why did king leopold want the congo

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Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. official, Major Charles C. Liebrechts, made the same estimate in 1920. wives' release, the men would have to disperse into the rain forest to collect the sap of wild rubber vines. Because of his actions King Leopold should be condemned as a criminal for his exploration and abuse to the Congo land and people. The relentless pursuit of profits in the Congo by King Leopold II resulted in one of the worst levels of moral decadence for mankind. Villages throughout the region had been burned and depopulated. Morel, E. D. (1968). Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. King Leopold II and the Congo | Encyclopedia.com Morel soon quit his job and in short order turned himself into the greatest British investigative journalist of his time. L'tat libre du Congo: Paradis perdu. He wrongly justified his actions by saying that the people of the Congo were inferior, and deserved the treatment they received. Seeing what profits Leopold was reaping from forced labor, officials in these colonies soon adopted exactly the same systemincluding women hostages, forced male labor, and the chicottewith equally fatal consequences. . . For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. 2023 . Stanley was lionised across Europe. In 1879 Stanley returned to the Congo as Leopold's agent. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement. Arab vs. European: Diplomacy and war in Nineteenth-Century East Central Africa. Stanley was applauded, admired, decoratedand ignored. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. https://www.thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731 (accessed May 1, 2023). By 1908, Leopold II's rule was deemed so cruel that European leaders, themselves violently exploiting Africa, condemned it and the Belgian parliament forced him to relinquish control of his fiefdom. Bennett, Norman Robert. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Last week a statue of Leopold II in the city of Antwerp was set on fire, before authorities took it down. One particularly notorious practice grew out of the suppression of those rebellions. Equipped with repeating rifles, cannons, and machine guns and fighting against Africans with only spears or antiquated muskets, King Leopold's 19,000-man army (black conscripts under white officers) gradually took control of the vast territory. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) Marchal, Jules (1996). However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press. 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. Alice Harris, a British Baptist, took photographs of the atrocities she witnessed. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. By the end of his life, Leopold was unpopular with his people, but, ironically, that had much less to do with his actions in Africa than with his conduct of his personal life. Henry Morton Stanley (2011). Initially he was most interested in ivory, a material that was greatly valued in the days before plastics because it could be carved into a great variety of shapesstatuettes, jewelry, piano keys, false teeth, and more. He spoke contemptuously of Belgiums small size, could not speak proper Dutch, the native language of more than half of its citizens, spent long winters in luxurious quarters on the French Riviera, and was estranged from two of his three daughters. But taking the monument away does not solve the problem of racism, she believes, while creating one museum devoted to the statues would not be useful either. After Morel orchestrated a protest resolution by the British Parliament, the government, in response, asked its representative in the Congo to investigate his charges. ." 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. Instead, he found what he called "the Siberia of the African Continent." Tens of thousands of others were shot down in failed rebellions against the regime. One by one the other great mysteries had been explored: Though the Congo had been one of the first to be attempted, it remained a mystery. 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. 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). 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. In May 1885, Leopold took possession of his colony and named it the Congo Free State. 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. "In the Heart of Darkness". Forty years later virtually all of it had been transformed into European colonies, protectorates, or territories ruled by white settlers.

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