Group discussion evaluation

A question that I still have lingering is if King Leopold is gay. Although this was not one of our questions, when we started talking about family life it came up. I want to know where his poor relationships with women come from. 

I think we did ok but I feel like the questions needed to be more open- ended and a more generalized questions. Just being able to discuss a question more would have been more helpful rather than finding just one answer and being stuck.

Chapter 8 Discussion Questions

Why didn't company officials pay closer attention to Leopold's actions after the Open Letter? 

Many of the officials who were working with or under Leopold noticed the cruel treatments of the Africans but many were afraid to speak up. Everyone was going along with what Leopold was doing, so to step out of system would be challenging everyone else (pg. 122). 

If the Congo was perfect for Leopold to explore and eventually take over, because of the resources and lack of military, then why did he feel the need to have the military present in the Congo? And why kill so many Africans? 


In the beginning. he seems as though he didn't you military force but then when people started rebelling the use began to increase. Many ethnic groups started to rebel against the "white man". It seems as though Leopold is trying to protect his project in the Congo.



How will the Force Publique rebellions effect the outcome of the Congo?

Response to pg. 1-32

For me, the intro and prologue were really boring for me. I didn't really find it that interesting and was just looking forward to the actual story. But after reading chapter one I realized that the information given in those pages was important to understanding the background. I also find Stanley very entertaining. The fact that he changes his name and his story is really interesting to me. While he has had a very rough childhood, the fact he likes to change his story still surprises me. I like the information about Stanley given in this chapter because it helps show me who this man was and how most saw him. Both of these were completely different because he lied so much to people. I also think it is interesting to see how his mother issues led to him pushing away from woman.I want to see how this will effect his role in Africa or if it will even effect it.  After reading all this it gave me this weird perception of him and I'm curious to see how he does "conquer" Africa.

2 questions: 

How do others perceive Stanley and how does it differ from who he actually is? 

How did his childhood effect him later on in life?

Class Thoughts on Blog

I learned that Imperialism and colonialism are interchangeable. I also learned about SPICER and how it can help bring up multiple ways an event can be examined. I also learned more about why people went in and decided to colonize. 

I am curious to learn more about The Berlin Conference and how the change of power shifted from Europe to the United States.