why did king leopold want the congo

He traveled throughout Britain speaking to large audiences and was adept at recruiting bishops, well-known writers, and other luminaries to join him on the lecture platform. As he headed back to England, Stanley was assiduously courted by King Leopold II of Belgium. A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. It is at this point that Leopold II of Belgium took a part. Leopold acquired the Congo through unethical means and thus took the people's chances away at self-rule. Leopold spoke of bringing civilization to the Africans and sent a small but heavily armed Belgian force into the Congo. The forced-labour system for gathering rubber was swiftly copied by French, German, and Portuguese colonial officials with equally fatal results. . Many more suffered from disease and torture. 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. Leopold II implemented a forced-labour system in the Congo that was quickly copied by other European colonial powers. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Oasis Kodila Tedika et Francklin Kyayima Muteba, The sources of growth in DRC before independence. . Franklin, John Hope (1985). 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. New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1986. You cannot download interactives. Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. 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). In later years he sometimes referred to himself as the Congo's proprietor. . I never imagined this happening in my lifetime," Ms Kayembe adds. But for over 20 years he had been agitating for Belgium to take its place among the great colonial powers of Europe. For all his social shortcomings in European society, he was undoubtedly the right man for the job. Why did Leopold want the Congo? - JOUNIMARTIKAINEN L'tat libre du Congo: Paradis perdu. 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. King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence. Although Stanley is best known as the man who found Livingstone, his trip across the Congo basin was the greater feat of exploration and had far more impact on history. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) . Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. The Congo Free State was founded by Belgian King Leopold II on February 5, 1885, after he violently annexed the African continent. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. 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. 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. The instructions were direct and to the point: "It is a question of creating a new State, as big as possible, and of running it. For instance, Leopold II was a first cousin of Queen Victoria of Britain. With most able-bodied adults prisoners or forced laborers for several weeks out of each month, villages had few people who could plant and harvest food, or go hunting or fishing, and famine soon spread. The treaties, some of which appear to have been subsequently doctored to Leopolds liking, were then put to use by the Belgian monarch. Leopold II, it seemed, was the only European willing to finance Stanley's dream: the building of a railway over the Crystal Mountains from the sea to Stanley Pool, from which river steamers could reach 1,000 miles (1,600km) into the heart of Africa. ThoughtCo, Jun. For a dozen years, from 1901 to 1913, working sometimes fourteen to sixteen hours a day, he devoted his formidable energy and skill to putting the story of forced labor in King Leopold's Congo on the world's front pages. La Force publique de sa naissance 1914: Participation des militaires l'histoire des premires annes du Congo. 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. When did George Washington Williams visit the Congo? p.20. She does not believe it will not be quick or easy. 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. Corrections? Eventually, the strain forced him to relinquish his control of the territory, and in 1908 it became the Belgian Congo. ThoughtCo. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. The results of this rule were very uneven. Leopold (18351909) had ascended to the throne in 1865. Several years later he hired the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to be his man in Africa. 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. Furthermore, as in any society where men and women are separated, traumatized, or in flight as refugees, the birth rate dropped precipitously. They also sometimes eradicatedwhole villages that failed to meet the quotas as a warning to others. Bulletin Officiel du Congo Belge (1920). Morel, E. D. (1904). Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. The results of this rule were very uneven. Moreover, he had a well-known penchant for teenaged girls, and, when he was age 65, he began a liaison with a teenaged former prostitute who bore him two additional children. The Atrocities of the Congo Free State Rubber Regime - ThoughtCo In actuality, Leopold wanted to get his hands on Congo's natural resources. The Force Publique, no doubt, also attracted men who, for whatever reason, felt little compunction about wielding such violence, but this was true of the White officers as well. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo, "King Leopold II and the Congo When you reach out to him or her, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. Outside of the Cape of Good Hope and the Mediterranean coast, Europe had no African colonies of any significance. However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. 2 volumes. CONGO.docx - Why did the King of Belgium Leopold II want And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. London: George Allen & Unwin. 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. "[2]:145. Brussels: Goemaere. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. Among those who weren't killed, many were punished by having a hand and/or foot amputated. Du sang sur les lianes. Belgian King Establishes Congo Free State - National Geographic Society A Lasting Legacy Of The Builder King In Brussels - Culture Trip Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Obtaining more precise statistics is difficult, for in 1908 King Leopold ordered the archives of his Congo state burned. National Geographic Headquarters 1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036. "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". The king also faced enemies of another sort. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. 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). Some of these soldiers were recruits, while others were enslaved people or orphans brought up to serve the colonial army. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. Brussels: Institut Royal Colonial Belge. In 1908, international pressure forced the king to turn the Congo Free State over to the country of Belgium. 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. 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. (1996). 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. There are at least 13 statues to Leopold II in Belgium, according to one crowd-sourced map, and numerous parks, squares and street names. For some years ivory was a principal source of the great wealth that Leopold and his associates drew from the new colony.

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