1 Early European exploration 2 Stanley's exploration 3 Prelude to conquest 4 See also The Congo River was the last part of the African continent to yield to European explorers. By 1910 nearly this entire huge expanse had become European colonies or land, like South Africa, controlled by white settlers. A renewed global focus on racism is highlighting a violent colonial history that generated riches for Belgians but death and misery for Congolese. After all, destroying the iconography of Adolf Hitler did not mean the history of Nazi Germany was forgotten, she points out. "Leopold II certainly does not deserve a statue in the public domain," agrees Bambi Ceuppens, scientific commissioner at the Africa Museum. Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets. Many classrooms still have Hergé's famous cartoon book Tintin in the Congo, with its depictions of black people now commonly accepted as extremely racist. Around 20,000 children born to Belgian settlers and local women were forcibly taken to Belgium to be fostered. EU-UK on verge of Brexit trade deal announcement, Santa explains what a Covid Christmas looks like. There are at least 13 statues to Leopold II in Belgium, according to one crowd-sourced map, and numerous parks, squares and street names. Leopold II, king of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. Statue of King Leopold II This statue was placed in the Democratic Republic of Congo to remind Congolese the horrors of the Belgian colonization. Leopold’s rule lead to the genocide of the Congolese, and restriction of the Congo’s development. For decades, colonial history has been barely taught in Belgium. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. Appealed to the countries that had signed the Berlin Act to create a commission to investigate this 3. Last year a UN working group called on Belgium to apologise for atrocities committed during the colonial era. .css-1xgx53b-Link{font-family:ReithSans,Helvetica,Arial,freesans,sans-serif;font-weight:700;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:#FFFFFF;}.css-1xgx53b-Link:hover,.css-1xgx53b-Link:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}Read about our approach to external linking. In DR Congo itself, no-one has really noticed the Belgian protests, says Jules Mulamba, a lawyer in the south-eastern city of Lubambashi. Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre. In 1870 roughly 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara Desert was governed by indigenous kings, chiefs, and other rulers. .css-orcmk8-HeadlineContainer{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}California man 'kills fellow Covid patient with oxygen tank'.css-1dedj2h-Rank{-webkit-align-self:center;-ms-flex-item-align:center;align-self:center;color:#B80000;margin-left:3.125rem;}1, Chrissy Teigen 'sad she will never be pregnant again'2, Deepfake queen to deliver Channel 4 Christmas message3, Trump pardons Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Charles Kushner4, Brexit: Boris Johnson set to unveil trade deal with EU5, Stella Tennant: Stella McCartney, Naomi Campbell and more pay tribute6, Airline fires pilot blamed for Taiwan's first Covid case in months7, Sharp rises in infection levels in England, says ONS8, Trump vetoes 'unconstitutional' defence bill9. The colonization of Belgium was only for Belgium’s and King Leopold’s interest and the people of Congo were treated as material objects and dehumanized. Beyond removal of statues, far more work is required to dismantle racism, protesters and black communities argue. Leopold’s men eventually discovered that the rainforest had a plentiful supply of rubber trees. Leopold II built commissioned a lot of buildings and urban projects. The ironic part of this story is that Leopold II committed these atrocities by not even setting foot in the Congo. For over a century, Belgium turned the Congo into a slave state governed by Leopold II. King Leopold II of Belgium (1835-1909) was the reigning king of Belgium from 1865 until his death in 1909. Officials in Dendermonde, a Flemish city 20 miles north of Brussels, said they were changing a similarly named street to simply Leopold Laan to avoid further “shame” for residents. He led the first European efforts to develop the Congo River basin. Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. "It's a good thing that everyone is waking up, looking around and thinking 'is this right?'" By 1908, Leopold II's rule was deemed so cruel that European leaders, themselves violently exploiting Africa, condemned it and the Belgian parliament forced him to relinquish control of his fiefdom. In 2019, the cities of Kortrijk and Dendermonde renamed their Leopold II streets, with Kortrijk council describing the king as a "mass murderer". It had taken 10 years of campaigning by the Congolese diaspora and others for the city authority to give its approval. This empire was known as the Congo Free State and Leopold II stood as its undisputed slave master. Leopold II, Holy Roman emperor from 1790 to 1792, one of the most capable of the 18th-century reformist rulers known as the “enlightened despots.” The third son of the Habsburg Maria Theresa and the emperor Francis I, Leopold succeeded his father as … He appointed governor generals to manage the various territories of the country. Leopold II and the Colonization of Africa: Leopold II of Belgium lived from 1835 to 1909 and reigned as King of Belgium from 1865 until his death. For 20 years, he “owned” the Free State of Congo in central Africa, a 3,000-square-mile section of resource-rich interior jungle and savannah. Most of them were paid with brutal exploitation of Congo Capital of Belgium, Brussels, is the seat of European Union Tip used his position to ramp up his slave trading and ivory hunting, and the generally anti-slavery European public brought pressure on Leopold II to break it off. They were beaten and tortured in order to quickly extract as much rubber from the region as possible. One visitor to the Africa Museum, where an outdoor statue was defaced last week, disagreed with the idea of removing them - "they're part of history," he explained. says Ms Kayembe. "Everyone is waking up from a sleep, it's a reckoning with the past," explains Debora Kayembe, a Congolese human rights lawyer who has lived in Belgium. Henry Morton Stanley retrouve David Livingstone, après 236 jours de recherche, dans ce qui s’avère une partie du monde en soi, immense, aux inextricables zones de forêts, de marais et de savane, arrosées par un fleuve Congo labyrinthique. In the last years of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, King Leopold II of Belgium ruled the Congo Free State with a tyranny that was … ... adopta ce principe de ‘colonisation moderne’, hâtivement mis en vigueur au Congo. “If other cities start with it, it could trigger a chain reaction, but there are no plans yet,” he told the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper. You have to change the street names and add an explanation to it, so that we don’t hide away the past.”, In Kortrijk, the council said it was also renaming a street marking the life of Cyriel Verschaeve, a Flemish nationalist priest, and collaborator during the Nazi occupation of Belgium. 1. In the 23 years (1885-1908) Leopold II ruled the Congo he massacred 10 million Africans by cutting off their hands and genitals, flogging them to death, starving them into forced labour, holding children ransom and burning villages. From 1885 to 1908, a period known as Congo Free State, acts of violence and cruelty were committed, something Leopold pleaded forgiveness for. Nevertheless, Leopold II eventually appointed Tip as a provincial governor in exchange for his noninterference in the king’s colonization of the western regions. Leopold’s private police force, the Force Publique, terrorized and exploited Congo, largely in secrecy. For many years Leopold II was widely known as a leader who defended Belgium's neutrality in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war and commissioned public works fit for a modern nation. Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. Inauguration of a square in Brussels, dedicated to the memory of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, after independence from Belgium. RDC : Du Roi Léopold II à Joseph Kabila — Une Histoire de Pillage, Destination Inconnue — L’impunité Continue ... De la traite des esclaves à la brutale colonisation belge, en passant par la manipulation de la guerre froide et les guerres qui ont suivi, ceux qui ont le plus souffert sont les citoyens congolais. .css-q4by3k-IconContainer{display:none;height:1em;width:1em;vertical-align:-0.125em;margin-right:0.25em;}playSanta explains what a Covid Christmas looks like. In Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, Leopold II's statues were moved to the National Museum. He attributes colonial crimes to the king himself, rather than the Belgian people or state. While some municipalities are holding out, the reappraisal offers further evidence of a sea change in how the colonial history is viewed. Leopold's British biographer, Barbara Emerson, agrees: 'I think it is a very shoddy piece of work. He built the Africa Museum in the grounds of his palace at Tervuren, with a "human zoo" in the grounds featuring 267 Congolese people as exhibits. For activists the holy grail is the giant statue of Leopold II on horseback at the gates of the Royal Palace in Brussels. In the period from 1885 to 1908, many well-documented atrocities were perpetrated in the Congo Free State (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) which, at the time, was a colony under the personal rule of King Leopold II of the Belgians.These atrocities were particularly associated with the labour policies used to collect natural rubber for export. It would be "really significant for Congolese people, especially those whose families perished," she explains. Panels giving information about Leopold II have also been attached to most of his statues in recent years. .css-po6dm6-ItalicText{font-style:italic;}Additional reporting by Eve Webster in Brussels, .css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link{color:inherit;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited{color:#696969;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link:hover,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited:hover,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link:focus,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited:focus{color:#B80000;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:link::after,.css-1hlxxic-PromoLink:visited::after{content:'';position:absolute;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;left:0;z-index:2;}EU-UK on verge of Brexit trade deal announcement. We will support companies and residents who may be affected by the new street names in the future.”, A century after millions died in Congo, attitudes (and street names) are changing. In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. Avant d'accéder au trône de Belgique, Léopold II qui était alors Duc de Brabant, s'intéressait déjà à l'idée de colonisation. Entre 1874 et 1876, le bush, au centre du continent africain, est encore pour les Européens une terre mystérieuse dans laquelle seuls des aventuriers se rendent. He promised a humanitarian and philanthropic mission that would improve the lives of Africans. But rumours of abuse began to circulate and missionaries and British journalist Edmund Dene Morel exposed the regime. Trump pardons former advisers Stone and Manafort, More than 2% of Londoners thought to have Covid. Jeroen Robbe, of the anti-racism group the Labo vzw said too many municipal leaders were still failing to show moral leadership: “The fact they are taking this so lightly indicates a blind spot that we have in our own history. The royal palace is yet to give its own response. The difference is not the size of the horror, but the skin colour of the victims. Archive pictures from Congo Free State document its violence and brutality. Like statues of racist historical figures vandalised or removed in Britain and the US, Leopold II's days on Belgian streets could now be numbered. Amputation was frequently used as punishment in the Congo Free State, controlled by Leopold II.