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. King Leopold II's rule over the Congo met fierce resistance. 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. June 11th, 2020. Together with epidemic disease, famine, and a falling . In 1870 more than 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara was under the rule of indigenous chiefs or kings. The relentless pursuit of profits in the Congo by King Leopold II resulted in one of the worst levels of moral decadence for mankind. (April 27, 2023). In estimating situations without the benefit of complete census data, demographers are more confident speaking of percentages than absolute numbers. t. e. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. Standing close by, one visitor said, "I didn't know anything about Leopold II until I heard about the statues defaced down town". 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. Birmingham Protest March Leopold then used the treaties to convince other Western colonial powers that he had legal right to the Congo River basin, an area more than fifty times the size of Belgium. Benedetto, Robert, ed. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. King Leopold's Rule in Africa. The movement, in fact, eventually forced Leopold to relinquish his private ownership of the Congo to the Belgian state in 1908. "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. 2023 BBC. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. In 1908, international pressure forced the king to turn the Congo Free State over to the country of Belgium. They also sometimes eradicatedwhole villages that failed to meet the quotas as a warning to others. Leopold II became the next King of Belgium in 1865 and reigned until his death on December 17th, 1909. Leopold II, Williams declared, was guilty of "crimes against humanity." 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. As a result of King Leopold actions, thousands of African tribes populations decreased significantly. Why did King Leopold II own the Belgian Congo colony 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. In order to enforce the near impossible rubber quotas imposed on villages, agents and officials called on the Free States army, the Force Publique. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. This was to be his most enduring legacy. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. Instead, the ships carried soldiers, and large quantities of firearms and ammunition. But for Leopold this posed no problem; he would acquire his own. Leopold II established a colony in the Congo to gain natural resources for Belgium and wealth for himself. Standing on the dock, Morel realized that he had uncovered irrefutable proof that a forced labor system was in operation 4,000 miles away. But the slashing of the territory's populationthrough a combination of disease, famine, slave labor, suppression of rebellions, and diminished birthrateindisputably occurred on a genocidal scale. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. After Morel orchestrated a protest resolution by the British Parliament, the government, in response, asked its representative in the Congo to investigate his charges. The Belgian cabinet of the day was not interested in colonies. Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. After leaving Livingstone, Stanley sailed for 1,000 miles (1,600km) down the Lualaba (Upper Congo) to the large lake he named Stanley Pool (now called Pool Malebo). Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. The king's colonial officials quickly set up a brutal but effective system for harvesting wild rubber. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. The king of Belgium wanted the Congo for the vast amounts of wild rubber it held, and to establish a colony as he thought kings were supposed to do. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. 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. https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo, "King Leopold II and the Congo This article is about the European colonization of the Congo region. Livingstone had not been heard from in several years and was, in fact, exploring the upper reaches of a great navigable inland river called the Lualaba, which Livingstone hoped was connected to the Nile, but which turned out to be the upper Congo. Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number. London: Heinemann. Apparently finding nothing reprehensible about Leopold's ambitions, Stanley set about his task with a will. . But in the chaos of the early 20th Century when World War One threatened to destroy Belgium, Leopold II's nephew King Albert I erected statues to remember the successes of years gone by. Because his only son had predeceased him, Leopolds nephew Albert I succeeded to the throne. This makeover of Leopold's image produced an amnesia that persisted for decades. George Washington Williams: A Biography. Updates? Votin, Herero . The first nationwide Congolese political party, the Congo National Movement, was launched in 1958 by Patrice Lumumba and other Congolese leaders. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. The army become known for its brutality, with the officers and soldiers being accused ofdestroying villages, taking hostages, raping, torturing, and extorting the people. Unfortunately, for the Congo, it was one of the only places in the world to have a large supply of wild rubber, and the government and its affiliated trading companies quickly shifted their focus to extracting the suddenly lucrative commodity. Morel, E. D. (1919). Almost the only early visitor to interview Africans about their experience of the regime, he took extensive notes, and, a thousand miles up the Congo River, wrote one of the greatest documents in human rights literature, an open letter to King Leopold that is one of the important landmarks in human rights literature. 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. 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. Europe was less than keen on the idea: the great European scramble for Africa had not yet begun. For some years ivory was a principal source of the great wealth that Leopold and his associates drew from the new colony. With women as hostages and men forced to tap rubber, few able-bodied adults were left to hunt, fish, and cultivate crops. Renting a missionary steamboat, he spent more than three months traveling in the interior. BBC World Service: 50 Things That Made the Modern . The New York Review of Books. National Geographic Society is a 501 (c)(3) organization. Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. (2022, June 2). It was the world's only major colony owned by one man. 1996 - 2023 National Geographic Society. L'tat libre du Congo: Paradis perdu. "King Leopold II and the Congo But why was Leopold's Congo so horrific? However, as he approached Stanley Falls at the junction between the Congo proper and the Lualaba (close to the general vicinity of Central Africa where he had found Livingstone six years before), it soon became clear that Stanley's men were not the only intruders. 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. The invention of the inflatable bicycle tire, followed soon by that of the automobile tire, triggered an enormous boom in rubber. The vicious fighting and terror of the Congo Free State is better understood as another example of the incredible capacity of people for incomprehensible cruelty. "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). Vocabulary On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Pakenham, Thomas (1991). For activists the holy grail is the giant statue of Leopold II on horseback at the gates of the Royal Palace in Brussels. Angela Thompsell, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of British and African History at SUNY Brockport. The bloodiest single episode in Africa's colonization took place in the center of the continent in the large territory, known as the Congo. For thousands of years, that territory had been conquered by nearby Netherlands, France, Germany, and Luxembourg. This army was composed of White officers and African soldiers. Four years before, the Zanzibaris had thought the Congo deadly and impassable, and warned Stanley not to attempt to go there, but when Tippu Tip learned in Zanzibar that Stanley had survived, he was quick to act. Tens of thousands of others were shot down in failed rebellions against the regime. 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. Many classrooms still have Herg's famous cartoon book Tintin in the Congo, with its depictions of black people now commonly accepted as extremely racist. It is false to assume that one group of people is more civilized than another. 2, 2022, thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. "King Leopold II and the Congo Soon after Stanley returned from the Congo, Leopold tried to recruit him. Why did King Leopold give up the Congo? 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. Throughout the world's tropics people rushed to establish rubber plantations. 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. And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. 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. Combining gift-giving with a show of military force, he persuaded hundreds of illiterate African chiefs, most of whom had little idea of the terms of the agreement to which they were ostensibly acceding, to sign away their land to the king. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. Last week a statue of Leopold II in the city of Antwerp was set on fire, before authorities took it down. OF DECOLONIZATION Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. That would be absurd."[9]. 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. 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. The history of Colonialism as a policy or practice go, THE CAUSE OF DECOLONIZATION He made further progress toward realizing his objective at a diplomatic conference in Berlin in 1884 and 1885 that the major European powers attended. The people of the Congo were forced to labor for valued resources, including rubber and ivory, to personally enrich Leopold. A detachment of soldiers would march into an African village and seize the women as hostages. ThoughtCo. Biography of Ernesto Che Guevara, Revolutionary Leader, Top Ten Villains of Latin American History, War of the First Coalition in 1790s France, 10 Facts About the Independence of Texas From Mexico, Events Leading to the Scramble for Africa, A Photo Gallery of the Mexican Revolution, Biography of Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolutionary, Ph.D., History, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, M.A., History, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, B.A./B.S, History and Zoology, University of Florida. Brill. 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.