The Belgian colonial empire consisted of three colonies owned by Belgium between 1885 and 1962.
The empire was born as a private property assured by the other colonial powers to the king of Belgium Leopold II, rather than by initiative of the Belgian state, in fact Leopold was the sovereign of both Belgium and the Free State of Congo, until the Belgian state assumed sovereignty direct on the Congo only in 1908, for reaction to the bad administration of the sovereign.
The "Free State of the Congo" was a private domain that the monarch managed without any control, not even by the Belgian government. All the land not cultivated was declared property of the state (ie the king), which had an absolute monopoly on its resources of immediate value (ivory and rubber) and on the minerals of the subsoil, whose exploitation was granted to various companies, with agreements rent for 99 years.
The discovery of the rubber vulcanization process and its industrial use made that colony one of the world's largest reservoirs of this product essential for the industrialization of the West.
The Belgian colonial empire was expanded at the end of the First World War, with the country being given the mandate on the former German colonies of Rwanda-Urundi.
The Belgian colonial territories gained independence between 1960 and 1962.
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