- CountryCongo
- Town:Kinshasa
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- Rider(s):Leopold II
At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the Congo was attributed solely to Leopold II (1835-1909) of Belgium on the condition that he should improve the lives of the native inhabitants. From the beginning, however, Leopold ignored these conditions. He ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal gain and extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labor from the natives to harvest and process rubber. His regime was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 2 to 15 million Congolese. He used great sums of the money from this exploitation for public and private construction projects in Belgium. Under considerable international pressure power was transferred to Belgium in 1908.
- Sculptor(s):Vincotte, Thomas
- Original in:Brussels, Belgium
Photo by Steeve P
A copy of the Brussels statue of Leopold II, who set up the Congo Free State in 1885 as his private colony, made a personal fortune from the harvest of its wild rubber and is held responsible for the deaths of many millions, was erected in Kinshasa in 1928 and removed for the first time after independence in 1967. The statue, dirty after spending 38 years in an open-air dump, was re-erected in 2005, prompting a fierce debate. As residents seemed ready to riot, the statue was removed within a day. Today Leopold looks out from the grounds of the National Museum of Congo over the river to the capital that once bore his name, Leopoldsville, now Kinshasa.
