King Leopold's Ghost

Oil isn’t the only natural resource that can curse: the Belgian colonizers inflicted decades of extraordinary brutality on the peoples of the Congo while extracting their ivory and rubber.

Hochschild paints horrific vistas of extreme greed and violence, and also tells the stories of the heroic individuals who resisted it. I didn’t know much about real ‘The Heart of Darkness’ before reading this book—now I know that the true savages were the Europeans.

I read King Leopold’s Ghost when I was working on conflict resolution in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the State Department.

The painful legacy of colonization can still be felt in the DRC and across the continent. Colonizing nations didn’t invest in education, public servants, infrastructure, or any of the necessary elements to create a strong nation-state because this was never colonization’s goal.

This book clearly outlines this upsetting reality with the real-life example of Belgium’s colonization of the DRC. It is upsetting to read, but so important to understand how we got to where we are in… show more.

This is one of the first books I ever read about African history and it sparked my curiosity to learn more about the continent and its development.

It’s a difficult book to read, diving into some of the worst atrocities, but it helps lay the foundation for understanding how many African countries experienced colonialism, which is important to understand today’s politics of the region.

I always recommend this book when people ask me for a good introduction to African history.

To be honest I could have picked any Adam Hochschild book. To End All Wars undoubtedly shaped the storytelling of my book. But King Leopold’s Ghost was my first and the most memorable encounter with his work. Not only is Hochschild a master of narrative nonfiction; he weaves the most amazing stories through real-life characters in ways that many novelists would envy. Yes, the topic of this book is heavy. Yes, this is an important history that strikes at the heart of colonialism and rapacious empire. Yet just as important is Hochschild’s approach to telling that history, his awareness of… show more.

In the late nineteenth century, Europe’s Great Powers tried to regulate their competitive land grab in Africa by allowing King Leopold II of Belgium, a tiny, neutral player on the world stage, to take personal control over a massive territory in central Africa, the so-called Congo Free State. To exploit the region’s huge supply of rubber, Leopold’s agents terrorized the Congolese population, taking women and children hostage to force men to work under slave-like conditions in the grueling equatorial heat. Cruel overseers sliced off the hands of workers deemed rebellious or insufficiently productive and chased potential laborers into the bush… show more.

This is a riveting and haunting account of a well-hidden history. The author tells the story of the acquisition of the Congo, a century ago, by King Leopold of the Belgians as a personal fiefdom through political guile, boundless greed, unspeakable cruelties, and of the crusade by a small group of pioneer human rights activists who unmasked the king and eventually generated the international pressure needed to stop the enslavement, mutilation, and murder of millions of Africans.  The superb writing carries the reader on as if pulled by a magnet.

Most books on this list are informative and fun. This one has no scope for humour. This book taught me more than any other of why so much of Africa is the mess it is today. A grim read but this telling of a Belgian king’s obsession with obtaining a colony and his brutal reign over it is breathtaking and horrifying.