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The Congo RiverEuropeans first encountered the Congo River in 1482.
However, no one traveled more than 200 miles upstream until 1877.
Kinshasa (the Central Station)
Matadi (the CompanyStation)
Belgium in the Congo
1878 – King Leopold II of Belgium asked explorer Henry Morton
Stanley to set up a Belgian colony in the Congo, saying he wanted
to “end slavery and civilize the natives.”
1885 – The Congress of Berlin forms Congo Free State, which was
ruled by Leopold II alone.
The Congress of Berlin is referred to in the book as “the
International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs.”
1879-1885:
Henry Morton
Stanley
explores the
region for
Leopold II of
Belgium
1890: Joseph
Conrad goes to
the Congo.
CONGO FREE
STATE(1892)
King Leopold and the Congo
After persuading other European powers (at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85) to give him personal possession of the Congo, King Leopoldused the Congo as a money-making resource, committing human rights violations in the process, as he built public works projects in Belgium with the money he accrued.
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King Leopold II (r. 1865 – 1909)
Belgian exploitation of
the Congo first focused
on the rubber industry.
Later on, the focus would
shift to ivory.
Ivory
In 1892, over a quarter of a million pounds of ivorywas exported from the Congo.
In Europe, it was used in making jewelry and other decorative items, piano keys, and billiard balls.
When Leopold declared (in 1892) that all natural resources in the Congo were his sole property, he gave the Belgians free reign to take whatever they wanted, however they wished.
Trade expanded at this time, and new stations were established farther and farther inland.
Atrocities
Documented atrocities committed by the Belgian
ivory traders include the severing of hands and heads.
Reports of this, combined with Conrad’s portrayal of
the system in Heart of Darkness, led to an
international protest movement against Belgium’s
presence in Africa.
Leopold reacted by outlawing these practices, but his
decree had little effect, and the Belgian parliament
finally took the king’s control away in 1908.
(However, Belgium did not grant independence to the
Congo until 1960.)
“It is blood-curdling to see [the
soldiers] returning with the hands of
the slain, and to find the hands of
young children amongst the bigger
ones...The rubber from this district
has cost hundreds of lives, and the
scenes I have witnessed, while
unable to help the oppressed, have
been almost enough to make me
wish I were dead... This rubber
traffic is steeped in blood, and if the
natives were to rise and sweep every
white person on the Upper Congo
into eternity, there would still be left
a fearful balance to their credit.”
-- Belgian Official
5-8 Million
Victims (50% of the population)
Motives?
Most Europeans in the 1890s felt that Africa needed exposure to European culture and technology for its inhabitants to “become more evolved.”
This responsibility was known as “the white man’s burden” and the fervor to bring Christianity and commerce to Africa grew.
In return for these “benefits,” the Europeans extracted huge amounts of rubber and ivory.
Comment from Stanley
“King Leopold found the Congo…cursed by cannibalism,
savagery, and despair; and he has been trying with patience,
which I can never sufficiently admire, to relieve it of its
horrors, rescue it from its oppressors, and save it from
perdition.” --H.M. Stanley
Kipling’s
“The White Man’s Burden”
Take up the White Man’s burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
14
Joseph Conrad
Born: 1857, Ukraine
His parents were political
activists who fought for the
abolition of serfdom and the
liberation of Polish lands from
Russian control.
They were first imprisoned and
then exiled to northern Russia,
where they contracted
tuberculosis and died, orphaning
11-year-old Joseph.
After being sent to live with his uncle, Conrad was sent to a boarding school at 13.
The owner’s daughter recalled,
“He stayed with us ten months... Intellectually he was extremely advanced but [he] disliked school routine, which he found tiring and dull; he used to say... he... planned to become a great writer.... He disliked all restrictions. At home, at school, or in the living room he would sprawl unceremoniously. He... suffer[ed] from severe headaches and nervous attacks”
In his adult life, his letters often described symptoms of depression.
At 16 (in 1874), Conrad went to Marseilles, France, to join the Merchant Navy.
He eventually became a British merchant sailor, then a master mariner, and finally, a British citizen, in 1886.
Most of his stories draw on his twenty years of experience working on and around ships.
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