King Leopold\'s Ghost Book Analysis

King Leopold's Ghost By Adam Hochschild

This is a short analysis of the content and historical merit of King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. It has 2 sources.

Adam Hochschild is a Journalism teacher at the University of California at Berkeley. He has written several books, with many of them having a central theme of megalomania and the subversion of the rights of the many by the few. He appears to have a fascination with good and evil, and what drives men to do unexpectedly evil or heroic things.

These concerns of his are foremost in "King Leopold's Ghost - A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa." It is an account of what befell the nation now known as Congo during the years of Belgian colonial rule in the early years of the twentieth century.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was becoming a commonly accepted belief among the European powers that colonial possessions enhanced the prestige of the nations that held them. King Leopold II, wishing to elevate Belgium to a higher status in the European community of nations, had his eyes upon Africa. Of course, there were also more practical reasons to play the imperial game, namely to build personal wealth and to accumulate personal power. With the major colonial states more interested in the coastal African states, Leopold managed to colonize the Congo, using public statements about his humanitarian concerns for the slave trade in the Congo and the drive to spread Christianity in the area to disguise his real intentions.

The new colony that Leopold now controlled was immense, over 76 times as large as Belgium. The area was also rich in many resources, such as rubber, which was increasingly in demand as the motor vehicle became more and more widespread as a mode of transport.

Hochschild details the colonization and subsequent subjugation of the Congolese through a succession of biographical sketches of the principal villains and heroes, the former being Leopold's accomplices and the latter his opponents. He describes the genocidal plundering of the Congo, the looting of its resources, primarily ivory and rubber, and the brutalization of its people by Leopold, which ultimately slashed the population of the region by ten million and sparked a global human rights outcry.

The book is not a mainstream scholarly work, as its style is designed to appeal more to a non-scholarly reader, with several plot digressions which would make it a curious work for pure historical insight. Also, there are many similarities with Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," and many references to it, which detract to some extent from the factual nature of the information being conveyed in the book.

The book does, however, succeed admirably in enlightening people who have no foreknowledge of the history and politics of the area about Congo's "forgotten Holocaust" (Hochschild). This is one of numerous parallels drawn between what happened in the Congo with what happened in Europe under the Nazis, with the implied accusation that atrocities committed by Europeans against anonymous, forgettable people without a voice have been conveniently forgotten in the post-colonial period.

The title of the book goes a long way to explaining its relevance in the modern period. The implication of the title is that the events of a long-past time still cast their shadows. The region ravaged by Leopold II is still haunted by the memories of that time. Democratization of the area has never really taken off, with a succession of dictators, each more brutal than the last, continuing to perpetrate a rape of the people and resources of the Congo, improving on the lessons taught to them by their colonizers.

There is also a cautionary tale in the book. The rule of King Leopold was welcomed by the "enlightened" world, and his exploration of the heart of Africa was welcomed. Also, since he was providing the West with much needed rubber for vehicles, especially in America, his means of obtaining the rubber were conveniently not questioned.

The developed world does not appear to have leant from these mistakes, and continues to make them, by supporting regimes which are politically expeditious and ignoring their human rights or ideological record. Some of these birds have come home to roost, while it is feared that others will.

Also, the Congo saw the first large-scale human rights movement in history, and was the first place where the power of the media was harnessed to mobilize public opinion against a state. All these things are relevant today more than ever, and there are lessons to be learnt from the failure of people to listen to the early warnings of what was being perpetrated in the Congo as it was impolitic to do so.