What did King Leopold's Congo Free State leave behind that still shapes eastern Congo?

"The Belgians feared that the development of intelligence among Africans would contribute to the formation of a liberation movement, so they severely restricted their access to higher education. ... it emerged after decolonisation that only 17 out of Congo’s 20 million citizens had a university education (Prunier, 2009, p. 76)."

"The natives were used for slave labour on rubber, coffee, cocoa and sugar cane plantations and in diamond and gold mines."

"The Congo Free State was therefore not free and its territories were purchased by Leopold II and were not the property of the Belgian state, instead they were entirely the private property of the monarch. ... He invested the money gained from exploitation in bank accounts around the world."

"The ethnically and politically diverse society and the lack of educated human resources were the root of the country’s subsequent instability."

"There was also a “huge graveyard” of Congolese due to the gruelling conditions of building the railway that would connect Leopoldville (Kinshasa) to the port of Matadi (Sidorova, 2024)."

"It was in this context that Belgium introduced the Ten-Year Plan for the Economic and Social Development of the Belgian Congo (1949)."

"In the 19th and 20th centuries, the education of children in the Congo was marked by the “cult of order” that came from Belgium, notably from the second organic law on primary education of 1 July 1879 (Van Ruyskensvelde, Hulstaert, Depaepe, 2016), implemented by Catholic missionaries."

"The forced labour system implemented in the Belgian Congo took a more cruel turn than previous experiments, leading some authors to characterise it as ‘brutal rubber exploitation’ (Oultache, 2025). ... The Congolese worked without pay and had to meet unattainable rubber harvesting quotas: they were slaves (Oultache, 2025)."

"Even before that, ‘the depletion of natural rubber supplies, the decimation of the African population, and the desperate resistance of Africans led to the end of the rubber regime before Belgian annexation’ in some areas of the Congo (Roes, 2010)."

"Elles étaient particulièrement associées aux méthodes de travail utilisées pour collecter le caoutchouc naturel pour l'exportation."

"Celles-ci étaient souvent coupées par des soldats de la Force publique composée d'auxiliaires locaux et qui devaient rendre compte de chaque coup de feu tiré en ramenant les mains de leurs victimes."

"En 1908, sous la pression internationale, le gouvernement belge a annexé l'État indépendant du Congo qui était en dépôt de bilan pour former le Congo belge et a mis fin à de nombreux systèmes responsables des abus."

"Le territoire sous le contrôle de Léopold dépassait 2 600 000 km 2 et était dirigé par un petit groupe d'administrateurs originaires de plusieurs pays européens."

"and the enforcing of an ever increasing tax from the people, from which the government. .L self draws 50 per cent, of the profits."

"The state was placed tinner the personal sovereignty of Leopold."

"they ar? their own police and arc seldom ; pnilty of punishing th?msolves."

"Rubber is, of course, the main cause of the slave trade in the Congo."

"In these districts the natives are taxed exorbitant exorbitantly - ly exorbitantly and assessed by villages, instead of by. individuals."

"The managers of the com company - pany company have another graft: They exercise a monopoly over their district and the natives are not allowed to sell outside of the territorial bounds."