Biography Of King Leopold II – Free PDF Download

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KING LEOPOLD II

Leopold II (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909) was King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. Born in Brussels as the second but eldest surviving son of Leopold I and Louise of Orléans, he succeeded his father to the Belgian throne in 1865 and reigned for 44 years until his death – the longest reign of any Belgian monarch.
Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf.

In the period from 1885 to 1908, many well-documented atrocities were perpetrated in the Congo Free State (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) which, at the time, was a colony under the personal rule of King Leopold II of the Belgians.
These atrocities were particularly associated with the labour policies used to collect natural rubber for export. Together with epidemic disease, famine, and a falling birth rate caused by these disruptions, the atrocities contributed to a sharp decline in the Congolese population.

The territory under Leopold’s control exceeded 2,600,000 km² (1,000,000 sq mi) and, amid financial problems, was ruled by a tiny cadre of administrators drawn from across Europe.
The boom in demand for natural rubber, which was abundant in the territory, created a radical shift in the 1890s—to facilitate the extraction and export of rubber, all “uninhabited” land in the Congo was nationalised, with the majority distributed to private companies as concessions.
Between 1891 and 1906, the companies were allowed to do whatever they wished with almost no judicial interference

A native paramilitary army, the Force Publique, was also created to enforce the labour policies. Individual workers who refused to participate in rubber collection could be killed and entire villages razed.
Despite these atrocities, the main cause of the population decline was disease. A number of pandemics, notably African sleeping sickness, smallpox, swine influenza, and amoebic dysentery, ravaged indigenous populations.
In 1901 alone it was estimated that 500,000 Congolese had died from sleeping sickness.

With the majority of the Free State’s revenues derived from the export of rubber, a labour policy—known by critics as the “Red Rubber system”—was created to maximise its extraction.
Labour was demanded by the administration as taxation.This created a “slave society” as companies became increasingly dependent on forcibly mobilising Congolese labour for their collection of rubber.
The state recruited a number of black officials, known as capitas, to organise local labour

With the majority of the Free State’s revenues derived from the export of rubber, a labour policy—known by critics as the “Red Rubber system”—was created to maximise its extraction.
Labour was demanded by the administration as taxation.This created a “slave society” as companies became increasingly dependent on forcibly mobilising Congolese labour for their collection of rubber.
The state recruited a number of black officials, known as capitas, to organise local labour

Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone.
As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off hands. Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by the villages themselves.