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the two drunkards to 100 lashes each, and to be kept in chains for 6 months.”
Through the Dark Continent,
(In Darkest Africa
My Dark Companions and Their Strange Stories
Readers got their money’s worth.
He is forever measuring and tabulating things:
“Believe? Yes, I do believe that we shall all emerge into light again some time. It is true that our prospects are as dark as this night. . . . I believe [this river] will prove to be the Congo; if the Congo, then there must be many cataracts . . . whether the Congo, the Niger, or the Nile, I am prepared. . . . Believe? I see us gliding down by tower and town, and my mind will not permit a shadow of doubt. Good-night, my boy! Good-night! and may happy dreams of the sea, and ships, and pleasure, and comfort, and success attend you in your sleep!”
Waguhha:
of Stanley
as one-eyed
tele...
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Stanley Falls.
Kasai,
Volga
and is half again as long as...
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“The Power possessing the Congo . . .” he wrote, “would absorb to itself the trade of the whole of the enormous basin behind. This river is and will be the grand highway of commerce to West Central Africa.”
Above all, Leopold told his man in London, “I do not want to risk . . . losing a fine chance to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake.”
Sanford
Although he had lived a pampered life in yachts and palaces, Leopold was, of the two, the
wiser in the ways of the world.
the king reached new heights as an illusionist.
“to found a chain of posts or hospices, both hospitable and scientific, which should serve as means of information and aid to travellers . . . and ultimately, by their humanizing influences, to secure the abolition of the traffic in slaves.”
International Association of the Congo,
it has been formed with the noble aim of rendering lasting and disinterested services to the cause of progress.”
“enough to make an American believe in Kings forever.”
“confederation of free negro republics,”
The station established at the top of the big rapids, within earshot of their thunder, and featuring a heavily fortified blockhouse and a vegetable garden, was christened Leopoldville. Above it rose Leopold Hill.
Soon maps showed Lake Leopold II and the Leopold River. One of the later-arriving steamboats, which would briefly be piloted by the Congo’s most famous ship’s officer, would be the Roi des Belges (King of the Belgians).
Stanley was a harsh taskmaster. “The best punishment is that of irons,” he explained in one of his letters to Brussels, “because without wounding, disfiguring, or torturi...
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“Breakstones.”
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza,
A still greater shock awaited him at Stanley Pool, where he found that de Brazza had signed a treaty with a chief ceding to France a strip of the northern shoreline. De Brazza had left a sergeant in command of an outpost there, flying the French flag.
and to assist by labour or otherwise, any works, improvements or expeditions which the said Association shall cause at any time to be carried out in any part of these territories. . . .
By labour or otherwise.
Although some Congo peoples, like the Pygmies, were admirably peaceful, it would be a mistake to see most of them as paragons of primeval innocence. Many practiced slavery and a few ritual cannibalism, and they were as likely to make war on other clans or ethnic groups as people anywhere on earth.
Cubism was new only for Europeans, for it was partly inspired by specific pieces of African art, some of them from the Pende and Songye peoples, who live in the basin of the Kasai River, one of the Congo’s major tributaries.
In June 1884, his work for Leopold done and a sheaf of treaties in his baggage, Stanley sailed home to Europe. He grumbled a bit about his employer’s greed; the king, he complained, had the “enormous voracity to swallow a million of square miles with a gullet that will not take in a herring.” But it was Stanley who made the big swallow possible.
Leopold was certain that none of these larger powers would be eager to recognize the one-man colony Stanley had staked out for him.
line. If no major European country would take this crucial first step, Leopold decided, he would look elsewhere.
Morgan,
The secretary of state declared that the United States of America recognized King Leopold II’s claim to the Congo. It was the first country to do so.
It does no harm for Paris to fear that a British protectorate could be established in the Congo.”
agreed. Confident that Leopold’s planned railway would bankrupt him and that he would then have to sell them the land, they thought they were getting an excellent deal.
There were some conflicting claims to be resolved, and clearly some ground rules were needed for further division of the African cake.
“Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.”
When talking to the British, for instance, he hinted that if he didn’t get all the land he had in mind, he would leave Africa completely, which would mean, under his right-of-first-refusal deal, that he would sell the Congo to France. The bluff worked, and England gave in.
No one benefited more than the man who had not been there, King Leopold II.
Leopold had paid £800 a month, a former servant of the house testified, for a steady supply of young women, some of whom were ten to fifteen years old and guaranteed to be virgins.
At last the cavalry officer was released from jail and dramatically rescued Louise from custody, only to die not long afterward.
Leopold particularly envied the Hapsburgs because, unlike him, they were little encumbered by parliaments and constitutions.
