Sunday, November 29, 2009

Tells of Atrocity in Belgian Congo

In the reading (599-600) it talks about the outrages being widely publicized in Europe. So I thought I would look for one of those articles, and I found one. It is from the New York Times in 1909. It talks about a little 2 year old boy from Congo, and how important he was and how everyone on the ship wanted to shake his hand. It also sort of shows how long it took people to hear about what was happening around the world because we now know that by 1908 Leopold's reign of terror was already over.
Here is the Link.

2 comments:

  1. Hey john so i tried to go to the link you posted but for some reason it took me to a newyorktimes member sign up. Im wondering if you can give a little bit of background on what the outrages are in the reading. Also why were the people on the boat so interested in this little boy? Especially since he was so young im wondering what enticed the people on the ship so much.

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  2. I was able to access the link, you can make a free accound on nytimes if you'd like.

    Based on the reading, the atrocities were hands cut off, mostly one hand would be severed but often times both. Unfortunately, this was even the case for many young children. This was done in order to show the importance of the natives ability to collect rubber and show how severe the consequences were.

    Does that help?

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