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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]
Belgian Mission - Congo Genocide: 1890 to 1910 10/15 Millions Deaths By King Leopold II, the constitutional monarch of Belgium against African Congolese people. In the 19th century, Leopold II, tried to persuade the governance to colonize certain areas of Africa. Under the pretext of humanitarian purposes, he managed to legally own the Kongo ...
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.
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.
Leopold's reign of exactly 44 years remains the longest in Belgian history. He was interred in the royal vault at the Church of Our Lady of Laeken. Leopold II's funeral procession passes the unfinished Royal Palace of Brussels, 22 December 1909. Attention to the Congo atrocities subsided in the years after Leopold's death.
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.
From 1908 until 1960, the Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa. In the first 23 years of Belgium’s ruling from 1885 to 1960, it is estimated that up 10 million Congolese died ...
The Indictment Against the Congo Government. Liverpool Press, 1906. E. D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement. Edited by Wm. Roger Louis and Jean Stengers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. Morel, Edmund Dene. The Black Man's Burden: The White Man in Africa from the Fifteenth Century to World War I. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969.