Congo and King Leopold IIInstructions: Now that you have analyzed the map below, read the text underneath it and create a cause-and-effect flow chart with at least three major events. Then, in a paragraph, use evidence from the text to explain how the demand for bicycles in Europe led to exploitation of Congo.

Institut National de Géographie Breuxelles, Croquis de l’Afrique Équatoriale : contenant les derniers renseignements recueillis par les agents de l’Association Internationale du Congo (1884)

Text from http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/index.html:

In 1876, Belgian’s King Leopold II (1835-1909) convened a geographical conference in Brussels. Leopold proposed the establishment of an international benevolent committee for the propagation of civilization among the peoples of Central Africa (the Congo region). Originally conceived as a multi-person, scientific, and humanitarian assembly, the Association Internationale Africaine (African International

Association) was essentially a single-shareholder development company owned by Leopold. The Comité d'Études du Haut-Congo (CEHC, Study Committee of the Upper Congo), an international commercial, scientific, and humanitarian committee, was subsequently organized; and, in 1879, the CEHC became the Association Internationale du Congo (AIC, International Congo Society). From 1878 to 1884, these organizations primarily endeavored to establish Belgian influence and sovereignty in the Congo and monopolize the rubber and ivory trade. In 1884 the Conference of Berlin (1884-1885) convened for the purpose of finalizing the colonial partitioning of the African continent among the late 19th century imperialist states (Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States). Leopold’s efforts to establish Belgian influence in the Congo were rewarded with the État Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State). The AIC was dissolved in 1885 and its structures acquired by the Congo Free State (CFS). Essentially, the territory of the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo, over two million square kilometers, was deemed the sole property of Leopold.

Under the terms of the General Act of the Berlin Conference, Leopold pledged to suppress the East African slave trade; promote humanitarian policies; guarantee free trade; and encourage missions, and other philanthropic and scientific enterprises. Contrary to these promises, in November 1888, Leopold issued three decrees. The first prohibited trade in arms. The second mandated the terms for the employment of indigenous workers, committing them to be indentured for terms of seven years to their employers. The third established the Force Publique (FP). The FP's officer corps was comprised entirely of whites—Belgian regular soldiers and mercenaries from other countries. On arriving in the CFS, these officers recruited men from neighboring non-Congolese ethnic groups—many came from warrior tribes in the Upper Congo. The FP’s primary role was to enforce Leopold’s exploitive economic policies in the newly established CFS.

Both directly and by leasing concessions to private companies paying him 50 percent of their profits, Leopold would personally capitalize on the vast wealth extracted in rubber, ivory, and minerals during his twenty-three year reign of terror in the Belgian colony. Moreover, he would subsequently break the Berlin Conference free-trade agreement among the colonial powers in Africa and embezzle profits owed to the Belgian government for publicly invested funds used to maintain and develop the colony. Using his vast colonial wealth to construct grand palaces and monuments including the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, ironically Leopold would never visit the colony and avoided personally witnessing the results of his inhumane treatment of the Congolese.

By the final decade of the 19th century, J. B. Dunlop’s 1887 invention of rubber inflatable bicycle tubes

and the growing popularity of the automobile had dramatically increased the global demand for rubber, exasperating Leopold’s greed. In 1891, Leopoldissued a decree giving himself total control over the rubber and ivory trade. The decree enforced a tax on Leopold’s Congo subjects requiring local chiefs to supply men to collect rubber. It essentially obliged natives to supply these products without payment. The genocide scholar Adam Jones comments that “the result was one of the most brutal and all-encompassing corveé institutions the world has known...Male rubber tappers and porters were mercilessly exploited and driven to death.” Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men hostage until they returned with their rubber quota. Those who refused or failed to supply enough rubber had their villages burned down, children murdered, and hands cut off.

Although local chiefs organized tribal resistance, the FP brutally crushed these uprisings. These rebellions often included Congolese fleeing their villages to hide in the wilderness, ambushing army units, and setting fire to rubber vine forests. In retribution, the FP burned villages and FP officers sent their soldiers into the forest to find and kill rebels hiding there. To prove the success of their patrols, soldiers were ordered to cut off and bring back a dead victim's right hand for proof that they had not wasted their bullets. If they missed, or used cartridges on big game, they would cut off the hands of living people to make up the necessary number.