The white man explained his intimate relation to the sun, and declared that if he were to request him to burn up his black brothers village it would be done. Passerino Editore history of African Americans in the United States and people of FOURTH.The Courts of your Majestys Government are abortive, unjust, partial and delinquent. EIGHTH.Your Majestys Government has violated the General Act of the Conference of Berlin by firing upon native canoes; by confiscating the property of natives; by intimidating native traders, and preventing them from trading with white trading companies; by quartering troops in native villages when there is no war; by causing vessels bound from Stanley-Pool to Stanley-Falls, to break their journey and leave the Congo, ascend the Aruhwimi river to Basoko, to be visited and show their papers; by forbidding a mission steamer to fly its national flag without permission from a local Government; by permitting the natives to carry on the slave- trade, and by engaging in the wholesale and retail slave-trade itself. What he witnessed, according to the American journalist and historian Adam Hochschild, was so brutal that, in a confidential letter, Williams accused King Leopold of crimes against humanity, decades before the term would reappear in the Nuremberg trials and . Upon the arrival of the survivors in the Congo they are set to work as labourers at one shilling a day; as soldiers they are promised sixteen shillings per month, in English money, but are usually paid off in cheap handkerchiefs and poisonous gin. More than just the people of the Required fields are marked *. When Leopold was 65, he took the 16-year-old prostitute Caroline Lacroix as his mistress. (1890) George Washington Williams's Open Letter to King Leopold on the This letter was accessed through the or the care for the sick that was needed. I have personally witnessed and examined their clumsy operations. There are from sixty to seventy officers of the Belgian army in the service of your Majestys Government in the Congo of whom only about thirty are at their post; the other half are in Belgium on furlough. ), and I was doomed to bitter disappointment. He claimed he was doing it to protect the natives from Arab slavers, and to open the heart of Africa to Christian missionaries, and Western capitalists. From these general observations I wish now to pass to specific charges against your Majestys Government. My experience with an OPay bike rider this morning, Exclusive pictures from the REDTV Rave 4 Shutdown party in Lekki, I want to break up with my boyfriend because he is too fine Nigerian woman, What having an emotional son has taught me about life, The first time my father hit my mother, something changed, Lockdown and Mental Health: I Almost Killed Myself Last Night, The struggle of being a man share your story. SIXTH.Women are imported into your Majestys Government for immoral purposes. nothing to help the people of the Congo to be educated. There is no white commissioned officer at these posts; they are in charge of the black Zanzibar soldiers, and the State expects them not only to sustain themselves, but to raid enough to feed the garrisons where the white men are stationed. Upon the arrival of the survivors in the Congo they are set to work as labourers at one shilling a day; as soldiers they are promised sixteen shillings per month, in English money, but are usually paid off in cheap handkerchiefs and poisonous gin. W. Williams, of the United States of America, 1890. Coronavirus patient shares what having the disease feels like! These black soldiers, many of whom are slaves, exercise the power of life and death. These piratical, buccaneering posts compel the natives to furnish them with fish, goats, fowls, and vegetables at the mouths of their muskets; and whenever the natives refuse to feed these vampires, they report to the main station and white officers come with an expeditionary force and burn away the homes of the natives. By such means as these, too silly and disgusting to mention, and a few boxes of gin, whole villages have been signed away to your Majesty. The staple argument was that the white mans heart had grown sick of the wars and rumours of war between one chief and another, between one village and another; that the white man was at peace with his black brother, and desired to confederate all African tribes for the general defense and public welfare. Instead of it being fertile and productive it is sterile and unproductive. The letter created a . The Case Of George Washington Williams's Letter To King | Cram WhatsApp Only +2347014043648. It taxes all trading companies and exempts its own goods from export-duty, and makes many of its officers ivory-traders, with the promise of a liberal commission upon all they can buy or get for the State. At length he appealed to the Governor-General, and he gave him the woman and thus the trader obtained the child also. There is not a single chaplain in the employ of your Majestys Government to console the sick or bury the dead. But instead King Leopold II unleashed new horrors on the African continent. Your email address will not be published. And, of course, many die. The children have to learn to obey what the missionary recommends, who is the father of their soul. on November 22, 2021.