LATE 19TH CENTURY COLONIZATION OF THE CONGO REGION

King Leopold II (Click to watch a video)

Berlin Conference

In 1885, the Berlin Conference, also known as the “Scramble for Africa,” led to the division of Africa by European powers. Western European nations, such as Great Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium colonized nearly all of Africa to exploit natural resources, such as minerals, land, and even human labor (Pakenham).

However, to justify human exploitation and violation of political sovereignty, Western European nations claimed that they had a civilizing mission - to spread Christianity and European culture to non-European peoples. They claimed that they were bettering the lives of African peoples, which allowed Europeans to colonize the people of Africa without their consent and with little criticism from Europe (Pakenham).

Civilizing Mission

King Leopold II of Belgium and the Blood Trade

While all the European colonists committed atrocities to their conquered peoples, King Leopold II of Belgium is the most infamous of European leaders in their treatment of their colonized subjects. King Leopold II decided to tap into the rubber industry by using the Congo basin as a place to extract rubber for his own personal profit. However, to gain approval for colonizing the region, Leopold claimed that he would civilize the Congo region. “Leopold, who was devious as well as greedy, persuaded the world that he was acting from humanitarian motives. In 1884, The Daily Telegraph, perspicacious as ever, opined: ‘Leopold II…[is] to carry to the interior of Africa new ideas of law, order, humanity and protection of the natives’” (“Forever in Chains”). Despite promoting a civilizing mission, Leopold’s deadly rubber trade, known as the red rubber trade because of all the human blood involved, led to the deadly exploitation of the Congolese for forced labor, which not only undermined the pre-colonial economy of the region but also led to a population decline by nearly half (Bevernage).

If the Congo laborers failed to meet the rubber quota, they could be imprisoned, whipped, burnt, killed and family members could be held for ransom. However, the most brutal form of punishment was severing human hands. Armed with guns, “[t]o prevent waste, soldiers were required to provide a human hand for every bullet used” (Lowe and Montero 10). These atrocities were committed to ensuring Leopold’s own financial profit.