Murder, destruction, mayhem, three things the people of Kinshasa, Congo know too well. This city was started with Eurocentric ideals embedded into the very nature of the land. Originally named Leopoldville, claimed in the name of King Leopold II of Belgium by a British explorer known as Henry Stanley.1 The colony was established as the personal property of the King at the Berlin Conference in 1884. By 1885 King Leopold II had established the Congo as the new Congo Free State.2 The Belgian government seized control from Leopold II at the request of other nations. Leopold II was so destructive during his reign of the Congo, that Belgium needed to take control subsequently renaming the Free State to the Belgian Congo.3 During his rule, King Leopold II killed millions of Congolese from either work exhaustion or from any of the mass murders performed by the king’s men.4 The citizens of Belgium were unaware of how severe conditions were becoming in the Congo. Since only a handful of Belgians visited the Congo, very few spoke publicly against King Leopold II’s conquests. For example Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness, which discusses horrific conditions the natives faced from the point of view of a European steamboat captain floating down the river.5 Conrad wanted to show the readers the internal struggle the young captain faced. How can he be loyal to a King and country that treats its ‘citizens’ like lesser beings?6 Well in 1908, the Congo officially became the one and only colony under Belgium’s rule. This new administration had similar beliefs of power and colonization as King Leopold II but with less bloodshed. When the government seized power, Leopoldville became a central hub for European affairs.
Independence came a few ye...
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.... "'Le petit beige a voulufaire grand' THE TROUBLESOME CONSTRUCTION OF THE 'Residence du Gouverneur Goniral du Congo Beige' IN LEOPOLDVILLE, 1922-1960." Journal of the Faculty of Architecture . no. 8 (2000): 5-27. http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/2000/cilt20/sayi_1_2/5-27.pdf (accessed May 12, 2014).
Meece, Roger. U.S. Department of State: Diplomacy in action, "Democratic Republic of the Congo." Last modified Nov 04, 2013. Accessed May 10, 2014. http://www.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/congokinshasa/40495.htm.
Nelson, Samuel H. Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880-1940. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1994.
Vanthemsche, Guy. The Historiography of Belgian Colonialism in the Congo. Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2006.
Witte, Els, Jan Craeybeckx, and Alain Maynen. Political History of Belgium: From 1830s Onward. Brussels: Academic & Scientific Publishers, 2010.
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.
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.
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.
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.
King Leopold and his allies’ had great power over the Congo, which he soon exploited for its large supply of rubber. As said in the King Leopold’s Ghost, “For Europ...
“Leopold II- King of the Belgians” World History: King Leopold’s heart of Darkness. 2000. 5 Oct. 2002 <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Tielemans/hp50marc.htm.>
The beginning of this brutality started in 1897 when King Leopold of Belgium strived for more land and prosperity. He considered Congo to be “The magnificent African Cake.” He referencing Congo like this is understandable because Congo was three times bigger than the state of Texas, had a beautiful river that would assist in trade and had an abundance of
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.
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.
As a political figure, King Leopold of Belgium had minimal power, yet he acknowledged the political and financial advantages of colonization, and acquired the Congo as a private colony whereas Britain snatched up colonies globally, including the “crown jewel” of all colonies, India. Belgium and Britain demonstrated a stark contradiction of two opposing methods of colonization. These two countries methods’ of domination ultimately decided the fates of each party, ...
Congo was an astounding bestseller novel. It was a great fictional novel that took place in the depths of the Congo rainforest. The novel was later made into a movie. Both the novel and the movie were good, however, I prefer the novel. It just seemed like a more entertaining piece than the movie. This movie was based much upon the novel, but had many alternatives and a completely different ending than the novel.
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...
It is widely debated why exactly King Leopold decided to conquer the Congo, but the general consensus seems to be that it was out of the belief that “the highlands of the Congo may be as rich in gold as the mountains of the western slope of the American Continent” (Stead). In the mid-1870s, the King hired Henry Stanley, who was familiar with many parts of Africa, to help him go about conquering. During the following years Stanley stayed in Africa, talking various tribes into signing over their lands and rights. After this was completed the King officially took over the Congo, renaming it the Congo Free State. This was especially ironic because all natives of the country were either forced to give up their way of life in exchange for virtual slavery in the ivory trade, agriculture, or the rubber traffic, or die trying to escape fate. Leopold was undeterred by the amount of suffering and death in the Congo, brought on by his rule. Belgian soldiers and officials were known for their cruelty in their methods to make, and then keep, Congo natives wo...
In the 19th Century King Leopold II was the king of Belgium and he was looking for a way to expand his power and influence of the Belgium state. During this time imperialism was becoming very prominent, especially in European countries. Imperialism was a way for a country to easily gain wealth by implementing military force on another country or group of people. They would extract resources and goods from these places and, in its wake, imperialism destroyed these societies and their cultures. King Leopold II is a perfect example of European Imperialism and in his book King Leopold’s Ghost; Adam Hochschild details the effects that King Leopold II had on the Congo in Africa. Hochschild also argues that Leopold’s rule had an impact in the Congo
In a period leading up to the eventual Independence from Belgium in 1960, several political parties were formed. The populous argued for independence from Belgium due to many decades of brutality and corruption under Belgian colonization. There were many protests and riots fighti...