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. 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. 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. 2, 2022, thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. 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. Leopold continued his action, even after the Belgium Parliament refused to annex the Congo. 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 the Heart of Darkness". The New York Review of Books. 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. 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. 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. Belgian officers were afraid that the rank and file of the Force Publique would waste bullets, so they demanded a human hand for each bullet their soldiers used as proof that the killings had been done. Virtually no information about the true nature of King Leopold's Congo reached the outside world until the arrival there, in 1890, of an enterprising visitor named George Washington Williams. 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 instructions were direct and to the point: "It is a question of creating a new State, as big as possible, and of running it. First, the system of exploitation established there became a model for colonial rule in other parts of central Africa. Most made no protest, but some were outraged at the brutal forced labor system. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. This makeover of Leopold's image produced an amnesia that persisted for decades. ThoughtCo. After Morel orchestrated a protest resolution by the British Parliament, the government, in response, asked its representative in the Congo to investigate his charges. In 2019, the cities of Kortrijk and Dendermonde renamed their Leopold II streets, with Kortrijk council describing the king as a "mass murderer". However, Leopold persisted and eventually Stanley gave in. 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. A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. 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. Alice Harris, a British Baptist, took photographs of the atrocities she witnessed. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. 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. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. Belgian King Leopold II ruthlessly seized control of the African continent on February 5, 1885, establishing the Congo Free State as a . Video, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, US black man George Floyd in police custody, statues of racist historical figures vandalised or removed, "rape, mutilation and genocide of millions of Congolese". It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. Thompsell, Angela. Standing close by, one visitor said, "I didn't know anything about Leopold II until I heard about the statues defaced down town". For decades, colonial history has been barely taught in Belgium. OF DECOLONIZATION Leopold (18351909) had ascended to the throne in 1865. He was the architect of one of history's greatest, if lesser known, crimes against humanity. State troops pursued them, trapping Mulume Niama and his soldiers in a large cave. If you have questions about licensing content on this page, please contact ngimagecollection@natgeo.com for more information and to obtain a license. When the Belgian King Leopold II acquired the Congo Free State during the Scramble for Africa in 1885, he claimed he was establishing the colony for humanitarian and scientific purposes, but in reality, its sole aim was profit, as much as possible, as fast as possible. In the early years the main commodity Leopold sought was ivory. Having established a beachhead on the lower Congo, in 1883 Stanley set out upriver to extend Leopold's domain, employing his usual methods: negotiations with local chiefs buying sovereignty in exchange for bolts of cloth and trinkets; playing one tribe off another; and if need be, simply shooting an obstructive chief and negotiating with his cowed successor instead. 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. Setting out from Zanzibar, Henry Morton Stanley, a British-born American journalist and explorer aimed to find the famous Dr. Livingstone. Because his only son had predeceased him, Leopolds nephew Albert I succeeded to the throne. 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. [1]:333, "There are 40,000,000 naked people" on the other side of the rapids, Stanley wrote, "and the cotton-spinners of Manchester are waiting to clothe them Birmingham's factories are glowing with the red metal that shall presently be made into ironwork in every fashion and shape for them and the ministers of Christ are zealous to bring them, the poor benighted heathen, into the Christian fold. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Discipline was harsh; reluctant military conscripts, disobedient porters, and villagers who failed to gather enough rubber all fell victim to the notorious chicotte, a whip made of sun-dried hippopotamus hide with razor-sharp edges. Ewans, Martin (2002). Montgomery Bus Boycott Please select which sections you would like to print: Also known as: Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, Leopold-Louis-Philippe-Marie-Victor. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. Read about our approach to external linking. He had no power to decide policy. 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. 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. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. 06/29/2020. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement. Leopold was an intelligent and ruthless man who wasn't afraid to lie or kill in order to expand Belgium's power. Arab vs. European: Diplomacy and war in Nineteenth-Century East Central Africa. 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. Leopold II's reign as King of Belgium coincided with the time period of the Scramble for Africa, during which the European powers of the day raced for control of different regions . 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. [6] For the look of things, he held one more meeting the following year, but from that time on, the International African Association was simply a front for Leopold's ambition. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. L'histoire du Congo 18761900. BBC World Service: 50 Things That Made the Modern . As the vines near a village were often drained dry, the men would sometimes have to walk for days to find areas where they could gather their monthly quota of rubber. Hochschild, Adam (1998). Forbath, P. The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration, and Exploitation of the World's Most Dramatic River, 1991 (Paperback). Birmingham Protest March Nzansu's men fought on sporadically for five years more, and no record of his fate exists. 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. Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition. Outside of the Cape of Good Hope and the Mediterranean coast, Europe had no African colonies of any significance. It quickly became a brutal, exploitative regime that relied on forced labour to cultivate and trade rubber, ivory and minerals. 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. In two ways the Congo's rubber boom had lasting impact beyond the territory itself. The royal coffers would become a central focus of Leopolds life, and he once grumbled to German Emperor William II while watching a parade in Berlin, There is really nothing left for us kings except money! Leopold soon decided that the best way to acquire wealth would be by establishing an African colony, at a time when the great European Scramble for Africa was under way. Leopold II's rule in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo was so bloody it was eventually condemned by other European colonialists in 1908 - but it has taken far longer to come under scrutiny at home. Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number. Bennett, Norman Robert. Stanley was lionised across Europe. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. Villages throughout the region had been burned and depopulated. Like statues of racist historical figures vandalised or removed in Britain and the US, Leopold II's days on Belgian streets could now be numbered. [5] None of these schemes came anywhere near fruition: the government of Belgium resolutely resisted all Leopold's suggestions, seeing the acquisition of a colony as a good way to spend large amounts of money for little or no return. Stanley, still hopeful for British backing, brushed him off. Several years later he hired the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to be his man in Africa. Vocabulary On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. POST-1945 HISTORICAL CONTEXTS To avoid discovery, materials and workers were shipped in by various roundabout routes, and communications between Stanley and Leopold were entrusted to Colonel Maximilien Strauch. She does not believe it will not be quick or easy. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. In 1853 he married Marie-Henriette, daughter of the Austrian archduke Joseph, palatine of Hungary, and became king of the Belgians on his fathers death in December 1865. For many years Leopold II was widely known as a leader who defended Belgium's neutrality in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war and commissioned public works fit for a modern nation. Franklin, John Hope (1985). In the far south, for example, a chief named Mulume Niama led warriors of the Sanga people in a rebellion that killed one of the king's officers. "We run the risk of someday seeing our native population collapse and disappear," declared the permanent committee of the National Colonial Congress of Belgium in 1924, "so that we will find ourselves confronted with a kind of desert" (Hoornaert and Louwers, 1924, p. 101). Angela Thompsell, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of British and African History at SUNY Brockport. 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. He was, nevertheless, an extremely minor monarch in the realpolitik of the times, ruling a totally insignificant nation, a nation in fact that had come into existence barely four decades before and lived under the constant threat of losing its precarious independence to the great European powers around it. Henry Morton Stanley (2011). Read about our approach to external linking. Corrections? If the estimates from varied sources of a 50 percent toll in King Leopold's Congo are correct, how many people does this mean? [11]:66. From the start the regime was founded on forced labor. Estimates suggest more than 50% died there. The boundaries of Colonialism, like those of many literary eras, are difficult to draw. 13(May 15). Several rebellions were mercilessly put down under Leopold's direction. [8], It was only at this point that Stanley was informed of the magnitude of Leopold's ambition: Stanley was not merely to construct a series of trading stations, he was to secretly carve out an entire nation. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Congolese fled their villages to avoid being impressed as forced labourers, and they sought refuge deep in the forest, where there was little food and shelter. The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. But why was Leopold's Congo so horrific? "[2]:145. For thousands of years, that territory had been conquered by nearby Netherlands, France, Germany, and Luxembourg. Charles Michel, prime minister at the time, declined. Why did King Leopold II own the Belgian Congo colony Because the systems effects in the Congo could so easily be blamed on one man, who could safely be attacked because he did not represent a great power, an international outcry focused on Leopold. E. V. Sjblom of Sweden was one of the first and most outspoken missionaries in the Congo. The royal palace is yet to give its own response. Red Rubber: The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Which Flourished on the Congo for Twenty Years, 18901910. 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. Initially, government and commercial agents focused on acquiring ivory, but inventions, like the car, dramatically increased the demand for rubber. Thus was the Belgian Congo created. European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State and Its Aftermath. If a soldier fired at someone and missed, or used a bullet to shoot game, he then sometimes cut off the hand of a living victim to be able to show it to his officer. Furthermore, as in any society where men and women are separated, traumatized, or in flight as refugees, the birth rate dropped precipitously. Leopold acquired the Congo through unethical means and thus took the people's chances away at self-rule. Obtaining more precise statistics is difficult, for in 1908 King Leopold ordered the archives of his Congo state burned. Demonstrations and protests demanded that Leopold end human rights abuses in the Congo Free State. 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. Tippu Tip, the most powerful of the Zanzibari slave traders of the 19th century, was well known to Stanley, as was the social chaos and devastation that slave-hunting brought. Tens of thousands of others were shot down in failed rebellions against the regime. Rather than control the Congo as a colony, as other European powers did throughout Africa, Leopold privately owned the region. 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. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo. To secure their The king also faced enemies of another sort. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. Leopold II ruled Belgium from 1865-1909 - activists want this statue in Brussels removed due to his brutal regime in Congo Free State, Before a renovation in 2018, Belgium's Africa Museum was known as the world's "last colonial museum", Thousands marched in Black Lives Matter protests in Belgium, This TV image shows a statue of Leopold defaced and damaged by fire being removed in Antwerp, Colonial officials amputated and mutilated Congolese people, including children, as punishment, A now infamous photo capturing atrocities committed in Congo Free State, Congolese people were forced to be human exhibits in a "zoo" in Belgium in 1897, Missionaries documented amputations while investigating abuses committed in Congo Free State, Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba is commemorated in a Brussels square, This bust of Leopold II was removed on Friday in Auderghem, near Brussels, Colony built on forced labour and brutality, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. Eventually, the price fell and wild rubber supplies began to run out, but by that time World War I had begun, and large numbers of Africans were forced to become porters, carrying supplies for Belgian military campaigns against Germany's African colonies. "Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities." Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities. The forced-labour system for gathering rubber was swiftly copied by French, German, and Portuguese colonial officials with equally fatal results. How did King Leopold gain control of the Congo? Harper & Row. As the realities and suffering within the Congo Free State became more widely known, many European people spoke out against these abuses. Pakenham, Thomas (1991). Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf as a personal union with Belgium. To curry diplomatic favor, he allowed several hundred Protestant missionaries into the Congo. Leopold II established a colony in the Congo to gain natural resources for Belgium and wealth for himself. As he put it, he did not want to miss out on the opportunity of getting a slice of "this magnificent African cake." King . 27 Apr. In 1885 he proclaimed the existence of the misnamed tat Indpendant du Congo, or, as it was known in English, the Congo Free State, with himself the King-Sovereign. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Brussels: Institut Royal Colonial Belge. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. The people of the Congo were forced to labor for valued resources, including rubber and ivory, to personally enrich Leopold. Former President of Kenya He became duke of Brabant in 1846 and served in the Belgian army. They refused to surrender, and when troops finally entered the cave three months later, they found 178 bodies. "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). Among those who weren't killed, many were punished by having a hand and/or foot amputated. Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. In 1924 the first territory-wide census, when adjusted for undercounting, placed the number of colony inhabitants at some ten million. For instance, Leopold II was a first cousin of Queen Victoria of Britain. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. National Geographic Headquarters 1145 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20036. 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. Leopold II became the next King of Belgium in 1865 and reigned until his death on December 17th, 1909. 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. Dark Safari: The Life behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley. Encyclopedia.com. On Friday the younger brother of Belgium's King Philippe, Prince Laurent, defended his ancestor saying Leopold II was not responsible for atrocities in the colony "because he never went to. 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. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. 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. 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. Most of the monarchs in western Europe had been forced to largely yield political power to the electorate by the late 19th century, so Belgiums parliament and cabinet were the real locus of power, but Leopold used the prestige of the monarchy to lobby for pet projects. "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". 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. This article is about the European colonization of the Congo region. As he headed back to England, Stanley was assiduously courted by King Leopold II of Belgium. Many people wonder why these soldiers were willing to do this to their own people, but there was no sense of being Congolese. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. I Have a Dream Encyclopedia.com. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. 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. This was to be his most enduring legacy. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) 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. But for Leopold this posed no problem; he would acquire his own. In the period from 1885 to 1908, many atrocities were perpetrated in the Congo Free State (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) which, at the time, was a state under the absolute rule of King Leopold II of the Belgians.These atrocities were particularly associated with the labour policies used to collect natural rubber for export. "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. Meanwhile, Leopold had already begun the job of persuading first the United Morel, in his mid-twenties at the time, noticed that when his company's ships arrived from the Congo, they were filled to the hatch with enormously valuable cargoes of rubber and ivory. Around the BBC. Last week a statue of Leopold II in the city of Antwerp was set on fire, before authorities took it down. Leopold II, French in full Lopold-Louis-Philippe-Marie-Victor, Dutch in full Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, (born April 9, 1835, Brussels, Belgiumdied December 17, 1909, Laeken), king of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. 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. "Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities." 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. Army officers and colonial officials earned bonuses based on the amount of rubber collected in areas under their control. Throughout the tropics, people rushed to sow rubber trees, but those plants could take many years to reach maturity, and in the meantime there was money to be made wherever rubber grew wild.