In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million—all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. … humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold’s Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold’s Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo—too long forgotten—onto the conscience of the West.
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If you don’t know the history of the Congo, you’ll learn it from this book in exquisite and provocative detail, and you’ll be angry, especially so when you learn it’s on-going.
This horrifying description of the depredations of King Leopold of Belgium to make himself important in the world’s eyes was well-researched but difficult to read because of the murders and cruelty he imposed on the natives of the Congo through the white men he sent to the Congo to reap the riches of the ivory and rubber trade.
History that reads like a page-turning thriller, although the thrills are in the vein of, “did I read that correctly?” After you‘ve completed this tremendously researched exploration of a particular episode of colonialism occurring amidst a backdrop of widespread, fervent European and American colonialist activities, pause and consider whether we …
Compelling and engaging history of the colonization of the Congo and the first international human rights movement to combat the exploitation and murder of the native Congolese people.
One can learn the history of how Belgium gained many riches by making slaves out of Africans around the Congo region. It is horrific history and will make the reader aware that America was not the only nation that exploited Africans.
Brilliant expose of the horrors of the King of Belgium’s wholesale ruin of the Congo for his personal gain. The story is told from the vantage point of a French clerk who discovered the slave state and blew the whistle thus marking the genesis of the modern civil rights movement. One of my favorite books.
This reads like a novel and is very compelling. I’d never heard of this chapter of history.
Wonderful, compelling history, beautifully written.
Compelling and revealing.
A well-researched and documented history of a horrific chapter in human history which also saw the beginnings of a new movement in human endeavor. Hochschild documents the ravages of colonialism in one of its most extreme examples as he relates the story of King Leopold of Belgium’s deceptive encroachment into the Congo under the guise of a faux …
A history that needed to be told.
An accessible look at a forgotten chapter in human evil.
It took a lot of pages for this book about the Congo to actually arrive on the continent of Africa. It was an interesting history but none of the actors actually came to life in the telling, not even King Leopold. Unfortunately, it is the best book on this episode of African history.