false 347610 0618001905 9780618001903 2241 399 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173937358m/347610.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/347610.King_Leopold_s_Ghost_A_Story_of_Greed_Terror_and_Heroism_in_Colonial_Africa 15402 Adam Hochschild 2654 495 5 0 false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 12 08:39:27 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 12 08:40:31 -0700 2008
Leopold II - King of the Belgians wanted his own colony. He wanted to be like the big guys. England had India, Spain had huge colonies in South America. The planet was running out of places to colonize. In the early 1890’s he set up a shell outfit that was allegedly for driving the slave traders out of the Congo. Over the next 20 years or so these so called humanistic endeavors were actually realized in the Congo in the form of forced labor and taking of the land by Belgian (actually Leopold’s) soldiers. Through a maze of shell companies the profits from ivory and later by the harvesting of raw rubber the riches of one person were sent into the stratosphere. That person was Leopold II. Interestingly at the time Belgium had a parliament but the official government had no real part in the rape of the Congo (although they loaned Leopold millions to help his “humanitarian” efforts. Never repaid). It was one man’s personal colony. Leopold.

It is estimated that during this reign of terror in the Congo the population was reduced by half meaning that approximately 10 million innocent people had been either shot, worked to death, tortured to death, or died of starvation or disease. Bullets were given to soldiers only for shooting the natives. Missing bullets had to be matched with proof of a kill which meant delivering the severed right hand of the deceased. To get the native men to go off in the jungle and search for natural rubber without simply disappearing the soldiers kept wives and children hostage. If a man returned with less than the amount of rubber he was supposed to he was either beaten or shot outright. Missionaries told stories of visiting busy villages before the rubber work and finding them abondonded or only populated with a small fraction of the original inhabitants. The remaining natives were typically starving, or dying of disease. Joseph Conrad visited the Congo around 1900 and got a good look at conditions there inspiring him to write Heart of Darkness.

The book reads like a novel with rich characters. Especially interesting is of course the King himself with his quirky ways, crazy sister, and disenfranchised daughters but also a hero, E. D. Morel. Morel worked as a clerk in a shipyard where ships would arrive from the Congo carrying the riches of ivory, lumber, etc. What Morel noticed though was that the outgoing ships carried nothing for trade. They only carried more soldiers, guns and ammunition. He started investigating more and over the next 20 years or so he, more than anyone else, started a world wide cry for justice in the Congo.

A fascinating read about a piece of history about which few of us are educated and a look at the bigger picture of how the age of colonialism still has it’s after shocks today in nations all over the world. Get it. Read it. It’s not a happy tale though.

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