King Leopold's Ghost
|
|
King Leopold's Ghost (1998 ISBN 0-330-49233-0) is a book by Adam Hochschild. It describes the exploitation of the Congo Free State by Leopold II of Belgium. The book is written with historical care and with the aim to make people aware of crimes committed by white "civilization" in Africa while at the same time serving as entertaining reading. After having been refused by 9 of the 10 U.S. publishing houses to which an outline was submitted, the book became an unexpected bestseller. By 2005, some 400,000 copies were in print in a dozen languages.
In Hochschild's impassioned book, King Leopold takes his place with the great tyrants, having reduced the population of the Congo Free State -- literally his private fiefdom -- from twenty million people to ten million in forty years.
The title is adopted from the poem The Congo, by Illinois poet Vachel Lindsay. Condemning Leopold's actions, Lindsay wrote:
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost, Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
| Contents |
The story of the Congo
Hochschild describes Leopold has a man of greed who, obsessed by the desire for a colony, hides his real intentions under "philanthropic" purposes. With a complex scheme of political intrigue, corruption and propaganda, he won the assistance of one of the greatest explorers of the time, Henry Morton Stanley, as well as that of public opinion and of powerful states. Through the Berlin Conference and other diplomatic efforts, he finally obtained international recognition for his colony. He then established a system of forced labour that kept the people of the Congo basin in a condition of virtual slavery.
The heroes of the book are Leopold's enemies, those who made the world aware of the reality of the Congo Free State. These include:
- George Washington Williams, an African American politician and historian, the first ever to report the atrocities in the Congo.
- William Sheppard, another African American, a Presbyterian missionary who furnished direct testimony of the atrocities.
- Edmund Dene Morel, a British journalist and shipping agent who understood, checking the commercial documents of the Congo Free State, that while millions of dollars worth of rubber and ivory were coming out of the Congo, all that was going back was rifles and chains. From this evidence, he inferred that the Congo was a slave state, and devoted the rest of his life to destroying it.
- Sir Roger Casement, British diplomat (and later Irish martyr), who put the force of the British government behind the international protest against the Belgians. Casement's involvement had the ironic effect of drawing attention away from British colonialism, Hochschild reports.
Hochschild dedicates a chapter even to Joseph Conrad, the famous Anglo-Polish writer, in the first years of Belgian colonization only a sea captain assigned to a Congo steamer. Hochschild observes that Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, despite its abstract and evocative theme, is in fact a quite realistic picture of the Congo Free State and its main character, Kurtz, is inspired by real figures of state fonctionnaires. While Heart of Darkness is probably the most reprinted and studied short novel of the 20th century, its psychological and moral truths are so profound as to overshadow its literal truth. Hochschild even found four likely models for the insane vilain Kurtz – heads on sticks and all – who have been ignored by Conrad scholars.
The work of Morel and Casement led to the establishment of the first international human-rights campaign of the twentieth century, the Congo Reform Association, direct ancestor of Amnesty International and other such groups. With the support of many distinguished people of the political, philanthropic and religious worlds, and of famous writers and rich merchants they succed in forcing the King to convocate an Inquiry Commission. The results of the inquiry ultimately led to the annexation of the Congo Free State by Belgium.
Although with this act Congo has become an "ordinary colony", the oppression of the Belgian Congo continued into modern times. For example, Hochschild reports that 80 per cent of the uranium in the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mined in the Congo.
Documentation and bibliography
In the book Adam Hochschild takes inspiration from the research of several historians, many of whom are Belgian. He especially refers to Jules Marchal, a Belgian former colonial civil servant and diplomat who spent twenty years of his life trying to break Belgian silence on the massacres. The documentation was not easy to come by; the furnaces in Brussels are said to have spent more than a week burning incriminating papers when Leopold turned over his private Congo to the Belgian nation, and for many years Belgian authorities prevented access to what remained of the archives, most notably the accounts of Congolese before the King's Commission. Most of the information about Leopold's torture-murderers that Hochschild uses was accumulated by his enemies.
Reviews and critics
Hochschild has been praised by critics for his ability in telling the story. While claiming that most of the facts illustrated in the book where already known (although written in books not easy to find), most historians and Africa specialists appreciated his capacity divulge the message. Hochschild's book was praised by the South African winner of the Nobel prize for literature Nadine Gordimer.
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". His choice was the basis of his success, but some criticism appeared in Belgium by people who didn't appreciate the comparison that Hochschild draws between King Leopold and such famous mass-murderers as Stalin or Hitler.
For example, the distinguished Belgian historian Jean Stengers, which works are cited in King Leopold's Ghost's sources, claimed in a newspaper article that Hochschild's moral judgements are « not justified in respect at the time and place» and that his conclusions about the scale of the mass murder are based on incomplete statistics. He advanced the suspicion that in Hochschild's book historical objectivity was affected by the desire to attract the attention of the public - especially the African American public.
Hochschild replied to Stengers, accusing him of not accepting the implications of his own research. While Stengers was "a meticulous and talented scholar", he was conditioned by his colonialist views. Hochschild claims that the estimates about the reduction of the population of the Congo reported in his book are taken directly from Stengers' own books.
On the other hand Jules Marchal showed his admiration for Hochschild's book. He defined it as "a masterpiece, without even one error about the historical deeds related". He reminded people that Hochschild's conclusions were confirmed by his own work on original sources. Several others Belgian experts on the period, such as antropologist Jan Vansina, backed Hochschild.
Links
- CoBelCo.org (http://www.cobelco.org/presentationfs.htm) French language site on Belgian Congo made with the consultation of Adam Hochschild and Jules Marchal.
- Reforming The Heart of Darkness: The Congo Reform Movement in England and the United States (http://www.boondocksnet.com/congo/)
- Interwiew with Adam Hochschild on Alter Net about King Leopold's Ghost (http://www.alternet.org/story/1059)