Question 9 - Worksheet for Module 7

Chapter 18 Colonial Encounters in Asia, Africa, and Oceania 1750-1950


Economies of Coercion: Forced Labor and the Power of the State

The image below shows the Belgium Colonial Violence towards the Congolese during the late nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Belgian King Leopold II ran the Congo Free State without supervision and was full of violence, enslavement, and exploitation of the Congolese. The two black young boys in the image had their hands cut off as punishment because they were not able to bring the rubber supply to King Leopold II because the forest rubber resources had run out. This was not an extreme case but a normal practice in the Congo Free State. This image shows how brutal colonial life was during the European colonization in all of Africa during that period. This was the time of the European Industrial Revolution when technology had advanced and Europeans needed more resources and labor to be able to compete economically, increase production and be profitable. Europeans were very arrogant during this time and considered themselves as the rulers and the Asians and Africans as their slaves. 

This brutality and disregard for human life should have never existed. It is unfortunate that people in the Congo had to go through so much suffering and then carry these memories throughout their lives. How could Europeans have thought about black people as resources as they did? King Leopold II’s greed and terror still shock us today. 

 

Strayer, R. (2016). Ways of the World: A Brief Global History. Bedford/St. Martin

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