Editing Leopold II of Belgium (section)

===Exploitation, atrocities, and death toll===
{{Further|Atrocities in the Congo Free State}}
[[File:Nsala of Wala in the Nsongo District.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.15|A Congolese man, [[Nsala of Wala in the Nsongo District|Nsala]], looking at the severed hand and foot of his five-year-old daughter who was killed, cooked, and [[Human cannibalism|cannibalized]] by members of the ''[[Force Publique]]'' in 1904.<ref name="lotdc">{{cite journal |first1=T. Jack |last1=Thompson |date=October 2002 |title=Light on the Dark Continent: The Photography of Alice Seely Harris and the Congo Atrocities of the Early Twentieth Century |journal=International Bulletin of Missionary Research |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=146–9 |url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Light+on+the+dark+continent%3a+the+photography+of+Alice+Seely+Harris...-a093009102 |doi=10.1177/239693930202600401 |s2cid=146866987 |access-date=21 July 2021 |archive-date=21 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210721145329/https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Light+on+the+dark+continent:+the+photography+of+Alice+Seely+Harris...-a093009102 |url-status=live }}</ref>]]

Leopold amassed a huge personal fortune by exploiting the natural resources of the Congo. At first, ivory was exported, but this did not yield the expected levels of revenue. When the global demand for rubber exploded, attention shifted to the labour-intensive collection of sap from rubber plants. Abandoning the promises of the [[Berlin Conference]] in the late 1890s, the Free State government restricted foreign access and extorted [[forced labour]] from the natives. Abuses, especially in the collection of rubber, included forced labour of the native population, beatings, widespread killings, and frequent mutilation when production quotas were not met. One practice used to force workers to collect rubber included taking wives and family members hostage.{{sfn|Renton|Seddon|Zeilig|2007|p=31}}

[[File:MutilatedChildrenFromCongo.jpg|thumb|right|Mutilated Congolese children and adults]]
Missionary [[John Hobbis Harris|John Harris]] of [[Baringa, Democratic Republic of the Congo|Baringa]] was so shocked by what he had encountered that he wrote to Leopold's chief agent in the Congo, saying:
<blockquote>I have just returned from a journey inland to the village of Insongo Mboyo. The abject misery and utter abandon is positively indescribable. I was so moved, Your Excellency, by the people's stories that I took the liberty of promising them that in future you will only kill them for crimes they commit.<ref name="bbc news" /></blockquote>

Estimates of the death toll range from one million to fifteen million,<ref name="oz1rV" /><ref name="93xD7" /> since accurate records were not kept. Historians Louis and Stengers in 1968 stated that population figures at the start of Leopold's control are only "wild guesses", and that attempts by [[E. D. Morel]] and others to determine a figure for the loss of population were "but figments of the imagination".<ref name="z8Rg3" /><ref name="wjUFe" />

[[Adam Hochschild]] devotes a chapter of his 1998 book ''[[King Leopold's Ghost]]'' to the problem of estimating the death toll. He cites several recent lines of investigation, by anthropologist [[Jan Vansina]] and others, that examine local sources (police records, religious records, oral traditions, genealogies, personal diaries, and "many others"), which generally agree with the assessment of the 1919 Belgian government commission: roughly half the population were killed or died during the Free State period. Hochschild points out that since the first official census by the Belgian authorities in 1924 put the population at about 10 million, these various approaches suggest a rough estimate of a population decline by 10 million.<ref name="ghost" />{{rp|225–233}}

Smallpox epidemics and sleeping sickness also devastated the deeply traumatized population.<ref name="vsyvv" /> By 1896, [[African trypanosomiasis]] had killed up to 5,000 people in the village of Lukolela on the [[Congo River]]. The mortality statistics were collected through the efforts of British consul [[Roger Casement]], who found, for example, only 600 survivors of the disease in Lukolela in 1903.<ref name="WLzS7" /> Research by Lowes and Montero found King Leopold II's coercive labor practices for rubber extraction in the Congo Free State had long-lasting negative impacts. Ethnic groups subjected to more intensive rubber exploitation exhibited significantly lower economic development over a century later, driven by disruptions to traditional economic systems and human capital accumulation. Their work also examined how colonial co-option of local chiefs during the rubber era may have undermined leader accountability, linking to broader critiques of indirect rule strategies across Africa. The oppressive policies under Leopold's personal rule are seen as engendering entrenched underdevelopment with enduring economic and political consequences in the region.<ref>Lowes, Sara; Montero, Eduardo (2017). "King Leopold’s ghost: The legacy of labour coercion in the DRC" (PDF). Harvard University. Retrieved 8 May 2024.</ref>