why did king leopold want the congo

And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. By 1908, Leopold II's rule was deemed so cruel that European leaders, themselves violently exploiting Africa, condemned it and the Belgian parliament forced him to relinquish control of his fiefdom. 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). Thompsell, Angela. 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. Apparently finding nothing reprehensible about Leopold's ambitions, Stanley set about his task with a will. t. e. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. 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. As he headed back to England, Stanley was assiduously courted by King Leopold II of Belgium. 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. When Stanley returned to Europe in 1878, he had not only found Dr. Livingstone (an event remembered to this day), resolved the last great mystery of African exploration, and ruined his health: he had also opened the heart of tropical Africa up to the outside world. To secure their Atrocities in the Congo Free State - Wikipedia Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. 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. 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. Statues have been daubed with red paint in Ghent and Ostend and pulled down in Brussels. Leopolds reign over the Congo Free State, however, has become infamous for its brutality. Since the 15th century, European explorers had sailed into the broad Congo estuary, planning to fight their way up the falls and rapids that begin only 100 miles (160km) inland, and then travel up the river to its unknown source. King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild Plot Summary | LitCharts Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Now, Stanley discovered, Tippu Tip's men had reached still further west in search of fresh populations to enslave. (Colonizing other peoples, regardless of the justification, is wrong. Hochschild, Adam (1998). Belgium's Heart of Darkness | History Today A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. 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. 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. Leopold II | Biography, Facts, & Legacy | Britannica Many people wonder why these soldiers were willing to do this to their own people, but there was no sense of being Congolese. He was the architect of one of history's greatest, if lesser known, crimes against humanity. The army become known for its brutality, with the officers and soldiers being accused ofdestroying villages, taking hostages, raping, torturing, and extorting the people. 24 February 2004. Ed. They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber. Leopold noted, "Our frontiers can never be extended into Europe." who owned land where rubber grew wild. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. King Leopold II Biography: The Monster of the Congo In 1879 Stanley returned to the Congo as Leopold's agent. Early and Personal Life. Ascherson, Neal (1963). 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. GENEALOGY OF THE TERM DECOLONIZATION Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. Soon after Stanley returned from the Congo, Leopold tried to recruit him. Updates? Paris: Editions L'Harmattan. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. The relentless pursuit of profits in the Congo by King Leopold II resulted in one of the worst levels of moral decadence for mankind. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. 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. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. 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. Thompsell, Angela. The effects were devastating. In Britain he founded the Congo Reform Association, and affiliated groups sprang up in the United States and other countries. 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. Interestingly, a longtime high colonial The propensity for violence is . An even greater toll was taken by disease: various lung and intestinal diseases, tuberculosis, smallpox, and, above all, sleeping sickness. Dark Safari: The Life behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley. 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 . [5] None of these schemes came anywhere near fruition: the government of Belgium resolutely resisted all Leopold's suggestions, seeing the acquisition of a colony as a good way to spend large amounts of money for little or no return. Throughout the 1870s, Leopold cunningly established a reputation as a great philanthropist and humanitarian who wanted to spread Christianity and civilization to Africa. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. 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. Biography of Ernesto Che Guevara, Revolutionary Leader, Top Ten Villains of Latin American History, War of the First Coalition in 1790s France, 10 Facts About the Independence of Texas From Mexico, Events Leading to the Scramble for Africa, A Photo Gallery of the Mexican Revolution, Biography of Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolutionary, Ph.D., History, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, M.A., History, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, B.A./B.S, History and Zoology, University of Florida. 8 Disturbing Facts About King Leopold II, the Butcher of Congo 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. "Almost all of them", he wrote, "clamoured for expenses of all kinds, which included wine, tobacco, cigars, clothes, shoes, board and lodging, and certain nameless extravagances"[10]:71 (by which he meant attractive slaves to warm their beds). p.20. He had long wanted a colonial empire, and in Stanley he saw someone who could secure it for him. 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". Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. 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. Many more suffered from disease and torture. States and then all the major nations of Europe to recognize his claim. La Force publique de sa naissance 1914: Participation des militaires l'histoire des premires annes du Congo. "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. The king then embarked on an ultimately successful effort to make a vast fortune from his new possession. 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. They refused to surrender, and when troops finally entered the cave three months later, they found 178 bodies. Marchal, Jules (1996). 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. Morel, E. D. (1919). To curry diplomatic favor, he allowed several hundred Protestant missionaries into the Congo. He called it Congo Free State. 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. Obtaining more precise statistics is difficult, for in 1908 King Leopold ordered the archives of his Congo state burned. The king also faced enemies of another sort. Vocabulary On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Omissions? Colonization of the Congo Basin - Wikipedia This was to be his most enduring legacy. 6.2 Reading Check.docx - Name Ahmed Kamel Date 2/17/22 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. 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. In two ways the Congo's rubber boom had lasting impact beyond the territory itself. 2 volumes. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. The couple's first son, Louis Philippe, died in infancy prior to Leopold II's birth. 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. Cambridge University Press. 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. 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. Montgomery Bus Boycott 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. Warning: This piece contains graphic pictures. As a result of King Leopold actions, thousands of African tribes populations decreased significantly. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. "It's a good thing that everyone is waking up, looking around and thinking 'is this right?'" Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. official, Major Charles C. Liebrechts, made the same estimate in 1920. 2023 . Leopold continued his action, even after the Belgium Parliament refused to annex the Congo. OF DECOLONIZATION If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. First, the system of exploitation established there became a model for colonial rule in other parts of central Africa. Europe was less than keen on the idea: the great European scramble for Africa had not yet begun. Leopold II established a colony in the Congo to gain natural resources for Belgium and wealth for himself. 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. 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. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Manchester, U.K.: National Labour Press. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. LEOPOLD II (18351909; ruled 18651909), king of Belgium and personal sovereign of the Congo Free State. 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. 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. EUROPEAN EFFORTS TO REINVENT OVERSEA, Kenyatta, Jomo 1891(? As the price of rubber soared, the quotas increased, and as vines near a village were drained dry, men desperate to free their wives and daughters would have to walk days or weeks to find new vines to tap. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Angela Thompsell, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of British and African History at SUNY Brockport. Hochschild, Adam (October 6, 2005). 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. 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. George Washington Williams: A Biography. He was interested in the Congo river basin because there were many natural resources such as rubber, minerals, ivory, diamonds, and gold. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. [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. 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. But rumours of abuse began to circulate and missionaries and British journalist Edmund Dene Morel exposed the regime. 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. 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. Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition. It was too lucrative, for the price of rubber was still high. 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. 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. 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. 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. Instead, he found what he called "the Siberia of the African Continent." Women and children were often taken hostage until men fulfilled a quota; during which time the women were raped repeatedly. Leopold, however, made the Belgian government pay him for his prized possession. By the end of his life, Leopold was unpopular with his people, but, ironically, that had much less to do with his actions in Africa than with his conduct of his personal life. King Leopold II and the Congo The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human 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. 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". Why did King Leopold II own the Belgian Congo colony Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. Belgian King Establishes Congo Free State - National Geographic Society It is false to assume that one group of people is more civilized than another. 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. Renting a missionary steamboat, he spent more than three months traveling in the interior. 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. (1952). But new rubber trees often require fifteen years of growth before they can be tapped. June 11th, 2020. Flament, F., et al. 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. Why did King Leopold give up the Congo? 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 1908, international pressure forced the king to turn the Congo Free State over to the country of Belgium. This makeover of Leopold's image produced an amnesia that persisted for decades. New York: Random House. 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. E. V. Sjblom of Sweden was one of the first and most outspoken missionaries in the Congo. The Belgian cabinet of the day was not interested in colonies. When Leopold II died in 1909, he was buried to the sound of Belgians booing. POST-1945 HISTORICAL CONTEXTS National Geographic Headquarters 1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement. Published in many American and European newspapers, it was the first comprehensive, detailed indictment of the regime and its slave labor system. Beyond removal of statues, far more work is required to dismantle racism, protesters and black communities argue. Thompsell, Angela. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. (1996). . 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. "[2]:145. 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. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. 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. 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. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. 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. 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. The people being colonized are robbed of their land, resources, and freedom.) Retrieved September 22, 2017. Former President of Kenya 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. Leopold bought half of the Congo as his own private possession after convincing the European community that his actions would be humanitarian and philanthropic. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. Borgloon, Belgium: Editions Paula Bellings. They were the very first royal family of Belgium, because the country was just 5 years old. In the early 1890s, Leopold's private African army, the Force Publique (Public Force), drove the powerful Muslim slave traders out of the Congo. 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". 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). 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. Demonstrations and protests demanded that Leopold end human rights abuses in the Congo Free State. Thus was the Belgian Congo created. Starting in the early 1920s, however, the system became considerably less draconian, mainly because colonial officials realized that otherwise they would soon have no labor force left. Did this woman die because her genitals were cut? "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). Millions of Congolese then found themselves suffering near-famine, which made them vulnerable to diseases they otherwise might have survived. Instead, the ships carried soldiers, and large quantities of firearms and ammunition. Red Rubber: The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Which Flourished on the Congo for Twenty Years, 18901910. In estimating situations without the benefit of complete census data, demographers are more confident speaking of percentages than absolute numbers. The treaties, some of which appear to have been subsequently doctored to Leopolds liking, were then put to use by the Belgian monarch. For the earlier Bantu colonization, see. Shaloff, Stanley (1970). 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. In Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, Leopold II's statues were moved to the National Museum.

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