The Congo Free State operated as a corporate state privately controlled by Leopold II, although he never personally visited the state. On, after the closure of the Berlin Conference, the king announced that he planned to name his possessions 'the Congo Free State', an appellation which was not yet used at the Berlin Conference and which officially replaced 'International Association of the Congo' on 1 August 1885. Via the International Association of the Congo, he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo basin. Leopold II was able to procure the region by convincing other Eurasian states at the Berlin Conference that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade. It was ruled personally by Leopold II and not by the government of Belgium, of which he was the constitutional monarch. The Congo Free State was a large state in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908.

Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries.Emperor Charles V extended the personal union of the Seventeen Provinces in the 1540s, making it far more than a personal union by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 and increased his influence over the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the region into Middle and West Francia and therefore into a set of more or less independent fiefdoms which, during the Middle Ages, were vassals either of the King of France or of the Holy Roman Emperor. A gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings. The name 'Belgium' is derived from Gallia Belgica, a Roman province in the northernmost part of Gaul that before Roman invasion in 100 BC, was inhabited by the Belgae, a mix of Celtic and Germanic peoples.

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