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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
Easily one of the most disturbing books I have ever read.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
I rarely read non-fiction, so I was surprised to see how quickly this sucked me in. I read it as background to teaching Heart of Darkness. As such, it is only somewhat helpful, but the long and painful history of the Belgian occupation of the Congo (which resulted in the death of 5-8 million Congolese) is a deep and rich tale all its own. Full of vile hippo-hide whip swinging opressors, millions of baffled oppressed, ignored crusaders, and misguided adventurers, this novel explores not only the colonization and exploitation of the Congo under the guidance of the rapacious King Leopold of Belgium but also of the multi-media human rights campaign that brought his crimes to light after the turn of the century. An excellent book whose primary virtue is to demonstrate how the slaughter of millions upon millions of Africans can go essentially unnoticed.
Let me say that this is a really well-researched and detailed collection to round out the timeline of the Congo up to so-called liberation. However, I think the storytelling gets to be a little tedious and hard to follow - it breaks from one story to describe the whole background of a new person over and over. Would recommend listening to the Behind the Bastards series on King Leopold, which is heavily influenced by this book, instead.
I just finished a book on American slavery, the American slavery was around thirty to forty years before King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, took the Congo as his sole property. I thought American slavery was tortuous enough, but when I read this book, it was a whole different level of hell.
In the end, King Leopold's one-man reign wiped out around ten million (10,000,000) of the population. The terror is comparable to Holocaust, Stalin's reign, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Khmer Rouge, but is hardly known. In fact, the story was virtually unheard of (with deliberate actions to forget it) for decades, by both Belgians and Congoleses. (There was even a statue of Leopold on a horse being worshipped by Africans – after this book came out, a hand was cut off one of the worshipping African statues to better reflect Leopold's regime.) The book also covered why it was largely unheard of.
They lived in a different age that time. Blacks were subhuman to the whites. Disposable. Just like our livestock today. But worse. Sometimes I imagined if the tortured/murdered blacks at that time were, say, cattle, I would still unable to fathom what the whites did to them at that time. I'm not good at describing the horror, I'm pretty sure some reviewers have elaborated on it.
It is also a story of PR, of the witty Leopold and his eventual archenemy, Edmund Dene Morel. And what a story he was. He was just a clerk, even had an ailing mother and a wife to support. He had nothing to gain. Even the author could not explain the reason behind Morel's burning passion. But a clerk against a king. And Leopold himself, you will be blown away how good he is at charming and deceiving people. His tricks up his sleeves are almost endless, you thought you got him cornered, but he pulls out another card.
And I hate to giveaway spoilers, but this is history after all, the ending had already happen. And this is no fiction story. The Hunger Games could have had a happily-ever-after ending (1984 could too if Orwell wished so), but the reality is darker than what we prefer it to be. Leopold died without facing any consequence for the millions he killed; in fact he never even saw the terror he inflicted. A few years afterward, the story was largely forgotten, for decades. And what happened at the Congo was not that different to the other African neighbours. And worst, what Morel did might not even helped the Africans as much as he would have wanted.
And credit to the author, he did mention that the story mainly revolved around the whites, the white villains and the white heroes, when mainly the tortured, mutilated, killed were the blacks. It was difficult, as the natives didn't have a written language at that time, everything was oral, hence not a lot was preserved. But he did make a deliberate effort to include as much stories from the victims as possible. Overall, this book is very authoritative, I believe one of the most thorough of its subject, and easy reading as well, I was hooked all the time.
If any improvement I wanted from this book, I think the author's tone demonizes Leopold too much. Not to say he's not a devil, he was, but rather too obvious. To a certain extent, I thought some of the stories were made up. But again, credit to the author, he made extensive citations for all the tales that I thought were outlandish, but in the end were true.
Stories of unthinkably heinous evil people tend to be outlandish.
And the title of this book is aptly named – although his body is long dead, his ghost continues to haunt the Congo to this day.
In the end, King Leopold's one-man reign wiped out around ten million (10,000,000) of the population. The terror is comparable to Holocaust, Stalin's reign, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Khmer Rouge, but is hardly known. In fact, the story was virtually unheard of (with deliberate actions to forget it) for decades, by both Belgians and Congoleses. (There was even a statue of Leopold on a horse being worshipped by Africans – after this book came out, a hand was cut off one of the worshipping African statues to better reflect Leopold's regime.) The book also covered why it was largely unheard of.
They lived in a different age that time. Blacks were subhuman to the whites. Disposable. Just like our livestock today. But worse. Sometimes I imagined if the tortured/murdered blacks at that time were, say, cattle, I would still unable to fathom what the whites did to them at that time. I'm not good at describing the horror, I'm pretty sure some reviewers have elaborated on it.
It is also a story of PR, of the witty Leopold and his eventual archenemy, Edmund Dene Morel. And what a story he was. He was just a clerk, even had an ailing mother and a wife to support. He had nothing to gain. Even the author could not explain the reason behind Morel's burning passion. But a clerk against a king. And Leopold himself, you will be blown away how good he is at charming and deceiving people. His tricks up his sleeves are almost endless, you thought you got him cornered, but he pulls out another card.
And I hate to giveaway spoilers, but this is history after all, the ending had already happen. And this is no fiction story. The Hunger Games could have had a happily-ever-after ending (1984 could too if Orwell wished so), but the reality is darker than what we prefer it to be. Leopold died without facing any consequence for the millions he killed; in fact he never even saw the terror he inflicted. A few years afterward, the story was largely forgotten, for decades. And what happened at the Congo was not that different to the other African neighbours. And worst, what Morel did might not even helped the Africans as much as he would have wanted.
And credit to the author, he did mention that the story mainly revolved around the whites, the white villains and the white heroes, when mainly the tortured, mutilated, killed were the blacks. It was difficult, as the natives didn't have a written language at that time, everything was oral, hence not a lot was preserved. But he did make a deliberate effort to include as much stories from the victims as possible. Overall, this book is very authoritative, I believe one of the most thorough of its subject, and easy reading as well, I was hooked all the time.
If any improvement I wanted from this book, I think the author's tone demonizes Leopold too much. Not to say he's not a devil, he was, but rather too obvious. To a certain extent, I thought some of the stories were made up. But again, credit to the author, he made extensive citations for all the tales that I thought were outlandish, but in the end were true.
Stories of unthinkably heinous evil people tend to be outlandish.
And the title of this book is aptly named – although his body is long dead, his ghost continues to haunt the Congo to this day.
I thought I knew a little about the evils of African colonialism and the consequences stemming from those evils. And I was right: I knew a very little.
This book broke my heart. It is so disturbing at points I had to stop reading occasionally.
One of the worst realizations was that missionaries in the Congo, while occasionally opposed to the evils going on around them (and the afterward gives them more credit than the actual narrative seemed to), were there for two reasons: 1. To spread the gospel of Christ 2. To make the natives wear clothes and conform to a European understanding of modesty, labor, and governance. (And I'll give you one guess which was the most important to them.) As my husband and I discussed as I read through this book, one unintended side effect of missions (and we are Christians who believe in missions!) is the importing of our own idols to others.
I highly recommend this book. It is necessary. It is not easy to wrestle with the implications, but ignorance is not the better option.
This book broke my heart. It is so disturbing at points I had to stop reading occasionally.
One of the worst realizations was that missionaries in the Congo, while occasionally opposed to the evils going on around them (and the afterward gives them more credit than the actual narrative seemed to), were there for two reasons: 1. To spread the gospel of Christ 2. To make the natives wear clothes and conform to a European understanding of modesty, labor, and governance. (And I'll give you one guess which was the most important to them.) As my husband and I discussed as I read through this book, one unintended side effect of missions (and we are Christians who believe in missions!) is the importing of our own idols to others.
I highly recommend this book. It is necessary. It is not easy to wrestle with the implications, but ignorance is not the better option.
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
This book is extremely sad, but it’s an important read
Book number 16 of 2022 snapped a three book streak of fantasy novels, and this book sure snapped me out of any sense of escapism I felt with the Wheel of Time series. First of all, Adam Hochschild’s book is beautifully written, especially when looking at it with a historian’s eye. The balance between narrative, historical thinking/theory, and use of primary and secondary sources is breathtaking. It is the way most historians wish they could write. Second, and most importantly, the story he tells is one of utmost importance. It is a story about the barbarism of unchecked greed, the frightening speed that unchecked political and economic power can ruin and kill people and cultures, and, most importantly, the power that people can have when they stand up to existing power struggles. The only thing that kept King Leopold’s Ghost from a perfect score is simply the lack of in-text citations in the form of numbers for the endnotes. It is a pet peeve of mine that I cannot excise.