Leopold II of Belgium

Leopold Louis-Philippe Marie Victor of Saxe-Coburg (April 9, 1835 – December 17, 1909), succeeded his father, Leopold I of Belgium, to the Belgian throne in 1865 as Leopold II, King of the Belgians and remained king until his death. Outside of Belgium, however, he is chiefly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken by the King to extract rubber and ivory, which relied on slavery and was responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans.

Private colonialism

Leopold fervently believed that overseas colonies were the key to a country's greatness, and worked tirelessly to acquire colonial territory for Belgium. Neither the Belgian people nor the Belgian government were interested, however, and Leopold eventually began trying to acquire a colony in his private capacity as an ordinary citizen.

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After a number of unsuccessful schemes for colonies in Africa or Asia, in 1876 he organized a private holding company disguised as an international scientific and philanthropic association. In 1879, under the auspices of the holding company, he hired the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley to establish a colony in the Congo region. Much diplomatic maneuvering resulted in the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, at which representatives of 14 European countries and the United States recognized Leopold as sovereign of most of the area he and Stanley had laid claim to. On February 5, 1885, the result was the Congo Free State (later the Belgian Congo, then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo), an area 76 times larger than Belgium, which Leopold was free to rule as a personal domain.

Related Topics:
1876 - 1879 - Henry Morton Stanley - Congo - Berlin Conference - United States - February 5 - 1885 - Congo Free State - Belgian Congo - Zaire - Democratic Republic of Congo

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Reports of outrageous exploitation and widespread human rights abuses (including enslavement and mutilation) of the native population, especially in the rubber industry, led to an international protest movement in the early 1900s. Estimates of the death toll range from 3 to 10 million (for further detail, see Congo Free State and here) and many historians consider the atrocities to have constituted a genocide. Finally, in 1908, the Belgian parliament compelled the King to cede the Congo Free State to Belgium. Historians of the period tend to take a very dim view of Leopold, due to the mass killings and human rights abuses that took place in the Congo: one British historian has said that he "was an Attila in modern dress, and it would have been better for the world if he had never been born."

Related Topics:
Human rights abuse - Enslavement - Mutilation - Rubber - Congo Free State - Genocide - Belgian parliament

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Leopold II is still a controversial figure in the Democratic Republic of Congo; in 2005 his statue was taken down just hours after it was re-erected in the capital, Kinshasa. The Congolese culture minister, Christoph Muzungu decided to reinstate the statue, arguing people should see the positive aspects of the king as well as the negative. But just hours after the six-metre (20 foot) statue was erected in the middle of a roundabout near Kinshasa's central station, it was taken down again, without explanation.

Related Topics:
2005 - Kinshasa - Christoph Muzungu

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