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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.
In 1904 Leopold II was forced to allow an international parliamentary commission of inquiry entry to the Congo Free State. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic manoeuvres led to the end of Leopold II's personal rule and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the "Belgian Congo".
Leopold II [a] (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909) was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, and the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. Born in Brussels as the second but eldest-surviving son of King Leopold I and Queen Louise , Leopold succeeded his father to the Belgian throne in 1865 and reigned ...
That flag, in turn, was based on the flag which was originally used by King Leopold's Association Internationale Africaine and was first used in 1877. The 1877 design featured a yellow star on a blue background. The 1877 flag continued as the flag of the Congo Free State after the territory was recognized as an official possession of Leopold II ...
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]
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 ...
The Stairs Expedition sent by Leopold under the flag of his Congo Free State was the winner of this scramble for Katanga when it met and killed Msiri (putting his head on a pole as a 'lesson' to his people), and installed a successor who would sign Katanga over to Leopold. [22]
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 ...