King Leopold's Ghost Analysis

The book, King Leopold’s Ghost, is a second hand account of one of the biggest crimes against humanity in history. The author, Adam Hochschild, explains the story of Leopold’s Congo in colonial Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s. The accounts of the slavery and the inhumanities are told in vivid detail, and give an image so cruel and gruesome that they are only comparable to those of the holocaust in Nazi Germany. After reading the book, the only question that was in my mind is how is this the only time I have heard of this? According to the book this atrocity must never be forgotten but it was, and in my opinion it should be taught in schools. While my opinion is that the book itself was a good read, the context troubles me in that it took so much effort to expose Leopold’s crimes and it was forgotten.

The story starts with King Leopold II of Belgium. In the scramble for Africa, many nations rushed to establish colonies, and those who did made a great profit from them. The king himself wanted to compete with them, as well as amass a profit. He traveled to several British colonies and learnt how to establish and manage a colony of his own. The king himself then secretly bought the Congo, and supported an expedition led by Henry Morton Stanly.

Stanly was an American who fought in the Civil war, deserted, became a journalist and then became an explorer. He was a ruthless, evil man, for he said “… continual combat was always a part of exploring”. He would kill up to hundreds of people and burn several towns and villages in his wake. (Like in Avatar) he would fight using advanced rifles and ammunition against tribes armed with bows and arrows. Being the first explorer to map the Congo River, he quickly re...

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...g in the testimonies of eyewitnesses including natives of the Congo.

Leopold profited around $1.1 billion from his Congo. At the age of seventy he sold the Congo territory to the Belgian government. By the time he was seventy-four he became sick and died, he left all his properties to his wife and sons. King Leopold II died, but his legacy in the Congo didn’t. The people were still enslaved and killed and with the dawn of the First World War some natives were made soldiers to fight. Morel became an activist against the war, but it resulted in him losing his popularity; after the war ended he was elected to parliament and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Hochschild concludes that the world must never forget the events of Leopold’s Congo. This event is evidence that it is the result of human greed that led to so much suffering, injustice, and corruption.