King Leopold: Bad Father or just blinded by power?

Something that really stuck with me was Leopold's ignorance towards the needs of his family.
Question number 14, How did Leopold's failing family life affect his actions in the Congo, really made me think more about the sacrifices that Leopold made in order to get further. Although Leopold liked about being a Humanitarian I still semi-respect him because he put the Congo as number one on his priority list. His dedication was amazing. He put his family on the back burner to focus all of his efforts on the Congo. He in a way did use the Congo as an escape from his family. He had many issues at home with his daughters and when he would fail as a father things in the Congo would progress.

DIALOGUE
me → Why would you ever choose to stay in a place like this?
Louise → I had put up with so much for so long and I was sick of following the rules. I dealt with the expectations of my family for so long and I was about to crack. The mask I had been wearing began to fall away and I realized that I could not let my family ruin my life. I knew that I had to finally stand up for myself and get what I wanted:love. I took a risk by having an affair, but I don't regret it. In a way it freed me of my chains as a daughter of King Leopold. I chose the asylum because in here you don't have to hide a thing. You don't have to wear a mask. They accept you, even if what you are is merely a loon.

DESCRIBING THE INDIVIDUALS LIFE
If Louise hadn't attempted to elope with her lover, she would have never been sent to an asylum. If she hadn't had the courage to attempt to leave she would have been stuck unhappily in her marriage forever. Louise matured as she aged

Questions
Why were people quick to believe Leopold was a good humanitarian? Did anyone suspect him of putting up a front and not having pure intentions?
How did Leopold's family past affect his idea of family when he was older?
Did Leopold's trouble at home push him to succeed in other aspects of his life (The Congo).

Questions in Class 1

Was it a good decision for Stanley to explore with men who had no experience as travelers? Why or why not?
Stanley's decision to explore without experienced companions was not a very wise idea, but he knew exactly what he was doing. "Out of the twelve hundred men who applied to join the expedition, some of them highly experienced travelers, he chose three unsuitable companions: a pair of sailor-fishermen, the brothers Drank and Eward Pocock, and a young hotel clerk named Frederick Barker"(Hochschild 49). "None of three had had any experience exploring" (49). "Stanley was always uncomfortable with anyone whose talents might outshine his own" and that is why he chose people that would have no chance of making him look bad or doing/finding something significant on their own. He planned it out so that he would be the star and that people wouldn't even remember the names of the other men. Stanley was practically exploring alone. If something would have went wrong, he would have had only himself to rely on. A hotel clerk, a bugle player... he didn't go out with a group schooled in the ways of the exploration. It was not a good idea at all, but he knew of the risk that came with taking incompetent companions on a trip where nothing was unexpected.

Quotes!

quotes that i found interesting...

“Leopold's letters and memos, forever badgering someone about acquiring a colony, seem to be in the voice of a person starved for love as a child and now filled with an obsessive desire for an emotional substitute, the way someone become embroiled in an endless dispute with a brother or sister over an inheritance, or with a neighbor over a property boundary. The urge for more can become insatiable, and its apparent fulfillment seems only to exacerbate that early sense of deprivation and to stimulate the need to acquire still more” (Hochschild 38).

“He has a script: the dream of a colony that had been through his head since he was a teenager. But he has as yet no stage, no cast” but “one day in September 1877,” the “Stage and star have appeared, and the play can begin” (Hochschild 46).

Stanley -> "The thin-skinned Stanley was remarkably frank about his tendency to take any show of hostility as a deadly insult. It is almost as if vengeance were the force driving him across the continent" (Hochschild 49).

"Stanley was always uncomfortable with anyone whose talents might outshine his own" (Hochschild 49). -> Even though this quote is short, I think it is important to realize that Stanley was a very proud man who loved the fame of being an explorer as much as the next person

1st Reading of King Leopold's Ghost

      For homework in my advanced world history class, I was instructed to read the first 35 pages of the book King Leopold's Ghost. The first part I read was the introduction. It talked about the background of a man that would alter history, Edmund Dene Moral. Moral was a very common man who didn't seem like "the sort of person likely to get caught up in an idealistic cause", but when he discovered the slave trade in Africa, he "almost single-handedly" "put the subject on the world's front page for more than a decade" (Hochschild 1, 2). As the introduction goes on, the author, Adam Hochschild, admits that he himself had heard of this great genocide in Africa and yet had filed it in his mind not as fact, but as fiction. The prologue talks of a time 500 years prior when people first began to go south towards Africa. They had many reasons. Some were drawn to the supposed riches, some to the source of the nile and some to the Legend of Prester John, a king who lived in Africa and would welcome strangers into his extravagant castle. This part of the reading caught my attention because it discusses how the people first got interested in moving south and how slowly but surely their curiousity began to get the better of them. They had wandered for so long that eventually the anticipation became to much and they started to attempt to go further and further into Africa. Most went on boats in the dangerous Congo River and the brave few would attempt to walk. I also found the section on how the priests were even betraying their promise to god and began to take slaves. It helped me to better understand how popular slave trade had become and how it was affecting more and more people. Another section that highly interested me was the beginning life of John Rowlands. He was a bastard child who spent most of his life wandering around. He lived with his grandpa, his uncles, a foster family and soon to St. Asaph Union Workhouse. John would go on to to be known as Henry Morton Stanley, the man who became a permanent roving foreign correspondent for the Herald at twenty-seven years old.

     One part that I found myself getting a bit disinterested in the reading was when Hochschild began to discusss Mbanza Kongo and how he changed things. I don't know why, I just found myself struggling to pull myself back in on this part, but it only laster the few pages discussing him and his rule. 

    Overall I found the reading very interesting and am already asking myself some questions such as...

1.) How was the story of such a mass genocide forgotten in history? It seems like a pretty hard event to forget.

2.) WHy do you think Europeans were willing to risk their lives traveling south down into Africa because of a silly fairytale? Was it purely curiosity or something more?