Colonialism: Belgian Congo
Be careful what you wish for/money isn't everything
His sister married a Habsburg and became empress of Mexico. After reigning for only 3 years, her husband was executed by firing squad and she was said to have gone insane. She spent the rest of her life in isolation.
His only son died at age 9 after falling in a pond and developing pneumonia.
Leopold had three daughters. He married them away at the age of 17 to men double their age.
One married Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Hapsburg throne. However, he had a drinking problem and had many affairs. One of these affairs ended with a suicide pact, leaving her a widow. She remarried a Hungarian nobleman, of a lesser rank and because of this her father never spoke to her again.
The other daughter of King Leopold was married a German prince. He was twice her age and had many affairs. When she, in turn, fell in love with a Croatian army officer. When her husband found out he gave her the choice of coming home to him or going to the insane asylum. She chose the asylum. There she stayed for 5 years without a single visit from her family.
Her son, brought up in their troubled marriage, had his own tragedy. He fell in love with a commoner. She too fell in love with him and wanted to marry. However, he was refused the option and was threatened to lose inheritance and titles if he did so. Therefore, he decided to write her a check as compensation and say goodbye one last time. However, this was a great insult to a girl who genuinely loved him. When she met up with him she shot him five times and threw acid in his face. Then she shot herself dead. The prince lived for another 6 months in suffering, then died.
King Leopold's first wife died and years afterward, at age 65, he would begin a relationship with a 16 year old prostitute. He left much of his vast wealth to her when he died at 75 and she 26.
Power and Responsibility
After Stanley's greatly publicized exploration into Africa, Leopold wanted to speak to him about the lands he found. Leopold sent him an invitation to the palace. He offered Stanley thousands of dollars a year to support Leopold's idea of owning the central African lands that Stanley had just explored.
Leopold expressed his interest in the lands in humanitarian terms. He told people that it would be good for the Africans who lived there. He would bring them enlightenment, western values and open them up to trade and Capitalism. He expressed a desire to civilize them and rescue them from Muslim slavery.
Leopold sent Stanley back to Africa to make treaties with chief tribesmen. Stanley tricked many tribesmen to sign over their land. Signing contracts wasn't a practice in central Africa and so many didn't understand what they were signing. Nevertheless, Leopold used the treaties to justify his ownership.
At the Berlin Conference of 1885, the European powers met up and discussed how to split Africa amongst themselves. No Africans were present or consulted in this deal. King Leopold, with the endorsement of the famous explorer, a hundred treaties in hand and the endorsement of the United States, successfully laid claim to ruling the central African region known as the Congo. He named the capital after himself, Leopoldville.
Around this time, a great invention sounded doom for the Congolese people. In the United States, Charles Goodyear invented a process of making super strong rubber. He died poor and never made any money from it. However, a few years after his death, a Scottish man by the name of John Dulop was watching his son ride a bike over cobblestones. He had the idea to put an inflatable rubber tube around the wheels, inventing the first tire. In the middle of the 19th century, rubber became a great commodity and demand was through the roof. Unfortunately for the people of the Congo, the Congolese jungle was full of rubber trees. King Leopold sent Belgians to the Congo to aquire its resources.
E. D. Morel
Morel worked at the port of Antwerp in Belgium. He was in charge of logging what went in and out of the port. He saw vast amounts of valuable ivory, rubber and valuable materials coming in. However, most of the ships going out carried weapons and chains.
What did E. D Morel conclude?
An increasing number of journalists visited the Belgian Congo. With each visit the treatment of the Africans was shared with the world. In America, Mark Twain was one of many public figures who expressed outrage with King Leopold.
Leopold's Apologetics
King Leopold responded to the accusations of cruelty and greed by saying:
I gave them jobs. They were lazy and didn't have work ethic.
They weren't using the rubber to its full potential.
Yes, some of them were enslaved but by making them apart of Christian slavery, we're saving them from Muslim slavery.
They're savages and don't understand civility like the white man. Violence is all that they understand.
Belgian Bias
Over the previous 50 years, Belgian had gone from a tiny European after-thought like Leichenstein and Luxembourg to a global superpower like Germany and the Netherlands. National pride was up and the people prospered from the wealth flooding into their nation. National monuments with beautiful architecture decorated public spaces.
So when some journalists criticized the King and the actions of Belgians in general, many Belgians didn't want to believe it.
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