King Leopold's Ghost
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King Leopold's Ghost (1998 ISBN 0-330-49233-0) is a non-fiction book by Adam Hochschild that explores the exploitation of the Congo Free State by Léopold II of Belgium. The book is written with the aim of bringing awareness to crimes committed by white rulers in Africa. After having been refused by 9 of the 10 U.S. publishing houses to which an outline was submitted, the book became an unexpected bestseller. By 2005, some 400,000 copies were in print in a dozen languages.
In Hochschild's impassioned book, King Léopold takes his place with the great tyrants, having reduced the population of the Congo Free State—which Hochschild describes as being his private fiefdom—from 20 million people to 10 million in 40 years.
The title is adopted from the poem The Congo, by Illinois poet Vachel Lindsay. Condemning Léopold's actions, Lindsay wrote:
Listen to the yell of Léopold's ghost, / Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
The story of the Congo
Hochschild describes Léopold as a man of greed who, obsessed by the desire for a colony, hides his real intentions under "philanthropic" purposes. With a complex scheme of political intrigue, corruption and propaganda, he wins the assistance of one of the greatest explorers of the time, Henry Morton Stanley, as well as that of public opinion and of powerful states. Through the Berlin Conference and other diplomatic efforts, he finally obtains international recognition for his colony. He then establishes a system of forced labour that keeps the people of the Congo basin in a condition of virtual slavery.The heroes of the book (as much as a book of non-fiction can be said to have heroes) are Léopold's enemies, those who made the world aware of the reality of the Congo Free State. These include:
- George Washington Williams, an African American politician and historian, the first ever to report the atrocities in the Congo.
- William Henry Sheppard, another African American, a Presbyterian missionary who furnished direct testimony of the atrocities.
- E. D. Morel, a British journalist and shipping agent who understood, checking the commercial documents of the Congo Free State, that while millions of dollars worth of rubber and ivory were coming out of the Congo, all that was going back was rifles and chains. From this evidence, he inferred that the Congo was a slave state, and devoted the rest of his life to destroying it.
- Sir Roger Casement, British diplomat who put the force of the British government behind the international protest against the Belgians. Casement's involvement had the ironic effect of drawing attention away from British colonialism, Hochschild reports. The Congo Reform Association was formed by Morel following Casements instigation.
Hochschild dedicates a chapter to Joseph Conrad, the famous Anglo-Polish writer, in the first years of Belgian colonization only a sea captain assigned to a Congo steamer. Hochschild observes that Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, despite its abstract and evocative theme, is in fact a quite realistic picture of the Congo Free State and its main character, Kurtz, is inspired by real figures of state functionnaires. While Heart of Darkness is probably the most reprinted and studied short novel of the 20th century, its psychological and moral truths are so profound as to overshadow its literal truth. Hochschild finds four likely models for Kurtz, even finding actual references to the decapitated heads described in Heart of Darkness.
Documentation and bibliography
Adam Hochschild takes inspiration from the research of several historians, many of whom are Belgian. He especially refers to Jules Marchal, a Belgian former colonial civil servant and diplomat who spent twenty years of his life trying to break Belgian silence on the massacres. The documentation was not easy to come by; the furnaces in Brussels are said to have spent more than a week burning incriminating papers when Léopold turned over his private Congo to the Belgian nation, and for many years Belgian authorities prevented access to what remained of the archives, most notably the accounts of Congolese before the King's Commission. Most of the information about Léopold's torture-murderers that Hochschild uses was accumulated by his enemies.Reviews and critics
Hochschild has been praised by critics for his ability in telling the story. While claiming that most of the facts illustrated in the book were already known (although written in books not easy to find), most historians and Africa specialists appreciated his capacity to divulge the message. Hochschild's book was praised by the South African winner of the Nobel prize for literature Nadine Gordimer.Hochschild has said that his intention was to tell the story in "a way that brings characters alive, that brings out the moral dimension, that lays bare a great crime and a great crusade." His choice was the basis of his success, but some critics deplored his comparison between Léopold and such famous mass-murderers as Hitler and Stalin.
The Belgian historian Jean Stengers, whose works are cited in the sources of King Leopold's Ghost, claimed in a newspaper article that Hochschild's moral judgements are "not justified in respect at the time and place" and that his conclusions about the scale of the mass murder are based on incomplete statistics. He advanced the suspicion that in Hochschild's book historical objectivity was affected by the desire to attract the attention of the public—especially the African American public.
Hochschild was also criticized by Barbara Emerson, author of a biography of Léopold, who described Hochschild's book as "a very shoddy piece of work" and declared that "Leopold did not start genocide. He was greedy for money and chose not to interest himself when things got out of control." [#endnote_guardian19990513a]
Hochschild replied to Stengers, accusing him of not accepting the implications of his own research. While Stengers was "a meticulous and talented scholar", he was conditioned by his colonialist views. Hochschild claims that the estimates about the reduction of the population of the Congo reported in his book are taken directly from Stengers' own books.
Jules Marchal, on the other hand, showed his admiration for Hochschild's book. He defined it as "a masterpiece, without even one error about the historical deeds related." He reminded people that Hochschild's conclusions were confirmed by his own work on original sources. Several other Belgian experts on the period, such as anthropologist Jan Vansina, also backed Hochschild.
References
External links
- [CoBelCo.org] French language site on Belgian Congo made with the consultation of Adam Hochschild and Jules Marchal.
- [Reforming The Heart of Darkness: The Congo Reform Movement in England and the United States]
- [Interwiew with Adam Hochschild on Alter Net about King Leopold's Ghost]
- [A film of the same title directed by Pippa Scott and Oreet Rees]
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