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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.
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 governance of the Belgian Congo was outlined in the 1908 Colonial Charter. [103] Despite being effectively removed from power, the international scrutiny was no major loss to Leopold II—who died in Brussels on 17 December 1909—or to the concessionary companies in the Congo.
In 1904 Leopold II was forced to allow an international parliamentary commission of inquiry entry to the Congo Free State. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic manoeuvres led to the end of Leopold II's personal rule and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the "Belgian Congo".
King Leopold II of Belgium attempted to persuade the government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely uncharted Congo Basin. The Belgian government's ambivalence resulted in Leopold's creating a colony on his own account.
The brother of Belgium's king joined a swelling debate about its past on Friday by saying that King Leopold II, under whose rule millions of Congolese were killed or maimed, could not have "made ...
King Leopold II reportedly owned the three skulls that date back to the Congo Free State colonial period. ... From 1908 until 1960, the Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa. In the ...
After an interview with Leopold, Williams went to the Congo to see "Christian civilization" in action. In early April 1891 Williams wrote a letter to Leopold entitled An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo about the suffering of the region at the hands of Leopold's ...