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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]
Leopold was born in Brussels on 9 April 1835, the second child of the reigning Belgian monarch, Leopold I, and of his second wife, Louise, the daughter of King Louis Philippe of France. [7] His eldest brother, Louis Philippe, Crown Prince of Belgium , died in infancy in 1834.
The Belgians freed thousands of men, women and children slaves from Swaihili Arab slave owners and slave traders in Eastern Congo in 1886-1892, enlisted them in the militia Force Publique or turned them over as prisoners to allied local chiefs, who in turn gave them as laborers for the Belgian conscript workers; when Belgian Congo was ...
Although few African scholars seriously question that large numbers died in Leopold's Congo, the subject remains a touchy one in Belgium itself. [4] The country's Royal Museum for Central Africa , founded by Leopold II, mounted a special exhibition in 2005 about the colonial Congo; in an article in the New York Review of Books , Hochschild ...
Force Publique soldiers photographed in 1900 Two Force Publique soldiers at Fort Shinkakasa.Shown are the blue and red uniforms worn until 1915. To command his Force Publique, Leopold II was able to rely on a mixture of volunteers (regular officers detached from the Belgian Army), mercenaries [4] and former officers from the armies of other European nations, especially those of Scandinavia ...
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 ...
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 ...
By the time Belgium's second king, Leopold II, was crowned, Belgian enthusiasm for colonialism had abated. Successive governments viewed colonial expansion as economically and politically risky and fundamentally unrewarding, and believed that informal empire , continuing Belgium's booming industrial trade in South America and Russia, was much ...