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King Leopold's Life In The Congo

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The Congo is located in the heart of Africa. This land is huge and it has many commodities that could be used to profit the land and the people. Commodities such as; ivory, rubber, uranium, diamonds, timber, gold, and many more could be found. Due to the accessibility of these profitable substances many people were beaten, whipped, starved, and even died. Life in the Congo was never pleasant for the natives. King Leopold was a very demeaning leader that was greedy, selfish, and wealthy hungry. He didn’t care what he had to do to make a profit and become rich. King Leopold had commodities at his fingertips and knew that if he found a way to cultivate them he could be rich. He found just the way. He forced the native people to go out and harvest …show more content…

He had proposed that other black American should go work in the Congo so the US could profit. He spent 6 months there and realized that the country was not like it was described. Instead he found the country full of torcher, abuse and murder. He went back and accused King Leopold of many crimes and demanded that America step in and make a change. Leopold was able to dismiss the crimes with little to no difficulty. Joseph Conrad was a European that also believed that Leopold’s work was noble. He spent six months on the Congo and found out that it was not like it was described. Conrad wrote a novel about it, but nothing was done to stop it. Roger Casement made claims on the government saying that they were not doing what they said they were doing. He did his best to try to get the practices in the Congo changed. Leopold and his staff accused Casement of only seeing people suffering from cancer in their hands, which had to be cut off in a surgical procedure. Many people tried to stop the work in the Congo by making claims and writing about the truth but Leopold always came back and conquered those claims and was able to continue to treat the people of his country in a way that would profit him. America and Europe could have done more to try to put an end to all of this, but it was easier to sit back and pretend like nothing was happening. Countries were able to prosper when they pretended like there was nothing going on. These countries were more concerned about the profit they could make rather than the people that were suffering and tried to cover this up by making claims against the Leopold and the Congo. These countries would do whatever they needed to do to

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