Blog #34 - Red Rubber, White King, Black Death

So far throughout World History A and B, you have studied how Africa had grown as a multi-ethnic continent with different tribes and thousands of languages before the Europeans came to become the crossroads for trade and commerce like it is today.


The northern African countries, the ones that have had the most interaction with Europe (good and bad) like Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt are more economically advanced than their sub-Saharan brethren. Those countries that lie South of the Equator are the ones that we will focus on for most of our imperialism unit in Chapter 24 and revisit before the end of the semester.


The British and the French were the two biggest colonizers of sub-Saharan Africa, but the Belgians, Germans, Dutch and Portuguese also carved up the continent after 1800. This period is known as the "new imperialism" - as if the time period of slavery when up to possibly 20 million Africans were stolen from the continent and shipped over to the Americas was somehow "old" imperialism and this was more "enlightened" because the Euros didn't sell humans and instead sold the resources? Yeah, right.


Some of the worst abuses of Africans were done by the Belgians in the resource-rich Congo. The Belgians extracted tons of rubber (this is where the title of our blog comes from), copper and ivory. Those villages who didn't harvest enough rubber would have children or sometimes women lose a hand. This was when the king himself, Leopold II, owned the Congo, until 1908 when the outrages over such treatment forced him to give it up. To quote a BBC documentary with the same name as our blog, "Until Adolf Hitler arrived on the scene, the European standard cruelty was set by a king."

Link to King Leopold's genocide: http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/king-leopold-ii-congo
A BBC news link that traces the current state of the region to the mess from the 19th Century: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3516965.stm

One thing that is included in your history book that was never included in the stuff that I learned was info from the Africans' points of view. The best examples are in Ch. 24, sec. 2, on p. 754-5 and p. 759-761. I had seen a movie about Shaka Zulu but it really was more about the brave whites who had to take on the Zulus in the scary war in southern Africans. I never got to learn the "other side" of the story or the Africans' side of the story unless I watched Roots which came out when I was 9 (in 1977, I think) or read stuff on my own.

As Americans, we can't claim any kind of moral superiority over the Europeans because of the U.S.'s genocidal policies enacted towards our Native Americans between the 1600s - 1800s. 

Your questions:
1. Can you think of an instance in history that we have studied where one person has had so much power over so many people and abused it so consistently?  Explain.
2. Give at least three examples of abuses that King Leopold's agents forced upon the Congolese people (as mentioned in the people).
3. How were the abuses of King Leopold's Free State exposed in 1904 - 1906?  What eventually happened to his ownership of the Congo?

300 words total.  Blog due Friday, May 29 by class.  

Blog 12 - Armenian Genocide and Turkey's continual denial

We've been reading about the Armenian genocide and Turkey's continual denial of their complicity in that genocide. The Ottoman government, at war with Russia at the time, saw the Armenians as an internal threat, spies, and sabotuers. Once the majority of the Armenians were exiled to Syria or killed by the end of 1915, the Young Turk officials began their official denials.

Some of the major issues at stake (BBC Online http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6045182.stm):

1. The number of Armenians killed: Armenians say that 1.5 million had perished in the sands of Syria while the Turks say that only 300,000 died between 1915-1923.

2. Were the killings systematic? Many governments, historians and the Armenians believe that the massacres were part of an organized plot done by the Turkish government during WW1, however, Turkey contends that many Muslims died in the "turmoil of war" as well.

3. The trials after WW1 ended up with one Turkish official hanged and another thrown in jail, but the big 3 Young Turks tried "in absentia" - not present -since they had run away to Germany.

For the U.S.'s part, we read about Ambassador Henry Morgenthau's efforts to persuade President Wilson to pressure the Ottomans/Young Turks to end the massacres or to get the Germans to stop the Turks. Wilson would do neither. In 1916, both the House and Senate passed resolutions saying that they were disturbed by the reports of mass Armenian killings and wanted to have a day where Americans should show their solidarity with the Armenian people and work to raise relief funds. Of course, in America, 1916 was an election year, and in a tough economy, Wilson campaigned to keep America out of that European mess.

At least 20 countries around the world since this time period have passed resolutions to express sorrow and sympathy (Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Russia and Uruguay), held prayer days and have officially recognized the Armenian genocide, yet America hasn't. In 1984, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution that called for the President to recognize a National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man with specific reference to the Armenian genocide. The day was April 24th, the day that the Turkish gov't. arrested 50 Armenian intellectuals and leaders who were then later executed - a day that the Armenians recognize as the offical start of the Armenian genocide.

In recent years, Turkey has denied the U.S. any use of its bases for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Also, Turkey has urged the U.S. gov't. to block a Congressional vote in 2007 that would recognize the Armenian genocide, and so the House Foreign Relations Committee stalled the bill.

So, why would Turkey continue to deny responsibility for the genocide? 150 words minimum. Due Monday, January 25.

Read the websites at the bottom of this Wikipedia page for links to pages that explain Turkey's point of view.

Copy of the genocide map from the Armenian National Institute: http://www.armenian-genocide.org/map-full.html