Essay On King Leopold's Ghost

King Leopold II of Belgium is known in history for his quest for African colonies and all of the atrocities he caused. Leopold II came to power in when he became King in 1865. When he became King, he was focused on mainly money and territory. King Leopold viewed the Congo as his own personal property, he first claimed the Congo in 1884 during the Berlin Conference, with the Congo Free State being declared in the following year. This became widely known as the European Scramble for Africa. The atrocities that Leopold caused were first exposed by American and British writers amd campaigners. With this publicity spreading, it eventually caused Leopold to hand over the country. In Adam Hochschild’s book, “King Leopold’s Ghost” reveals Leopold’s

evil desire for money and trying to maximize his profits from rubber and ivory.
For quite a while, most of the European population falsely believed that King Leopold spent his large fortune on helping develop public works in the Congo and making an effort to stop slavery in East Africa. King Leopold convinced explorers, politicians, as well as newspapers that he planned to help Africans, when actually, his goal was to find imperial territory for himself. In 1876, Leopold held a Geographical Conference in Central Africa, where he invited famous explorers to talk about ending the slave trade in East Africa and try to spread European civilization throughout these territories. At the conference, he tried to persuade the explorers by making his trying to make his idea sound fascinating and challenging, “To open to civilization the only part of our globe which it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness which hangs over entire peoples, is, I dare say, a crusade worthy of this century of progress” (Hochschild 44).
Throughout the reign of terror under King Leopold II, the population of COngo was dramatically reduced into half, with as many as 8 million Africans losing their lives. Many were beaten or whipped to death for not reaching their expected resources amount of ivory and rubber. Some of the Africans were even worked to death, being forced into labor that resembled slavery in many ways. Diseases affected many of the Africans, killing a good portion of them, with it spreading throughout the Congo by Europeans. Lastly, many Africans in the Congo died from famine. King Leopold's cruel army would destroy crops and take the villagers’ food, leaving the citizens of these villages with next to nothing. For centuries, African slave dealers had raided Congo, in attempts to sell their citizens to American and European captains who sailed Africa's west coast, as well as to traders who took slaves to the Arab world from the continent's east coast. The European colonization of Africa was can be known as one of the greatest conquests in human history. By 1910 almost entirely of Africa had become European colonies or land, like South Africa, and was controlled by white European settlers.
The scramble for Africa started from 1800’s to the start of the First World War in 1914. Before the 19th century, most of the world did not know of the horrid things that were happening in Africa. Leopold was able to colonize Congo for its resources during the Scramble for Africa through forced labor. Africa provided large areas of lands under that were under the control of the Europeans. Colonies were formed and forced labor was enforced to bring land and labor together. The main reason of forced labor was to get raw materials, ivory and rubber, for processing in European industries. Leopold collected public support from citizens at home by publicly announcing his purpose to Christianize and modernize the Congolese population, while at the same time, he was planning on forcing men, women, and children into labor to attain ivory and rubber for business purposes. With what became known as the "rubber terror" spreading throughout the Congolese rainforest, Adam Hochschild states that, entire villages were wiped out with there being hundreds of dead bodies that were left in rivers and lakes. These soldiers kept hands cut off the dead bodies as evidence for white commanders to show how many people had been killed.
In 1890, an African-American named George Washington Williams discovered for himself the true nature of Leopold's Congo.

George Washington Williams was a former soldier graduated from Howard University,with a degree in theology. Williams was also was a newspaper writer, as well as a former politician and historian (Hochschild, 102-105). After George Washington Williams was introduced to Henry Shelton Sanford during his lobbying campaign in Washington, Williams became very interested with the Congo and saw an open opportunity for African-Americans (Hochschild, 105). He met with Leopold for an interview, where he was as enthralled by the king and his Godly mission in Africa, just like many others who had met with the King before (Hochschild, 106). While attempting to recruit young, black Americans for work in the Congo, he was faced with questions regarding life

there.
Edmund Dene Morel was a clerk out of Liverpool. Edmund’s job as a clerk was to supervise the unloading and reloading of the ships that came through Belgium and as he was doing this he came to notice the massive amounts of rubber and ivory that were being taken to Belgium, but there being next to nothing being exchanged for them to Africa. In Hochschild's book he states, “"There is no trade going on here. Little or nothing is being exchanged for the rubber and ivory…with almost no goods being sent to Africa to pay for them, he realizes that there can be only one explanation for their source: slave labor" (Hochschild 2). Once Edmund Dene Morel came to learn this, he decided to act upon it. He began to dedicate his life to try and stop slavery in the Congo. Within in this time he wrote three books on the matter, as well as other informational resources. He would travel all around Britain too, in attempts to spread awareness of the horrid things going on in the Congo. Morel was able to also attain allies to help him and create a larger platform to protest against slavery in the Congo..
Adam Hochschild’s book, “King Leopold’s Ghost” is much more than just all of the atrocities King Leopold caused, but could also be viewed as one of the first Human Rights Movement.

George Washington Williams, the first and perhaps bravest campaigner, initially sounded the alarm, but he was ignored largely because he was African American. Edmund Dene Morel was able to have more success in raising awareness for the Congo when he noticed an imbalance in trade coming in and out of Belgium. As Hochschild shows, not only was Leopold II a monster for what he did in the Congo, but in other areas and with other people of his life (including his wife, his daughters, and virtually everyone he encountered other than, perhaps, his mistress Caroline Lacroix, younger than him by forty-eight years) he was thoroughly amoral and supremely egocentric. He was one of the most reprehensible people of

history.