King Leopold's Congo Research Paper

Leopold’s Congo

During the nineteenth century many of the European empires raced for an exclusive access to new territories in search of natural resources or new markets for produced goods. The process of colonization was always a form of exploitation of the weak and underdeveloped countries. Belgian King Leopold II was one of the ambitious monarchs interested in acquiring a “slice of African Cake”. Ultimately, his reign over his Congo Free State was a regime of terror and monumental atrocities. The Belgium King, under a humanitarian pretense, was the person behind massive exploitation of African Congo. In his effort to maximize the profits from ivory and wild rubber, Leopold II imposed a system of torture, slavery and slaughter.
His Congo Free State became nothing less of a forced labor camp, and his cruel regime brought holocaust upon the Congolese people.
Leopold created plans to make the vast Congo territory his personal colony as soon as African explorations of Henry Morton Stanley became public. Despite Belgium’s disagreement with Leopold’s colonization ideas, he never stopped pursuing his plan. To get opposition’s approval Leopold II created a spurious philanthropic plan for the Congo and under this pretense continued his work. In 1878 the king asked Stanley to lead an exploration to provide bases and a headquarters. He also employed American businessman Henry Shelton Stanford to lobby in the United States for his “humanitarian" plan for Congo. However, as “King-Sovereign” of the newly acquired territory, Leopold’s main interest in the Congo was only “in extracting every possible penny of wealth – as the Congo’s proprietor” (Hochschild, 87).
Leopold’s began his exploitation of the Congo by acquiring massive amounts of ivory from elephant’s tusks.
Ivory was in a very in high demand in Europe at the time, as it could be easily carved into many items, anything from jewelry pieces to false teeth. Leopold gave a clear command to Stanley to “purchase all the ivory which is to be found on the Congo” (Hochschild, 70). His orders were soon obeyed by Congo State officials and their African subordinates. Indeed, they got their hands on all the ivory they had stumbled upon, except that they did not “purchase” anything. In most cases they simply confiscated the goods. Since transactions in money were not allowed in the Congo, the Africans were paid in small amount of clothes, beads or the bran rod (territory’s main currency decreed by the state). Furthermore, the state officials forbade to sell or deliver ivory to anyone else than Leopold’s
agents.
The collection of ivory demanded some sort of transportation system between the trading posts and the port towns. Consequently, ten of thousand porters were drafted to carry the ivory. In dealing with his recruits, Leopold encouraged his officials to utilize methods “which will best shake their idleness and make them realize the sanctity of work” (Hochschild, 118). The porters were nothing but slaves. They were often forced to carry heavy loads of ivory while being chained by the neck. If they were given any food, it was only an in a quantity that was necessary for their survival. Some of porters were forced to carry loads over long distances which often led to their death. Even children were put to work. With Leopold’s approval, use of the forced labor in the Congo became widespread at that time.
Despite all Leopold’s efforts, ivory did not yield the expected levels of revenue. The king’s attention quickly shifted to labor-intensive collection of sap from plants as the global demand for rubber exploded. Leopold did not publicly disclose his profits made from the rubber business but it was estimated at many tens of millions (and this in a time when even one million was a massive fortune). He spent part of his profits on a “string of monuments, new palace wings, museums, pavilions”, as well as parks, galleries, promenades and golf courses all over Belgium (Hochschild, 168). However, keeping control over this “gold mine” was more complex than controlling the ivory business. In order to manage workers who had to walk deep into the woods in search of rubber plants, Leopold established a hostage-taking policy. Instructions on how to successfully apply such policy were given out to each agent and each state post in form of a manual (Hochschild, 162). Typically, the soldiers would attack the natives, seize the women, children or the elders and keep them hostage until the required quota of harvested rubber was delivered to them. Leopold’s private army, the Force Publique, played an essential role in application of the hostage-taking policy.
Running his own army was a dream of Leopold’s, second only to running his own colony.
Both ideas were met with strong opposition from Belgian legislators. In 1888 Leopold organized his African mercenaries into the Force Publique, which soon included over nineteen thousand soldiers and thus became the most powerful army in Africa (Hochschild, 123). The use of Force Publique fully allowed Leopold II to rule the Congo as his personal domain. This private army was first utilized in suppressing the many rebellions against Leopold’s regime. Ultimately, this army of slaves became an integral part of the rubber collecting process. Armed with modern weapons and the chicotte — a whip made of hippopotamus hide – the Force Publique became Leopold’s “weapon of mass destruction”. This cruel army was responsible for the countless crimes on the Congolese people: mutilations, beheadings, rape and murder, and those he escaped them were still likely to die from starvation, exhaustion or wide spreading diseases. Although most of the records were destroyed, it has been estimated that during Leopold’s twenty-three year regime over Congo, its population had been reduced by approximately ten million people (Hochschild,
233).
Leopold’s Congo Free State was anything but. It was, in fact, a giant forced labor camp and a personal domain of Leopold II. The king made a fortune by robbing the Congolese people of their homeland’s natural resources, and using them as forced labor to extract those resources. Further, his oppression resulted in a massacre of Congolese people, with countless incidents of mutilations, beheadings and rape. Many of them were beaten to death for failing to meet strict quotas, while millions more died from physical exhaustion, famine and infectious disease. King Leopold II was beyond doubt a mass murderer and the person responsible for the holocaust of the Congolese.

Works Cited
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold 's ghost: a story of greed, terror, and heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Print