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. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. While Leopold II did much to establish Belgium as an economically and militarily stable power in Europe, he is chiefly remembered for the nightmarish practices that were carried out in his name. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) At a Glance Beyond removal of statues, far more work is required to dismantle racism, protesters and black communities argue. It is clearly understood that in this project there is no question of granting the slightest political power to the negros. It is at this point that Leopold II of Belgium took a part. The iconic images to emerge from this terror, though, were the baskets full of smoked hands and the Congolese children who survived having a hand cut off. Ascherson, Neal (1963). For centuries African slave dealers had raided parts of this area, selling their captives to American and European captains who sailed Africa's west coast, and to traders who took slaves to the Arab world from the continent's east coast. 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. In Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, Leopold II's statues were moved to the National Museum. The results of this rule were very uneven. (Colonizing other peoples, regardless of the justification, is wrong. 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. Last week a statue of Leopold II in the city of Antwerp was set on fire, before authorities took it down. Instead, he found what he called "the Siberia of the African Continent." "[2]:145. 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. The newly named Belgian Congo remained a colony until the Democratic Republic of Congo gained its independence in 1960. Women and children were often taken hostage until men fulfilled a quota; during which time the women were raped repeatedly. They also sometimes eradicatedwhole villages that failed to meet the quotas as a warning to others. He built the Africa Museum in the grounds of his palace at Tervuren, with a "human zoo" in the grounds featuring 267 Congolese people as exhibits. Leopold II's rule in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo was so bloody it was eventually condemned by other European colonialists in 1908 - but it has taken far longer to come under scrutiny at home. 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. 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. The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State: A Story of Work and Exploration. But for Leopold this posed no problem; he would acquire his own. Leopold II established a colony in the Congo to gain natural resources for Belgium and wealth for himself. 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. 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. A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. Around 20,000 children born to Belgian settlers and local women were forcibly taken to Belgium to be fostered. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. 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. 657, 660, 662). The royal coffers would become a central focus of Leopolds life, and he once grumbled to German Emperor William II while watching a parade in Berlin, There is really nothing left for us kings except money! Leopold soon decided that the best way to acquire wealth would be by establishing an African colony, at a time when the great European Scramble for Africa was under way. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 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 built outposts and a road around the river's rapids and, using small steamboats, he traveled up and down the great river and its tributaries. Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? GENEALOGY OF THE TERM DECOLONIZATION Pakenham, Thomas (1991). The relentless pursuit of profits in the Congo by King Leopold II resulted in one of the worst levels of moral decadence for mankind. He became duke of Brabant in 1846 and served in the Belgian army. 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. There are at least 13 statues to Leopold II in Belgium, according to one crowd-sourced map, and numerous parks, squares and street names. The king's colonial officials quickly set up a brutal but effective system for harvesting wild rubber. Leopold bought half of the Congo as his own private possession after convincing the European community that his actions would be humanitarian and philanthropic. Leopold II ruled Belgium from 1865-1909 - activists want this statue in Brussels removed due to his brutal regime in Congo Free State, Before a renovation in 2018, Belgium's Africa Museum was known as the world's "last colonial museum", Thousands marched in Black Lives Matter protests in Belgium, This TV image shows a statue of Leopold defaced and damaged by fire being removed in Antwerp, Colonial officials amputated and mutilated Congolese people, including children, as punishment, A now infamous photo capturing atrocities committed in Congo Free State, Congolese people were forced to be human exhibits in a "zoo" in Belgium in 1897, Missionaries documented amputations while investigating abuses committed in Congo Free State, Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba is commemorated in a Brussels square, This bust of Leopold II was removed on Friday in Auderghem, near Brussels, Colony built on forced labour and brutality, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. For thousands of years, that territory had been conquered by nearby Netherlands, France, Germany, and Luxembourg. 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. 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. 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. 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. The Herero were traditional occupants of the temperate high plains of central Namibia. After all, destroying the iconography of Adolf Hitler did not mean the history of Nazi Germany was forgotten, she points out. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. In 1924 the first territory-wide census, when adjusted for undercounting, placed the number of colony inhabitants at some ten million. For all his social shortcomings in European society, he was undoubtedly the right man for the job. Why did Leopold want the Congo? Vocabulary On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Belgium took over the colony in 1908 and it was not until 1960 that the Republic of the Congo was established, after a fight for independence. 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. LEOPOLD II (18351909; ruled 18651909), king of Belgium and personal sovereign of the Congo Free State. However, the date of retrieval is often important. If you have questions about licensing content on this page, please contact ngimagecollection@natgeo.com for more information and to obtain a license. But other scholars use even higher numbers. Dec 14, 2022. As rubber prices soared, so did the quotas. Leopold's reign over the Congo Free State, however, has become infamous for its brutality. [3], As a constitutional monarch, Leopold was charged with the usual constitutional duties of opening parliaments, greeting diplomats, and attending state funerals. 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. 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. "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 Belgian cabinet of the day was not interested in colonies. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 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. Many people wonder why these soldiers were willing to do this to their own people, but there was no sense of being Congolese. (1996). 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. Thompsell, Angela. Many more suffered from disease and torture. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. The people being colonized are robbed of their land, resources, and freedom.) London: George Allen & Unwin. National Geographic Society is a 501 (c)(3) organization. He called it tat Indpendant du Congo, the Congo Free State. The first nationwide Congolese political party, the Congo National Movement, was launched in 1958 by Patrice Lumumba and other Congolese leaders. It was the world's only major colony owned by one man. 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. Several rebellions were mercilessly put down under Leopold's direction. L'tat libre du Congo: Paradis perdu. 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. In estimating situations without the benefit of complete census data, demographers are more confident speaking of percentages than absolute numbers. Rather than control the Congo as a colony, as other European powers did throughout Africa, Leopold privately owned the region. One particularly notorious practice grew out of the suppression of those rebellions. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. 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. 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). These were an incentive for ruthless, devastating plunder. p.20. 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. 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. 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. First, the system of exploitation established there became a model for colonial rule in other parts of central Africa. 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. National Geographic Headquarters 1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036. Under his reign, the Congolese people were terrorized with forced labor and harsh treatment. who owned land where rubber grew wild. Leopold II, King of the Belgiansas his coun, c. 1875 Between the time that Leopold started to assume control of the Congo (around 1880) and when the forced labor system became less severe (after 1920), what happened could not, by strict definition, be called genocide, for there was no deliberate attempt to wipe out all members of one particular ethnic group. 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). 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. 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. 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 king's stated goal was to bring civilization to the people of the Congo, an enormous region in Central Africa. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 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. Army officers often demanded of their men a severed hand from each rebel killed in battle. However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. L'histoire du Congo 18761900. In 2010, former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel and the father of future prime minister Charles Michel, called Leopold "a hero with ambitions for a small country like Belgium". 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. They were the very first royal family of Belgium, because the country was just 5 years old. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Harper & Row. 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. 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. Leopold continued his action, even after the Belgium Parliament refused to annex the Congo. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. 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. King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State as his personal possession. The people of the Congo were forced to labor for valued resources, including rubber and ivory, to personally enrich Leopold. Initially, government and commercial agents focused on acquiring ivory, but inventions, like the car, dramatically increased the demand for rubber. [8], It was only at this point that Stanley was informed of the magnitude of Leopold's ambition: Stanley was not merely to construct a series of trading stations, he was to secretly carve out an entire nation. The army become known for its brutality, with the officers and soldiers being accused ofdestroying villages, taking hostages, raping, torturing, and extorting the people. 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. Leopold was an intelligent and ruthless man who wasn't afraid to lie or kill in order to expand Belgium's power. 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. He promised a humanitarian and philanthropic mission that would improve the lives of Africans. In actuality, Leopold wanted to get his hands on Congo's natural resources. Presbyterian Reformers in Central Africa: A Documentary Account of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and the Human Rights Struggle in the Congo, 18901918. 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. Soon after Stanley returned from the Congo, Leopold tried to recruit him. Apparently finding nothing reprehensible about Leopold's ambitions, Stanley set about his task with a will. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press. wives' release, the men would have to disperse into the rain forest to collect the sap of wild rubber vines. 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. 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. "King Leopold II and the Congo European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State and Its Aftermath. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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. BBC World Service: 50 Things That Made the Modern . The history of Colonialism as a policy or practice go, THE CAUSE OF DECOLONIZATION 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. 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. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style.
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