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. By the early 1890s a new source of riches had appeared. 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. 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. Unlike previous European nations that spread their influence over 2023 BBC. Please select which sections you would like to print: Also known as: Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, Leopold-Louis-Philippe-Marie-Victor. https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo, "King Leopold II and the Congo As he headed back to England, Stanley was assiduously courted by King Leopold II of Belgium. 06/29/2020. E. V. Sjblom of Sweden was one of the first and most outspoken missionaries in the Congo. 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. Then, as they would be into the 21st century, most of the royal families of Europe were related. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. At the time, his father, Leopold I, was the King of Belgium. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). 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. Shaloff, Stanley (1970). One lucrative source of wild rubber was the Landolphia vines in the great Central African rainforest, and no one owned more of that area than Leopold. 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. 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. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Pakenham, Thomas (1991). The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. Early and Personal Life. This was to be his most enduring legacy. ." On December 12, 1963, the flag of independent Kenya billowed over the capital city of Nairobi f, Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) Men who did not fulfill their quota were killed or mutilated. The invention of the inflatable bicycle tire, followed soon by that of the automobile tire, triggered an enormous boom in rubber. Angela Thompsell, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of British and African History at SUNY Brockport. State troops pursued them, trapping Mulume Niama and his soldiers in a large cave. Leopold acquired the Congo through unethical means and thus took the people's chances away at self-rule. "Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities." 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. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. King Leopold II's rule over the Congo met fierce resistance. He attributes colonial crimes to the king himself, rather than the Belgian people or state. Apparently finding nothing reprehensible about Leopold's ambitions, Stanley set about his task with a will. A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. Many more suffered from disease and torture. Instead, he found what he called "the Siberia of the African Continent." 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. She or he will best know the preferred format. 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. Harper & Row. Leopold's eventual response was extraordinary in its hubris and simplicity. Morel, E. D. (1968). Leopold II established a colony in the Congo to gain natural resources for Belgium and wealth for himself. 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 forced-labour system for gathering rubber was swiftly copied by French, German, and Portuguese colonial officials with equally fatal results. 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. Male rubber gatherers often died from exhaustion. Imperialism in Africa Assignment and Quiz Flashcards | Quizlet 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. This makeover of Leopold's image produced an amnesia that persisted for decades. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. Ewans, Martin (2002). Shocked by recent local census statistics that showed less than one child per woman, the official Commission Institue pour la Protection des Indignes made a similar reckoning in 1919. The current protests are not the first time Belgium's ugly history in Congo has been contested in the streets. wives' release, the men would have to disperse into the rain forest to collect the sap of wild rubber vines. 1996 - 2023 National Geographic Society. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) London: Heinemann. "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. Although he played a significant role in the development of the modern Belgian state, he was also responsible for widespread atrocities committed under his rule against his colonial subjects. Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. Presbyterian Reformers in Central Africa: A Documentary Account of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission and the Human Rights Struggle in the Congo, 18901918. Leopold's most formidable enemy surfaced in Europe. 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. The British consul, an Irishman named Roger Casement, later famous as an Irish patriot, took the assignment seriously. The king's colonial officials quickly set up a brutal but effective system for harvesting wild rubber. When you reach out to him or her, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition. 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. ThoughtCo, Jun. Together with epidemic disease, famine, and a falling . The Belgian cabinet of the day was not interested in colonies. Standing close by, one visitor said, "I didn't know anything about Leopold II until I heard about the statues defaced down town". 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). Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. The Herero were traditional occupants of the temperate high plains of central Namibia. States and then all the major nations of Europe to recognize his claim. There seemed no economic sense to investing energy in Africa when the returns from other colonies were likely to be both richer and more immediate. No one owned more land like this than King Leopold II, for equatorial rain forest, dotted with wild rubber vines, comprised half of his Congo state. King Leopold II was the ruler of the Congo Free State, and the King of Belgium. Ed. In two ways the Congo's rubber boom had lasting impact beyond the territory itself. The focus of the great powers was still firmly on the lands that had made Europe's fortune: the Americas, the East Indies, India, China, and Australasia. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. there were "positive aspects" to colonisation, Democratic Republic of Congo country profile, called on Belgium to apologise for atrocities, apologise for the kidnapping of thousands of mixed-race children, MasterChef Australia host Jock Zonfrillo dies, Banana artwork in Seoul museum eaten by visitor, NFL player's daughter, aged two, drowns in pool, Trevelyan relative 'would consider' famine payment, Ding becomes China's first male world chess champion, Indian 'killer' elephant relocated to tiger reserve. 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. A British shipping company had the monopoly on all cargo traffic between the Congo and Belgium, and every few weeks it sent to the port of Antwerp a young junior official, Edmund Dene Morel, to supervise the unloading of a ship arriving from Africa. Thompsell, Angela. "Civilisation" was at the core of Leopold II's pitch to European leaders in 1885 when they sliced up and allocated territories in what became known as the Scramble for Africa. Because his only son had predeceased him, Leopolds nephew Albert I succeeded to the throne.