Summary Of L Habitat De Belgique: The State Of Belgium

L'état de Belgique/The State of Belgium Before examining the novel, the reader must consider the time period which the book was written in and how it influenced Conrad’s writing. The country of Belgium, even when it gained independence in 1831, has always suffered problems like any other 19th century nation. Belgium was plagued with many internal and external problems. Many historians believe that ”Belgium’s oldest division was that between anticlerical liberalism and political Catholicism. The country’s “culture wars” were among the hottest in Europe between the 1850s and the 1880s, culminating in a guerre scolaire (1879–84) that left deep wounds on the local level. The struggle “for the soul of the child” triggered a massive political

For years, the Congo Basin remained a mystery for many western explorers. This dark continent would remain a mystery until it would fall under Belgian jurisdiction. After colonization, many explorers who traveled into the Congo found “a sordid succession of murderous punitive expeditions, much unpleasantness … in an atmosphere of “cerebral decortication” and “F.D.H.”—Fever, Dysentery, Hematury—”(Picard 780). With exploration brought the discovery of large deposits of rubber and thus brought a lot of investment from not only Belgian natives but also foreign entrepreneurs and introduced “a capital of a peculiar kind, dazed by the glitter of the court and firmly controlled by the king through concession companies.”(Strenger 759). Soon within mere months, the Congo became the economic backbone of Belgium. Many economists at the time stated that “”The king “exploits,” “extorts,” “robs,” “pillages,” “seizes,” “loots,” and “preys upon,” he “sucks” nectour out of colonial flowers and eats his piece of the “magnificent African pie.” While the colonization might have brought glory to the people at Belgium, but at the expense of