Development Factors In King Leopold's Era

Development Factors in King Leopold's Era

Amnah Altaher

University of Dayton

Development Factors in King Leopold's Era

Several kings ruled for many years, but there are no manifestation of the development and improvement in those countries they ruled. However, some rulers who ruled countries for years, they resulted with different positive change in those societies. King Leopold II became the king of Belgium; he privately controlled and owned the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. In 1908, the area was annexed by Belgium as a colony known as the Belgian Congo. Leopold used his personal control to strip the county of vast amounts of wealth, largely in the form of ivory and rubber. These labor-intensive industries were serviced by slave labor, and the local peoples were forced to work through various means, including torture, imprisonment, maiming and terror. There are three factors that consider relevant in explaining how King Leopold of Belgium acquired an African empire in the Congo which are exploration, industrial technology, and media.

The first factor, exploration was considering an important factor that played a good role for King Leopold’s to acquire his empire. There were several explores who helped him to explorer rare keys that enable him to ruled the empire. The first character is Sir Henry Morton Stanley who was a Welsh journalist and explorer, famous for several expeditions to Africa. In chapter one the author motioned a perfect background of his life; he traveled a lot from place to place. One point that he was the founder of Dr. Livingston and The important thing that he In 1874, Stanley returned to Africa and, leaving from Zanzibar, traversed the continent along the length of th...

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...ted to Leopold's control of the media.

On the other hand, Leopold's adversaries also used the media—but in a different way. Morel established his own illustrated weekly newspaper, which served as an unofficial clearinghouse for stories about Congo and African atrocities. Whereas Leopold spent vast sums of money, Morel spent vast amounts of time. His willingness to oppose Leopold made him the natural recipient of any anti-Leopold news, and Morel routinely received information deliberately leaked from Congo. Finally, official governmental reports were largely beyond Leopold's direct control. Thus, the Casement Report and the Commission of Inquiry Report both had profound impacts on the media portrayal of Leopold's colony. That the colony was eventually annexed by Belgium is adequate testimony to the power of media manipulation, an obvious secondary theme in the text.