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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 967.51022
EAN: 9780618001903
ISBN: 0618001905
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 1999-10
Publisher: Mariner Books
Sales Rank: 3019
Studio: Mariner Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo--too long forgotten--onto the conscience of the West.
Amazon.com Review:
King Leopold of Belgium, writes historian Adam Hochschild in this grim history, did not much care for his native land or his subjects, all of which he dismissed as "small country, small people." Even so, he searched the globe to find a colony for Belgium, frantic that the scramble of other European powers for overseas dominions in Africa and Asia would leave nothing for himself or his people. When he eventually found a suitable location in what would become the Belgian Congo, later known as Zaire and now simply as Congo, Leopold set about establishing a rule of terror that would culminate in the deaths of 4 to 8 million indigenous people, "a death toll," Hochschild writes, "of Holocaust dimensions." Those who survived went to work mining ore or harvesting rubber, yielding a fortune for the Belgian king, who salted away billions of dollars in hidden bank accounts throughout the world. Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light. --Gregory McNamee
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
There are few stories that shock you with horror and this is one of the stories that make you wonder about greed and inhumanity of men. The grounds one of Africa's largest region was granted continue to this day(we all remember democracy for Iraq)was to end the Islamization of the Congo but the reality was for Leopold to exploit as he want through summary executions, looting, deforestation, hanging, amputations of African women, men and children.
Leopold's personal rubber planations ... Read More
Rating: -
To the extent that the Belgians impinge on the American sense of history at all, they exist in a kind of permanent heroic relief, bravely standing strong against the juggernaut of Kaiser Wilhelm in World War I. Their brave defense of Liege, and the courageous stand of King Albert I when he fought the German onslaught remain as poster-child images of an honorable European nation.
Adam Hochschild paints a horrific tale that makes adherents of divine retribution see a just punishment in ... Read More
Rating: -
This is a brutal history of the colonization of the Belgian Congo beginning in the 1890's. Long after slavery was unilaterally condemned on the planet earth, we find that King Leopold and the tiny country of Belgium has managed to take ownership of a chunk of the African continent, claim it for its own and ransack its people and resources for his own benefit.
Belgium felt they were being left out of the colonial expansion of Europe into Africa and wanted their piece of the action. They ... Read More
Rating: -
I would like to present a review of Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa" which depicts the ruthlessness and greed of King Leopold in his exploitation of the Congolese. Furthermore, it illustrates the horrors of the rubber trade which spanned nearly thirty years. The author narrates this account of African history particularly well. Showing us the psychological traits of each character involved in the plot to acquire the Congo, the author ... Read More
Rating: -
Although I teach High school history I've never been intersted in African history. I've taught slavery, Pre-european contact, and Egypt yet I've never studied or taught about imperialism in Africa. In preparation for teaching this period in a Modern World history class I've been reading about Africa. Wow - this book blew my mind. It presents all sides of the imperialism issue and doesn't make the Africans as innocent victims. Don't be confused this book pulls no punches everyone from the American government ... Read More
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