Thursday, August 16, 2007

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild

We've all heard of many of the large genocides that have occurred in human history, but I must admit that I was ignorant of the mass killings that occurred in Belgian Congo in the late 19th and early 20th century. As many as 6 million Africans fell dead due to the actions of Belgium's King Leopold. This book tells the real life story of Heart of Darkness (earlier in the year I read Heart of Darkness but I need to reread it after this).

It seems like all European countries were enamored with imperialism 100 years ago, but I never knew that small little Belgium could cause so much harm. Before reading this book, the name Belgium conjured up images of waffles; now, unfortunately, I'll just think of lies and slavery. Apparently, King Leopold was rather pissed off that he was the king of such a small country. To compensate for his size, he decided to take over a huge chunk of Africa, many times larger than his home country. He then used the local population to exploit the land for all it had, including the lives of the people. This slavery and murder went on for a number of years, but the rest of the world didn't swat an eye because the King did a brilliant job as marketing his exploitation as a humanitarian mission where Belgium wasn't even benefiting. Belgium did benefit, but most of the money went directly to Leopold where he squandered it on teenage hookers. Towards the end of his life he started getting some harsh criticism, but largely because of his little girl fetish, not the killing spree going on in his name.

I'd recommend this book to anyone, especially those fascinated by the horrors of imperialism and the heroism of the few individuals who were willing to take on a King.

Completed: Sometime in August

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