| abstract | - The Congo Free State () was a large area in Central Africa that was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Leopold was able to procure the region by convincing the international community that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work; through the use of several smokescreen organizations he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo Basin. Leopold eventually allowed the concept of a philanthropic "Association" involved in the Congo to end; on May 29, 1885, the king named his new colony the Congo Free State. The state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo and existed from 1885 to 1908. Leopold's reign in the Congo eventually earned infamy due to the increasingly brutal mistreatment of the local peoples and plunder of natural resources. Leopold extracted ivory, rubber, and minerals in the upper Congo basin for sale on the world market, even though his nominal purpose in the region was to uplift the local people and develop the area. Under Leopold II's administration, the Congo Free State became one of the greatest international scandals of the early 20th century. The report of the British Consul Roger Casement led to the arrest and punishment of white officials who had been responsible for killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1903 (including one Belgian national for causing the shooting of at least 122 Congolese people).[citation needed] The loss of life and atrocities inspired literature such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and raised outcries. Excess deaths in this period are believed to number up to 10 million. One view is that the forced labour system directly and indirectly eliminated 20% of the population. European and U.S. reformers exposed the conditions in the Congo Free State to the public through the Congo Reform Association. Also active in exposing the activities of the Congo Free State was the author Arthur Conan Doyle, whose book The Crime of the Congo was widely read in the early 1900s. By 1908, public pressure and diplomatic manoeuvres 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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