FILE HF-0004
Congo Free State
Congo Free State, Democratic Republic of the Congo · 1885–1908
Between 1885 and 1908, the Congo Free State — the personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium, not a Belgian state colony — extracted rubber and ivory through a system of forced labor enforced by quotas, hostage-taking, and mutilation. Population loss over the period is estimated in the millions, though the precise toll remains genuinely disputed among historians and demographers.