Rating: 
Summary: Absorbing and horrifying!
Review: One of the best indictments of colonialism that I have ever read, King Leopold's Ghost is obsensively a book about power and greed. Leopold, a King of a small country and a man with very limited powers, decides that he desperately needs to find a colony where he can reign supreme. He finally discovers Central Africa, a place that hasn't been gobbled up by the other colonizing powers, and claims it for his own. What ensues is one of the most brutal subjegations in recorded history. King Leopold's reign in the Congo was so vicious that even the other colonial powers of the day had to condemn him.This book is the story of a man that was so greedy- even the pretext of humanitarian aims were summarily ignored during his rule. One of the things I liked most about this book is that it deflates the hero status of people like Henry Morton Stanley- an insecure man who shot Africans for sport. In his place, Hochschild has given us people like E.D.Morel, William Sheppard, Roger Casement and Hezekiah Shanu to look up to. People who tried to make a difference when it wasn't popular to do so. This book is the very sad story of how the ego of one puny despot lead to the deaths of millions. Informative, honest and well written- I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Review: One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry--both when reading the book itself and when reading some of the reviews posted here. On the one hand it's good to see that Hochschild's excellent work of popular history has generated some justifiable outrage. On the other hand it's sad that so many had learned so little about these atrocities before encountering the book--a sad commentary on America's politically correct schools. (Be advised that by "politically correct" I mean "slanted in favor of conservatism, racism, etc.") Occasional signs of how much racism and moral relativism remains are found in some of the angrier negative reviews above (another indication of the great value of Hochschild's work). Apparently unable to refute Hochschild's main thesis, one reviewer carps about details such as the photographs, then launches into an argument that is every bit as morally bankrupt as the old saw about how Hitler was good because he made the trains run on time: "Does the author has realized that leprosy, sleeping disease, endemic wars between tribes have created more havoc in Congo before and during the time that king Leopold was sending Stanley to follow the Congo valley?" Of course, there were wars in Germany before the rise of the Third Reich, and in Russia before the October Revolution. Are we therefore to excuse Hitler and Stalin? This book's negative reviews have deepened my own experience of the book by reminding me that the sources of the evils Hochschild describes are still lurking among us.
Rating:
Summary: An absorbing and horrifying book!
Review: One of the best indictments of colonialism that I have ever read, King leopold's Ghost is obsensively a book about power and greed. Leopold, a King of a small country with very limited powers, decides that he desperately needs to find a colony where he can reign supreme. He finally discovers Central Africa, a place that hasn't been gobbled up by the other colonizing powers, and claims it for his own. What ensues is one of the most brutal subjegations in recorded history. King Leopold's reign in the Congo was so vicious that even the other colonial powers of the day had to condemn him. This book is the story of a man that was so greedy- even the pretext of humanitarian aims were summarily ignored during his rule. One of the things I liked most about this book is that it deflates the hero status of people like Henry Morton Stanley- an insecure man who shot Africans for sport. In his place, Hochschild has given us people like E.D. Morel, William Sheppard, Roger Casement and Hezekiah Shanu to look up to. People who tried to make a difference when it wasn't popular to do so. This book is a very sad story of how the ego of one puny despot lead to the deaths of millions. Informative, honest and well written- I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Forgotten History?
Review: I find it strange with all of the books now coming out with the presumption that history has been "forgotten." Maybe I am a product of a good Canadian Education System which taught us all about King Leopold's lark when we were 12, but I thought this was all well known. Also no one ever listen to Australia's rock band Midnight Oil before? ...conquistador of Mexico... ...the Zulu and the Navajo... ...the Belgians in the Congo, Hey, Short Memory! Short Memory, Must have a, Short Memory And I think that is what is going on here. It comes as a "shock" to people that such attrocities were perpetrated in the backwaters of the Congo at the turn of the last century. The author does us a favour by reminding all of us in a good, ripping read about the inanity of King Leopold and his lackeys, from the higher-ups like H.M. Stanley, to those lesser govt. officials of "Heart of Darkness" fame. It is not a attack on colonialism in general and to see it as such is projecting our values backward in time. It does show us rather that King Leopold and his morality was so out of step with the times that the other colonial powers, whose colonial systems were based upon less harsh (though perhaps equally) exploitive aims, had to take the colony away from him. In brief Leopold was so horrid that even the other colonial powers held their noses when they visited him in Laeken, Belgium. Colonialism existed on a continuum and anyone familiar with the times will know that idealism and good intentions played as much in foreign policy implementation as the clearly manifest evil intentions of Leopold in the Congo. The real builders of empire like Britian ruled, as an ideal, indirectly, integrated locals into the security and administation structure of the colony, and invested in their colonies while all the time taking profits from it. Rule of law was also developed and, although it might not have done locals a lot of good at the time, it was there as a nascent institution which sometimes served the newly independent countries well. The Belgiums were on the other end of the scale: direct rule from the home country, no attempt to build up independent adminstrative and education branches, and therefore no attempt to integrate locals into the security forces of the time. It was simple and direct, rule at the point of a whip with no recourse to law. Strip the place bare and move on. Cut and run colonialism where the master never took the time to learn the language. Therefore one would get a rather slanted view of colonialism if one thought that all colonies operated like the Congo. The Congo is noteworthy for one point alone, that it was viewed even then as a dysfunctional colony.
Rating:
Summary: Too brutal to read straight through
Review: This is a staggering piece of non fiction. Like the Rape of Nanking, I had to keep putting it down. It is simply too brutal to read straight through. Too little of the criminal side of history is taught, and too little is understood. King Leopold is the secret Hitler of Africa. He was able to find willing accomplices, and obfuscate the truth through a naive cooperative press, and greedy lieutenants. We are living with the awful legacy of his easy terror. Leopold was obsessed with obtaining a colony for little Belgiam. When he couldn't buy one,or marry his heirs into one, he created one on lies, intrigue, and terror. This is a tale of a horrid human being,who enslaved the people of the Congo as 19th century Europe, and No. America were seeing that pecular institution disappear. This tale of three continents, is littered with prominent 19th century personalities... Stanley (of Stanley and Livingston) and Joseph Conrad. A few voices of truth, Twain and Sir Conan Doyle, existed, and attempted do good. But the fact that we know so little about this part of African and European and American history, indicate the victor in the war of propaganda. Read this and weep.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible Truth about Mankind
Review: After reading "King Leopold's Ghost", I was reminded again of man's inhumanity to man. How could Europeans deliberately enslave native peoples as the Belgians did by chaining up wives while husbands were forced to harvest rubber in the Congo? And burn down entire villages if Congo chiefs refused their villagers' work services to the Belgians? And chop off hands and whip men into submission while they were chained to the road. The history of colonialism was vividly brought alive in this book. One cannot help but wonder where Africa would be today if the colonial powers had not done these things to the native African peoples? One is reminded, too, of what conquering Europeans did to Native Americans in the United States as well: take the property and rich resources where Indians dwelled and run them off the land. Humans: what a species!
Rating:
Summary: The Darkness of Colonialism
Review: Adam Hochschild's book is subtitled "A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa," and all three can be found in his gripping narrative. The greed is largely that of Leopold II, King of the Belgians. For years before becoming king, Leopold had been obsessed with colonies and the wealth that could be extracted from them. When he came to the throne, he proceeded to grab a large chunk of the enormous basis drained by the Congo River, much of which was explored for him by the mercenary journalist Henry Morton Stanley (who does not emerge favorably from Hochschild's account). In his Congo Free State, run by a private corporation, Leopold wielded far more authority than he did as Belgium's constitutional monarch, and he used that authority to enrich himself for 23 years. The terror was visited on the inhabitants of the Congo. Forced labor was used on a massive scale to extract and export the natural wealth of the region--ivory and rubber being two of the biggest prizes--and the chicotte, a nasty whip made of hippopotamus hide, was freely used to lash every last drop of effort out of people who were essentially slaves. Hochschild carefully documents the extent of the human costs paid for Leopold's enrichment. The death toll due to murder, starvation, disease, etc., amounted to about half the Congo's population over a 40 year period--some 10 million deaths to lay at Leopold's door. The heroism was displayed by people who fought to expose Leopold's crimes and puncture his undeserved reputation as a humanitarian, and who eventually forced him to at least give up his personal rule of the Congo. What was one of the first great worldwide human rights campaigns involved both the famous, like Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle, and the little-remembered. Three men in particular stand out: George Washington Williams, a black American journalist who was the first to expose Leopold's reign of terror by chicotte; Roger Casement, an Irishman who became the first British consul to the Congo, and as such bore powerful, offical witness to the crimes; and Edmund Morel, an English shipping agent who founded the Congo Reform Association, which stands as a forebear to humanitarian groups like Human Rights Watch in our own time. Hochschild is a meticulous researcher and a gifted writer, and he brings his century old characters, both the virtuous and the malignant, to vivid life. Like many books, "King Leopold's Ghost" is not pleasant reading, but necessary reading. Only by confronting and understanding history's darker episodes can we hope to avoid repeating them.
Rating:
Summary: Now I'm more educated!
Review: It's amazing how a middle age person like myself can be so mis-educated that I never knew of the atrocities that happened in the Congo under King Leopold II. With the help of this book, my eyes have been opened. I knew the colonizers of Africa were mean, but now they seem more onerous than before. The King was not alone, as the book reveals, in his inhumanity and greed. There was a whole gang of folks that helped him. Whenever I think upon the cutting off of hands of his victims, it gives me new strength to stomach whatever comes my way, and to say to myself and my children, "If Black people could survive this type of treatment, I to can make it." The only thing is that I won't allow myself to be treated like this without letting others know and the secret be hidden for over 100 years. Today similar treatment of blacks is happening, but it's more in the mind. We cannot allow King Leopold's Ghost to keep terrorizing us. His evil spirit and attitude still hovers. There is a need to send evil spirits like his into the netherworld "BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY" and to purge our lives of such demons by analyzing and working on ways to end such terror.
Rating:
Summary: A true heart of darkness
Review: The ten million dead (more than the dead from WWI), the one billion extracted in ivory, rubber, and mining, the "private" possession of the Congo being sold to Belgium by its own King, the burning of the State archives ordered by Leopold, the sealing of remaining archives until the 1980s, the piles of severed right hands, the utterly dispicable and cowardly brutality of men like Stanley. And today, the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Brussels, having a world class collection of Africana but not one mention of these things, the diplomats in Belgium who know not their own history, the killing of Lumumba, the bankrupting of the country by Mobutu until riots in 1993. There is an unbroken chain from Leopold to the present day of greed, lying, and brutality. We in the "civilized" West know so little of the darkness of our own hearts. Thank you Adam Hochschild for this documented and carefully written story.
Rating:
Summary: Very Ineresting and Thought Provoking
Review: Hochschild book is an intersting and thought provoking history of one of the darker sides of western history. It does a brillant job of bringing the horror of Leopold's Congo to the reader. The only criticism is that the book spends too much time on the European and American protest movements. Hochschild readily concedes that the absence of a personal historical record concerning the genocide is a limitation. So perhaphs, the criticism is unfair. Where the book excells is in painting a portrait of Leopold. He truly deserves to be included in the same catagory as the 20th centuries most evil characters. Leopold was responsible for the murder of over 10 million people and Hochschild book finally gives him the publicity that he deserves.
| 
