Why Was King Leopold Able To Colonize Congo

Journalists play an important role in our history because they give us a view of our world and help us make connections to everyone. They would have to go extreme measures if needed to find more information because they want their story to be the highly accurate and the best one out there. In order for the people to understand what was going on in daily news, they would read what the journalists wrote. King Leopold II was able to colonize Congo with the help of the journalists and writers keeping quiet about what was really happening in Congo. King Leopold II was an ambitious man who only cared about the money and power. He was focused on buying land and in the 1870s, Africa was the best place to start a colony. To do all of this, Leopold pretended to like a humanitarian and philanthropist by holding international conferences. He pretended to help the Africans by wanting to abolish slave trade as part of his secretive plan to illegally take over African land. In reality, he would end
up having a forced labor harvesting ivory and rubber all for him self. Henry Stanley was a well- known journalist who had become the first white man to cross the African continent from east to west. Stanley’s work caught the eyes of King Leopold and he began helping Leopold build Congo secretly. Leopold wanted to send Stanley on missions to explore what was around and for anything that he could use. For a couple of years, Stanley was supervisor of the that were making trails, but he was not the best supervisor. He was cruel to the blacks and many of them died because of his punishments. His cover up was that the Africans were too lazy to do their work. Before Stanley began working for Leopold, he was sworn to secrecy about all of Leopold’s work so he had to make up lies in order to keep their cover. Leopold spoke strongly on abolishing slave trade and creating peace at a Geographical Conference in Brussels. The end result was the establishment of the International African Association. About four hundred Congo chiefs were forced to sign treaties that would give Leopold a complete trading monopoly, but he told others that he was opening Africa to free trade. The chiefs blindly went in to signing the treaties not knowing what they were for. George Washington Williams was a paid journalist who traveled to Europe and interviewed King Leopold. Williams was impressed with what Leopold was doing for Congo, but little did he know that it was all a cover up. As a journalist, Williams had the ability to keep searching for more information and evidence bout what Leopold was exactly doing. He discovered that Leopold was misleading about everything; he had violated human rights, and did not have any anything that was promised. Leopold was enraged when Williams found out about his plan so he decided to attack Williams. In order for all of Leopold’s plans to work, labor was a vital key to his success.
Men, women and even the children were chained by the next while doing their work. They were extremely malnourished, had lack of sleep and were being mistreated and it led to many of their deaths. Leopold was all about making money so he would make them produce large amounts of products at a time. If they were not cooperating or following the quota, their punishments included being lashed by a corkscrew whip twenty-five to one hundred times. To others it looked like Leopold kept emphasizing the ban on slave trade but some witnesses wanted to say that he was a hypocrite. He called his own slaves volunteers, but they were in chains. Leopold’s army would hold women, children and chiefs as hostages until the men met the quota of the amount of rubber. This clearly shows that King Leopold was lying to everyone that he wanted to ban slave trade and he would have the media cover up the
truth. King Leopold established a couple of associations that are suppose to help protect the people of Congo but instead; they are treating the Congolese people poorly. Their hands and feet would be cut off if they did not make enough rubber and sometimes if a village refused to cooperate, the whole village would be executed. As time went on, disease started to attack the people of Congo and Leopold blamed the diseases for the deaths. A large of amount of Africans was actually killed from being overworked. William Sheppard was on a missionary and he witnessed the harsh conditions that were going on in Congo. Sheppard wrote for the missionary magazines and he wrote articles about what he witnessed. He tried to expose what Leopold was actually doing but Leopold would do anything to keep his secret a secret. Everything that King Leopold II did while colonizing Congo was wrong and inhumane. He lied to everyone that he had a stance on banning slave trade; yet he had thousands of slaves working for him. He would have people’s limbs cut off just because they did not make enough rubber to reach the quota or would have the whole village executed if they did not cooperate. The slaves were not treated properly and that resulted in thousands of innocent people dying. The print media was related to humanitarianism because the media promotes ending world hunger, donating clothes to those in need, and many other things that better the lives of people. Being a journalist can be a dangerous job because the story can be so intriguing to you that you might actually go to far to get more information. Especially if you go to a foreign place and know very little background about the area, it can be dangerous. Journalists are the ones who retrieve the real information about stories. Writers and journalists could change the perceptions of imperialism because people will believe what they write in their stories or columns. If the journalist did tell everyone about Leopold’s actions, then he would not have been able to colonize Congo and all of the government would get rid of him. Being part of the government, you have to be careful about what you say because there is always someone that is listening and what they write can change people’s perception on the government. What they write can affect how an empire or country develops because the people might not agree with what was written. As word started going around about the truth of what King Leopold was actually doing in Congo, he tried to come up with other ways to keep everything a secret. Once something important or eye-catching is said, it will start to spread to everyone because words can travel fast. There were many witnesses of Leopold’s actions, but they were kept quiet and they might have been afraid to say anything because they didn’t want to deal with those who held power. In reality, nothing can be kept a secret because the media is everywhere and they are trained to recover vital information as quickly as possible.