The Belgian Imperialism and The COVID Vaccine part one
Belgium and The Democratic Republic of Congo.
Belgium had a big swath of Africa, where the modern-day Democratic
Republic of the Congo is. What Belgium did in the Congo is shocking,
and hard to get your head around. It's terrible, in fact. But,
Belgium's horrendous actions in the Congo would lead to Johnson & Johnson Vaccine
for covid vaccine. It is cheaper. It can be shipped without having to be
frozen, so it's way more durable.
It's made of really advanced sophisticated technology that allows
you to just get one shot of it instead of the two doses from the previous ones.
And so to understand how this vaccine that is being rolled out by
Johnson & Johnson, a New Jersey-based company, how is connected to
Belgium?
in the late 1800s in the Congo basin. You have to understand the
story of how sophisticated technology was developed, and by whom.
And that is One man at the conference of Berlin, walked away with
his own private colony, and showed what colonialism looked like at its very
worst.
Let me tell you a story of one of the most insane and horrendous versions of European colonialism in Africa. The 1880 and 90, were years of terrifying upheaval in Africa. It starts with this guy,
King Leopold II the king of Belgium.
He was the King of Belgium. And by the way, this wasn't like 300
years ago. This is like the mid to late 1800.
Belgium wasn't a big player in the colonizing game, not like
France and Britain, but Leopold sort of wanted to be. He wanted to be a big boy
in a peerless nation. So he actually went to Spain and Portugal whose empires
were sort of declining at the time and offered to buy some of their colonial
possessions. They didn't agree.
So, Leopold decided to take things into his own hands. Like
literally on his own. He privately would create a colony for Belgium.
So Leopold decided to take things into his own hands. With his own
money and his own army. He knew he would need some support for this
in terms of just like approval.
So he created an organization, that he called the International
African Society. Leopold builds this organization and says that it's meant to
be a research and philanthropy organization. With a mission to explore the
world for good and for science. But soon, Leopold would use this organization
to get his wish of being a big boy colonizer.
The Congo Free State and his master “King Leopold”.
It was 1884 when a bunch of the European and Ottoman and American
powers who were colonizing Africa got together and they decided
that they needed some sort of a unifying policy of how they were
going to go into Africa, and how trade was going to work.
But they wanted to work together as they carved up the continent of
Africa. Leopold gets up at this conference, it was in Berlin, and he says,
listens, I've got this organization. I would love to take this organization of
mine and go and take over a huge swath of central Africa. And everyone's like,
you mean like Belgium is going to go take over the Congo? And he's like, no,
no, no, not Belgium, me.
I'll do it with my own money. And the European powers are sort of
like, okay.
How much harm can one guy and his NGO do going into Congo? So
Leopold gets his dream. He gets international approval to go take over a swath of
Africa that is 76 times larger than Belgium. He would call his new private
colony, the Congo Free State.
Well, you know what happens next. He doesn't improve the lives of
people. That was never his intention. Instead, his army quickly gains control over
the local population and starts to use the locals to forcibly extract raw
materials from the land of Congo.
Mainly in rubber, whose price was going up during the Industrial
Revolution? And in ivory. He would put these quotas on the local people
that they had to get a certain amount of rubber. And he would
instruct his army that if they didn't bring back their quota, they were to
go remove their hands or limbs.
This is everyone. Men, women, and children are being forced to
work for King Leopold and get their limbs removed if they don't meet the
quota. So, Leopold starts extracting huge amounts of wealth from the Congo. And
he uses this new money to build big shiny things back in Belgium. Including
this big, beautiful park and archways Or this beautiful train station in
central Antwerp.
Comments
Post a Comment