At the peak of Imperialism in the late nineteenth century, the “Scramble for Africa” occurred. This is formally recognized as the event in which European actors recognized Africa for its material wealth and began to invade, occupy, and extract resources. Subsequently, while each colony varied in outcome, the most inhumanely prolific colony was, arguably, the Congo Free State. King Leopold II of Belgium, claimed the Congo as his own in order to become a world power and as a result, the Congo Free State suffered from casualties upwards of 10 million people. Thus, the argument is a raised that despite the accolades that rendered the Congo a “free state”, genocide existed under King Leopold’s rule. In order to explore this concept, Roger Casement’s …show more content…
In 1876, it became apparent that. Leopold considered “his country too small to hold him” and felt that they only way he and his country would be taken seriously is by getting rich through a colony in Africa. This desire resulted in Leopold II establishing the International Africa Association, an organization he used to promote his desire for riches under the guise that he was a “philanthropic leader” doing a “Christian duty to the Congolese people”. In reality, however, this convention was used to rally explorers and fellow and find one willing to execute King Leopold’s plan to imperialize Congo. Eventually, Leopold hired Henry Morton Stanley, a British journalist and explorer who had previously traveled the Congo, to prepare the land for colonization. Stanley arrived in 1889 set up operations to build an infrastructure using both foreign and native workers. He established “a fleet of steamers [to] navigate the main river and its principal affluent at fixed intervals” in order to provide communication to the “most inaccessible parts of Central Africa.” Simultaneously, Henry Morton Stanley wass ordered to take land from the current inhabitants by any