He produced an excoriating, detailed report, complete with sworn testimony from witnesses, which is in many ways a model for the reports produced by contemporary organizations like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. L'tat libre du Congo: Paradis perdu. Estimates suggest more than 50% died there. Warning: This piece contains graphic pictures. Moreover, he had a well-known penchant for teenaged girls, and, when he was age 65, he began a liaison with a teenaged former prostitute who bore him two additional children. (Colonizing other peoples, regardless of the justification, is wrong. In two ways the Congo's rubber boom had lasting impact beyond the territory itself. The kings stated goal was to bring civilization to the people of the Congo, an enormous region in Central Africa. Birmingham Protest March The first nationwide Congolese political party, the Congo National Movement, was launched in 1958 by Patrice Lumumba and other Congolese leaders. The European colonization of Africa was one of the greatest and swiftest conquests in human history. Congo Free State Rubber Regime Atrocities. Forbath, P. The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration, and Exploitation of the World's Most Dramatic River, 1991 (Paperback). Bennett, Norman Robert. ." t. e. Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. A petition calling on the city for its removal has reached 74,000 signatures. Unlike previous European nations that spread their influence over When Stanley returned to Europe in 1878, he had not only found Dr. Livingstone (an event remembered to this day), resolved the last great mystery of African exploration, and ruined his health: he had also opened the heart of tropical Africa up to the outside world. King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence. Army officers often demanded of their men a severed hand from each rebel killed in battle. The relentless pursuit of profits in the Congo by King Leopold II resulted in one of the worst levels of moral decadence for mankind. Almost the only early visitor to interview Africans about their experience of the regime, he took extensive notes, and, a thousand miles up the Congo River, wrote one of the greatest documents in human rights literature, an open letter to King Leopold that is one of the important landmarks in human rights literature. The New York Review of Books. King Leopold II Biography: The Monster of the Congo Bierman, John (1990). Leopold financed development projects with money loaned to him from the Belgian government. (Believing one people is more civilized than another is wrong.) He wrote articles, appeared at public meetings, lobbied the rich and powerful tirelessly; and always his theme was the boundless opportunity for commercial exploitation of the lands he had discovered or, in his own words, to "pour the civilisation of Europe into the barbarism of Africa". Estimates vary, but about half the Congolese population died from punishment and malnutrition.