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Achievements Of King Leopold In Congo
Leopold II and the Congo Free State
Topic about congo
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King Leopold II formed the Congo Free State in 1884 at the Berlin Conference. King Leopold’s goal was to extract as much and as many resources from the CFS as he could. Leopold formed the Force Publique to stop the arab slave trade in upper congo but in actuality the Force Publique was used to maximize production from the workers. The Force Publique was made up of belgian soldiers and mercenaries. Locals were recruited to help the Force Publique.
Local chiefs supplied workers to rubber farms. Workers were often paid little to nothing. Some chiefs rebelled by ambushing army units, burning down rubber farms, and fleeing into the wilderness to escape working. To suppress these rebellions the Force Publique would burn down villages, and followed rebels into the forest. Rebels found would be shot and killed. The Force Publique cut off the hands of their victims to prove they did not waste their bullets. Soldiers who missed or wasted ammunition would cut off the hands of living people to make up their quota.
Eventually a man named E D Morel while working at a british shipping company noticed many commodities were being exported from the CFS but only guns for the Force Publique were being shipped to Congo. Nothing needed to fuel a colony was being exported to the CFS. E D Morel resigned and devoted time to bring awareness to issues in the CFS. In 1903 E D Morel convinced the british government to look into human rights abuses in the CFS. The british government instructed Roger Casement, the british consul in the CFS, to tour the territory and report his findings. What Roger Casement found impacted him so much that in 1904 he formed the Congo Reform Association with E D Morel. The Congo Reform Association pushed political powers to invest...
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...ors cleared out ABAKO supporters who had gathered for a political meeting. Immediate riots broke out in which Congolese attacked European properties. When the riots had ended 49 Congolese were killed and 101 Congolese were wounded. On January 13th, 1959 Belgium made a statement stating that their goal was to move towards independence. At this point another political party rose to prominence in the form of the MNC lead by Patrice Lumumba.
In the May of 1960 an election was held with Lumumba receiving the largest number of votes. Lumumba’s victory forced Belgium to make him the prime minister. Another election was held after this election in which Kasavubu won and became the president. On June 30, 1960 the Democratic Republic of Congo received independence with both a prime minister and president. This lead to a conflict over who was the actual leader of the country.
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.
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
In 1962 France met with the FLN and they all agreed that Algeria should decide their own rights. Although, Algeria’s formal independence day is recognized as 5 July 1962. When the French left Algeria did not have a leader, so they appointed Ahmed Ben Bella who became the republic's first president in 1963. Algerian government then took over businesses, farms, and banks. Ahmed Ben Bella then personally controlled the army and the government. Bella was overthrown shortly after he aligned Algeria with the soviet union. They replaced him with Houard Bournediene who focused on reforming Algeria by hiring skilled workers and restarting the economy (golbalEDGE), (The World
The Force Publique was created in 1885, when King Leopold II of Belgium, who held the Congo Free State as his private property, ordered his Secretary of the Interior to create a military and police force for the State.... ... middle of paper ... ... Leopold was able to colonize and pillage Congo for its resources during the Scramble for Africa through forced labor.
After discovering what was happening in the Congo, he started a campaign to end Leopold’s Congo. He gained support by a Baptist missionary Alice Harris who had taken pictures of the human suffering in the Congo, which Morel was able to put on newspapers. Morel was also able to recruit Booker T. Washington and Mark Twain to his cause. King Leopold II was finally exposed after a Commission of Inquiry confirmed all crimes he had committed after taking in the testimonies of eyewitnesses including natives of the Congo. Leopold profited around $1.1 billion from his Congo.
... to the interior as soon as possible, and to send reports soon”(195). Casement was nineteen years old when he first saw the Congo as he was working on a Elder Dempster ship. For two years he had been sending reports to the Foreign Office about the harsh conditions in the Leopold`s Congo. He spent days at Lake Tumba where rubber slavery operations were ran. Counting the number of people held hostage in a village because they did not meet the rubber quota. Casement wrote in his diary daily talking about the horror he had faced during his adventure. Casement found someone he could share his feelings with about the conditions in the Congo. He had read Edmund Morel`s writings and wanted to meet him. The two shared evidence about what they uncovered in the Congo. Together Morel and Casement would form an organization devoted mainly to campaigning for justice in the Congo.
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...
The director’s attempt at bringing the story of Patrice Lumumba to the “silver screen” had political intentions. It had intentions of breaking post-colonial hegemonic forces that portrayed Lumumba as a nationalist dictator. In regards to race and class in Congo, I will refer to the work of Franz Fanon, in particular his book entitled The Wretched of the Earth. In this book Fanon develops a theory of “dual citizenship” required by the colonizers in order to validate the colonization process.
They finally gained their independence in 1975 under the first Prime Minister, Henck Arron. Five years after received their independence from the Netherlands, they were taken over by a military regime and became a socialist republic, led by military leader Desire Bouterse. In 1982, after the murder of 15 important opposition leaders, both the United States and the Netherlands cut off any financial aid that was previously being given to the country. This caused the economy to take a nosedive and in 1987, after increasing economic pressure arose, a democratic election took place (Central Intelligence Agency 2014).
According to BBC News, The Congo’s troubles started back in the early 19th century, when Belgium colonized the Congo and enslaved its citizens. It wasn’t until the 1960’s when the Congo finally gained its independence, however Joseph Mobutu came to power in 1965 and let the nation (renamed Zaire) fall apart due to his exploitation of the land’s abundance of natural resources (BBC News). In 1994, the Genocide in Rwanda occurred, were the dominant Hutu extremists slaughtered 800,000 ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda (ECI). According to the ICRtoP, the exiled Hutu extremists found refuge in Zaire and allied themselves with Mobutu. Rwanda and Uganda later invaded Zaire that year in what was known as the “First Congo War”, resulting in the overthrow of Mobutu, the installment of Laurent-Desire Kabila (who renamed the country to the DRC), and ...
Since the late 1800’s, almost all of Africa had been under European colonial rule, but this changed drastically in 1960. Sixteen African nations gained their independence that year, including the former Belgian Congo, which became the Democratic Republic of the Congo on June 30. One of the key personalities that made this possible was Patrice Lumumba, who experienced widespread support in gaining independence and became the first Prime Minister of the DROC. However, he lost much of this support once he was in office, and lasted fewer than 200 days. Lumumba’s ability to communicate was a key reason for his success and failure.
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...
...ermore established imperial rule in the Congo. The Force Publique was Leopold’s governing army. They were to oversee the work of the now colonized people of the Congo. Another of Leopold’s objectives was to gain wealth from his acquired colony. With the Force Publique, he would force the Congolese to gather ivory from the land. Those who refused had their elders, women and children held hostage until they complied. Leopold’s International African Association was to be a humanitarian project that would help to end slavery, however, by forcing the people to work for him, he was enslaving those he supposedly sought to help. When the popularity of the bicycle rose in the late 19th, manufactures were in need of rubber for their tires. Leopold saw this as an opportunity to gain more wealth and quickly had the Force Publique force the people into harvesting rubber.
Over a period from 1960-1965, the first Republic of the Congo experienced a period of serious crisis. There was a terrible war for power that displayed senseless violence and the desperation to rule. There were many internal conflicts among the people. The country eventually gained independence from Belgium. For many countries this would be a time for celebration. Unfortunately for the people of the Congo this became a time to forget. Almost immediately after independence and the general elections, the country went into civil war. Major developed cities like Katanga and Kasai wanted to be independent from the Lumumba government. Different factions started to fight the government and Katanga and Kasai tried to secede from the rest of the country out of fear of the mutinous army that was out of control looting and killing.
As Marlow passes through the waters of the Congo, it is easily visible the trouble of the natives. “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth half coming out, half effaced with the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.” (20) Show that the holding of these colonies has started. The soldiers have come in and taken the inhabitants and are destroying them and taking from them the one thing they deserve over everything, life. The imperialists seem to not care about the Africans and are just there for their land.