King Leopold's Ghost

A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

By: Adam Hochschild

Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard

Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company's ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II's vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber. Outbound ships carried little more than soldiers and firearms.

Correctly concluding that only slave labor on a vast scale could account for these cargoes, Morel resigned from his company and almost singlehandedly made Leopold's slave-labor regime the premier human rights story in the world. Thousands of people packed hundreds of meetings throughout the United States and Europe to learn about Congo atrocities. Two courageous black Americans - George Washington Williams and William Sheppard - risked much to bring evidence to the outside world. Roger Casement, later hanged by Britain as a traitor, conducted an eye-opening investigation of the Congo River stations.

Sailing into the middle of the story was a young steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming over all was Leopold II, King of the Belgians, sole owner of the only private colony in the world.

©1998 Adam Hochschild (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

"Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light." (Amazon.com review)

"Hochschild's superb, engrossing chronicle focuses on one of the great, horrifying and nearly forgotten crimes of the century: greedy Belgian King Leopold II's rape of the Congo, the vast colony he seized as his private fiefdom in 1885....[M]ost of all it is a story of the bestiality of one challenged by the heroism of many in an increasingly democratic world." ( Publishers Weekly)

Excellent history

This is an excellent account of European colonialism in Africa, specifically in the Congo. Hochschild's account of rubber extraction in the Congo is chilling, but essential to understanding how colonial legacies continue to shape the present.

Fascinating, educational, and sad

The phrase I came away with might not be original and certainly not meant to be funny, but it is simply, in Africa no one can hear you scream. Certainly true in the era written about here, but in many ways there is truth in that still today.

The callous inhuman abuses heaped upon the African people by Europeans claiming to be civilizing them is mind boggling. Perhaps most shocking is how recently all of this occurred. Perhaps it took 2 World Wars to teach us empathy.

This history should be taught right alongside the holocaust, because the level of inhumanity is quite comparable, only were aren't talking about neural Nazis. These were perpetrated by what I've always believed were the peaceful Belgians.

The reading was superb, but ruined by poor editing and producing. It's normal for a reader to stop and reread a passage they wish to improve or to pickup the next session by rereading a line or 2 to get the pace set. But it is the editor's job to correctly edit the pieces together, not simply slam the reads together without trimming the redundancy off. This was disorienting and broke the flow of the story. In my opinion, very unprofessional.

The final distraction came at the end. The book has ended, then without any introduction another book begins, the entire introduction is read, about 24 minutes. Then the recording ends. I suppose it was a teaser to sell another book, but it seemed like a mistake on par with the other editing mistakes throughout the recording. I suspect this was simply awful producing and a lame teaser attempt.

In conclusion, great book whose audio production was awfully produced and edited.

King Leopolds Ghost

Historical content is beyond reproach. Very well writtened.
The narrator was very eloquent.
I enjoyed the book from the standpoint of learning about the Congo. Was horrified at learning of practice of slavery and other human rights violations.

Exposing a hidden corner of history

Excellent writing and a thorough research uncovers the dark European secret. This book should be an obligatory school reading in all Western countries and of course in Congo.

Good story, poorly edited recording

Very well written and narration is good. Recording wasn't well edited though. There are maybe 2p or so times where a line gets repeated, probably because of breaks in the recording session. It's weird but you get used to it.

Supremely Well Told History of Horrific Past Events

One of many aspects of our history that we were not taught at all in school.

Belgian Congo

My goodness, the inhumanity! It amazes the history left untold. A brilliant presentation of a horrific event.

Thank you Michael Brooks.

Michael Brooks was a Podcaster who was very well read. One of his top recommendations was this book and now I understand why. it was a shameful time when kings ruled the planet, Now instead of a few kings we have thousands, what else would you call a billionaire, but a modern day king?

Good listen

Great depth. Narration became a bit monotone at times. Amazed that this period of history and what European nations did to Africa isn’t more highlighted or well known.

Important, sobering, and worth your time

Probably one of the best books I read this year.

Vastly informative and at times difficult to read owing to the horrific nature of the content, King Leopold’s Ghost lays out the origins of colonialism in the Congo, the rubber terror, and the changes that were (or weren’t) made when the Belgian king was finally forced to sell “his” territory. The intricacies of Leopold’s schemes to discover, dominate, and extract labor from central Africa probably should not have surprised me, but they did.

I don’t know much African history, but if every book about its nations and territories were written like this one, I would read them all. This was a well-researched piece of nonfiction with a full cast of characters. It took me about two months to read (I read about 1/4 of it and listened to the remaining 3/4 on Audible) because I had to take it in doses. Some of the atrocities described are too awful for words. It is utterly remarkable and very sad to me that I had never heard of the terror inflicted on the Congo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before a friend recommended this. The Western world condemns Hitler, and rightly so—but Leopold was just as bad.

The audiobook had a great narrator—he did not distract from the text and read with clarity and appropriate emphasis. A strange glitch, a holdover from the days of literal books on tape, was that random pauses and repeated sentences would occur with each “break” between one tape and the next. This would have been easy to edit out but for whatever reason no one has done that. All the same, a small imperfection that in no way detracts from the value of this book!