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King Leopold Imperialism

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Europeans used the influence of Imperialism in the Congo during King Leopold’s reign to try to discover raw materials and enhance economic trade in his colonial empire. Since Africa during this time period was unexplored, Europeans thought there had to be resources just waiting to be found. This would have expanded profits by an enormous amount because resources such as rubber and jewels were in great demand. Unfortunately, King Leopold went to drastic measures to fulfill his purpose in central Africa. One of history’s massive genocides took place in the Congo.
The devious schemes of King Leopold made civilians of the Congo believe he would establish free trade and improve the lives of the natives. They were clueless as to what his intentions …show more content…

In each village, a certain quota was requested and the consequences were uncanny. Leopold used his sidekick, Henry Morton Stanley, to do his work for him and make the chiefs of the tribes give up their lands. Stanley scanned the areas The traditions in Africa were replaced by british authority figures and police such as The Force Publique. They embarrassed victims in public executions or used the worst form of torture possible: homicide. An officer once said, “I made war against them. One example was enough: a hundred heads cut off, and there have been plenty of supplies ever since. My goal is ultimately humanitarian. I killed a hundred people... but that allowed five hundred others to live." (“Belgium's imperialist…”). Joseph Conrad, a british writer, witnessed the horrors that occurred there. In his book, “Heart of Darkness” he states, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” The women of the Congo would be taken hostage and the men would be …show more content…

Eventually, workers would not have time to harvest crops for themselves and their families. Without proper nutrition and rest, as a result, many of the congolese people suffered a painful death. In the book, King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild brought awareness to the political corruption and the horrid crimes that happened during the exploitation of the Congo Free State. For instance, the Congo was left in great debt due to the economic disaster because people kept dying and could not produce enough materials. Vachel

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George Washington Williams, an African American legislator, and Kande Kamara, an African colonial subject, both experienced some of the most brutal products of European Imperialism. Williams, in the late nineteenth century, toured the Belgian controlled Congo and witnessed the harsh measures King Leopold implemented to maintain absolute control and bleed the country of its resources. Kamara, on the other hand, bore witness to the end result of overzealous imperial ambitions when he was forced to fight for the allies in the trenches of WWI. These two men’s experiences, although considerably different, both shed light on Europe’s colonial philosophy of racism and ethnic superiority and its position of immense power during this period.

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Summary of the text: Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa is a historical fiction published in 1998 (Hochschild, 1998). It comprises a myriad of evidence to testify the Belgian King Leopold II’s atrocities in Congo between 1885 and 1908 for the sake of capturing the attention of various readers towards the Belgian imperialist delinquencies through a detailed narration of a number of main characters’, including George Washington Williams and William Henry Sheppard, experiences in Belgian Congo (Hochschild, 1998). In this excerpt, it illustrates William’s peaceful exploration in Congo as the first American-Black missionary. During his journey, not only did he explore the Congolese culture,

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When he is told that they should leave the Congo, he blatantly refuses to listen to reason and further continues to chance the lives of his family. He is willing to sacrifice other people’s lives for his own goals and needs. His coldness and cruelty only fuels his stubbornness and does not make for an enjoyable

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Thousands killed in the Leopold outbreak. King Leopold should be condemned for his brutal actions, and for making the population more then half in population, like in Lukolela “The population in the villages of Lukolela in January 1891 must have been not less than 6,000 people, but when I counted the whole population in Lukolela at the end of December 1896. I found it to be only 719… but judge of my heartache when on counting them all again on Friday and Saturday last, to find only a population of 352 people.” (Document 5) In 1800-1900’s, King Leopold wanted to and planned to take control of the Congo people.

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Hochschild's argument successfully claims that European imperialism in Africa (specifically that of King Leopold) led to devastating effects on the natives and their land. The nineteen-chapter, two part book starts off with a brief introduction. This introduction sets up the first part of the book, where the Hochschild describes the early life of Leopold and his main explorer: Henry Morton Stanley. From the first European-completed expedition of the Congo River and its basin to the Berlin Conference, Hochschild explains the story behind Leopold’s reception of the Congo - specifically how he gained power of the Congo with only the permission of

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As a result of the Berlin Conference (1884-1885), to which Africans were not invited, the imperialist competition in sub-Saharan Africa began . Consequently, violence became an element implemented by all European nations to retain control and subdue the population. However, in Leopold II’s Congo Free State the levels of violence and brutality were excessively high. As a protest against the cruelty and abuses conducted by the Belgian troops, Edward Morel, a British journalist and socialist, wrote “The Black Man’s Burden” in 1903. In this document, the author condemned the conditions of African people in Belgian Congo, reconnecting them to the presence of European

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As Frantz Facon once stated that “imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land by from our minds as well”, one can assert without much exertion that such European powers, in the course of Imperialism, indeed, brought about an array of irreversible impairments such as ethnic tensions, slavery, increased local warfare, and many others. Rwanda, for instance, is a country that is rife with the presence of such an irretrievable deficiency. Rwanda, indeed, has shown a startling economic growth and become an emergent leader country in Central Africa. The World Bank has recently eulogized Rwanda’s recent remarkable development success, which it

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The first white explorers who came to Africa then went back to their countries with books telling of their adventures became instant celebrities. The desire for fame drove many explorers to venture deep into Africa; all in a bid of trying to go further than the other explorer had done. Explorers such as Stanley made a lot of money by printing every detail of his exploration. Some whites who were not recognized in their own countries came to Africa to serve as station masters, soon realized that they could wield some sort of power over the Africans. The author gives examples of people such as Leon Rom who was not recognized much in his own country, but eventually became very powerful in

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Pain. Deception. Hatred. These words are rooted in the minds of the African countries whenever the mention of Imperialism. This practice of extending a government's reign to gain economic control, using missionaries as facades, hurt many African’s during 1750 to 1914.

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The Belgians also spread their language around, minimizing the use of tribal languages in an effort to diminish Congo’s culture completely. The Belgians made it clear that they were in charge and showed violence if the Congolese people continues to speak their native languages. If the people had the same beliefs, they would be more likely not to rebel. King Leopold and the Belgians prosper when Congolese people change their beliefs because this means that they have gained more power over the

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Some even it to consider his way of controlling Congo to be a genocide. King Leopold’s actions can be easily described as deceitful. The whole time he was king he had wanted to have the reputation of “a philanthropist and humanitarian.” (Hochschild p.92) King Leopold also “won much praise for his patronage of Christian missionaries.”

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(Conrad 46) This was another reason the natives were being treated so poorly, King Leopold II enforced a system of commission for colonists who would find the largest quantities of ivory, and told them to obtain it by any means necessary. The colonists ran around destroying the Congo under the impression that they are helping

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So Europe invaded Africa, took possession of Africa, and divided Africa into colonies of Europe. The period of invasion, lasting some twenty years, was more or less completed by 1900. There followed a longer period, between sixty and ninety years, of direct European rule, called colonial rule. This was a time of profound upheaval for all of Africa’s peoples. It brought irreversible changes” (4).

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In that year, he delivered a university lecture called “A Image of Africa; Racism in Heart of Darkness”. The Nigerian writer is outrage because of the description of the African people in the novella as barbaric and savages. This lecture is a direct response to Conrad’s work and its author did not hesitate to say explicitly that the novella inherits extreme racial slurs and condemns it. His target was nothing else but Heart of Darkness and in order to make the readers realize that it indeed contains racism, he supports his claims with examples quoted directly from the short novel to point out to the harsh description of Africa as the opposite of Europe and as the back of the

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Africa in this novella is portrayed as “the Heart of Darkness” the place where the men’s inner evil is exposed, this is done through their thoughts and actions. The contrast between the Thames River and the Congo River is also made evident in the novella. The Thames River is described as calm and peaceful. It is viewed as a city of light that is not mysterious.

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