The Accomplishments of King Leopold II

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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.

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