King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: rubber terror, rubber slaves, wild rubber, Force Publique, United States, Congo River (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

King Leopold of Belgium, writes historian Adam Hochschild in this grim history, did not much care for his native land or his subjects, all of which he dismissed as "small country, small people." Even so, he searched the globe to find a colony for Belgium, frantic that the scramble of other European powers for overseas dominions in Africa and Asia would leave nothing for himself or his people. When he eventually found a suitable location in what would become the Belgian Congo, later known as Zaire and now simply as Congo, Leopold set about establishing a rule of terror that would culminate in the deaths of 4 to 8 million indigenous people, "a death toll," Hochschild writes, "of Holocaust dimensions." Those who survived went to work mining ore or harvesting rubber, yielding a fortune for the Belgian king, who salted away billions of dollars in hidden bank accounts throughout the world. Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Hochschild's superb, engrossing chronicle focuses on one of the great, horrifying and nearly forgotten crimes of the century: greedy Belgian King Leopold II's rape of the Congo, the vast colony he seized as his private fiefdom in 1885. Until 1909, he used his mercenary army to force slaves into mines and rubber plantations, burn villages, mete out sadistic punishments, including dismemberment, and committ mass murder. The hero of Hochschild's highly personal, even gossipy narrative is Liverpool shipping agent Edmund Morel, who, having stumbled on evidence of Leopold's atrocities, became an investigative journalist and launched an international Congo reform movement with support from Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington and Arthur Conan Doyle. Other pivotal figures include Joseph Conrad, whose disgust with Leopold's "civilizing mission" led to Heart of Darkness; and black American journalist George Washington Williams, who wrote the first systematic indictment of Leopold's colonial regime in 1890. Hochschild (The Unquiet Ghost) documents the machinations of Leopold, who won over President Chester A. Arthur and bribed a U.S. senator to derail Congo protest resolutions. He also draws provocative parallels between Leopold's predatory one-man rule and the strongarm tactics of Mobuto Sese Seko, who ruled the successor state of Zaire. But most of all it is a story of the bestiality of one challenged by the heroism of many in an increasingly democratic world. 30 illustrations. Agent: Georges Borchardt. First serial rights to American Scholar. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618001905
• ISBN-13: 978-0618001903
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (197 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,853 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 110 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The horror! The horror!", August 27, 2005

By	D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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Many of us who have read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" think of it as an allegory tinged with racism--a tale of a European, Kurtz, who has abandoned the restraints of civilization and has surrendered himself to the barbaric despotism and primitive rituals innate to Africa. Yet Hochschild spends a full chapter of his excellent history reminding us of the novel's historical context: the figure of Kurtz is based on at least one real-life colonial administrator, and the barbarity is not one that is indigenous to Africa but imported from Europe. Conrad's contemporary readers understood that his novel was a condemnation more of colonial tyranny rather than of African primitivism.

And the ringleader of these gang of hoodlums who invaded the Congo and massacred its inhabitants was King Leopold II of Belgium. In a tour de force of characterization, Hochschild portrays Leopold as a petulant and greedy monster who decided at a young age that the way to wealth was ownership of an African colony and the subjugation of its inhabitants. Leopold initially made his profits through the exportation of ivory, but his bureaucrats struck gold with the expansion of the international rubber market.

The victims were the natives, who lost not only their land and their freedom, but often their lives. There is no pretty way for Hochschild to tell this story: Leopold's officials used unbelievably harsh methods to force the locals to collect rubber--all in the name of bringing them European civilization, Christian charity, and a Western work ethic. In addition to taking wives and children hostage (in subhuman conditions) until the men made their quotas, soldiers would torture or kill the inhabitants if they faltered. One of the most grisly aspects of this calculatingly orchestrated version of modern slavery was the severing of hands--and their collection into baskets as proof of killings--as a means of terrorizing the population. The wonder of it all is that Leopold and his agents managed to keep most of these deeds secret and even disguised his colony as a charity for the benefit of "pagan" African natives.

Yet Hochschild's narrative is not simply a gruesome account of the horrors of Leopold's personal fiefdom--which the king himself never once visited. The most fascinating part of this tale is the creation of what might reasonably be called the world's first human rights movement. George Washington Williams, the first and perhaps bravest campaigner, initially sounded the alarm, but he was ignored largely because he was African American. Later rabble-rousers had better success: E. D. Morel, whose suspicions were aroused when he noticed the imbalance of trade to the colony while working at the docks; William Sheppard, a Presbyterian missionary who provided first-hand accounts; and Roger Casement, a British consul who became an important anti-Leopold activist (and who later became an significant figure in the Irish independence movement whose closeted homosexuality provides a sad coda to his life's story).

One of Hochschild's themes is astonishment, only a century later, at the world's amnesia (including his own) regarding these atrocities. Even the thousands of annual visitors to Laeken's Royal Greenhouses and Winter Palace, Leopold's extravagant and luxurious monument, do not realize that this park was literally built with the lives of millions of Africans. Fortunately, thanks to Hochschild's best-selling book, as well as similar reassessments published by European historians during the last twenty years, even the briefest biographical accounts about King Leopold II now portray him as he was: a brutal and gluttonous colonial thug.

77 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing and horrifying!, May 27, 2000

By	Chad Bagley "Chad" (Shanghai China/Provo, UT) - See all my reviews

One of the best indictments of colonialism that I have ever read, King Leopold's Ghost is obsensively a book about power and greed.

Leopold, a King of a small country and a man with very limited powers, decides that he desperately needs to find a colony where he can reign supreme. He finally discovers Central Africa, a place that hasn't been gobbled up by the other colonizing powers, and claims it for his own. What ensues is one of the most brutal subjegations in recorded history. King Leopold's reign in the Congo was so vicious that even the other colonial powers of the day had to condemn him.This book is the story of a man that was so greedy- even the pretext of humanitarian aims were summarily ignored during his rule.

One of the things I liked most about this book is that it deflates the hero status of people like Henry Morton Stanley- an insecure man who shot Africans for sport. In his place, Hochschild has given us people like E.D.Morel, William Sheppard, Roger Casement and Hezekiah Shanu to look up to. People who tried to make a difference when it wasn't popular to do so.

This book is the very sad story of how the ego of one puny despot lead to the deaths of millions.

Informative, honest and well written- I highly recommend this book.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Epitome of Historical Tragedy, September 28, 2000

By A Customer

King Leopold's Ghost provides a vivid account of an episode in the modern history of Africa that was the epitome of tragedy. In this book, Adam Hochschild concerns himself with the looting of the Congo and the destruction of its peoples by a cousin of Queen Victoria, King Leopold of the Belgians.

The story is told through a succession of biographical sketches of the principal villains and heroes, the former being Leopold's accomplices and the latter his opponents. Hochschild, though bent on illuminating a great human tragedy, allows himself and the reader several curious and even piquant digressions. The first suspicion that these digressions are only there to spice up the story is belied when the author manages to make them highly relevant, such as the connection between Leopold's unsuccessful wedding night and his all-consuming desire in the Congo.

Hochschild begins this book by reminding us of the figure of Affonso I, the sixteenth-century Christian King of the Kongo, pious son of a ruler converted by the Portuguese. Affonso wrote a series of eloquent letters to the Portuguese king complaining that the slave traders were depopulating his kingdom and even seizing members of the royal family. The Portuguese, however, had meanwhile discovered a traffic more profitable than gold and they were not about to give it up.

Leopold, the figurehead monarch of a small country, successfully acquired a realm larger than France, Italy and Germany combined. For many of the new imperial powers, collecting colonies was not particularly profitable, but Leopold, through a strange mix of luck, cunning, ruthlessness and breathtaking hypocrisy, managed to gain a huge fortune.

Leopold favored a quick killing in the Congo because it was clear that the boom in wild rubber would eventually be overtaken by the planting of commercial rubber plantations. He joined forces with others to suppress forces within the Congo and bleed it dry. Leopold's Force Publique had an officer corps of well-paid desperadoes recruited from all over Europe, characters resembling Kurtz in Conrad's chilling Heart of Darkness.

Leopold's vicious experiment combined some of the latest techniques of European industry steamboats, machine guns and railways with a sure understanding of traditional African bondage and brigandage, and of the ways they could be bent to his purpose. The slave-traders became the best recruiters both for the Force Publique and for the porters who carried the rubber to the river or to the railhead.

Sadly, Leopold's enterprise enjoyed the blessing of the United States despite the fact that it flew in the face of its supposed anti-slavery, anti-colonial and republican principles. The indulgence of Europe's colonial powers was less surprising given the rampant racism and imperialism of the time.

There were a few anti-slavery zealots who objected to the "magnificent work of exploration" with which Leopold was credited. (Interestingly, Leopold maintained tight personal control without ever going near the Congo.) The journalist George W. Williams wrote an angry pamphlet denouncing Leopold's brutal regime but died shortly afterwards.

Hochschild does not end this book on a comfortable note. Conditions in the Congo barely improved, and the harsh but effective methods pioneered by Leopold were taken up by yet other colonial powers. The outbreak of war in Europe soon furnished its own lessons in industrial slaughter, making Leopold's war on the people of the Congo seem like little more than a dress rehearsal.

Although tragic, King Leopold's Ghost is an exemplary piece of history writing: urgent, vivid and most compelling.