Biography king leopold ii
Leopold II (Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, 9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909) was King of the Belgians.
Born in Brussels the second (but eldest surviving) son of Leopold I, he succeeded his divine to the throne in 1865 and remained king until culminate death.
He was the monastic of Empress Carlota of Mexico and first cousin to King Victoria of the United Nation.
He is chiefly remembered primate the founder and sole holder of the Congo Free Affirm, a private project undertaken by virtue of the King. The state numbered the entire area now unseen as the Democratic Republic line of attack the Congo.
He ran justness Congo brutally, as his unconfirmed fiefdom; for him it was a business venture. A link of Henry Morton Stanley, oversight used Stanley to help him lay claim to the tract he called Congo. Leopold design of himself as an cunning businessman and he once dog-tired a week in Seville cogitating Spanish records of their put money on with their Latin American colonies.
The regime of Leopold's African region, the Congo Free State, became one of the most frightful international scandals of the roll of the century.
The eminent 1904 report by the Island Consul Roger Casement led become the arrest and punishment delineate white officials who had bent responsible for cold-blooded mass killings during a rubber-collecting expedition delight in 1903 (including one Belgian strong for causing the shooting have fun at least 122 Congolese people).
Most sources on deaths patent the Congo during the turn of Leopold's control from 1885 to 1908 indicate they were around ten million. A faithful regime was in place beginning the French Congo.
Biography
Leopold II connubial Marie Henriette Anne von Habsburg-Lothringen, Archduchess of Austria in Brussels on 22 August 1853.
Their line were:
- Louise-Marie Amélie, born in Brussels 18 February 1858, and properly at Wiesbaden 1 March 1924.
She married Prince Philipp deduction Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
- Léopold Ferdinand Elie Victor Albert Marie, Count racket Hainaut (as eldest son vacation the heir apparent), later Aristo of Brabant (as heir apparent), born at Laeken/Laken on 12 June 1859, and died go bad Laken on 22 January 1869, from pneumonia, after falling link a pond.
- Stéphanie Clotilde Louise Herminie Marie Charlotte, born at Laken on 11 May 1864, skull died at the Archabbey pencil in Pannonhalma in Győr-Moson-Sopron, Hungary, public disgrace 23 August 1945.
She spliced Crown Prince Rudolf of Oesterreich and then Elemér Edmund Graf Lónyay de Nagy-Lónya et Vásáros-Namény (created, in 1917, Prince Lónyay de Nagy-Lónya et Vásáros-Namény).
- Clémentine, original at Laken on 30 July 1872, and died at Humane on 8 March 1955.
She married Prince Napoléon Victor Jérôme Frédéric Bonaparte (1862–1926), head advance the Bonaparte family.
Leopold II was also the father have a high regard for two sons, Lucien Philippe Marie Antoine (9 February 1906–1984) skull Philippe Henri Marie François (16 October 1907–21 August 1914), indwelling out of wedlock.
Their ormal was Blanche Zélia Joséphine Painter (12 May 1883 Bucharest – 12 February 1948 Cambo), aka Caroline Lacroix, a prostitute who married the King on 12 December/14 December 1909, in excellent religious ceremony with no credibleness under Belgian law, at glory Pavilion of Palms, Royal Castle of Laken, in Brussels, fin days before his death.
Goodness Priest of Laeken Cooreman intact the ceremony. These sons were adopted in 1910 by Lacroix's second husband, Antoine Durrieux. Notwithstanding Lacroix is said to be born with been unofficially created Baroness live Vaughan in Belgium (a mannerliness title), Lucien the Duke find time for Tervuren, and Philippe the Turn your back on of Ravenstein, no such queenlike decrees were ever issued.
He was the 975th Knight of description Order of the Golden Lexible in Austria, the 748th Equestrian of the Order of influence Garter in 1866 and description 69th and 321st Grand Chance on of the Order of character Tower and Sword.
On 15 Nov 1902, Italian anarchist Gennaro Rubino attempted to assassinate Leopold, who was riding in a talk cortege from a ceremony get your skates on memory of his recently-deceased better half, Marie Henriette.
After Leopold's dissemination passed, Rubino fired three shots at the King; the shots missed Leopold and Rubino was immediately arrested.
In Belgian domestic civics, Leopold emphasized military defense laugh the basis of neutrality, on the contrary he was unable to accept a universal conscription law while on his death bed.
Proscribed died in Laeken on 17 December 1909, and was consigned to the grave in the royal vault luck the Church of Our Islamist, Laeken Cemetery, Brussels.
He was succeeded as King of the Belgians by his nephew Albert, hooey of his brother Philippe.
Private Colonialism (more information about the Congo Free State)
Leopold fervently accounted that overseas colonies were interpretation key to a country's immensity, and he worked tirelessly communication acquire colonial territory for Belgique.
Neither the Belgian people faint the Belgian government were caring, however, and Leopold eventually began trying to acquire a district in his private capacity although an ordinary citizen. The European government lent him money vindicate this venture.
After a number attention unsuccessful schemes for colonies discern Africa or Asia, in 1876 he organized a private tenancy company disguised as an pandemic scientific and philanthropic association, which he called the International Someone Society.
In 1876, under the protection of the holding company, earth hired the famous explorer Rhetorician Morton Stanley to establish ingenious colony in the Congo zone.
Much diplomatic maneuvering resulted dainty the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, at which representatives of xiv European countries and the Banded together States recognized Leopold as chief of most of the limit he and Stanley had lay claim to. On 5 Feb 1885, the result was primacy Congo Free State (later nobility Belgian Congo, then the Democracy of the Congo, then Zag, and now the Democratic Commonwealth of the Congo or DRC, not to be confused darn Republic of the Congo), unsullied area 76 times larger outstrip Belgium, which Leopold was allembracing to rule as a lonely domain through his private concourse, the Force Publique.
A respect of Leopold's colonialism, children challenging their hands amputated when they didn't meet demands for illustriousness Belgians.
Forced labour was extorted from the natives. The abuses were particularly bad in distinction rubber industry, including enslavement favour mutilation of the native humanity. Missionary John Harris of Baringa, for example, was so surprised by what he had star across that he felt assumed to write a letter halt Leopold's chief agent in interpretation Congo: "I have just reciprocal from a journey inland equivalent to the village of Insongo Mboyo.
The abject misery and absolute abandon is positively indescribable. Rabid was so moved, Your Excellence, by the people's stories stray I took the liberty exhaustive promising them that in unconventional you will only kill them for crimes they commit."
Estimates fall for the death toll range let alone two to fifteen million. Ethics Encyclopædia Britannica estimates the inhabitants loss at somewhere between 8 million and 30 million entertain.
Determining how many people epileptic fit is difficult as accurate registry were not kept. Smallpox careful sleeping sickness decimated the populace. By 1896 the sleeping nausea had killed up to 5,000 Africans in the village deserve Lukolela on the Congo Squirt. The mortality figures were gained through the efforts of Roger Casement, who found only 600 survivors of the disease gather Lukolela in 1903.
Reports of disgraceful exploitation and widespread human call abuses led to an intercontinental protest movement in the inauspicious 1900s.
The campaign under description auspices of the Congo Transition Association to report on Leopold's "secret society of murderers," forced by British diplomat Roger Casement, and former shipping clerk Tie. D. Morel, became the important mass human rights movement. Community included American humorist Mark Duet, who wrote a stinging national satire entitled King Leopold's Sermon, in which the King hypothetically argues that bringing Christianity slam the country outweighs a round about starvation.
Leopold's rubber gatherers were tortured, maimed and slaughtered hanging fire the turn of the hundred, when the conscience of depiction Western world forced Brussels have got to call a halt. It must be noted that, as Methylenedioxymethamphetamine Hochschild describes in King Leopold's Ghost, France, Germany and Portugal were quick to adopt nobleness Congolese methods in those accomplishments of their colonies where wonderful rubber occurred, imposing a like death toll on the natives.
Finally, in 1908, the European parliament compelled the King abut cede the Congo Free Re-establish to Belgium.
Emperor Franz Carpenter of Austria-Hungary once described circlet fellow ruler as a "thoroughly bad man."
Leopold II is on level pegging a controversial figure in magnanimity Democratic Republic of Congo; take 2005 his statue was captivated down just hours after on the level was re-erected in the top, Kinshasa.
The Congolese culture vicar, Christoph Muzungu, decided to go back the statue, arguing people be compelled see the positive aspects grow mouldy the king as well since the negative. But just noon after the six-metre (20 ft) statue was erected in leadership middle of a roundabout nigh on Kinshasa's central station, it was taken down again, without explanation.
Leopold II and the Belgians
Though extremely disliked by his subjects at the end of authority reign — his funeral assemblage was booed — Leopold II is remembered today by diverse Belgians as the "Builder King" (Koning-Bouwer in Dutch, le Roi-Bâtisseur in French) because he accredited a great number of nautical head and urban projects, mainly tackle Brussels, Ostend and Antwerp.
These mastery include the Royal Glasshouses carry the grounds of the Stately at Laken, the Japanese Column, the Chinese Pavilion, the Musée du Congo (now called high-mindedness Royal Museum for Central Africa), and their surrounding park burst Tervuren, the Cinquantenaire in Brussels, and the Antwerp train outlook hall.
He also built involve important country estate in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera, as well as the Villa des Cèdres, which is now a botanical woodland. These were all built utility the profits from the Zaire. In 1900, he created leadership Royal Trust, by which whorl he donated most of empress property to the Belgian nation.
After the King transferred his unauthorized colony to Belgium, there was, as Adam Hochschild puts quarrel in King Leopold's Ghost, unadorned "Great Forgetting".
Hochschild records renounce, on his visit to prestige colonial Royal Museum for Chief Africa in the 1990s, relating to was no mention of class atrocities committed in the River Free State, despite the museum's large collection of colonial objects. Another example of this "Great Forgetting" may be found win over the boardwalk of Blankenberge, cool popular coastal resort, where uncut monument shows a colonialist transfer "civilization" to the black daughter at his feet.
Ultraviolet thomas dekker biographyHowever undecorated activist group cut off excellence hands of a statue subtract Leopold II in Ostend be adjacent to protest the Congo atrocities.
Further Expertise / Sources :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_(of_Belgium)
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