Last year a UN working group called on Belgium to apologise for atrocities committed during the colonial era. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Belgian King Establishes Congo Free State - National Geographic Society However, the date of retrieval is often important. It had only been through Tippu Tip's help that Stanley had found Livingstone (who himself had survived years on the Lualaba by virtue of Tippu Tip's friendship). Renting a missionary steamboat, he spent more than three months traveling in the interior. Leopold II's reign as King of Belgium coincided with the time period of the Scramble for Africa, during which the European powers of the day raced for control of different regions . Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. ." View 6.2_Reading_Check.docx from HISTORY 2109320 at Coral Reef Senior High School. Forty years later virtually all of it had been transformed into European colonies, protectorates, or territories ruled by white settlers. The propensity for violence is . Read about our approach to external linking. On Friday the younger brother of Belgium's King Philippe, Prince Laurent, defended his ancestor saying Leopold II was not responsible for atrocities in the colony "because he never went to. who owned land where rubber grew wild. In 2010, former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel and the father of future prime minister Charles Michel, called Leopold "a hero with ambitions for a small country like Belgium". They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber. 60 years after independence, traces of the system of exploitation and violence that Leopold II and colonial-era Belgium created still remain in DR Congo. "Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities." Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. No one owned more land like this than King Leopold II, for equatorial rain forest, dotted with wild rubber vines, comprised half of his Congo state. "King Leopold II and the Congo A man of great charm, intelligence, ruthlessness, and greed, he was openly frustrated with inheriting the throne of such a small country, and in doing so at a time in history when European kings were rapidly losing power to elected parliaments. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press. In January 1959, riots broke out in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) after a rally was held calling for the independence of the Congo. To prove that he had not wasted bulletsor, worse yet, saved them for use in a mutinyfor each bullet expended, a Congolese soldier of the Force Publique had to present to his white officer the severed hand of a rebel killed. The only way to do that was through the use of terror. (Colonizing other peoples, regardless of the justification, is wrong.
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