King Leopold's Ghost, By Adam Hochschild

When it comes to historical events, the happiest are remembered and celebrated while the worst are often forgotten and ignored. The events that have shaped society have not been the pleasant ones but they are the painful, horrendous, and bloody disasters. One such disaster was the exploitation of the Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium in the late 1800s and 1900s. In colonial Africa, the people of the Congo were subjected to personal greed, terror, and a few acts of heroism from specific individuals. The book, King Leopold’s Ghost, written by Adam Hochschild brought this neglected historical event of the African people to life. The individual that started the terror that occurred in the Congo was King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold was known for being an odd and sly child. His relationship with his parents was very cold and he even had to request an audience to talk to his father. His father would also send his secretaries to relay his messages to his son. It could be presumed that his childhood turned him into the horrible man that initiated what occurred in the Congo. As he grew older he realized that he would soon become king of Belgium, due to his parents not having favor towards their older son. Per Hochschild King Leopold stated, “petit pays, petits gens (small country, small people).” He believed that country he was to inherit was too small and that caused him to begin looking overseas. He began traveling to the Balkans, Constantinople, and the Aegean and he gave speeches about Belgium’s future role in world trade. This is just the beginning of his quest for creating imperial opportunities. As the years passed by, in the mid-1870s Africa was beginning to look like a place to develop colonies. While other counties such as Great Britain and Portugal were staking their claim on areas of Africa, King Leopold was deciding where his piece of the pie would be. He started to watch explorers such as Henry Morton Stanley and pine for their success. Leopold realized that as a king of a small country the only way he could get a colony was by pretending it was for humanitarian reasons. He decided to use the slave trade, moral uplift, and the advancement of science as his platform and not about gaining profits from the colony. He gave the appearance that he did not want to build an empire, that he only wanted to help the people in Africa. King Leopold II found a piece of Africa that he wanted and it was an area near the great Congo river. With the connections that he created in London and other countries, he held a conference in 1876 called the Geographic Conference in Brussels. This convention is where he explained …show more content…
Stanley was famous across Europe as an explorer and that is why he caught Leopold’s eye. Stanley was in the Congo for five years working for King Leopold II and during this time he had his crew make roads, bridges, and stations. He was known as harsh among his crew members and enjoyed giving out punishments. Stanley once stated, “The best punishment is that of irons, because without wounding, disfiguring, or torturing the body, it inflicts shame and discomfort.” This quote shows how Stanley felt about punishing the African members of his crew. He would not punish the white men this way. He would often criticize his workers in his letters to King Leopold calling this lazy and …show more content…
He was from Ireland and worked with the government and joined Edmund Dene Moral and spoke out against King Leopold. They were both part of the Congo Reform Movement. The ways that they would speak out was by writing letters and doing speeches about what was occurring in the Congo. King Leopold II would try to get both men to stop speaking out against him by giving them gifts and potentially bribing them. Casement would write in his diary the horrors he saw and one entry was, “I walked into villages, and saw the nearest one—population dreadfully decreased—only 93 people left out of many hundreds.” This heartbreaking entry fueled his fire for speaking out against King Leopold