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Summary: Unrealized potential
Review: This could have been a very good book -- an historical exploration of a little-known era and series of events in Africa. The author certainly did enough research to craft such a tale, and in spots the narrative is quite interesting. However, the author simply cannot stop trying to wedge this story into a politically correct fable without any real justification for doing so and keeps dragging in irrelevant things he admires -- Amnesty International, pacificists in WWI, etc. Well, it doesn't work and all this does is gradually undercut the author's credibility and make the reader suspicious of the other parts...Too bad, it could have been much better.
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Summary: Congo's Late 1800s History Through the Eyes of European
Review: The author's claim of a lack of primary sources (African writers) is somewhat disingenuous considering that quite a number of Africans (albeit educated by Europeans) DID write about the atrocities in the Congo. Other than that fairly huge flaw, the book itself was written quite lucidly and understandable. Especially cogent was the author's disgrace of the worse-than-racism world view almost everyone had in the turn of the century. Ignorance is never an excuse (especially when the Europeans thought they were educated)
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Summary: "A remarkable achievement" -- Paul Theroux
Review: OUTSTANDING PRAISE FOR KLG: "a remarkable achievement, hugely satifying on many levels. It overwhelmed me in the way "Heart of Darkness did when I first read it."--Paul Theroux"Hochschild's outstanding study, unmatched by any other work on the Congo, reveals how all Europe -- and the USA-- contributed to the making of King Leopold's holocaust of the congolese people."-- Nadine Gordimer
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Summary: Catches the spirit of a time and place
Review: As I was going on reading, I was not sure whether I had in my hands the book of history it as supposed to be, or a very engaging novel. The author himself says in the introduction that history provides such an ample supply of interesting characters that no fiction writer can outdo it in inventiveness. And he has been very successful in seeking these characters out and painting their portraits with unflappable fairness. Standing out among the cast are the larger-than-life maverick crusader Edmund D. Morel, the greedy arch-villain King Leopold II, and other dastardly villains of secondary importance such as Leon Rom. Hochschild has told a grim real story in a way that I think all real stories should be told: As a hybrid of history and fiction, without the dreariness of the former and the implausibility of the latter.
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Summary: Fascinating piece of forgotten history
Review: This book truly deserves the title of "Secret History of the Congo" for it fills in some rather resounding historical blanks with intriguing anecdotes. Just about everyone knows that Henry Stanley said "Dr. Livingstone I presume" but how many were aware that he said it in the course of an expedition which had as its covert purpose paving the way for the grabbing of the Congo for King Leopold, or that Stanley himself was a mass murderer who thought nothing of liquidating entire villages of unthreatening natives? Equally invaluable are the discovery of the long lost context for Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, or telling the tale of Morel, one of the forgotten heroes of the early 20th century, who led not only the campaign to liberate the Congo from Leopold, but went on to oppose Britain's futile participation in World War I, a campaign which resulted in his imprisonment and ultimate death. Nevertheless, despite all these relevations, the book fails to establish its central thesis. The charge of "genocide" is never made to stick. Reading the book, one is left with no doubt that tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Congolese were killed in one way or another by the men of the heartless King Leopold, but the demographic evidence underlying the claim that millions died is sketchy in the extreme. The estimates of 10 million Congolese before Leopold and 5 million after that are unexplained, and seem to be nothing more than dead reckoning. Further, no attempt is made to distinguish between deaths through killing and overwork on one hand, and disease on the other. In the end we are left with the portrait of a man amazingly indifferent to the sufferings and deaths he caused among Africans, while at the same time exceptionally sensitive to his reputation among Europeans. It is a brutal indictment of the insensitivity and hypocrisy of colonialism, but offers little more than guesswork in support of its claims of an African Holocaust.
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Summary: 10 Million Dead - Hochschild documents the Congo holocaust
Review: Researcher Adam Hochschild provides a lurid and surprisingly fascinating account of the brutal exploitation of the Congo under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium and beyond. With the real-life stories of Henry Morton Stanley, William Sheppard, Leon Rom, Joseph Conrad, Roger Casement and others as foundation, Hochschild is able to outline the rise of Leopold, and to paint a vivid portrait of his development from an unlikable and oafish young heir of the Belgian throne to a cunning and vicious ruler responsible for the death of approximately 10 million African men, women and children. More than that, this book is also the story of E.D. Morel, an Englishman whose chance discovery of apparent misdeeds in so-called "trade" with the Congo gave rise to the most extensive and politically powerful anti-slavery and anti-colonization movements of the century. I recommend this title for its readability (few historians ever make their subject matter as accessible to general readers), its underlying - and savvy - political analysis of the brutality of European colonization across Africa, and its detailed account of what it took to launch, extend and sustain a human rights movement. I recommend pairing this work with Michela Wrong's "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz," which details Congo's later struggles under dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
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Summary: Horrifying history of colonial cruelty!
Review: Lets face it! Belgium is not a country that readily springs tomind when one thinks of perpetrators of mass murder &genocide. This makes the harrowing story of King Leopold's Ghost all the more harrowing. His single-minded, obsessive desire to carve out a piece of the "African cake", that most of his neighbouring European colleagues were busy doing in the late 19th. century, is fascinating enough. His cunning use of contempory international personalities, the manipulation of the media, the guise of an anti-slavery organisation to further his ends, might even allow one a grudging admiration for the man's abilities. However, his cavalier indifference to the suffering & death of millions of the Congo natives that he caused in the sordid pursuit of personal profit, is quite simply appalling. One is left with a feeling of admiration for the fierce & dauntless opponants of this tyranical regime, contempt for the lily-livered support they received from statesmen of so-called enlightened countries & loathing for the king that brought these deeds to pass. The book, I would mention, is well written, well researched & recommended.
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Summary: An excellent non-fiction companion to Heart of Darkness
Review: This is an extremely readable book, but its title is deceptive. While the full title is King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, the book is not about Africa at all. Instead, the vast majority of this book is about diplomacy and protest movements in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States with regards to Belgian rule in Congo. If you pick this book up looking to find the details of the governance and rule of the Congo Free State or the history of the major rebellions against Belgian rule, you will be sorely disappointed.
This is not a criticism of the author, who likely didn't select his own title anyway. If you look at the book from the standpoint of what Hochschild wanted to write, it is a good but not great work. Hochschild was mostly interested in European/American personalities and focuses on them instead of a chronology of events either in the West or in Africa. At times, this makes the book confusing, as Hochschild does not use a lot of dates to help the reader sort out the order of events. On the other hand, the personalities of the day are vivid and fascinating. Hochschild has mined the vast majority of the available evidence to give us stunningly detailed (and at times salacious) details on King Leopold and his major opponents.
Perhaps the most important feature of Hochschild's writing is that he doesn't shy away from the imperfections of his heros or try to brush away the moral ambiguities of his subject. He is the first to admit that slavery was a problem even before the first major European contact with central Africa even while showing how the European/American system was far more pernicious and devastating than anything the natives had devised. He acknowledges that some of his protagonists are conceited and provides the background to show why they became so; this makes the ultimate sacrifices of some of his heroes that much more significant.
Hochschild is a journalist by training, and this explains many of the strengths and weaknesses of King Leopold's Ghost. The two main strengths are this books readability and accessibility. I am not normally a fast reader but I flew through this book thanks to its clear prose and Hochschild's highly developed sense of irony. I also read this book as someone who knows relatively little about African history, but I never felt as though Hochschild was either condescending or assuming a level of knowledge that the average reader would not have.
However, there are some weaknesses that result from the journalistic style as well. Most significant of these is the relative paucity of bibliographic information, as Hochschild only provides specific sourcing to direct quotations. Hochschild is the first to admit that it is nearly impossible to find African sources for his material, but that makes the identities of those sources that much more interesting, especially for readers who want to learn more about the subject at hand. Finally, this is likely a book that will not interest experts on African history, both because of its superficial treatment of what actually happened in Africa and because of the lack of analysis of the causes of events other than psychological sketches of Leopold, his supporters, and his opponents.
That said, this is a superior work overall. If, like me, you read Heart of Darkness in a high school English class without getting any of the background on Conrad's time, you will find this work to be revelatory. Even if you have only a passing interest in Africa, you will find yourself more intrigued by its history when you finish than when you started.
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Summary: The forgotten horror.
Review: There are times, when you read something that you know inside, you don't really want to believe. This book tells the story of how in an effort to get his piece of the pie, King Leopold colonizes the Congo region of Africa. The king tells the world of the great things he is doing for the people while covering up the atrocities that are being committed.
King Leopold realizes that most of the European powers have carved up Africa and Asia and are raking in money. Leopold wants Belgium to get her share of the colonial pie and searches what is left of the world. Settling on the Congo region, Leopold proceeds to rape the country for everything that it has.
I had heard of some to the terrible things done in the name of colonial times, but I was not aware of this story. It is sad to think that most people do not know about this and how a king's desire to have a colony for Belgium. Leopold spends a tremendous amount of money and time trying to cover up what is really happening, and to discredit the people trying to bring these events to the world.
This book is hard to read for some of the decriptions of what happens to the African people. It is a subject that more people should know about.
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Summary: Sheds new light on the history of human rights movements
Review: While telling the story of one of the last pre-World War I colonizations, this book covers the gamut of human sentiments, from love to greed to curiosity to self-sacrifice. Hochshchild is a good storyteller, and he has a great cast of characters to work with. I knew roughly as much about Congo before reading this book as Hochschild knew before writing it: I had read Heart of Darkness, and figured that the events it portrayed were an exercise in the grotesque. Thanks to Hochschild's book, I now have a much better understanding of the atrocities that actually happened under colonial rule. But this book actually is uplifting, because of what Hochschild points out is the distinguishing feature of the Congo colonial story: not the atrocities (which happened in many other colonies) but the successful international humanitarian campaign that pressured Belgium to clean up house. The rise of Amnesty International and other human rights campaigns and organizations later in the twentieth century is something that I understand better now, after reading Hochschild's story of Edmund Morel, Roger Casement, and others. The increasing profile and influence of human rights campaigns is one of the best reasons to be optimistic about the future of world affairs, and so in the end I am more optimistic after reading "King Leopold's Ghost."
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