described what they saw: Africans whipped to death, rivers full of corpses, and piles of severed handsa detail that quickly seared itself on the world's imagination. Warning: This piece contains graphic pictures. 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). He wrote articles, appeared at public meetings, lobbied the rich and powerful tirelessly; and always his theme was the boundless opportunity for commercial exploitation of the lands he had discovered or, in his own words, to "pour the civilisation of Europe into the barbarism of Africa". 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.
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