The Congo Book Report

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The Belgian Congo isn’t something most students learn about. It’s a period in history mostly unknown to those outside historical departments, however, this period in time is just as exceedingly bloody as any other genocidal event, perhaps even bloodier. The exploitation and violence in the Congo is extensively covered by authors like Adam Hochschild and Peter Forbath. However, the cause of violence has always been often overshadowed by the story of King Leopold and the monetary exploitation by some scholars. Some scholars choose to write off the violence that happened in the Congo as a strictly exploitative tactic used by officers and businesses to gain more rubber and ivory. While this is true, the motives of violence in the Congo need to …show more content…
Casement became a human rights activist and surveyed the actions of King Leopold’s own personal army, the Force Publique, to discern the situation in his colony. The report is a journal of the interviews he collected while he was investigating the situation, and sheds light on the horrendous activities the army was engaged in. Through these journals, Casement was able to discern how and why the Congolese were tortured and ultimately killed off. Casement also came to the conclusion that, despite the fact some officers were tried and found guilty of abusive actions, they only represented an increasingly small portion of the human rights violations happening throughout Leopold’s territory. Casement revealed that the Congolese were being forced to work but with compensation. However, Leopold’s army also decimated many of the villages when they refused to work for him, and forced many people into labor and into his own army. His accounts suggest that this violence stemmed from Leopold’s need to increase monetary gains from the …show more content…
Morel, and the Foreign Office in London. This primary source is a collection of articles and journal entries, the first of which being a letter from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an author but also a supporter and activist for reforming the Congo, which stated pressure needed to be applied to Belgium and the king in order for the Congo to not only gain freedom but break from the genocide (he estimates the Congolese lost 2/3rds of their population) they were experiencing. By writing this, Doyle is explaining that the violence is centrally commanded and is something that can be changed by those in power, suggesting that the violence is indeed centrally encouraged. The rest of the letters are between the Foreign Office and the Congo Reform Association, in which they discuss the things that should be done to push Belgium towards releasing the Congo as a colony. Amongst those things they discuss the Congo’s right to their own land’s resources, goods confiscated by the Belgian’s from the natives, forced labor on rubber plantations, and the dwindling population of
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