 With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885.By the turn of the century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908.Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial trinity" ("trinité coloniale") of state, missionary and private-company interests.