Preview

Letter To King Leopold Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
638 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Letter To King Leopold Analysis
King Leopold is from Belgium, he came to Africa to take their natural resources because Africans were rich with resources. Belgians had companies in Africa and they worked their, Leopold got really greedy for natural resources and he started to invade in Africa. King Leopold started to make promises with the Africans saying that he was going to keep them very well educated, build hospitals and buildings for their needs Leopold didn’t keep his promises because he didn’t take care of the Natives and he abused/killed many of them, Natives really didn’t get anything from this experience only thing they got was abused and manipulated by “the great” King Leopold. Therefore, King Leopold didn’t follow his promises to the Natives, he followed the promises …show more content…
In “The Treaty of Berlin” he was promising to take care of the Natives and help with well being. However, in George Washington Williams “Letter to King Leopold”, it states,“Your Majesty Government has never spent one franc for educational purposes, nor instituted any practical system of industrialism.” (George Washington Williams). Leopold manipulated the Natives by saying he was going to make hospitals but they ended up being in a dusty nasty shack which most likely made the Africans a lot more sick, he claimed he was going to spend money on education but that didn’t turn out well,instead he burned down buildings and destroyed people and their belongings all for natural resources. If king Leopold really ‘cared for his people’ he wouldn’t have put them through so much stress from the beginning he was telling them even when he was trying to cross to get to Africa that he was going to make things better and for them and they were waiting but little did they know that wasn’t going to happen he was using them for what they had and caused lots of damage too, Leopold also forced them to give up their land. King Leopold didn’t help out the Natives like he stated he really just came there and took over everything, killed many people, for their resources and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the sons of two of Chicago's wealthiest and most prominent German Jewish families, precipitated one of the twentieth century's most sensational mass media events when they kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old neighbor boy, Robert Franks, in May of 1924. At first, there was little suspicion that the pair, close friends since childhood, had any involvement in the disappearance of the Franks boy. Law enforcement, back in 1924, was able to track down a killer from a pair of eyeglasses. This just recently was profiled in a homicide update story on a missing child. Police first missed the glasses altogether, missed the reflection in a beer…

    • 364 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost" is a lost historical account starting in the late 19th century continuing into the 20th century of the enslavement of an entire country. The book tells the story of King Leopold and his selfish attempt to essentially make Belgium bigger starting with the Congo. This was all done under an elaborate "philanthropic" public relations curtain deceiving many countries along with the United States (the first to sign on in Leopold's claim of the Congo). There were many characters in the book ones that aided in the enslavement of the Congo and others that help bring light to the situation but the most important ones I thought were: King Leopold, a cold calculating, selfish leader, as a child he was crazy about geography and as an adult wasn't satisfied with his small kingdom of Belgium setting his sites on the Congo to expand. Hochschild compares Leopold to a director in a play he even says how brilliant he is in orchestrating the capture of the Congo. Another important character is King Leopold's, as Hochschild puts it, "Stagehand" Henry Morton Stanley. He was a surprisingly cruel person killing many natives of the Congo in his sophomore voyage through the interior of Africa (The first was to find Livingston). Leopold used Stanley to discuss treaties with African leaders granting Leopold control over the Congo. Some of the natives he talked to weren't even in the position to sign the treaties or they didn't know what they were signing. And probably the most influential person in the book, E.D. Morel. Morel, an employee of a Belgian company that handled shipments to the Congo, noticed that the shipments coming to and from the Congo seemed really suspicious.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Adam Hochschild's book, King Leopold's Ghost,he uses his educational and life experiences as historian. Additionally, not only does this book reach from an education of politics but also human rights. Hochschild is questioning: How so many people accept the exploration stories of men filled with greed, charm, and cunning (Hochschild. p.6). Today, you rarely hear stories told from the Africans point-of-view. Hochschild thesis is that if, we had both point-of-views we could make stronger arguments. The author's concept is that after the Atlantic slave trade is responsible for the increase and brutality of slavery, as well as the large number of slaves.…

    • 249 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Soon after the Congress of Berlin in 1885, the Congo Basin was united as the Congo Free State. From the Belgian parliament, Leopold was granted almost absolute control of the area. Under terms of the General Act of the Berlin Conference, Leopold pledged to guarantee free trade within the colony, suppress the East African slave trade, promote humanitarian policies, impose no import taxes for twenty years, and encourage philanthropic and scientific enterprises. Conflicting with his oath, Leopold issued a series of decrees beginning in the mid-1880's that violated these conditions. First, he decreed that Belgium assert rights of proprietorship over all vacant land in the Congo. In three successive decrees, the already few rights of the Congolese were reduced even further. They were only able to lay claim on their native villages and farms. Second, Leopold ordered that merchants limit their commercial operations in the Congo to no more that bartering with natives. By 1890, faced with considerable financial difficulty, Leopold had already directly violated his promises; the Congo basically became a commercial entity and it was found that Leopold had been slowly monopolizing a large amount of the ivory and rubber trade by imposing import and export taxes.…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    King Leopold II of Belgium was a manipulative ruler who created injustices in the Congo Free State. Many missionaries and young idealists traveled to Africa for adventure but unexpectedly found themselves amidst a holocaust. Despite the many African rebel leaders’ attempts to stop King Leopold, over ten million Congolese people were killed.…

    • 689 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Samuel de Champlain the founder of Quebec was a French Explorer and Cartographer best known for establishing and governing the settlement of New France when the British signed the treaty to give it to the French and the city of Quebec to the British. He was married to Helene Boulle (56).He had three daughters Hope,Charity,and Faith de Champlain.…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    colony of Belgium; trading stations established in 1879, and Leopold II was given control of the Congo; the Belgian rulers savagely treated the indigenous peoples in their quest for rubber and ivory; Leopold's incursion into Congo basin raised the question of the political fate of black Africa (south of the Sahara); as did Britain's conquest of Egypt…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Government scandal is no shocking news, constant new conspiracies and power plays are all too frequently covered by the media for such a thing to be a surprise. The biggest scandal is covering up their own actions. Too much history is covered up by governments around the world. Selfishly, they hide their own shameful history to keep a good name and to stay in good graces with their subjects. In his final chapter of King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild conveys how the transgression of the Flemish to the Congolese was erased. How is it that the people of both the Congo and Belgium have completely forgotten the horrors their predecessors endured and committed? For every secret that is uncovered, how many more are…

    • 587 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Letter to King George III

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages

    We send our gratitude for your soldiers protecting us but we wish to please separate from Great Britain. We, the people of the colonies shall wish you dearly but it is time for us to become our own nation. Please DO NOT be offended by the following Statements.…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout his reign as the King of the Belgians, Leopold II both followed and went against some of the ideas Niccolo Machiavelli lists in “The Prince”. One of the first things Leopold II did when he came into power in 1865 was pulling Belgium into neutrality in Europe due to recent shifts in the European balance of power. This goes against what Niccolo Machiavelli says in “The Prince” about what a prince must do to be esteemed. “A prince can also win prestige by declaring himself an ally of one side of a conflict. Neutrality alienates both the victor and the loser” (Machiavelli). He tells us in this quote that a prince should choose a side when making allies instead of staying neutral. He claims that the victor will see the nation as a “doubtful friend” while the loser will see them as a coward. Since Belgium was seen as a powerless country in Europe at the time, it probably would have been wise of him to choose a side with either France or Germany since they bordered Belgium and could have taken over at any time. In an instance where Leopold II did follow Machiavelli’s ideas, he lied in the Brussel’s Conference in 1876 by saying that by expanding into the Congo Free State, he was only “promoting scientific exploration of Africa for the advancement of knowledge and for the economic benefit of all humanity” (Blumberg, 161). Machiavelli states that “a prince who honors his word is generally praised by others”, but at the same time, he should be a master of deception by learning “how to fight both with laws and with force” (Machiavelli). Therefore, the best of all princes is one that keeps his promises, but knows when it’s the right time to lie. In this case, Leopold lied at the conference so that he could receive the Congo for his own benefit. Since Belgium was a Constitutional Monarchy in which the king had very little power over domestic affairs, he really didn't do much that would have affected the lives of his people directly. Therefore, by getting the Congo to…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Supporting Evidence #1: “However, he licensed companies that brutally exploited Africans by forcing them to collect sap from rubber plants. At least 10 million Congolese died due to the abuses inflicted during Leopold's rule.”World history: Patterns of interactions. (2009). p#774…

    • 678 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Congo Free State, later named the Democratic Republic of Congo, drastically changed in 1876 when it was first colonized by King Leopold of Belgium. The colony of the Congo Free State was ruled solely by King Leopold, who used it for his own personal advancement. He took advantage of the country's well-known sources such as rubber. King Leopold of Belgium took all profits made off of the resources for himself and left the native people with nothing. In addition, King Leopold enslaved these natives and treated them poorly. They were forced to do hard and dangerous labor and if they did not meet the King’s standards, they could be killed. While the inhabitants of the Congo Free State could not do much to retaliate against the King, other countries…

    • 1007 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Belgium saw them as an easy target with big profits and imperialized. Belgium, as a western nation, also agreed to the ideas of Social Darwinism, the belief that the white European was better than the rest of the people in the world, chiefly based on their physical features. Simply put, they were racist. Most Europeans fell into this belief, but the Belgian people took this to an extreme. They enslaved the native people of Congo in their own country and forced work upon them. Quotas and taxes were created to ensure certain amounts of raw materials were gathered and harsh punishments were put into action for those who didn’t complete or meet their requirements. According to Mark Twain, “The amount of rubber needed to meet the tax requires the men to work for up 25 days each month harvesting the wild rubber vines in the Congo forest” [3]. According to this that would leave only 5 days a month for “regular” life for the Congolese people. They did not have the time or resources to educate themselves, make money, or to develop. In 1908 the Belgian government gave the natives better treatment, by taking away the direct ownership of the nation from Leopold and they made it an official colony of the Belgian government [4]. This decision came through by putting humanitarian pressure put on King Leopold. Conditions improved, schools, hospitals, and roads were built, but the cruelty and racism was still their because of the history they had of it. Also, the punishment, crimes, and cruelty was all that the people understood because they were forced to live in it their entire lives, and it was a hard to shift back. Even in today’s world, this industrialization and these policies have left a scar on the Congos. In both the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic Of Congo there is still political unrest and constant violence. On December 17, there were 22…

    • 1768 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Imperialism is the ideology that drives the Europeans in the “Heart of Darkness” towards the Congo for its ivory. In the Congo, the only things worth paying attention towards are those that provide monetary benefits, and this can be seen when Conrad states “Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care.…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The First Knight Essay

    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A. Introduction: Write an introduction that introduces the themes of courtly love and chivalry; also,…

    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays