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Leopold II of Belgium Segment

Added Dec 07, 2017 •

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Clip goes along with powerpoint lecture on Imperialism in Africa

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after the conference of Berlin in 1885 Europeans and box in a continent-wide land grab in less than 20 years 90% can territory will be placed under European Colonial rule one of the main beneficiaries was King Leopold II of Belgium aware of the vast Fortune to be made he persuaded Europe's power to recognize his sovereignty over one of Africa's largest regions the Congo here was this man who became king of Belgium in 1865 at the age of 30 and Norma's leash rules enormously greedy enormously ambitious and with an absolutely brilliant sense of public relations he hired the Explorer Henry Morton Stanley the man who found Livingstone to go to the Congo essentially steak out this huge territory for him Leopold God first the United States and then all the major nations of Western Europe to ratify his seizure of this enormous territory in the center of the first Leopold create the smokescreen claiming that he wished to educate a Savage people they will I already food by the airport because they took it he was a sort of a man is going to lose all his money in this crazy feeling proper attention but they didn't realize what he was already off to a toll which is to make himself hugely Rich by exploiting Brown hands and Broad so who going to carry the wealth of Africa unloaded on ships for his own personal profit extreme violence with employer to impose is Dominion the right hands of those who fail to meet rubber quotas with severed even young children will not stand 1896 a German newspaper reported that 1003 8 hands have been gathered in one day Leopold create the 90,000 strong Army to enforce his rule one of his tenants wrote I don't need the Whip and civilize the black they would go into Village after Village the Army would seize the women of the village in a whole day hostage in order to force the men of each Village to go into the forest and gather a monthly quota of wild Rubber and they did this for about 20 years and you can just very easily imagine if you have a village the women are all being held hostage the men are all in the forest is forced labor is for several weeks out of each month there's nobody to plant and harvest food to go hunting to go fishing to do all the normal things for what your community feed sits so from all of these causes starvation being worked to death and most of all from the disease that hit this time in Britain population the best estimates are that between 1881 King Leopold the first got his hands on the Congo has 1920 that in that 40 year. The population was / were about 20 million at the beginning. To run 10 min at the end so Norma's loss of human life huge building projects throughout Belgium was funded by Leopold's well celebrate it rain Leupold of himself a palace now called The Museum of central Africa to display his spoils free story of baby koi pins his father is Congolese the building in what is the myths created to justify Belgian rule in the Congo the central hula gives you the idea of what the museum is supposed to be about you have the central to which delightful the Heart of Darkness underneath you can say simultaneously the dumb also present the sky court and stand in the central hole underneath that representation of Leopold the second tallest statues of Congolese so what you really see anybody hierarchical relationships that structure to the relations between the colonists and the colonizers as a human being and obviously shocked by that because it is so very clear that Africans the way that this Museum was originally set up and way that most of the exhibition still work are really dehumanized because it was seen a represented as Savages tools needed to help of outside design Europeans to transform them into fully civilized human beings from the late 19th century on Woods humans exhibiting Africans in that primitive state became popular around Europe one of the first was house in the grounds of Leopold's Museum the African sweat Pooch display so people could go and see them infant with the same way that they could look at the caged animals in the zoo and their reactions were also very similar or notices saying that people would not allow how to throw peanuts at HD Africans because that's why this museum is also an adverbial sense the only Monument to Belgium Colonial history left in this country so if we dismantle the museum there was a Dairy Queen danger that we also eradicate public memory of that Colonial Heritage and once that happens of course 1 page the way for old is people who say well it was not as bad as that was hit a Leopold II really did do a great deal of God in 1908 before his crimes were made public and he was. control of the Congo over to the Belgium government but the cruelty continued the forced labor system did not come to an end because it was so profitable the new Belgian Congo continued it more or less until the year 1920s at that point the Belgian Colonial officials realize that their population was shrinking so rapidly from the effects of the forced labor system that they had to modify that they had to make it a Leslie or otherwise he would have no labor force left 10 million people died the Congolese genocide has largely been forgotten in Europe in the book The Heart of Darkness the author Joseph Conrad who witnessed the violence in the Congo writes the conquest of the earth which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or sliding shelves when you look into it too much

Uploaded by Annalee Pearson.