Thomas Pakenham. The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876-1912 (1992) „In scarcely half a generation during the late 1800s, six European powers sliced up Africa like a cake. The pieces went to Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Belgium; among them, they acquired 30 new colonies and 110 million subjects. Although African rulers resisted, many battles were one-sided massacres. In 1904 the Hereros, a tribe of southwest Africa, revolted against German rule. Their punishment was genocide--24,000 driven into the desert to starve; those who surrendered were sent to forced labor camps to be worked to death. In a dramatic, gripping chronicle, Pakenham ( The Boer War ) floodlights the "dark continent" and its systematic rape by Europe. At center stage are a motley band of explorers, politicians, evangelists, mercenaries, journalists and tycoons blinded by romantic nationalism or caught up in the scramble for loot, markets and slaves. In an epilogue Pakenham tells how the former colonial powers still dominate the economies of the African nations, most of which are under one-party or dictatorial rule.”
Mark Dummett: King Leopold's legacy of DR Congo violence. BBC News. (Hozzáférés: 2011. június 14.) „"Legalized robbery enforced by violence", as Leopold's reign was described at the time...contributed in a large way to the death of perhaps 10 million innocent people...children and adults whose right hands had been hacked off by his agents...men sent off into the forests, and ... women tied up as hostages and helpless targets of abuse until their husbands return with enough wild rubber to satisfy the agent.”
George Washington Williams: George Washington Williams's Open Letter to King Leopold on the Congo, 1890. (Hozzáférés: 2011. június 14.) „the natives of the Congo... everywhere complain that their land has been taken from them by force; that the Government is cruel and arbitrary, and declare that they neither love nor respect the Government and its flag. Your Majesty’s Government has sequestered their land, burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail...All the crimes perpetrated in the Congo have been done in your name, and you must answer at the bar of Public Sentiment for the misgovernment of a people, whose lives and fortunes were entrusted to you by the august Conference of Berlin, 1884—1 885. I now appeal to the Powers which committed this infant State to your Majesty’s charge, and to the great States which gave it international being; and whose majestic law you have scorned and trampled upon, to call and create an International Commission to investigate the charges herein preferred in the name of Humanity, Commerce, Constitutional Government and Christian Civilisation.”
History of Africa – King Leopold and the Congo: AD 1875-1878. (Hozzáférés: 2011. június 15.) „an International African Association, the purpose of which will be 'to open to civilization the only part of our globe to which it has yet to penetrate'. The king emphasizes in his opening remarks that in this he has no selfish designs. 'No, gentlemen, if Belgium is small, she is happy and satisfied with her lot.' But in a subsequent letter to the Belgian ambassador in London, he is more frank: 'I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.'”
