"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. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. He had long wanted a colonial empire, and in Stanley he saw someone who could secure it for him. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. 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. He wrongly justified his actions by saying that the people of the Congo were inferior, and deserved the treatment they received. Male rubber gatherers often died from exhaustion. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement. Furthermore, as in any society where men and women are separated, traumatized, or in flight as refugees, the birth rate dropped precipitously. But rumours of abuse began to circulate and missionaries and British journalist Edmund Dene Morel exposed the regime. 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. 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. Charles Michel, prime minister at the time, declined. Leopold II was the second son of Leopold I, first king of the Belgians, and his second wife, Marie-Louise of Orlans. 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. Updates? 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. . It is false to assume that one group of people is more civilized than another. Hochschild, Adam (1998). A petition calling on the city for its removal has reached 74,000 signatures. Millions of Congolese then found themselves suffering near-famine, which made them vulnerable to diseases they otherwise might have survived. 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. Europe was less than keen on the idea: the great European scramble for Africa had not yet begun. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Oasis Kodila Tedika et Francklin Kyayima Muteba, The sources of growth in DRC before independence. Forty years later virtually all of it had been transformed into European colonies, protectorates, or territories ruled by white settlers. But in the chaos of the early 20th Century when World War One threatened to destroy Belgium, Leopold II's nephew King Albert I erected statues to remember the successes of years gone by. 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. 24 February 2004. 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. He had no power to decide policy. When you reach out to him or her, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. "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). official, Major Charles C. Liebrechts, made the same estimate in 1920. Army officers and colonial officials earned bonuses based on the amount of rubber collected in areas under their control. Some of these soldiers were recruits, while others were enslaved people or orphans brought up to serve the colonial army. 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". King Leopold II committed heinous . They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. . ThoughtCo. Bennett, Norman Robert. says Ms Kayembe. 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. "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). Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. Soon after Stanley returned from the Congo, Leopold tried to recruit him. 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. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. 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. From the start the regime was founded on forced labor. Early and Personal Life. 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. Because of his actions King Leopold should be condemned as a criminal for his exploration and abuse to the Congo land and people. But taking the monument away does not solve the problem of racism, she believes, while creating one museum devoted to the statues would not be useful either. I Have a Dream 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. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets. 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. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. By that point he had made a huge profit from the territory, conservatively estimated as the equivalent of more than $1.1 billion in early twenty-first century terms. Published in many American and European newspapers, it was the first comprehensive, detailed indictment of the regime and its slave labor system. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) (1952). 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. The museum is largely protected by heritage law but, in the streets outside, monuments to a monarch who seized a huge swathe of Central Africa in 1885 have no such security. But why was Leopold's Congo so horrific? "King Leopold II and the Congo Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Leopold II implemented a forced-labour system in the Congo that was quickly copied by other European colonial powers. E. D. Morel contre Lopold II: L'histoire du Congo 19001910. "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. 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. London, Curzon Press, p.27. 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. Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. She or he will best know the preferred format. Beyond removal of statues, far more work is required to dismantle racism, protesters and black communities argue. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. New and revised edition. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. 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. 1996 - 2023 National Geographic Society. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. The treaties, some of which appear to have been subsequently doctored to Leopolds liking, were then put to use by the Belgian monarch. A worldwide rubber boom was under way, kicked off by the invention of the inflatable bicycle tire and spurred on by the rise of the automobile and the use of rubber in industrial belts and gaskets, as well as in coating for telephone and telegraph wires. 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". Interestingly, a longtime high colonial 2 volumes. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan. https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731 (accessed May 1, 2023). Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? The events in King Leopold's Congo also rippled beyond its borders in a more positive way: They gave birth to the twentieth century's first great international human rights movement (see sidebar). Leopold II, Williams declared, was guilty of "crimes against humanity." It was the worlds only private colony, and Leopold referred to himself as its proprietor.. GENEALOGY OF THE TERM DECOLONIZATION The king then embarked on an ultimately successful effort to make a vast fortune from his new possession. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press. Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. If the estimates from varied sources of a 50 percent toll in King Leopold's Congo are correct, how many people does this mean? And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. 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. He made further progress toward realizing his objective at a diplomatic conference in Berlin in 1884 and 1885 that the major European powers attended. In 2019, the cities of Kortrijk and Dendermonde renamed their Leopold II streets, with Kortrijk council describing the king as a "mass murderer". Votin, Herero 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. Why did Leopold want the Congo? It is at this point that Leopold II of Belgium took a part. [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. [1]:333, "There are 40,000,000 naked people" on the other side of the rapids, Stanley wrote, "and the cotton-spinners of Manchester are waiting to clothe them Birmingham's factories are glowing with the red metal that shall presently be made into ironwork in every fashion and shape for them and the ministers of Christ are zealous to bring them, the poor benighted heathen, into the Christian fold. From 1874 through 1877 the British explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley (18411904) crossed Africa from east to west. It is clearly understood that in this project there is no question of granting the slightest political power to the negros. Vangroenweghe, Daniel (1986). 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. "I will dance if it comes down. An even greater toll was taken by disease: various lung and intestinal diseases, tuberculosis, smallpox, and, above all, sleeping sickness. The army become known for its brutality, with the officers and soldiers being accused ofdestroying villages, taking hostages, raping, torturing, and extorting the people. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. He established his control over the colony through the use of brute force in an attempt to wean the Congolese into submission. 2 volumes. Morel, E. D. (1919). Why did King Leopold II own the Belgian Congo colony 06/29/2020. Rather than control the Congo as a colony, as other European powers did throughout Africa, Leopold privately owned the region. You cannot download interactives. Dark Safari: The Life behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley. 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. (April 27, 2023). BBC World Service: 50 Things That Made the Modern . 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. 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. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. 2, 2022, thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. The king also faced enemies of another sort. 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. He was a figure who, one might have had every reason to expect, would devote himself to maintaining his country's strict neutrality, avoiding giving offence to any of his powerful neighbours, and indulging his keenly developed tastes for the pleasures of the flesh, rather than one who would make a profound impact on history. The effects were devastating. 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. A renewed global focus on racism is highlighting a violent colonial history that generated riches for Belgians but death and misery for Congolese. 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. Alice Harris, a British Baptist, took photographs of the atrocities she witnessed. In the newly christened Belgian Congo, however, the forced labor system did not immediately end. Morel, E. D. (1904). The propensity for violence is . However, he added, "since history teaches that colonies are useful, that they play a great part in that which makes up the power and prosperity of states, let us strive to get one in our turn."[4]. Women and children were often taken hostage until men fulfilled a quota; during which time the women were raped repeatedly. Stanley, still hopeful for British backing, brushed him off. In actuality, Leopold wanted to get his hands on Congo's natural resources. Leopold II, King of the Belgiansas his coun, c. 1875 Cambridge University Press. Tens of thousands of others were shot down in failed rebellions against the regime. [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. But for Leopold this posed no problem; he would acquire his own. 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. 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. She does not believe it will not be quick or easy. 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. ThoughtCo, Jun. At the time, his father, Leopold I, was the King of Belgium. The people of the Congo did not suffer these injustices without fighting back. POST-1945 HISTORICAL CONTEXTS Civil rights leader . Read about our approach to external linking. Standing on the dock, Morel realized that he had uncovered irrefutable proof that a forced labor system was in operation 4,000 miles away. "Everyone is waking up from a sleep, it's a reckoning with the past," explains Debora Kayembe, a Congolese human rights lawyer who has lived in Belgium. In 1924 the first territory-wide census, when adjusted for undercounting, placed the number of colony inhabitants at some ten million. "Leopold II certainly does not deserve a statue in the public domain," agrees Bambi Ceuppens, scientific commissioner at the Africa Museum. The Belgian cabinet of the day was not interested in colonies. In return European leaders, gathered at the Berlin Conference, granted him 2m sq km (770,000 sq miles) to forge a personal colony where he was free to do as he liked. 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. Nzansu's men fought on sporadically for five years more, and no record of his fate exists. State troops pursued them, trapping Mulume Niama and his soldiers in a large cave. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps, Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Some writers, almost entirely in Belgium, claim that such estimates are exaggerated. 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. For decades, colonial history has been barely taught in Belgium. The forced-labour system for gathering rubber was swiftly copied by French, German, and Portuguese colonial officials with equally fatal results. Belgium's education minister announced this week that secondary schools would teach colonial history from next year. That would be absurd."[9]. 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). 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. 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. 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. In 1870 roughly 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara Desert was governed by indigenous kings, chiefs, and other rulers. Thompsell, Angela. They were the very first royal family of Belgium, because the country was just 5 years old. Standing close by, one visitor said, "I didn't know anything about Leopold II until I heard about the statues defaced down town". 27 Apr. Brussels: Didier Hatier. 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. In the early 1890s, Leopold's private African army, the Force Publique (Public Force), drove the powerful Muslim slave traders out of the Congo. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. [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. . There seemed no economic sense to investing energy in Africa when the returns from other colonies were likely to be both richer and more immediate. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. 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. 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. 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. Army officers often demanded of their men a severed hand from each rebel killed in battle. When the ships turned around and steamed back to Africa, however, they carried no merchandise in exchange. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press. Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo. Around 20,000 children born to Belgian settlers and local women were forcibly taken to Belgium to be fostered. Henry Morton Stanley (2011). Hoornaert, Andr and O. Louwers (1924). Soldiers were also reportedly promised their freedom or given other incentives for killing the most people as proven by supplying the most hands. "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. Under his reign, the Congolese people were terrorized with forced labor and harsh treatment. Encyclopedia.com. In Britain he founded the Congo Reform Association, and affiliated groups sprang up in the United States and other countries. How did King Leopold gain control of the Congo? National Geographic Society is a 501 (c)(3) organization. Shaloff, Stanley (1970). The invention of the inflatable bicycle tire, followed soon by that of the automobile tire, triggered an enormous boom in rubber. Thompsell, Angela. Why did King Leopold colonize the Congo? If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. 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.
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