''King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa'' (1998) is a

best-selling A bestseller is a book or other media noted for its top selling status, with bestseller lists published by newspapers, magazines, and book store chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and specialties (novel, nonfiction book, cookb ...

popular history Popular history is a broad genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistinction to professio ...

book by

Adam Hochschild Adam Hochschild (; born October 5, 1942) is an American author, journalist, historian and lecturer. His best-known works include '' King Leopold's Ghost'' (1998), '' To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918'' (2011), ''Bu ...

that explores the exploitation of the

Congo Free State ''(Work and Progress) , national_anthem = Vers l'avenir , capital = Vivi Boma , currency = Congo Free State franc , religion = Catholicism (''de facto'') , leader1 = Leop ...

by King

Leopold II of Belgium * german: link=no, Leopold Ludwig Philipp Maria Viktor , house = Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , father = Leopold I of Belgium , mother = Louise of Orléans , birth_date = , birth_place = Brussels, Belgium , death_date = ...

between 1885 and 1908, as well as the large-scale atrocities committed during that period. The book, also a general biography of the private life of Leopold, succeeded in increasing public awareness of these crimes in recent decades.: "The story is familiar thanks to Adam Hochschild's 1998 book, ''King Leopold's Ghost''." The book was refused by nine of the ten U.S. publishing houses to which an outline was submitted, but became an unexpected bestseller and won the prestigious

Mark Lynton History Prize The Mark Lynton History Prize is an annual award in the amount of $10,000 given to a book "of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression". The prize is one of three awards given as p ...

for literary style. It also won the 1999

Duff Cooper Prize The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or occasionally poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Ca ...

. By 2013 more than 600,000 copies were in print in a dozen languages. The book is the basis of a 2006 documentary film of the same name, directed by

Pippa Scott Philippa Scott is an American actress who has appeared in film and television since the 1950s. Personal life Scott was born in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of actress Laura Straub and screenwriter Allan Scott; an uncle was th ...

and narrated by

Don Cheadle Donald Frank Cheadle Jr. (; born November 29, 1964) is an American actor. He is the recipient of multiple accolades, including two Grammy Awards, a Tony Award, two Golden Globe Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has also earned nom ...

Title

The title is adopted from the 1914 poem "The Congo", by Illinois poet

Vachel Lindsay Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (; November 10, 1879 – December 5, 1931) was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern ''singing poetry,'' as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted. Early years Lindsay was bor ...

. Condemning Leopold's actions, Lindsay wrote: :Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost, :Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host. :Hear how the demons chuckle and yell, :Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.

Content

Leopold II, King of the Belgians, privately controlled and owned the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. In 1908, the area was annexed by Belgium as a colony known as the

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colo ...

. Leopold used his personal control to strip the country of vast amounts of wealth, largely in the form of ivory and rubber. These labor-intensive industries were serviced by slave labor, and the local peoples were forced to work through various means, including torture, imprisonment, maiming and terror. Christian missionaries and a handful of human rights organizers internationally publicized these atrocities. Slowly, various nations, including the United Kingdom and the United States of America, began to object to Leopold's tyranny with the result that the country's administration was transferred to Belgium. Little changed inside the country, however, until the ivory and rubber were exhausted. European interest in the African continent can be traced back to the late 1400s, when the European explorer

Diogo Cão Diogo Cão (; -1486), anglicised as Diogo Cam and also known as Diego Cam, was a Portuguese explorer and one of the most notable navigators of the Age of Discovery. He made two voyages sailing along the west coast of Africa in the 1480s, explori ...

sailed the west coast and saw the Congo River. By the 1860s, most African coastal regions were claimed as colonies of European powers, but the vast interior of the continent remained unknown to Europeans.

Henry Morton Stanley Sir Henry Morton Stanley (born John Rowlands; 28 January 1841 – 10 May 1904) was a Welsh-American explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician who was famous for his exploration of Central Africa and his sear ...

, a complicated man and renowned explorer, ventured through much of that unknown during a descent of the Congo River. Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was fascinated with obtaining a colony and focused upon claiming the interior of Africa—the only unclaimed sizable geographic area. Moving within the European political paradigm existing in the early 1880s, Leopold gained international concessions and recognition for his personal claim to the Congo Free State. His rule of the vast region was based on tyranny and terror. Under his direction, Stanley again visited the area and extracted favorable treaties from numerous local leaders. A road and, eventually, a rail line were developed from the coast to Leopoldville (present-day Kinshasa). A series of militarized outposts were established along the length of the Congo River, and imported paddle wheelers commenced regular river service. Native peoples were forced to gather ivory and transport it for export. Beginning c. 1890, rubber—originally manufactured from coagulated sap—became economically significant in international trade. The Congo was rich in rubber-producing vines, and Leopold transitioned his exploitative focus from dwindling ivory supplies to the burgeoning rubber market. Slavery, exploitation and the reign of terror continued and even increased. Meanwhile, early missionaries and human rights advocates such as Roger Casement, E. D. Morel,

George Washington Williams George Washington Williams (October 16, 1849 – August 2, 1891) was a soldier in the American Civil War and in Mexico before becoming a Baptist minister, politician, lawyer, journalist, and writer on African-American history. He served in the ...

, and William Henry Sheppard began to circulate news of the widespread atrocities committed in the Congo under the official blessing of Leopold's administration. Women and children were imprisoned as hostages to force husbands and fathers to work. Flogging, starvation and torture were routine. Murder was common—tribes resisting enslavement were wiped out; administration officials expected to receive back a severed human hand for every bullet issued. Rape and sexual slavery were rampant. Workers failing to secure assigned quotas of rubber were routinely mutilated or tortured. Administration officials so completely dehumanized local peoples that at least one decorated his flower garden with a border of severed human heads. News of these atrocities brought slow, but powerful, international condemnation of Leopold's administration leading, eventually, to his assignment of the country to Belgian administration. In 1908, Belgium annexed the Congo as a colony and proclaimed a general sea-change in administrative policy. Actual change, however, was nearly imperceptible. The era of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

shifted attention from atrocities in Africa to European trench warfare. In the post-war era, the global demand for reform was largely forgotten. However, commercial rubber tree farming had become firmly established and the collection of wild rubber became commercially insignificant, just as ivory supplies had been exhausted years earlier. Because of this, the slave labor industries of the Congo diminished in importance and atrocities became far less frequent. Finally, in 1960, the Congo gained independence.

Scholarship

Hochschild cites the research of several historians, many of them Belgian. He refers especially to Jules Marchal, formerly a Belgian colonial civil servant and diplomat who (as Hochschild describes) spent twenty years trying to break Belgian silence about the massacres. The documentation was not easy to come by; the furnaces of the palace in Brussels are said to have spent more than a week burning incriminating papers before Leopold turned over his private Congo to the Belgian nation. For many years Belgian authorities prevented access to what remained of the archives, notably the accounts given by Congolese to the King's Commission. Although few African scholars seriously question that large numbers died in Leopold's Congo, the subject remains a touchy one in Belgium itself. The country's

Royal Museum for Central Africa The Royal Museum for Central Africa or RMCA ( nl, Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika or KMMA; french: Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale or MRAC; german: Königliches Museum für Zentralafrika or KMZA), also officially known as the AfricaMuse ...

, founded by Leopold II, mounted a special exhibition in 2005 about the colonial Congo; in an article in the ''

New York Review of Books New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...

'', Hochschild accused the museum of distortion and evasion. Recently, however, the museum reopened after an extensive five-year renovation. Hochschild gave the results a partly favorable review. Also in 2005, the American and British publishers of ''King Leopold's Ghost'' reissued the book with a new afterword by Hochschild in which he talks about the reactions to the book, the death toll, and events in the Congo since its publication.

Reception

Hochschild has been praised by scholars and critics for his narrative. Jeremy Harding, writing in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', called it "a model account" that showed how the human rights abuses and human rights activism that resulted became a "template for modernity". Richard F. Hamilton, writing in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'', called it an excellent book to counteract "the great forgetting" of the Congo atrocities. Hochschild's estimate of 10 million deaths is generally considered on the high range of possibilities, but a plausible one.

Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem (born 7 February 1944, Ipamu), is a Congolese historian and linguist. He is the author of several essays, studies and other publications about the history of the Congo, including the overview work ''L'histoire géné ...

, a Congolese scholar whose ''Histoire générale du Congo'' was published the same year as ''King Leopold's Ghost'', estimated the death toll in the Free State era and its aftermath at roughly 13 million (which Ndaywel è Nziem has subsequently revised downward to 10 million, the same number as Hochschild's conclusion). According to Jean Stengers, and Etienne van de Walle, Aline Désesquelles and Jacques Houdaille, the 10 million number cited by Hochschild is extrapolated from a 1924 estimation of the population and from the opinion of a 1919 Belgian government official commission that the population had been halved since 1880. While 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", he was criticised for his overly moralistic dimension, and former Belgian officials deplored his comparison of Leopold with

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

and

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

. Belgian historian Jean Stengers commented, "Terrible things happened, but Hochschild is exaggerating. It is absurd to say so many millions died." Hochschild was also criticized by Barbara Emerson, the author of a biography of Leopold, who described his book as "a very shoddy piece of work" and declared that "Leopold did not start a genocide. He was greedy for money and chose not to interest himself when things got out of control." Hochschild does not use the word genocide, but describes how the mass deaths happened as a result of the forced labor system instituted at Leopold's direction. Other historians have painted a picture similar to Hochschild's of the high death toll in Leopold's Congo, among them

Jan Vansina Jan Vansina (14 September 1929 – 8 February 2017) was a Belgian historian and anthropologist regarded as an authority on the history of Central Africa, especially of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. He was ...

, who appeared in the documentary based on the book, and the demographer . ''King Leopold's Ghost'' was specifically singled out for praise by the American Historical Association when it gave Hochschild its Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award in 2008.

References

{{reflist , refs = {{cite web , title = In the Heart of Darkness — A Glimpse of the World , date = 2005-10-26 , work = HowardwFrench.com , publisher =

, url = http://www.howardwfrench.com/2005/10/in_the_heart_of/ , access-date = 2011-06-02 , quote = The exhibit deals with this question in a wall panel misleadingly headed 'Genocide in the Congo?' This is a red herring, for no reputable historian of the Congo has made charges of genocide; a forced labor system, although it may be equally deadly, is different. {{cite news , title = The hidden holocaust , date = 1999-05-13 , newspaper =

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

, publisher = GMG , location =

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, issn = 0261-3077 , oclc = 60623878 , url = https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/13/features11.g22 , access-date = 2011-06-02 ;Cited works {{Refbegin *{{Cite book , last = Hochschild , first = Adam , author-link = Adam Hochschild , year = 1998 , title = King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa , publisher =

Pan Macmillan Pan Books is a publishing imprint that first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers, owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany. Pan Books began as an independent publisher, ...

, isbn = 0-330-49233-0 *{{Cite book , editor1-last = Louis , editor1-first = Wm. Roger , editor2-last = Stengers , editor2-first = Jean , editor2-link = Jean Stengers , year = 1968 , title = E. D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement , location = Oxford , publisher = Clarendon Press , isbn = 0-19-821644-0 *{{Cite book , last = Neier , first = Aryeh , author-link = Aryeh Neier , year = 2012 , title = The International Human Rights Movement: A History , location = Princeton, NJ , publisher =

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...

, isbn = 978-0-691-13515-1 {{Refend

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