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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]
The Congo Free State, also known as the Independent State of the Congo (French: État indépendant du Congo), was a large state and absolute monarchy in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908. It was privately owned by King Leopold II, the constitutional monarch of the Kingdom of Belgium. In legal terms, the two separate countries were in a personal ...
The Casement Report was a 1904 document written at the behest of the British Government by Roger Casement (1864–1916)—a British diplomat and future Irish independence fighter—detailing abuses in the Congo Free State which was under the private ownership of King Leopold II of Belgium. This report was instrumental in Leopold finally ...
Pages in category "Atrocities in the Congo Free State" ... King Leopold's Ghost; N. ... Media in category "Atrocities in the Congo Free State"
Leopold II's effigy on a Congo Free State 5 Franc, with the unabridged and translated lettering of "Leopold II, King of the Belgians, Sovereign of the Independent State of the Congo". In 1894, King Leopold signed a treaty with Great Britain which conceded a strip of land on the Congo Free State's eastern border in exchange for a lifetime lease ...
There was a worldwide media propaganda campaign waged by both King Leopold II of Belgium and the critics of the Congo Free State and its atrocities. Leopold was very astute in using the media to support his virtual private control of the Congo.
By the turn of the century, however, the atrocities committed by Free State officials and international mercenaries against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by ratifying the Colonial Charter on the Belgian ...
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 ...