King Leopold's Statement Report

Imperialism, a word that has been thrown here and there for the past century. It means for a country to dominate another country through political, cultural, or military means. Sometimes countries such as Belgium will induce fear through actions such as whipping or forcing labor into the citizens of another country just to gain power over that country. The primary motive of imperialism was nationalist domination, where one nation gains power over another. A country might try to gain power over other countries by trying to gain recognition from other countries. From King Leopold’s Public Letter, he says “The task which Belgian agents have to accomplish in the Congo is noble. It is incumbent upon them to carry on the work of civilization in Africa. The aim is to regenerate races whose degradation and misfortune is hard to realize.” Through those words, King Leopold, the king of Belgium, was trying to show the other countries that he was a

According to The Casement Report, a report that documented all the violent actions that King Leopold took on the people of Africa, an example of a brutal action that the Belgium people took was “ A widow came and declared that she had been forced to sell her daughter, a little girl about ten.... I found on returning that the statements made with regard to the girl were true.... The girls had again changed hands and was promised in sale to a town whose people are open cannibals.” These cruel actions taken upon the people of Africa was inhumane, and definitely not humanitarian. King Leopold publicized these incidents to the rest of the world so that he can gain their fear, and everyone would listen to him through terror. In the long run, he would be gaining power, even though the actions that he took to achieve that power was