I. Europe and the Making of the Congo Free State

A. Partition of Africa and Leopold’s “Place in the Sun”

1. Africa and Africans only matter in relation to Europe:

a) humanitarian intervention and exploration created conditions for territorial expansion (Maps: Alien Rule in Africa: 1830 and 1880, 1891 and 1914)

b) sources of raw materials, potential markets, and other strategic interests (Pear’s Soap Soudan, Pear's Soap Message from the Sea, Congo Soap, White Man’s Burden Soap advertisements)

2. European powers understood Leopold’s motives but recognized Congo Free State:

a) guaranteed free trade in Congo and movement on River system

b) weak state better than conflict over territory

(Conrad references, pages 13 & 50)

3. organized Congo state to extract wealth from local populations:

a) destroyed traditional economy and forced to work only for the state or concessionaries (businesses)

c) violence used to extract “taxes” in the form of labor, natural recourses and/or food (Slides of Life in the Congo: Chicotte in use; Amputated Hands; Hostages)

B. Mapping the Greed of Leopold’s Free State

1. Heart of Darkness as a Critique of European Imperialism (Slide of Joseph Conrad)

a) uses familiar rhetorical strategies to expose brutality

b) objects of European inquiry inverted (compare with Equiano)

2. describes the appropriation of natural resources and human bodies:

a) sights and sounds of explosions, craters, excavations for rail way, endless networks of trails;

(Conrad references, pages 17, 20, 23 & 33)

b) landscape assumes quasi-human characteristics (menace, monster, etc.)

(Conrad references, pages 16, 37-38 & 57-58)

3. process of wealth extract depersonalizes Africans

a) porters function as human transportation system as well as excavation machines (compared to mules)

b) scream and depopulated villages form part of the landscape.

(Conrad references, pages 19, 20, 21, 23 & 26)

C. The Congo Scandal and Crusade

1. contrast between promise and reality made the conditions in the Congo an international scandal by turn to the twentieth century:

a) 1890 George Washington Williams published Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo (Slide of George Washington Williams)

2. Leopold blunted criticism of Williams and missionaries through formation of Commission for the Protection of Natives (1895) and stature as crown head long associated with humanitarian causes

3. Congo Reform Association established by E. D. Morel and Roger Casement

a) white men in positions to know about the Congo (

accountant for a shipping concern that contracted with the Congo Free State and a career foreign service officer

4. Congo Reform Association (1904) modeled on other movements, including abolition:

a) deployed knowledge, observers with local experience and photographs, to legitimate accusations of exploitation

b) lobbied elites with humanitarian credibility as well as established national network of branches

c) used the press as well as internal publications to discredit Leopold (Slides of King Leopold Cartoons)

5. Leopold snatched victory from defeat:

a) transferred Congo to Belgium in 1908 but at a cost:

b) assumed debts and compensated Leopold, including

multi-million grant “as a mark of gratitude for his great sacrifices made for the Congo”

c) Belgian obtains an empire while Africans remain under European rule. (Slides The Empress & The Peaceful Conquest of Africa)