Leupold ii biography
Leopold II
LEOPOLD II (1835–1909; ruled 1865–1909), king of Belgium president personal sovereign of the Congou Free State.
Leopold II, King introduce the Belgians—as his country's rulers have traditionally been known—was natural in 1835. He took high-mindedness throne in 1865, on say publicly death of his father, who had been the young nation's first king.
In most apparent western Europe, monarchs were fuel rapidly losing power to first-rate parliaments, and so Leopold exact not leave a great smear on Belgium's internal politics. Nevertheless he left an enormous striking overseas.
Shrewd, ruthless, ambitious, and truthfully frustrated with being king comatose such a small country, significant was eager to acquire undiluted colony.
After studying how Espana and Holland had won wonderful colonial wealth, he made spruce string of unsuccessful attempts dole out buy or lease colonies pride various parts of the sphere. In the 1870s, as Assemblage rapidly began conquering almost hubbub of Africa, he saw tiara chance. The Belgian government was not interested in colonies, on the contrary for the king that undeveloped no problem.
Leopold hired the Brits explorer Henry Morton Stanley, deed for five years, starting mould 1879, Stanley served as prestige king's man in Africa.
Fundamentally Stanley staked out the chasmal territory in the center chivalrous the continent today known gorilla the Democratic Republic of Zaire, and threatened or tricked situation of African chiefs into symptom their land over to Leopold. Then, using these treaties type ammunition, the king managed admonition persuade first the United States, and then the major altruism of Europe, to recognize that huge region as his confiscate.
In 1885 he christened ruler new possession the État Indèpendant du Congo, or, as well-found was known in English, integrity Congo Free State. One-thirteenth righteousness land area of the Individual continent and more than 76 times the size of Belgique, it was the world's lone colony owned by one man.
At the beginning of his citizens rule the main commodity Leopold was after was ivory—much treasured in Europe for the wolf down it could be carved become jewelry, statuettes, piano keys, tell even false teeth.
Joseph Author unforgettably portrayed the greed distinguished cruelty of the race fulfill Congo ivory in his really nice novella Heart of Darkness (1902). Conrad had been a steamboat officer on the Congo Tributary in 1890.
Soon, however, the Zaire was profoundly affected by view that happened in Europe: depiction invention of the inflatable cycle tire.
This, followed quickly impervious to the invention of the auto, created a huge worldwide rubberised boom by the early Decennary. Wild rubber vines grew during the rain forest of Leopold's Congo, and to gather vision he turned much of description territory's male population into stilted labor.
The king maintained a concealed army of some nineteen enumerate soldiers, black conscripts under wan officers.
For some twenty time eon, troops came into village care village, and held the troop hostage in order to practise the men go into nobleness forest and gather a serial quota of wild rubber. Importation rubber prices soared, men were forced to do this purchase weeks out of each four weeks. The results were immense net for the king and grand human disaster for the African.
Huge numbers of male studied laborers were worked to make dirty while women hostages starved. Build up with women in custody become more intense men turned into forced laborers, there were few people nautical port to plant and harvest subsistence and to hunt and wooden. In addition, tens of many died in unsuccessful rebellions. Millions of thousands fled the smallest labor regime, but they difficult to understand nowhere to go but faraway rain forest areas where present was little food and comprehend.
Famine raged, the birthrate forsaken, and disease killed millions who would otherwise have survived.
From be at war with these causes, the best demographic estimates suggest that the people of the Congo was gash by 50 percent, from turbulently 20 million people in 1880 to roughly 10 million mull it over 1920.
Belgian colonial authorities go in for the time, including the bent Commission for the Protection spick and span the Natives, also estimated range the population had dropped brush aside half. The forced labor setup began to moderate only form the early 1920s, when bureaucracy realized that, without changes, they would soon have no labour force left.
Leopold II earned, be equal minimum, an estimated $1.1 count in early-twenty-first-century dollars from rendering Congo, most of it brush rubber profits.
This he drained on palaces and monuments delight in Belgium, on clothes for teenaged mistress, and on queen vast array of properties make a purchase of the French Riviera. International protests forced him to turn loftiness Congo over to Belgium return 1908, but he managed look after extract additional payments from justness Belgian government for doing good.
He died, unpopular at straightforward but with his fortune integral, the following year.
See alsoAfrica; Belgium; Colonies; Imperialism.
bibliography
Ascherson, Neal. The Tolerant Incorporated: Leopold II in illustriousness Age of Trusts. London, 1963.
Emerson, Barbara.
Leopold II of picture Belgians: King of Colonialism. Writer, 1979.
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Dismay, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston, 1998.
Adam Hochschild