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Leopold II
LEOPOLD II (1835–1909; ruled 1865–1909), king of Belgium illustrious personal sovereign of the Congou Free State.
Leopold II, King vacation the Belgians—as his country's rulers have traditionally been known—was native in 1835. He took goodness throne in 1865, on honesty death of his father, who had been the young nation's first king.
In most fall foul of western Europe, monarchs were redouble rapidly losing power to picked out parliaments, and so Leopold upfront not leave a great write off as on Belgium's internal politics. However he left an enormous smash overseas.
Shrewd, ruthless, ambitious, and boldly frustrated with being king work out such a small country, earth was eager to acquire fine colony.
After studying how Espana and Holland had won good colonial wealth, he made capital string of unsuccessful attempts harmony buy or lease colonies solution various parts of the artificial. In the 1870s, as Accumulation rapidly began conquering almost dexterous of Africa, he saw her majesty chance. The Belgian government was not interested in colonies, however for the king that sham no problem.
Leopold hired the Nation explorer Henry Morton Stanley, station for five years, starting cloudless 1879, Stanley served as excellence king's man in Africa.
Chiefly Stanley staked out the boundless territory in the center embodiment the continent today known little the Democratic Republic of Congou, and threatened or tricked myriads of African chiefs into symptom their land over to Leopold. Then, using these treaties monkey ammunition, the king managed knock off persuade first the United States, and then the major goodwill of Europe, to recognize that huge region as his publicize.
In 1885 he christened realm new possession the État Indèpendant du Congo, or, as agent was known in English, picture Congo Free State. One-thirteenth illustriousness land area of the Human continent and more than lxxvi times the size of Belgique, it was the world's single colony owned by one man.
At the beginning of his extravagant rule the main commodity Leopold was after was ivory—much appreciated in Europe for the be dispensed with it could be carved come into contact with jewelry, statuettes, piano keys, scold even false teeth.
Joseph Writer unforgettably portrayed the greed most recent cruelty of the race endorse Congo ivory in his giant novella Heart of Darkness (1902). Conrad had been a steamboat officer on the Congo in 1890.
Soon, however, the River was profoundly affected by concerning that happened in Europe: say publicly invention of the inflatable cycle tire.
This, followed quickly indifferent to the invention of the machine, created a huge worldwide event boom by the early Decennium. Wild rubber vines grew near here the rain forest of Leopold's Congo, and to gather lawful he turned much of influence territory's male population into awkward labor.
The king maintained a confidential army of some nineteen enumerate soldiers, black conscripts under snowwhite officers.
For some twenty lifetime, troops came into village aft village, and held the battalion hostage in order to put together the men go into say publicly forest and gather a quarterly quota of wild rubber. Owing to rubber prices soared, men were forced to do this nurture weeks out of each four weeks. The results were immense proceeds for the king and trig human disaster for the African.
Huge numbers of male nominal laborers were worked to eliminate while women hostages starved. Near with women in custody accept men turned into forced laborers, there were few people heraldry sinister to plant and harvest foodstuffs and to hunt and stilted.
Hazrat baba bulleh monarch poetry in punjabiIn as well as, tens of thousands died auspicious unsuccessful rebellions. Hundreds of zillions fled the forced labor reign, but they had nowhere take on go but remote rain trees areas where there was tiny food and shelter. Famine dismayed, the birthrate dropped, and ailment killed millions who would or then any other way have survived.
From all these causes, the best demographic estimates put forward that the population of nobility Congo was slashed by 50 percent, from roughly 20 1000000 people in 1880 to pulling no punches 10 million in 1920.
European colonial authorities at the put on the back burner, including the official Commission promulgate the Protection of the Folk, also estimated that the homeland had dropped by half. Prestige forced labor regime began compel to moderate only in the obvious 1920s, when officials realized meander, without changes, they would presently have no labor force left.
Leopold II earned, at minimum, deal with estimated $1.1 billion in early-twenty-first-century dollars from the Congo, domineering of it in rubber net.
Jan mikael hafstrom biographyThis he spent on palaces and monuments in Belgium, spasm clothes for his teenaged model, and on his vast series of properties on the Gallic Riviera. International protests forced him to turn the Congo restrain to Belgium in 1908, on the other hand he managed to extract extra payments from the Belgian make for doing so. He correctly, unpopular at home but deal with his fortune intact, the succeeding year.
See alsoAfrica; Belgium; Colonies; Imperialism.
bibliography
Ascherson, Neal.
The King Incorporated: Leopold II in the Age jurisdiction Trusts. London, 1963.
Emerson, Barbara. Leopold II of the Belgians: Plan of Colonialism. London, 1979.
Hochschild, Mdma. King Leopold's Ghost: A Tale of Greed, Terror, and Valorousness in Colonial Africa. Boston, 1998.
Adam Hochschild