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| King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
Paperback
Author: Adam Hochschild
Publisher: Mariner Books
Release Date: 1999-10
ISBN-10: 0618001905
ISBN-13: 9780618001903
List Price: $15.00
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
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. 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.
Leopold: Evil Genius
| Customer Rating: | I would like to present a review of Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa" which depicts the ruthlessness and greed of King Leopold in his exploitation of the Congolese. Furthermore, it illustrates the horrors of the rubber trade which spanned nearly thirty years. The author narrates this account of African history particularly well. Showing us the psychological traits of each character involved in the plot to acquire the Congo, the author gives us insight into the psychological motives of this episode in Belgium's colonizing days. Leopold is an evil, political genius orchestrating a grand scheme to subtly take over the Congo. He manipulates people with ease and lies just as easily. As Belgium's King, he acquires loyal spies in every major European country informing him of that country's intentions and political moves. Furthermore, Hocschild chronicles how the Belgian army slaughtered the native Congolese in pursuit of rubber vines from the rain forest. Moreover, as a novel, "Leopold's Ghost" introduces each character individually tracing their roots from childhood and depicting their personality traits early in life and illustrates how personality traits shape people and their desires.
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Amazingly eyeopening
| Customer Rating: | | Although I teach High school history I've never been intersted in African history. I've taught slavery, Pre-european contact, and Egypt yet I've never studied or taught about imperialism in Africa. In preparation for teaching this period in a Modern World history class I've been reading about Africa. Wow - this book blew my mind. It presents all sides of the imperialism issue and doesn't make the Africans as innocent victims. Don't be confused this book pulls no punches everyone from the American government to the British, Belgium and the African leaders are shown to be complicit in the death of over 10 million Africans. Don't miss this one it will help you understand the problems Africa faces today. |
Rich and informative.
| Customer Rating: | | This book was among the best I have read this year. I had no idea as to the atrocities committed in the Congo around the turn of the century until I picked up this book. While Hochschild goes into great lengths to expose King Leopold II and his horrible deeds, he still maintains great objectivity and examines WHY Leopold may have acted in the manner that he did. I would love for Hochschild to look more into Leopolds mistress Caroline. That is a book I would definetly pick up. |
Good Book
| Customer Rating: | | A very interesting book about a very evil person and a bad time in the world. Much like now in Africa. |
The Contest Against Leopold, Archetypal Colonial Despot
| Customer Rating: | Hochschild's treatment of Belgian King Leopold's African Empire is a well-written and authoritative lay history. The author provides a context for and then delves deeply into the period lasting decades (from the 1880s into the 1920s) during which the envious crowned head of a tiny European nation built himself a totalitarian state for his personal financial gain in the heart of a continent suffering wholesale rape at the gunpoints of the world powers of the time.
Hochschild is careful to note that although the scale of the killings of Congolese Africans was "of genocidal proportions," maybe ten million, it wasn't genocide. It was business. He also notes that King Leopold wasn't the only villain during this time; French, British and U.S. imperialists were oppressing and taking advantage of people throughout Africa, Asia and the Pacific. He does, however, show that the study of Leopold's exercise is an excellent, egregious example of the spirit of the times. And the contest against Leopold's Congolese nation by some of the great humanitarians of the early twentieth century gave voice to the first internationalist ways of thinking about human rights, and local African sovereignty. There were many great, flawed, powerful, conflicted personalities involved in the struggle to make the world aware of what Leopold was doing in the African interior such as British businessman E.D. Morel, U.S. adventurer/attorney George Washington Williams, Irish idealist Roger Casement, and American clergyman William Sheppard. Finally, Hochschild observes that the current condition of many African countries can't be laid fully to rest on the grave of the despotic Leopold, or on imperialism itself. But it is important to recognize and truthfully account for the parts that Western selfishness and superiority played in the history of "the Dark Continent."
I read this book upon the recommendation of my girlfriend and subsequent to a whirlwind college course in which the European colonial period of the African continent was given a mere week in a history class I was taking. |
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