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

This is an amazing and well-researched deep dive into the genocidal assault, mass slavery, and extractive economy that was the Belgian Congo. In three acts, King Leopold of Belgium, finally gets the foreign land he seeks to wring out and obtains the Belgian Congo, later known as Zaire and now simply as Congo. For the second act and the closing decade of the 19th Century, Leopold enacts a rule of terror resulting in the deaths of 4 to 8 million indigenous people, "a death toll," Hochschild writes, "of Holocaust dimensions." The final act finds, largely in the US and UK, an activist front that exposes the rapacious tactics over the 20th Century's first decade.

Along the way we meet Joseph Conrad as a steamboat captain, a possible basis show more for Kurtz in Léon Rom, the oddball characters drawn to lawless frontiers like the sketchy Morton Stanley and more.

It is unfortunate that this audio book has many repeated lines. It is boundaries between sessions we done so the last line of the previous session became the first line of the following session. Then, sloppy editing brought these together like rail cars, not deleting one of the lines in the connection. show less

Having only a passing familiarity with the history of the European colonization of sub-Saharan Africa, I must admit to being somewhat shocked at the raw body count associated with Leopold's rape of the Congo. As many have asked, "How could the death of up to 10 million people become nothing more than a footnote to this historical era?"

The subjugation and plundering of large areas of the region was certainly not an activity that began and ended with Leopold, however, the scope of his atrocities coupled with the other aspects of his pathetic life identify him as an utterly miserable excuse for a human being.

That being said, however, it should be noted (as the author does at the end of his work), that in many ways, Leopold was a man of show more his times. If his body count was higher than that of French, German and English colonies, this was largely due to the fact that the rubber resource was more densely located in his area of control. What matter the body count if the value of the bodies were negligible? Even many of the "heroes" identified in the book, looked with disgust and abhorence at the subjects of Leopold's crimes against humanity.

However, it is these very individuals, who took on at great risk the powers involved in the carnage that make up the story of this period. A willingness to protect the defenseless, at great personal sacrifice and with virtually no hope of either success or reward is what identifies the finest among us. show less

This is a difficult history, meticulously researched & well-written. The time: roughly 1859-1924, but with continuities that extend backward and forward from those dates.
Yet another instance of gross greed, power hungering and mongering, and heinous acts on the part of both individuals and groups. Once again, no one is truly innocent, although some are certainly more bloodthirsty, greedy and cruel than others.
The heroes of this history: E.D. Morel, Roger Casement, William Shepard & George Washington Williams--none without flaws, but all with a well-developed sense of and commitment to moral outrage in conjunction with action to remedy the causes of that outrage.
The only women of significance: E.D. Morel's wife Mary & the missionary as show more witness and photographer Alice Seeley Harris.

One of the book's main themes is "the politics of forgetting." How what went on in the Congo when it was King Leopold II's private kingdom to pillage was so readily brushed under the carpet in Belgium and elsewhere, once it was wrested from him. In part, because similar abuses, even if conducted with lesser intensity, continued when Congo became a Belgian colony & then an independent nation ruled by the autocratic Mobutu after the U.S. & its allies supported the assassination of Lumumba. W.G. Sebald's books concern themselves with a similar politics and process of forgetting, the one that took place in Germany after WWII. In that instance, in the years immediately following the war, Germans decided to "move on" & "forget" both what they had done (the Holocaust) and what had been done to them (Dresden, etc.).

The history of the Congo is not a happy one, then or since. During Leopold's reign the population was decimated by half-an estimated 10 million people were murdered, starved, worked to death or maimed (there was a widespread practice of severing hands from victims both dead and alive & the application of the chicotte in floggings that often resulted in death).

Hochschild (& the reader) obviously greatly admires the heroes mentioned above, sees them as role models of energy, commitment & moral outrage translated into action & considers them & the organizations they founded as models for present-day Human Rights & liberation movements as well as such organizations as Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders. On the other hand, he admits that it is difficult to assess whether or not their efforts were substantively "successful" where the Congo itself is concerned. Congo, and much of Africa, is as readily pillaged today as it was then. People and environment, in dire straits, remain vulnerable to the Market & to the greed and political maneuvering of both post-colonial despots and international political and economic interests. show less

No doubt it's important when writing a book about a colonial genocide like this that the author makes clear the viewpoint through which we are viewing it, and what the long term consequences are. Hochschild minces no words in lamenting the lack of Congolese voices we have during this period, between Leopold's entry into the Congo during the 1870's until after his death in 1909, and it's in no small part because of this that the facts of Leopold's reign have gone largely unnoticed or received indifferently until well past the turn of the 21st century. Hochschild is also sober about the outcomes of the humanitarian movement that sprung up in the late 1890's, recognizing the tangible impact it had on stifling the more hardcore crimes show more against Congolese communities, and at the same time acknowledging the continued state of colonization that the area experienced until it's independence from Belgium 1960, when it was cast off into a totally different if no less dangerous jungle of global politics, completely unprepared to become solvent as a nation.

The sheer amount of wealth extracted from the region by colonial powers - whether by ivory, rubber, or human beings themselves - through the use of forced labor and terror is staggering. Like icing on a shit cake, this wealth was never returned to the place and the people it was taken from, in this case mostly ending up immortalized in the monuments, plazas, and chateaus that Leopold constructed and even now serves as the fodder that tourists go to Belgium in search of. What a strange case this was, when it comes to European colonialism. The brutality is much the same, but I'm unaware of another royalty that was able to subvert his way into personally controlling and benefiting from such an atrocity, all the while under the guise of humanitarianism. In this way, Hochschild describes why Leopold's reign is notable amongst a dark sea of similar crimes against humanity.

Hochschild strikes a fine balance between narrative storytelling and factual accounting. This is really my ideal mix of the two; enough narrative to keep me engaged through its density, but enough reality to make me feel like I'm actually learning something, that my time isn't being wasted by prose that's better suited to a work of fiction. In my estimation one of the hallmarks of really good works of non-fiction are also the points of interest that get churned up that the author doesn't have to space to fully explore, that beg you for further research. These little bits of gravy are plentiful here, Roger Casement, E.D. Morel, and George Washington Williams among them, not to mention the numerous African cultures mentioned. show less

This is the engrossing, well-told account of an incredibly appalling bit of human history.

Spoiler: King Leopold II of Belgium is the inexcusable, unapologetic villain of the piece. Described as “too intelligent to hide it,” there’s a sort of horrifying fascination to observing the cleverness with which he manipulates charitable organizations, religious organizations, governments, and the press into supporting his infamous scheme.

First, he flatters the insecure Henry Stanley (the African explorer of “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” fame) into re-entering Africa for the purpose of mapping the theretofore unclaimed lands of the Congo. Then he fans the flames of European “Arab slavery” hysteria (“Arab countries are engaging show more in slavery! The horror!” cry countries actively enforcing forced labor in their own colonies) to convince the world that Belgium’s stewardship of the region is a necessary humanitarian mission, winning himself an international reputation as an enlightened leader. And then he sets about exploiting his new colonial holdings in the most ruthless imaginable way, implementing a system of quotas and incentives (initially for ivory, later for rubber) guaranteed to reward and perpetuate atrocities to include slavery, torture, kidnapping, maiming, rape, and murder. Estimates suggest that Leopold’s activities likely led to 10M deaths.

Fortunately, about halfway through the book – just when you’re questioning whether humanity as a species deserves to continue to exist – Hochschild’s narrative transitions to the efforts taken by reformers to expose the horrors of Leopold’s colonial empire. God bless number crunchers: it’s one of these, a fellow named Morel, who finally figures out that if ships returning from Africa stuffed with ivory and rubber are returning to Africa stuffed not with trading goods but with guns and ammunition, what’s happening almost certainly isn’t “free trade.” A man of inexhaustible energy and cleverness (he hits as very Alexander Hamilton-ish), he orchestrates the global campaign that finally exposes Leopold’s horrific empire.

Not that this resulted in the immediate dismantling of the abominable system Leopold set in motion – it was the coming of cultivated rubber plantations that mostly contributed to that. Nor did this prevent other European countries from continuing similar abhorrent practices in their own African and East Indian colonies. Which is worth mentioning because it reminds us why books like this one – authoritative, frank, lucid, entertaining – are important. Read it for the entertainment value, but also pay attention to the lessons it has to teach us - about the lengths immoral, narcassistic, greedy leaders will go to in order to monetize their power, but also about how the courage and passion of a few individuals can expose corruption and alter the course of history. show less

King Leopold II of Belgium managed to convince the world (for a while) that he was a humanitarian and philanthropist. Meanwhile, he was extracting the riches of the Congo for personal gain and ruthlessly exploiting the Congolese, with the death toll eventually estimated at ten million people. This book provides a history of the Congo from pre-colonial times through Mobutu’s regime. Through the efforts George Washington Williams, Rev. William Sheppard, E.D. Morel, and Roger Casement, the abuses became widely known and Leopold was forced to relinquish control to Belgium. These main paid a high price for their activism in the area of human rights.

“The Congo reform movement had two achievements that lasted far beyond its own time. show more First…it put a remarkable amount of information on the historical record. And there it remains, despite the strenuous efforts of Leopold and his admirers, then and now, to burn it, to ignore it, to distort it with mythologizing. That record of truth matters, especially for a continent whose history is otherwise so filled with silences. [Second]… among its supporters, it kept alive a tradition, a way of seeing the world, a human capacity for outrage at pain inflicted on another human being, no matter whether that pain is inflicted on someone of another color, in another country, at another end of the earth.”

This book is an engagingly written, logically organized history that provides a revealing analysis of the colonization of the Congo, and the oppression of its inhabitants. Hochschild relates Leopold’s activities in the Congo to the larger picture of other countries’ exploitation of Africa. He also gives the reader a good idea of why this part of history had previously been largely forgotten (or covered up).

This is the type of history book that reads as a story of man’s inhumanity to man. It is meticulously footnoted, and the author has attempted to use primary sources as much as possible. His only regret is that there is such limited source material from the Congolese tribes. The photos are heart-breaking. Highly recommended. show less

I let this book sit on my shelves because I thought that it'd be too depressing to read. When I started, I couldn't put it down. The story of the Belgian Congo and the broader colonization of Africa is one of the most fascinating and horrible in history, and Hochschild makes King Leopold's Ghost come alive.

Late into the 19th century, Africa was still the 'dark continent', unmapped and uncontrolled by European powers. The great Congo river was blocked by falls a few hundred miles inland, and the slave traders camped out in disease ridden coastal towns were content to let slaves come to them. A few men of immense will and ambition broke that system. Henry Morton Stanley was a Welsh orphan, a man who invented his own past, and became a show more famous explorer. His expeditions could best be described as search and destroy operations, as he lead columns of enslaved porters into the African wilderness, blasting away at anything, animal or human, that crossed his path. His expedition to the headwaters of the Congo found thousands of miles of navigable river above the Congo rapids. King Leopold of Belgium was ruler of a small country with grand ambitions. In a clever series of diplomatic manuevers in the 1880s, he organized millions of square miles of internal Africa as a personal colony, responsible only to him.

And then he set out exploiting that. The system is simple. Get a few people from Europe ready for a grand adventure. Give them rifles, bullets, and a platoon of enslaved Africans separated from their home. Tell them to gather ivory by any means necessary, including hostage taking, repeated application of the chicotte (a kind of whip made out of hippo hide), and summary executions. When ivory began to fail, a rubber boom provide an even greater impetus to murder for the sake of profit. Conrad's Heart of Darkness and his Mr. Kurtz only scratch the surface of the mass murder and disfigurement of the Congo. At one point, soldiers were required to show a severed hand for every bullet expended, leading to a brisk trade in hands.

Leopold's Congo was brought down by public opprobrium, lead by the English abolistionist E.D. Morel, and substantially aided by a pair of African American missionaries, George Washing Williams and William Sheppard. These men revealed to the world what was happening in the Congo, and the immensity of the crime. Leopold was forced to relinquish the Congo a year before his death, but not before extracting one last concession from the Belgian people.

Since its publication, Hochschild's book has provoke a reexamination of King Leopold, and European colonialism more broadly. This is right. This is one of the best books I've read all year. Absolutely recommended. show less