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King Leopold II The King of the Belgiums (1835-1909).
- The Belgium Congo Heart of Darkness

King Leopold II

The Scramble for Africa saw virtually the whole of the African continent swallowed by the European Powers, Germany, Italy, France Britain, Portugal and Spain. The King of the Belgiums King Leopold Of Belgium was frustrated that tiny Belgium possessed no colonies for as a constitutional monarch, he held little power at home.

King Leopold invited Henry Morton Stanley to Belgium and persuaded the now famous explorer to return to the Congo acting as the king's personal agent. King Leopold instructed Stanley, under the guise of doing scientific explorations and combating slavery, to secretly establish monopoly control over the rich Congo ivory trade. To do this, Stanley had to get local clan chiefs to sign treaties turning over their lands and the labor of their people to Leopold.

Over the next five years, Stanley signed more than 450 treaties with Congo chiefs. Clearly, they had no idea what they were signing in exchange for the cloth, trinkets, alcohol, and other cheap goods Stanley gave them. After Leopold sent agents to lobby Congress, the United States became the first nation to recognize his claim to the Congo.

At the Berlin Conference 1884-85, the Great European Powers laid down the rules for the Scramble for Africa and decided the status of central Africa. Suspicious of each other's ambitions in the region,the European powers and the United States agreed to grant Leopold possession of the Congo River basin. This encompassed nearly a million square miles, an area 80 times larger than Belgium. On May 29, 1885, King Leopold's agents proclaimed him "sovereign" (supreme authority) of the Congo Free State. By the mid-1890s a world rubber boom suddenly started, following the invention of the inflatable tire Leopold’s greed and the system of forced labor he imposed there prompted the first human rights movement of the 20th century.

The Savage repressions carried out in the Congo are well documented in the literary classic by Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness 1902. Joseph Conrad was himself a captain of a steamboat on the Congo River in 1889.

East Africa Askari Colonial Soldier Collection

Click here for details of the hand carved wooden Askari Soldiers, in three sizes from 17 inch to 6 foot tall

Wooden Soldier Regimental Histories

All of my wooden soldiers are made in strictly limited editions, click here for a regimental history of each soldier.