A.P.

Euro Peter Straubinger

Mr. Spielberger Period 8

Summary

While Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost is wholly a work of non fiction,

it will stun readers both with the enormity of its subject matter and the thoroughly

engaging manner in which Hochschild relates the book’s events. Said events revolve

around the titular King Leopold II, ruler of Belgium, and his conquest of the Congo

during the mid- to late-1800s.

Hochschild sets the scene for his book by introducing the reader to the European

view of the African continent far before when the book’s main story takes place. To

European explorers in the 1400s, Africa was largely a mystery; it was merely a source of

ivory and other exotic and highly demanded items, with the majority of the continent

being shrouded in an ominous uncertainty. Diogo Cão, a Portuguese explorer, was the

first man to venture into the Congo. He explored the region in the late 1400s, but found

little that changed European perceptions. For nearly two centuries, Africa remained a

resource hub for Europe and other nations.

The tale resumes in the 1840s, with a man named Henry Morton Stanley. Famous

for his widely-publicized journey into Africa with the renowned Dr. David Livingstone,

Stanley went on past the doctor’s death to become a highly regarded explorer in and of

himself. His fame eventually brought the attention of the Belgian King Leopold II;

Leopold had his hopes set on a new colony for his country, and Africa seemed to be the

ripest of his choices. He further narrowed his territorial desire down to the Congo, due to
the region’s favorable ivory supply. Stanley had explored the Congo among his journeys,

and met with King Leopold in 1878. Stanley was soon convinced to return to Africa,

now in the employ of the Belgian king with aims not of exploration, but of conquest.

Stanley laid the foundations for King Leopold’s rule, which went (unsurprisingly) largely

unopposed. In 1884, the Conference of Berlin gave King Leopold total control over the

Congo. In a darkly ironic twist, he christened his colony “Congo Free State”.

Largely unbeknownst to most of the world, Leopold’s reign in Africa was one of

terror and cruelty from its very outset. Under the king’s direction, Stanley would murder

and burn indiscriminately throughout his expeditions. Following the conclusion of the

exploratory phase of Leopold’s plans, the king used a horribly efficient system of

repression, slavery and barbarism to leech wealth, mainly in the form of ivory, from the

Congo. As the atrocity continued, the outside world was largely convinced that Leopold

was a benevolent conqueror, seeking to free the Congo’s residents from slavery. While

Leopold’s methods were discreet, they were not invisible; George Washington Williams,

an American, was one of the first men to speak out against the Belgian King’s actions in

the Congo. His letters of protest reached many people in Europe, and began to warn

people of the disregard for humanity that was occurring in the Congo.

The suffering of the Africans, however, was far from over. Soon, a discovery

rattled the entire system set in place within the Congo. It was found that rubber vines

grew wild within the region, promising massive profit for those with the resolve and

manpower to obtain the valuable resource. King Leopold wasted no time in swooping

onto this new source of riches. African men were set a quota of rubber, with punishments

for coming up short ranging from whippings, to the severing of limbs, to entire villages
being put to flame. Meanwhile, King Leopold reaped immense profit from the region.

However, Leopold’s barbaric methods were not destined to survive forever. The

presence of reformers was becoming more and more apparent, as people began to learn

of the atrocities occurring deep within the Congo. A British man by the name of Edward

Dene Morel was foremost among those who sought to expose the Belgian King for his

cruelty. Along with a man named Roger Casement, Morel created to Congo Reform

Association and sought to sway public opinion on the African plight. Leopold’s

establishment was dealt its final blow when, in a twist of poetic justice, a public relations

man for the king named Henry Kowalsky shifted allegiances and exposed the king’s

numerous scandals to the public. Leopold’s rule in the Congo was, in effect, finished.

After King Leopold’s death, his holdings in the Congo became property of the

Belgian government. By this time, over 10 million Africans had been killed as a result of

Leopold’s actions. The Belgian King Baudouin later granted freedom to the Congo, with

Leopold’s legacy serving as a historical example in brutality and greed.

Polemic Part I

In writing King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild had a dual-edged polemic;

most obvious is that King Leopold II was a cruel person, motivated wholly by greed,

whose actions in the Congo led to the suffering and death of literally millions. However,

more subtle is the tie that the book’s events have with atrocities in modern times.

Hoschschild seeks to prove to the world that the events in the Congo are a sort of

“forgotten Holocaust”, and that such black marks upon humanity’s history cannot be lost

to time.

“Mr. Stanley has taken great care of me during these bad days… the sort of care a
blacksmith applies to repair an implement that is most essential and that has broken
down through too rough usage… teeth clenched in anger, he smites it again and again on
the anvil, wondering whether he will have to scrap it or whether he will yet be able to
use it as before. (pg. 68)”

These are the words of Paul Néve, a white steamboat engineer in Stanley’s early

expedition. With dry, sarcastic manner, Néve reveals to the reader an important and

telling point: the manner of Stanley, and how it was that he was at all capable of the

horrific acts he committed within the Congo. It is oftentimes difficult to comprehend

how a human can sink to depths of cruelty that are unimaginable and terrible in their

nature. While the world may never fully understand the nature of such base disregard for

human rights, Néve’s account shows an integral piece of the puzzle. Stanley’s inhumanly

utilitarian methods, along with his foul temper and lack of patience, are what may cause

him to use other human beings at best for personal gain, and at worst for a twisted sort of

entertainment. Stanley regards others as tools, as Néve’s blacksmith analogy illustrates.

He uses a person far beyond any reasonable stretch of compassion or empathy, and when
his underlings falter he seeks to bolster their progress with cruelty and force. Finally,

when the man is wasted (as is the inevitable and obvious outcome) he throws them away

like scrap metal and begins again on a new subject. This method of thinking fits in well

with the later brutality that Stanley exhibited; were an African man not to fulfill his quota

of rubber harvest, he would be whipped in the best case scenario. If this did not convince

the man to work himself harder and meet expectations, then he was most often deemed

useless and simply killed. While Leopold’s cruelty has the trademarks of efficiency and

profit-mongering, alluding to a (harshly twisted) businesslike mentality, it is Stanley who

is most likely to garner a sick pleasure out of harm, and out of seeing his fellow man

subjugated into labor under him. Stanley later grouses that King Leopold possesses the

“enormous voracity to swallow a million of square miles with a gullet that will not take a
herring. (pg. 74)”

. It is Stanley, however, who is the main tool in this endeavor.

Reformers of the Congo horrors were not silent:

“And when the heat of Afric’s sun

Grew quite too enervating
Some bloodshed with the Maxim gun
Was most exhilarating!” (pg. 100)

These words come from the pages of an English weekly newspaper. Through the

use of sarcasm, they criticize Stanley and the slaughter he presided over. The Maxim gun

was a newly-developed and highly efficient machinegun, and one of the main tools for

murder within the Congo. It allowed a withering hail of fire to be laid down, and crippled

the African fighting forces who were largely without firearms. This ruthless efficiency is

only further indicative of the evil within those who orchestrated the Congo’s takeover.

The suffering was not, however, purely born of malice. It was the hunt for profits
which galvanized the entire undertaking, and no resource proved more profitable than the

rubber that the Congo held in excess. Rubber’s value came from its inherent flexibility

and range of uses (“The industrial world rapidly developed an appetite not just for rubber

tires, but for hoses, tubing, gaskets…”(pg. 159)). The discovery of rubber can be marked

as a turning point, where the fates of the Congo’s denizens were at their darkest. Leopold

demanded rubber in the greatest amounts that were humanly possible, and the only viable

solution seemed to be slave labor. Men, women and children all had to work at the

backbreaking labor. Hochschild relates the process,

“A gatherer had to dry the syrup-like rubber…The first few times it is not without
pain”(pg. 161).

However, as horrid as it was to gather the rubber, it paled in comparison to the

suffering that stemmed from the Force Publique, the local quasi-police force that worked

to subjugate and work the Africans.

“…they [the Force Publique] attacked the natives until able to seize their women;
these women were kept as hostages…”(pg. 161).

Hochschild is clearly stating his polemic in this and other passages, detailing the

unthinkable methods in which the people of the Congo were made to work literally until

they dropped. Were they to stop before their white masters were satisfied, or refuse

subjugation entirely, they would be met with further terrors.

“If a village refused to submit to the rubber regime, state or company troops or
their allies sometimes shot everyone in sight”(pg. 165).

It is this casual disregard for human life that enabled the Belgian colony to

operate so efficiently, and also prompted the horrific bloodshed within the region.

In seeking to reveal the unchecked evil perpetrated by King Leopold II,

Hochschild alludes to other works of literature concerning the era. Josepth Conrad’s

novel Heart of Darkness, famous in modern day for its Vietnam-era retelling as

Apocalypse Now, detailed an officer within the Congo by the name of Kurtz. As

Hoschschild states,

“Conrad fully recognized Leopold’s rape of the Congo for what it was: ‘The
horror! The horror!’”(pg. 146).

Kurtz was a clear parallel to men such as Henry Morton Stanley, seemingly

heartless men who wanted only to profit regardless of others’ suffering. Further driving

home this point is Hochschild’s explanation of the Congo’s hierarchy of power.

“More than any other colony in Africa, the Congo was administrated directly
from Europe” (pg. 115)

There are few governors to split the blame among, no bureaucracy to hide behind

and to shift responsibility; the genocide in the Congo lies solely on the shoulders of a

few devious and cruel men. Again, the cold efficiency of the enterprise presents itself, a

direct link between Europe and the Congo existing to enable the quickest means of

profit. It was likely that King Leopold, along with the other men involved, did not want

to share the “glory”. Given that the king was brash and shameless enough to attempt to

paint himself as a humanitarian, it is no great leap of the imagination to envision the man

proud of his work in the Congo, of creating rule where there once was community, profit

where there once was peace, death where there once was life. It is difficult for the reader

to know where exactly to stop imagining the extent mad desire that pervaded the

responsible parties’ minds.

Hochschild also seeks to draw parallels to horrors in the real world. He writes,

“I began to read more. The further I explored, the more it was clear that the
 Congo of a century ago had indeed seen a death toll of Holocaust dimensions” (pg. 4).

The Congo’s death was, in fact, most likely greater than that of the Holocaust.

Nevertheless, it is largely forgotten in the modern day, which grows more and more

unthinkable as the book progresses.

“Statistics about mass murder are often hard to prove. But if this number turned
out to be even half as high, I thought, the Congo would have been one of the major
killing grounds of modern times. Why were the deaths not mentioned in the standard
litany of our century’s horrors? “(pg. 3)

Above, Hochschild related his startled reaction upon discovering the Congo’s

estimated death toll of 5 to 7 million lives. He is incredulous at the fact that such a mass

killing was forgotten, and understandably so. In rather the same vein, Hochschild quotes

a man named Primo Levi, who staffed a Nazi concentration camp.

“Monsters exist…but they are too few in number o be truly dangerous. More
dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions”

Far smaller atrocities from history than the Congo are much more commonly

remembered. While the world’s method for recalling its own heartache is not strictly

utilitarian in nature, it is still seemingly nonsensical that such a gargantuan loss of life,

and in relatively modern times, has been lost to the common knowledge. Leopold’s

Congo should stand along with the likes of the Holocaust, Tiannanmen Square, and

Darfur in our collective grief, each equally deserving of remembrance. Even in captions,

Hochschild will state the name of a severed hand’s owner, in an effort to commit their

names to record and prevent them from being lost.

Hochschild delves further into the mental indications of the cruelty within the

Congo, seeking to explain what enables men to perform such unthinkable deeds.

“What made it possible to…so blithely deal out pain and death…? To begin
 with…was race….Then, of course, the terror in the Congo was sanctioned by the
authorities. (pg. 122)”

As far as the issue of race is concerned, Hochschild has hit the nail on the head.

Africans were considered inferior beings by the Europeans; they were lazy, they were

uncivilized, they were useful only as pack animals and laborers to the civilized white

conquerors. This dehumanization process is a time-honored ritual carried out in

numerous cases of genocide and subjugation around the world. It is much easier to inflict

pain on a creature than on one’s fellow man, and the Victorian-era ideals of race made

this all the more simple. It is this concerted effort to keep oneself with some shred of

moral dignity, even when knee-deep in the filthiest of activities, that produced an odd

breed of “gentleman murderers”. Similar to Nazi scientists half a century later, most of

the Europeans within the Congo sought to distance themselves from direct harm and

cruelty. Often, it was not the whites who would wield the chicotte (a whip designed for

cutting) against the African slaves under them, but black auxiliaries. Hence, the whites

felt that their hands were clean while they could still complete the demanding tasks of

cruelty and slavedriving. The words of George Bricusse sum up these collected ideals

quite succinctly, as he writes in his diary his account of a man who had stolen a rifle.

“The gallows is set up. The rope is attached, too high. They lift up the nigger and
put the noose around him. The rope twists for a few moments, then crack, the man is
wriggling on the ground. A shot in the back of the neck and the game is up. It didn’t
make the least impression on me this time!! And to think that the first time I saw the
chicotte administered, I was pale with fright. Africa has some use after all. I could now
walk into fire as if to a wedding. (Pg. 123)

By the end of King Leopold’s Ghost, the reader has an excellent picture of Adam

Hochschild’s polemic. The author has managed to bring the numerous historical

characters involved back to life, with cruel villains and noble heroes abounding. One can
see not only the cruelty of the white slavemasters, but their methods, rationale, and

justification. On the other end of the spectrum are the heroes and reformers who risk

their livelihoods (and occasionally lives) to speak out against King Leopold. And finally,

the reader is left wondering how such a monumental act of evil could be left nearly

forgotten by the world.

Polemic Part II

Adam Hochschild’s purpose in writing King Leopold’s Ghost is quite obvious by

the book’s first few chapters. His aim was, first and foremost, to commit the genocide in

the Congo into the minds of many, in order to fight the slippage that has seemed to afflict

the even in the world’s memory. While it is unheard of to find someone who is ignorant

concerning the Holocaust, it is similarly unlikely for the average person to even know

who King Leopold II was. While reading the book, it is obvious that Hochschild sees no

need to overly embellish the suffering he relates. The subject matter is enough that most

readers will be shocked time and time again simply by the subject matter and their own

ignorance of such a massive crime against humanity. The author even related his own

tale of astonishment in the book’s prologue, of how he learned of the Congo atrocity

through footnotes and odd conversations. Understandably astounded, he put pen to paper

and sought to educate the world about a holocaust forgotten.

Impact
 King Leopold’s Ghost was, in my experience, a difficult book to put down. The

subject alone is enough to keep one glued to the pages for hours on end, equally horrified

and astonished at the continuous revelations. This is to say nothing for Hochschild’s

writing, which goes far beyond adequate in conveying his thoughts and purpose. I was

never once distracted from the enthralling tale of torture, cruelty and madness, though I

often found myself rereading passages in simple awe of the acts contained within. The

characters are all fleshed out with a skill that leaves no doubt to their utter humanity, and

I found ways to relate, even in some small facet, to the book’s darkest villains. In short,

the book is a keeper. There is no reason to even consider removing the novel, as it

contains everything a student (and a teacher) need find in a book. It is exciting enough to

keep it from becoming soporific, and packed with enough factual information to leave

one nearly dumbfounded as to the depth of research the text warranted. I am considering

renewing the book at my local library simply to peruse it a second time, and any school-

issued book that can warrant my attention twofold is certainly something extraordinary.

Abstract

King Leopold’s Ghost is a tale of genocide and slavery in Africa orchestrated by

the book’s titular Belgian. Taking place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is an

astonishing retelling of a forgotten holocaust that claimed up to ten million lives. The

struggle of Africans in the Belgian colony of the Congo who were forced to harvest

rubber and ivory in horrific conditions speaks volumes on European colonization, issues
of race, and even human nature.
Picture Of A Duck