These poor creatures are frequently beaten with a dried piece of hippopotamus skin, called a chicote, and usually the blood flows at every stroke when well laid on. They know that to kill, to sleep with someone elses wife, to lie and to insult is bad. on November 22, 2021. They are introduced by two methods, viz., black men are dispatched to the Portuguese coast where they engage these women as mistresses of white men, who pay to the procurer a monthly sum. Overall this letter held a lot of information. These piratical, buccaneering posts compel the natives to furnish them with fish, goats, fowls, and vegetables at the mouths of their muskets; and whenever the natives refuse to feed these vampires, they report to the main station and white officers come with an expeditionary force and burn away the homes of the natives. Coronavirus patient shares what having the disease feels like! . Upon the arrival of the survivors in the Congo they are set to work as labourers at one shilling a day; as soldiers they are promised sixteen shillings per month, in English money, but are usually paid off in cheap handkerchiefs and poisonous gin. Congo being maltreated but also the Belgium men that were being sent over were sick These black soldiers, many of whom are slaves, exercise the power of life and death. Meet the man who has donated blood every week for 60 years! Their letters never reach home. 7 Ibid, page 7 The African soldiers and labourers of your Majestys Government fare worse than the whites, because they have poorer quarters, quite as bad as those of the natives; and in the sheds, called hospitals, they languish upon a bed of bamboo poles without blankets, pillows or any food different from that served to them when well, rice and fish. T have heard an officer of the Belgian Army pleading the cause of a white man of low degree who had been guilty of beating and stabbing a black man, and urging race distinctions and prejudices as good and sufficient reasons why his client should be adjudged innocent. 4 blackpast/george-washington-williams-open-letter-king-leopold- They make no report as to the number of robberies they commit, or the number of lives they take; they are only required to subsist upon the natives and thus relieve your Majestys Government of the cost of feeding them. All Rights Reserved. Shortly before his death he travelled to King Leopold II's . When I arrived in the Congo, I naturally sought for the results of the brilliant programme: fostering care, benevolent enterprise, an honest and practical effort to increase the knowledge of the natives and secure their welfare. Shocked by the widespread brutal abuses and slavery imposed on the Congolese, he wrote an open letter to Leopold in 1890 about the suffering of the regions native inhabitants at the hands of the kings agents. However, in his letter, Williams claims that no effort has been made to aid these people, but . A small donation would help us keep this available to all. government on how they have wronged the people if the Congo. It may be safely asserted that no barbarous people have ever so readily adopted the fostering care of benevolent enterprise, as have the tribes of the Congo, and never was there a more honest and practical effort made to increase their knowledge and secure their welfare. There were instances in which Mr. HENRY M. STANLEY sent one white man, with four or five Zanzibar soldiers, to make treaties with native chiefs. AT THE BEGINNING of August 1890, several weeks after he wrote his furious Open Letter to King Leopold II, George Washington Williams finished the long return journey down the Congo River to the station of Kinshasa, on Stanley Pool. Such criticism will come with more grace from some Belgian statesman, who may remember that there is no constitutional or organic relation subsisting between his Government and the purely personal and absolute monarchy your Majesty has established in Africa. An open letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II: King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo. Three hundred Ntakabrassrod-is the price the State pays for a slave, when bought from a native. In such slave-hunting raids one village is armed by the State against the other, and the force thus secured is incorporated with the regular troops. George Washington Williams witnessed the extreme mistreatment of the Africans in the Congo, and wrote An Open Letter to King Leopold II as a response. I was anxious to see to what extent the natives had adopted the fostering care of your Majestys benevolent enterprise (? While the Great Powers competed for territory elsewhere, the king of one of Europes smallest countries carved his own private colony out of 100km of Central African rainforest. From Leopoldville to NGombe, a distance of more than 300 miles, there is not a single soldier or civilian. He pointed out in twelve charges against the Belgium There many of the members of the various boards are in the education field It buys and sells and steals slaves. The laws printed and circulated in Europe for the Protection of the blacks in the Congo, are a dead letter and a fraud. Not long ago a Belgian trader had a child by a slave-woman of the State, and he tried to secure possession of it that he might educate it, but the Chief of the Station where he resided, refused to be moved by his entreaties. personal bias and it came out in his writings. Why did Katy Perry collapse on set of American Idol? Otis Moss, III: The Criminalization of Blackness, #NowWhatBmore: Baltimore hosts a townhall on what lessons it can learn from #Ferguson. I appeal to Anti-Slavery Societies in all parts of Christendom, to Philanthropists, Christians, Statesmen, and to the great mass of people everywhere, to call upon the Governments of Europe, to hasten the close of the tragedy your Majestys unlimited Monarchy is enacting in the Congo. They are introduced by two methods, viz., black men are dispatched to the Portuguese coast where they engage these women as mistresses of white men, who pay to the procurer a monthly sum. A number of electric batteries had been purchased in London, and when attached to the arm under the coat, communicated with a band of ribbon which passed over the palm of the white brothers hand, and when he gave the black brother a cordial grasp of the hand the black brother was greatly surprised to find his white brother so strong, that he nearly knocked him off his feet in giving him the hand of fellowship. The letter that he wrote to King Leopold, woke a society that didn't want to wake up. But of all the awful crimes they committed, Belgiums King Leopold II left arguably the largest and most horrid legacy of all. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Posted on August 20, 2009 September 3, 2019 by contributed by: BlackPast. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja details the horrific abuses of Leopold's occupation and looting of the . Three hundred Ntakabrassrod-is the price the State pays for a slave, when bought from a native. or the care for the sick that was needed. This was, however, an unusual case of generosity and clemency; and there is only one post that I know of where there is not to be found children of the civil and military officers of your Majestys Government abandoned to degradation; white men bringing their own flesh and blood under the lash of a most cruel master, the State of Congo. I love children but they have no place in my life, None of my colleagues at work knows that Im a transgender Read Montoyas Story, Gay, but married to a woman Read Jims story. The natives can scarcely subsist upon the vegetable life produced in some parts of the country. I have the honour to submit for your Majestys consideration some reflections respecting the Independent State of Congo, based upon a careful study and inspection of the country and character of the personal Government you have established upon the African Continent. I have the honour to submit for your Majestys consideration some reflections respecting the Independent State of Congo, based upon a careful study and inspection of the country and character of the personal Government you have established upon the African Continent. The primary source as the title suggests is an open letter T saw the white servant of the Governor-General, CAMILLE JANSSEN, detected in stealing a bottle of wine from a hotel table. George Washington Williams, "An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo By Colonel, The Honorable Geo. Would you buy the story of finding the kings letter in a bible ? To avoid that, they get interested in it, and make you murderous competition and dream one day to overthrow you. and dying on the ships and they were not being given the Christian burials they required No one can be prosecuted in the State of Congo without an order of the Governor-General, and as he refused to allow his servant to be arrested, nothing could be done. source of this documents authenticity I looked at the original source first. treatment of the Native people. Your Majestys Government has sequestered their land, burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail. They speak and submit to a Mungu, one Nzambi, one Nzakomba, and what else I dont know. Major Barttelot was shot by a Zanzibar soldier, and the captain of a Belgian trading-boat was the victim of his own rash and unjust treatment of a native chief. Other officers have served the State faithfully, and deserve well of their Royal Master. He turned his Congo Free State into a massive labour camp, made a fortune for himself from the harvest of its wild rubber, and contributed in a large way to the death of perhaps 10 million innocent people. King Leopold II had obtained the Congo to supposedly enrich the lives of the people who lived there. When natives have persisted in trading with the trade-companies the State has punished their independence by burning the villages in the vicinity of the trading houses and driving the natives away. 6 Ibid, page 6 In 1935, while working in the Congo, Muikwani Bukoko bought a second-hand Bible from a Belgian priest who forgot the speech in the Bible. of Minas Gerais would sink. Se continui ad utilizzare questo sito noi assumiamo che tu ne sia felice. *** Via degli Eucalipti, 9, 04024 Gaeta LT HIS233: World Civilization 2 At length he appealed to the Governor-General, and he gave him the woman and thus the trader obtained the child also. Blackpast has a board DuBois, An Appeal to the World : A Statement of Denial of Human Rights to Minorities, PREAMBLE Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which Read More(1948) United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief From a Crime of The United States Government Against the Negro People (1951) Introduction: Out of the inhuman black ghettos of American cities, out of the cotton plantations of the South, comes this Read More(1951) We Charge Genocide, The Freedom Charter Adopted at the Congress of the People, Kliptown, on 26 June 1955 We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and Read More(1955) The South African Freedom Charter, My beloved companion, I write you these words not knowing whether you will receive them, when you will receive them, and whether I will still be alive when you read them. Shocked by the widespread brutal abuses and slavery imposed on the Congolese, he wrote an open letter to Leopold in 1890 about the suffering of the region's native inhabitants at the . There are only 2,300 soldiers in the Congo. Institute a confessional system, which allows you to be good detectives denouncing any black that has a different consciousness contrary to that of the decision-maker. New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2004. . BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. In his conclusion he wrote Against the deceit, The above speech which shows the real intention of the Christian missionary journey in Africa was exposed to the world by Mr. Moukouani Muikwani Bukoko, born in the Congo in 1915. DuBois, An Appeal to the World : A Statement of Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress. Introduction There are in Read More(1947) W.E.B. 9. Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a05f34588bb8ca64686b0d8f5df0e3d8" );document.getElementById("i421ca229f").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. All the sleight-of- hand tricks had been carefully rehearsed, and he was now ready for his work. But to the surprise of every honest man, the thief was sheltered by the Governor General of your Majestys Government. They are the greatest curse the country suffers now. If God punished Eve with painful childbirth, why do animals feel pain too? include, deficient in moral military and financial strength 5 , The courts of the Majestys There is a feeling of deep discontent among the Arabs here, and they seem to feel that they are being trifled with. about the fact that he disagreed with the practice and that he wanted the King to put a They are enemies, not patriots. State soldiers patrol many villages forbidding the natives to trade with any person but a State official, and when the natives refuse to accept the price of the State, their goods are seized by the Government that promised them protection. Early and Personal Life. Nor will this condition of affairs change until the native shall have been taught by the European the dignity, utility and blessing of labour. . He served in the Ohio House of Representatives. The labour system is radically unpractical; the soldiers and labourers of your Majestys Government are very largely imported from Zanzibar at a cost of 10 per capita, and from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Accra and Lagos at from 1 to 1/10 per capita. You will find many other books, which will be given to you at the end of this conference. The natives can scarcely subsist upon the vegetable life produced in some parts of the country. There has been, to my absolute knowledge, no honest and practical effort made to increase their knowledge and secure their welfare. Your Majestys Government has never spent one franc for educational purposes, nor instituted any practical system of industrialism. But the cruelties visited upon soldiers and workmen are not to be compared with the sufferings of the poor natives who, upon the slightest pretext, are thrust into the wretched prisons here in the Upper River. FIFTHYour Majestys Government is excessively cruel to its prisoners, condemning them, for the slightest offences, to the chain gang, the like of which can not be seen in any other Government in the civilized or uncivilized world. Three shots were fired and the native fell dead, pierced through the head, and the trade canoe was transformed into a funeral barge and floated silently down the river. He was not a combatant and was ignorant of the conflict in progress upon the shore, some distance away. or history majors their research helps keep the information accurate. He was not a combatant and was ignorant of the conflict in progress upon the shore, some distance away. Three hundred and sixteen slaves were sent down the river recently, and others are to follow. Leopold II, French in full Lopold-Louis-Philippe-Marie-Victor, Dutch in full Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, (born April 9, 1835, Brussels, Belgiumdied December 17, 1909, Laeken), king of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. congo-1890 5 , page 13 Leopold II was born in 1835 to King Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orleans. To discover the My girlfriend slapped my mother what should I do? An open letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold III, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo. But Williams went anyways. There were instances in which Mr. HENRY M. STANLEY sent one white man, with four or five Zanzibar soldiers, to make treaties with native chiefs. He witnessed the porters enslaved in chains, the brutal . In early April 1891 Williams wrote a letter to Leopold entitled An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo about the suffering of the region at the hands of Leopold's agents. maintained by a Webmaster Stanbery 'Stanley' Foster III, who works for the State of Sick sailors frequently die on board their vessels at Banana Point; and if it were not for the humanity of the Dutch Trading Company at that placewho have often opened their private hospital to the sick of other countriesmany more might die. State soldiers patrol many villages forbidding the natives to trade with any person but a State official, and when the natives refuse to accept the price of the State, their goods are seized by the Government that promised them protection. CONCLUSIONS This is THIRD.Your Majestys Government is guilty of violating its contracts made with its soldiers, mechanics and workmen, many of whom are subjects of other Governments. It is natural that they everywhere shrink from the fostering care your Majestys Government so eagerly proffers them. how he felt about Belgium treatment of the Natives. This first salvo would not undo Leopold but it paved the way for others. The labour force at the stations of your Majestys Government in the Upper River is composed of slaves of all ages and both sexes. 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British government sent the Casement Report to the Belgian government. In the late 1880s, Williams turned his interest to Europe and Africa. 1. Discovering the website blackpast has provided a plethora of information on For thousands of years, that territory had been conquered by nearby Netherlands, France, Germany, and Luxembourg. Read millions of eBooks and audiobooks on the web, iPad, iPhone and Android. I believe that from this experience he was able to show his Washington Williams, George. I hope that the stamp of the University is fake as well, otherwise my respect for the Uni. Melanie Knight . Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window). Instead of it being fertile and productive it is sterile and unproductive. He was born in a time of slavery and he saw first hand all the problems that Every twig represented a person in his village who died because of King Leopold's brutal regime in the Congo. He describes the atrocities in detail using dialogue as a catalyst for social change. put together I went to their home page. There are instances in which they have brought the heads of their victims to their white officers on the expeditionary steamers, and afterwards eaten the bodies of slain children. W. Williams, of the United States of America, 1890. place for people to be able to obtain accurate information on African American heritage George Washington Williams, 1889. Global African History: Primary Documents: Global African History (1900) The Uganda Agreement. dealings with the native people They are ignorant of native character, lack wisdom, The letter also pointed out that the government has done He allows his personal feelings on the subject the shine through in his A few hours later the Procurer-General searched his room and found many more stolen bottles of wine and other things, not the property of servants. I cannot deal with the dimensions of these prisons in this letter, but will do so in my report to my Government. ELEVENTH.Your Majestys Government has concluded a contract with the Arab Governor at this place for the establishment of a line of military posts from the Seventh Cataract to Lake Tanganyika territory to which your Majesty has no more legal claim, than I have to be Commander-in-Chief of the Belgian army. I appeal to our Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect love, in witness of the purity of my motives and the integrity of my aims; and to history and mankind I appeal for the demonstration and vindication of the truthfulness of the charge I have herein briefly outlined. people of the Congos lives. ), and I was doomed to bitter disappointment. T have heard an officer of the Belgian Army pleading the cause of a white man of low degree who had been guilty of beating and stabbing a black man, and urging race distinctions and prejudices as good and sufficient reasons why his client should be adjudged innocent. It afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me last year, of visiting your State in Africa; and how thoroughly I have been disenchanted, disappointed and disheartened, it is now my painful duty to make known to your Majesty in plain but respectful language. I now appeal to the Powers which committed this infant State to your Majestys charge, and to the great States which gave it international being; and whose majestic law you have scorned and trampled upon, to call and create an International Commission to investigate the charges herein preferred in the name of Humanity, Commerce, Constitutional Government and Christian Civilisation. All Rights Reserved. I have personally witnessed and examined their clumsy operations. I base this appeal upon the terms of Article 36 of Chapter VII of the General Act of the Conference of Berlin, in which that august assembly of Sovereign States reserved to themselves the right to introduce into it later and by common accord the modifications or ameliorations, the utility of which may be demonstrated experience. The above speech which shows the real intention of the Christian missionary journey in Africa was exposed to the world by Mr. Moukouani Muikwani Bukoko, born in the Congo in 1915. The white brother took from his pocket a cigar, carelessly bit off the end, held up his glass to the sun and complaisantly smoked his cigar to the great amazement and terror of his black brother. Keep their women in nine months of submission to work freely for us. George Washington Williams was an impressive individual. Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost" is a lost historical account starting in the late 19th century continuing into the 20th century of the enslavement of an entire country. history of African Americans in the United States and people of I appeal to Anti-Slavery Societies in all parts of Christendom, to Philanthropists, Christians, Statesmen, and to the great mass of people everywhere, to call upon the Governments of Europe, to hasten the close of the tragedy your Majestys unlimited Monarchy is enacting in the Congo. 2016 KineticsLive.com. The State then hires these woman out to the highest bidder, the officers having the first choice and then the men. The African soldiers and labourers of your Majestys Government fare worse than the whites, because they have poorer quarters, quite as bad as those of the natives; and in the sheds, called hospitals, they languish upon a bed of bamboo poles without blankets, pillows or any food different from that served to them when well, rice and fish. There is no improvement among the natives, because there is an impassable gulf between them and your Majestys Government, a gulf which can never be bridged. They are the greatest curse the country suffers now. That same year Joseph Conrad trained as a steamship captain on the Congo River. Whenever children are born of such relations, the State maintains that the women being its property the child belongs to it also. Congo. Officers at the chief stations get the men and receive the money when they are transferred to the State; but there are some middle-men who only get from twenty to twenty-five francs per head. FOURTH.The Courts of your Majestys Government are abortive, unjust, partial and delinquent. There are from sixty to seventy officers of the Belgian army in the service of your Majestys Government in the Congo of whom only about thirty are at their post; the other half are in Belgium on furlough. Ibid, page 9. When the native inquired about the disparity of strength between himself and his white brother, he was told that the white man could pull up trees and perform the most prodigious feats of strength. It is not my duty to criticise the unlawful and unconstitutional use of these officers coming into the service of this African State. 1 had never been able to conceive of Europeans, establishing a government in a tropical country, without building a hospital; and yet from the mouth of the Congo River to its head-waters, here at the seventh cataract, a distance of 1,448 miles, there is not a solitary hospital for Europeans, and only three sheds for sick Africans in the service of the State, not fit to be occupied by a horse. Pixabay. You can also contact us through the Contact Form on our website. These poor natives are sent hundreds of miles away from their villages, to serve among other natives whose language they do not know. No white man commanded his rear column, and his troops were allowed to straggle, sicken and die; and their bones were scattered over more than two hundred miles of territory. It is the aim of the THIRD.Your Majestys Government is guilty of violating its contracts made with its soldiers, mechanics and workmen, many of whom are subjects of other Governments. George Washington Williams(October 16, 1849 August 2, 1891) was a soldier in the American Civil War and in Mexico before becoming a Baptist minister, politician, lawyer, journalist, and writer on African-American history. When Leopold was 65, he took the 16-year-old prostitute Caroline Lacroix as his mistress. An open letter is a critical letter that is addressed to a particular person but is intentionally leaked to the public. But I take the liberty to say that many of these officers are too young and inexperienced to be entrusted with the difficult work of dealing with native races. soldiers and the treatment of the women. Instead of it being fertile and productive it is sterile and unproductive. EIGHTH.Your Majestys Government has violated the General Act of the Conference of Berlin by firing upon native canoes; by confiscating the property of natives; by intimidating native traders, and preventing them from trading with white trading companies; by quartering troops in native villages when there is no war; by causing vessels bound from Stanley-Pool to Stanley-Falls, to break their journey and leave the Congo, ascend the Aruhwimi river to Basoko, to be visited and show their papers; by forbidding a mission steamer to fly its national flag without permission from a local Government; by permitting the natives to carry on the slave- trade, and by engaging in the wholesale and retail slave-trade itself.
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