Leopold II, King of the Belgians

Leopold II (April 9, 1835 - December 17, 1909) was King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. Leopold became the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. He used explorer Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. He ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal enrichment. He used great sums of the money from this exploitation for public and private construction projects in Belgium during this period. Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labor from the native population to harvest and process rubber. Under his regime millions of the Congolese people died. Reports of deaths and abuse led to a major international scandal, leading the Belgian government to force Leopold to relinquish control of the colony to Belgian civil administration in 1908. He died in 1909 at the age of 74. His reign of 44 years remains the longest in Belgian history. No photographer credited, undated

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Abuse Atrocities Atrocity Congo Congolese Exploitation Infamous Notorious

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