King Leopold II

Leopold Lodewijk Philip Maria Victor (Brussels, April 9, 1835 – Laeken, December 17, 1909), Prince of Belgium, Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Brabant and Senator of Belgium, was the second King of the Belgians. He was the second but eldest surviving son of Belgium's first king Leopold I of Belgium and Queen Louise Marie of Orléans. He succeeded his father to the throne on December 17, 1865 and remained king until his death in 1909. Leopold II was also the founder and King sovereign of the Congo Free State, which he obtained through the Berlin Conference.

Early Life

Leopold was born in Brussels on 9 April 1835, the second child of the reigning Belgian monarch "Leopold I of Belgium", and of his second wife "Louise of Orléans" the daughter of King Louis Philippe of France. At the age of 18 on August 22, 1853 Leopold was married to "Marie Henriette of Austria", a cousin of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and granddaughter of the late Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. The marriage produced four children: three daughters and one son. As Leopold's older brother, the earlier crown prince Louis Philippe had died the year before Leopold's birth, Leopold became heir to the throne of Belgium when he was 9 years old, Leopold received the title of Duke of Brabant, and was appointed a sub-lieutenant in the army. He served in the army until his accession in 1865, by which time he had reached the rank of lieutenant-general.

Belgian Senator

Leopold's public career began on his attaining the age of majority in 1855, when he became a member of the Belgian Senate. He took an active interest in the senate, especially in matters concerning the development of Belgium and its trade. Leopold traveled abroad extensively from 1854 to 1865 with his privately owned Yacht the "Alberta" visiting Spain, The Ottoman Empire, Austria, India, China, Egypt, where he was a special guest at the opening ceremony of the famous Suez Canal amongst others, and most other countries on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. His father died on 10 December 1865, and Leopold took the oath of office on 17 December, at the age of 30. It is on these voyages, where he, under the influence of his father King Leopold I starts to explore the possibilities of enlarging Belgium through an overseas empire with Colonies.

Second King of the Belgians

Leopold became king in 1865. In a speech at his swearing-in ceremony He explained the goal for his reign as follows:

"On this day, succeeding to a father so honored during his life and so regretted after his death, my first engagement before the representatives or the nation is to religiously follow the precepts and examples which his wisdom has left me, and never to forget the duties imposed on me by this precious inheritance. If I do not promise to Belgium either a great reign like that which founded her independence, or a great king like him whom we mourn, I at least promise her a king Belgian in heart and soul, whose whole life belongs to her."

Leopold II did however not mention anything about colonies in his speech as been told by various Liberal and popular media outlets, the full speech is available here.

During Leopold's reign, many social changes were enacted into law. Among these were the right of workers to form labor unions and the abolition of the livret d'ouvrier, an employment record book. Laws against child labor were passed. Children younger than 12 were not allowed to work in factories, children younger than 16 were not allowed to work at night, and women younger than 21 years old were not allowed to work underground. Workers gained the right to be compensated for workplace accidents and were given Sundays off. Leopold was also a big opponent of the Death penalty, which was abolished under his rule.

The first revision of the Belgian constitution came in 1893. Universal male suffrage was introduced, though the effect of this was tempered by plural voting. The eligibility requirements for the senate were reduced, and elections would be based on a system of proportional representation, which continues to this day. Leopold pushed strongly to enable a royal referendum, whereby the king would have the power to consult the electorate directly on an issue, and use his veto according to the results of the referendum. The proposal was rejected, as it would have given the king the power to override the elected government. Leopold was so disappointed that he considered abdication. Leopold writes:

"Dear Minister, I particularly regret that the government, as I had expressly requested, did not make the royal referendum a sine qua non, three points in the program concern the crown directly, the possibility of expanding the territory, the referendum and the princely marriages, I would have liked to see this matter implemented, we have been clear about this during our discussions, we have taken a very moderate attitude with this at a time when the most democratic constitution in Europe is being even more democratized, a constitution drawn up during a revolution, and at a time when there was no monarch, your devotee, etc. Leopold." and "To the presidents of the chambers, the institutions of the country are on the eve of profound changes, various indications and circumstances have convinced me that it is desirable in the new situation, a new administration should take office, I request you on my behalf to inform the chambers of my abdication, with the highest and most special esteem, your affectionate King, Leopold."

Builder King

Leopold commissioned a great number of buildings, urban projects and public works. These projects earned him the epithet of "Builder King". The public buildings were mainly in Brussels, Ostend, Leuven and Antwerp, and include the Hippodrome Wellington racetrack (1883), the Royal Galleries and Maria Hendrikapark in Ostend (1902); the Royal Museum for Central Africa and its surrounding park in Tervuren (1898); the Cinquantenaire park and triumphal arch complex (1852-1880), the Duden Park in Brussels (1881), the Reconstruction of the Royal Palace in Brussels (1904), The Palace of Justice of Brussels (1866-1883) the Antwerp ZOO (1843), Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Brussels (1905-1969), Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (1884), the Royal Greenhouses of Laken (1874-1895), and the Antwerpen-Centraal railway station (1895–1905). In popular Liberal media it is portrayed that the funds for these buildings were mainly from profits from his rule over the Congo Free State, this is however untrue, as most building projects were realized before the Colony in the Congo even existed, and many of them even were initiated by his father King Leopold I who was considerably rich himself. Leopold writes in 1865 when ascending to the throne of Belgium:

"I am generous and about to make a multi-million dollar sacrifice to beautify my capital. It will cost me three to four years of wages, but I wish my life here on earth to leave many traces."

Thinking of the future after his death, Leopold did not want the collection of estates, lands and heritage buildings he had privately amassed to be scattered among his daughters, each of whom was married to a foreign prince. In 1900, he created the Royal Trust, by means of which he donated most of his property to the Belgian nation. This preserved them to beautify Belgium in perpetuity, while still allowing future generations of the Belgian royal family the privilege of their use.

Belgian colonial Empire

Leopold just as his father fervently believed that overseas colonies were the key to a country's greatness, and he worked tirelessly to acquire colonial territory for Belgium. He envisioned "little Belgium" as the capital of a large overseas empire. Leopold writes:

"Trading posts and colonies, gentlemen, have not only strengthened the commercial positions of the peoples concerned; these nations owe their greatness to these institutions."

During his reign, Leopold saw the empires of the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain as being in a state of decline and expressed interest in buying their territories. In 1866, Leopold instructed the Belgian ambassador in Madrid to speak to Queen Isabella II of Spain about ceding the Philippines to Belgium. Knowing the situation fully, the ambassador did nothing. Leopold quickly replaced the ambassador with a more sympathetic individual to carry out his plan. In 1868, when Isabella II was deposed as queen of Spain, Leopold tried to press his original plan to acquire the Philippines. But without funds, he was unsuccessful. Leopold then devised another unsuccessful plan to establish the Philippines as an independent state, which could then be ruled by a Belgian. When both of these plans failed.

Congo Free State

After numerous unsuccessful plans to acquire colonies in Africa and Asia, Leopold created the international scientific and philanthropic association in 1878, which he called the International African Society, the society was an international organization with branches in every industrialized nation of the world at the time, with its headquarters was in Brussels, in 1878 under the mandate of the association, he hired the then already world-famous explorer and American Civil War hero Henry Morton Stanley to explore the possibilities of establishing a colony in the Congo region.

Recognition by the United states

The United States was the first country to recognize the Congo free state in 1884, as it went trough a civil war recently concerning the abolishion of slavery, and so as American diplomats describe it at the time, the United States had a special duty towards the negro race, they already had set up the Liberia colony in West Africa as a safe heaven for returning emancipated Black Afro-American slaves and also as a refuge for slaves who were captured from illegal slavers after 1861 by American military vessels patrolling mostly the Gold Coast of Africa and the mouth of the Congo stream, which were the main source for black slaves in the transatlantic slave trade, as it was unpractical and cruel to send the slaves back to the places where they were first enslaved, this same idea of creating a free heaven was initially also the idea behind the Congo free State, therefore 6 months before the Berlin conference and after various positive reports from American diplomats to the United States Congress in 1884, the United States recognized the Congo free state, 6 months before the Berlin conference, further diplomatic maneuvering among European nations with a great help of the United States resulted in the recognition of the Congo free state of 1884–1885, at which Leopold was recognized as sovereign of most of the area to which he and Stanley had laid claim. On 5 February 1885, the Congo Free State, an area 80 times larger than Belgium, was established under Leopold II's sovereign rule. It was however not his private property or colony as the Liberal media and academics claim, he was merely the head of state.

Critisism of the Congo Free State

Under pressure of the Congo Reform Association, a political and humanitarian activist group that sought to promote reform of the Congo Free State, in the King's private territories namely "the Crown domain" which was located in the Western part of the Congo Basin Area of the Congo Free State. International criticism of Leopold’s rule increased and mobilized. Reports of outrageous exploitation and widespread human rights abuses led the British Crown to appoint their consul, Liberal and Gay Activist who was also a member of the Congo Reform association Roger Casement who in his later life was sentenced to death for treason against in his own country to investigate conditions there. His extensive travels and interviews in the region resulted in the Casement Report, which detailed the extensive abuses under Leopold's regime. Leopold unaware of the crimes committed in his name immediately assembles a commission to investigate these allegations, but because of the vast size of the Congo and the inability to find appropriate replacements, and also the large financial depth he had gathered by the cost of creating large scale infrastructural works such as the Matadi-Leopoldville railway and the military campaign to drive out the Arab slavers in earlier years, Leopold was unable and some claim unwilling to correct this aberration.

Writer Arthur Conan Doyle also criticized the "rubber regime" in his 1908 work The Crime of the Congo, written to aid the work of the Congo Reform Association. Doyle contrasted Leopold's rule with British rule in Nigeria, arguing that decency required those who ruled primitive peoples to be concerned first with their uplift, not how much could be extracted from them. As Hochschild describes in King Leopold's Ghost, many of Leopold's policies, in particular those of colonial monopolies and forced labor, were influenced by Dutch practice in the East Indies.  Similar methods of forced labor were employed to some degree by Germany, France, and Portugal where natural rubber occurred in their own colonies.

International opposition and criticism from the Catholic Party, Progressive Liberals and the Labour Party caused the Belgian parliament to compel the king to cede the Congo Free State to Belgium in 1908. The deal that led to the handover cost Belgium the considerable sum of 215.5 million Francs. This was used to discharge the debt of the Congo Free State and to pay out its bondholders. The Congo Free State was transformed into a Belgian colony known as the Belgian Congo under parliamentary control. 

Death and Afthermath

On 17 December 1909, Leopold II died at Laken, and the Belgian crown passed to Albert I, the son of Leopold's brother, Philippe, Count of Flanders. Leopold's reign of exactly 44 years remains the longest in Belgian history. He was interred in the royal vault at the Church of Our Lady of Laken in Brussels.

In June 2020, the Extreme and violent Black Lives Matter and Antifa movement demonstration in Brussels protested the murder of George Floyd, causing Leopold II's legacy to become once again the subject of debate. Several MPs from the Center-Left Labor and the Extreme Left Green Party agreed to set up a parliamentary commission to examine Belgium's colonial past, a step likened to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee set up in South Africa after the apartheid regime was abolished.

Further reading

• Ascherson, Neal. The King Incorporated: Leopold II in the Age of Trusts (1963) online edition
• Emerson, Barbara. Leopold II of the Belgians: King of Colonialism. (1979). 324 pp.
• Slade, Ruth. King Leopold's Congo: Aspects of the Development of Race Relations in the Congo Independent State (1962) online edition