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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
I read this in my freshman year African studies class in college. I thought it was entertaining and an interesting read.
The European powers began to take over the continent of Africa, cutting the land up into small regions controlled by the European nations. One of the most notorious of these Europeans countries to acquire a sizable amount of land was the country of Belgium with their shrewd leader, King Leopold II. During his reign over the territory of the Congo, he brought with him death and destruction. His whole reason for controlling the territory was to make money and to gain himself more power and prestige within the world. What happened in the Congo region was a holocaust on the scale of the one that would be created by the Nazi’s in Germany half a century later. The devastation caused during Leopold’s reign exterminated entire populations and destroyed multiple civilizations; imperialism took a great toll on the lives of people in Africa.
The imperialism of the African continent by the European countries is what in fact really devastated African populations, not the greater known African slave trade, although that did contribute to the problem. The interior of Africa was hit lesser due to the slave trade than the coastal ports; the ruin to the interior came due to exploration and the need for the European powers to obtain more land. When explorers started to venture into the interior of the Congo at the end of the nineteenth century they discovered vast lands inhabited by people the Europeans thought were uncivilized and not fit to govern themselves. The two most famous explorers were Stanley and Livingston who explored the region of Africa’s Congo. From the beginning, these two explorers surveyed the area of the Congo region, traversing Africa from the east to west coast. they came back to Europe with new information about the lands and how easy it would be for a country to take it over.
King Leopold of Belgium took control over the Congo territory in the late 1800s and ended up causing the deaths of over ten million African people. At first Leopold focused on the ivory that the area could bring in from elephants but it quickly turned into a need for rubber by any means necessary. African women were imprisoned until their husbands could come up with enough rubber to set them free. Natives were punished for the minor offenses by being whipped with a chicotte, a rope of twisted hippopotamus hide. Also, for every bullet used a soldier had to bring back the right hand of a native so that their superiors new that they had killed someone and not wasted the bullet. This often led to the frequent amputations of still living Africans.
Leopold’s reign of terror depleted the population in more ways than just the murder of the areas people. The Africans were also killed by the diseases that the European settlers, army men, and missionaries brought over such as small pocks and the sleeping disease, which were the most common. Starvation was another major form of death for the Africans. As people were running from the oncoming European armies, they were forced to survive in the jungle for long periods of time. Babies were also left behind in the villages because the adults were afraid that the babies’ cries would give away their locations of where they were hiding. The men that had to collect rubber did not have enough time to go in search of food and the women held in the prisons by the European soldiers were given next to nothing to eat. Africans reproduction rate was also limited do to the fact that women took precautions specifically not to get pregnant for fear that if they were large with child they could not outrun the oncoming soldiers or if they had babies in their arms they would be slower to escape the threats the soldiers posed.
Eventually through a few explorers and missionaries, the atrocities of Leopold’s armies, The Force Publique, were exposed and the reign of Leopold’s rule in the Congo lasted only around twenty-three years; although, that reign marked a national holocaust not easy for anyone to forget.
The European powers began to take over the continent of Africa, cutting the land up into small regions controlled by the European nations. One of the most notorious of these Europeans countries to acquire a sizable amount of land was the country of Belgium with their shrewd leader, King Leopold II. During his reign over the territory of the Congo, he brought with him death and destruction. His whole reason for controlling the territory was to make money and to gain himself more power and prestige within the world. What happened in the Congo region was a holocaust on the scale of the one that would be created by the Nazi’s in Germany half a century later. The devastation caused during Leopold’s reign exterminated entire populations and destroyed multiple civilizations; imperialism took a great toll on the lives of people in Africa.
The imperialism of the African continent by the European countries is what in fact really devastated African populations, not the greater known African slave trade, although that did contribute to the problem. The interior of Africa was hit lesser due to the slave trade than the coastal ports; the ruin to the interior came due to exploration and the need for the European powers to obtain more land. When explorers started to venture into the interior of the Congo at the end of the nineteenth century they discovered vast lands inhabited by people the Europeans thought were uncivilized and not fit to govern themselves. The two most famous explorers were Stanley and Livingston who explored the region of Africa’s Congo. From the beginning, these two explorers surveyed the area of the Congo region, traversing Africa from the east to west coast. they came back to Europe with new information about the lands and how easy it would be for a country to take it over.
King Leopold of Belgium took control over the Congo territory in the late 1800s and ended up causing the deaths of over ten million African people. At first Leopold focused on the ivory that the area could bring in from elephants but it quickly turned into a need for rubber by any means necessary. African women were imprisoned until their husbands could come up with enough rubber to set them free. Natives were punished for the minor offenses by being whipped with a chicotte, a rope of twisted hippopotamus hide. Also, for every bullet used a soldier had to bring back the right hand of a native so that their superiors new that they had killed someone and not wasted the bullet. This often led to the frequent amputations of still living Africans.
Leopold’s reign of terror depleted the population in more ways than just the murder of the areas people. The Africans were also killed by the diseases that the European settlers, army men, and missionaries brought over such as small pocks and the sleeping disease, which were the most common. Starvation was another major form of death for the Africans. As people were running from the oncoming European armies, they were forced to survive in the jungle for long periods of time. Babies were also left behind in the villages because the adults were afraid that the babies’ cries would give away their locations of where they were hiding. The men that had to collect rubber did not have enough time to go in search of food and the women held in the prisons by the European soldiers were given next to nothing to eat. Africans reproduction rate was also limited do to the fact that women took precautions specifically not to get pregnant for fear that if they were large with child they could not outrun the oncoming soldiers or if they had babies in their arms they would be slower to escape the threats the soldiers posed.
Eventually through a few explorers and missionaries, the atrocities of Leopold’s armies, The Force Publique, were exposed and the reign of Leopold’s rule in the Congo lasted only around twenty-three years; although, that reign marked a national holocaust not easy for anyone to forget.
I hope the africamuseum in Tervuren, which has been renovated and will reopen in december 2018, Will deal with this very dark page in the history of belgium. And not as a footnote! We shall see....
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
dark
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Brutal material, but enlightening.
dark
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
dark
informative
slow-paced
could have been 5 stars if hochschild didn't make an aside every single chapter to how terrible the soviet union was for absolutely no reason.
Aaaaargh.
History is very big and very complicated, so I guess we can't learn about everything in formal classrooms, but one might think there should have been at least a mention or two of this dude and his horror show.
As a piece of literature, this book is compulsively readable and difficult to put down. Characters assume larger than life stances and cannot be ignored. Everything is well researched and beautifully put together, despite Leopold ordering most of the paperwork burned at the end of his reign. It's kind of amazing how Hochschild and the researchers before him in the 80s and 90s were able to first get access to the scanty existing information, and then tame it into something understandable. For that alone, this book is a marvel.
History is very big and very complicated, so I guess we can't learn about everything in formal classrooms, but one might think there should have been at least a mention or two of this dude and his horror show.
As a piece of literature, this book is compulsively readable and difficult to put down. Characters assume larger than life stances and cannot be ignored. Everything is well researched and beautifully put together, despite Leopold ordering most of the paperwork burned at the end of his reign. It's kind of amazing how Hochschild and the researchers before him in the 80s and 90s were able to first get access to the scanty existing information, and then tame it into something understandable. For that alone, this book is a marvel.