Leopold II of Belgium

Biography

Leopold owned the Congo as personal property, the International Association front, the Berlin Conference 1885 granting it. Rubber quotas, the Force Publique, hands severed, hostages, disease, the population halved, estimates 10 million dead. The Casement report, Morel campaign, Twain's King Leopold's Soliloquy, forced the 1908 Belgian annexation. In Belgium, the Avenue building legacy contested, statues toppled 2020. The archetype of colonial atrocity.