The king's stated goal was to bring civilization to the people of the Congo, an enormous region in Central Africa. He had no power to decide policy. They also sometimes eradicatedwhole villages that failed to meet the quotas as a warning to others. Marchal, Jules (1996). Read about our approach to external linking. 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. Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets. 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. Stanley was applauded, admired, decoratedand ignored. The people of the Congo did not suffer these injustices without fighting back. She was not unique - chopping off the limbs of enslaved Congolese was a routine form of retribution when Leopold II's quotas were not met. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. He had long wanted a colonial empire, and in Stanley he saw someone who could secure it for him. Ed. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) 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. James Andrew Broun Ramsay, marquess and 10th earl of Dalhousie, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-II-king-of-Belgium, Leopold II - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). A man of great charm, intelligence, ruthlessness, and greed, he was openly frustrated with inheriting the throne of such a small country, and in doing so at a time in history when European kings were rapidly losing power to elected parliaments. Hoornaert, Andr and O. Louwers (1924). As the realities and suffering within the Congo Free State became more widely known, many European people spoke out against these abuses. Leopold II of Belgium - Wikipedia 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. 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. 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. For all his social shortcomings in European society, he was undoubtedly the right man for the job. View 6.2_Reading_Check.docx from HISTORY 2109320 at Coral Reef Senior High School. 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. Humankind will never know even the approximate toll with any certainty, but beyond any doubt what happened in the Congo was one of the great catastrophes of modern times. Vocabulary On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. 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 propensity for violence is . These men were generally from other parts of the Congo or other colonies entirely, and the orphans and enslaved people had often been brutalized themselves. The people being colonized are robbed of their land, resources, and freedom.) (April 27, 2023). 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. Although neither figure is well-documented, Hannah Arendt's seminal The Origins of Totalitarianism cites an estimated minimum population loss of 11.5 million, and a Congolese historian writing in 1998, Isidore Ndaywel Nziem, estimates the loss at roughly 13 million. 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. 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. Alice Harris, a British Baptist, took photographs of the atrocities she witnessed. E. V. Sjblom of Sweden was one of the first and most outspoken missionaries in the Congo. Throughout the world's tropics people rushed to establish rubber plantations. This was to be his most enduring legacy. 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. Flament, F., et al. He wrote three books on the Congo, several dozen pamphlets, and hundreds of newspaper articles, making much use of eyewitness testimony from the missionaries. Red Rubber: The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Which Flourished on the Congo for Twenty Years, 18901910. Franklin, John Hope (1985). Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. Company agents were paid large concessions on top of their salaries for the profits they generated, creating personal incentives to force people to work more and harder for little to no pay. Exhausted, Stanley returned to Europe, only to be sent straight back by Leopold, who promised him an outstanding assistant: Charles 'Chinese' Gordon (who did not in fact take up Leopold's offer but chose instead to go to meet his fate at Khartoum). Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. "I will dance if it comes down. Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? Why did King Leopold give up the Congo? The Herero were traditional occupants of the temperate high plains of central Namibia. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. SCLC Formed "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. )1978 Millions of Congolese then found themselves suffering near-famine, which made them vulnerable to diseases they otherwise might have survived. 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. 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 the Heart of Darkness". Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. In May 1885, Leopold took possession of his colony and named it the Congo Free State. Leopolds reign over the Congo Free State, however, has become infamous for its brutality. 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. If you have questions about licensing content on this page, please contact ngimagecollection@natgeo.com for more information and to obtain a license. Montgomery Bus Boycott New and revised edition. Meanwhile, Leopold had already begun the job of persuading first the United https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo, "King Leopold II and the Congo Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. He was the architect of one of history's greatest, if lesser known, crimes against humanity. 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. The first nationwide Congolese political party, the Congo National Movement, was launched in 1958 by Patrice Lumumba and other Congolese leaders. The forced-labour system for gathering rubber was swiftly copied by French, German, and Portuguese colonial officials with equally fatal results. 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". The royal palace is yet to give its own response. To curry diplomatic favor, he allowed several hundred Protestant missionaries into the Congo. 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. Retrieved September 22, 2017. Imperialism in Africa Assignment and Quiz Flashcards | Quizlet Manchester, U.K.: National Labour Press. "It's a good thing that everyone is waking up, looking around and thinking 'is this right?'" These were an incentive for ruthless, devastating plunder. "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). Belgian Congo | History & Facts | Britannica The Hidden Holocaust: How King Leopold II - The African Exponent In 1853 he married Marie-Henriette, daughter of the Austrian archduke Joseph, palatine of Hungary, and became king of the Belgians on his fathers death in December 1865. Europeans were interested in Africa for its abundance of natural resources (ivory, rubber, gold, etc.) Charles Michel, prime minister at the time, declined. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. 24 February 2004. As rubber prices soared, so did the quotas. Cambridge University Press. The results of this rule were very uneven. Omissions? Tippu Tip had raided 118 villages, killed 4,000 Africans, and, when Stanley reached his camp, had 2,300 slaves, mostly young women and children, in chains ready to transport halfway across the continent to the markets of Zanzibar. 2 volumes. Among those who weren't killed, many were punished by having a hand and/or foot amputated. The king's colonial officials quickly set up a brutal but effective system for harvesting wild rubber. 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. Leopold spoke of bringing civilization to the Africans and sent a small but heavily armed Belgian force into the Congo. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. Several years later he hired the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to be his man in Africa. Bulletin Officiel du Congo Belge (1920). 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. Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number. As he put it, he did not want to miss out on the opportunity of getting a slice of "this magnificent African cake." King . Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press. But why was Leopold's Congo so horrific? No one will ever know the precise figures, but, from all these causes, demographers estimate that between 1880 and 1920 the population of the Congo may have been slashed by up to 50 percent, from perhaps 20 million people at the beginning of that period to an estimated 10 million at the end. Wearing one of his many hats, that of a journalist, Williams expected to see the paradise of enlightened rule that Leopold had described to him in Brussels. Read about our approach to external linking. King Leopold II's Colonization Of The Congo | ipl.org Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. 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. King Leopold II and the Congo | Encyclopedia.com From the start the regime was founded on forced labor. As he headed back to England, Stanley was assiduously courted by King Leopold II of Belgium. Reform in Leopold's Congo. 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. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State: A Story of Work and Exploration. The king then embarked on an ultimately successful effort to make a vast fortune from his new possession. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan. If a soldier fired at someone and missed, or used a bullet to shoot game, he then sometimes cut off the hand of a living victim to be able to show it to his officer. 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. In the newly christened Belgian Congo, however, the forced labor system did not immediately end. ThoughtCo. Morel, E. D. (1904). 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. It would be "really significant for Congolese people, especially those whose families perished," she explains. 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. Thompsell, Angela. 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. 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).