Catalogue information
Carte Postale. Postcard Belgium With imprint 5 centimes stamp Leopold Joris Christiaan Frederik [1] (Coburg, December 16, 1790 - Laken, December 10, 1865), Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (later of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), Duke of Saxony, was the Duke of Saxony from 1831 until his death. first King of the Belgians. Leopold Louis Philippe Maria Victor (French: Léopold Louis Philippe Marie Victor) (Brussels, April 9, 1835 - Laeken, December 17, 1909), Prince of Belgium, Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Brabant, was the second king of the Belgians. Born in Brussels, he was the second (but the oldest surviving) son of Leopold I of Belgium and Louise Marie of Orléans, he succeeded his father on December 17, 1865 and remained king until his death. Leopold is mainly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project of the king. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, an area now known as Congo-Kinshasa. The Powers at the Berlin Colonial Conference agreed to establish the Free State in 1885, on the condition that the inhabitants be brought into the modern world and that all nations be allowed to act freely. From the outset, Leopold essentially ignored these terms and ruled the Congo brutally, by proxy from a mercenary army, for his own personal gain. He won a personal fortune from the Congo, initially by collecting ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forcing the indigenous people to collect sap from rubber plants. His harsh regime was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Congo became one of the most infamous international scandals of the early 20th century, and Leopold was eventually forced to give up control of the country and hand it over to the government of Belgium.
This text has been translated automatically from Dutch
Click here for the original text