King Leopold's Ghost Summary

Wayne Gerard Trotman, a British filmmaker, once said, “instead of loving people and using money, people often love money and use people.” During the Age of Imperialism, industrialized countries around the globe believed that conquest was the best way to boost their economies. These quickly-developing countries used the resources and people from their imperialized territories as their own. Whether or not this was done morally was of little concern to these countries. The need to boost their economy spurred industrialized countries to imperialize other countries for resources and power, which could not be done without a humanitarian cover.

For example, the United States imperialized less developed territories to profit from them while claiming

it to be the United States’ supposed duty to help the lesser territories. In 1898, tensions were rising between America and Spain as a result of Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain, which was backed by the US. After an unexplained sinking of a US Navy ship that had been sent to protect American citizens and military bases in Cuba, Spain declared war on America. The war lasted until the second half of the year, and Spain granted Cuba its independence, and ceded the rest of its territories and colonies, such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines, to the US.1 When deciding what to do with the newly acquired land, the two options were to either keep the territories or free them. In his speech, The March of the Flag, Albert Beveridge, a US Senator from Indiana, supported the option to keep the acquired land because the resources there would greatly benefit America’s economy.2 For example, “the resources of Porto Rico have only been trifled with” and the “riches of the Philippines have hardly been touched by the fingertips of modern methods.” Beveridge says that their resources and “trade will be ours in time.” By this, Beveridge explained that his reason for keeping the territories is to increase the resources that the US has, leading to more trade, and significant improvement to the United States’ economy. He attempted to add morality to this claim by saying that it was the United States’ duty to spread the good fortune it has had to less fortunate places. When Beveridge said, “the rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government,” he claimed that the US must govern the places it has obtained because those places are incapable of governing themselves. Through this logic, Beveridge made it seem like keeping the newly acquired territories was a moral obligation. In the end, it was clear that the Spanish American War was fought more for economic gain than public safety. This quest for economic gain at the expense of colonies was not limited to America. Europeans also had similar aspirations.
In Europe, the king of Belgium, King Leopold II, found economic and political gain by taking the Congo as his own and ruthlessly exploiting its resources and people, all while leaving the rest of Europe to believe that everything he did had a humanitarian justification to support it.

The book, King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild3, provides details of Leopold’s avarice. One example was when Leopold wanted to sell all the ivory found in the Congo, he increased incentives, and “Congo state officials and their African auxiliaries swept through the country on ivory raids, shooting elephants, buying tusks from villagers for a pittance, or simply confiscating them.” Even so, Leopold wrote to the prime minister that “the Congo state is certainly not a business. If it gathers ivory on certain of its lands, that is only to lessen its deficit.” Because only Leopold knew of the cruelty being used in the Congo, no one could testify against this benign claim. The entire process was not only unfair, but also it was cruel. To Leopold, the end, economic gain for Belgium and himself, justified the means. He even forced the Congolese to act as porters. “Even children were put to work: one observer noted seven- to nine-year-olds each carrying a load of twenty-two pounds.” These porters would carry loads for weeks at a time. Many died on the journey to their destination. Once again, the rest of Europe knew nothing of these atrocities. This went to show that Leopold was willing to do whatever was necessary to make a

profit.
These are just two examples of imperialist countries exploiting the resources of territories they control to boost their own economy without care for how the resources are obtained. Today, there are not many places still under imperialist or colonial rule, but the effects of that time period still remain. There is a significant disparity in the wealth and quality of life between the previously conquered and conqueror countries that will remain far into the future.