A post-colonial disaster in Africa: King of Belgium Leopold's brutality... How many deaths is Leopold II responsible for?
A murderer who has committed perhaps one of the greatest genocides in human history and massacred millions of Congolese.
He is such a murderer, that he asks his soldiers to cut off the hand or genitals of the person shot in order to prove that the bullets they fired were not wasted.
However, because the people they killed were Africans, his name was never as famous as Hitler, and he was not cursed.
When Belgium separated from the Netherlands in 1831 and became a new nation and gained its independence, it established two colonies in Africa: 1) The Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly known as Zaire. 2) The Republic of Rwanda, formerly Rwanda-Urundi.
In the late 1800s, the great powers of Europe divided Africa and took colonies for themselves. Second King of Belgium Leopold, Early in his life, had decided to establish a colony of his own as a source of personal property and wealth. The best spots on the coast had already been taken, so Leopold set his sights on the vast, mapless interior of Africa.
He portrayed himself as a European with a human side to show his difference from other Western powers. He would save the Congo from the evil Arab slave traders. He also promised to open the Congo to free trade so that their European allies could benefit from it.
King Leopold was a very ambitious man who wanted to enrich himself personally and increase the prestige of his country by annexing and colonizing African lands.
He succeeded his father, Leopold I, to the Belgian throne in 1865. In 1876, he commissioned Sir Henry Morton Stanley's expedition to explore the Congo region. This discovery initially led to the establishment of the Congo Free State.
The new colony consisted of a territory larger than Western Europe and seventy-four times larger than Belgium and was privately owned during World War II. It belonged to Leopold. He declared himself king of the Congo Free State at a time when France, England, Portugal, and Germany also had colonies in the area.
In 1885, Leopold II secured recognition of US personal sovereignty over the Congo Free State. Thereafter, Leopold II was the absolute ruler of the Congo, but his brutal rule cost the lives of millions of Congolese.
Then came 1895, the British press began exposing Leopold's atrocities in the Congo. In 1897, a Swedish missionary described how Leopold's soldiers at a London meeting were rewarded with the number of Congolese hands they cut as punishments for domestic workers for not working hard enough.
By 1899, the British vice-consul had confirmed and also officially reported the brutality of Leopold's mismanagement in the Congo. Finally, in 1908, Leopold had to cede his personal principality, the Free State of Congo, to the Belgian state.
Belgian Administration of the Congo (1908-1960)
Taking over the administration of the country by the Belgian government, brought some improvement in the lives of the Congolese people, who suffered untold hardships under Leopold II and his private militia.
There were minor improvements in the daily economic and social life of the Congolese, comparable to conditions in other European colonies in Africa. The Belgian colonial administration built some schools, railways, roads, fields, mines, industrial areas, and airports in the Congo to make people forget the old mismanagement.
Despite the modest improvements in the lives of the Congolese, the Belgians, who could not get rid of their racist thoughts, created two separate societies in the Congo: whites and natives. Native Africans lacked everything, while whites had all the luxuries.
An apartheid-type social order was established. All important decisions regarding Congo were made in Brussels and Congolese were not allowed to participate in the government of their own country.
In 1955, a few Congolese educated elites organized resistance against the lack of democracy and the Apartheid policies of the Belgian colonial masters. The main purpose of this elite that resisted Belgian colonial rule was to correct this great inequality between Europeans and Africans.
They used civil disobedience, strikes, and civil actions against the Belgian colonists, and these uprisings led to the dissolution of Belgian colonial rule. Ultimately, all these efforts helped Congo gain its independence in 1960.