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Picking up from the blood-soaked ivory trails of Part One, Part Two plunges deeper into King Leopold’s private empire as the hunger for profit shifts from elephant tusks to an even deadlier harvest, rubber. The bicycle boom and the rise of the motor car in Europe turn the Congo’s wild vines into gold, but every drop of latex is wrung from the land through terror. Villages are burned, women taken hostage, and men worked to death. Severed hands, collected in baskets as proof of punishment, become the grotesque currency of Leopold’s rule.

Meanwhile, in the salons of Brussels, the king polishes his humanitarian image, culminating in the spectacle of the 1897 Brussels International Exhibition. While visitors marvel at the exotic displays of “civilisation,” Congolese men, women, and children are paraded like animals in human zoos. The disconnect between Europe’s glittering façade and the atrocities in the jungle could not be starker — but for now, the king’s web of murder and greed remains intact.

But that’s all about to change.

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