King Leopold II - Brussels, Belgium
N 50° 50.428 E 004° 21.863
31U E 596064 N 5632971
A bronze statue of Leopold II in Brussels, Belgium, close to the Royal Palace.
Waymark Code: WMCXAW
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Date Posted: 10/22/2011
Views: 41
Leopold II (French: Léopold Louis Philippe Marie Victor, Dutch: Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor) (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909) was the second king of the Belgians. Born in Brussels the second (but eldest surviving) son of Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orléans, he succeeded his father to the throne on 17 December 1865 and remained king until his death.
Leopold is chiefly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken by the King. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, an area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Powers at the Berlin Conference allowed the Free State to accede to its final Act in 1885, which committed the State to bringing the inhabitants into the modern world and that all nations be allowed to trade freely. From the beginning, however, Leopold essentially ignored these conditions and ran the Congo brutally, using a mercenary force, for his own personal gain. He extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s by forcing the native population to collect sap from rubber plants. His harsh regime was directly or indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people. The Congo became one of the most infamous international scandals of the early 20th century, and Leopold was ultimately forced to relinquish control of it to the government of Belgium.
Leopold II is still a controversial figure in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His statue in the capital, Kinshasa, was removed after independence. Congolese culture minister Christoph Muzungu decided to reinstate the statue in 2005, pointing out the sense of liberating progress that had marked the beginning of the Free State and arguing that people should see the positive aspects of the king as well as the negative; but just hours after the six-metre (20 ft) statue was erected in the middle of a roundabout near Kinshasa's central station, it was taken down again without explanation. The Congo continues, however, to use a variation of the Free State flag, which it adopted after dropping the name and flag of Zaire.
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This equestrial statue of king Leopold II was inaugurated the 15th november 1926, at near bout the very place where Leopold II took the oath. This bronze statue was made by the scuptor Thomas Vinçotte and the architect François Malfait .
The statue was paid with private money. Some 2,5 million € were collected for this statue. The sculptor, who worked for it several long years, didn't have long pleasure of it. He died a few days after finishing the statue.
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