How long is king leopold ghost

In he wrote an Open Letter to King Leopold. This first salvo would not undo Leopold but it paved the way for others. That same year Joseph Conrad trained as a steamship captain on the Congo River. His Heart of Darkness is an accurate description of the Congo drawn from his experience.

Following in George Washington Williams footsteps was William Sheppard, a black American Presbyterian missionary who witnessed some of the most horrific atrocities in the Congo.

With the rising price of rubber, it soon rivaled ivory as a valuable export. The Force Publique compelled the local men to collect rubber from jungle vines by taking their wives and children hostage.

Those who fell short were flogged to near death. Those who resisted were summarily killed. Hands were cut off the dead and sometimes the living by government soldiers and agents to prove the number killed in order to receive the government bounty. Sheppard published many articles attesting to these crimes.

While King Leopold successfully parried these stories, this second salvo widened the cracks in his armor. These cracks were finally broken open by E. Morel, a British employee of the shipping company King Leopold used to ship goods to and from the Congo. Morel saw the manifests and realized mostly arms and ammunition for the Force Publique were going to the Congo.

Little in trade for the shipments of ivory and rubber was going to the Congo. He quickly deduced that only slave labor could explain this unequal trade. He protested and ended up having to leave his job. This resulted in the British Parliament passing a Congo protest resolution and dispatching its consul in the Congo to the interior to report on the situation. The consul, Irishman Roger Casement, eschewed government guides, interviewed Africans and witnessed their ruthless exploitation.

He wrote a scathing report that the Foreign Office due to politics watered down. Casement teamed up with Morel. He donated money to help Morel start the Congo Reform Association in Morel gained the support of the nonconformist Protestant clergy. Leopold had the Catholic Church in his pocket. The Congo operation came under increasing scrutiny.

Leopold countered by setting up a handpicked Commission of Inquiry in Criticism of Leopold continued to escalate and he continued to match it with skilled obfuscation. Finally in he had no choice but to sell the Congo to the state of Belgium and in at 74 he died. His nephew, Prince Albert, succeeded him and came out against the brutal practices of the Congo administrators.

However, even though Leopold was gone, the same people were running the country. Still the situation improved enough that Morel dissolved the Congo Reform Association in Part of the improvement was due to the replacement of wild rubber with cultivated rubber which required plantation workers rather than jungle foragers.

However the Congolese were still forced to work on the plantations or worse in the mines which were very dangerous. This was due to: Countless murders, massacres, brutal floggings, torture and harsh imprisonment; exhaustion and exposure from forced labor; starvation from the burning of villages, the stealing and destroying of food supplies; European diseases like smallpox to which the Congolese had no immunity; and a large drop in the birth rate since people put off raising children in such circumstances.

Africans in adjacent states in equatorial Africa suffered similar fates driven by the rubber trade. These other colonial governments employed the same ruthless tactics. Leopold, it turned out, had ownership in many of the concessions in the French, German and Portuguese territories. As bad as the Congo was, no specific ethnic group was targeted for elimination. The government wanted slave and forced laborers. These people were worked to death or killed for refusing but not solely for who they were.

But the Germans formally proclaimed a policy of extermination of the Herero tribe searching them out and killing men, women and children, poisoning their sources of water and driving survivors out into the desert to starve.

Casement ultimately left the British Foreign Service and became a rebel fighting for Irish independence. During WWI he sought help from the Germans for his cause. In he was hanged for treason. Morel became a peace activist and spent six months in hard labor for his opposition. Morel died in In due to popular uprisings the Belgian government was finally forced to grant the Congo independence.

Sadly, Western intervention continued. Eisenhower ordered Allen Dulles to eliminate the duly elected independence leader Patrice Lumumba although it was the Belgians who finally murdered him. But this is another story. Before Leopold turned the Congo over to Belgium he had all of the state archives burned to hide his crimes.

However the Belgian government still had the original transcripts from the Commission of Inquiry. It would be almost 80 years later before the government finally allowed a retired Belgian diplomat and dogged researcher, Jules Marchal, to see these transcripts. The testimonies provided detailed documentation of the many crimes.

Most of us are familiar with similar atrocities by the Nazis and the Soviets or by Europeans against New World Indians, but the Congo atrocities were under the radar for me and I suspect many others.

While it is unsettling to discover still another horrendous chapter in history, it is an important one and well worth the effort to learn about.

View all 11 comments. The Belgian Congo, as Zaire and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were formerly called was the creation of King Leopold of Belgium who desperately wanted a colony. By the late 19th century there was little land left for the taking except in Africa and it had become obvious that taking over independent lands was neither wise nor practical.

King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was a man of enormous appetites both for land and food—he once ate two whole pheasants at a restaurant in Paris, The Belgian Congo, as Zaire and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were formerly called was the creation of King Leopold of Belgium who desperately wanted a colony. King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was a man of enormous appetites both for land and food—he once ate two whole pheasants at a restaurant in Paris, and it was not unusual for him to order several entrees.

His colony was 75 times larger than Belgium. He had learned an important lesson during his search for Livingston: there was little military threat from the local inhabitants who were small in population, encompassed more than ethnic groups speaking more than languages making a joint effort against the white man distinctly unlikely.

Leopold was being more than a little disingenuous. He also used several front organizations in an attempt to hide his financial interest. Failing to meet quotas was a capital offense. Hands of dead Congolese were cut off and kept in storage to account for expended ammunition, although often the natives were killed just for sport.

Leopold was a genius at public relations and he knew how to accumulate supporters in other countries through flattery and marketing. Arthur, were easily manipulated by the King into gaining American support for his efforts.

Reading this book reinforced my view that, as a society, our values and standards are far superior to those of the nineteenth century. The discovery of rubber and its immense number of uses for an increasingly industrial society made it a valuable commodity that would make Leopold immensely rich. He did so on the backs of the black population of the Congo.

He could not countenance slavery, of course, so his soldiers would take hostages, usually women and children, to be returned when the natives had supplied their quota of rubber.

Gathering the rubber was dangerous and very painful -- the usual method was to let the rubber sap dry on one's skin and then peel it off. People in communities that showed resistance were shot. The good generals, fearing that soldiers might be saving cartridges for hunting or mutiny, demanded that the soldiers supply the right hand of each victim they killed for each cartridge, presumably only one being needed per victim.

One person was in charge of smoking the hands to preserve them so they would remain in condition to be counted by the appropriate authorities. Often soldiers would use bullets to kill animals to eat and sever the hand off a living person to account for the bullets. Women hostages were difficult for the commanders because their men would often demand the prettier ones to rape and this lead to morale problems.

I suspect some of the savagery know going on in Africa may have be learned from western Europeans. The savagery did not go unnoticed and several men were notable in their opposition. This is a model account that carries several lessons for us today.

The distance consumers are from the location of the raw materials needed to fuel their thirst for ever more goodies—I count myself among the worst offenders, that new PalmPilot is really cool—permits the rape of the less fortunate to proceed behind a fog of marketing and public relations, that bane of the twentieth century that celebrates mendacity as its highest ethic.

But, the speed of international communications and the camera have also played a part in exposing and revealing the travesties, so one can still hope that they might belong to the not so distant past.

View all 6 comments. Horrifying story, rivetingly told. Regrettably, much of my reading of history has been centered primarily on the history of Europe and of the U. Hochschild's account of Belgium's exploitation of the Congo left me appalled. Despite the accounts of some truly savage atrocities, I ended up reading it in a couple of marathon sittings. A disturbing book, but one so well-written, I highly recommend it. View 2 comments. Shelves: around-the-world , crime , history , non-fiction , ultimate-reading-list.

If you ask an educated American to name the worst despots and atrocities of the twentieth century, you'll immediately hear such names as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

I wouldn't have before reading this book, yet a man thousands of miles from a land he never visited is charged with instituting policies responsible for 10 million deaths in the course of a couple of decades, sparking the "first great If you ask an educated American to name the worst despots and atrocities of the twentieth century, you'll immediately hear such names as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

I wouldn't have before reading this book, yet a man thousands of miles from a land he never visited is charged with instituting policies responsible for 10 million deaths in the course of a couple of decades, sparking the "first great international human rights movement of twentieth century. The story of almost every monster of history seems to lie in a hunger for fame, glory or a twisted patriotism or ideology.

With Leopold, as he's presented, the motive seems to be pure greed. The next third begins to set out how Leopold's military dictatorship used forced labor to meet demands for ivory and rubber. Finally, Hochschild tells the story of the protest movement, especially the story of Edmund Dene Morel, "an obscure shipping-company official" who became Leopold's most dangerous enemy. After reading this I certainly will never again be able to see Stanley as a hero or read Heart of Darkness in the same way.

Given the material, this is an absorbing book--a five star in terms of the importance of the story, but not, I thought, in presentation. Hochschild, a former editor of the Marxist Ramparts and a co-founder of the far-left Mother Jones , often lets his socialist biases peek out. For instance, he bizarrely expresses his bewilderment over how a businessman like Morel with no attachment to socialism could be so passionate about fighting injustice! Even more than the intrusive socialist lens, I was left uneasy by the whiff of sensationalist journalism in his psychoanalysis and unsupported speculations about motives and actions and focus on scandal.

I think in a lot of cases like that, less would have been more. And in the case of what happened in Congo, more would have been more. I felt I got a better sense of how Leopold conducted his affair with his teenage mistress than how he governed the Congo. Hochschild's chronology and evidence for the numbers he claimed killed in the introduction and analysis of what part could be pinned down as due to the direct effect of colonial rule felt sketchy, as did the exploration of Leopold's role beyond press relations and lobbying.

Admittedly, as Hochschild related, difficult precisely because so many documents were ordered destroyed by Leopold. View all 10 comments. Shelves: africa , non-fiction , history , This book took me several months to read because it was so disturbing.

After reading a chapter and having nightmares, I'd put it away for something else, and then return to it once I'd finished with the other book. The atrocities committed in the Belgian Congo were nothing short of diabolical.

And yet, shockingly, one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century remains relatively unheard of. I am a big fan of Adam Hochschild; he makes you feel like you're reading a novel rather than a historic This book took me several months to read because it was so disturbing. I am a big fan of Adam Hochschild; he makes you feel like you're reading a novel rather than a historical non-fiction book, without sacrificing thoroughness or detail.

It's extremely enlightening, and I recommend it really strongly. View 1 comment. Nov 07, Charlotte Kersten rated it it was amazing Shelves: colonialism. A horrifying look at the heart of colonialism: the naked greed, exploitation and dehumanizing racialized violence that are covered by a veneer of humanitarianism and a "civilizing" mission.

It's a meticulously researched and incredibly insightful book, and one of the biggest takeaways for me was that most of the activists who fought the horrors of Leopold's Congo didn't actually object to the practice of colonialism in and of itself; they were simply protesting its violent excesses in one coloni A horrifying look at the heart of colonialism: the naked greed, exploitation and dehumanizing racialized violence that are covered by a veneer of humanitarianism and a "civilizing" mission.

It's a meticulously researched and incredibly insightful book, and one of the biggest takeaways for me was that most of the activists who fought the horrors of Leopold's Congo didn't actually object to the practice of colonialism in and of itself; they were simply protesting its violent excesses in one colonial state.

Morel is a great example of this - he dedicated his life to fighting for this cause but wholeheartedly maintained that the British Empire was doing good in the world. It's astonishing, looking back, but I think it goes to show just how incredibly persuasive the beneficent propaganda of empire can be. Leopold used it to con the world, colonizers used it to rewrite the history of what they did and many people still believe it today. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.

This book begins with the assertion of evil. It made me uneasy. I prefer to hear the facts and draw my own conclusions. Better that we finally uncover the ugly truth and take its lesson: unbridled greed may be the ugliest, most unforgivable, most unnecessary sin of al This book begins with the assertion of evil.

Better that we finally uncover the ugly truth and take its lesson: unbridled greed may be the ugliest, most unforgivable, most unnecessary sin of all. How can we not have known this horrible history? It happened only a hundred years ago. Though I am embarrassed I did not know the anguished history and perpetuation of evil in the Congo, I stand in good company. Resistance requires exceptional people willing to bear witness, but also organization and persistence. Fortunately, he was an articulate man with a convincing speaking style and he had enormous drive.

He managed to gather like-minded folk to himself to voice a larger protest. The life of Irishman Roger Casement, the gay man knighted by the Queen for his work as a diplomat and later hanged by Britain as a traitor to the crown for his work as an Irish patriot, stands as an example of the strange dissociation countries in power display when someone challenges their economic and political interests.

I fell in love with him a little, Sir Roger Casement, as a man of great courage and vision: he saw what men are and did not despair, though one might say that, in the end, he died of it. Black Americans who spent their adult lives speaking out against the horror happening in Africa, the Reverend William Henry Sheppard and George Washington Williams, have finally found their way back into history.

Many Christian missionaries, though notably, not Catholic missionaries, did their part in publicizing crimes in pursuit of endless demand for rubber. What I liked most about the book was the way Hochschild brought us past the period of the Congo revelations to the present day, telling us how we could have been ignorant of the time and the period.

He followed the lives of Morel and Chapman to their ends, and introduced us to Ambassador Marchal of Belgium. Their behaviors have been perpetuated over the generations until there is nothing but misery left in that place. Now I understand better how a country so rich in natural resources could be so socially impoverished. The crimes continue to the present. What can be the solution to this kind of moral destitution? View all 9 comments. The fault in this book is set out by Hochschild both in the introduction and again in his afterword.

Here's what he says - Looking back on this book after an interval of some years has reminded me of where I wish I could have done more.

My greatest frustration lay in how hard it was to portray individual Africans as full-fledged actors in this story. Historians often face such difficulties, since the written record from colonizers, the rich, and the powerful is always more plentiful than it is f The fault in this book is set out by Hochschild both in the introduction and again in his afterword. Historians often face such difficulties, since the written record from colonizers, the rich, and the powerful is always more plentiful than it is from the colonized, the poor, and the powerless.

Again and again it felt unfair to me that we know so much about the character and daily life of Leopold and so little about those of Congolese indigenous rulers at the time, and even less about the lives of villagers who died gathering rubber. Or that so much is on the record about Stanley and so little about those who were perhaps his nearest African counterparts: the coastal merchants already leading caravans of porters with trading goods into the interior when he first began staking out the Congo for Leopold.

Of those who worked against the regime, we know the entire life stories of Europeans or Americans like Morel, Casement, and Sheppard, but almost nothing of resistance leaders like Kandolo or Mulume Niama who lost their lives as rebels. This skews the story in a way that, unintentionally, almost seems to diminish the centrality of the Congolese themselves. And that's what's wrong with it. However I appreciated that Hochschild recognised this problem himself, but still felt it was a story worth telling, even with these limitations.

Jan 30, Laura Noggle rated it it was amazing Shelves: nonfiction , history , He never set foot in the Congo. There is something very modern about that, too, as there is about the bomber pilot in the stratosphere, above the clouds, who never hears screams or sees shattered homes or torn flesh. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history.

View all 8 comments. I had 2 interesting experiences relating to this book while I was reading it. First, I recieved a call from an Airmiles rep who spoke with a thick African accent, he had no difficulty spelling my last name.

He told me he came from the Congo, previously a Belgian colony where many names start with "van", hence his ease with my name.

After telling him I was reading "King Leopold's Ghost", we talked for quite some time about the state of his homeland. He remarked that the people of the Congo are in I had 2 interesting experiences relating to this book while I was reading it. He remarked that the people of the Congo are in more dire straights today than when they were colonized by Belgium.

He said that colonization brought many benefits such as medical care, education, and wages that were paid regularly.

The present day dictatorship has all but erased these advances with selfish corruption. This encounter was a bit of a light bulb momment for me: reading is not just about a book or what you learn from it, it's about how it opens your world to people The other point of interest came on the last page of the book. The author writes, "One factor is the abysmal position of women and all of the violence, repression and prejudices that go with it. No pun intended, but Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is often refered to in the book.

For a first review I've certainly gone on for a bit, sorry! View all 3 comments. May 30, Lee Prescott rated it it was amazing. A compelling read about what surely must be one of humanity's horrific chapters - the systematic destruction of the Congo and its peoples by one of history's little-mentioned, but most grotesque characters. The author's liberal standpoint may mean it is ultimately an unbalanced book, centring on exploitation and attrocity with no discernable counterpoint, but in chronicling that it is an excellent, if harrowing, account.

The image of Nsala's daughter's hand and foot will haunt me for a very long A compelling read about what surely must be one of humanity's horrific chapters - the systematic destruction of the Congo and its peoples by one of history's little-mentioned, but most grotesque characters.

The image of Nsala's daughter's hand and foot will haunt me for a very long time. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A colonial morality play. The story in "King Leopold's Ghost" is a powerful one -- colonization taken to its extreme -- but the book is rendered mediocre by the author's trite moralizing, lack of historical rigor, and tiresome reliance on depicting every actor with either a halo or horns.

Leopold, here an antagonist of extraordinary guile, is only weakly connected to the governmental and business interests with which he worked; the reader is given pages of anecdote concerning the king's depravit A colonial morality play. Leopold, here an antagonist of extraordinary guile, is only weakly connected to the governmental and business interests with which he worked; the reader is given pages of anecdote concerning the king's depravity with nearly no overview of the system in which he operated.

The final chapter is a model of the book's flaws. It considers the Belgian process of forgetting which followed their foray into colonialism aided by international sympathy during the first world war. Instead of pursuing this interesting and somewhat complicated topic in more detail, however, we are duly regaled with additional vignettes of heroism and villainy.

The book then concludes with a sermon aimed squarely at us in the choir. View all 12 comments. A very troubling look at the Belgian involvement in the Congo -- a chapter in the European 'Scramble for Africa' -- that I had not known much about. Leopold, in particular, comes out looking very bad.

The book which I listened to as an audio is still a bit too long and spends too much time on narrow topics -- and engages in a bit of hagiography of E. In other words, the author is trying to appeal to the pathos in the reader, where more detachment would have made for A very troubling look at the Belgian involvement in the Congo -- a chapter in the European 'Scramble for Africa' -- that I had not known much about.

In other words, the author is trying to appeal to the pathos in the reader, where more detachment would have made for a duller but stronger book. In other words, it is a good book, but the author was concerned about sales This is a brilliant achievement: a history book of horrors which turns out to be a riveting read. I did not know much of King Leopold before this book, but I did know that he was responsible for many atrocities in his private colony Congo.

This book paints a portrait of a greedy but intelligent man who knew how to use propaganda to achieve what he wanted: a colony and riches. Leopold also had a taste for very young girls - at the age of 65 years his mistress was a year old prositute who event This is a brilliant achievement: a history book of horrors which turns out to be a riveting read. Leopold also had a taste for very young girls - at the age of 65 years his mistress was a year old prositute who eventually bore him two sons.

His daughters by his first, early marriage were supposed to marry well. When two of them opposed him, he never talked to them again. An evil, stubborn man. King Leopold wanted a a colony. The explorer Stanley - a short-tempered, cruel man - helped him with this. At first what was being exported out of Congo was ivory, later it became rubber.

Play trailer Directors Pippa Scott Oreet Rees. Adam Hochschild book Pippa Scott. See more at IMDbPro. Trailer King Leopold's Ghost - Trailer. Photos Add Image. Top cast Edit. Philippe Bergeron. Don Cheadle Narrator as Narrator. James Cromwell. Frank McCourt. Alfre Woodard Ilanga as Ilanga voice. Pippa Scott Oreet Rees. More like this. Watch options. Those who refused were dismembered or worse, and the book estimates that as many as 8 million were killed in this ruthless pursuit.

The book was previously the basis for a documentary. This film is an account of the Congolese who defied Leopold II and fought back. Their heroic plight sparked a daring and unlikely alliance between a black American missionary, an English investigative journalist and an Irish spy that shone a light on the horrors and gave birth to the first human rights movement. The film is borne out of his personal passion for the region. Affleck founded Eastern Congo Initiative, an advocacy and grant-making initiative focused on working with and for the people of eastern Congo to spur economic and social development and increase the quantity of public and private funding to support those goals.

At one point, the project was contemplated as a limited series but now the filmmakers feel it has found its form as a movie.