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. This makeover of Leopold's image produced an amnesia that persisted for decades. 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. Read about our approach to external linking. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. 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. Corrections? Why did King Leopold colonize the Congo? Forty years later virtually all of it had been transformed into European colonies, protectorates, or territories ruled by white settlers. King Leopold II's rule over the Congo met fierce resistance. (1996). In the early 1890s, however, a larger source of wealth suddenly loomed. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. "King Leopold II's Exploitation of the Congo From 1885 to 1908 - STARS 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. But other scholars use even higher numbers. 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. In 1879 Stanley returned to the Congo as Leopold's agent. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Some of these soldiers were recruits, while others were enslaved people or orphans brought up to serve the colonial army. "I will dance if it comes down. LEOPOLD II (18351909; ruled 18651909), king of Belgium and personal sovereign of the Congo Free State. Soldiers were also reportedly promised their freedom or given other incentives for killing the most people as proven by supplying the most hands. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps, Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. The largest mutiny involved three thousand troops and an equal number of auxiliaries and porters, and continued for three years. 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. If the estimates from varied sources of a 50 percent toll in King Leopold's Congo are correct, how many people does this mean? 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. In 1908, international pressure forced the king to turn the Congo Free State over to the country of Belgium. He became duke of Brabant in 1846 and served in the Belgian army. 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. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. . Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. Belgian Congo | History & Facts | Britannica 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. Leopold II implemented a forced-labour system in the Congo that was quickly copied by other European colonial powers. 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 . When did George Washington Williams visit the Congo? 06/29/2020. 2 volumes. 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. Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number. Cambridge University Press. For activists the holy grail is the giant statue of Leopold II on horseback at the gates of the Royal Palace in Brussels. 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. Thompsell, Angela. An even greater toll was taken by disease: various lung and intestinal diseases, tuberculosis, smallpox, and, above all, sleeping sickness. National Geographic Headquarters 1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036. ThoughtCo. Throughout the world's tropics people rushed to establish rubber plantations. From the start the regime was founded on forced labor. On December 12, 1963, the flag of independent Kenya billowed over the capital city of Nairobi f, Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 Tens of thousands of others were shot down in failed rebellions against the regime. 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. But why was Leopold's Congo so horrific? says Ms Kayembe. The results of this rule were very uneven. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. The great population movements caused by the colonial regime brought these illnesses into areas where people had not built up an immunity to them, and many would have died even under a government far less brutal than Leopold's. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. It is at this point that Leopold II of Belgium took a part. He was interested in the Congo river basin because there were many natural resources such as rubber, minerals, ivory, diamonds, and gold. 2023 . The people being colonized are robbed of their land, resources, and freedom.) A cointegration analysis, CRE Working paper, n02/10, juin 2010, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colonization_of_the_Congo_Basin&oldid=1117806574, The fever-ridden mangroves of the lower Niger by the brothers, This page was last edited on 23 October 2022, at 17:53. Now, Stanley discovered, Tippu Tip's men had reached still further west in search of fresh populations to enslave. 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. 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. Marchal, Jules (1996). 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. These were an incentive for ruthless, devastating plunder. 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. Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets. 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". Did this woman die because her genitals were cut? 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. The horrors, though, are only one part of the story. 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. 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. Du sang sur les lianes. Obtaining more precise statistics is difficult, for in 1908 King Leopold ordered the archives of his Congo state burned. 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. In later years, Stanley would write that the most vexing part of his duties was not the work itself, nor negotiating with the natives, but keeping order amongst the ill-assorted collection of white men he had brought with him as overseers, who squabbled constantly over small matters of rank or status. Forced labor remained a major part of the Congo's economy for many years after the war. ." It is false to assume that one group of people is more civilized than another. The results of this rule were very uneven. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. He called it tat Indpendant du Congo, the Congo Free State. 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. "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. 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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. Thompsell, Angela. All rights reserved. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. 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. For all his social shortcomings in European society, he was undoubtedly the right man for the job. The king also faced enemies of another sort. The king's stated goal was to bring civilization to the people of the Congo, an enormous region in Central Africa. 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. It had only been through Tippu Tip's help that Stanley had found Livingstone (who himself had survived years on the Lualaba by virtue of Tippu Tip's friendship). It would be "really significant for Congolese people, especially those whose families perished," she explains. Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State as his personal possession. "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. https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731 (accessed May 1, 2023). Among those who weren't killed, many were punished by having a hand and/or foot amputated. King Leopold II and the Congo The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. The New York Review of Books. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement. 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. 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. Hochschild, Adam (1998). 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. The only way to do that was through the use of terror. In Britain he founded the Congo Reform Association, and affiliated groups sprang up in the United States and other countries. Leopold noted, "Our frontiers can never be extended into Europe." Leopold II: Belgium 'wakes up' to its bloody colonial past They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber. The movement, in fact, eventually forced Leopold to relinquish his private ownership of the Congo to the Belgian state in 1908. Manchester, U.K.: National Labour Press. A hundred lashes of the chicotte, a not infrequent punishment, could be fatal. Many people wonder why these soldiers were willing to do this to their own people, but there was no sense of being Congolese.
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