Rating: 
Summary: worth reading but not what you really want to know
Review: King Leopold's Ghost is more a review of the protest movements against Belgian cruelty in the Congo than a history of the colony itself. If you are a student of protest against social repression this book is worth reading. Otherwise, the book falls short. It gives only a sketch of the colony's operation, enough information to document crimes against humanity such as murder, pillaging, and torture in order to set the scene for the protest movements. Worse, there is only superficial description of the mentality of colonialists. They are painted merely as euro-centric chauvinists, and greedy self serving adventurers. They come across basically as thugs. This sort of boring moralizing does not inform us about history but rather about Hochschild's personal moral standards.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting account of the horrors of colonialism in Africa
Review: Near the end of the 1800's much of Europe was discovering the untapped natural resources of Africa, and expanding their colonial reach into the Dark Continent. King Leopold of Belgium, unhappy with his small kingdom and dimished role as king, sought to create a colony anywhere he could. He used the famed explorer Stanley to claim the area known as the Congo as his own personal colony. He initially exploited it for ivory, and later for rubber, using forced labor (slavery) among the native peoples to build his own personal wealth. Although he never set foot there himself, he profited immensely while brutally suppressing the natives and forcing them to work for him, causing the deaths of an estimated 10 million people over about 25 years. At the same time he portrayed himself as a great humanitarian to the rest of the world. Eventually, however, word began to come out of the atrocities committed in the Congo. Leopold waged public relations campaigns to discredit his detractors, but eventually several mistakes led to a great public outcry and he eventually sold the Congo to Belgium.
The author does a very good job of pulling all available sources together, a difficult task since much of the documentation was destroyed. The brutality and cruelness employed by the Europeans is discussed at length and in appropriate detail. He discusses the attitudes and hypocricy prevalent at the time, but doesn't ignore the fact that slavery was a long-standing practice among Africans. He also examines the successes and failings of the movement to free the Congo, the first sustained human-rights campaign in history. This book is very enlightening about an area and period of history that has long been ignored and covered up, to the point where few remember what happened.
Rating: 
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.
Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: This is a must read if you are at all interested in Africa and the atrocities commited there. Normally i don't like history books, but after reading the introduction I was hooked. it is very easy to read, and reads like a novel. It is a history of King leopold's Congo, how came to be and how it was brought down by the hard work of a few individuals that created a world wide mouvement to stop him. The book discribes in detail the horrors that occured and how the people of the Congo were mistreated. Hochschild has a way of bringing the charachters to life through revealing their past and showing them as real human beings as opposed to one dimentional characters from history. In the beging of the book he discribes the history of the Congo, and how King Leopold aquired it. In the second half of the book he shows how his rein was pulled down by the first major humanitarian effort of the last century.
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