p. 806-816

Our book states that "Joseph Conrad in his Heart of Darkness publicized the arbitrary brutality and the vast scale of suffering," regarding the Belgian Congo specifically (810). But his novel is general and could be applied to imperialism everywhere. I start to wonder, what made the lot of the Congo so radically different from that of all the other European colonies? Wars were fought over colonies and control was taken with no regard for the native populations: farmlands were destroyed and the slave trade was "abolished," only to be replaced by a system of labor that was just as bad. The Congo was a perfect example of imperialism gone wrong, the extreme of brutality, but what is imperialism gone according to plan? To solidify your holdings abroad, you cannot let the territory have its own functioning government, which means that the government you set up or the control, economically or directly, you maintain will only be incidentally in those people's best interests. The goal of imperialism, while ostensibly seems to be "civilizing," cannot be other than the desire to strengthen one's own country and culture by spreading it. The rivalry between the European states drove the "scramble for Africa," and the subjugation of the people was the priority, not proper treatment.