King Leopold’s Ghost, A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa - Adam Hochschild
Language: EnglishKeywords:
Africa
Belgium
Capitalism
Colonialism
Congo
Conrad
Darkness
Genocide
Imperialism
Racism
Salvery
Shared by:FreePalestine
Written by
Read by Geoffrey Howard
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 80 Kbps
** Single File, Proper Chapters! **
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.
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| Creation Date: | Sat, 04 Feb 2023 01:33:46 +0100 |
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| King Leopold’s Ghost - Adam Hochschild.m4b 426.44 MBs | |
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| Comment: | In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company’s ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II’s vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber. Outbound ships carried little more than soldiers and firearms.
Correctly concluding that only slave labor on a vast scale could account for these cargoes, Morel resigned from his company and almost singlehandedly made Leopold’s slave-labor regime the premier human rights story in the world. Thousands of people packed hundreds of meetings throughout the United States and Europe to learn about Congo atrocities. Two courageous black Americans - George Washington Williams and William Sheppard - risked much to bring evidence to the outside world. Roger Casement, later hanged by Britain as a traitor, conducted an eye-opening investigation of the Congo River stations. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming over all was Leopold II, King of the Belgians, sole owner of the only private colony in the world. |
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This post has 6 comments with rating of 5/5
February 4th, 2023
Great book. Thank you very much.
February 4th, 2023
Any chance to upload the newly published book by this author? “American Midnight: Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis, 1917-1921″
February 4th, 2023
Thank you for sharing
February 6th, 2023
Thanks for a very interesting book. Look forward to reading it, this guy sounds like a real monster. I read this part “slashed its population by ten million”, and decided to check it out. The population of Congo in the 1880’s was about 7.6 million, and never saw a big drop up to the 1950’s, in fact it continued to increase. Other sources say 5 million over 80 years, some just say “millions”. I guess it depends how far left you are. So you need to take with a BIG grain of sand books that overly exaggerate without really using accurate information. But it sounds like a gripping story nonetheless.
February 7th, 2023
Not sure of your sources, Hogweed, but according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “the population of the entire state is said to have declined from some 20 million to 8 million. The truth about Leopold’s brutal regime eventually spread, largely owing to the efforts of the Congo Reform Association, an organization founded by British citizens in the early 20th century.”
Even a more conservative estimate would vastly outnumber your proposed estimate of 7.6 million.
Also from Britannica, “Although Leopold II established Belgium as a colonial power in Africa, he is best known for the widespread atrocities that were carried out under his rule, as a result of which as many as 10 million people died in the Congo Free State.”
Unless you have valid sources that Britannica’s numbers would be so far out of line with your own, you seem to have started on the wrong page.
October 19th, 2023
Thank you. :)
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