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Leopold II [a] (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909) was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, and the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. Born in Brussels as the second but eldest-surviving son of King Leopold I and Queen Louise , Leopold succeeded his father to the Belgian throne in 1865 and reigned ...
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's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule. New York: P. R. Warren, 1905. Williams, George Washington. "An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of the Congo". Reprinted in Franklin, John Hope. George Washington Williams: A Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago ...
From Stanley Falls, Williams wrote "An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo" on July 18, 1890. [4] In this letter, he condemned the brutal and inhuman treatment of the Congolese at the hands of Europeans and Africans supervising them for the Congo Free State.
At the conference, Leopold organized the International African Association with the cooperation of European and American explorers and the support of several European governments, and was himself elected chairman. Leopold used the association to promote plans to seize independent central Africa under this philanthropic guise.
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.
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 ...
King Leopold's Ghost was specifically singled out for praise by the American Historical Association when it gave Hochschild its Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award in 2008. [17] In an article published by The American Conservative , political scientist Bruce Gilley was highly critical of the accuracy of the book and defended colonialism.