Modern history

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa

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.

INTRODUCTION

Prologue: "The Traders Are Kidnapping Our People"

Part I: Walking into Fire

Chapter 1: "I SHALL NOT GIVE UP THE CHASE"

Chapter 2: THE FOX CROSSES THE STREAM

Chapter 3: THE MAGNIFICENT CAKE

Chapter 4: "THE TREATIES MUST GRANT US EVERYTHING"

Chapter 5: FROM FLORIDA TO BERLIN

Chapter 6: UNDER THE YACHT CLUB FLAG

Chapter 7: THE FIRST HERETIC

Chapter 8: WHERE THERE AREN'T NO TEN COMMANDMENTS

Chapter 9: MEETING MR. KURTZ

Chapter 10: THE WOOD THAT WEEPS

Chapter 11: A SECRET SOCIETY OF MURDERERS

Part II: A King at Bay

Chapter 12: DAVID AND GOLIATH

Chapter 13: BREAKING INTO THE THIEVES' KITCHEN

Chapter 14: TO FLOOD HIS DEEDS WITH DAY

Chapter 15: A RECKONING

Chapter 16: JOURNALISTS WON'T GIVE YOU RECEIPTS

Chapter 17: NO MAN IS A STRANGER

Chapter 18: VICTORY?

Chapter 19: THE GREAT FORGETTING

Looking Back: A Personal Afterword

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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