The Scramble For Africa Imperialism

What became known as “The Scramble for Africa” began with the Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885, when the continent was partitioned among several European powers into several colonies. One of those countries represented at the Berlin Conference was Belgium. At this time, Belgium had already explored the Congo basin and sent missionaries there, so delegates repressing King Leopold II at the conference unsurprisingly lobbied to preside over the region, which soon turned into a reality. Unlike other European nations that occupied African territory, though, Belgium did not immediately annex the Congo. Instead, the King made the region his own personal plantation under the name the Congo Free State. During this period, between 1885 and 1908,

Simultaneously, the King authorized several Catholic missionaries to convert the black natives to Christianity. This paper argues that since the missionaries who were authorized by Leopold II himself did nothing to stop the genocide-like abuse in the Congo Free State.

Despite not officially controlling the area until 1885, hints of imperialism in the Congo basin can be traced back to 1876, when Leopold II proposed what would eventually become the Association Internationale Africaine, a development company that publically served European geographical and humanitarian interests. Around 1879, he subsequently organized the Comité d'Études du Haut-Congo - an international commercial, scientific, and humanitarian committee that eventually folded into the International Association of the Congo. All three companies served as tools to gain Belgian influence and sovereignty in the Congo region by masking them as exploration and humanitarian. In reality, his end goal was to create an ivory trade route through the Upper Congo. He wrote to the Belgian Catholic missionaries located in the Congo in 1883, and called upon

Many Protestant missionaries witnessed and publicized the abuses against the indigenous population during rubber- and ivory-gathering operations firsthand. Roger Casement, a British Consul, published a report in 1903 about the abuses in the Congo. Following his lead, the American and British Protestant missionaries located in the Etat Indépendant du Congo spread the news of the horrors vocally rallied for the first human rights movement of the twentieth century. One Protestant protestor was none other than Booker T. Washington. Due to international pressure, King Leopold II relinquished control of the Congo Free State and the government formally annexed it in 1908. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, defended Leopold. In the Vatican, Pope Pius X favored Leopold II as he hid his true motives by expressing a desire to improve the material and moral situation of the African people, via promoting Christianity, winning over several Roman Catholic prelates who supported his regime and interests from start to finish. They then blamed the reforms and protests on British greed, as it did not help that the Anglican Church was a rival to Catholicism. By and large, most Protestants opposed the brutality occurring in the Congo while Catholics enabled their occurrences by supporting the