page_title: Leopold II of Belgium
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Leopold II of Belgium / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Léopold II, statue à Kinshasa
context_page_description: Leopold II was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909 and, through his own efforts, the owner and absolute ruler of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908.
  Born in Brussels as the second but eldest surviving son of Leopold I and Louise of Orléans, he succeeded his father to the Belgian throne in 1865 and reigned for 44 years until his death – the longest reign of any Belgian monarch. He died without surviving legitimate sons. The current Belgian king descends from his nephew and successor, Albert I.
  Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorized his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants. Leopold ignored these conditions and ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal gain.
context_section_description: On 17 December 1909, Leopold II died at Laeken, and the Belgian crown passed to Albert I, the son of Leopold's brother, Philippe, Count of Flanders. His funeral cortege was booed by the crowd in expression of disapproval of his rule of the Congo. Leopold's reign of exactly 44 years remains the longest in Belgian history. He was interred in the royal vault at the Church of Our Lady of Laeken in Brussels.
  Attention to the Congo atrocities subsided in the years after Leopold's death. Statues of him were erected in the 1930s at the initiative of Albert I, while the Belgian government celebrated his accomplishments in Belgium. The debate over Leopold's legacy was reignited in 1999 with the publication of King Leopold's Ghost by American historian Adam Hochschild, which recounts Leopold's plan to acquire the colony, the exploitation, and the large death toll. The debate then periodically resurfaced over the following 20 years.
  In 2010 Belgian member of the European Parliament and former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel called Leopold II a "visionary hero." According to Michel, "To use the word 'genocide' in relation to the Congo is absolutely unacceptable and inappropriate. ... maybe colonisation was domineering and acquiring more power, but at a certain moment, it brought civilisation." Michel's remarks were countered by several Belgian politicians.  Senator Pol Van Den Driessche replied, "[A] great visionary? Absolutely not. What happened then was shameful. If we measured him against 21st century standards, it is likely that Leopold would be hauled before the International Criminal Court in the Hague."
  In June 2020, after a major Black Lives Matter demonstration in Brussels, Leopold II's legacy once again became the subject of debate. MPs agreed to set up a parliamentary commission to examine their country's colonial past, which was likened to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee set up in South Africa after the apartheid regime was abolished. On 30 June, the 60th anniversary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's independence, King Philippe released a statement expressing his "deepest regret" for the wounds of the colonial past, and the "acts of violence and cruelty committed" in the Congo during colonisation but did not explicitly mention Leopold's role in the atrocities. Some activists accused him of not making a full apology.
caption: Statue in Kinshasa.
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