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How Was the Brutality of the Congo Free State Finally Exposed? - The Congo Free State and King Leopold II's Rubber Terror | Sleepy Facts About History
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In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium acquired a territory in central Africa seventy times the size of his own country. He did not take it as a colony for his nation, but as his personal property. This episode examines how the Congo Free State was formed, how a global demand for rubber transformed it into a machine of forced labor, and how the system was finally exposed by an international campaign.
The extraction of wild rubber from the equatorial forest was enforced through a private army…
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