King Leopold II of Belgium was the owner and ruler of the Congo, then known as the Congo Free State. During the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, representatives from Europe and the United States handed over the colony to Leopold, who pretended to be a great humanitarian. In reality, however, he ruled over the Congo as a dictator, using his private army to brutally force the Congolese people to extract ivory and rubber. Scholars believe that...
King Leopold II of Belgium was the owner and ruler of the Congo, then known as the Congo Free State. During the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, representatives from Europe and the United States handed over the colony to Leopold, who pretended to be a great humanitarian. In reality, however, he ruled over the Congo as a dictator, using his private army to brutally force the Congolese people to extract ivory and rubber. Scholars believe that as much as half of the native population died during Leopold's savage reign.
Rumors of his brutality circulated for years, but they were largely ignored. In 1902, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, based on Conrad's experiences as a steamboat captain in the Congo years before, was published (it had appeared as a three-part serial in a magazine in 1899), exposing the atrocities that Leopold and his army were committing in the Congo. The British government finally appointed Roger Casement to investigate what was going on in the Congo, and his report, the Casement Report, documented Leopold's abuses. A shipping clerk named E.D. Morel then founded the Congo Reform Association. In his position, he had seen ships leaving from Belgium only with guns and other weapons and returning with valuable rubber and ivory. From these records, Morel guessed at Leopold's atrocities. Morel's actions, supported by Mark Twain and others, was an example of an average person taking steps to reform abuses. In 1908, King Leopold was forced to give up the Congo to the Belgian Parliament, and it became the Belgian Congo.
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