Leopold II of Belgium

“{{cite journal |last1=Langbein |first1=John H. |date=January 1976 |title=The Historical Origins of the Sanction of Imprisonment for Serious Crime |journal=The Journal of Legal Studies |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=35–60 |url=http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/541 |jstor=724073|doi=10.1086/467543 |s2cid=29172387 }}”

“{{cite journal |last1=van den Braembussche |first1=Antoon |author-link=Antoon Van den Braembussche |year=2002 |title=The Silence of Belgium: Taboo and Trauma in Belgian Memory |journal=Yale French Studies |issue=102 |pages=34–52 |jstor=3090591}}”

“{{cite journal |last1=Peffer |first1=John |year=2008 |title=Snap of the Whip/Crossroads of Shame: Flogging, Photography, and the Representation of Atrocity in the Congo Reform Campaign|journal=Visual Anthropology Review |volume=24 |pages=55–77 |doi=10.1111/j.1548-7458.2008.00005.x}}”

“{{cite journal |last1=Grant |first1=Kevin |year=2001 |title=Christian critics of empire: Missionaries, lantern lectures, and the Congo reform campaign in Britain |journal=The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=27–58 |doi=10.1080/03086530108583118|s2cid=159607969 }}”

“Interview with King Leopold II Publishers' Press, 1906”

“"The Political Economy of Power" Interview with political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, with a discussion of Leopold halfway through”

“Official biography from the Belgian Royal Family website”

“Archive Léopold II, Royal museum of central Africa”

“International African Association”

“International Association of the Congo”

“Henry Morton Stanley”

“Belgian Colonial Empire”

“Congo Free State”

“The Committee of the British Baptist Missionary Society, of London, desire most respectfully to address Your Majesty as Sovereign of the Congo Free State, and to express their grateful acknowledgments for Your Majesty's gracious and helpful sympathy with all wisely considered efforts put forth for the enlightenment and uplifting of Your Majesty's native subjects living within the territories of the Congo Free State.”

“By 1891, six years into the attempt to build the EIC, the whole project was on the verge of bankruptcy. It would have been easy for Léopold to raise revenues by sanctioning imports of liquor that could be taxed or by levying fees on the number of huts in each village, both of which would have caused harm to the native population. A truly “greedy” king, as Hochschild repeatedly calls him, had many fiscal options that Léopold did not exercise.”

“I crossed Africa from East to West and from West to East, and I never saw any excesses committed. I do not think that from this point of view there is a single sovereign living who has done so much for humanity as Leopold II."”

“England would not have managed the Congo better than King Leopold has done if she had been mistress of it, as she might have become in 1877.”

“The apology cult must stop. But that does not mean that the atrocities of the past should be denied. This applies to Leopold II, but also to other culprits. And certainly for crimes that continue to this day in certain areas of the world such as slavery.”

“Tackling Leopold in Africa has set in motion a big movement – it must be a movement of human liberation all the world over.”

“To my beginnings in colonial life, almost forty years ago, I found my first major lesson in studying the work of King Leopold II in the Congo: model of creation, practical organization and director, broad and liberal initiative, understanding the material, moral and social needs of natives, from whom all colonial works should be inspired and which, for so many years and over so many points, served as a guide.”