Historical Legacies Endless stories… Social 10 Chapter 6

The Scramble For Africa In 1884 the United States, Austria- Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands met to divide Africa amongst themselves. They wanted to avoid conflicts with other imperial powers, protect existing trade routes and gain control of the continents natural resources.

African Indigenous Reaction When the Portuguese arrived, they were thought to by (vumbi) – ancestral ghosts They believed that a persons skin turned white after death.

ORAL ACCOUNT Our fathers were living comfortably. They had cattle and crops; they had salt marshes and banana trees. Suddenly they saw a big boat rising out of the great ocean. This boat had wings all of white, sparkling like knives. White men came out of the water and spoke words which no one understood. Our ancestors took fright; they said these were vumbi, spirits returned from the dead. They pushed them back into the ocean with volleys of arrows. But the vumbi spat fire with a noise of thunder. Many men were killed. Our ancestors fled. The chiefs and wise men said that these vumbi were the former possessors of the land. From that time to our days now, the whites have brought us nothing but wars and miseries.

King Leopold and the Congo In the early 1880s King Leopold of Belgium sparked the initial scramble for Africa. Leopold ruled this land and the Indigenous people as his own personal colony. By 1885 Leopold had forced the Indigenous peoples of the Congo region to give up much of their land to work harvesting natural rubber. (North America was in need for rubber to make tires for newly invented automobiles.) As a result King Leopold saw this as an opportunity to gain much personal wealth.

What Happened to the Indigenous Population at the Congo? If Indigenous peoples who resisted were brutally punished. Some were beaten. Some had their feet, ears, and hands cut off. Many were killed. In addition many died due to starvation and disease.

Desperate for Power and Control Léopold tried to prevent knowledge of these atrocities from reaching the outside world. His employees were forbidden to leave the Congo, and news reporters were forbidden to enter. Léopold also bribed publishers to write positive stories, and he accused critics of working for other colonial powers that wanted to grab some of the profits for themselves. Although some rumours did leak out, Léopold’s strategy worked for more than a decade.

Legacies of Change