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{{short description|Book by Adam Hochschild}}

{{Infobox book {{Infobox book
| name = King Leopold's Ghost | name = King Leopold's Ghost
| image = ] | image = Klgcover.jpg
| caption =
| author = ]
| country = ] | author = ]
| language = ] | title_orig = <!-- if not in English -->
| series = | translator =
| genre = | illustrator =
| publisher = ] | cover_artist =
| country = United States
| release_date = 1999
| language = English
| english_release_date =
| series =
| media_type = Print (] & ])
| subject =
| genre =
| publisher = ]
| pub_date = 1998
| english_pub_date =
| media_type = Print (] & ])
| pages =
| isbn =
| oclc =
| dewey =
| congress =
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
}} }}


'''''King Leopold's Ghost''''' (1998) is a ] ] book by ] that explores the exploitation of the ] by King ] between 1885 and 1908.<ref>{{cite book '''''King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa''''' (1998) is a ] ] book by ] that explores the exploitation of the ] by King ] between 1885 and 1908, as well as the ] during that period.{{sfn|Hochschild|1998}} The book, also a general biography of the private life of Leopold, succeeded in increasing public awareness of these crimes in recent decades.<ref name = "Neier 43">{{Harvnb|Neier|2012|p=}}: "The story is familiar thanks to Adam Hochschild's 1998 book, ''King Leopold's Ghost''."</ref>
| last = Hochschild
| first = Adam
| authorlink = Adam Hochschild
| title =
| publisher = ]
| series =
| year = 1998
| doi =
| isbn = ISBN 0-330-49233-0
<!-- (Published in the USA by Mariner Books, 1998, ISBN 0-618-00190-5.) -->
}}</ref>{{italic title}}


The book aims to increase public awareness of crimes committed by European colonial rulers in Africa. It was refused by nine of the ten U.S. publishing houses to which an outline was submitted, but became an unexpected bestseller and won the prestigious ] for literary style. By 2005, some 400,000 copies were in print in a dozen languages. The book was refused by nine of the ten U.S. publishing houses to which an outline was submitted, but became an unexpected bestseller and won the prestigious ] for literary style. It also won the 1999 ]. By 2013 more than 600,000 copies were in print in a dozen languages.


The book is the basis of a 2006 documentary film of the same name, directed by ] and narrated by ].<ref>{{IMDb title|qid=Q123901177|title=King Leopold's Ghost}}</ref>
The title is adopted from the poem ''The Congo,'' by Illinois poet ]. Condemning Leopold's actions, Lindsay wrote: ''Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost, / Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host''.


== Title ==
The book is the basis of a 2006 ] of the same name, directed by ] and narrated by ].<ref>, ].</ref>
The title is adopted from the 1914 poem "The Congo", by Illinois poet ]. Condemning Leopold's actions, Lindsay wrote:


== The story of Leopold's Congo == :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.


== Content ==
The story chronicles the efforts of ] of ] to make the Congo into a colonial empire. With a complex scheme of political intrigue, corruption and propaganda, he wins the assistance of one of the best-known explorers of the time, ], as well as that of public opinion and of powerful states. Through the ] and other diplomatic efforts, he finally obtains international recognition for his colony. He then establishes a system of forced labour that keeps the people of the Congo basin in a condition of slavery.
{{Unreferenced section|date=May 2024}}
Leopold II, King of the Belgians, privately controlled and owned the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. In 1908, the area was annexed by Belgium as a colony known as the ]. Leopold used his personal control to strip the country of vast amounts of wealth, largely in the form of ivory and rubber. These labor-intensive industries were serviced by slave labor, and the local peoples were forced to work through various means, including torture, imprisonment, maiming and terror. Christian missionaries and a handful of human rights organizers internationally publicized these atrocities. Slowly, various nations, including the United Kingdom and the United States of America, began to object to Leopold's tyranny with the result that the country's administration was transferred to Belgium. Little changed inside the country, however, until the ivory and rubber were exhausted.


European interest in the African continent can be traced back to the late 1400s, when the European explorer ] sailed the west coast and saw the Congo River. By the 1860s, most African coastal regions were claimed as colonies of European powers, but the vast interior of the continent remained unknown to Europeans. ], a complicated man and renowned explorer, ventured through much of that unknown during a descent of the Congo River. Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was fascinated with obtaining a colony and focused upon claiming the interior of Africa—the only unclaimed sizable geographic area. Moving within the European political paradigm existing in the early 1880s, Leopold gained international concessions and recognition for his personal claim to the Congo Free State.
The book places King Leopold among the great tyrants of history. The death toll in the Congo under his regime is hard to pin down, both because accurate records were not kept and because many of the existing records were deliberately destroyed by Leopold shortly before the government of Belgium took the Congo out of his hands. Although Wm. Roger Louis and Jean Stengers<ref>Wm. Roger Louis and Jean Stengers: ''E.D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement'' p.252-7.</ref> characterize the earliest population and mortality estimates as "wild guesses", Hochschild cites many subsequent lines of inquiry that conclude that the early official estimates were essentially correct: roughly half the population of the Congo perished during the Free State period. Since the census taken by the Belgian government (after acquiring the Congo from Leopold) found some 10 million inhabitants, Hochshild concludes that roughly 10 million perished, though the precise number can never be known.


His rule of the vast region was based on tyranny and terror. Under his direction, Stanley again visited the area and extracted favorable treaties from numerous local leaders. A road and, eventually, a rail line were developed from the coast to ] (present-day Kinshasa). A series of militarized outposts were established along the length of the Congo River, and imported paddle wheelers commenced regular river service. Native peoples were forced to gather ivory and transport it for export. Beginning c. 1890, rubber—originally manufactured from coagulated sap—became economically significant in international trade. The Congo was rich in rubber-producing vines, and Leopold transitioned his exploitative focus from dwindling ivory supplies to the burgeoning rubber market. Slavery, exploitation and the reign of terror continued and even increased.
Hochschild profiles several people who helped make the world aware of the reality of the Congo Free State, including:


Meanwhile, early missionaries and human rights advocates such as ], ], ], and ] began to circulate news of the widespread atrocities committed in the Congo under the official blessing of Leopold's administration. Women and children were imprisoned as hostages to force husbands and fathers to work. Flogging, starvation and torture were routine. Murder was common—tribes resisting enslavement were wiped out; administration officials expected to receive back a severed human hand for every bullet issued. Rape and sexual slavery were rampant. Workers failing to secure assigned quotas of rubber were routinely mutilated or tortured. Administration officials so completely dehumanized local peoples that at least one decorated his flower garden with a border of severed human heads. News of these atrocities brought slow, but powerful, international condemnation of Leopold's administration leading, eventually, to his assignment of the country to Belgian administration.
* ], an ] politician and historian, the first to report the atrocities in the Congo to the outside world.
* ], another African American, a ] missionary who furnished direct testimony of the atrocities.
* ], a British journalist and shipping agent checking the commercial documents of the Congo Free State, who realized that the vast quantities of rubber and ivory coming out of the Congo were matched only by rifles and chains going in. From this he inferred that the Congo was a slave state, and he devoted the rest of his life to correcting that.
* Sir ], a British diplomat and Irish patriot, put the force of the British government behind the international protest against Leopold. Casement's involvement had the ironic effect of drawing attention away from British colonialism, Hochschild suggests. The ] was formed by Morel at Casement's instigation.


In 1908, Belgium annexed the Congo as a colony and proclaimed a general sea-change in administrative policy. Actual change, however, was nearly imperceptible. The era of ] shifted attention from atrocities in Africa to European trench warfare. In the post-war era, the global demand for reform was largely forgotten. However, commercial rubber tree farming had become firmly established and the collection of wild rubber became commercially insignificant, just as ivory supplies had been exhausted years earlier. Because of this, the slave labor industries of the Congo diminished in importance and atrocities became far less frequent. Finally, in 1960, the Congo gained independence.
Hochschild devotes a chapter to ], the famous Anglo-Polish writer, who captained a steamer on the Congo River in the first years of Belgian colonization. Hochschild observes that Conrad's novel '']'', despite its unspecific setting, gives a realistic picture of the Congo Free State. Its main character, ], was inspired by real state functionaries in the Congo, notably ]. While ''Heart of Darkness'' is probably the most reprinted and studied short novel of the 20th century, its psychological and moral truths have largely overshadowed the literal truth behind the story. Hochschild finds four likely models for Kurtz: men who, like Kurtz, boasted of cutting off the heads of African rebels and sometimes displayed them.


== Scholarship ==
== Documentation and bibliography ==
Hochschild cites the research of several historians, many of them Belgian. He refers especially to ], formerly a Belgian colonial civil servant and diplomat who (as Hochschild describes) spent twenty years trying to break Belgian silence about the massacres. The documentation was not easy to come by; the furnaces of the palace in Brussels are said to have spent more than a week burning incriminating papers before Leopold turned over his private Congo to the Belgian nation. For many years Belgian authorities prevented access to what remained of the archives, notably the accounts given by Congolese to the King's Commission.


Although few African scholars seriously question that large numbers died in Leopold's Congo, the subject remains a touchy one in Belgium itself.<ref name = "Graun review" /> The country's ], founded by Leopold II, mounted a special exhibition in 2005 about the colonial Congo; in an article in the '']'', Hochschild accused the museum of distortion and evasion.<ref name="HowardwFrench2005-10-26" /> Recently, however, the museum reopened after an extensive five-year renovation. Hochschild gave the results a partly favorable review.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Hochschild |first=Adam |date=January 2020 |title=When Museums Have Ugly Pasts |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/when-museums-have-ugly-pasts/603133/ |magazine=The Atlantic |access-date=18 September 2020}}</ref>
Hochschild cites the research of several historians, many of them Belgian. He refers especially to ], formerly a Belgian colonial civil servant and diplomat who spent twenty years trying to break Belgian silence about the massacres. The documentation was not easy to come by; the furnaces of the palace in Brussels are said to have spent more than a week burning incriminating papers before Leopold turned over his private Congo to the Belgian nation. For many years Belgian authorities prevented access to what remained of the archives, notably the accounts given by Congolese to the King's Commission.


Also in 2005, the American and British publishers of ''King Leopold's Ghost'' reissued the book with a new afterword<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|url=http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/hochschild_king_leo.shtml#afterword|title=Reader's Guide for King Leopold's Ghost published by Houghton Mifflin Company|website=www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com|access-date=November 10, 2019}}</ref> by Hochschild in which he talks about the reactions to the book, the death toll, and events in the Congo since its publication.
Although few Africa scholars outside of Belgium seriously question that large numbers died in Leopold’s Congo, the subject remains a touchy one in Belgium itself. The country’s ], founded by Leopold II, mounted a special exhibition in 2005 about the colonial Congo; in an article in the ], Hochschild accused the museum of distortion and evasion.<ref name=Hochschild-2005-10-26>Adam Hochschild , ], 26 October 2005. "The exhibit deals with this question in a wall panel misleadingly headed 'Genocide in the Congo?' This is a red herring, for no reputable historian of the Congo has made charges of genocide; a forced labor system, although it may be equally deadly, is different."</ref>


== Reception ==
Also in 2005, the American and British publishers of ''King Leopold’s Ghost'' reissued the book with a new by Hochschild in which he talks about the reactions to the book, the death toll, and events in the Congo since its publication.
Hochschild has been praised by scholars and critics<ref name=Harding>{{cite news
|title=Into Africa
|author=Jeremy Harding
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/reviews/980920.20hardint.html
|newspaper=New York Times
|date=20 September 1998
|access-date=13 June 2012
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010913021042/http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/20/reviews/980920.20hardint.html
|archive-date=13 September 2001
|quote=a superb synoptic history of European misdemeanor in central Africa
}}</ref><ref>{{cite news
|title=Genocide With Spin Control
|author=Michiko Kakutani
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/daily/leopold-book-review.html
|newspaper=New York Times
|date=1 September 1998
|access-date=13 June 2012
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010418010702/http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/daily/leopold-book-review.html
|archive-date=18 April 2001
|quote=Hochschild has stitched it together into a vivid, novelistic narrative
}}</ref><ref>{{cite news
|title=Leopold's Heart of Darkness
|author=Luc Sante
|url=http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Leopold-s-Heart-of-Darkness-Adam-Hochschild-2988734.php
|newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle
|date=27 September 1998
|access-date=13 June 2012
|quote='King Leopold's Ghost' is an absorbing and horrifying account
}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal
|author = Godwin Rapando Murunga
|year = 1999
|title = King Leopold's Ghost (review)
|journal = African Studies Quarterly
|volume = 3
|issue = 2
|publisher = Center for African Studies at the University of Florida
|url = http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v3/v3i2a12.htm
|access-date = 13 June 2012
|quote = King Leopold's Ghost tells the story of the Congo with fresh and critical insights, bringing new analysis to this topic.
|url-status = dead
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120618115733/http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v3/v3i2a12.htm
|archive-date = 18 June 2012
}}</ref> for his narrative. ], writing in '']'', called it "a model account" that showed how the human rights abuses and human rights activism that resulted became a "template for modernity".<ref name=Harding/> Richard F. Hamilton, writing in '']'', called it an excellent book to counteract "the great forgetting" of the Congo atrocities.<ref>Hamilton, Richard F. "Forgotten Holocaust". ''The Washington Post.'' January 7, 2001. Accessed April 29, 2018.</ref>


Hochschild's estimate of 10 million deaths is generally considered on the high range of possibilities, but a plausible one. ], a Congolese scholar whose ''Histoire générale du Congo'' was published the same year as ''King Leopold's Ghost'', estimated the death toll in the Free State era and its aftermath at roughly 13 million (which Ndaywel è Nziem has subsequently revised downward to 10 million, the same number as Hochschild's conclusion).<ref name="auto"/> According to ], and Etienne van de Walle, Aline Désesquelles and Jacques Houdaille, the 10 million number cited by Hochschild is extrapolated from a 1924 estimation of the population and from the opinion of a 1919 Belgian government official commission that the population had been halved since 1880.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Stengers|first=Jean|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r-MwAQAAIAAJ|title=Congo: mythes et réalités|date=2007-09-01|publisher=Racine|isbn=978-2-87386-517-7|pages=307|language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=van de Walle|first=Etienne|date=1999|title=Hochschild Adam — Les fantômes du Roi Leopold. Un holocauste oublié|url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/pop_0032-4663_1999_num_54_3_7030|journal=Population|volume=54|issue=3|pages=583–584|doi=10.2307/1534993|jstor=1534993}}</ref>
== Reviews and critics ==


While Hochschild has said that his intention was to tell the story in "a way that brings characters alive, that brings out the moral dimension, that lays bare a great crime and a great crusade", he was criticised for his overly moralistic dimension, and former Belgian officials deplored his comparison of Leopold with ] and ].<ref name = "Graun review">{{Cite web | last = Bates | first = Stephen | date = 13 May 1999 | title = The hidden holocaust | url = https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/13/features11.g22 | website = theguardian.com | access-date = 17 June 2015 }}</ref> Belgian historian ] commented, "Terrible things happened, but Hochschild is exaggerating. It is absurd to say so many millions died."<ref name = "Graun review" /> Other historians have painted a picture similar to Hochschild's of the high death toll in Leopold's Congo, among them ], who appeared in the documentary based on the book, and the demographer {{ill|Léon de Saint-Moulin|ln|Léon de Saint Moulin}}.<ref>"What is Known of the Demographic History of Zaire Since 1885," in ], ed. ''Demography from Scanty Evidence: Central Africa in the Colonial Era''(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990), p. 303.</ref>
Hochschild has been praised by critics for his skill in telling the story. While acknowledging that most of the facts illustrated in the book were already known (although appearing in books and documents not easy to find), most historians and Africa specialists appreciated his capacity to narrate the history accurately. Hochschild's book was praised by scholars of Africa such as Prof. ] of ] and by the South African ] ].


Hochschild was also criticized by ], the author of a biography of Leopold, who described his book as "a very shoddy piece of work" and declared that "Leopold did not start a genocide. He was greedy for money and chose not to interest himself when things got out of control."<ref name="Guardian1999-05-13" /> Hochschild does not use the word genocide, but describes how the mass deaths happened as a result of the forced labor system instituted at Leopold's direction.<ref name="HowardwFrench2005-10-26"/>
Hochschild has said that his intention was to tell the story in "a way that brings characters alive, that brings out the moral dimension, that lays bare a great crime and a great crusade." His choice was the basis of his success, but some Belgian critics deplored his comparison of Leopold with ] and ].


''King Leopold's Ghost'' was specifically singled out for praise by the American Historical Association when it gave Hochschild its Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award in 2008.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.historians.org/awards-and-grants/past-recipients/theodore-roosevelt-woodrow-wilson-award-recipients/2008-theodore-roosevelt-woodrow-wilson-award-recipient|title=2008 Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award Recipient &#124; AHA|website=www.historians.org|access-date=November 10, 2019}}</ref> In an article published by '']'', political scientist ] was highly critical of the accuracy of the book and defended colonialism.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gilley |first=Bruce |date=2023-04-17 |title=King Hochschild's Hoax |url=https://www.theamericanconservative.com/king-hochschilds-hoax/ |access-date=2023-05-24 |website=The American Conservative |language=en-US}}</ref>
The Belgian historian ], whose works appear in the sources of ''King Leopold's Ghost'', claimed in a newspaper article that Hochschild's moral judgements are "not justified in respect at the time and place" and that his conclusions about the scale of the mass murder are based on incomplete statistics. He advanced the suspicion that in Hochschild's book historical objectivity was affected by the desire to attract the attention of the public – especially the African-American public.


==See also==
Hochschild was also criticized by ], author of a biography of Léopold, who described Hochschild's book as "a very shoddy piece of work" and declared that "Leopold did not start genocide. He was greedy for money and chose not to interest himself when things got out of control."<ref>, '']'', 13 May 1999</ref> Hochschild has never called what happened in the Congo a genocide; he describes how these mass deaths happened as a result of a forced labor system.<ref name=Hochschild-2005-10-26/>
* ]
* '']''
* ]
* ]
*'']''
* '']''


== References ==
Hochschild replied to Stengers, accusing him of not accepting the implications of his own research, arguing that while Stengers was "a meticulous and talented scholar", he was biased by his colonialist views. Hochschild points out that the estimates about the reduction of the population of the Congo reported in his book are taken in part from Stengers' writing.


{{reflist
Jules Marchal called Hochschild's book "a masterpiece, without even one error about the historical deeds related." He reminded people that Hochschild's conclusions were backed by his work on original sources. Several other Belgian experts on the period, such as anthropologist ], have also backed Hochschild. ], a Congolese scholar whose ''Histoire générale du Congo'' was published the same year as ''King Leopold's Ghost'', estimated the death toll in the Free State era and its aftermath at roughly 13 million, a higher figure than the various scholarly estimates Hochschild cites.
| refs =


<ref name="HowardwFrench2005-10-26">
'']'' reported in July 2002 that after initial outrage by Belgian historians over ''King Leopold's Ghost'', the state-funded ] would finance an investigation into Hochschild's allegations. The investigatory panel, likely to be headed by Professor ], was scheduled to report its findings in 2004.<ref name="Osborn_2002">Andrew Osborn '' ]'' July 13, 2002</ref> The main result appears to be the museum exhibit mentioned above.
{{cite web
| title = In the Heart of Darkness&nbsp;— A Glimpse of the World
| date = 2005-10-26
| work = HowardwFrench.com
| publisher = ]
| url = http://www.howardwfrench.com/2005/10/in_the_heart_of/
| access-date = 2011-06-02
| quote = The exhibit deals with this question in a wall panel misleadingly headed 'Genocide in the Congo?' This is a red herring, for no reputable historian of the Congo has made charges of genocide; a forced labor system, although it may be equally deadly, is different.
}}
</ref>


<ref name="Guardian1999-05-13">
== References ==
{{cite news
| title = The hidden holocaust
| date = 1999-05-13
| newspaper = ]
| publisher = ]
| location = ]
| issn = 0261-3077
| oclc = 60623878
| url = https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/13/features11.g22
| access-date = 2011-06-02
}}
</ref>


<!-- The following references appeared in the reflist but were not used in the prior text. Please return them to the reflist once they have been correctly cited in the main article.
<references />
<ref name="Osborn2002-07-13">
{{cite news
| title = Belgium exhumes its colonial demons
| last = Osborn
| first = Andrew
| date = 2002-07-13
| newspaper = ]
| publisher = ]
| location = ]
| issn = 0261-3077
| oclc = 60623878
| url = https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/13/humanities.artsandhumanities/print
| access-date = 2011-06-02
-->
}}

;<big>Cited works</big>
{{Refbegin}}
*{{Cite book
| last = Hochschild | first = Adam | author-link = Adam Hochschild | year = 1998
| title = King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
| publisher = ]
| isbn = 0-330-49233-0 <!-- (Published in the United States by Mariner Books, 1998, ISBN 0-618-00190-5.) -->
}}
*{{Cite book
| editor1-last = Louis | editor1-first = Wm. Roger
| editor2-last = Stengers | editor2-first = Jean | editor2-link = Jean Stengers | year = 1968
| title = E. D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement
| location = Oxford | publisher = Clarendon Press
| isbn = 0-19-821644-0
}}
*{{Cite book
|last = Neier | first = Aryeh | author-link = Aryeh Neier | year = 2012
| title = The International Human Rights Movement: A History
| location = Princeton, NJ | publisher = ]
| isbn = 978-0-691-13515-1
}}
{{Refend}}


== External links == == External links ==
* {{commons category-inline}}
*
*
* French language site on Belgian Congo made with the consultation of Adam Hochschild and Jules Marchal.
*
* *
*
* *
* * {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130122124559/http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v3/v3i2a12.htm |date=January 22, 2013 |title=Review of ''King Leopold's Ghost'' in the ''African Studies Quarterly'' (Univ. of Florida) }}

]
]
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]


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Latest revision as of 19:30, 8 October 2024

Book by Adam Hochschild
King Leopold's Ghost
AuthorAdam Hochschild
LanguageEnglish
PublisherMariner Books
Publication date1998
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998) is a best-selling popular history book by Adam Hochschild that explores the exploitation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium between 1885 and 1908, as well as the large-scale atrocities committed during that period. The book, also a general biography of the private life of Leopold, succeeded in increasing public awareness of these crimes in recent decades.

The book was refused by nine of the ten U.S. publishing houses to which an outline was submitted, but became an unexpected bestseller and won the prestigious Mark Lynton History Prize for literary style. It also won the 1999 Duff Cooper Prize. By 2013 more than 600,000 copies were in print in a dozen languages.

The book is the basis of a 2006 documentary film of the same name, directed by Pippa Scott and narrated by Don Cheadle.

Title

The title is adopted from the 1914 poem "The Congo", by Illinois poet Vachel Lindsay. Condemning Leopold's actions, Lindsay wrote:

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.

Content

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Leopold II, King of the Belgians, privately controlled and owned the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. In 1908, the area was annexed by Belgium as a colony known as the Belgian Congo. Leopold used his personal control to strip the country of vast amounts of wealth, largely in the form of ivory and rubber. These labor-intensive industries were serviced by slave labor, and the local peoples were forced to work through various means, including torture, imprisonment, maiming and terror. Christian missionaries and a handful of human rights organizers internationally publicized these atrocities. Slowly, various nations, including the United Kingdom and the United States of America, began to object to Leopold's tyranny with the result that the country's administration was transferred to Belgium. Little changed inside the country, however, until the ivory and rubber were exhausted.

European interest in the African continent can be traced back to the late 1400s, when the European explorer Diogo Cão sailed the west coast and saw the Congo River. By the 1860s, most African coastal regions were claimed as colonies of European powers, but the vast interior of the continent remained unknown to Europeans. Henry Morton Stanley, a complicated man and renowned explorer, ventured through much of that unknown during a descent of the Congo River. Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was fascinated with obtaining a colony and focused upon claiming the interior of Africa—the only unclaimed sizable geographic area. Moving within the European political paradigm existing in the early 1880s, Leopold gained international concessions and recognition for his personal claim to the Congo Free State.

His rule of the vast region was based on tyranny and terror. Under his direction, Stanley again visited the area and extracted favorable treaties from numerous local leaders. A road and, eventually, a rail line were developed from the coast to Leopoldville (present-day Kinshasa). A series of militarized outposts were established along the length of the Congo River, and imported paddle wheelers commenced regular river service. Native peoples were forced to gather ivory and transport it for export. Beginning c. 1890, rubber—originally manufactured from coagulated sap—became economically significant in international trade. The Congo was rich in rubber-producing vines, and Leopold transitioned his exploitative focus from dwindling ivory supplies to the burgeoning rubber market. Slavery, exploitation and the reign of terror continued and even increased.

Meanwhile, early missionaries and human rights advocates such as Roger Casement, E. D. Morel, George Washington Williams, and William Henry Sheppard began to circulate news of the widespread atrocities committed in the Congo under the official blessing of Leopold's administration. Women and children were imprisoned as hostages to force husbands and fathers to work. Flogging, starvation and torture were routine. Murder was common—tribes resisting enslavement were wiped out; administration officials expected to receive back a severed human hand for every bullet issued. Rape and sexual slavery were rampant. Workers failing to secure assigned quotas of rubber were routinely mutilated or tortured. Administration officials so completely dehumanized local peoples that at least one decorated his flower garden with a border of severed human heads. News of these atrocities brought slow, but powerful, international condemnation of Leopold's administration leading, eventually, to his assignment of the country to Belgian administration.

In 1908, Belgium annexed the Congo as a colony and proclaimed a general sea-change in administrative policy. Actual change, however, was nearly imperceptible. The era of World War I shifted attention from atrocities in Africa to European trench warfare. In the post-war era, the global demand for reform was largely forgotten. However, commercial rubber tree farming had become firmly established and the collection of wild rubber became commercially insignificant, just as ivory supplies had been exhausted years earlier. Because of this, the slave labor industries of the Congo diminished in importance and atrocities became far less frequent. Finally, in 1960, the Congo gained independence.

Scholarship

Hochschild cites the research of several historians, many of them Belgian. He refers especially to Jules Marchal, formerly a Belgian colonial civil servant and diplomat who (as Hochschild describes) spent twenty years trying to break Belgian silence about the massacres. The documentation was not easy to come by; the furnaces of the palace in Brussels are said to have spent more than a week burning incriminating papers before Leopold turned over his private Congo to the Belgian nation. For many years Belgian authorities prevented access to what remained of the archives, notably the accounts given by Congolese to the King's Commission.

Although few African scholars seriously question that large numbers died in Leopold's Congo, the subject remains a touchy one in Belgium itself. The country's Royal Museum for Central Africa, founded by Leopold II, mounted a special exhibition in 2005 about the colonial Congo; in an article in the New York Review of Books, Hochschild accused the museum of distortion and evasion. Recently, however, the museum reopened after an extensive five-year renovation. Hochschild gave the results a partly favorable review.

Also in 2005, the American and British publishers of King Leopold's Ghost reissued the book with a new afterword by Hochschild in which he talks about the reactions to the book, the death toll, and events in the Congo since its publication.

Reception

Hochschild has been praised by scholars and critics for his narrative. Jeremy Harding, writing in The New York Times, called it "a model account" that showed how the human rights abuses and human rights activism that resulted became a "template for modernity". Richard F. Hamilton, writing in The Washington Post, called it an excellent book to counteract "the great forgetting" of the Congo atrocities.

Hochschild's estimate of 10 million deaths is generally considered on the high range of possibilities, but a plausible one. Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, a Congolese scholar whose Histoire générale du Congo was published the same year as King Leopold's Ghost, estimated the death toll in the Free State era and its aftermath at roughly 13 million (which Ndaywel è Nziem has subsequently revised downward to 10 million, the same number as Hochschild's conclusion). According to Jean Stengers, and Etienne van de Walle, Aline Désesquelles and Jacques Houdaille, the 10 million number cited by Hochschild is extrapolated from a 1924 estimation of the population and from the opinion of a 1919 Belgian government official commission that the population had been halved since 1880.

While Hochschild has said that his intention was to tell the story in "a way that brings characters alive, that brings out the moral dimension, that lays bare a great crime and a great crusade", he was criticised for his overly moralistic dimension, and former Belgian officials deplored his comparison of Leopold with Hitler and Stalin. Belgian historian Jean Stengers commented, "Terrible things happened, but Hochschild is exaggerating. It is absurd to say so many millions died." Other historians have painted a picture similar to Hochschild's of the high death toll in Leopold's Congo, among them Jan Vansina, who appeared in the documentary based on the book, and the demographer Léon de Saint-Moulin [ln].

Hochschild was also criticized by Barbara Emerson, the author of a biography of Leopold, who described his book as "a very shoddy piece of work" and declared that "Leopold did not start a genocide. He was greedy for money and chose not to interest himself when things got out of control." Hochschild does not use the word genocide, but describes how the mass deaths happened as a result of the forced labor system instituted at Leopold's direction.

King Leopold's Ghost was specifically singled out for praise by the American Historical Association when it gave Hochschild its Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award in 2008. In an article published by The American Conservative, political scientist Bruce Gilley was highly critical of the accuracy of the book and defended colonialism.

See also

References

  1. Hochschild 1998.
  2. Neier 2012, p. 43: "The story is familiar thanks to Adam Hochschild's 1998 book, King Leopold's Ghost."
  3. King Leopold's Ghost at IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
  4. ^ Bates, Stephen (13 May 1999). "The hidden holocaust". theguardian.com. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  5. ^ "In the Heart of Darkness — A Glimpse of the World". HowardwFrench.com. New York Review of Books. 2005-10-26. Retrieved 2011-06-02. The exhibit deals with this question in a wall panel misleadingly headed 'Genocide in the Congo?' This is a red herring, for no reputable historian of the Congo has made charges of genocide; a forced labor system, although it may be equally deadly, is different.
  6. Hochschild, Adam (January 2020). "When Museums Have Ugly Pasts". The Atlantic. Retrieved 18 September 2020.
  7. ^ "Reader's Guide for King Leopold's Ghost published by Houghton Mifflin Company". www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com. Retrieved November 10, 2019.
  8. ^ Jeremy Harding (20 September 1998). "Into Africa". New York Times. Archived from the original on 13 September 2001. Retrieved 13 June 2012. a superb synoptic history of European misdemeanor in central Africa
  9. Michiko Kakutani (1 September 1998). "Genocide With Spin Control". New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 April 2001. Retrieved 13 June 2012. Hochschild has stitched it together into a vivid, novelistic narrative
  10. Luc Sante (27 September 1998). "Leopold's Heart of Darkness". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 13 June 2012. 'King Leopold's Ghost' is an absorbing and horrifying account
  11. Godwin Rapando Murunga (1999). "King Leopold's Ghost (review)". African Studies Quarterly. 3 (2). Center for African Studies at the University of Florida. Archived from the original on 18 June 2012. Retrieved 13 June 2012. King Leopold's Ghost tells the story of the Congo with fresh and critical insights, bringing new analysis to this topic.
  12. Hamilton, Richard F. "Forgotten Holocaust". The Washington Post. January 7, 2001. Accessed April 29, 2018.
  13. Stengers, Jean (2007-09-01). Congo: mythes et réalités (in French). Racine. p. 307. ISBN 978-2-87386-517-7.
  14. van de Walle, Etienne (1999). "Hochschild Adam — Les fantômes du Roi Leopold. Un holocauste oublié". Population. 54 (3): 583–584. doi:10.2307/1534993. JSTOR 1534993.
  15. "What is Known of the Demographic History of Zaire Since 1885," in Bruce Fetter, ed. Demography from Scanty Evidence: Central Africa in the Colonial Era(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990), p. 303.
  16. "The hidden holocaust". The Guardian. London: GMG. 1999-05-13. ISSN 0261-3077. OCLC 60623878. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
  17. "2008 Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award Recipient | AHA". www.historians.org. Retrieved November 10, 2019.
  18. Gilley, Bruce (2023-04-17). "King Hochschild's Hoax". The American Conservative. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
Cited works

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