The Villainy of King Leopold II

Michael Jennings, as well as giving us his thoughts on a trip to Antwerp, tells us of the villainy of King Leopold II

The Belgian Congo (initially the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium, who had ironically managed to get control of it in the first place by presenting himself as a great humanitarian) was perhaps the most brutal colonial enterprise of them all. Essentially, at the end of the 19th century the colony was turned into a slave labour rubber plantation by King Leopold and his men. Over a thirty year period the population of the colony was reduced from 20 million to 10 million. The level of brutality is hard to imagine. ..... The practice in the Congo was truly mindblowingly barbaric. One of its more notable practices was to demand that the men enforcing the collection of rubber from Africans bring back a severed human hand for every bullet they were issued with, to demonstrate that the bullet had not been "wasted"

Not for nothing is this man in the same league as Hitler and Stalin, yet he doesn't loom anything like as large in the public imagination. As Michael notes, his crimes make those of Saddam Hussein pale into insignificance.