A Tragic "Great Forgetting"

"Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host. Hear how the demons chuckle and yell Cutting his hands off, down in Hell." (p. 266)

There has been a a great forgetting of the tragic deaths of millions of Africans just a mere 125 years ago. This well - researched book thoroughly documents the Belgian atrocities in the Congo from 1890 until approximately 1910. ( )

Well researched and very readable. ( )

A terrific, eye opening, horrifying true story of the Belgian King and his colonization of the Congo. Highly recommended. ( )

Before reading this book, my knowledge of African history was scanty. I have read a few books on North Africa, but none on the history of the sub-Saharan continent. Adam Hochschild’s book, King Leopold’s Ghost, proved to be a startling introduction.

First off, the book has a reputation for brutality. Before I began, people warned me to prepare myself. I don’t think anything could prepare someone for the horrors perpetrated on the people native to Africa by the European colonizers. The term “colonize” sounds so innocuous that it masks the violence of the process.

Hochschild highlights King Leopold II, king of the small and relatively new country of Belgium. Leopold’s bottomless well of greed and ruthless ambition caused him to gain control, underhandedly, of the massive area of central Africa called the Congo. He didn’t share this wealth with his country. So, the people of Belgium didn’t even profit from any of his activities using slavery to gain riches from the sale of ivory and rubber at the beginning. This changed after the king died.

To make it clear that terror and exploitation are not unique to Leopold or Belgium, Hochschild talks about violence perpetrated by Africans on other Africans before the Europeans arrived. He also touches on inhumanity demonstrated by other countries worldwide, but primarily by Europeans in their colonization of Africa and theft of its natural resources. He takes pains to discuss the complicity of the United States in similar outrages within its borders.

People have told me that Hochschild cherry-picked his facts and that this book presents an unfair view of the place and the period. I find this difficult to believe. He provides his sources, and the sheer number of damning statistics, facts, and anecdotes cannot be denied. Though the story sickened me, I cannot discount it, and I am glad I read it. We need to know history, no matter how horrible it may have been. Looking at historical darkness in the heart of Africa should prompt us to search for traces of that darkness in ourselves because that’s the only way to ever rid ourselves of it. ( )

An outstanding book that clinically and calmly exposes the outrage of the Belgian King's appalling crimes in colonial Africa.
Along with Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Alice Seeley Harris's photos of severed hands, this book should be required reading for all westerners so we never forget the worst aspects of European colonial history. While not all colonial leaders were as depraved as King Leopold, the colonial era was fundamentally founded on exploitation. The Belgians, in the Congo, merely took that exploitation to an extreme. ( )