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170 of 178 found the following review helpful:
 "The horror! The horror!" Aug 28, 2005
By D. Cloyce Smith
Many of us who have read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" think of it as an allegory tinged with racism--a tale of a European, Kurtz, who has abandoned the restraints of civilization and has surrendered himself to the barbaric despotism and primitive rituals innate to Africa. Yet Hochschild spends a full chapter of his excellent history reminding us of the novel's historical context: the figure of Kurtz is based on at least one real-life colonial administrator, and the barbarity is not one that is indigenous to Africa but imported from Europe. Conrad's contemporary readers understood that his novel was a condemnation more of colonial tyranny rather than of African primitivism.
And the ringleader of these gang of hoodlums who invaded the Congo and massacred its inhabitants was King Leopold II of Belgium. In a tour de force of characterization, Hochschild portrays Leopold as a petulant and greedy monster who decided at a young age that the way to wealth was ownership of an African colony and the subjugation of its inhabitants. Leopold initially made his profits through the exportation of ivory, but his bureaucrats struck gold with the expansion of the international rubber market.
The victims were the natives, who lost not only their land and their freedom, but often their lives. There is no pretty way for Hochschild to tell this story: Leopold's officials used unbelievably harsh methods to force the locals to collect rubber--all in the name of bringing them European civilization, Christian charity, and a Western work ethic. In addition to taking wives and children hostage (in subhuman conditions) until the men made their quotas, soldiers would torture or kill the inhabitants if they faltered. One of the most grisly aspects of this calculatingly orchestrated version of modern slavery was the severing of hands--and their collection into baskets as proof of killings--as a means of terrorizing the population. The wonder of it all is that Leopold and his agents managed to keep most of these deeds secret and even disguised his colony as a charity for the benefit of "pagan" African natives.
Yet Hochschild's narrative is not simply a gruesome account of the horrors of Leopold's personal fiefdom--which the king himself never once visited. The most fascinating part of this tale is the creation of what might reasonably be called the world's first human rights movement. George Washington Williams, the first and perhaps bravest campaigner, initially sounded the alarm, but he was ignored largely because he was African American. Later rabble-rousers had better success: E. D. Morel, whose suspicions were aroused when he noticed the imbalance of trade to the colony while working at the docks; William Sheppard, a Presbyterian missionary who provided first-hand accounts; and Roger Casement, a British consul who became an important anti-Leopold activist (and who later became an significant figure in the Irish independence movement whose closeted homosexuality provides a sad coda to his life's story).
One of Hochschild's themes is astonishment, only a century later, at the world's amnesia (including his own) regarding these atrocities. Even the thousands of annual visitors to Laeken's Royal Greenhouses and Winter Palace, Leopold's extravagant and luxurious monument, do not realize that this park was literally built with the lives of millions of Africans. Fortunately, thanks to Hochschild's best-selling book, as well as similar reassessments published by European historians during the last twenty years, even the briefest biographical accounts about King Leopold II now portray him as he was: a brutal and gluttonous colonial thug.
51 of 55 found the following review helpful:
The Epitome of Historical Tragedy Sep 28, 2000
King Leopold's Ghost provides a vivid account of an episode in the modern history of Africa that was the epitome of tragedy. In this book, Adam Hochschild concerns himself with the looting of the Congo and the destruction of its peoples by a cousin of Queen Victoria, King Leopold of the Belgians.The story is told through a succession of biographical sketches of the principal villains and heroes, the former being Leopold's accomplices and the latter his opponents. Hochschild, though bent on illuminating a great human tragedy, allows himself and the reader several curious and even piquant digressions. The first suspicion that these digressions are only there to spice up the story is belied when the author manages to make them highly relevant, such as the connection between Leopold's unsuccessful wedding night and his all-consuming desire in the Congo. Hochschild begins this book by reminding us of the figure of Affonso I, the sixteenth-century Christian King of the Kongo, pious son of a ruler converted by the Portuguese. Affonso wrote a series of eloquent letters to the Portuguese king complaining that the slave traders were depopulating his kingdom and even seizing members of the royal family. The Portuguese, however, had meanwhile discovered a traffic more profitable than gold and they were not about to give it up. Leopold, the figurehead monarch of a small country, successfully acquired a realm larger than France, Italy and Germany combined. For many of the new imperial powers, collecting colonies was not particularly profitable, but Leopold, through a strange mix of luck, cunning, ruthlessness and breathtaking hypocrisy, managed to gain a huge fortune. Leopold favored a quick killing in the Congo because it was clear that the boom in wild rubber would eventually be overtaken by the planting of commercial rubber plantations. He joined forces with others to suppress forces within the Congo and bleed it dry. Leopold's Force Publique had an officer corps of well-paid desperadoes recruited from all over Europe, characters resembling Kurtz in Conrad's chilling Heart of Darkness. Leopold's vicious experiment combined some of the latest techniques of European industry steamboats, machine guns and railways with a sure understanding of traditional African bondage and brigandage, and of the ways they could be bent to his purpose. The slave-traders became the best recruiters both for the Force Publique and for the porters who carried the rubber to the river or to the railhead. Sadly, Leopold's enterprise enjoyed the blessing of the United States despite the fact that it flew in the face of its supposed anti-slavery, anti-colonial and republican principles. The indulgence of Europe's colonial powers was less surprising given the rampant racism and imperialism of the time. There were a few anti-slavery zealots who objected to the "magnificent work of exploration" with which Leopold was credited. (Interestingly, Leopold maintained tight personal control without ever going near the Congo.) The journalist George W. Williams wrote an angry pamphlet denouncing Leopold's brutal regime but died shortly afterwards. Hochschild does not end this book on a comfortable note. Conditions in the Congo barely improved, and the harsh but effective methods pioneered by Leopold were taken up by yet other colonial powers. The outbreak of war in Europe soon furnished its own lessons in industrial slaughter, making Leopold's war on the people of the Congo seem like little more than a dress rehearsal. Although tragic, King Leopold's Ghost is an exemplary piece of history writing: urgent, vivid and most compelling.
86 of 100 found the following review helpful:
Absorbing and horrifying! May 28, 2000
By Chad Bagley
"Chad"
One of the best indictments of colonialism that I have ever read, King Leopold's Ghost is obsensively a book about power and greed. Leopold, a King of a small country and a man with very limited powers, decides that he desperately needs to find a colony where he can reign supreme. He finally discovers Central Africa, a place that hasn't been gobbled up by the other colonizing powers, and claims it for his own. What ensues is one of the most brutal subjegations in recorded history. King Leopold's reign in the Congo was so vicious that even the other colonial powers of the day had to condemn him.This book is the story of a man that was so greedy- even the pretext of humanitarian aims were summarily ignored during his rule. One of the things I liked most about this book is that it deflates the hero status of people like Henry Morton Stanley- an insecure man who shot Africans for sport. In his place, Hochschild has given us people like E.D.Morel, William Sheppard, Roger Casement and Hezekiah Shanu to look up to. People who tried to make a difference when it wasn't popular to do so. This book is the very sad story of how the ego of one puny despot lead to the deaths of millions. Informative, honest and well written- I highly recommend this book.
21 of 22 found the following review helpful:
Fascinating and thought-provoking! Jan 03, 2000
By José Saavedra
I have read 3 books on the subject of Leopold and the Congo: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; Neal Ascherson's The King Incorporated; A. Hochshild's King Leopold's Ghost. All 3 are well worth reading. I find Hochschild's to be the easiest one to read and the most entertaining and thought-provoking; also the latest; and well documented. Ascherson's goes into more detail and is very thorough and equally well documented, but probably harder work. I didn't particularly enjoy Heart of Darkness; granted it's the classical work on the subject, but I didn't find it particularly enjoyable. All 3 works refer to how King Leopold of Belgium managed to carve out for himself a personal, yes, personal colony in the 1880's against all odds in the heart of black Africa, which had made him a colossal fortune by the time that, bowing to international pressure,he handed it over to the Belgian Government shortly before he died in 1909, after having destroyed the majority of the colony's records. The King is shown to be a man of exceptional intelligence and cunning, hypocritical and deceitful and totally deprived of morality. These works suggest that the enormous profits he got out of the Congo were based on his ruthlessly forcing the natives to work for him in shipping to the international markets huge quantities of ivory and later of rubber. His brutal tactics resulted in the population literally being halved in the Congo during the 24 years that he was in charge. I would recommend that you begin with Hochschild and then go to Ascherson for more detail and a somewhat different perspective.
24 of 26 found the following review helpful:
 An excellent non-fiction companion to Heart of Darkness Feb 20, 2005
By William D. Shingleton
"Wishful Thinking Is Not a Plan"
This is an extremely readable book, but its title is deceptive. While the full title is King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, the book is not about Africa at all. Instead, the vast majority of this book is about diplomacy and protest movements in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States with regards to Belgian rule in Congo. If you pick this book up looking to find the details of the governance and rule of the Congo Free State or the history of the major rebellions against Belgian rule, you will be sorely disappointed.
This is not a criticism of the author, who likely didn't select his own title anyway. If you look at the book from the standpoint of what Hochschild wanted to write, it is a good but not great work. Hochschild was mostly interested in European/American personalities and focuses on them instead of a chronology of events either in the West or in Africa. At times, this makes the book confusing, as Hochschild does not use a lot of dates to help the reader sort out the order of events. On the other hand, the personalities of the day are vivid and fascinating. Hochschild has mined the vast majority of the available evidence to give us stunningly detailed (and at times salacious) details on King Leopold and his major opponents.
Perhaps the most important feature of Hochschild's writing is that he doesn't shy away from the imperfections of his heros or try to brush away the moral ambiguities of his subject. He is the first to admit that slavery was a problem even before the first major European contact with central Africa even while showing how the European/American system was far more pernicious and devastating than anything the natives had devised. He acknowledges that some of his protagonists are conceited and provides the background to show why they became so; this makes the ultimate sacrifices of some of his heroes that much more significant.
Hochschild is a journalist by training, and this explains many of the strengths and weaknesses of King Leopold's Ghost. The two main strengths are this books readability and accessibility. I am not normally a fast reader but I flew through this book thanks to its clear prose and Hochschild's highly developed sense of irony. I also read this book as someone who knows relatively little about African history, but I never felt as though Hochschild was either condescending or assuming a level of knowledge that the average reader would not have.
However, there are some weaknesses that result from the journalistic style as well. Most significant of these is the relative paucity of bibliographic information, as Hochschild only provides specific sourcing to direct quotations. Hochschild is the first to admit that it is nearly impossible to find African sources for his material, but that makes the identities of those sources that much more interesting, especially for readers who want to learn more about the subject at hand. Finally, this is likely a book that will not interest experts on African history, both because of its superficial treatment of what actually happened in Africa and because of the lack of analysis of the causes of events other than psychological sketches of Leopold, his supporters, and his opponents.
That said, this is a superior work overall. If, like me, you read Heart of Darkness in a high school English class without getting any of the background on Conrad's time, you will find this work to be revelatory. Even if you have only a passing interest in Africa, you will find yourself more intrigued by its history when you finish than when you started.
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