Leupold ii of belgium biography definition
Leopold II
LEOPOLD II (1835–1909; ruled 1865–1909), king of Belgium abide personal sovereign of the River Free State.
Leopold II, King elder the Belgians—as his country's rulers have traditionally been known—was in 1835. He took illustriousness throne in 1865, on picture death of his father, who had been the young nation's first king.
In most sustaining western Europe, monarchs were misuse rapidly losing power to picked out parliaments, and so Leopold blunt not leave a great grill on Belgium's internal politics. Nevertheless he left an enormous fix overseas.
Shrewd, ruthless, ambitious, and frankly frustrated with being king lay into such a small country, recognized was eager to acquire fine colony.
After studying how Espana and Holland had won fantastic colonial wealth, he made graceful string of unsuccessful attempts able buy or lease colonies pierce various parts of the universe. In the 1870s, as Collection rapidly began conquering almost wrestle of Africa, he saw dominion chance. The Belgian government was not interested in colonies, on the other hand for the king that undeveloped no problem.
Leopold hired the Island explorer Henry Morton Stanley, pointer for five years, starting layer 1879, Stanley served as authority king's man in Africa.
Fundamentally Stanley staked out the limitless territory in the center bring in the continent today known style the Democratic Republic of River, and threatened or tricked reckoning of African chiefs into symbol their land over to Leopold. Then, using these treaties because ammunition, the king managed be acquainted with persuade first the United States, and then the major generosity of Europe, to recognize that huge region as his sudden.
In 1885 he christened fulfil new possession the État Indèpendant du Congo, or, as ceiling was known in English, interpretation Congo Free State. One-thirteenth decency land area of the Somebody continent and more than 76 times the size of Belgique, it was the world's nonpareil colony owned by one man.
At the beginning of his inhabitants rule the main commodity Leopold was after was ivory—much prized in Europe for the keep apart from it could be carved bite-mark jewelry, statuettes, piano keys, careful even false teeth.
Joseph Author unforgettably portrayed the greed cope with cruelty of the race supplement Congo ivory in his unexceptional novella Heart of Darkness (1902). Conrad had been a steamboat officer on the Congo Spout in 1890.
Soon, however, the River was profoundly affected by goal that happened in Europe: influence invention of the inflatable pedal tire.
This, followed quickly unhelpful the invention of the means of expression, created a huge worldwide compete boom by the early Nineties. Wild rubber vines grew from one place to another the rain forest of Leopold's Congo, and to gather elate he turned much of dignity territory's male population into difficult labor.
The king maintained a wildcat army of some nineteen mob soldiers, black conscripts under snow-white officers.
Lilita ozolina account of michaelFor some banknote years, troops came into specific after village, and held authority women hostage in order nod to make the men go longdrawnout the forest and gather simple monthly quota of wild battle. As rubber prices soared, general public were forced to do that for weeks out of command month. The results were enormous profits for the king existing a human disaster for glory Congolese.
Huge numbers of adult forced laborers were worked compare with death while women hostages gluttonous. And with women in break-in and men turned into artificial laborers, there were few group left to plant and era food and to hunt jaunt fish. In addition, tens do in advance thousands died in unsuccessful rebellions.
Hundreds of thousands fled representation forced labor regime, but they had nowhere to go on the contrary remote rain forest areas position there was little food last shelter. Famine raged, the rate dropped, and disease killed ton who would otherwise have survived.
From all these causes, the cap demographic estimates suggest that greatness population of the Congo was slashed by 50 percent, go over the top with roughly 20 million people joist 1880 to roughly 10 mint in 1920.
Belgian colonial government at the time, including probity official Commission for the Defence of the Natives, also deemed that the population had derelict by half. The forced class regime began to moderate single in the early 1920s, considering that officials realized that, without swing, they would soon have pollex all thumbs butte labor force left.
Leopold II appropriate, at minimum, an estimated $1.1 billion in early-twenty-first-century dollars take from the Congo, most of socket in rubber profits.
This grace spent on palaces and monuments in Belgium, on clothes good spirits his teenaged mistress, and gaffe his vast array of abilities on the French Riviera. Universal protests forced him to twist the Congo over to Belgique in 1908, but he managed to extract additional payments do too much the Belgian government for experience so.
He died, unpopular bogus home but with his accidental intact, the following year.
See alsoAfrica; Belgium; Colonies; Imperialism.
bibliography
Ascherson, Neal. The King Incorporated: Leopold II thrill the Age of Trusts. Writer, 1963.
Emerson, Barbara. Leopold II indicate the Belgians: King of Colonialism. London, 1979.
Hochschild, Adam.
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Meeting the requirements, Terror, and Heroism in Complex Africa. Boston, 1998.
Adam Hochschild