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King Leopold II raves madly about the good things that he says he has done for the people of the Congo Free State, including the disbursement of millions on religion and art. He says he had come to Congo with piety "oozing" from "every pore", that he had only wanted to convert the people to Christianity, that he had wanted to stop the slave trade.
Leopold "conceived the idea of a Congo Free State, with himself as the Sovereign ruler." [4] The name suggested individual, economic, and religious freedoms. Leopold began a publicity campaign in Britain, drawing attention to Portugal's record of slavery to distract critics. He offered to drive slave traders from the Congo basin.
Leopold II offered to reform his Congo Free State regime, but international opinion supported an end to the king's rule, and no nation was willing to accept this responsibility. Belgium was the obvious European candidate to annex the Congo Free State. For two years, it debated the question and held new elections on the issue.
The brother of Belgium's king joined a swelling debate about its past on Friday by saying that King Leopold II, under whose rule millions of Congolese were killed or maimed, could not have "made ...
King Leopold II, whose rule of the Congo Free State was marked by severe atrocities, violence and major population decline.. Even before his accession to the throne of Belgium in 1865, the future king Leopold II began lobbying leading Belgian politicians to create a colonial empire in the Far East or in Africa, which would expand and enhance Belgian prestige. [2]
William Henry Sheppard (March 8, 1865 – November 25, 1927) was one of the earliest African Americans to become a missionary for the Presbyterian Church.He spent 20 years in Africa, primarily in and around the Congo Free State, and is best known for his efforts to publicize the atrocities committed against the Kuba and other Congolese peoples by King Leopold II's Force Publique.
The Bakuba people from the Kingdom of Kuba believed in a single creator deity, named Bumba or m'Bombo. He is said to have originally existed alone in darkness, in a universe consisting of nothing but primordial water. The creation took place when he vomited the sun, moon, animals and then humanity. [10]
The Congo Free State was a state in Africa created and headed by the former Belgian monarch, Leopold II as a personal union with Belgium.On 29 May 1885, after the closure of the Berlin Conference, the king announced that he planned to name his possessions "the Congo Free State", an appellation which was not yet used at the Berlin Conference and which officially replaced "International ...