ABSTRACT
Unlike European states in the sixteenth century that had to confront external rivals, Leopold II had to face only internal rivals in building the Congo Free State (CFS). Once he had partly defeated and co-opted most local challengers, the king began to rally the Belgian private sector to help him build physical infrastructure in exchange for vast land concessions. In addition to the Catholic Church, King Leopold relied on his undisciplined army to collect rubber and other wild products as taxes since his patrimonial administration was quite small in the early days of state formation. As an absolute monarch with a small winning coalition, the state-building process in the CFS took the form of excessive extraction similar to slavery. On balance, King Leopold only built a rudimentary state based on an economy of plunder that destroyed long-term economic development prospects. Although the number of people who lost their lives either directly as a result of the army’s raw and brutal force or indirectly as the consequence of diseases and other elements, King Leopold II remained one of the most murderous rulers in the world history.
