Do you have a flag?

I have done a lot of work on colonization and slavery in Africa, there was an entire class of it at the 400 level in History a few years ago. There really wasn't anything about the facts of colonization that shocked our surprised me. However, the players were different, I have never looked at Belgium as a colonialist, most courses focus on Britain or the French if you are lucky.

I have to give King Leopold II credit for never giving up on his dream of a colony. His first attempts, like trying to drain lakes to make a colony seem pretty ridiculous to me, possible, but not the smartest route. At that point of his life he seemed like an excited child who found a way to get a new toy. Then he really stepped up his efforts and tried finding new areas. There were countless times where his plans were shot down or hit road bumps, at any of these times he could have given up, but not Leopold he powered through that. I think it goes to show the overwhelming feeling in Europe at the time. Everyone knew that the next step to being the world leader wasn't in Europe but abroad, so every European nation wanted to grab as much land around the world as possible.

Whenever I hear someone proclaim in classes that they cannot understand how nations can go to a land with people already on it and claim it as their new found land, Eddie Izzard pops into my head.

Colonization, flags are key. This is partially true, depending what flag you fly under is the country that can claim your exploits. Well, flags and guns. That is what made Henry Morton Stanley so useful for King Leopold, his first expeditions were not for any country it was paid for by his employers. Since the papers he was working for did not want to claim any parts of Africa he was exploring, it made the world view Stanley as a neutral explorer, safe to be employed by Belgium and King Leopold's sneaky land grab in Africa. Oh, and the last thing is that if you claim a river as your countries you get all the tributaries, hence why King Leopold's claim kept getting larger (same applied to the French and the Mississippi River).

My favorite part of the first 100 pages of King Leopold's Ghost was how King Leopold worked his treaties. In the initial conference in Berlin Leopold managed to get his territory by telling the nations, like Germany and America, that his Congo would be free of tariffs. This would be very appealing because it would let the countries import goods and still sell them at a large profit. This all went out the window when at the Anti-Slavery Conference King Leopold was given the go ahead to levy imports so the King could aid in the war against the Barbary slave trade. It is good to note that the Barbary slave trade and white slavery ended in the 1830's. So either Europeans were being nice and caring about African's enslaving other Africans or the powers that be were exploiting old feelings for their own uses.