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Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private colonial project undertaken on his own behalf as a personal union with Belgium. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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]
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 ...
The independence of the British, French and Dutch colonies in Asia shortly after 1945 had little immediate effect in the Congo, but in the United Nations pressure on Belgium (as on other colonial powers) increased. Belgium had ratified article 73 of the United Nations Charter, which advocated self-determination, and both superpowers put ...
In 1885, Leopold's efforts to establish Belgian influence in the Congo Basin were awarded with the État Indépendant du Congo (CFS, Congo Free State). By a resolution passed in the Belgian Parliament, Leopold became roi souverain , sovereign king, of the newly formed CFS, over which he enjoyed nearly absolute control.
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 ...
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 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 ...