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. 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. Pakenham, Thomas (1991). He provided for no education or vocational training, which would stunt future Congolese leaders from making sound economic and political policies. One particularly notorious practice grew out of the suppression of those rebellions. Henry Morton Stanley (2011). 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. Leopold's reign over the Congo Free State, however, has become infamous for its brutality. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. On December 12, 1963, the flag of independent Kenya billowed over the capital city of Nairobi f, Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 . POST-1945 HISTORICAL CONTEXTS The king also faced enemies of another sort. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Because his only son had predeceased him, Leopolds nephew Albert I succeeded to the throne. . Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 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. London, Curzon Press, p.27. Published in many American and European newspapers, it was the first comprehensive, detailed indictment of the regime and its slave labor system. Soldiers were also reportedly promised their freedom or given other incentives for killing the most people as proven by supplying the most hands. But for Leopold this posed no problem; he would acquire his own. One visitor to the Africa Museum, where an outdoor statue was defaced last week, disagreed with the idea of removing them - "they're part of history," he explained. Forbath, P. The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration, and Exploitation of the World's Most Dramatic River, 1991 (Paperback). 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. 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. Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities. 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. 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. 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. Leopold agreed and in deepest secrecy, Stanley signed a five-year contract at a salary of 1,000 a year, and set off to Zanzibar under an assumed name. 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. In 2019, the cities of Kortrijk and Dendermonde renamed their Leopold II streets, with Kortrijk council describing the king as a "mass murderer". They were a newly independent country . . "[2]:145. King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence. Flament, F., et al. The first nationwide Congolese political party, the Congo National Movement, was launched in 1958 by Patrice Lumumba and other Congolese leaders. In the early 1890s, Leopold's private African army, the Force Publique (Public Force), drove the powerful Muslim slave traders out of the Congo. Forty years later virtually all of it had been transformed into European colonies, protectorates, or territories ruled by white settlers. Birmingham Protest March 13(May 15). Most populous nation: Should India rejoice or panic? The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. Angela Thompsell, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of British and African History at SUNY Brockport. Corrections? Learn how and when to remove this template message, Oasis Kodila Tedika et Francklin Kyayima Muteba, The sources of growth in DRC before independence. 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). 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. 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. Cambridge University Press. Warning: This piece contains graphic pictures. 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. 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. Now, Stanley discovered, Tippu Tip's men had reached still further west in search of fresh populations to enslave. Dec 14, 2022. Leopold, however, made the Belgian government pay him for his prized possession. Men who did not fulfill their quota were killed or mutilated. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State as his personal possession. 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". Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. Estimates suggest more than 50% died there. Marchal, Jules (1996). They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. He persuaded first the United States and then all the major nations of western Europe to recognize a huge swath of Central Africaroughly the same territory as the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congoas his personal property. She or he will best know the preferred format. A Bantu people, they had moved south into this region f, King of the Bingo Game by Ralph Ellison, 1944, https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo. The New York Review of Books. Forced labor remained a major part of the Congo's economy for many years after the war. 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. They were the very first royal family of Belgium, because the country was just 5 years old. Hoornaert, Andr and O. Louwers (1924). Leopold acquired the Congo through unethical means and thus took the people's chances away at self-rule. 657, 660, 662). Having found the new ruler of the upper Congo, Stanley negotiated an agreement with Tippu Tip to allow him to build his final river station just below Stanley Falls (which prevented vessels sailing further upstream). Omissions? However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. The king's stated goal was to bring civilization to the people of the Congo, an enormous region in Central Africa. George Washington Williams: A Biography. 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. 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. King Leopold II and the Congo The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. 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. In later years he sometimes referred to himself as the Congo's proprietor. Some writers, almost entirely in Belgium, claim that such estimates are exaggerated. When you reach out to him or her, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. You cannot download interactives. ADAM HOCHSCHILD. Leopold continued his action, even after the Belgium Parliament refused to annex the Congo. Retrieved September 22, 2017. Leopold II, French in full Lopold-Louis-Philippe-Marie-Victor, Dutch in full Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, (born April 9, 1835, Brussels, Belgiumdied December 17, 1909, Laeken), king of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. 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. New York: Random House. The invention of the inflatable bicycle tire, followed soon by that of the automobile tire, triggered an enormous boom in rubber. Virtually no information about the true nature of King Leopold's Congo reached the outside world until the arrival there, in 1890, of an enterprising visitor named George Washington Williams. The couple's first son, Louis Philippe, died in infancy prior to Leopold II's birth. He did however apologise for the kidnapping of thousands of mixed-race children, known as mtis, from Burundi, DR Congo and Rwanda in the 1940s and 1950s. https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo, "King Leopold II and the Congo Women and children were often taken hostage until men fulfilled a quota; during which time the women were raped repeatedly. Stanley was lionised across Europe. The king's colonial officials quickly set up a brutal but effective system for harvesting wild rubber. Alice Harris, a British Baptist, took photographs of the atrocities she witnessed. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. "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). 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".
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