Belgian Colonialism and the Heart of Darkness

World History, from the Congo.

Chapter 13

Belgian colonialism on the Congo, the terrifying truth.
Joseph Clark. Missionary from the time of imperialism.
“The quest of rubber from the Congo free state was devastating and has cost millions of life, the scenes that I have witnessed, and the fact that I wasn't able to help those under the oppression, are almost enough to make me wish that I were dead”!

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Bwitaka (Native who gave testimony in 1904.
“Three days after we returned to the village, we saw dead bodies. we saw hanging between lines fixed between two sticks tied up genital organs.”!

Image 1. Showing how natives were treated by the FP. (The FP also called the force publique, was Leopold’s private police who looked over King Leopold's operations and maintained “order” amongst the natives

How did it all start?
 
Belgium, a European country that got independence in 1831 is the colonial power responsible for the colonialism in what is now known as The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Belgium was under the rule of king Leopold II; he was an ambitious man who wanted to enrich himself and the prestige of his country by exploiting the mineral wealth of the Congo. In 1876 he commissioned Sir Henry Morton Stanley’s expedition to explore the Congo region. This exploration led initially to the establishment of the Congo Free State. The new colony comprised a land bigger than Western Europe and seventy-­‐four times larger than Belgium. $
 

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Force Publique Junior officer.!
“The commanding officer ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village palisades, also their sexual members, and to hang the women and the children on the palisade in the form of a cross."


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Swedish missionary from the scene.
“King Leopold’s soldiers were rewarded depending on the number of Congolese hands they amputated as punishment to native workers for failure to work hard enough”!

In 1884-­‐1885, the Berlin W Africa Conference effectively divided up the est...