Progressive Politics

In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber. She was not unique - chopping off the limbs of enslaved Congolese was a routine form of retribution when Leopold II's quotas were not met.

Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. Estimates suggest more than 50% died there.

Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number.

Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets.

He built the Africa Museum in the grounds of his palace at Tervuren, with a "human zoo" in the grounds featuring 267 Congolese people as exhibits.

Let's look through US history for our child slave soldier colonies.

But first modern Belgiums take on its past!

former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel and the father of future prime minister Charles Michel, called Leopold "a hero with ambitions for a small country like Belgium".

In a TV debate this week, a former president of the Free University of Brussels, Hervé Hasquin, argued there were "positive aspects" to colonisation, listing the health system, infrastructure, and primary education he said Belgium brought to Central Africa