Heart of Darkness

HISTORICAL

CONTEXT

The Congo RiverEuropeans first encountered the Congo River in 1482.

However, no one traveled more than 200 miles upstream until 1877.

Kinshasa (the Central Station)

Matadi (the CompanyStation)

Belgium in the Congo

1878 – King Leopold II of Belgium asked explorer Henry Morton

Stanley to set up a Belgian colony in the Congo, saying he wanted

to “end slavery and civilize the natives.”

1885 – The Congress of Berlin forms Congo Free State, which was

ruled by Leopold II alone.

The Congress of Berlin is referred to in the book as “the

International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs.”

Africa and

Imperialism

King Leopold II

1879-1885:

Henry Morton

Stanley

explores the

region for

Leopold II of

Belgium

1890: Joseph

Conrad goes to

the Congo.

CONGO FREE

STATE(1892)

King Leopold and the Congo

After persuading other European powers (at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85) to give him personal possession of the Congo, King Leopoldused the Congo as a money-making resource, committing human rights violations in the process, as he built public works projects in Belgium with the money he accrued.

6

King Leopold II (r. 1865 – 1909)

Belgian exploitation of

the Congo first focused

on the rubber industry.

Later on, the focus would

shift to ivory.

Belgium s Stranglehold on the Congo

Ivory

In 1892, over a quarter of a million pounds of ivorywas exported from the Congo.

In Europe, it was used in making jewelry and other decorative items, piano keys, and billiard balls.

When Leopold declared (in 1892) that all natural resources in the Congo were his sole property, he gave the Belgians free reign to take whatever they wanted, however they wished.

Trade expanded at this time, and new stations were established farther and farther inland.

Atrocities

Documented atrocities committed by the Belgian

ivory traders include the severing of hands and heads.

Reports of this, combined with Conrad’s portrayal of

the system in Heart of Darkness, led to an

international protest movement against Belgium’s

presence in Africa.

Leopold reacted by outlawing these practices, but his

decree had little effect, and the Belgian parliament

finally took the king’s control away in 1908.

(However, Belgium did not grant independence to the

Congo until 1960.)

“It is blood-curdling to see [the

soldiers] returning with the hands of

the slain, and to find the hands of

young children amongst the bigger

ones...The rubber from this district

has cost hundreds of lives, and the

scenes I have witnessed, while

unable to help the oppressed, have

been almost enough to make me

wish I were dead... This rubber

traffic is steeped in blood, and if the

natives were to rise and sweep every

white person on the Upper Congo

into eternity, there would still be left

a fearful balance to their credit.”

-- Belgian Official

5-8 Million

Victims (50% of the population)

Motives?

Most Europeans in the 1890s felt that Africa needed exposure to European culture and technology for its inhabitants to “become more evolved.”

This responsibility was known as “the white man’s burden” and the fervor to bring Christianity and commerce to Africa grew.

In return for these “benefits,” the Europeans extracted huge amounts of rubber and ivory.

Comment from Stanley

“King Leopold found the Congo…cursed by cannibalism,

savagery, and despair; and he has been trying with patience,

which I can never sufficiently admire, to relieve it of its

horrors, rescue it from its oppressors, and save it from

perdition.” --H.M. Stanley

Kipling’s

“The White Man’s Burden”

Take up the White Man’s burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

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Heart of Darkness

BIOGRAPHICAL

CONTEXT

Joseph Conrad

Born: 1857, Ukraine

His parents were political

activists who fought for the

abolition of serfdom and the

liberation of Polish lands from

Russian control.

They were first imprisoned and

then exiled to northern Russia,

where they contracted

tuberculosis and died, orphaning

11-year-old Joseph.

After being sent to live with his uncle, Conrad was sent to a boarding school at 13.

The owner’s daughter recalled,

“He stayed with us ten months... Intellectually he was extremely advanced but [he] disliked school routine, which he found tiring and dull; he used to say... he... planned to become a great writer.... He disliked all restrictions. At home, at school, or in the living room he would sprawl unceremoniously. He... suffer[ed] from severe headaches and nervous attacks”

In his adult life, his letters often described symptoms of depression.

At 16 (in 1874), Conrad went to Marseilles, France, to join the Merchant Navy.

He eventually became a British merchant sailor, then a master mariner, and finally, a British citizen, in 1886.

Most of his stories draw on his twenty years of experience working on and around ships.

In 1894, he retired from sailing and took up writing full time.

His stint working for a Belgian trading company in the Congo as a steamer captain (1890) inspired Heart of Darkness (1899), considered by many to be the finest short novel ever written in English.