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Essays on imperialism and decolonization on congo from belgium
Essays on imperialism and decolonization on congo from belgium
Essays on imperialism and decolonization on congo from belgium
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“‘I will give them my Congo,’ Leopold told Stinglhamber, ‘but they have no right to know what I did there.’”1
King Leopold’s Ghost is a historical analysis by Adam Hochschild, professor at Berkley, of Belgium’s King Leopold II’s orchestration of a private empire in the Congo at the end of the 1800s. During this particular time in history, the great political powers in the world set their eyes upon Africa as a prospect for exploration, annexation and exploitation. In King Leopold’s Ghost, Hochschild recounts the great human cost of Belgium’s imperial effort, and the willingness of the world to turn a blind eye to the blatant terrorization of a people. This book is an account of the atrocities which took place in the Congo at the bidding of King Leopold II, why they happened, why they did not stop, and most importantly why no one remembers what happened to those unfortunate peoples of the Congo as a result of imperialism and globalization.
Hochschild begins this tale with the extraordinary geographical efforts of those men which the world credits the discovery and mapping of the African continent: Diogo Cao, Captain Tuckey, David Livingstone, Lieutenant Cameron, and Henry Morton Stanley. It is thanks to the wooing of Stanley by Leopold that the Congo was trapped within the clutches of the Belgian king. On behalf of Leopold, Stanley surveyed the Congo area, made treaties with the natives consigning their lands to Leopold, and worked towards establishing an effective mode of transportation throughout its dense jungles. Hochschild reveals Leopold to be a deft man of business and cunning, tricking the world into accepting the many fronts for his operations in the Congo, and accepting his position as its sole ruler. Using his unwitt...
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... King Leopold’s Ghost, my understanding of African history, the Rubber Terror, and the Scramble for Africa was shaky at best. Upon its conclusion, my vision of world history, specifically the effects of imperialism has been greatly broadened. I have found this expose one of the most compelling works of the century and would gladly recommend it for any person interested in the truth of the world’s forgotten past.
Works Cited
Notes
1 Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's Ghost: a Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 294
2 Hochschild. King Leopold’s Ghost, 259
3 "AC's Reviews > King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa." Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/478211737?book_show_action=true&page=1 (accessed February 15, 2014).
4 Hochschild. King Leopold’s Ghost, 33
The book mainly chronicles the efforts of King Leopold II of Belgium which is to make the Congo into a colonial empire. During the period that the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River.
Alas, in 1961 Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by a US- sponsored plot 7 months after independence, and replaced him with a “puppet dictator named Mobutu” (Kingsolver). In her book, Barbara Kingsolver surfaces a forgotten part of our nation’s history in the exploitation of the Congo through her main characters, the Price family, who are missionaries sent to the Kilanga village. Through characters’ narratives that “double as allegories for the uneasy colonial marriage between the West and Africa” (Hamilton, Jones), Kingsolver creates a relatable way for her readers to understand the theme she is trying to convey, which is “‘what did we do to Africa, and how do we feel about it?’” (Snyder). Kingsolver began with this theme and developed the rest of the novel around it, just as she does with her other works, and sticking with her trademark technique, she utilizes her book as a vessel for “political activism, an extension of the anti-Vietnam protests” she participated in college (Snyder).
Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost" is a lost historical account starting in the late 19th century continuing into the 20th century of the enslavement of an entire country. The book tells the story of King Leopold and his selfish attempt to essentially make Belgium bigger starting with the Congo. This was all done under an elaborate "philanthropic" public relations curtain deceiving many countries along with the United States (the first to sign on in Leopold's claim of the Congo). There were many characters in the book ones that aided in the enslavement of the Congo and others that help bring light to the situation but the most important ones I thought were: King Leopold, a cold calculating, selfish leader, as a child he was crazy about geography and as an adult wasn't satisfied with his small kingdom of Belgium setting his sites on the Congo to expand. Hochschild compares Leopold to a director in a play he even says how brilliant he is in orchestrating the capture of the Congo. Another important character is King Leopold's, as Hochschild puts it, "Stagehand" Henry Morton Stanley. He was a surprisingly cruel person killing many natives of the Congo in his sophomore voyage through the interior of Africa (The first was to find Livingston). Leopold used Stanley to discuss treaties with African leaders granting Leopold control over the Congo. Some of the natives he talked to weren't even in the position to sign the treaties or they didn't know what they were signing.
Leopold paid a large monthly price to a journalist to ensure a stream of sympathetic articles about his activities in the Congo. The French did not feel threatened by Belgium or by Leopold’s claims. Their main fear was that when the king ran out of money, as they were sure he would, in his expensive plan to build a railway, he might sell the whole territory to their rival, Britain. When talking to the British, Leopold hinted that if he didn’t get all the land he wanted, he would leave Africa completely, which meant he would sell the Congo to France. The bluff worked, and Britain gave in. Staff in place and tools in hand, Leopold set out to build the infrastructure necessary to exploit his colony. Leopold’s will treated the Congo as if it were just a piece of uninhabited land to be disposed of by its owner. Leopold established the capital of his new Congo state at the port town of
...abor to get what he wanted, ivory and rubber. Leopold was able to colonize and pillage Congo for its resources during the Scramble for Africa through forced labor. The quote that sums up my essay and the book is best described at the end of chapter 15. Massacring huge numbers of natives will eventually frighten the survivors into gathering rubber. This shows the intentions of forced labor by the Force Publique and the reason for the population drop in Congo during Leopold’s rule.
Hochschild concludes that the world must never forget the events of Leopold’s Congo. This event is evidence that it is the result of human greed that led to so much suffering, injustice, and corruption.
George Washington Williams was a black American. He had come to the Congo over a route that seemed almost as if it took him through several different lives. He was in the U.S. Army, fought battles, attended University`s, and graduated from Newton in 1874. Williams married and became a pastor. He also created a milestone in the literature of human rights and of investigative journalism. This work is titled An Open Letter to His Serne Majesty Leopold 2nd , King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo, by Colonel the Honorable Geo.W. Williams, of the Untied States of America(102). As well as submitting a statement to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations urging recognition of the International Association of the Congo. Williams had a plan to go to the Congo to collect material for his book. As Williams traveled up the the great river he had time to take in Africa. When he reached Stanley Falls he could no longer contain what he had felt and saw. He then writes h...
Book Review of King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild What some have considered to be the first international scandal of the modern era took place in the Congo from 1890 until 1910. King Leopold II of Belgium was at the head of this so-called scandal. Although Europe and the rest of the world seemed to have forgotten the victims of these crimes, there is a considerable amount of material to use when attempting to recreate the horror that took place in Leopold's Congo. This is exactly what Adam Hochschild is attempting to do by writing this book. By using the written words of mostly Europeans and Americans, which creates a distorted view of history, he wants to show that the Holocaust type event that took place in the Congo is something that should never be forgotten in our history.
The land Leopold had obtained was about eighty times larger than that of Belgium itself. Plus, Leopold was proclaimed the “sovereign” ruler of all the Congo Free Sta...
During the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, King Leopold II of Belgium invaded the Congo and used it to procure more wealth for himself and his nation. In doing so, as many as ten million Congolese were decimated, and they faced unspeakable horrors. Hochschild argues in King Leopold’s Ghost that all actions taken by King Leopold II were done out of nothing more than sheer greed and selfishness, and he used any means necessary to get what he wanted, and manipulated others into following suit by exploiting their own greed and racism. The only way the brutality was combated, Hochschild further goes on to describe, was through the actions of the few with a higher moral character.
During the 17th century, slavery was a widely used commodity with the Europeans, little do people know however that African kings also had and accepted slavery in their own nations. King Nzinga Mbemba of Congo and the King of Ouidah had similarities on the issue of slavery; they tolerated the use of slaves. Congo’s king had no contingency with slavery; in fact, he had slaves in his country. When the Portuguese were purchasing goods in Congo, the king had men “investigate if the mentioned goods are captives or free men” (NZ, 622). The fact that the king differentiates the men between ‘free’ and ‘captives’ illustrates that not all people in Congo are free. Whether these captives are from the country of Congo or not, they are still caught and held all across the nation against their will. King Mbemba kept slaves because the population of Congo was vastly declining due to the slave trade. In his letter, he pleads with the king of Portug...
Zins, Henryk S. "Joseph Conrad and the Early British Critics of Colonialism in the Congo." Lubelskie Materiały Neofilologiczne 22.(1998): 155-169. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Sun. 08 May 2011.
While Leopold II, the King of Belgium, desperately wanted an overseas colony, The Belgian people did not share his enthusiasm; which created the feelings of neglect and apathy Belgium had towards Congo. The Congo Free State, established “in the margins of the Berlin Conference” in 1885, allowed Leopold to “gain international recognition of his possession” which he had begun to take control of since the 1870s. However, while Leopold was securing control of the Congo, the Belgian people were not interested in controlling colonies, as they believed that colonies “would merely soak up resources that would be better used for social purposes at home.” Thus, the Belgian people decided to solve the problem of having an unwanted colony by separating the Belgian government from...
Although numerous critics (including Johanna M. Smith, Peter Hyland, Herbert Klein, and Garrett Stewart) have drawn attention to how Marlow's lie to the Intended informs the whole preceding text and how that culminating scene with the Intended is connected to Marlow's initial impression of Brussels as a whited sepulchre (how appropriate in light of Belgian King Leopold II's hypocritical defense of his private company's rapacious exploitation of the ludicrously- named Congo Free State!), few have until recently focussed on how the lie affects the reader's reaction to Marlow as the protagonist and narrator of Conrad's Congo tale.
While the economic and political damage of the scramble for Africa crippled the continent’s social structure, the mental warfare and system of hierarchy instituted by the Europeans, made the continent more susceptible to division and conquest. The scramble for partition commenced a psychological warfare, as many Africans were now thrust between the cultural barriers of two identities. As a result, institutions for racial inferiority became rooted in the cultural identity of the continent. This paper will expound on the impact of colonialism on the mental psyche of Africans and the employment of the mind as a means to seize control. I will outline how the mental hierarchy inculcated by the Europeans paved the way for their “divide and conquer” tactic, a tool essential for European success. Through evidence from a primary source by Edgar Canisius and the novel, King Leopold’s Ghost, I will show how colonial influences heightened the victimization of Africans through psychological means. I will culminate by showing how Robert Collins fails to provide a holistic account of colonialism, due to his inability to factor in the use of psychological warfare as a means to the end. By dissecting the minds of both the colonizer and the colonized, I hope to illustrate the susceptibility of African minds to European influences and how psychological warfare transformed Africans from survivors to victims during colonialism.