The rapids and falls, had they known it, extended for 220 miles (350km) inland, and the terrain close by the river was impassable, and remains so to this day. 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. 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. As a result of King Leopold actions, thousands of African tribes populations decreased significantly. He made further progress toward realizing his objective at a diplomatic conference in Berlin in 1884 and 1885 that the major European powers attended. He had long wanted a colonial empire, and in Stanley he saw someone who could secure it for him. This was to be his most enduring legacy. Cambridge University Press. Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets. Thus was the Belgian Congo created. Around the BBC. 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. The king of Belgium wanted the Congo for the vast amounts of wild rubber it held, and to establish a colony as he thought kings were supposed to do. official, Major Charles C. Liebrechts, made the same estimate in 1920. London: Heinemann. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. Around 20,000 children born to Belgian settlers and local women were forcibly taken to Belgium to be fostered. In addition, Leopold's regime faced resistance from within his own conscript army, whose soldiers sometimes found a common cause with the rebel groups they were supposed to pursue. 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. They also sometimes eradicatedwhole villages that failed to meet the quotas as a warning to others. 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). Ascherson, Neal (1963). On December 12, 1963, the flag of independent Kenya billowed over the capital city of Nairobi f, Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 It is clearly understood that in this project there is no question of granting the slightest political power to the negros. The country of Belgium itself was only about five years old at the birth of Leopold II, who became the eldest surviving son of Leopold I, first king of the Belgians, and his second wife, Louise-Marie 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. Hochschild, Adam (October 6, 2005). Leopold II was the second son of Leopold I, first king of the Belgians, and his second wife, Marie-Louise of Orlans. They were the very first royal family of Belgium, because the country was just 5 years old. Shaloff, Stanley (1970). This article is about the European colonization of the Congo region. The history of Colonialism as a policy or practice go, THE CAUSE OF DECOLONIZATION The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. 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. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. 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. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. 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. Together with epidemic disease, famine, and a falling . He died the following year. 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. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. [7], Stanley, much more familiar with the rigours of the African climate and the complexities of local politics than Leopold Leopold II never set foot in the Congo persuaded his patron that the first step should be the construction of a wagon trail and a series of forts. In later years he sometimes referred to himself as the Congo's proprietor. Statues have been daubed with red paint in Ghent and Ostend and pulled down in Brussels. . Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. 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". 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]. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. 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. 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. Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition. King Leopold II and the Congo The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. An even greater toll was taken by disease: various lung and intestinal diseases, tuberculosis, smallpox, and, above all, sleeping sickness. "Leopold II certainly does not deserve a statue in the public domain," agrees Bambi Ceuppens, scientific commissioner at the Africa Museum. 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. Angela Thompsell, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of British and African History at SUNY Brockport. For many years Leopold II was widely known as a leader who defended Belgium's neutrality in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war and commissioned public works fit for a modern nation. 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. Repeated attempts to travel overland were repulsed with heavy casualties, accidents, conflicts with natives, and, above all, disease saw large and well-equipped expeditions got no further than 40 miles (64km) or so past the westernmost rapid, the legendary Cauldron of Hell. 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. Brill. But rumours of abuse began to circulate and missionaries and British journalist Edmund Dene Morel exposed the regime. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Oasis Kodila Tedika et Francklin Kyayima Muteba, The sources of growth in DRC before independence. Almost the only early visitor to interview Africans about their experience of the regime, he took extensive notes, and, a thousand miles up the Congo River, wrote one of the greatest documents in human rights literature, an open letter to King Leopold that is one of the important landmarks in human rights literature. And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. 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. 06/29/2020. Morel, E. D. (1968). For all his social shortcomings in European society, he was undoubtedly the right man for the job. 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. 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. 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. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. Men who did not fulfill their quota were killed or mutilated. Outside of the Cape of Good Hope and the Mediterranean coast, Europe had no African colonies of any significance. Although Leopold II established Belgium as a colonial power in Africa, he is best known for the widespread atrocities that were carried out under his rule, as a result of which as many as 10 million people died in the Congo Free State. Eventually, the strain forced him to relinquish his control of the territory, and in 1908 it became the Belgian Congo. National Geographic Society is a 501 (c)(3) organization. However, the date of retrieval is often important. 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. 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. 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 . London, Curzon Press, p.27. Although he played a significant role in the development of the modern Belgian state, he was also responsible for widespread atrocities committed under his rule against his colonial subjects. 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. Leopold acquired the Congo through unethical means and thus took the people's chances away at self-rule. 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. 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. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. 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. It was the world's only major colony owned by one man. She does not believe it will not be quick or easy. In January 1959, riots broke out in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) after a rally was held calling for the independence of the Congo. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. Soon after Stanley returned from the Congo, Leopold tried to recruit him. The movement, in fact, eventually forced Leopold to relinquish his private ownership of the Congo to the Belgian state in 1908. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. In 1885 he proclaimed the existence of the misnamed tat Indpendant du Congo, or, as it was known in English, the Congo Free State, with himself the King-Sovereign. June 11th, 2020. The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. "King Leopold II and the Congo "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". For the earlier Bantu colonization, see. All rights reserved. Several years later he hired the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to be his man in Africa. Because the systems 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. . Under his reign, the Congolese people were terrorized with forced labor and harsh treatment. Army officers often demanded of their men a severed hand from each rebel killed in battle. He wrongly justified his actions by saying that the people of the Congo were inferior, and deserved the treatment they received. 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. E. D. Morel contre Lopold II: L'histoire du Congo 19001910. 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. Red Rubber: The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Which Flourished on the Congo for Twenty Years, 18901910. He established his control over the colony through the use of brute force in an attempt to wean the Congolese into submission. They refused to surrender, and when troops finally entered the cave three months later, they found 178 bodies. 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. Furthermore, as in any society where men and women are separated, traumatized, or in flight as refugees, the birth rate dropped precipitously. Stanley was applauded, admired, decoratedand ignored. 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. 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. View 6.2_Reading_Check.docx from HISTORY 2109320 at Coral Reef Senior High School. They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Africans also died in two decades' worth of unsuccessful uprisings against the king's regime. Male rubber gatherers often died from exhaustion. 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). 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. Morel, E. D. (1919). 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. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? 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. For thousands of years, that territory had been conquered by nearby Netherlands, France, Germany, and Luxembourg. Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. But for Leopold this posed no problem; he would acquire his own. Ed. 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. In estimating situations without the benefit of complete census data, demographers are more confident speaking of percentages than absolute numbers. For five years Stanley traveled up and down the immense waterways of the Congo River basin, setting up trading posts, building roads, and persuading local chiefsalmost all of them illiterateto sign treaties with Leopold. It was down to rubber. ." He attributes colonial crimes to the king himself, rather than the Belgian people or state. 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. Europe was less than keen on the idea: the great European scramble for Africa had not yet begun. )1978 For activists the holy grail is the giant statue of Leopold II on horseback at the gates of the Royal Palace in Brussels. 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. He became duke of Brabant in 1846 and served in the Belgian army. Demonstrations and protests demanded that Leopold end human rights abuses in the Congo Free State. 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. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) The relentless pursuit of profits in the Congo by King Leopold II resulted in one of the worst levels of moral decadence for mankind. Many people wonder why these soldiers were willing to do this to their own people, but there was no sense of being Congolese. Throughout the 1870s, Leopold cunningly established a reputation as a great philanthropist and humanitarian who wanted to spread Christianity and civilization to Africa. Standing on the dock, Morel realized that he had uncovered irrefutable proof that a forced labor system was in operation 4,000 miles away. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. (April 27, 2023). The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. Stanley, still hopeful for British backing, brushed him off. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) In the newly christened Belgian Congo, however, the forced labor system did not immediately end. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. "[2]:145. When Leopold II died in 1909, he was buried to the sound of Belgians booing. 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. Benedetto, Robert, ed. Forbath, P. The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration, and Exploitation of the World's Most Dramatic River, 1991 (Paperback).
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