Thoughts King Leopold II

This week discussion was again very depressing while watching the movie King Leopold’s Ghost. It was hard to believe how harsh humans can be. I just cannot get my head around how King Leopold would just be fine with himself by just killing a lot of people without feeling guilty or terrible about themselves. But it shows how some people are so greedy; they do not care about hurting people if it is for the money.

During King Leopold’s II rein of the Congo Free State, he had killed over five to fifteen million Congolese. This mass murder is even harder to pay attention to the harsh punishment that he put on the Congolese. He did not just kill, he made soldiers rape, torment and cut off feet and hands of these innocent people. He did not even allow the people of the Congo to make there own money from their resources but basically took away their goods. He and his friend Henry Morton Stanley made treaties with the chiefs of most of the tribes in the Congo but they did not even understand what they were agreeing upon because they did not speak the same language. It is not right on how King Leopold could just take over a country just because he was apart of a country that was more developed than most of the African countries. But the reason behind all of this is because of how much money King Leopold was making. It is estimated that he was making around a billion dollars, which was a ridiculous amount of money during that time. It is pretty obvious that King Leopold wanted the money.

What I found very surprising is that King Leopold II is still viewed as a great person in the Western History. I really cannot find a great reason to say that he was great at all except at killing people. In my opinion I feel that Belgium should say that this actually happened, this was wrong that he did that, and that they learn from there mistakes and will not do it again. Even though this mass murder was terrible to think of, it is very important to look back at history so that we will not make the same mistakes over again.

It is also important to show how regular people can have an impact on what is wrong. Through the writings of George Washington Willams’s Open Letter to King Leopold on the Congo and others educate people about what is happening and that common people could make a difference in changing the world in a positive aspect.

Thoughts of Slavery

While reading Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild and The Development of the Anti-Slavery Movement after 1807 by Mike Kaye, an important role of slavery had occurred. The first time when people finally thought that slavery was not moral occurred until the British decided to stop slaving people of Africa. This is the first human rights movement to ever occur in human life.

It is hard for me to grasp that slavery was once a normal action that use to take place on a regular basis. I never realized that slavery was a necessary for all the great civilizations of our past to survive. It is truly amazing in such a short amount of time that we were able to make this world less and less dependent on slavery. There is a good lesson that we could learn from the British Human Rights movement. If people could chose to do the right thing, it is very possible that the government will also believe in making the more moral choice instead of just doing nothing about it. The amount of slavery has cut down a tremendous amount over the past 200 years and will keep decreasing because slavery is now to everybody’s mind that it is really immorally wrong. This could foreshadow what we need to do now so that this world will be a healthier habitat for biodiversity to occur and for a more bright future. We need to be able to live a more sustainable lifestyle, decrease the growing population, and use green technology so that this world will have a good future. People need to team up and protest what they think is right, despite the fact that it could effect our economy. The British protest hurt the sugar industry a lot but at least slavery started to decrease. The same case might have to happen again but it is for a good reason.

Thoughts 4/16

While reading Bartolomes La Casa's A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, I thought an important role that came out of this was that the right facts need to be implemented in our education. It was interesting to see a different perspective than what I was always taught. Back when I was in grade school, I learned only the perspective of Western Culture, that Cortes's brought disease to South America and thats how all the Mayans died. But in La Casa's perspective, we could see that the perspective that I was taught all my life is wrong. It was quite shocking and depressing to read and see the images of Natives being killed for no good reason. The Natives treated them with respect and greeted them with open arms compared to the Spaniards that only wanted there goods and treated them very poorly and killed many of them with burning alive Mayans and slaughtering them with swords.
La Casa's story made me bring up the question on who is right? Most people have learned that disease from Spaniards killed all Mayans, not that the Spaniards purposely killed them all. It could be hard for someone to grasp, which side is right. Its seems that La Casa's perspective is right but why did most of us learn the other perspective? It is kind of like how big corporations are having so much power that they are causing a lot of problems to the world when most people do not even know about it. These big corporations are using very unsustainable techniques for the environment, causing poorer countries to struggle more, and feeding people unhealthy food. Yet we still purchase items form these big corporations while they are still doing harm to this world. The sad part is that most people do not even realize that they are contributing to the harm while purchasing the items. Education will be a key to fixing this problem like how La Casa's tried educated people about what was actually happening. When people are educated about what is right, they will make the right decisions.