Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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]
Morel used newspaper accounts, pamphlets, and books to publish evidence from reports, eye-witness testimony, and pictures from missionaries and others involved directly in the Congo. As Morel gained high-profile supporters, the publicity generated by his campaign eventually forced Leopold to relinquish control of the Congo to the Belgian ...
Map of the Congo Free State, published in 1904. The concession areas of various rubber companies are shown, the area of the ABIR concession can be seen approximately in the centre of the upper half. The Congo Conference of 1885 resulted in the effective grant of the Congo Free State to King Leopold II of Belgium as personal property.
Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; Contact us; Pages for logged out editors learn more
English: Female atrocity victim, Congo, ca. 1900-1915. At the Congo Balolo Mission, in colonial Congo Free State, (present day Democratic Republic of the Congo). Tinted lantern slide titled "The Congo Atrocities" showing a young woman. The woman wears a short waist wrap and holds a long wooden cane, since one of her feet has been amputated.
News of these atrocities brought slow, but powerful, international condemnation of Leopold's administration leading, eventually, to his assignment of the country to Belgian administration. In 1908, Belgium annexed the Congo as a colony and proclaimed a general sea-change in administrative policy. Actual change, however, was nearly imperceptible.
In 1910, following the Belgian annexation of the Congo Free State as the Belgian Congo in 1908 and the death of the Belgian King in December 1909, British authorities reclaimed the Lado Enclave as per the Anglo-Congolese treaty signed in 1894, and added the territory to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. [52]
In Belgian public discourse, King Leopold II of Belgium (r. 1865–1909), who ruled the Congo Free State as his private property from 1885 to 1908, is generally held to bear the primary responsibility for the atrocities committed there in that colonial period. In the early 21st century, statues of Leopold II have been regularly defaced or ...