The man known to history as King Leopold II
of Belgium was born Prince Leopold Louis-Philippe Marie Victor on the 9th of April 1835 in Brussels,
the capital of Belgium, where his parents ruled as King and Queen. His father was King Leopold I of the Belgians,
a German prince from the dukedom of Coburg in Saxony who came of age during the Napoleonic
Wars and served as a cavalry commander in the Russian army fighting against the Emperor
Napoleon in 1813 and 1814, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant general. In 1816, Leopold married Princess Charlotte
of Wales, the daughter of George, Prince Regent, and second in line to the British throne. When Charlotte died giving birth to a stillborn
child in 1817, Leopold remained an influential figure at the British court, especially after
his sister Victoria married Prince Edward of Kent in 1818, giving birth to a daughter
also named Victoria, who would become Queen in 1837. Five years before Prince Leopold’s birth,
Belgium declared independence from the United Netherlands, but Great Britain was the only
major power to recognise Belgian independence at the time. In the immediate aftermath of the Belgian
Revolution of 1830, the British government was concerned that the Belgians might chose
a French prince as their king and offered Leopold as an alternative candidate. The Belgians, afraid that a French king might
annex their new nation to France, gladly accepted Leopold, who was sworn in as King of the Belgians
on the 21st of July 1831. The Dutch were unwilling to give up their
claim to Belgium so quickly, and it was only in 1839 that the Netherlands joined six other
European states in signing the Treaty of London guaranteeing Belgian independence and neutrality. Soon after becoming King, Leopold I married
the twenty-year-old Princess Louise d’Orléans, the eldest daughter of King Louis-Philippe
I of France. Leopold believed that not only would the marriage
encourage France to abandon its claims on Belgian territory, but Louise, who was a Catholic,
would help him bridge the religious gap between himself and his primarily Catholic subjects. As a Lutheran, Leopold wanted to demonstrate
that he could be a good ruler despite the differences in faith. Following their marriage in August 1832, the
couple had four children together. The first, Crown Prince Louis-Philippe Leopold
Ernest, was born in July 1833 but died before his first birthday. The royal couple would go on to have three
more children, sons Leopold and Philippe, and a daughter Charlotte, all of whom survived
into adulthood. In 1840, the five-year-old Prince Leopold
was granted the title of Duke of Brabant by his father, while his younger brother Philippe
was made Count of Flanders. Although Leopold was heir to the throne, he
resented the fact that his parents favoured his two younger siblings and proved an unruly
child. His first language was French, the native
language of his mother as well as the Belgian social elite, and he also learned to speak
English and German. Following the traditions of European royalty,
Leopold’s upbringing was entrusted to a royal governor, Count Gustave de Lannoy, who
established a strict schedule which involved more than eight hours of study each day. While his siblings excelled in their studies,
Leopold struggled, only finding success in drawing. Although he was uninterested in his education,
Leopold was fascinated by politics and even at the age of ten enjoyed discussing current
affairs with his father’s most distinguished subjects. As Leopold entered his teens, the King desperately
tried to force his son to become a more diligent student and instructed Count de Lannoy to
apply stricter discipline, but these efforts were counterproductive, and Leopold’s wild
behaviour continued to worry his parents. In October 1850, young Leopold was at his
mother’s bedside when she died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-eight. The Duke of Brabant was devastated by the
death of his affectionate mother, and the sixty-year-old King proved unable or unwilling
to bridge the emotional distance with his eldest son. The King was accustomed to communicating with
Leopold via secretaries, though he ensured that he was kept up to date with the latest
political developments. In 1848, Leopold’s maternal grandfather
King Louis-Philippe had been overthrown in a revolution led by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte,
the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I. By 1852, Louis-Napoleon followed in his uncle’s footsteps
and assumed the title Emperor Napoleon III. The overthrow of his father-in-law damaged
Leopold I’s prestige in Europe, and the King of the Belgians hoped to address this
by arranging a favourable marriage for his son. In August 1853, the eighteen-year-old Duke
of Brabant married sixteen-year-old Archduchess Marie-Henriette, a cousin of Emperor Franz
Joseph I of Austria, providing the Belgian royal family with a connection to the imperial
House of Habsburg. The young couple were wholly unsuited to each
other, and while Leopold was a quiet and depressive young man, his playful bride enjoyed horseback
riding and Hungarian gypsy music. In October 1853, the newlywed couple left
Belgium for a long trip to England to visit Leopold’s cousin Queen Victoria. While the English Queen was impressed by Marie-Henriette’s
intelligence, her liberal views, and her keen interest in the arts, she portrayed her Belgian
cousin as uninteresting and intolerant, while admitting his expertise on political and military
affairs. For many years, Leopold’s health had been
in a delicate state, and in 1854 his doctors advised him to take a long rest in Egypt. Geography was the only academic subject which
interested Leopold, and he was glad to have the opportunity to visit Egypt and learn more
about the world. After leaving Belgium in November 1854, Leopold
and Marie travelled through Germany, Austria, and Italy before arriving in Alexandria, Egypt
at the beginning of February 1855. The royal couple were welcomed by the khedive,
Sa’id Pasha, who ruled Egypt as viceroy of the Ottoman Empire. During his two-month stay in Egypt, Leopold
was delighted to take a steamship up the Nile past the ancient sites of Thebes and Karnak,
and while in the Egyptian capital of Cairo he extracted a promise from the khedive to
establish a steamship company connecting Alexandria and the Belgian port of Antwerp. During his time in Egypt, Leopold also began
to consider the potential for establishing a Belgian colony in Africa either in or near
Egypt, an issue which would become an obsession for the rest of his life. After leaving Egypt, the Duke and Duchess
of Brabant spent Easter week in Jerusalem as guests of Sultan Abdulmejid I, the ruler
of the Ottoman Empire, which included the Middle East and parts of south-eastern Europe. The royal party then travelled to Syria and
Lebanon before sailing across the Mediterranean to Athens, meeting King Otto and Queen Amalia
of Greece. On their way home they made another stop in
Italy, moving up the peninsula to meet King Ferdinand of Naples, the pope in Rome, and
King Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia-Piedmont, who would become King of Italy within a decade. Soon after returning to Belgium in August
1855, Leopold made a diplomatic visit to Paris in October where he failed to charm the court,
who had become endeared to his young wife. Visiting and receiving foreign royalty was
a large part of the Duke of Brabant’s responsibilities, and in May 1856 he received his wife’s cousin
Archduke Maximilian, the younger brother of the Austrian emperor. King Leopold hoped that Maximilian would marry
his daughter Charlotte, and the Austrian archduke immediately took a liking to the beautiful
Belgian princess. In July 1857 the couple married in Brussels,
much to the satisfaction of various royal family members. Despite being a small country, Belgium’s
industry and economy developed rapidly during the middle of the 19th century, and the issue
of commercial development was particularly close to Leopold’s heart. In December 1855, he made his first substantive
speech in the Belgian Senate about the subject of a steamship service from Antwerp to Egypt,
which he had discussed with the khedive earlier in the year. Leopold was only interested in domestic affairs
when it had something to do with Belgium’s international prestige or its international
trade relations, and he was a strong advocate for investment in the Belgian railway network
and the ports of Antwerp and Ostend. Independence from the Netherlands had deprived
Belgium of its access to the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean and the East Indies, and
King Leopold was desperate to acquire colonies for Belgium. The extensive search for a potential colony
covered the entire globe, including the Greek island of Crete, then under Ottoman rule,
the Faroe Islands, Cuba and other Caribbean islands, Latin America, Africa, and even parts
of Texas, which had declared independence from Mexico but had not yet joined the United
States. A Belgian mission to establish a colony in
Guatemala in Central America in 1845 was abandoned after many of the colonists died of heat exhaustion
and disease. In 1850s the Duke of Brabant was an enthusiastic
supporter of his father’s quest to acquire an overseas colony. An opportunity appeared to present itself
in 1859, when a joint Anglo-French military force prepared to go to war with China seeking
further liberalisation of the opium trade and greater access to Chinese ports in what
became known as the Second Opium War. King Leopold I hoped that by sending a small
Belgian force alongside the British and the French, he might also be able to obtain access
to Chinese markets. Though Napoleon III was open to the idea of
a Belgian contingent of around 1,500 men, the Belgian Parliament refused to finance
the expedition. In response to this setback, the Duke of Brabant
worked with Auguste Lambermont, an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Captain
Henri-Alexis Brialmont, a military engineer, to produce a 219-page pamphlet making a forceful
case for Belgian colonisation. By the early 1860s King Leopold’s health
was in decline and with his declining health came a declining interest in colonial schemes,
but his son Leopold was undeterred. The Duke explored colonisation schemes in
Borneo and the Pacific islands and was constantly in contact with Brialmont researching potential
leads. The two men planned to write a book with the
title Belgians Abroad, and Leopold made plans to carry out research for the project by visiting
the colonial powers and their colonies. In 1860 he travelled to Constantinople to
meet the Ottoman Sultan, while in 1862 he went to Spain and North Africa. In 1864 he embarked on his most ambitious
adventure, travelling to the British imperial possessions of India and Ceylon, now Sri Lanka,
as well as Burma, now Myanmar, Singapore, and the Chinese ports of Canton and Hong Kong. By the time Leopold returned from his Asian
tour in May 1865, his father’s health was in terminal decline, and on the 10th of December
1865 King Leopold I of the Belgians died at the age of seventy-five. A week later, on the 17th of December, the
Duke of Brabant was sworn in as King Leopold II of the Belgians. After an uncertain start, Leopold impressed
his ministers with his political judgement. Not long after his accession, Belgium became
the target of another French attempt at annexation, prompted by French anxieties about the expansion
of the Kingdom of Prussia. The energetic Prussian Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck sought to fuse the German states into a united German empire, and Prussian
armies had defeated Denmark and Austria in quick succession in the mid-1860s. These victories strengthened the Prussian
state, which loomed menacingly on France’s eastern border, and Napoleon hoped to redress
the balance by annexing all or parts of Belgium. Napoleon III also hoped to restore his prestige
after his failure to establish a Mexican empire friendly to French interests ruled by Leopold’s
brother-in-law Archduke Maximilian of Austria. After arriving in Mexico in 1864, Maximilian’s
small army had little chance of success against the resurgent republican forces of President
Benito Juarez. While Maximilian begged for European assistance
to defend his empire, by 1866 Napoleon decided to abandon Maximilian to his fate. With her husband in grave danger, Empress
Charlotte, now known by her Spanish name of Carlota, returned to Europe to seek assistance
in person. With her cries for help falling on deaf ears
at both the French and Austrian courts, Charlotte’s mental health began to decline, to the point
of displaying signs of mental instability, and the news of her husband’s capture and
execution in June 1867 was kept from her until the end of the year after her return to Belgium,
where she remained in her state of insanity until her death in 1927 at the age of eighty-six. Napoleon was unsuccessful in his efforts to
obtain territorial compensation, and in July 1870 France pre-emptively declared war on
Prussia before the power imbalance became unassailable. Although both belligerent states had signed
the Treaty of London, Leopold was uncertain that Belgian neutrality would be respected
and requested a further guarantee from England. Although the British were initially reluctant
to do so, the emergence of a secret agreement between France and Prussia in 1866 sanctioning
the French annexation of Belgium caused the British government to respond. In early August, the French and Prussians
signed a new treaty with Britain affirming Belgian neutrality. Regardless of the renewed guarantees, Leopold
authorised the mobilisation of the Belgian army to defend its borders if necessary. The King was disappointed to learn that of
the 105,000 men that existed on paper, only 85,000 could be mobilised. The fighting between French and Prussian forces
was uncomfortably close to the Belgian border, but the war was effectively over on the 2nd
of September 1870 when the Prussian army won a decisive victory at Sedan and captured Napoleon
III. With the railway lines to Germany carrying
troop trains, Napoleon was granted passage through Belgium from Leopold as a German prisoner
of war. After the Franco-Prussian War, most Belgians
decided that neutrality served as a sufficient guarantee of Belgian independence, but Leopold
drew the opposite conclusion, believing that Belgium could only enforce neutrality with
a large army. As with many European monarchs, Leopold considered
it his duty to his family and his country to produce a son and an heir to succeed him
to the throne. In 1858, Marie-Henriette had given birth to
a daughter Louise, and the following June she produced the desired son, Prince Leopold,
Count of Hainault. The young Leopold succeeded to the Dukedom
of Brabant in 1865 when his father became King, but he was frequently ill and died of
pneumonia in January 1869. The King and Queen had already grown distant,
but their son’s death led to a brief reconciliation in which they tried to have another son. In 1872, shortly after Marie-Henriette gave
birth to a daughter, Princess Clementine, the royal couple separated and only remained
together on ceremonial occasions. Leopold accepted that he would not have a
legitimate heir and focused his attentions on Baudouin, his brother Philippe’s eldest
son. By 1875, the forty-five-year-old Leopold had
been on the throne for ten years. He and Belgium had survived challenges to
its independence during the Franco-Prussian War, and had he carried on in this vein he
would have been regarded by posterity as a patriotic Belgian monarch who promoted the
country’s economic prosperity. He was popular among his subjects, though
he cared little for them and was known to have said, “I am King of a small country
and small-minded people.” He was nevertheless interested in promoting
Belgium’s standing on the international stage, but it was his continued interest in
colonisation projects that would make him one of the most controversial monarchs of
his day. Following the death of his son. Leopold turned his energies to finding a suitable
colony, and in the late 1860s he made enquiries about acquiring the Portuguese colonies of
Mozambique and Angola in Africa, and in the 1870s he was involved in prolonged negotiations
with Spain over the Philippines. An attempt in 1875 to secure a Belgian foothold
in South Africa was disrupted by the British, and delicate negotiations with France to establish
a Belgian colony in Vietnam, part of French Indochina, collapsed after French prime minister
Leon Gambetta fell from power in early 1882. Leopold also sought to improve Belgian prestige
by marrying off his daughters to foreign princes. In 1875 his eldest daughter Princess Louise
married a distant cousin, Prince Philipp of Coburg, who was then in Vienna. In 1880, Prince Philipp’s best friend, Crown
Prince Rudolf of Austria, the son and heir of Emperor Franz Josef I and Empress Elisabeth
of Austria, married Louise’s younger sister Princess Stephanie. King Leopold was delighted that his daughter
might one day become Empress of Austria, but the marriage proved unhappy, especially after
Stephanie’s doctors determined that she could not have any more children after the
birth of her daughter Elisabeth in 1883. Rudolf found consolation in the arms of various
mistresses, and in January 1889 he and his mistress Mary Vetsera committed suicide at
the imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling. As Leopold II continued his search for a location
for a Belgian colony, Leopold was taking a greater interest in the continent of Africa. Leopold was familiar with the discoveries
of English missionaries and explorers in Central Africa including David Livingstone, Henry
Morton Stanley, and John Speke, as well as various French expeditions in West Africa. The King was a shareholder in the Suez Canal
in Egypt, which opened in 1870 and facilitated access to the East Coast of Africa. Leopold took a close interest in the expedition
led by Verney Lovett Cameron, who had been dispatched by the British Royal Geographical
Society in 1873 to assist David Livingstone. By the time Cameron arrived on the shores
of Lake Tanganyika Livingstone was already dead, but after collecting Livingstone’s
papers he decided to continue his work to determine whether a north-flowing river that
Livingstone referred to as the Lualaba flowed into the Nile. Cameron hoped to follow the course of the
river downstream but was forced to turn south into Angola by Arab slave traders, emerging
on the Angolan coast in November 1875 and becoming the first European to cross equatorial
Africa in the process. Although Cameron claimed the territory he
traversed for Britain, the British government was not interested. When Leopold visited England in May 1876,
he met Cameron, who informed him about the rich agricultural and mineral resources in
the region as well as the brutality of the slave trade under the Arabs. Leopold decided that a moral crusade to suppress
the slave trade in Africa would serve as a convenient pretext for a Belgian colonial
presence in Africa. The purpose of Leopold’s visit to England
was to promote such a philanthropic initiative among English missionaries and members of
the Royal Geographical Society, preparing the ground for the Geographical Conference
of Brussels, which opened in the Belgian capital on the 12th of September 1876. After introducing the agenda of the conference,
namely, to discuss how to tackle the slave trade along the Congo and the Zanzibar coast
in west and east Africa respectively, Leopold relinquished the chair in favour of the Russian
explorer Pyotr Semenov, who was famous for his expeditions in Central Asia but knew nothing
about Africa, allowing the King to exert his influence behind the scenes. The conference was a success for Leopold,
who was elected chairman of the International African Association, a body to coordinate
the newly-created national committees formed to promote knowledge and awareness of Africa
among the European nations represented at the conference. While Leopold had a genuine interest in obtaining
and disseminating scientific and geographic knowledge of the continent, he used his presidency
of the International Association to further his own colonial ends. After establishing a Belgian national committee
chaired by his brother the Count of Flanders, Leopold appointed Belgian diplomat Jules Greindl
as secretary-general of the International Association. While the French, German, and Dutch representatives
at the conference set up their respective national committees, a British attempt to
do so was blocked by the Foreign Office, which began to have its suspicions about the humanitarian
nature of King Leopold’s enterprise. Despite his promise to serve only one year
as chairman of the International Association, in June 1877 the international committee re-elected
him for another year, and no more meetings of the organisation were held thereafter,
allowing Leopold to continue to direct the organisation’s activities under the guise
of international support. In 1877 Leopold sent four inexperienced Belgians
on an expedition into Central Africa, but after two of them died en route the others
decided to return home. As the King searched for an experienced explorer
who could lead an expedition to the Congo to establish a Belgian colony, in August 1877
Henry Morton Stanley emerged at the trading post of Boma near the mouth of the Congo after
starting his journey from the Zanzibar coast three years earlier. A Welshman born in the United States, Stanley
was best known for leading an expedition in 1871-72 which located and re-established communications
with David Livingstone, who had lost contact with Europe for several years. In 1874 Stanley led an Anglo-American expedition
to explore the Great Lakes in Central Africa and to further determine the course of the
Lualaba. As Stanley and his company of more than 200
men proceeded inland, they were frequently involved in bloody skirmishes with locals
who objected to the presence of the intruders, many of Stanley’s men being killed in these
battles. After completing the circumnavigation of Lake
Victoria and Tanganyika, Stanley followed the course of the Lualaba northwards until
it looped anti-clockwise to the southwest towards the Atlantic Ocean, negotiating the
rapids, waterfalls, and mighty tributaries that stood in the way. By the time he arrived at Boma, he had 114
men left, while his three European companions had all perished on the way. Leopold believed that Stanley was the perfect
candidate to advance his project in the Congo and in January 1878, while the explorer was
returning to England, the King dispatched Baron Greindl and General Henry Stanford,
former American ambassador to Belgium, to intercept Stanley in Paris with an offer to
work for the International Association. While flattered, Stanley declined, preferring
instead to deliver the Congo to the British government as Cameron had attempted earlier. Although Stanley was received as a popular
hero upon his return to England in February 1878, the British government continued to
be uninterested in the Congo. While writing an account of his travels under
the title Through the Dark Continent, in June 1878 Stanley went to Brussels to signal interest
in Leopold’s offer, and by November a Committee for the Study of the Upper Congo was set up
to manage the establishment of permanent philanthropic and commercial bases along the Congo, with
the King as honorary president. On the 10th of December 1878, Stanley signed
an agreement with the Committee to build three stations on the Lower Congo, a 200-mile stretch
at the mouth of the river, and to explore the commercial potential of the Upper Congo,
the much longer section of the river which extended into the heart of Africa. Not long after Stanley’s arrival in Africa
in February 1879 to recruit African porters for the expedition, one of the Dutch companies
backing the committee went bankrupt, and in November 1879 Leopold decided that he would
personally finance the scheme and take personal charge of a new organisation called the International
Association of the Congo. Earlier in summer, Stanley had already received
wider instructions to obtain territory for a new state, and in his diary remarked of
Leopold that “it has been pretty evident that under the guise of an International Association
he hopes to make a Belgian dependency of the Congo Basin.” Stanley was not the only explorer Leopold
approached to lead an expedition under the guise of the International Association. He made another offer to the French explorer
Pierre de Brazza, who declined before leading a French expedition to the Congo. In the early 1880s Leopold discussed an antislavery
expedition in Central Africa with the British military officer Charles Gordon, who had recently
served the Egyptian khedive as Governor of the Sudan after first winning fame in China
twenty years earlier, but for the time being Gordon rejected these approaches. Stanley began moving upriver from the mouth
of the Congo in mid-August 1879 and began the task of building bases and negotiating
commercial treaties with African chieftains, but Leopold was keen for Stanley to move inland
quicker in order to prevent De Brazza from laying claim on the upper reaches of the river
for France. Stanley’s objective was to beat de Brazza
to Stanley Pool, the lake separating Lower Congo from Upper Congo which he had named
in his earlier expedition. In November 1880 Stanley received a surprise
visit from de Brazza, and when he arrived at Stanley Pool the following summer, he learned
that the Frenchman had made a treaty with a local chieftain ceding a strip of land north
of the lake to France, taking over the existing town which was renamed Brazzaville. In response, Stanley crossed to the southern
shore of the lake and secured the rights to build a trading post he named Leopoldville
after the King, now the city of Kinshasa. Stanley had followed his initial instructions
to the letter but accepted Leopold’s demands to trek further upriver. With his supplies running low and suffering
from fever, in the summer of 1882 Stanley left Africa and returned to Europe to recuperate,
hoping that he would not be asked to return to the Congo. As soon as Stanley returned to Europe, the
unsympathetic Leopold demanded that he return to the Congo. October 1882 was a crucial month in the Franco-Belgian
contest for sovereignty over the Congo. De Brazza had returned to France in June seeking
ratification of the treaty he had obtained at Brazzaville, attacking Stanley’s conduct
as part of his campaign to secure recognition of French rights to the Congo. In the meantime, Portugal had reactivated
its dormant claim to the Congo with the support of Britain, whose main priority was to deny
the region to France. Leopold realised that his strategy of establishing
economic dominance over the Congo was not enough and instructed Stanley to return to
Africa to draw up treaties with the chiefs to surrender their territory to the International
Association of the Congo. In December 1882, Stanley returned to the
Congo to find that the men he placed in charge in his absence had abandoned their posts. In spite of the setback, Stanley sent three
expeditions to establish control of the valley of the Kouilou-Niari River to the north of
the Congo, cutting off French West Africa from Brazzaville. In May 1883 he then returned his attention
to building stations in the Upper Congo up to the Stanley Falls more than 1,000 miles
upriver. Stanley made his way back to the Atlantic
coast in the spring of 1884 after signing treaties with more than 450 native chiefs,
though in most cases the African chiefs may have thought they were signing treaties of
alliance rather than treaties of cession. At the end of 1883, with Stanley’s five-year
contract with Leopold set to expire, General Gordon was finally persuaded to accept Leopold’s
offer to become his new agent in the Congo, but a week after confirming the details of
his employment in January 1884, Gordon agreed to lead a British expedition to Khartoum that
would ultimately prove fatal, infuriating Leopold in the process. In the meantime, amidst competing French,
Portuguese, and Belgian claims to the Congo, Leopold sent General Stanford to Washington
DC to seek American support. Leopold was intentionally vague over whether
he was claiming the Congo on behalf of the International African Association or the more
exploitative International Association of the Congo, Leopold secured American recognition
in April 1884. An Anglo-Portuguese Treaty signed in February
recognising Portuguese claims to the Lower Congo was not only opposed by France and Belgium,
but also by Bismarck’s Germany. When Bismarck asked Leopold to define the
territory he claimed for the Association, the King sketched out a large area including
the Congo basin, Sudanese provinces recently abandoned by the Egyptian government during
the rebellion led by the Mahdi, the messianic leader of an Islamic movement, stretching
east beyond Lake Tanganyika. After Bismarck broke off negotiations over
the scale of Belgian ambitions, in August 1884 Stanley advised Leopold to abandon the
claims to Sudan and territories east of Lake Tanganyika. Bismarck accepted these borders after being
promised by Leopold that European nations would be allowed to trade freely in the Congo. With the British and Portuguese diplomatically
isolated, they agreed to an international conference in Berlin chaired by Bismarck and
attended by representatives of twelve European states and the United States. In deference to French wishes, Bismarck kept
the question of sovereignty over the Congo off the agenda and limited discussions to
trading rights, but British and German fears of a French or Portuguese trading monopoly
at the mouth the Congo led Bismarck to advise France and Portugal to come to an agreement
with the Association. To facilitate this, Leopold proposed giving
up the Kouliou-Niari valley in return for the province of Katanga in the southeast,
while the Portuguese were satisfied with sovereignty over lands south of the Congo which would
become Angola. On the 25th of February 1885, the Berlin Conference
closed with recognition of the Congo basin as a large free trade zone under the sovereignty
of the International Association of the Congo. When the Berlin Act went to Brussels for ratification,
Leopold agreed that he would govern the Congo personally and pay all the new government’s
expenses. On the 29th of May 1885, Leopold issued a
royal decree establishing the Etat Independent du Congo, or the Congo Free State, a country
over a million square miles with a population of up to 20 million. In less than a decade, the fifty-five-year-old
Leopold had personally sponsored the exploration of a large piece of territory in Central Africa
almost eighty times the size of Belgium and had secured international recognition from
the world’s great powers for his right to govern it as if it were his personal property. Leopold had achieved his ambitions in the
Congo with little support from his Belgian subjects or his government ministers. While his primary focus had been the governing
and creation of his own personal colony, he remained a part of the Belgian political system. As a constitutional monarch, Leopold’s political
powers in Belgium were limited, and it was left to government officials and parliament
to set the political agenda. In 1878, the Belgian Liberal Party had returned
to power after eight years in opposition and chief minister Hubert Frère-Orban proposed
a law to create a new state-sponsored education system while withholding state support for
church schools. The law was passed the following year and
caused an outcry among the Catholic Party, who returned to power in 1884 after a split
between the Liberals and their more radical supporters. After their return to power the Catholics
were determined to take revenge on the Liberals, but following protests around the country
Leopold encouraged a compromise to restore support for Catholic schools but to go no
further. During the first two decades of Leopold’s
reign, the Belgian economy continued its rapid development, exporting coal and iron to the
industrialising economies of France and Germany, while constructing the densest railway network
in Europe, enabling Antwerp to become a major European port. The rapid industrialisation did little to
improve the conditions of working-class Belgians, and poverty worsened following an economic
downturn in the latter half of the 1870s. The economic crisis led to the creation of
several socialist political parties, which united in 1885 to form the Belgian Labour
Party. In response to a series of workers’ riots
in 1886, Catholic chief minister Auguste Beerneart launched a transport infrastructure construction
programme to reduce unemployment, labour councils were set up in factories to arbitrate between
managers and workers, and in 1889 the minimum age of work was set at twelve. The government’s reforms encouraged the
workers to ask for more, and 100,000 workers went on strike in Brussels in 1890 demanding
universal suffrage. While Leopold was prepared to support an extension
of voting rights, he obtained a concession to strengthen the powers of the Senate. In 1893 universal male suffrage was introduced,
though more prominent members of society were given up to three votes. The extension of the vote strengthened the
socialists at the expense of the Liberals and Catholics, a development which played
to the King’s advantage. By the 1890s, Leopold’s interest in domestic
Belgian politics was confined to the military and urban planning. Although he was not particularly interested
in art and architecture for its own sake, Leopold initiated grand building projects
to increase Belgian prestige in Europe and the wider world. For the fiftieth anniversary of Belgian independence
in 1880, he commissioned the construction of the Cinquantenaire Park and two exhibition
halls, and a quarter-century later in 1905 his ambitions to connect the two structures
with a triumphal arch were realised. That same year, construction began on the
Basilica of the Sacred Heart, a Roman Catholic cathedral inspired by its French namesake,
the Sacre-Coeur in Paris. In 1904, construction began on a grand palatial
building to house the Royal Central African Museum in nearby Tervuren, while the King
also presided over an expansion of his palace at Laeken. Outside the capital, Leopold’s building
projects were concentrated in the port of Antwerp and the seaside town of Ostend, where
he built a horse-racing track in 1883 named Hippodrome Wellington after the British general
who defeated Napoleon on Belgian soil at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Leopold’s grand public construction projects
earned him the nickname of “Builder King” from his subjects. Leopold’s construction projects for the
benefit of the Belgians were funded by the profits generated from the economic exploitation
of the Congo Free State. When he took control of the Congo in 1885,
he desperately needed financial backing to augment his dwindling personal fortune, 10
million francs of which had already been spent on the Congo over the previous five years. He attempted to raise loans of up to 150 million
francs but interest among European financiers was limited. The government of the Free State was largely
directed by Leopold himself, alongside a cabinet of three officials based in Brussels: the
administrator-general for foreign affairs and justice, the head of the finance department,
and the administrator-general for the interior. The most senior official in the Congo was
the governor-general, based in the capital of Boma, who led a team of around 400 European
administrators to manage the vast territory of the Free State. The King’s first task was to build a railway
to avoid the unnavigable rapids between the Lower and Upper Congo, and in December 1886
he came to an agreement with Belgian officer Captain Albert Thys to form the Congo Company
for Commerce and Industry with private investment. In 1887 Thys led an expedition to study the
feasibility of the project and returned to Brussels in March 1888 presenting plans to
construct a railway from the port of Matadi to Leopoldville. After being appointed administrator-general
of the interior in the government of the Free State, Thys raised 25 million francs for the
project. Work began on the railroad in 1890 and was
completed in 1898, enabling Leopold and his backers to better exploit the local economies. Since Stanley’s expedition in the late 1870s,
the Belgian outposts along the river had served as collection points for precious commodities,
primarily ivory, which were then transported to the port for export to Europe. Before the construction of the railroad, the
journey from Leopoldville to Matadi took three weeks, and many African porters died. In December 1889 Thys created the Belgian
Society of the Upper Congo to take over the existing trading activities in ivory, rubber,
palm oil, and other commodities. The creation of these companies and the commercial
potential for the Belgian business community inspired greater support for Leopold’s Congolese
enterprise in Belgium, allowing the King to obtain a 25 million franc interest-free loan
from parliament in 1890, the year of his Silver Jubilee. In his haste to recoup his personal investment
in the Congo, from late 1891 Leopold issued a series of decrees which effectively created
a state monopoly in ivory and rubber. These decisions caused an outcry among Belgian
business interests, many of whom were influential in parliament, and forced Leopold to agree
to a compromise in 1892 to divide land deemed vacant, reserving two-thirds of the country
as the private domain of the King but allowing a free trade zone including the Lower Congo
region and the river up to the Stanley Falls, in which private companies could lease commercial
rights in return for paying an annual dividend to the King, though Leopold would also set
up anonymous companies for his own benefit. Leopold ordered his officials to increase
the production and cultivation of ivory and rubber, and by 1895 the Free State was generating
vast amounts of wealth for Leopold. Despite using coercive methods to extract
wealth from the Congo, Leopold retained his international reputation as a philanthropist
and an opponent of the slave trade, and in November 1889 the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference
met at the Belgian capital. While the British, French, and German delegates
disagreed on what to do and how much they were willing to invest in the effort, Leopold
presented an extensive plan to establish fortified outposts in the African interior to serve
as refuge points for natives to defend themselves against the slavers. Leopold took advantage of the fact that none
of the other participants were minded to make such a substantial commitment to set up bases
in the Congo to consolidate his control over the country. In 1888 he had organised his African mercenaries
into the Force Publique, which over time would become central Africa’s largest army with
around 20,000 officers and men. In addition to protecting the Free State from
hostile tribes, the Force Publique served to maintain internal order and to coerce African
labourers working for the Free State. Leopold’s colony faced frequent rebellions,
such as one in 1893 near the rapids of the Lower Congo led by a local chief named Nzansu. When the Belgian state agent Eugene Rommel
attempted to recruit porters by force to carry goods to Matadi, the chief led an uprising
which killed Rommel and burned his station, remaining at large for eight months before
the rebellion was suppressed by the Force Publique. Leopold also hoped to use his antislavery
credentials as a means to gain control of the upper Nile. During his discussions with General Gordon
in January 1884, Leopold was informed that the Sudanese province of Bahr-el-Ghazal was
the centre of the slave trade in East and Central Africa. After the death of Gordon at Khartoum at the
hands of Mahdist forces in January 1885, the British government decided to abandon its
interests in Sudan. Emin Pasha, the German governor of the province
of Equatoria in southern Sudan, continued to hold out against the Mahdi and pleaded
for support from Britain. Henry Morton Stanley accepted an offer from
the Scottish businessman William Mackinnon to lead an expedition for the relief of Emin
Pasha, and as Stanley was still employed by Leopold, the Belgian King saw an opportunity
to incorporate Equatoria into the Free State. Stanley arrived at the mouth of the Congo
in March 1887, but by the time he joined up with Emin Pasha the following April what remained
of his rescue mission was in a worse state than the man he was supposed to be rescuing. Emin refused Leopold’s offer to remain in
Equatoria and join the Free State, and after his evacuation he instead chose to work on
German schemes for the colonisation of East Africa. Though Leopold was disappointed by the outcome
of the failed rescue mission, he sought to take advantage of the political vacuum left
by Emin Pasha in Equatoria. When William Mackinnon’s Imperial British
East Africa Company supported the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes’ plans to build
a railway from South Africa across the length of the continent to Egypt, Leopold agreed
to exchange a strip of Free State territory for construction of the railroad west of Lake
Tanganyika in return for land west of the Nile down to Lado in Bahr-el-Ghazal, subsequently
known as the Lado Enclave. In 1892 the British government took control
of the East Africa Company and attempted to repudiate the agreement, but in response to
Leopold’s threats to cooperate with France, a British-Congolese Treaty was signed in May
1894 offering Leopold the Lado Enclave for his lifetime and the larger area of the Bahr-el-Ghazal
for him and his successors. Following protests from France and Germany,
Leopold was forced to give up the Bahr-el-Ghazal to France. Leopold faced difficulties with the British
in both the north and southern parts of the Congo Free State. As part of his negotiations with the French
during the Berlin Conference, Leopold laid claim to the mineral-rich province of Katanga
in the southeast, but the claim was not recognised by the British, and in the late 1880s Cecil
Rhodes’ British South Africa Company advanced its own claim to the Katanga and its copper
mines. Two Belgian expeditions in 1891 failed to
gain any concessions from Msiri, King of the Yeke Kingdom in southeast Katanga. A further expedition led by the Canadian-British
explorer Captain William Stairs, a veteran of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, arrived
at Msiri’s capital in December 1891. When Stairs realised that Msiri was dragging
negotiations out to play the Europeans off against each other, he resolved to eliminate
the local king, and on the 20th of December one of the Europeans in Stairs’ party shot
and killed Msiri before being mortally wounded in the struggle that ensued. The elimination of the king enabled Stairs
to claim Katanga on behalf of the Free State. With Stairs’ expedition running low on supplies,
they were relieved by a party led by Lucien Bia in January 1892. Though Bia manged to locate a rich copper
mine at Kambove, Leopold did not have the financial means to build a railway to link
up to the existing network in the Lower Congo, and in 1900 he reached an arrangement for
the British to develop the mines in the Katanga, retaining a 60 per cent share of the profits
of the joint venture. In 1892 Leopold began to act on his pledge
to eradicate the Arab slave traders at the Antislavery Conference, not only for humanitarian
reasons but to divert central African trade westwards to the Congo. Though the King’s attention remained on
extending his state to the north, the deaths of several European traders in eastern Congo
at the hands of the Arabs in May 1892 forced his hand. During the initial hostilities the Force Publique
under Captain Francis Dhanis defeated the forces of the chieftain Ngongo Lutete, who
switched sides to join Dhanis in September. In early 1893 the combined army of 1,500 men
captured the key Arab posts of Nyangwe and Kasongo in the east of the country. Meanwhile, a separate force under the command
of Captain Louis-Napoleon Chaltin defeated the Arabs around Stanley Falls before joining
Dhanis for the final push against the slave trader Rumaliza who had recruited a large
force on the eastern bank of Lake Tanganyika. By the end of 1893, the Free State secured
its eastern frontier and Rumaliza escaped to German East Africa, modern-day Tanzania. In 1896, Leopold turned his attention back
to the Nile as a French expedition was sent to Fashoda on the Nile to prevent the British
from re-establishing control over Sudan. He ordered a force of 3,000 men under Baron
Dhanis and another of 800 men under Chatlin to advance to Lado, with secret instructions
to advance downriver to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Dhanis’ column took a circuitous route to
conceal its true objectives, but the force mutinied and disintegrated. Chatlin’s column enjoyed more success, and
in February 1897 defeated a Mahdist army more than twice its size at the Battle of Rejaf,
securing the Lado Enclave for the Free State. The Belgians lacked the capacity to proceed
any further down the Nile, and in July 1898 the French took possession of Fashoda. In September, a large British army under General
Herbert Kitchener defeated the Mahdists at Omdurman and recaptured Khartoum. Some 1,500 men proceeded upriver to confront
the much smaller French presence at Fashoda, and following a stand-off which threatened
war, the French withdrew from Fashoda and signed a treaty with the British establishing
their respective spheres of influence, which excluded France from the Nile valley. Though the French backed down, Leopold was
undeterred in his efforts to expand the Lado Enclave, until in 1906 he was forced to give
up his claims. Although most notorious for his exploitation
of Africa, Leopold was also keen to get his hands on a slice of the Chinese Empire, which
had been in gradual decline since the late 18th century in the face of European technological
superiority. Leopold maintained an interest in China since
his visit in the 1860s, and in 1896 he persuaded the veteran Chinese statesman Li Hongzhang
to make a visit to Brussels while on a European tour to strengthen diplomatic relations following
China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Li agreed to grant Belgium a concession to
build a railway between the capital of Beijing and the city of Hankou in the Yangtze valley,
now part of the larger urban area of Wuhan. In March 1897 a Society for the Study of Railways
in China was founded to carry out a technical study of the route, and financing from French
banks for the construction work was secured in early 1898. Leopold then sought to acquire a territorial
concession at Hankou, but lacking the financial and military means to force a concession from
the Chinese government, Leopold personally acquired 115 acres of land from the Chinese
imperial railway company for 700,000 francs. Leopold was also in negotiations to buy out
the American company that had been granted the concession to construct a railway from
Hankou to the port of Canton when the Boxer Rebellion erupted. Officially known as the Society of the Righteous
and Harmonious Fists, in late 1899 the Boxers launched an uprising in northern China against
foreign influence in China. The imperial government sympathised with the
Boxers and initially did little to suppress the rebellion, forcing the European nations
in China to take coordinated action and send troops to deal with the uprising and protect
their diplomats, merchants, and missionaries in the country. The Boxers had damaged parts of the Beijing-Hankou
railway and killed six Belgian workers, and Leopold personally financed a contingent of
over 600 Belgian soldiers to go to China, but Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany considered
it a violation of neutrality and refused give permission for the Belgian expedition to go
ahead. Although Belgium was not represented in the
eight-nation force that defeated the Boxer Uprising, the Belgians were awarded 31 million
francs by the Chinese government in compensation. The capital was used to establish the Sino-Belgian
Bank in 1902, while Leopold continued to try and secure a controlling interest in the Hankou-Canton
railway. By 1904 the Americans protested against the
degree of Belgian control and the US State Department urged Leopold to sell his part
of the stake, while the Chinese government threatened to confiscate the concession altogether
on the grounds of mismanagement. In the end, the banker J.P. Morgan, the largest
financial backer of the company, decided to sell their portion of the concession back
to the Chinese government. Though he made a modest profit, Leopold lost
out on the prospect of controlling a north-south railway line all the way from Beijing to Canton. By 1906, with his control of the Congo at
risk, Leopold decided to sell out of China. Leopold’s control of the Free State had
already been at risk for over a decade. In 1895, after being informed that Leopold
had raised 5 million francs from a banker secured by 40 million acres of territory and
was unable to make repayments from the Free State’s treasury, the Belgian government
proposed the annexation of the Congo. The arrangement suited Leopold, who had intended
for the Congo to become a Belgian colony after his death, but the proposals were strongly
opposed by the Liberals, the Labour Party, and isolationists in the Catholic Party. In March 1895, Leopold decided against annexation
after realising that increased global demand for rubber would enable the Congolese economy
to sustain itself, and it later emerged that the 5 million franc loan was invented by Leopold
to extract a further loan of 6.5 million from the Belgian state. By 1900, the Free State was exporting 6,000
metric tons of rubber a year compared to 500 five years earlier, and the balance of trade
increased to 25 million francs a year. Under the terms of the 1890 loan from the
Belgian parliament, Leopold was to pay 25 million francs back in ten years, but by 1900
the King was in a position of strength and decided to ignore parliament’s claims. While he continued to remain popular in Belgium,
Leopold’s international reputation was in decline, as reports of atrocities in Congo
carried out by agents of the Free State began to spread around the world in the 1890s. In 1890 the black American historian George
Washington Williams published a report highlighting Belgian human rights abuses in the Congo. One of the accusations levelled against Leopold’s
agents was that they had claimed to have magical powers and gave electric shocks to native
chiefs in order to force them to sign territorial concessions. Williams reported that the military outposts
were established at the cost of immense bloodshed among the native population, and far from
providing humanitarian aid, the Free State had no hospitals or schools, and none of the
Free State’s officials could speak any African languages. Williams remarked that white officials frequently
shot at native Africans for sport or to take away their women as concubines. Finally, the American fatally undermined Leopold’s
claim to be an antislavery champion by claiming that the Free State bought and sold slaves
to serve in its army. In a letter to the American secretary of state,
Williams claimed that Leopold was guilty of “crimes against humanity” in the Congo. Leopold, who never set foot in the Congo in
his whole life, claimed to be horrified at these early revelations, but did little to
stop the exploitation. This exploitation was most apparent in the
rubber enterprises, and while rubber was sold in Antwerp for ten francs a kilo, the local
population received half a franc paid in kind. As the Congo lacked a monetary economy, taxes
were also paid in kind, in the form of labour obligations. Although in 1903 working hours were theoretically
limited to forty hours a week, the native labourers were set impossibly high targets
for the amount of rubber to collect, while workers who did not reach their quotas were
subject to imprisonment, beatings, mutilation, and often murder, whether intentional or accidental. Over the course of the 1890s allegations about
the Free State surfaced in the British press, prompting Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain
to order the British colonies in West Africa not to allow the recruitment of their subjects
by agents of the Free State. In 1902 the publication of Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness inspired by his experience in the Congo in 1890 further increased scrutiny
of the Free State. In response to concerns from philanthropists
and businessmen, in January 1903 Lord Cromer, the British consul-general in Egypt, visited
parts of Sudan under Free State control and described the Free State as “the most extreme
and most objectionable form of mercantile enterprise” in his report to London. King Edward VII, who succeeded his mother
Queen Victoria in 1901, was convinced that atrocities were happening in the Congo and
placed responsibility on the shoulders of Leopold. Although the British government was not keen
on alienating Leopold while negotiations over the Nile were ongoing, the House of Commons
voted unanimously in favour of a motion introduced by the Liberal MP Herbert Samuel to approach
the signatories of the Berlin Conference and set up an international effort to end the
abuses. The Foreign Office instructed the British
consul in Boma, an Irishman named Roger Casement, to travel into the interior of the Free State
and prepare a report on the condition of the native population. Casement, who would be better known to history
for his role in leading the Easter Rising for Irish independence in 1916, had previously
worked for the Free State in the late 1880s before being appointed the first British consul
to the Free State in 1900. Already in 1901 he observed the “rotten
system” in place in Leopoldville, and in the summer of 1903 he steamed upriver on his
fact-finding mission to the Upper Congo, where he was informed by missionaries that Free
State officials and soldiers had forced the native population deeper and deeper into the
forests to extract rubber, and as he travelled further inland he witnessed many native settlements
depopulated by the brutality of Leopold’s regime in the Free State. While Leopold attempted to defend himself
by publishing and distributing a pamphlet entitled La Vérité sur le Congo, or The
Truth about the Congo, claiming that the British were smearing him in order to get their hands
on the Congo, Casement’s report was submitted to the Foreign Office in December 1903 and
published the following February. In addition to the publication of his report,
Casement led the creation of the Congo Reform Association in March 1904 to keep up the political
pressure on the issue. The British government asked Leopold to investigate
the accusations and called for an independent inquiry, and in July Leopold conceded to a
three-man commission of inquiry led by Belgian judge Emile Janssens. The commissioners spent three months in Congo
from October 1904 to February 1905 and gathered enough evidence to reach the same conclusions
as Casement in its report of December 1905. The report concluded that the natives ought
to be granted significantly more land and recommended the abolition of private monopolies
and the eventual restoration of free trade. While many Belgians had been unconvinced by
the Casement Report and were persuaded by Leopold’s propaganda that the British were
trying to seize the Congo for themselves, an idea that some British politicians would
not have minded, the conclusions of the Belgian inquiry authorised by the King himself led
to a wave of domestic opposition to Leopold’s administration of the Congo Free State. In early 1906 the Brussels lawyer and legal
professor Félicien Cattier published a critique of the Free State and placed sole responsibility
for its mismanagement on the shoulders of King Leopold. Cattier recommended annexation of the Congo
by the Belgian government to fundamentally reform the state. Two months later, Father Arthur Vermeersch
of the Catholic University of Leuven published another critique which warned that Leopold’s
atrocities in the Congo would serve to undermine Belgium’s international reputation if it
were allowed to carry on. Attacked at home and abroad, Leopold fought
back by paying sympathisers to write books claiming to describe British atrocities in
its African colonies while denying the existence of any atrocities in the Congo. When the Belgian Labour leader Emile Vandervelde
put forward a motion for annexation, former chief minister Auguste Beernaert introduced
a more moderate motion to re-examine the annexation bill of 1901, which was reluctantly accepted
by Leopold. Though Leopold agreed to carry out limited
reforms to the Free State, he refused to give up his personal sovereignty, which led the
Belgian government to favour immediate annexation. The British government and the Congo Reform
Association backed Belgian annexation, and despite Leopold’s sustained efforts to court
American opinion, by the end of 1906 the American government was prepared to join Britain at
an international conference on the Congo. With the threat of American intervention,
Leopold agreed to annexation in December. The King hoped to put behind himself the international
outrage as soon as possible, but the Belgian parliament preferred to take its time in developing
an appropriate and more humane system of colonial administration. When an annexation bill was introduced to
parliament in September 1907, Leopold hoped to exclude the 100,000 square miles of territory
known as the “Crown Foundation” which he hoped to keep for himself. Profits from the land had been used to finance
public construction works in Belgium which Leopold had previously been celebrated for,
however the Belgian parliament refused to allow the King to keep control of the Foundation. In February 1908, a depressed and isolated
Leopold indicated that he was prepared to give up the Foundation, while the Belgian
government agreed to cover the Free State’s debts of 110 million francs, while providing
an additional 45 million for Leopold’s building projects in Belgium. After the Catholic government of Frans Schollaert
was re-elected in May 1908, parliament passed the annexation bills and on the 18th of October
King Leopold II signed the Treaty of Cession, transforming the Congo Free State into Belgian
Congo. In August 1908, Leopold issued orders to burn
the Congo state archives in Brussels, telling an aide, “I will give them my Congo, but
they have no right to know what I did there,” implying that he was guilty of the crimes
he denied. The colony remained under Belgian rule until
its independence in 1960, and in 1964 it adopted its modern name of the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. For most of his reign, Leopold had dedicated
himself to his work, whether in Belgium, the Congo, or other colonial and commercial schemes
he championed. He had been separated from his wife, Queen
Marie-Henriette, for thirty years before her death in 1902. Two years earlier, Leopold began an affair
with Caroline Lacroix, a sixteen-year-old French prostitute, whom he later granted the
courtesy title of Baroness de Vaughan. When the affair became public following the
death of the Queen, it initially had a greater negative impact on Leopold’s popularity
in Belgium than the allegations about atrocities in the Congo. While Leopold had given plentiful gifts in
the form of money and estates to his mistress and their two illegitimate sons Lucien and
Philippe, he was less generous towards his three daughters, leaving them less than 4
million francs each in his will. After losing control of the Congo, Leopold
focused his attention on the defence of Belgium, an issue that he had promoted his whole life. In a conversation with Kaiser Wilhelm II in
1903, Leopold was surprised to hear the Kaiser say that he would not hesitate to invade Belgium
if strategic considerations demanded it. German imperial ambitions in Morocco threatened
war with France in 1904, leading to the creation of the entente cordiale between Britain and
France, while the Belgians took a greater interest in military preparations. When the French discovered German plans developed
by Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen to invade France through Belgium, the Belgian
military joined Anglo-French staff talks to discuss how to respond in such a scenario. Though the 1906 Algeciras Conference helped
to diffuse tensions with Germany, Leopold continued to urge military preparations by
strengthening the fortress of Antwerp. For the entirety of his reign, Leopold favoured
the introduction of national conscription service, and it was only in 1909, when the
King was dying, that parliament complied. Though he had been robust and healthy for
most of his life, in December 1909 Leopold fell violently ill at the palace of Laeken. On the 12th of December he married Baroness
de Vaughan in a religious ceremony, though Belgian law only recognised marriages conducted
in a civil ceremony. On the 14th of December, the King managed
to sign the Army Bill adopting national service from his deathbed. In the early hours of the 17th of December
1909, exactly forty-four years to the day of his accession to the throne, King Leopold
II of the Belgians died at the age of seventy-four. He was succeeded by his nephew King Albert
I, the second son of his brother Philippe. In August 1914, less than five years after
Leopold’s death, the German army violated Belgian neutrality during its invasion of
France at the start of the First World War. King Leopold II of Belgium is one of the most
controversial and infamous monarchs in modern European history. He reigned in Belgium during an era of political
and social reform, but as a constitutional monarch his powers were limited and he respected
constitutional conventions by recognising the will of the people as expressed by their
parliamentary representatives. His most apparent legacy in Belgium is the
grand public buildings that he constructed to elevate Belgium’s international prestige. While Leopold also had serious commercial
interests in China, he is best known for his rule over the Congo Free State. While presenting himself to the international
community as a champion of the antislavery cause, Leopold and his colonial administrators
ruled over the Congo in a way that horrified contemporaries and eventually forced him to
give up control of the colony a year before his death. While historians have debated the extent to
which Leopold was aware of the atrocities going on in the Congo, as the autocratic ruler
of Congo Free State he had ultimate responsibility for the brutal exploitation of the Congo between
1879 and 1908. There are varying estimates of the death toll
in the Congo during this period, but a Belgian government commission in 1919 estimated that
the Congolese population was cut in half. Based on an official census conducted by the
Belgian administration in 1924 which put the population of the Congo at around 10 million,
the historian Adam Hochschild argues that 10 million people perished under Leopold’s
rule from a combination of murder, starvation, disease, and reductions in the birth rate. Hochschild describes the death toll as genocidal,
though it was not strictly a genocide, as Leopold was motivated by economic exploitation
rather than ethnic cleansing. Throughout his life, Leopold sought to warn
his Belgian subjects that the country was vulnerable to enemy invasion in spite of the
neutrality guarantees received. The warning would prove prescient five years
after Leopold’s death when Germany invaded France through Belgium in August 1914 at the
beginning of the First World War. What do you think of Leopold II of Belgium? Should he receive recognition for his domestic
achievements in Belgium and his prescient warnings about Belgian national security before
the First World War or is he one of history’s most notorious and destructive colonial advocates
who inflicted death and destruction on the Congolese population? Please let us know in the comment section
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
