Discussion Conclusions

1. I'd like to discuss whether or not Leopold's violence was truly the most efficient way of exploiting the resources of the Congo.

2. I think our discussion was super-mega-awesome. The questions were a little difficult to sift through, and finding the best ones were tricky, so I think there could have been more "open-endedness" per se. I don't think that our discussion was really in any great need of improvement.

King Leopold 1-32 response

My response essentially consists of shock that the atrocities of Leopold's Congo matched those of the Holocaust, as stated on page 4. What I also found appalling was how the Belgians and local political leaders of Congo worked together to systematically root out and exploit subjects for slave labor. Whats more is that often these leaders were tricked into accepting useless commodities such as 'cloth, tools, and other knickknacks' in exchange for human collateral from Tribal Leaders. Then there was this idea that it would suffice for Europeans to conquer other cultures, but when uncivilized races started conquering each other, it was considered shocking (page 28).

How important was it that the Congolese had no written language?

 What made Humans ideal for trading?

Today I learned how Old Imperialism differed from its modern version that we see today. I'm interesting in how this ended at the start of World War I, because it seems as if the Old Imperialism may have caused the entangling alliances that we were all conventionally told lead to WWI. I'd also like to know why political control became more invaluable in new colonialism.