personification vs animation | why did king leopold want the congo
The invention of the inflatable bicycle tire, followed soon by that of the automobile tire, triggered an enormous boom in rubber. To secure their In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. Several rebellions were mercilessly put down under Leopold's direction. For a dozen years, from 1901 to 1913, working sometimes fourteen to sixteen hours a day, he devoted his formidable energy and skill to putting the story of forced labor in King Leopold's Congo on the world's front pages. The king of Belgium wanted the Congo for the vast amounts of wild rubber it held, and to establish a colony as he thought kings were supposed to do. The conference was a sham: at its close, Leopold proposed that they set up an international benevolent committee to carry on, and modestly agreed to accept the chairman's role. Statues have been daubed with red paint in Ghent and Ostend and pulled down in Brussels. With women as hostages and men forced to tap rubber, few able-bodied adults were left to hunt, fish, and cultivate crops. Brill. The King Incorporated: Leopold II in the Age of Trusts. A petition calling on the city for its removal has reached 74,000 signatures. In addition, Leopold's regime faced resistance from within his own conscript army, whose soldiers sometimes found a common cause with the rebel groups they were supposed to pursue. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. Around the BBC. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. What Did King Leopold Of Belgium Do In The Congo? - Caniry Its report that year to the Belgian king mostly focused on disease, but stressed that forced labor for rubber and other products "subjects the natives to conditions of life which are an obstacle to their increase" and warned that this situation, plus "a lack of concern about devastating plagues ancient and modern, an absolute ignorance of people's normal lives [and] a license and immorality detrimental to the development of the race," had reached "the point of threatening even the existence of certain Congolese peoples" and could completely depopulate the entire region (Bulletin Officiel, 1920, pp. Bennett, Norman Robert. 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. And under such circumstances people tended to stop having children, so the birthrate plummeted as a result. . Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. It was down to rubber. Amidst all of this, some of the best of people was also seen, in the bravery and resilience of ordinary Congolese men and women who resisted in small and large ways, and the passionate efforts of several American and European missionaries and activists to bring about reform. So they outsourced the task to Leopold, who used personal diplomacy to convince the European powers to grant him control of a large portion of the Congo basin. London, Curzon Press, p.27. CONGO.docx - Why did the King of Belgium Leopold II want But heat, tropical diseases, and the huge rapids near the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic had long kept the Congo's interior a mystery to Europeans. Because the system's effects in the Congo could so easily be blamed on one man, who could safely be attacked because he did not represent a great power, an international outcry focused on Leopold. Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. Updates? Nor was there a strong humanitarian interest in the continent now that the American slave trade had been extinguished. Throughout the tropics, people rushed to sow rubber trees, but those plants could take many years to reach maturity, and in the meantime there was money to be made wherever rubber grew wild. Male rubber gatherers often died from exhaustion. These were an incentive for ruthless, devastating plunder. On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State as his personal possession. Why did King Leopold want to take over areas of Africa? Thompsell, Angela. Many women hostages were raped and a significant number starved to death. 2023 BBC. After leaving Livingstone, Stanley sailed for 1,000 miles (1,600km) down the Lualaba (Upper Congo) to the large lake he named Stanley Pool (now called Pool Malebo). For some years ivory was a principal source of the great wealth that Leopold and his associates drew from the new colony. Statues of Leopold II should now be housed in museums to teach Belgian history, suggests Mireille-Tsheusi Robert, director of anti-racism NGO Bamko Cran. The king's colonial officials quickly set up a brutal but effective system for harvesting wild rubber. (1996). 13(May 15). Most made no protest, but some were outraged at the brutal forced labor system. Please select which sections you would like to print: Also known as: Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, Leopold-Louis-Philippe-Marie-Victor. Furthermore, as in any society where men and women are separated, traumatized, or in flight as refugees, the birth rate dropped precipitously. The Atrocities of the Congo Free State Rubber Regime - ThoughtCo The horrors, though, are only one part of the story. The army become known for its brutality, with the officers and soldiers being accused ofdestroying villages, taking hostages, raping, torturing, and extorting the people. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. 2, 2022, thoughtco.com/congo-free-state-atrocities-rubber-regime-43731. In 1870 roughly 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara Desert was governed by indigenous kings, chiefs, and other rulers. The Herero were traditional occupants of the temperate high plains of central Namibia. Men who did not fulfill their quota were killed or mutilated. Morel, E. D. (1919). In 2019, the cities of Kortrijk and Dendermonde renamed their Leopold II streets, with Kortrijk council describing the king as a "mass murderer". Leopold's eventual response was extraordinary in its hubris and simplicity. (April 27, 2023). Leopold II, Williams declared, was guilty of "crimes against humanity." Apparently finding nothing reprehensible about Leopold's ambitions, Stanley set about his task with a will. Humankind will never know even the approximate toll with any certainty, but beyond any doubt what happened in the Congo was one of the great catastrophes of modern times. Retrieved September 22, 2017. Because the systems effects in the Congo could so easily be blamed on one man, who could safely be attacked because he did not represent a great power, an international outcry focused on Leopold. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1879 Stanley returned to the Congo as Leopold's agent. King Leopold II and the Congo The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. And in 2018, Brussels named a public square in honour of Patrice Lumumba, a hero of African independence movements and the first prime minister of Congo, since renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo. Livingstone had not been heard from in several years and was, in fact, exploring the upper reaches of a great navigable inland river called the Lualaba, which Livingstone hoped was connected to the Nile, but which turned out to be the upper Congo. Leopold II implemented a forced-labour system in the Congo that was quickly copied by other European colonial powers. https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/king-leopold-ii-and-congo, "King Leopold II and the Congo ." A renewed global focus on racism is highlighting a violent colonial history that generated riches for Belgians but death and misery for Congolese. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 24 February 2004. Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. A cointegration analysis, CRE Working paper, n02/10, juin 2010, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colonization_of_the_Congo_Basin&oldid=1117806574, The fever-ridden mangroves of the lower Niger by the brothers, This page was last edited on 23 October 2022, at 17:53. La question sociale au Congo: Rapport au comit du congrs colonial national. For the earlier Bantu colonization, see. As the price of rubber soared, the quotas increased, and as vines near a village were drained dry, men desperate to free their wives and daughters would have to walk days or weeks to find new vines to tap. Leopold agreed and in deepest secrecy, Stanley signed a five-year contract at a salary of 1,000 a year, and set off to Zanzibar under an assumed name. A master of public relations who portrayed himself as a great philanthropist, the king orchestrated successful lobbying campaigns in one country after another. All rights reserved. On Monday the University of Mons removed a bust of the late king, following the circulation of a student-led petition saying it represented the "rape, mutilation and genocide of millions of Congolese". Read about our approach to external linking. Discipline was harsh; reluctant military conscripts, disobedient porters, and villagers who failed to gather enough rubber all fell victim to the notorious chicotte, a whip made of sun-dried hippopotamus hide with razor-sharp edges. The vicious fighting and terror of the Congo Free State is better understood as another example of the incredible capacity of people for incomprehensible cruelty. The children sent to a 'holiday camp' never to come back, Russia launches pre-dawn missile attack on Ukraine, Chaos at port as thousands rush to leave Sudan. The British consul, an Irishman named Roger Casement, later famous as an Irish patriot, took the assignment seriously. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. The movement, in fact, eventually forced Leopold to relinquish his private ownership of the Congo to the Belgian state in 1908. Morel soon quit his job and in short order turned himself into the greatest British investigative journalist of his time. King Leopold II committed heinous . Tippu Tip had raided 118 villages, killed 4,000 Africans, and, when Stanley reached his camp, had 2,300 slaves, mostly young women and children, in chains ready to transport halfway across the continent to the markets of Zanzibar. One particularly notorious practice grew out of the suppression of those rebellions. [7], Stanley, much more familiar with the rigours of the African climate and the complexities of local politics than Leopold Leopold II never set foot in the Congo persuaded his patron that the first step should be the construction of a wagon trail and a series of forts. The iconic images to emerge from this terror, though, were the baskets full of smoked hands and the Congolese children who survived having a hand cut off. The colony in the Congo - the Congo Free State - was personal property for the Belgian king and there was little oversight over what happened there. 27 Apr. Outside of the Cape of Good Hope and the Mediterranean coast, Europe had no African colonies of any significance. I never imagined this happening in my lifetime," Ms Kayembe adds. She or he will best know the preferred format. By the end of his life, Leopold was unpopular with his people, but, ironically, that had much less to do with his actions in Africa than with his conduct of his personal life. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. Instead, he found what he called "the Siberia of the African Continent." Hochschild, Adam (1998). But numerous surviving records from the rubber-bearing land in the adjoining French Congo, which closely followed the model of the Leopoldian forced labor system, also suggest a population loss there of around 50 percent. In 1924 the first territory-wide census, when adjusted for undercounting, placed the number of colony inhabitants at some ten million. OF DECOLONIZATION . Although Belgiums government felt that colonies would be an extravagance for a small country with no navy or merchant marine, that situation suited Leopold perfectly. At various times, he launched unsuccessful schemes to buy an Argentine province, to buy Borneo from the Dutch, rent the Philippines from Spain, or establish colonies in China, Vietnam, Japan, or the Pacific islands. Although neither figure is well-documented, Hannah Arendt's seminal The Origins of Totalitarianism cites an estimated minimum population loss of 11.5 million, and a Congolese historian writing in 1998, Isidore Ndaywel Nziem, estimates the loss at roughly 13 million. Forced labor remained a major part of the Congo's economy for many years after the war. Bulletin Officiel du Congo Belge (1920). After Morel orchestrated a protest resolution by the British Parliament, the government, in response, asked its representative in the Congo to investigate his charges. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press. Throughout the world's tropics people rushed to establish rubber plantations. Nothing was being sent to the Congo to pay for the goods flowing to Europe. The horrific consequences of rubber's toxic past - BBC News 2 volumes. London: George Allen & Unwin. Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf as a personal union with Belgium. Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets. King Leopold II was the ruler of the Congo Free State, and the King of Belgium. Benedetto, Robert, ed. E. V. Sjblom of Sweden was one of the first and most outspoken missionaries in the Congo. To avoid discovery, materials and workers were shipped in by various roundabout routes, and communications between Stanley and Leopold were entrusted to Colonel Maximilien Strauch. He became duke of Brabant in 1846 and served in the Belgian army. Thompsell, Angela. Meanwhile, Leopold had already begun the job of persuading first the United Army officers often demanded of their men a severed hand from each rebel killed in battle. Votin, Herero In 1853 he married Marie-Henriette, daughter of the Austrian archduke Joseph, palatine of Hungary, and became king of the Belgians on his fathers death in December 1865. Leopold II, King of the Belgiansas his coun, c. 1875 A Lasting Legacy Of The Builder King In Brussels - Culture Trip oliviall Answer: Since the consequences of the scheme in the Congo could too easily be blamed on one man who could comfortably be targeted because he did not serve a great power, a Leopold-focused foreign uproar. It is at this point that Leopold II of Belgium took a part. While Leopold portrayed this as a great humanitarian act, his real purpose was to gain control of the upper Congo River and to acquire more workers. These men were generally from other parts of the Congo or other colonies entirely, and the orphans and enslaved people had often been brutalized themselves. In estimating situations without the benefit of complete census data, demographers are more confident speaking of percentages than absolute numbers. Why did King Leopold II own the Belgian Congo colony First, the system of exploitation established there became a model for colonial rule in other parts of central Africa. This makeover of Leopold's image produced an amnesia that persisted for decades. They were the very first royal family of Belgium, because the country was just 5 years old. Eventually, the price fell and wild rubber supplies began to run out, but by that time World War I had begun, and large numbers of Africans were forced to become porters, carrying supplies for Belgian military campaigns against Germany's African colonies. 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". 2023
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As a part of Jhan Dhan Yojana, Bank of Baroda has decided to open more number of BCs and some Next-Gen-BCs who will rendering some additional Banking services. We as CBC are taking active part in implementation of this initiative of Bank particularly in the states of West Bengal, UP,Rajasthan,Orissa etc.
We got our robust technical support team. Members of this team are well experienced and knowledgeable. In addition we conduct virtual meetings with our BCs to update the development in the banking and the new initiatives taken by Bank and convey desires and expectation of Banks from BCs. In these meetings Officials from the Regional Offices of Bank of Baroda also take part. These are very effective during recent lock down period due to COVID 19.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is one of the Models used by Bank of Baroda for implementation of Financial Inclusion. ICT based models are (i) POS, (ii) Kiosk. POS is based on Application Service Provider (ASP) model with smart cards based technology for financial inclusion under the model, BCs are appointed by banks and CBCs These BCs are provided with point-of-service(POS) devices, using which they carry out transaction for the smart card holders at their doorsteps. The customers can operate their account using their smart cards through biometric authentication. In this system all transactions processed by the BC are online real time basis in core banking of bank. PoS devices deployed in the field are capable to process the transaction on the basis of Smart Card, Account number (card less), Aadhar number (AEPS) transactions.