Hoornaert, Andr and O. Louwers (1924). While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The royal palace is yet to give its own response. London: George Allen & Unwin. Leopold II | Biography, Facts, & Legacy | Britannica ADAM HOCHSCHILD. He wrote articles, appeared at public meetings, lobbied the rich and powerful tirelessly; and always his theme was the boundless opportunity for commercial exploitation of the lands he had discovered or, in his own words, to "pour the civilisation of Europe into the barbarism of Africa". Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. New and revised edition. Why did Leopold want the Congo? The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Using a wide variety of local and church sources, Jan Vansina, professor emeritus of history and anthropology at the University of Wisconsin and the leading ethnographer of Congo basin peoples, calculates that the Congo's population dropped by some 50 percent during this period, an estimate with which other modern scholars concur. When the ships turned around and steamed back to Africa, however, they carried no merchandise in exchange. [12] At the end of his physical resources, Stanley returned home, to be replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Francis de Winton, formerly a British Army officer. Although Stanley is best known as the man who found Livingstone, his trip across the Congo basin was the greater feat of exploration and had far more impact on history. Most of the monarchs in western Europe had been forced to largely yield political power to the electorate by the late 19th century, so Belgiums parliament and cabinet were the real locus of power, but Leopold used the prestige of the monarchy to lobby for pet projects. Detachments of his 19,000-man private army, the Force Publique, would march into a village and hold the women hostage, forcing the men to scatter into the rainforest and gather a monthly quota of wild rubber. Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities. Leopold II and the Congo Free State - HISTORY CRUNCH In January 1959, riots broke out in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) after a rally was held calling for the independence of the Congo. On 29 May 1885, after the closure of the Berlin Conference, the king announced that he planned to name his possessions "the Congo Free State", an appellation which was not yet used at the Berlin Conference and which officially replaced "International Association of the Congo" on 1 August 1885. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) In a TV debate this week, a former president of the Free University of Brussels, Herv Hasquin, argued there were "positive aspects" to colonisation, listing the health system, infrastructure, and primary education he said Belgium brought to Central Africa. This brutal practice was a catastrophe for the population of the Congo, and Leopold was eventually forced to give up his hold on the colony. A renewed global focus on racism is highlighting a violent colonial history that generated riches for Belgians but death and misery for Congolese.
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