Review

     In class we talked about Colonialism, at one point we discussed Africa. I watched a movie in another class about colonialism, it was called White King, Red Rubber, Black Death. It was about King Leopold II who tried to colonize the Congo. As a result millions of Africans were killed throughout the 1880's and 1890's. The people of the Congo were tortured, raped and mutated. They were stripped of everything they had and given no rights, justice or freedom. As this was going on King Leopold was being honoured for a great humanitarian and philanthropist. I wouldn't say this was a good movie or recommend it to other people unless they were interested int he subject. It was mildly depressing to see people being treated this way. Even when someone asked a group of people on the street (recent day) who King Leopold was they said "he is our Uncle, he is the one who provided jobs for us." I'm not sure if this was a compliment or what people actually think but I was surprised to hear people praising him and not bashing him. King Leopold used the Congo to get tons of money for Belgium to build large statues and architecture which is still in place today. Belgium looked beautiful, rich and nobody questioned where the money was coming from. 
    Colonialism to me in general seems pretty cruel. In every case you hear of bad things going on, people being killed or culture be taken away. The only reason why larger countries decided to colonize under developed places was because they were greedy and it was easy to take advantage of "uncivilized" people. I find it surprising how a lot of the laws that were set in place when certain countries were colonized still hold some of the same framework or history. Or the fact that some of them are still even governed by the larger country in some way (like currency).  I don't know a lot of history of colonialism or who "owned" what but it seems like it was almost a contest at one point like who could colonize the most places or something.  At the end of this movie Leopold was exposed and a case was made against him, although the outcome wasn't the justice people were looking for.