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Congo: States
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The Parliament of Belgium annexed the Congo Free State and took over its administration on November 15, 1908, four years after the Casement Report and six years after the first printing of Heart of Darkness. However, the international scrutiny was no major loss to Leopold or the concessionary companies in the Belgian Congo. By then Southeast Asia and Latin America had become lower-cost producers of rubber. Along with the effects of resource depletion in the Congo, international commodity prices had fallen to a level that rendered Congolese extraction unprofitable. The state took over Léopold's private dominion and bailed out the company, but the rubber boom was already over.
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Leopold II ... expropriated the Ivory, Rubber, Copper, Gold, and Diamond resources of Congo; and he often abused the African workers who did the manual labor (forced labor that is) for his imperialistic aspirations. Of course much of Europe protested his practices and this eventually led to the decline of his powers in Africa. A statement quoted from http://www.cusd.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/scramble/leopold.htm reads as follows:
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By about 1000 the Bantu had settled most of the Congo, reducing the area occupied by the Pygmies. By the early 2d millennium the Bantu had increased considerably in number and were coalescing into states, some of which governed large areas and had complex administrative structures. Most of the states were ruled by a monarch, whose authority, although considerable, was checked by a council of high civil servants and elders. Notable among the states were the kingdom of Kongo (founded in the 14th cent.), centered in modern N Angola but including extreme W Congo and a Luba empire (founded in the early 16th cent.), centered around lakes Kisale and Upemba in central Katanga.
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The European and U.S. press agencies exposed the conditions in the Congo Free State to the public in 1900. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic maneuvers led to the end of Leopold II's rule and to the annexation of the Congo as a colony of Belgium, known as the Belgian Congo.
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