Why Was King Leopold Able To Colonize Congo

Journalists play an important role in our history because they give us a view of our world and help us make connections to everyone. They would have to go extreme measures if needed to find more information because they want their story to be the highly accurate and the best one out there. In order for the people to understand what was going on in daily news, they would read what the journalists wrote. King Leopold II was able to colonize Congo with the help of the journalists and writers keeping quiet about what was really happening in Congo. King Leopold II was an ambitious man who only cared about the money and power. He was focused on buying land and in the 1870s, Africa was the best place to start a colony. To do all of this, Leopold pretended to like a humanitarian and philanthropist by holding international conferences. He pretended to help the Africans by wanting to abolish slave trade as part of his secretive plan to illegally take over African land. In reality, he would end
Men, women and even the children were chained by the next while doing their work. They were extremely malnourished, had lack of sleep and were being mistreated and it led to many of their deaths. Leopold was all about making money so he would make them produce large amounts of products at a time. If they were not cooperating or following the quota, their punishments included being lashed by a corkscrew whip twenty-five to one hundred times. To others it looked like Leopold kept emphasizing the ban on slave trade but some witnesses wanted to say that he was a hypocrite. He called his own slaves volunteers, but they were in chains. Leopold’s army would hold women, children and chiefs as hostages until the men met the quota of the amount of rubber. This clearly shows that King Leopold was lying to everyone that he wanted to ban slave trade and he would have the media cover up the