King Leopold’s Ghost: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

In the spring of 1883, President Chester A. Arthur traveled to Florida as the guest of General Henry Shelton Sanford, still the loyal servant of King Leopold II. Sanford was a longtime supporter of the Republican Party to which Arthur belonged, and Leopold believed that he could use Sanford to convince Arthur to formally recognize his claims to Congolese land. In the fall of 1883, Sanford met with Arthur in the White House, where he praised Leopold for his great humanitarian work. Shrewdly, Sanford compared Leopold’s work in the Congo to the American project to resettle slaves in Africa—a project which had been driven by private societies and which had resulted in the creation of the independent country of Liberia. Sanford also claimed that Leopold’s colonial holdings in the Congo would thwart the ambitions of “barbaric” Arab slave-traders in the region.

Throughout 1884, Sanford continued his work as a Washington lobbyist for Leopold’s cause. He wined and dined American politicians and businessmen, and found a powerful ally in John Tyler Morgan, a white supremacist senator from Alabama who had supported a plan to send former slaves (many of whom had lived their whole lives in the United States) “back” to Africa. Sanford convinced Morgan that, by recognizing the existence of Leopold’s Congo landholdings, the U.S. would have a way to establish economic connections between itself and Africa, perhaps opening up a new market for Alabama’s cotton surplus. Morgan introduced a Senate resolution recognizing Leopold’s Congo claims, and in April 1884, the U.S. became the first country to officially recognize King Leopold II’s claim to the Congo. The Secretary of State made a statement in which he confused the IAC and the IAA, showing that Leopold’s strategy had worked perfectly: America couldn’t be sure if Leopold’s landholdings were philanthropic or colonial.

U.S. recognition of the Congo immediately strengthened Leopold’s position in Africa. Leopold scored another victory when he convinced France to formally recognize his landholdings, as well. In order to accomplish this, Leopold launched a journalistic campaign, paying writers to pen long stories praising his humanitarian work in the Congo. The French government wasn’t concerned about Belgium threatening France’s power in Africa; in fact, France believed that, by recognizing Belgium’s colonial holdings, it stood a better chance of buying those holdings at some point in the future. American and French recognition launched a domino effect—within a few years, a long list of countries recognized Leopold’s claim to the Congo. Leopold’s greatest challenge was convincing Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany to recognize the Congo. Von Bismarck immediately doubted that Leopold would establish an independent state in the Congo. However, he eventually agreed to recognize Leopold’s claims to the Congo because he was worried that, if he did not, Britain or France would claim the territory for itself.

In 1884, von Bismarck hosted the famous Berlin Conference, in which the leaders of Europe’s great powers met to discuss the division of Africa. King Leopold did not attend the conference, because, officially, the Congo was under the control of the IAC, which was a private society. However, many of Leopold’s followers were present at the conference, including Sanford (acting as ambassador from America), and Stanley. Leopold instructed his allies to include Belgium in a series of trade agreements, further cementing the Congo’s status as a legitimate territory.

On May 29, 1885, Leopold, now fifty years old, officially declared his landholdings to be the Congo Free State. In spite of the changed name, the land remained under Leopold’s private control.