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People: Emperor Huizong of Song
Topic: League of Cambrai, War of the
Location: Ferghana > Fergana Ferghana Uzbekistan

Leopold II soon proceeds to transform the …

Years: 1876 - 1887

Leopold II soon proceeds to transform the Congo Free State into an effective instrument of colonial hegemony in order to meet the conference's legal requirement of "effective occupation."

Indigenous conscripts are promptly recruited into his nascent army, the Force Publique, manned by European officers.

A corps of European administrators is hastily assembled, which by 1906 will number fifteen hundred people; and a skeletal transportation grid will eventually be assembled to provide the necessary links between the coast and the interior.

The cost of the enterprise will prove far higher than had been anticipated, however, as the penetration of the vast hinterland cannot be achieved except at the price of numerous military campaigns.

Some of these campaigns will result in the suppression or expulsion of the previously powerful Afro-Arab slave traders and ivory merchants.

Only through the ruthless and massive suppression of opposition and exploitation of African labor can Leopold II hold and exploit his personal fiefdom.

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Middle Africa (1876 - 1887)
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Middle Africa (1876 - 1887)