King Leopold II
King Leopold II was the Belgium king who took over the Congo and created Belgium Congo in 1908. Before doing this he made Belgium his private resource center.(Killer-Leopold,www) King Leopold felt that Belgium should become a colonel power as he states in this quote, "I believe that the moment is come for us to extend our territories. I think that we must lose no time, under penalty of seeing the few remaining good positions seized upon by more enterprising nations than our own,"(Leopold II). This is what he did in the Congo. He changed it into a place where his violent army ran everything, and he made the people of the Congo out to be rabid cannibals. (Killer-Leopold,www)
King Leopold in The Poisonwood Bible
"Well. The Belgians in general. He's very mad about all the nice things they said earlier about King Leopold. Who was a bad egg, I'll admit that."( Kingsolver 183).
| This quote from the book is of Mrs. Underdown speaking to Leah during Patrice Lumumba's speech. Mrs. Underdown was in fact a Belgian lady saying this about a great Belgian king. The author uses fictional characters to create the point of him being such a horrid man.
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