Adam Hochschild painted a very vivid picture of the cruelty and injustices done to the Congolese from 1885 to 1908 in his book King Leopold’s Ghost. Hochschild shows us how manipulative King Leopold was in his desire for fortune and more power. This paper will point out the how King Leopold was a silver tongued snake, how he used his charm to win him the colony of Congo, and how his greed caused many innocent lives to be lost. This can be seen in the examination of how he gained control of the colony and his management thereafter.
We first start to see how Leopold’s personality was developing into the character he became when even his father, the king, had spoken to one of his advisors stating, “Leopold is subtle and sly.” He also made reference to Leopold being like a fox. Hochschild went on further to state how these assets would become valuable to Leopold as an adult because he learned how to be stealthy, observe from a distance, and was able to dissemble problems when they would arise. Leopold had an obsession with trade; a first step into his world of greed, he was often looked upon by the
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royals and the court as being odd or not quite right because of his interests. Leopold often expressed his opinions of being the future king of Belgium with great distress stating, “Petit pays, petits gens” (small country, small people) . Leopold believed that Belgium was too small of a country for his rule and was always looking for ways to expand his nation and to make himself as rich as possible. Before Leopold was even king he was already traveling looking for opportunities for investment and expansions. Although Belgium was happy as it was and didn’t want any part of colonization, Leopold often pushed the topic. After becoming the king in 1865, Leopold grew more intent on finding a place to colonize not just for wealth but for more power. During the mid-1870’s Africa had become a high point of interest for many countries looking to expand their territory. Many explorers had started their conquest of Africa for fame of discovery of new lands and were being popularized through publications in newspapers around the world. King Leopold II paid close attention to these discoveries and soon founded the International African Association to be his dummy company for exploitation of future colonization. Leopold had told one of his men, “I do not want to risk…losing a fine chance to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake.” Eventually Leopold would woo Henry Morton Stanley to work for the International African Association setting out to establish a base and build a road that would later turn into a railroad for future endeavors. King Leopold used his charm to convince Mr. Stanley and the world that their mission was strictly philanthropic and nothing else. Later, King Leopold created other organizations to obtain backers for his dream of domination under the carefully orchestrated guise of philanthropy and humanitarian missions. This deliberate move by the king was to cause confusion amongst many members of what the other organizations’ responsibilities were and what they were doing, so he could keep their eyes off him and focused on other issues. King Leopold finally had enough land through Mr. Stanley striking deals with the local tribes’ chiefs, creating contracts, uses of trickery and sometimes straight out brutality for those who would not compromise. King Leopold needed backing from a large nation to recognize his land as a colony. So through his networking of friends he sent Mr. Sanford and his wife to the US to win over their recognition. They used their political power and wealth to host many dinner parties and played on the thoughts of sending the blacks back to Africa which was popular thinking during that timeframe. Finally Leopold had won the favor of the United States: The Government of the United States announces its sympathy with and approval of the humane and benevolent purposes of the International Association of the Congo, administering, as it does, the interest of the Free States there established, and will order the officers of the United States, both on land and sea, to recognize the flag of International African Association as the flag of friendly government. While Sanford was doing this in the US, Leopold also had a man in Paris raising sympathy for the cause.
Leopold often had many individuals on his pay roll, many being newspaper writers that would make Leopold sound like a righteous man. King Leopold finally had the power he desired became Congo’s “King Sovereign”. In no way did he share his power with the Belgium government. On May 29, 1885, the king named his new, privately owned country the Congo Free State and the king had the country he always dreamed of.
Another example of King Leopold’s cunning is when he won over the Christian supporters and missionaries by denouncing the use of slavery and slave trade in Africa. He was elected a member of a human rights group called Aborigines Protection Society. Little did they know the terrible atrocities he had ordered his people to do to make the Africans work or acquire
goods. King Leopold was a well-informed man, he had people working for him all over Europe and in Africa. Leopold was always abreast of the news and tried to stay one step ahead until he met his match, E.D. Morel. Still, Leopold did everything in his power to be painted as the man of great sacrifice and a humanitarian. Leopold did so through buying more press writers for his side, bribing people, and putting people on his payroll to lobby that he was a great man who was doing great things. Leopold even sent three judges down to Africa to gather evidence for his so told crimes that he had committed. The Commission of Inquiry found many horrors while in Africa and found that there was no way that the information they acquired could have been made up. This evidence was overwhelmingly damning for the king, but none of the reports were ever read and the information was dismissed because the report was generalized and never quoted the witnesses. King Leopold had made millions, maybe even billions of dollars, off the lives of the African people. Leopold didn’t care how he acquired his money as long as he got it. Leopold received reports from his generals in Africa on the production of rubber and other materials being exported from that country. He was well aware of the crimes committed against the Congolese but to him it didn’t matter because they weren’t really people in his eyes anyways. They were just a means to his success and a dreadful blight upon his reputation. The extent of King Leopold’s greed is stated that he would rather build buildings and gardens than give any of his money to his daughters. Right before he died he ensured that they would never see a cent of the money he made by selling the Congo nation to Belgium and then giving all his wealth to his mistress (wife), their sons and his sister. Leopold also established a foundation in Germany in which he donated millions of dollars in paintings, silver, crystal and furniture to keep his fortune away from his daughters. One of Leopold’s cabinet ministers had said, “The king has but two dreams, to die a billionaire and to disinherit his daughters.” Before King Leopold turned over Congo to Belgium he had ordered all paperwork and historical records to be burned, thus trying to erase history and preserve what reputation he had left. The furnaces were said to have burned for eight days straight. The king had said, “I will give them my Congo, but they have no right to know what I did there.” Leopold had also ordered that all the records in Congo were to be destroyed. Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost gave a great account for historical records when the King and his staff tried to burn the story away from the pages of history. Without this book and other books on record written during the time, some may have never known who King Leopold was and the terrible crimes he had committed. King Leopold was proven in this essay to be very sly, eloquent with his words, greedy and a grand manipulator and for power and fortune. Bibliography Hochschild, Adam. 1998. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
The book mainly chronicles the efforts of King Leopold II of Belgium which is to make the Congo into a colonial empire. During the period that 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.
It may seem like Ghost on the Throne by James Romm is just another one of the thousands of books written about the life about Alexander the Great. The fact is it was nearly the exact opposite. Of course, Alexander the Great plays an enormous role in the book, but Ghost on the Throne told the story of the legacy Alexander the Great left behind after his death. In fact, the word “Ghost” in the title of the book refers to Alexander the Great. Throughout the book, Romm told many stories about those who ruled after Alexander the Great and the influence Alexander had on the way those people ruled. This is why the book was given the title “Ghost on the Throne.” James Romm proves the impact Alexander’s legacy had on those once under his command even after he was no longer alive. Ghost on the Throne was a very interesting read and did an excellent job explaining Alexander the Great’s legacy.
Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost" is a lost historical account starting in the late 19th century continuing into the 20th century of the enslavement of an entire country. The book tells the story of King Leopold and his selfish attempt to essentially make Belgium bigger starting with the Congo. This was all done under an elaborate "philanthropic" public relations curtain deceiving many countries along with the United States (the first to sign on in Leopold's claim of the Congo). There were many characters in the book ones that aided in the enslavement of the Congo and others that help bring light to the situation but the most important ones I thought were: King Leopold, a cold calculating, selfish leader, as a child he was crazy about geography and as an adult wasn't satisfied with his small kingdom of Belgium setting his sites on the Congo to expand. Hochschild compares Leopold to a director in a play he even says how brilliant he is in orchestrating the capture of the Congo. Another important character is King Leopold's, as Hochschild puts it, "Stagehand" Henry Morton Stanley. He was a surprisingly cruel person killing many natives of the Congo in his sophomore voyage through the interior of Africa (The first was to find Livingston). Leopold used Stanley to discuss treaties with African leaders granting Leopold control over the Congo. Some of the natives he talked to weren't even in the position to sign the treaties or they didn't know what they were signing.
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
...abor to get what he wanted, ivory and rubber. Leopold was able to colonize and pillage Congo for its resources during the Scramble for Africa through forced labor. The quote that sums up my essay and the book is best described at the end of chapter 15. Massacring huge numbers of natives will eventually frighten the survivors into gathering rubber. This shows the intentions of forced labor by the Force Publique and the reason for the population drop in Congo during Leopold’s rule.
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.
George Washington Williams was a black American. He had come to the Congo over a route that seemed almost as if it took him through several different lives. He was in the U.S. Army, fought battles, attended University`s, and graduated from Newton in 1874. Williams married and became a pastor. He also created a milestone in the literature of human rights and of investigative journalism. This work is titled An Open Letter to His Serne Majesty Leopold 2nd , King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo, by Colonel the Honorable Geo.W. Williams, of the Untied States of America(102). As well as submitting a statement to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations urging recognition of the International Association of the Congo. Williams had a plan to go to the Congo to collect material for his book. As Williams traveled up the the great river he had time to take in Africa. When he reached Stanley Falls he could no longer contain what he had felt and saw. He then writes h...
Hochschild also wants to show the heroism that took place afterwards in what became the first human rights movement of our time. Hochschild does an excellent and detailed job of showing how clever and cunning (like a fox) Leopold was in obtaining and maintaining his hold in the Congo. Early on Leopold became obsessed with the idea of colonies and the profit that they could bring to his country.
The land Leopold had obtained was about eighty times larger than that of Belgium itself. Plus, Leopold was proclaimed the “sovereign” ruler of all the Congo Free Sta...
Dracula, as it was written by Bram Stoker, presents to us possibly the most infamous monster in all of literature. Count Dracula, as a fictional character, has come to symbolize the periphery between the majority and being an outsider to that group. Dracula’s appeal throughout the years and genres no doubt stems from his sense of romanticism and monster. Reader’s no doubt are attracted to his “bad-boy” sensibilities, which provide an attraction into the novel. Looking first at his appearance, personality, and behaviour at the beginning of the novel, we can easily see Dracula’s blurred outsider status, as he occupies the boundaries of human and monster. Related to this is Dracula’s geographic sense of outsider. For all intents and purposes, Dracula is an immigrant to England, thus placing him further into the realm of outsider. To look at Bram Stoker’s Dracula as solely a monster in the most violent sense of his actions would to be look at a sole aspect of his character, and so we must look at how he interacts with the outside world to genuinely understand him.
During the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, King Leopold II of Belgium invaded the Congo and used it to procure more wealth for himself and his nation. In doing so, as many as ten million Congolese were decimated, and they faced unspeakable horrors. Hochschild argues in King Leopold’s Ghost that all actions taken by King Leopold II were done out of nothing more than sheer greed and selfishness, and he used any means necessary to get what he wanted, and manipulated others into following suit by exploiting their own greed and racism. The only way the brutality was combated, Hochschild further goes on to describe, was through the actions of the few with a higher moral character.
During the 17th century, slavery was a widely used commodity with the Europeans, little do people know however that African kings also had and accepted slavery in their own nations. King Nzinga Mbemba of Congo and the King of Ouidah had similarities on the issue of slavery; they tolerated the use of slaves. Congo’s king had no contingency with slavery; in fact, he had slaves in his country. When the Portuguese were purchasing goods in Congo, the king had men “investigate if the mentioned goods are captives or free men” (NZ, 622). The fact that the king differentiates the men between ‘free’ and ‘captives’ illustrates that not all people in Congo are free. Whether these captives are from the country of Congo or not, they are still caught and held all across the nation against their will. King Mbemba kept slaves because the population of Congo was vastly declining due to the slave trade. In his letter, he pleads with the king of Portug...
Alas, in 1961 Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by a US- sponsored plot 7 months after independence, and replaced him with a “puppet dictator named Mobutu” (Kingsolver). In her book, Barbara Kingsolver surfaces a forgotten part of our nation’s history in the exploitation of the Congo through her main characters, the Price family, who are missionaries sent to the Kilanga village. Through characters’ narratives that “double as allegories for the uneasy colonial marriage between the West and Africa” (Hamilton, Jones), Kingsolver creates a relatable way for her readers to understand the theme she is trying to convey, which is “‘what did we do to Africa, and how do we feel about it?’” (Snyder). Kingsolver began with this theme and developed the rest of the novel around it, just as she does with her other works, and sticking with her trademark technique, she utilizes her book as a vessel for “political activism, an extension of the anti-Vietnam protests” she participated in college (Snyder).
While Leopold II, the King of Belgium, desperately wanted an overseas colony, The Belgian people did not share his enthusiasm; which created the feelings of neglect and apathy Belgium had towards Congo. The Congo Free State, established “in the margins of the Berlin Conference” in 1885, allowed Leopold to “gain international recognition of his possession” which he had begun to take control of since the 1870s. However, while Leopold was securing control of the Congo, the Belgian people were not interested in controlling colonies, as they believed that colonies “would merely soak up resources that would be better used for social purposes at home.” Thus, the Belgian people decided to solve the problem of having an unwanted colony by separating the Belgian government from...
On April 9, 1835, a king was born. Leopold Louis Philippe Marie Victor was the son of Leopold I of Belgium and Louise of Orleans. As a young prince, his parents saw Leopold II as a weakling who was not fit for this world and they often preferred his younger brother and sister. His parents rarely spoke to him and instead sent correspondences through their royal secretaries. If Leopold II wanted to speak with his father he would have to request and audience with him. Leopold II learned that in order to overcome these feelings of being unwanted that he would need to gain the favor of many people. Court officials were certainly eager befriend the future king. They taught him about the government, showed him maps and gave him information about the world. Leopold II visited many colonies of other empires. He became obsessed with the idea of having colonies and a larger kingdom to rule once he became king. He looked to acquire or purchase many territories but failed to do so. Leopold II finally looked into the continent of Africa where about 80 percent of it was still under indigenous rule. He had finally found his land to conquer.