King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa - Softcover

Hochschild, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618001905 ISBN 13: 9780618001903

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade), 1999

Synopsis

In "an enthralling story, full of fascinating characters, intense drama, high adventure, deceitful manipulation, courageous truth-telling, and splendid moral fervor" ("Christian Science Monitor"), Hochschild tells the story of King Leopold of Belgium, a megalomaniac of monstrous portions. 31 photos. Map.

About this title

Review:

Years ago, Adam Hochschild came across a reference to the "five to eight million lives" destroyed in the colonial exploitation of the Congo. Startled, he realised that this had been "one of the major killing grounds of modern times. Why were these deaths not mentioned in the standard litany of our century's horrors?" His corrective history makes sobering and gripping reading. In King Leopold of Belgium, who decided to buy himself an empire to compensate for his country's smallness, he portrays a villain of Shakespearian dimensions. Aided by Stanley (of "Mr Livingstone I Presume" fame) the king appropriated a section of central Africa the size of Western Europe as his personal territory. The appalling brutality that ensued, as Europeans plundered the country for rubber and ivory, is vividly captured by Hochschild. He manages to leaven the horror with touches of grotesque humour--for instance, when tricking tribal chiefs into signing away their land for bales of cloth, Stanley would, to impress his dupes, secrete a battery in his pocket with the wires in his palm, so that on shaking hands the chief "was greatly surprised to find his white brother so strong that he nearly knocked him off his feet". Hochschild has something of Simon Schama's gift for populist history; and among other things he provides astonishing background to Joseph Conrad's Congo-set masterpiece, Heart of Darkness. --Adam Roberts

Review:

"An enthralling story, full of fascinating characters, intense drama, high adventure, deceitful manipulations, courageous truth-telling, and splendid moral fervor . . . A work of history that reads like a novel."
--Christian Science Monitor

"As Hochschild's brilliant book demonstrates, the great Congo scandal prefigured our own times . . . This book must be read and reread."
--Neal Ascherson, Los Angeles Times

"A vivid, novelistic narrative that makes the reader acutely aware of the magnitude of the horror perpetrated by King Leopold and his minions."
--The New York Times

"King Leopold's Ghost is a remarkable achievement, hugely satisfying on many levels. It overwhelmed me in the way Heart of Darkness did when I first read it--and for precisely the same reasons: as a revelation of the horror that had been hidden in the Congo."
--Paul Theroux

"Carefully researched and vigorously told, King Leopold's Ghost does what good history always does--expands the memory of the human race."
--The Houston Chronicle

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0618001905
• ISBN 13: 9780618001903
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400