The end of the nineteenth-century brought about one of the most notable examples of imperialism and genocide in modern memory. King Leopold II of Belgium (ruled 1865–1909) possessed an insatiable greed for money, land, and power — and looked to Africa to find them. Like many other Europeans, he was intrigued by reports of Africa made by the famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904), whose books How I Found Livingstone: Adventures and Discoveries in Central Africa (1872) and Through the Dark Continent (1878) were best-selling accounts of his travels. Through a series of machinations and a deluge of propaganda proclaiming his munificence, Leopold eventually secured the Congo region of Africa as a Belgian colony. On May 20, 1885, Leopold named his new nation the État Independent du Congo, or The Congo Free State. This huge area of Africa remained under Belgium control until 1960.
The Congo was a perfect colony for Leopold II for several reasons. First, ivory and rubber were plentiful and could be systematically gathered and shipped to Europe. Second, the only law there was Leopold's: Although he constantly presented himself to his European contemporaries as a philanthropist and humanitarian, Leopold ran the Congo (without ever visiting it) from a distance with an iron hand. Third, labor was plentiful and, more important to Leopold, free, because his agents routinely forced the Congolese into slave labor by means of torture or intimidation: Women, for example, were often kidnapped and held until their husbands and sons gathered sufficient quantities of rubber. Forth, there were few operating expenses: Huts and mess-halls were constructed for the agents, and the construction of a railroad system running through the Congo guaranteed that supplies could reach different stations quickly. Finally, the colony was thousands of miles away from sheltered European skies. People could not condemn what they could not see.
