Almost three times as big as Texas with 905,600 sq feet, the Democratic Republic of Congo, known as Africa’s second largest country; is abundantly filled with natural resources like, rubber, coal, copper, diamonds, ivory and more, is unfortunately considered to be the most underprivileged and poverty-stricken. It’s vast and lush land and natural resources have stimulated the most preposterous history. The Congo should have been the pride of Africa but rather the people of Congo are the poorest in the world and most are victims of abnormal deaths; these people have been the sufferers of about a hundred years of greed, torment, terror and pillage. All these were a legacy of a man who never even set foot in Congo, King Leopold II of Belgium.
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In a tribute to the grotesque cruelty of the European colonial period and imperialism in its best form during the 1880s, King Leopold established personal interest to the uncharted Congo Free State, when Europe was busy tearing up the continent of Africa. King Leopold is the only one accountable for the deaths and catastrophe of about ten million Congolese Africans during the late 1800s. The possessions of current day Belgium incur much to these same Congolese Africans. King Leopold sent an explorer called henry Morton Stanley, to explore the heart of Africa, the Congo. Stanley's brutal descent into Congo is recorded in his own personal diary. The King had ordered Stanley to "purchase as much land as you will be able to obtain, and that you should place successively under... suzerainty... as soon as possible and without losing one minute, all the chiefs from the mouth of the Congo to the Stanley falls..." (p70). Stanley was to buy all the available ivory and organize obstruction on the roads he unlocked. The King asked Stanley to keep land rights treaties as "brief as possible and in a couple of articles must grant us everything" (p71). Stanley had obtained hundreds of such arrangements. The King grew a military dictatorship, with only a minimal number of his white officials. Originally, he paid mercenaries, but in 1888 these altered into the “Force Publique”. The pursuit is to extract all natural rubber sooner, before organized cultivation took over the market. Aside from financing these expeditions the King's private army and the Force Publique to control the slave labors that collected rubber, capital expense to be non-existent. The Congolese had to look out for vines through the hostile jungle. In the King's Congo it was considered illegal to pay any Congolese Africans with anything
In a tribute to the grotesque cruelty of the European colonial period and imperialism in its best form during the 1880s, King Leopold established personal interest to the uncharted Congo Free State, when Europe was busy tearing up the continent of Africa. King Leopold is the only one accountable for the deaths and catastrophe of about ten million Congolese Africans during the late 1800s. The possessions of current day Belgium incur much to these same Congolese Africans. King Leopold sent an explorer called henry Morton Stanley, to explore the heart of Africa, the Congo. Stanley's brutal descent into Congo is recorded in his own personal diary. The King had ordered Stanley to "purchase as much land as you will be able to obtain, and that you should place successively under... suzerainty... as soon as possible and without losing one minute, all the chiefs from the mouth of the Congo to the Stanley falls..." (p70). Stanley was to buy all the available ivory and organize obstruction on the roads he unlocked. The King asked Stanley to keep land rights treaties as "brief as possible and in a couple of articles must grant us everything" (p71). Stanley had obtained hundreds of such arrangements. The King grew a military dictatorship, with only a minimal number of his white officials. Originally, he paid mercenaries, but in 1888 these altered into the “Force Publique”. The pursuit is to extract all natural rubber sooner, before organized cultivation took over the market. Aside from financing these expeditions the King's private army and the Force Publique to control the slave labors that collected rubber, capital expense to be non-existent. The Congolese had to look out for vines through the hostile jungle. In the King's Congo it was considered illegal to pay any Congolese Africans with anything