King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

As the European powers divided up Africa in the 1880s, King Leopold II of Belgium took control of the large and mostly uncharted region around the Congo River. He carried out a murderous invasion of the Congo, stealing its rubber, abusing its people, and eventually reducing its population by ten million—all the while deftly fostering his image as a legendary humanitarian. The first big human rights movement of the twentieth century was the result of heroic attempts to expose these atrocities, and participants ranged from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. King Leopold's Ghost is the chilling story of a monstrously large megalomaniac who is just as sly, endearing, and ruthless as any of the greatest villains in Shakespearean history. It is also a very poignant portrayal of the people who opposed Leopold: a courageous group of missionaries, tourists, and youthful idealists who travelled to Africa in search of employment or excitement only to discover they were unintentionally witnesses to a genocide. Adam Hochschild uses the humour and dexterity of a Barbara Tuchman to vividly depict this mostly unrecorded tale. Similar to her, he is aware that history often offers a much more diverse array of individuals than any writer could create. The most prominent of them is Edmund Morel, a young shipping agent from Britain who later spearheaded the global campaign against Leopold. Roger Casement, an Irish nationalist and another hero in this story, met his demise on a London gallows. George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, two brave African Americans, took great risks to expose the world to the horrors occurring in the Congo. Joseph Conrad, a young riverboat officer on the Congo River, sailed into the centre of the narrative. Above them all, scheming millionaire King Leopold II towered. King Leopold's Ghost will powerfully and compassionately imprint the tragedy of the Congo—too long forgotten—on the Western world's consciousness.