King Leopold II of Belgium was responsible for the deaths and mutilation of 10 million Congolese Africans during the late 1800’s. The spoils of modern day Belgium owes much to the people of the Congo River Basin.
In a testament to the hideous brutality of the European colonial era and imperialism in its finest form, during the 1880s, when Europe was busy dividing up the continent of Africa like a vast chocolate cake, King Leopold II of Belgium laid personal claim to the largely uncharted Congo Free State. The 905,000 square miles (76 times larger than Belgium) of African rainforest held a vast fortune in rubber plantations, a commodity in high demand in late 19th century industrial Europe.
