Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost": Uncovering the Greed, Terror, and Heroism of Colonial Africa

Amazon Customer: This came quickly and other than a slight bend in the cover is in perfect condition.

United States on Aug 29, 2023

RCL: This is an excellent book on the subject of Belgium Congo. I did not know this happened until I was watching a documentary on genocide and the Congo was mentioned. I began researching to find information and found Heart of Darkness and this book. What a sad chapter(s) in history along with the American Indians, worldwide slavery, and multiple incidents of genocide.

United States on Aug 06, 2023

Diana Messerschmidt: Hugely engaging book, so well written, with sharp characterization (all the characters are so well described they come to life) and great observations and insight. I could not put this down, and so well-written that it was like reading good literary fiction rather than a non-fiction. Move over Joseph Conrad!

United Kingdom on Aug 02, 2023

John Nambu: Actually I read this book because I have become interested in hippopotami and wanted to know more about the lands where they live. This was a truly depressing book. When I was growing up, we were taught that colonialism was a good thing, where more advanced nations governed peoples who were unable to do so themselves; though they may have extracted profits from the natural resources and labor of the people, again the native peoples would have been incapable of extracting these resources, and the colonizers after granting independence, left behind a legacy of education, institutions, and infrastructure.
It is striking to me that Leopold not only exploited, tortured and literally half exterminated the native population of the Congo, he also concealed the financial structure of his enterprise from his own nation, reaping all of the profit, while passing the expenses of his ventures onto the Belgian people. Kaiser Wilhelm II may have had his faults, but his opinion of Leopold quoted by the author is a marvel of concision and accuracy--Satan and Mammon in one man.
Perhaps even more scary is that Leopold never set foot in the Congo, and that the physical oppression was committed...

United States on Jul 04, 2023

katewickham: I'm slightly over a third of the way through with the story (excluding all the after story add-ons) and I'll finish but I've begun to wonder about the accuracy. Earlier I encountered two minor flaws that I didn't highlight. Then I got to Cologne that only exists to non citizens. The city's name is Köln and a history should use the proper name, even it the author feels the need to footnote that some noncitizens refer to it as "Cologne."

Now I've come to "Where There Aren't No Ten Commandments." Grammatically that means "Where Are Ten Commandments." Why? The leading characters are from different countries and cultures, but none have displayed a lack of education.

United States on Apr 02, 2023

dmiguer: This is a tragic history of the Belgian Congo at the turn of the 19th century as the Scramble for Africa began. Adam Hochschild is an American writer and journalist for the New Yorker, NY Times, NY Review of Books and Times Literary Supplement. His work has combined history with human rights advocacy. The events in this book are a shameful chapter in the era of colonialism, of which there were many. It is portrait of Leopold likely to inspire loathing in any who reads it. Beside an account of a colony, it archives the lives of activists who fought to free it.

In 1482 Portuguese sailors braved the ocean beyond the Canary Islands and discovered a fresh water flow off the coast of Central Africa. Following a silt trail, fighting a fast current, they found the mouth of a vast river. Nine years later priests and emissaries arrived and began the first European settlement in a black African kingdom. Small scale slavery existed but a booming slave trade developed with the Americas to grow cotton and cane. During the 19th century slavery was abolished in Britain and America yet continued in Afro-Arab commerce.

Leopold II (1835-1909) was the King of the Belgians and obsessed...

United States on Feb 11, 2021

Vasily Pugh: The first thing to state - and something that I was unaware of - was that the original book was published thirty years ago. This means that the closing chapter acts as an update of sorts and is almost worth reading first. It brings the story up to date and shows how some things haven't changed.

One of the darkest chapters in human history, 'King Leopold's Ghost recounts the egregious land-grab by King Leopold of Belgium towards the riches of the Congo. Having felt left out by the colonial profits of surrounding countries, Leopold formulated a plan to access one of the most inaccessible parts of Africa. Leopold's brand of colonialism was especially vicious though and some of the crimes are hard to read.
Importantly, I say 'human' instead of 'White', 'Black', 'Colonial' as one thing we learn is that no one race had patent rights on slavery, despite w might be taught today. The book highlights how the indigenous tribes had quite a fruitful line in slavery before explorers arrived; nowhere near as rapacious or structured, but just as nasty. One tribe mentioned used severed heads as a kind of currency - if you ran out of funds, simply lop a slave's head off.

Of course...

United Kingdom on Oct 16, 2020

Christopher: A very engaging and informative popular history covering the conception, birth and life of King Leopold II's personal colony in central Africa: The Congo Free State (1885 - 1908). This book will make great reading for anyone interested in any one of the following: European colonialism, human rights movements, constitutional monarchs, and, of course, central Africa at the end of the 19th century. Hochschild presents this history primarily through narratives following some of the key figures of the era, most notable among them being Leopold himself. As such, the first third of the book takes place largely in Europe and covers Leopold's diplomatic maneuvering as he attempts to create and gain recognition for his envisioned colony. This portion of the book was excellent. The author does a great job of showing how a constitutional monarch in a small country with a government uninterested in colonial adventures was able to create and ultimately gain diplomatic recognition of his own personal colony. Hochschild also provides a surprisingly compelling account of Leopold II himself too - a figure I was initially fairly uninterested in but who I ultimately became fascinated by. The sections...

Canada on May 16, 2020

Reginald C.: Excellent historical accounting of what happened to the Congo Free State under Belgian King Leopold II reign. The story is so riveting it has compelled me into activism - to tell story here in Belgium. Belgians know of some of the atrocities committed against Congolese like amputations but they are not told of the systemic forced labor and other abuses that enriched Leopold. To this day there is not a single monument in all of Belgium that commemorates Congolese sacrifices. We are told Leopold was a great philanthropist, building all sorts of structures at great expense but we are never told how the financing came about. Leopold kept that information largely secret. This book helps with a bit of the unraveling and we can safely assume the money came from the blood, sweat and tears of Congolese.

My only quibble with the author is the term 'genocide' which is actually a big concern when trying to pinpoint accountability with mass death and suffering. A lot rests on how history is told with that single word. Omit the word and the history becomes a footnote. He says the death of millions of Congolese was not genocide but from a series of human rights atrocities and disease. To...

United Kingdom on May 29, 2015

Random Reader: This is an exceptional book, relating as it does the early colonial period in the history of the Congo with the commercial exploitation, of first ivory and then rubber, as orchestrated by Leopold, King of the Belgians. The book is a serious work of scholarship, well-researched, but at the same time immensely readable. Perhaps the surprise of the book is the emphasis placed on the non-African participants in the story. The author himself highlights the relative paucity of African testimonies and the reasons for this. Despite working hard to extract what is available, there is naturally little heard from those who were conquered.

However, the book is no less fascinating as a result. What is informative and riveting at the same time is the game of chess played out on a background of human suffering by the scheming King Leopold and the irrepressible campaigners, the shipping clerk E.D. Morel, the Irishman and British Consul, Roger Casement and the complex American George Washington Williams, with a sub-cast of missionaries, politicians and other private and public figures.

The most striking lesson is the impact made by just a few dedicated opponents of this exploitation:...

United Kingdom on Jan 10, 2011