King Leopold's Ghost Sparknotes

The book King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa is written by Adam Hochschild. Adam Hochschild is the author of many books. He teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

King Leopold’s Ghost is a gruesome story about Leopold II and the Kingdom of Kongo. The Kingdom of Kongo was roughly three hundred miles square, comprising territory that today lies in several countries. In 1949, an expedition of Portuguese priests and emissaries made a ten-day trek and set up housekeeping as permanent representatives of their country in the court of the Kongo king. Their arrival marked the beginning of the first sustained encounter between Europeans and a black African nation.

As in much of Africa, the kingdom had slavery. African slavery varied from one area to another, but most slaves were captured. Others had been criminals, or were given away by their families as part of dowry settlement. At first, slave owners arrived in small numbers.

Then they began to flood in across the Atlantic. Many of the slaves were shipped to America, and others were captured by African slave-dealers.
Leopold II inherited the distinctive title by which his country’s monarchs were known, King of the Belgians. Leopold was certain that the vast territory in the middle of Africa, miraculously still unclaimed by any European power, could become the colony he craved. Ivory was one of the most brightly riches that Leopold hoped to find. European and American merchant were already eager to buy African ivory. Leopold forced people to work using torture and manipulating them.
Europeans soon became interested in the African continent.

Leopold paid a large monthly price to a journalist to ensure a stream of sympathetic articles about his activities in the Congo. The French did not feel threatened by Belgium or by Leopold’s claims. Their main fear was that when the king ran out of money, as they were sure he would, in his expensive plan to build a railway, he might sell the whole territory to their rival, Britain. When talking to the British, Leopold hinted that if he didn’t get all the land he wanted, he would leave Africa completely, which meant he would sell the Congo to France. The bluff worked, and Britain gave in. Staff in place and tools in hand, Leopold set out to build the infrastructure necessary to exploit his colony. Leopold’s will treated the Congo as if it were just a piece of uninhabited land to be disposed of by its owner. Leopold established the capital of his new Congo state at the port town of

Boma.
Many other places soon learned about the tyranny of King Leopold in Africa. The terror in Congo was sanctioned by the authorities. King Leopold’s terror was widespread across the world. Soon, Belgium annexed the Congo. Slavery diminished over time, and the Congo gained its independence back. The theme of this book is colonialism, which is the extension of one nation’s sovereignty over a territory beyond its borders.