King Leopold's ghost
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.
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7recommend
15mentions
13people
2012–2026years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- That’s true I suppose. Belgium had incredibly effective “PR” essentially turning “us” from the aggressor to the victim due to WW1 breaking out and effectively erasing Congo from the Zeitgeist.
I highly recommend the book “King Leopold’s Ghost”. (Or the fictionalized “heart of darkness” by Konrad if fiction is more your thing).
- Sounds more like the author just had bad experiences with non fiction? There are plenty of non fiction books which are good and where the book doesn’t just feel like filler. Some that come to mind quickly :
- bad blood (about theranos)
- SPQR
- King Leopold’s Ghost
- Lost in Math
- masters of doom
- "King Leopold's Ghost" An honest, brutal account of colonialism and the attempt to cover up it's effects on the people suffering under it.
- And further along this path, if you really want to be saddened / depressed / disgusted, there's King Leopold's Ghost.
- Wasn't limited to Leopold, though his Stalinesque reputation means his is probably one of the better known. Many of the "developed" nations of the late 1800s and early 1900s had ethic villages or exhibitions - with live exhibits. London, Paris, New York, etc. St Louis made a point of adding newly acquired native Philippinos to the native American display at the World Fair and 1904 Olympics. Developed nations carried on with those exhibitions far longer than you might expect or hope. Though they were in decline by WW2, there's been a fair selection of basically racist exhibits post war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_zoo
King Leopold II was a bit special, even by the standards of the height of colonialism. His privately owned Congo Free State - it really was his, founded and owned by him personally was excessively bad at everything. It started public and government campaigns in Britain, America and I believe France and others too, ultimately culminating in multiple nations taking stand and signing treaties against Leopold's vanity project. The atrocities were far in excess of any other colonial power for the few years he owned it. Millions died, millions more, including children, had hands or feet hacked off. The state stepped in and it became the Belgian Congo after 15 or 20 years of Stalin ^W Leopold. (Edit: In that time, the 1919 Belgian Government Commission estimated half the population had died).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State
Belgium has been surprisingly reluctant to even acknowledge this black spot in their history, and you will still find plenty of statues, squares and streets in his honour.
Should you want to read more, and it's not an easy read, I'd recommend King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild.
- "King Leopold's Ghost" is also very good
