Madness and wickedness are exposed in the heart of darkness. Joseph Conrad compared the Eldorado expedition in his novel Heart of Darkness with the Katanga expedition of 1890-1892. In doing so, he illustrated the madness and malevolence of the leaders of the Katanga expedition and of imperialist profiteers in general. The foundations of the Katanga expedition were laid in 1883 when King Leopold proposed in his will to leave the Congo State to Belgium. if he could borrow 25 million francs without interest to finance the development of the region. In 1890, Prime Minister Beernaert arranged for Leopold to obtain the loan (Pakenham 399). Thanks to German adventurers and British missionaries, Leopold soon learned of both Katanga's bounty in natural resources and the existence of its unusual native warlord, Msiri. Hoping to obtain raw materials, Leopold launched the Katanga expedition in 1890 (Pakenham 400). Conrad's "Kurtz" in Heart of Darkness is based on Georges-Antoine Klein (Sherry 9), although there are many similarities between him and Msiri, also the indigenous leader of Katanga. Like Kurtz, Msiri liked to keep tight control over everything that happened in his area and he liked to show off his collection of human heads (Pakenham 400). As Kurtz had no qualms about shooting his followers (like the Russian) for trivial reasons (Conrad 56), Msiri frequently cut off the appendages of all his subjects who displeased him (Pakenham 403). As Msiri was enormous, "six feet tall and fourteen stone tall" (Pakenham 403), Kurtz "looked at least 7 feet long" (Conrad 59). When Msiri's enemies grew bolder, Msiri's huts filled with supplies were burned (Pakenham 406). This is analogous to the incident in Heart of... middle of paper... back of it as that of the burglars breaking into a safe” (Conrad 33). Through Marlow, Conrad was highlighting the evil ambitions of the Katanga expedition. In the Katanga expedition, there was no real objective of “enlightening” the “savage” natives. The members of the expedition only cared about money and riches. the indigenous peoples of Africa. Conrad was disgusted with the way Belgium treated the people of the Congo, and he blatantly illustrated this disgust with his portrait of the Katanga Expedition thinly veiled as the Eldorado Expedition. Works Cited Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness. : WW Norton and Company, Inc, 1988. Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa New York: Random House, 1991. Sherry, Norman Conrad's Western World: Cambridge University Press., 1971.