#TodayInHistory King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo Free State in 1885, effectively making it his personal fiefdom, that would begin a reign of Terror, where natives were massacred, tortured, starved to death,and it's resources looted. 
Leopold ran Congo using his own military force, to oversee the large rubber plantations. Workers who failed to meet the specific rubber quota, were either killed or had their hands chopped off. The precious ivory was looted in large numbers.
Leopold enriched his personal fortune, looting the Congo dry of it's resources, first it was ivory, and later rubber. The cultivation was done using forced labor, the rubber plantation atrocities were as terrible as those of the slaves on US plantations.
The brutalities of King Leopold II in Congo, were on par with that of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or rather he was the predecessor of them all. Close to a million died, the place was stripped and looted of it's natural resources.
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