Belgian Congo or Congo Free State

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Belgian Congo or Congo Free State

• The Belgian Congo, later the Congo Free State,
  Zaire (1965-1997), today The Democratic Republic
  of Congo.
• The Congo Free State was held as the personal
  property of King Leopold II of Belgium from 1876
  to 1908.
• 1876 Leopold organizes a meeting in Brussels to
  discuss a plan to open to civilization the only
  part of our globe where Christianity has not yet
  penetrated and to pierce the darkness which
  envelops the whole population.

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Congo Free State

• 1884 Bismarck calls European powers to Berlin
  for a conference that leads for the Scramble for
  Africa.
• Leopold is given complete control over the Congo
  Free State in return he guarantees free trade
  rights no monopolies no taxes and tariffs, no
  restriction on trade.
• 1908 Leopold bequeathed the CFS to Belgium for
  150m francs.

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Belgian Congo

• Leopolds rule resulted in the torture and murder
  of an estimated six million Congolese between
  1888 and 1908.
• The population of the Congo was reduced by half.
• Ivory became a Belgian monopoly.

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Belgian Congo

• The rubber harvest was entirely worked through
  slave labor. Reports of amputation and torture.
• Congo Reform Association established in 1903 by
  Roger Casement (friend of Conrads).
• Casement got Conrad to write a letter about
  conditions in the Congo It is an extraordinary
  thing that the conscience of Europe which seventy
  years ago put down the slave trade on
  humanitarian grounds tolerates the Congo state
  today.

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Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

• Born Josef Korzeniowski in a Poland that was
  divided between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian
  Empire.
• Joins French Merchant Navy at 17 yrs.
• Twenty years as a sailor four as French and 16
  in English trading ships. Adopts British
  citizenship at 29.
• 1894 settles in England as writer.
• 1890 spends six months in the Congo as captain
  of small steamship.

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Heart of Darkness (1899)

• Chinua Achebes lecture in 1975 accuses Conrad of
  racism.
• Ideological analysis and the text.
• Language and Rhetoric the Impressionist novela
  combination of Modernism and Romance convention,
  the Gothic horror genre.
• Mans innate nature.
• The lure of the instinctive versus the rational.
• The translation of the material into the
  metaphysical rivers, trees, the earth, human
  faces, even labor.

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Heart of Darkness (1899)

• Conrads criticism of Colonialism
• Colonists vs. conquerors (p. 2023).
• Civilizing mission vs. Profit (2027)
• The devastation of the country chain gangs
  (2029), the dead and the dying (2030-1),colonizers
  as devils, the dead man (2033).
• Ivory idolatry, Imbecile rapacity (2035)
• Sordid buccaneers (2040).
• The hungry crew paid in brass wire (2048)

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Heart of Darkness

• The battle between Instinctive Savagery and
  Reason or Culture (2023)
• White women protected from the struggle against
  innate savagery the aunt (2027) lie to the
  Intended (2053).
• Suspicion that Africans may be human (2044). The
  improved specimen (2045).
• Cannibals have no notion of time (2047).
• Civilization as existing between the butcher and
  the policeman (2053)
• Kurtzs unspeakable rites (2054). His pamphlet
  altruism and genocidal impulses (2055).

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Heart of Darkness

• The Kurtz cult the charismatic leader who
  reconciles oppositions.
• Kurtzs freedom (2066) the madness of his soul.
• Kurtzs last words a summing up (2069).
• Race difference as material manifestation and
  literary analogy for the inner battle between
  instinct and reason.