What was the motivation to take over the Congo?

Leopold II, the King of Belgium, took over the Congo, then known as the Congo Free State, in 1885 as the head of a group of private investors. Leopold was drawn to the region in part because he had contracted with the explorer Sir Henry Stanley, the first European to explore the Congo. In the 1870s, Leopold began to fund expeditions to open up stations along the Congo to European trade, and Belgian traders began to establish ties with local rulers. Leopold was eager to reap a huge profit from trading with locals for ivory, palm oil, and especially rubber. Worldwide demand for rubber was high, and there were immense profits to be made by harvesting rubber. The plant was difficult to collect, and Leopold began to turn to forced labor and genocide to get the rubber.

Under Leopold's rule, treatment of the Congolese became brutal. Local workers were forced to meet high quotas for the collection of rubber, and they were beaten if they did not meet these requirements. At times, their relatives were taken hostage with the threat that they would not be released until the workers had met their quotas. Leopold's private army brutalized locals and even cut off the hands of local people, including children, in an attempt to repress the Congolese. Eventually, Leopold's brutality, which led to the deaths of millions, was exposed, in part by the Congo Reform Association, and in 1908, he was forced to hand over control of the Congo Free State to the Belgian parliament. At this point, the country became known as the Belgian Congo, and Leopold died in 1909 in disgrace.