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How Did King Leopold II Use Direct Rule

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In the Belgian Congo, King Leopold II practiced the most brutal style of direct rule. Almost 10 million Congolese were killed when King Leopold II was in power. When King Leopold II was in power he used cutting off of hands as a punishment to the Congolese. We still see hands as a symbol in the Congo today. King Leopold II strictly used the Congo for slaves and resources. He used direct rule to enhance his greed, carelessness, and brutality towards the Congo. With an estimated loss of about 10 million Congolese, the Congo could surely be classified as the most murderous part of the European Scramble for Africa. Leopold ordered his soldiers to cut off hands, whip Congolese, starve them, break their families apart, kill if they disobeyed, and
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Instead of giving the people of Congo freedom, he took it away and made them work extremely hard, and giving them impossible quotas to meet. If they were not meet, he would cut off their family members hands, and their own to make them work harder, and as punishments. He would take the resources that they got, and used them to make him rich, and make the land flourish in terms of buildings, and making it more urbanized, but the Congo people were struggling to live everyday. As a result, thousands of Congo people were killed for the brutal work King Leopold made them do, and the population decreased significantly. Because of his actions King Leopold should be condemned as a criminal for his exploration and abuse to the Congo land and people.

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With the passing of decades, most Europeans mistakenly believed that King Leopold spent his considerable fortune funding public works in the Congo and stopping slavery in East Africa. He was the unintimidating King of Belgium; but it was all a sham. Underneath the veneer of generosity and graciousness laid a cunning and self-engrossed scoundrel, a duplicitous fraud to rival the evil charm of Iago or Richard III. Under the guise of an international charitable foundation, he personally owned the colony of the Congo, and he ran it as a brutal business investment. His “charity” resulted in the death of ten million people, approximately 50% of the population in the Congo.

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Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, is no ordinary dictator; he was highly driven by the ideology of total revolution which had four separate, but related components. First, and most important of all, is the push for total independence and self-reliance, second, the dictatorship of the proletariat, third, total and immediate economic revolution, and lastly, a complete transformation of Khmer social values (Jackson 135). To implement this ideology of total revolution, the Khmer Rouge had to resort to permanent purges in order to eliminate all potential competitors and to “create a society with no past and no alternatives” (Jackson 137). Pol Pot divided Cambodian society into five classes: the working, the peasants the bourgeoisie, the capitalist, and the feudal class. However, in an effort to create an egalitarian society, the only acceptable classes were the “workers, peasants, and the revolutionary army” (Jackson 136).

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The imperialism of Belgium over the Congo brought great destruction and death to the natives. Similarly, the Belgians imposed a high rubber quota on the Congolese, one too high for many to afford, and punished those who could not pay the tax by cutting off their hands (Photograph of Congolese). Hands were an acceptable payment for the tax, so many villages fought each other and cut off one another’s limbs in order to pay back their titanic debt. The Belgians encouraged the Congolese to turn on each other in order to pay these taxes. They applauded those who paid the tax and further punished those who did not.

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played a key role in Lumumba's assassination, which had significant consequences for the Congo and the African continent. The U.S. government expected his death, and that was the result. Lumumba's death paved the way for Mobutu's rise to power and his brutal dictatorship, which lasted for over 30 years and led to widespread human rights abuses and the plundering of the country's natural resources. During and directly after the assassination took place, Americans had no idea and would have never thought the U.S. government had anything to do with Lumumba’s death. Sometime after though, documents were released that contained information about trying to poison Lumumba.

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Many Europeans did not treat the Africans well. Many colonists started colonizing in the New World for three main reasons: God, Gold, and Glory. Colonists met Native Americans there and wanted the Native Americans to work for the them, which led to bad treatment of the Native Americans and also led to slavery. The Industrial Revolution soon started and people needed more natural resources for all the resources being produced. During the 19th Century, many Boers made colonies, land controlled by another country, on the land lended to them by Africans; soon afterward the colonizers started deceiving the African.

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Dictator Stalin ordered to execute anyone that opposed him. Him and his secret police raided houses and killed and tortured many who were being accused of going against him. Many had to confess for crimes they did not commit due to torture. He eve executed his own party officials and leaders which lead to fear across the country. People were dying for simply not agreeing or not acting a certain way.

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When King Leopold established the Congo Free State, he destroyed the link between the Congolese people and their homeland (Kenneth). King Leopold made one single country between Belgium and Congo. He combined the ethnicities of both of these cultures, taking away the Congolese people’s heritage and culture. In addition to this, the Roman Catholic Church forced their religion and values on the Congolese people, taking away their beliefs, and using violence if necessary. The Belgians forced their values upon the Congolese people in order to assimilate their religion and gain more power.

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Vlad had many torture methods for example (impaling etc..)("Lallanilla Marc"). He would impale people to strike fear into opponents and

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A vast number of complex cultures and populations have suffered under the violently oppressive rule of an authoritarian leader. Through imperialistic control, slavery, and force, fascist and totalitarian regimes have historically inflicted pain and damage unto millions of innocent civilians. These leaders, these dictators, these societal adversaries, demand that the people work for the state under their forsaken rule. Thus, one man essentially controls the way citizens live, move, and provide. Of the most malicious, greedy, and malevolent fascist leaders, Leopold II of Belgium reigns supreme.

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An absolute monarch can be defined as a ruler who rules without any interference from the nobles, having complete, utter and unrestricted rule over his people. Louis XIV of France was a key model of an absolute monarch during the time seen as a man to whom there was no equal intellectually, militarily or physically. His absolute monarchy was one of the most successful during the Age of Absolution, having the longest rule of any monarch in Europe. The king's rule was extremely successful due to his control over both the nobility and his own people, the massive and powerful army that he embarked on creating for his nation as well as the revenue he attained through his taxation of his people and use of mercantilism. France has not since or prior

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Pol Pot and his fellow Khmer Rouge members tyrannized their authority by how they treated their citizens. To start, the Khmer Rouge treated their citizens unfairly and cruelly. The Khmer Rouge was biased towards ethnic minorities like, chinese, vietnamese and Muslim Cham, 80% were the estimate that were killed (“Cambodian

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It is seen that the power rid of Napoleon’s conscience, and created a ruthless dictator.

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He punished the citizens of Wallachia for the smallest crimes, by impalement. Women would be impaled for no reason, but were told they weren’t working hard enough. His unfair torture and killings led to constant fear and panic from the people. He would even put a golden chalice in the towns just to test people, to see if anyone would attempt to steal it so he could punish them, but no one dared, for they knew what awaited them if they even thought about it. No one would even talk bad about him, for fear of being executed.

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Both dictators inflicted immense suffering, regarded as the “twin demons of the twentieth century, responsible for… more deaths than any other men in history” (Overy, 2004, 31). However, both regimes used contrasting forms of violence, with Nazi Germany characterized by overt and excessive violence, inflicting public, torture, executions, and mass murder. In contrast, Stalin’s regime operated through more subtle forms of violence, with a majority of casualties occurring through indirect sources, including famine and exhaustion in labour camps. In addition, Hitler was directly responsible for a majority of casualties, instructing the murder of “enemies of the state”, whereas Stalin's rule resulted in more indirect deaths due to food shortages and other factors. This difference is reflected in which Stalin is estimated to be responsible for the direct murder of between 6-9 million, in an effort of 'liquidating Kulaks', While Hitler was responsible for between 16 - 20 million murders.

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