In 1884, the Daily Telegraph described the Congo Free State with these words:
Leopold II…has knit adventurers, traders and missionaries of many races into one band of men, under the most illustrious of modern travellers (H.M. Stanley) to carry into the interior of Africa new ideas of law, order, humanity, and protection of the natives.
Looking back, J.F. Gjersø instead calls it a latifundium of terror — which, I suppose, makes more sense when you know that latifundium is Latin for plantation:
The excessive force exacted by the capitas were manifested through the severed hands, noses or ears they would have to exhibit to the officials for each spent cartridge, proving that they had not squandered the ammunition.
In case the men of the village fled, compliance would be enforced through hostage taking of the village chief, women or children. Making them susceptible to rape, starvation or disease and not released until a ransom of rubber or ivory was paid.
Also the methods of collection that had to be undertaken by the natives produced a significant death toll, as collectors would be required to travel farther as the local sources of rubber were depleted owing to the fragility of the Landolphia genus. This would make villagers susceptible to attacks from wild animals, starvation and disease or merely from the act of extracting the rubber itself from tall trees.
In The Predictioneer’s Game — and in his EconTalk podcast on The Political Economy of Power — Bruce Bueno de Mesquita makes the point that Leopold II of Belgium was, if anything, quite progressive back in Belgium, where he had to answer to his people.