King Leopold's ghost

By Adam Hochschild

Subjects: Congo (democratic republic), history, Genocide, Politics and government, Travail forcé, Zwangsarbeit, Human rights movements -- History -- 19th century, Congo (Democratic Republic) -- Politics and government, Politics, Forced labor -- Congo (Democratic Republic) -- History -- 19th century, Koloniale periode, Africa, race relations, Human Rights, Congo (Democratic Republic) -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century, Indigenous peoples -- Congo (Democratic Republic) -- History -- 19th century, Human rights movements -- History -- 20th century, General, Forced labor -- Congo (Democratic Republic) -- History -- 20th century, Colonialism, HISTORY, Politique et gouvernement, Histoire, Gruweldaden, Congo (Democratic Republic) -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century, Congo (democratic republic), politics and government, Indigenous peoples -- Congo (Democratic Republic) -- History -- 20th century, History, 20th Century, New York Times reviewed, Mouvements des droits de l'homme, Congo (democratic republic), social conditions, Relations raciales, Human rights, congo (democratic republic), Kolonialismus, Indigenous peoples, Antislavery movements, Autochtones, Forced labor, History, History, 19th Century, Human rights movements, Race relations, Congo (Democratic Republic) -- Politics and government -- 1885-1908, Indigenous peoples, africa, west, Uitbuiting, Ethnische Beziehungen

Description: 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. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo--too long forgotten--onto the conscience of the West.