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콘래드, 조지프/콘래드아프리카제국

King Leopold II - Letter. [Guy Burrows - The Land of Pigmies]

by 길철현 2018. 12. 2.


[정리]

여러 어려움 가운데에서도 야만적인 콩고의 원주민을 문명화시키는 작업을 지속할 것을 독려. 중간의 몇 구절은 [콩고 자유국]에서 행해지고 있던 원주민에 대한 과도한 조치들이 문제시되고 있음을 보여주기도 한다.


  It is in their leaders that they must see
living evidence of these higher principles, taught that the exercise of authority is not at all to be confounded with cruelty, but is, indeed, destroyed by it.


(285)  They [the agents]  have to continue
the development of civilisation in the centre of Equatorial
Africa, receiving their inspnution directly from Berlin and
Brussels.
- Placed face to face with primitive barbarism, grappling with
sanguinary customs that date back thousands of years, they are obliged to reduce these gradually. They must accustom the population to general laws, of which the most needful and the most salutary is assuredly that of work.

- In such countries, I know, strong authority must be imposed to bring the natives (who have no such inchnation) to conform to the usages of civihsation. For that purpose we must be both firm and parental.

(286) The soldiers of the State, who are recruited necessarily from among the natives, do not immediately forsake those sanguinary habits that have been transmitted from generation to generation.

- It is in their leaders that they must see
living evidence of these higher principles, taught that the exercise of authority is not at all to be confounded with cruelty, but is, indeed, destroyed by it.

- Our only programme, I am anxious to repeat, is the work of material and moral regeneration, and we must do this among a population whose degeneration in its inherited conditions it is difficult to measure

(287) The many horrors and atrocities which disgrace humanity give way little by little before our intervention. Each step forward made by our people must mark an improvement in the condition of the natives.

- This material prosperity obviously consolidates the interests
of whites and negroes. Their primitive nature will not resist
indefinitely the pressing appeals of Christian culture. Their
education, once begun, will proceed apace.

- The network of railways and stations has
gradually put an end to the incessant warfare of tribe against
tribe, village against village, and thus has brought about a rule
of peace.