Leopold fervently believed that overseas colonies were the key to a country’s greatness, and he worked tirelessly to acquire colonial territory for Belgium. He envisioned “our little Belgium” as the capital of a large overseas empire.Leopold eventually began to acquire a colony as a private citizen. The Belgian government lent him money for this venture.

During his reign, Leopold saw the empires of the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain as being in a state of decline and expressed interest in buying their territories. In 1866, Leopold instructed the Belgian ambassador in Madrid to speak to Queen Isabella II of Spain about ceding the Philippines to Belgium. Knowing the situation fully, the ambassador did nothing. Leopold quickly replaced the ambassador with a more sympathetic individual to carry out his plan. In 1868, when Isabella II was deposed as queen of Spain, Leopold tried to press his original plan to acquire the Philippines. But without funds, he was unsuccessful. Leopold then devised another unsuccessful plan to establish the Philippines as an independent state, which could then be ruled by a Belgian. When both of these plans failed, Leopold shifted his aspirations of colonisation to Africa.

After numerous unsuccessful schemes to acquire colonies in Africa and Asia, in 1876 Leopold organized a private holding company disguised as an international scientific and philanthropic association, which he called the International African Society, or the International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of the Congo. In 1878, under the auspices of the holding company, he hired explorer Henry Stanley to explore and establish a colony in the Congo region. Much diplomatic maneuvering among European nations resulted in the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 regarding African affairs, at which representatives of 14 European countries and the United States recognized Leopold as sovereign of most of the area to which he and Stanley had laid claim.On 5 February 1885, the Congo Free State, an area 76 times larger than Belgium, was established under Leopold II’s personal rule and private army, the Force Publique.

References:Hochschild, A. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin, 1999. pp. 111–112

-HB #polemicist 🖋