It has been suggested that this section be. Charles de Kavanagh Boulger, Demetrius (1898). Historians Louis and Stengers in 1968 stated that population figures at the start of Leopold's control are only "wild guesses", and that attempts by E. D. Morel and others to determine a figure for the loss of population were "but figments of the imagination". Congolese culture minister Christophe Muzungu decided to reinstate the statue in 2005. But without funds, he was unsuccessful. The deal that led to the handover cost Belgium the considerable sum of 215.5 million Francs. Leopold fervently believed that overseas colonies were the key to a country's greatness, and he worked tirelessly to acquire colonial territory for Belgium. Leopold was born in Brussels on 9 April 1835, the second child of the reigning Belgian monarch, Leopold I, and of his second wife, Louise, the daughter of King Louis Philippe of France. "[44], Following George Floyd’s death at the hands of law enforcement in June 2020, after a major Black Lives Matter demonstration in Brussels, Leopold II's legacy once again became the subject of debate. The king’s appalling system began to take its toll on a scale unheard of since the Mongol rampage across Asia. They slaughtered ivory-bearing elephants in massive hunts that saw hundreds or thousands of local beaters driving game past a raised platform occupied by European hunters armed with half a dozen rifles each. This made Tip a rival to Leopold II, and the Belgian king’s pretense of ending slavery in Africa made any negotiation awkward. The current Belgian king descends from his nephew and successor, Albert I. Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. In Britain, former shipping clerk E. D. Morel with Casement's support founded the Congo Reform Association, the first mass human rights movement. Voici ces discours accablants : Discours de Léopold II, Roi des Belges, en 1883 : He cites several recent lines of investigation, by anthropologist Jan Vansina and others, that examine local sources (police records, religious records, oral traditions, genealogies, personal diaries, and "many others"), which generally agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government commission: roughly half the population perished during the Free State period. He argued that people should recognize some positive aspects of the king as well as the negative, but hours after the six-metre (20 ft) statue was installed near Kinshasa's central station, it was officially removed. With the field cleared of rivals, King Leopold II reorganized his mercenaries into a ruthless group of occupiers called the Force Publique and set them to enforcing his will across the colony. The greed of the Congo’s overlords knew no boundaries, and the lengths to which they went to gratify it were likewise extreme. Leopold then devised another unsuccessful plan to establish the Philippines as an independent state, which could then be ruled by a Belgian. [18] Failure to meet rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. The imperial double-cross left Leopold II in complete control. After the king's death, it soon emerged that he had left Caroline a large fortune, which the Belgian government and Leopold's three estranged daughters tried to seize as rightfully theirs. [2][3][4] Colonial accounts placed much more stress on Leopold's modernizing changes in the Congo. This preserved them to beautify Belgium in perpetuity, while still allowing future generations of the Belgian royal family the privilege of their use. The public buildings were mainly in Brussels, Ostend and Antwerp, and include the Hippodrome Wellington racetrack, the Royal Galleries and Maria Hendrikapark in Ostend; the Royal Museum for Central Africa and its surrounding park in Tervuren; the Cinquantenaire park, triumphal arch and complex, and the Duden Park in Brussels, and the 1895-1905 Antwerpen-Centraal railway station. Bust near the entrance of the former restaurant 'Les 4 rois' (The Four Kings), Lanestraat 2 in the village of Tombeek in the municipality of Overijse. Universal male suffrage was introduced, though the effect of this was tempered by plural voting. This equestrian statuette is one of several small statues of soldiers sharing a single wooden pedestal inside the, This bronze bust on blue stone was created by. The activists were willing to give the hand back if a historically correct sign would be placed near the statue. When both of these plans failed, Leopold shifted his aspirations of colonisation to Africa. As Hochschild describes in King Leopold's Ghost, many of Leopold's policies, in particular those of colonial monopolies and forced labour, were influenced by Dutch practice in the East Indies. Hardcover How to Prepare for the SAT II (Barron s Sat Subject Test in U.S. History) zekipawefe . 5 0 obj Leopold traveled extensively abroad from 1854 to 1865, visiting India, China, Egypt, and the countries on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. Nobody knows how many people lived in the Congo Free State in 1885, but the area, which was three times the size of Texas, may have had up to 20 million people before colonization. Whippings and mutilations continued for years in the Congo, with every penny in profit siphoned out until independence in 1971. View our listings & use our detailed filters to find your perfect home. No single cause took them all. Attention to the Congo atrocities subsided in the years after Leopold's death. His father died on December 10, 1865, and Leopold took the oath of office on December 17, in his thirtieth year. Tip’s group had a considerable presence on the ground and sent regular shipments of slaves and ivory down to the Zanzibar coast. Nsala of Wala contemplates the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter in 1904. « Révérends Pères et Chers compatriotes, La tâche qui vous est confiée est très délicate à remplir et demande du tact. He was interred in the royal vault at the Church of Our Lady of Laeken in Brussels. From the beginning, Leopold ignored these conditions. She was also an accomplished artist and musician. Eventually, tales of the nightmare unfolding in the Free State reached the outside world. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorised his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants.[17]:122–124. (editor, 1967) ", Last edited on 10 November 2020, at 06:35, George Floyd’s death at the hands of law enforcement, Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History, Napoléon Victor Jérôme Frédéric Bonaparte, Grand Cross of the Order of Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig, Grand Cross of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, Ernest Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Princess Sophie Antoinette of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Countess Karoline Ernestine of Erbach-Schönberg, Princess Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, "Belgium's genocidal colonial legacy haunts the country's future", https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2020/06/05/leopold-ii-portret-en-controverse/, "Non, Léopold II n'est pas un génocidaire! To save time and money, the king’s agents routinely depopulated villages – where most of the clearance work had already been done – to make room for the King’s cash crop. The Congo was given independence in 1960. The king replied after the attack to a senator: "My dear senator, if fate wants me shot, too bad!" When he was 9 years old, Leopold received the title of Duke of Brabant, and was appointed a sub-lieutenant in the army. Leopold's sister became the Empress Carlota of Mexico. Leopold emphasized military defence as the basis of neutrality, and strove to make Belgium less vulnerable militarily. Among these were the right of workers to form labour unions and the abolition of the livret d'ouvrier, an employment record book. Marie Henriette retreated to Spa in 1895, and died there in 1902.[13]. These governors — vis a vis the labor of their slave workers — looted Congo’s natural resources with industrial efficiency. Caricature of Leopold II. Clear cutting that forest is a big job that delays the crop and cuts into profits.