King Leopold II of Belgium originally wanted to take over the Philippines. He first asked to purchase the Philippines from Spain, but he did not have the money to do so. He then tried to make the Philippines an independent nation that he could control. When he failed in this attempt, he tried to colonize Africa.
King Leopold tried to establish different colonies in Africa that failed. He was interested in the explorations of Henry Morton Stanley along the Congo, and he organized what appeared to be a benevolent organization called the International African Society. This organization was actually his means to control the Congo as a private individual. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, European diplomats gave him sovereignty over the Congo, then known as the Congo Free State. He was at first interested in controlling this region to extract ivory, and then, when the price of rubber increased, he used the region to enrich himself by enforcing the use of brutality to coerce the native people to extract rubber. For example, the native people were tortured, mutilated, or killed if they did not meet quotas for extracting enough rubber. Eventually, King Leopold was exposed for being a brute and for using Congo to enrich himself, and he died in shame in 1909.
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