For decades, colonial history has been barely taught in Belgium. An even greater toll was taken by disease: various lung and intestinal diseases, tuberculosis, smallpox, and, above all, sleeping sickness. For some years ivory was a principal source of the great wealth that Leopold and his associates drew from the new colony. King Leopold II and the Congo | Encyclopedia.com In Peter Forbath's words, Leopold was: A tall, imposing man enjoying a reputation for hedonistic sensuality, cunning intelligence (his father once described him as subtle and sly as a fox), overweening ambition, and personal ruthlessness. Ewans, Martin (2002). The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. "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". Borgloon, Belgium: Editions Paula Bellings. 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. Apparently finding nothing reprehensible about Leopold's ambitions, Stanley set about his task with a will. 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. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. But rumours of abuse began to circulate and missionaries and British journalist Edmund Dene Morel exposed the regime. They were a newly independent country . 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. 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. It was down to rubber. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Stanley was applauded, admired, decoratedand ignored. 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. "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. On Monday the University of Mons removed a bust of the late king, following the circulation of a student-led petition saying it represented the "rape, mutilation and genocide of millions of Congolese". 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. Bennett, Norman Robert. 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. Why did Leopold want the Congo? Army officers and colonial officials earned bonuses based on the amount of rubber collected in areas under their control. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. To secure their While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. States and then all the major nations of Europe to recognize his claim. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement. 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. All failed. Some of these soldiers were recruits, while others were enslaved people or orphans brought up to serve the colonial army. Leopold then used the treaties to convince other Western colonial powers that he had legal right to the Congo River basin, an area more than fifty times the size of Belgium. Under his reign, the Congolese people were terrorized with forced labor and harsh treatment. Last week thousands in the country of 11 million joined solidarity protests about the killing of US black man George Floyd in police custody. The invention of the inflatable bicycle tire, followed soon by that of the automobile tire, triggered an enormous boom in rubber. 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 New York Review of Books. Leopold II established a colony in the Congo to gain natural resources for Belgium and wealth for himself. It is at this point that Leopold II of Belgium took a part. With most able-bodied adults prisoners or forced laborers for several weeks out of each month, villages had few people who could plant and harvest food, or go hunting or fishing, and famine soon spread. Several rebellions were mercilessly put down under Leopold's direction. Video, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, US black man George Floyd in police custody, statues of racist historical figures vandalised or removed, "rape, mutilation and genocide of millions of Congolese". 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. His most important legacy, however, remains the human catastrophe that the rubber forced-labour system brought to the Congoa heritage that continued to echo in that region more than a century after Leopolds death. 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. For instance, Leopold II was a first cousin of Queen Victoria of Britain. 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. 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 results of this rule were very uneven. From 1874 through 1877 the British explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley (18411904) crossed Africa from east to west. King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence. Sadly, Williams, only forty-one years old, died of tuberculosis on his way home from Africa, but not before writing several additional denunciations of what he had seen in the Congo. Former President of Kenya 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. For thousands of years, that territory had been conquered by nearby Netherlands, France, Germany, and Luxembourg. King Leopold II Biography: The Monster of the Congo Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. . Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. EUROPEAN EFFORTS TO REINVENT OVERSEA, Kenyatta, Jomo 1891(? 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. View 6.2_Reading_Check.docx from HISTORY 2109320 at Coral Reef Senior High School. Other parts of the Congo economy, from road building to chopping wood for steamboat boilers, operated by forced labour as well. L'tat libre du Congo: Paradis perdu. 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. 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. A Lasting Legacy Of The Builder King In Brussels - Culture Trip A detachment of soldiers would march into an African village and seize the women as hostages. Amidst all of this, some of the best of people was also seen, in the bravery and resilience of ordinary Congolese men and women who resisted in small and large ways, and the passionate efforts of several American and European missionaries and activists to bring about reform. Furthermore, as in any society where men and women are separated, traumatized, or in flight as refugees, the birth rate dropped precipitously. 2 volumes. In the early 1890s, however, a larger source of wealth suddenly loomed. June 11th, 2020. 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. Thus was the Belgian Congo created. In order to enforce the near impossible rubber quotas imposed on villages, agents and officials called on the Free States army, the Force Publique. . 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. Leopold continued his action, even after the Belgium Parliament refused to annex the Congo. 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. 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. [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. says Ms Kayembe. In estimating situations without the benefit of complete census data, demographers are more confident speaking of percentages than absolute numbers. (2022, June 2). For much of the journey he floated down the river, mapping its course for the first time and noting the many tributaries that, it turned out, comprised a network of navigable waterways more than 7,000 miles long. I Have a Dream Thompsell, Angela. Manchester, U.K.: National Labour Press. 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). E. D. Morel contre Lopold II: L'histoire du Congo 19001910. Instead, the ships carried soldiers, and large quantities of firearms and ammunition. 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. 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. The king then embarked on an ultimately successful effort to make a vast fortune from his new possession.

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