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King Leopold II and Princess Clémentine visit colonial celebrations in Antwerp on the occasion of the Congo's annexation to Belgium in 1909. International opposition and criticism at home from the Catholic Party, Progressive Liberals [51] and the Labour Party caused the Belgian Parliament to compel the king to cede the Congo Free State to ...
Cartoon by British caricaturist Francis Carruthers Gould depicting King Leopold II, and the Congo Free State A 1906 Punch cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne depicting Leopold II as a rubber snake entangling a Congolese rubber collector. Leopold ran up high debts with his Congo investments before the beginning of the worldwide rubber boom in the ...
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]
King Leopold II of the Belgians attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition of the Congo Free State in ...
The Belgian parliament started on an initial legislation for the future Belgian colony, a long and difficult process. A first draft of the Colonial Charter had already been written in 1901, but with an overtone of royal absolutism, the initial draft included provisions for Leopold II to hold on to a private Crown Domain. His goal was to exclude ...
Leopold II, King of the Belgians, privately controlled and owned the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. In 1908, the area was annexed by Belgium as a colony known as the Belgian Congo. Leopold used his personal control to strip the country of vast amounts of wealth, largely in the form of ivory and rubber.
William Henry Sheppard (March 8, 1865 – November 25, 1927) was one of the earliest African Americans to become a missionary for the Presbyterian Church.He spent 20 years in Africa, primarily in and around the Congo Free State, and is best known for his efforts to publicize the atrocities committed against the Kuba and other Congolese peoples by King Leopold II's Force Publique.
King Leopold II in the late 1800s. Leopold thought overseas colonies were of critical importance to become a great power, and worked to establish colonial possessions for Belgium. The national legislature did not authorize the colonial enterprise, and Leopold eventually acquired a colony in the Congo for himself with money loaned by the Belgian ...