this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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Concensus is that is was not so much "the Belgians", but mostly king Leopold II and his band of mercenaries. The Belgian government fucked up by allowing it to persist for so long.
Nowadays the king is more a costly ceremonial position but i can imagine back then no one dared say no to their monarchs whims.
Bit of a weird situation in Belgium. There was a delicate balance of power between the monarch and the rest of the government. The Congo Free State was under the king's personal authority, until word of the atrocities got out and the Belgian parliament took it from him.
It would still not be "the Belgians" then, but the Belgian monarch and the government. At that time especially, that had very little to do with the Belgian people