why did king leopold want the congo

As rubber prices soared, so did the quotas. In Britain he founded the Congo Reform Association, and affiliated groups sprang up in the United States and other countries. The kings stated goal was to bring civilization to the people of the Congo, an enormous region in Central Africa. Thompsell, Angela. Equipped with repeating rifles, cannons, and machine guns and fighting against Africans with only spears or antiquated muskets, King Leopold's 19,000-man army (black conscripts under white officers) gradually took control of the vast territory. Keen on establishing Belgium as an imperial power, he led the first European efforts to develop the Congo River basin, making possible the formation in 1885 of the Congo Free State, annexed in 1908 as the Belgian Congo and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leopold spoke of bringing civilization to the Africans and sent a small but heavily armed Belgian force into the Congo. This army was composed of White officers and African soldiers. Thus was the Belgian Congo created. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They refused to surrender, and when troops finally entered the cave three months later, they found 178 bodies. Published in many American and European newspapers, it was the first comprehensive, detailed indictment of the regime and its slave labor system. 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. Renting a missionary steamboat, he spent more than three months traveling in the interior. These were an incentive for ruthless, devastating plunder. 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. GENEALOGY OF THE TERM DECOLONIZATION Presbyterian Reformers in Central Africa: A Documentary Account of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and the Human Rights Struggle in the Congo, 18901918. Flament, F., et al. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. 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. 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. The invention of the inflatable bicycle tire, followed soon by that of the automobile tire, triggered an enormous boom in rubber. 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. 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. All failed. "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". In 1924 the first territory-wide census, when adjusted for undercounting, placed the number of colony inhabitants at some ten million. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Soon after Stanley returned from the Congo, Leopold tried to recruit him. ." 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. The royal palace is yet to give its own response. For all his social shortcomings in European society, he was undoubtedly the right man for the job. 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. OF DECOLONIZATION Dark Safari: The Life behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley. 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. Rather than control the Congo as a colony, as other European powers did throughout Africa, Leopold privately owned the region. 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. Because of his actions King Leopold should be condemned as a criminal for his exploration and abuse to the Congo land and people. 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. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) An even greater toll was taken by disease: various lung and intestinal diseases, tuberculosis, smallpox, and, above all, sleeping sickness. 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. And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. Under his reign, the Congolese people were terrorized with forced labor and harsh treatment. The people of the Congo were forced to labor for valued resources, including rubber and ivory, to personally enrich Leopold. It had only been through Tippu Tip's help that Stanley had found Livingstone (who himself had survived years on the Lualaba by virtue of Tippu Tip's friendship). She does not believe it will not be quick or easy. ADAM HOCHSCHILD. 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. Stanley, still hopeful for British backing, brushed him off. 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. 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. State troops pursued them, trapping Mulume Niama and his soldiers in a large cave. Former President of Kenya The only way to do that was through the use of terror. The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State: A Story of Work and Exploration. 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. The colony in the Congo - the Congo Free State - was personal property for the Belgian king and there was little oversight over what happened there. Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo. Du sang sur les lianes. 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. Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence. 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. In actuality, Leopold wanted to get his hands on Congo's natural resources. National Geographic Society is a 501 (c)(3) organization. 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. Leopold's reign over the Congo Free State, however, has become infamous for its brutality. King Leopold II was the ruler of the Congo Free State, and the King of Belgium. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. 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 . 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. Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition. Morel, E. D. (1904). For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. 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. The current protests are not the first time Belgium's ugly history in Congo has been contested in the streets. 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. Morel, E. D. (1919). Montgomery Bus Boycott 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. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. From 1874 through 1877 the British explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley (18411904) crossed Africa from east to west. This article is about the European colonization of the Congo region. King Leopold II committed heinous . 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". The king then embarked on an ultimately successful effort to make a vast fortune from his new possession. He traveled throughout Britain speaking to large audiences and was adept at recruiting bishops, well-known writers, and other luminaries to join him on the lecture platform. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps, Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. 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. Leopold II (1835-1909) wanted his country to join the league of European empires, but the Belgian state refused to finance its part in western Europe's expensive scramble for Africa.

Food Lion Success Factors Login, Dave Joerger New Wife, William Combes Interview, Charcuterie Board Class Columbus, Ohio, Man Killed In Sanford Nc, Articles W