Download or read book King Leopold s Congo and the Scramble for Africa written by Michael A. Rutz and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "King Leopold of Belgium's exploits up the Congo River in the 1880s were central to the European partitioning of the African continent. The Congo Free State, Leopold's private colony, was a unique political construct that opened the door to the savage exploitation of the Congo's natural and human resources by international corporations. The resulting 'red rubber' scandal—which laid bare a fundamental contradiction between the European propagation of free labor and 'civilization' and colonial governments' acceptance of violence and coercion for productivity's sake—haunted all imperial powers in Africa. Featuring a clever introduction and judicious collection of documents, Michael Rutz's book neatly captures the drama of one king's quest to build an empire in Central Africa—a quest that began in the name of anti-slavery and free trade and ended in the brutal exploitation of human lives. This volume is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the history of colonial rule in Africa." —Jelmer Vos, University of Glasgow

Download or read book King Leopold s Ghost written by Adam Hochschild and published by Picador. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce the population by half. . While he did all this, he carefully constructed an image of himself as a deeply feeling humanitarian. Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize in 1999, King Leopold’s Ghost is the true and haunting account of this man’s brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. It is also the inspiring and deeply moving account of a handful of missionaries and other idealists who travelled to Africa and unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a gruesome holocaust. Instead of turning away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Adam Hochschild brings life to this largely untold story and, crucially, casts blame on those responsible for this atrocity.

Download or read book King Leopold s Rule in Africa written by Edmund Dene Morel and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Casement Report written by Roger Casement and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2018-09-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original: The Casement Report by Roger Casement

Download or read book Selling the Congo written by Matthew G. Stanard and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belgium was a small, neutral country without a colonial tradition when King Leopold II ceded the Congo, his personal property, to the state in 1908. For the next half century Belgium not only ruled an African empire but also, through widespread, enduring, and eagerly embraced propaganda, produced an imperialist-minded citizenry. Selling the Congo is a study of European pro-empire propaganda in Belgium, with particular emphasis on the period 1908–60. Matthew G. Stanard questions the nature of Belgian imperialism in the Congo and considers the Belgian case in light of literature on the French, British, and other European overseas empires. Comparing Belgium to other imperial powers, the book finds that pro-empire propaganda was a basic part of European overseas expansion and administration during the modern period. Arguing against the long-held belief that Belgians were merely “reluctant imperialists,” Stanard demonstrates that in fact many Belgians readily embraced imperialistic propaganda. Selling the Congo contributes to our understanding of the effectiveness of twentieth-century propaganda by revealing its successes and failures in the Belgian case. Many readers familiar with more-popular histories of Belgian imperialism will find in this book a deeper examination of European involvement in central Africa during the colonial era.

Download or read book King Leopold s Ghost written by Adam Hochschild and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 1999-09-03 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An enthralling story . . . A work of history that reads like a novel." — Christian Science Monitor “As Hochschild’s brilliant book demonstrates, the great Congo scandal prefigured our own times . . . This book must be read and reread.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review In the late nineteenth century, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium carried out a brutal plundering of the territory surrounding the Congo River. Ultimately slashing the area’s population by ten million, he still managed to shrewdly cultivate his reputation as a great humanitarian. A tale far richer than any novelist could invent, King Leopold’s Ghost is the horrifying account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who defied Leopold: African rebel leaders who fought against hopeless odds and a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure but unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust and participants in the twentieth century’s first great human rights movement. A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A New York Times Notable Book

Download or read book King Leopold s Congo written by Ruth M. Slade and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1974 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Belgium and the Congo 1885 1980 written by Guy Vanthemsche and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains how and why Belgium, a small but influential European country, was changed through its colonial activities in the Congo, from the first expeditions in 1880 to the Mobutu regime in the 1980s. Belgian politics, diplomacy, economic activity and culture were influenced by the imperial experience. Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1980 yields a better understanding of the Congo's past and present.

Download or read book Land of Tears written by Robert Harms and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A prizewinning historian's epic account of the scramble to control equatorial Africa In just three decades at the end of the nineteenth century, the heart of Africa was utterly transformed. Virtually closed to outsiders for centuries, by the early 1900s the rainforest of the Congo River basin was one of the most brutally exploited places on earth. In Land of Tears, historian Robert Harms reconstructs the chaotic process by which this happened. Beginning in the 1870s, traders, explorers, and empire builders from Arabia, Europe, and America moved rapidly into the region, where they pioneered a deadly trade in ivory and rubber for Western markets and in enslaved labor for the Indian Ocean rim. Imperial conquest followed close behind. Ranging from remote African villages to European diplomatic meetings to Connecticut piano-key factories, Land of Tears reveals how equatorial Africa became fully, fatefully, and tragically enmeshed within our global world.

Download or read book The Story of the Congo Free State written by Henry Wellington Wack and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Concise History of the World written by Merry Wiesner-Hanks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-23 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of humankind as producers and reproducers from the Paleolithic to the present. Renowned social and cultural historian Merry Wiesner-Hanks brings a new perspective to world history by examining social and cultural developments across the globe, including families and kin groups, social and gender hierarchies, sexuality, race and ethnicity, labor, religion, consumption, and material culture. She examines how these structures and activities changed over time through local processes and interactions with other cultures, highlighting key developments that defined particular eras such as the growth of cities or the creation of a global trading network. Incorporating foragers, farmers and factory workers along with shamans, scribes and secretaries, the book widens and lengthens human history. It makes comparisons and generalizations, but also notes diversities and particularities, as it examines the social and cultural matters that are at the heart of big questions in world history today.

Download or read book The Scramble For Africa written by Thomas Pakenham and published by Abacus. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1880 the continent of Africa was largely unexplored by Europeans. Less than thirty years later, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained unconquered by them. The rest - 10 million square miles with 110 million bewildered new subjects - had been carved up by five European powers (and one extraordinary individual) in the name of Commerce, Christianity, 'Civilization' and Conquest. The Scramble for Africa is the first full-scale study of that extraordinary episode in history.

Download or read book European Atrocity African Catastrophe written by Martin Ewans and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This narrative of the creation, development and collapse both of King Leopold's regime, and of the Belgian colony that replaced it, provides insight into the nature of European colonialism in Africa and the consequences for Europe itself.

Download or read book Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa written by Robert Aleksander Maryks and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-01-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Protestants entering Africa in the nineteenth century sought to learn from earlier Jesuit presence in Ethiopia and southern Africa. The nineteenth century was itself a century of missionary scramble for Africa during which the Jesuits encountered their Protestant counterparts as both sought to evangelize the African native. Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa, edited by Robert Alexander Maryks and Festo Mkenda, S.J., presents critical reflections on the nature of those encounters in southern Africa and in Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Fernando Po. Though largely marked by mutual suspicion and outright competition, the encounters also reveal personal appreciations and support across denominational boundaries and thus manifest salient lessons for ecumenical encounters even in our own time. This volume is the result of the second Boston College International Symposium on Jesuit Studies held at the Jesuit Historical Institute in Africa (Nairobi, Kenya) in 2016. Thanks to generous support of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College, it is available in Open Access.

Download or read book The Congo Free State written by Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the Congo Free State *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "I do not want to risk...losing a fine chance to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake." - King Leopold II of Belgium King Leopold II of Belgium emerges from the pages of history as a curious character. He was a member of a privileged clique of European monarchs, bereft of power but rich, indulgent, and indolent. Leopold certainly availed himself of all the pleasures of court life, but he was also shrewd, astonishingly competent, and avaricious to an almost unimaginable degree. His initial interest in foreign real estate was imperial, insofar as he desired on behalf of Belgium the main accoutrements of a first-rate power, which were, of course, foreign estates and colonies. He was, however, unable to move the Belgian parliament to act in accordance, the conservative belief perhaps being that Belgium could not afford to compete on that level. Belgium was a small European nation, existing between major and, at times, belligerent powers, and as such, it quietly went about its business with a determination not to rock the European boat. Displaying enormous ability and a masterful grasp of diplomatic maneuver, Leopold was able to secure primary rights over the territory of the Congo River catchment, a portion of the globe more than three times the size of France. By any standards, this was a monumental coup, and by the time the other European powers woke up to precisely what was underway, it was too late the arrest the momentum. Of all the issues on the agenda as delegates gathered in Berlin in 1884, foremost was the Congo question. The matter was debated, and although deeply troubled by the potential consequences, recognition was eventually afforded to Leopold's claim to the Congo. And so, the Congo Free State came into being, a private fiefdom of Leopold II of Belgium and arguably one of the most cynical and exploitative colonial regimes across the European spectrum. The truth of this would not immediately come to light, and the high-minded proclamations that accompanied the formation of Leopold's colony were taken at face value. However, it was of profound importance was to ensure that nothing like it could happen again, and central to the agenda of the conference, which lasted almost a year, was to establish certain ground rules governing the future European partition of Africa. Of these, three are most noteworthy. The first was that the annexation of any territory in Africa by any European power would not be formally recognized without a clear display of effective occupation and administration. Second, no such annexation could proceed without a formal request for protection on the part of an indigenous leader or monarch responsible for that territory. Such a plea for protection would be required to be submitted to treaty and be ascribed with the seal, mark, or signature of that king. The third rule, which could perhaps be better described as a convention, required that in the event of a European war, the territories, protectorates, and colonies acquired under the terms of the conference's General Act would remain neutral. The Congo Free State: The History and Legacy of the Colony Established by King Leopold II of Belgium chronicles the turbulent history of the Belgian colony. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Congo Free State like never before.

Download or read book King Leopold II His Rule in Belgium and the Congo written by John de Courcy MacDonnell and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1969 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Congo from Leopold to Kabila written by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The people of the Congo have suffered from a particularly brutal colonial rule, American interference after independence, decades of robbery at the hands of the dictator Mobutu and periodic warfare which continues even now in the East of the country. But, as this insightful political history makes clear, the Congolese people have not taken these multiple oppressions lying down and have fought over many years to establish democratic institutions at home and free themselves from foreign exploitation; indeed these are two aspects of a single project. Professor Nzongola-Ntalaja is one of his country's leading intellectuals and his panoramic understanding of the personalities and events, as well as class, ethnic and other factors, make his book a lucid, radical and utterly unromanticized account of his countrymen's struggle. His people's defeat and the state's post-colonial crisis are seen as resulting from a post-independence collapse of the anti-colonial alliance between the masses and the national leadership . This book is essential reading for understanding what is happening in the Congo and the Great Lakes region under the rule of the late President Kabila, and now his son. It will also stand as a milestone in how to write the modern political history of Africa.