King Leopolds Ghost: Illuminating Congos Heart of Darkness
King Leopolds Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild is a sweeping and often revolting account of the atrocities of the Belgian colonization of the Congo and its aftermath. Using a variety of writing techniques, Hochschild creates an engrossing narrative which not only unveils a dark chapter in our global history, but also fosters an empathy in the reader to the victims of the barbarity of the time.
The story unfolds around the turn of the twentieth century when European powers began to explore and colonize Sub-Saharan Africa. Belgian king Leopold II laid individual claim to the enormous chunk of land surrounding the Congo River and proceeded to strip the land of its resources, including, but not limited to, rubber, ivory, and people using a deadly system of forced labor. Under the ironic and spurious guise of humanitarianism, Leopold built himself an empire in central Africa, lining his pockets and satisfying his egotism, becoming the largest individual landowner in the world, while the brutality of his reign slashed the Congolese population by 10 million people, or approximately in half (Hochschild, 233). The narrative is uplifting at points as it also tells the story of the courageous few Africans, Europeans, and Americans that stood up to Leopold in what, in hindsight, was the first major humanitarian effort of the twentieth century (Straus).
The book strikes a fine balance between literary fiction and statistical evidence. Hochschild often invokes Joseph Conrads novella Heart of Darkness as an allegory, despite academias typical regard for that work as fiction. In fact, Hochschild spends nearly an entire chapter, Meeting Mr. Kurtz, on the comparison. He quotes Conrad as saying, Heart of Darkness is experience ... pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case (Hochschild, 143). Hochschild continues,
Conrad stayed true to life when creating the charismatic, murderous figure at the center of his novel, perhaps the twentieth centurys most famous literary villain. Mr. Kurtz was clearly inspired by several real people... Whatever the case, the moral landscape of Heart of Darkness and the shadowy figure at its center are the creations not just of a novelist but of an open-eyed observer who caught the spirit of a time and place with piercing accuracy. (Hochschild, 144-9)
Balancing the literary fiction is a surfeit of empirical data. Hochschild quotes a vast array of specific information from the 178 bodies found by troops at the site of a rebellion (Hochschild, 124) to the 1,359 out of 83,518 men who were worked to death in a specific region of the Congo (Hochschild, 278). Hochschild also quotes a large number of firsthand accounts from sickly steamboat captains (68), British Baptist missionaries (191), and everyone in between. The cumulative effect of all these sketches culled from novels, biographies, texts, and statistical data is an extraordinarily nuanced and vivid picture of the story. As vivid as the actual pictures included in the book of youths missing their hands and of a parent staring at the severed hands and feet of their children.
In both Hochschilds own writing and his choice of quotes there is pervasive vivid imagery, graphic detail, and powerful language. In one particularly powerful vignette Hochschild introduces the scene by saying a soldier, described the slaughter as casually as if it were a hunt (Hochschild, 99), and then segues from that disturbing simile into the soldiers own account.
It was most interesting, lying in the bush watching the natives quietly at their days work. Some women ... were making banana flour by pounding up dried bananas. Men we could see building huts and engaged in other work, boys and girls running about, singing... I opened the game by shooting one chap through the chest. He fell like a stone... Immediately a volley was poured into the village. (Hochschild, 99)
Hochschild finishes the vignette with a final grotesque detail, hammering the likening of the slaughter to that of a hunt. One member of the expedition packed the severed head of an African in a box of salt and sent it to London to be stuffed and mounted by his Piccadilly taxidermist (Hochschild, 99). That type of vibrant imagery is extremely effective, the reader cant help but have a visceral reaction to that type of casual slaughter. Certainly, the thought of a severed head in a box of salt to be treated as a trophy as trivial as a rack of antlers is a mental picture that is hard to shake. That type of graphic detail and powerful language is rife throughout the book.
Due to this type of language the book has a very novelistic feel, despite the storys constantly shifting and variety of perspectives. Often, however, Hochschild employs rhetorical questions. He invokes this technique as early as the prologue, asking, For what was slavery in the American South, after all, but a system for transforming the labour of black bodies, via cotton plantations, into cloth? (Hochschild, 16). Similarly, he begins his conclusion with the question, What epitaph can we write for the movement that worked so hard for justice in the Congo a hundred years ago? (Hochschild, 304). Asking these questions, Hochschild jars the reader out of the flow the story and forces them to think more deeply and profoundly about the events unfolding on the page. While it is easy to get lost in the story, the book is nonfiction and educational. In asking these questions, Hochschild reminds the reader that this story is true and that realization makes the events in the story that much more powerful and appalling.
The critical reviews of King Leopolds Ghost were almost unanimously positive with, excluding some predictable Belgian outrage, scarcely any derogatory comments published on its account. In fact, the praise is so overwhelming that many hardly qualify as critical reviews, for the most part they simply gush. The San Francisco Chronicles review that, Hochschild's gripping narrative [is] as dense as a novel and laden with subplots (Sante), is typical of the books press. Similarly, Flak Magazine gushed that, Anyone with an interest in race relations, colonialism or human rights should find 'King Leopold's Ghost to be a riveting, rewarding read. But Hochschild's book has a broader audience. Anyone with an interest in the way we care for or mistreat other humans may find a great deal of food for thought here, as well (Norton). Indeed, the vast majority of the reviews are eerily similar. The Globe and Mail rhapsodized, You need not be a historian to enjoy this book; Hochschild's narrative is accessible and tragically absorbing. It is also a crucial read, in that it illustrates how colonization changed every aspect of the economies and traditional societal structures then in place in Africa, and created the basis for many current challenges (Kilgour). The Toronto Star was perhaps the most effusive in its praise of this magnificent book, Run, don't walk, to get a copy of Leopold's Ghost. It'll bring tears to your eyes as you read... You'll cheer for the heroes who exposed what was happening... And you'll gasp at the breathtaking cynicism of Leopold (Gwyn). Unfortunately, the aforementioned reviews are substantively plot summaries and while they certainly appreciate the writing style, they are very biased toward the story itself, which is undeniably engrossing and compelling. The African Studies Quarterly review, while still strongly positive, dug a little deeper into the writing itself,
King Leopolds Ghost tells the story of the Congo with fresh and critical insights, bringing new analysis to this topic... Of particular interest in the book is the international scope of Hochschilds scholarship... The book is a good guide to the work of individual protesters in alleviating the overt power of an egoistic monarch. It employs both empirical evidence and fiction to tell a forgotten story. The grasp of the story across regional, national ad continental boundaries is an important strength of the book. The book is recommended beyond the confines of academia. (Murunga)
Salon published a solidly negative review of the book claiming that,
While it would be reassuring to believe that Leopold's violence stopped as a result of intrepid crusaders, Hochschild doesn't make a convincing case... Hochschild prefers to see the Congo as a sorry tale that is in the end redemptive. Unfortunately, redemption in this case can only be found by distorting history... Hochschild has written about a terrible period that we have tried to forget. It's a shame that he tries to shield himself and the reader from recognizing the full dimension of the horror. (Karabell)
Certainly Hochschild was not trying to shield anybody from the horror of the story, his writing often verges on hyperbole in its description. Furthermore, while Hochschild concludes on a somewhat uplifting note in his final several paragraphs discussing global human rights efforts both then and now, it is a stretch to say it is in the end redemptive. The final chapter, essentially his conclusion, primarily discusses how easily and quickly history has forgotten the tragedies of the narrative and discusses similarities between Leopolds regime and that of modern day Africa. He poses difficult questions such as whether European powers used the horrors of Leopolds regime to diffuse attention from their own dubious colonial practices and whether we as a species have learned to prevent similar atrocities with the speed with which we have learned to create them (Hochschild, 292-306). Hardly the uplifting and redemptive ending Salon suggests.
The Boston Phoenix also discussed the writing itself, and also had a minor qualm with it, The weaknesses of King Leopolds Ghost have to do with occasional lapses of narrative energy an at least one far too literal interpretation... But this is a minor caveat. King Leopolds Ghost ably reconstructs the human rights situation with which the century began and puts it in the context of colonialism (Blume). The too liberal interpretation to which the review refers is assertion that a line from Conrads Heart of Darkness refers literally to King Leopold. While it references only a single instance, it does raise a larger and more significant issue, that many of the stories relayed by Hochschild are fiction or unsubstantiated facts. Nearly any picture could have been painted with careful quote selection, the truthfulness of those anecdotes must be called into question.
Ultimately, Hochschild has woven a powerful and compelling account of one of historys most tragic times. Through use of persistently powerful language he created a story with mind-boggling weight. The book is exhaustively researched with 257 sources cited in the bibliography. In much the same way that a stereo image creates depth, the variety of constantly shifting perspectives from his enormous number of sources creates a depth and color that immerses the reader in his writing. Not only is the storyline itself compelling, but Hochschild also poses grand philosophical questions which leave the reader thinking not only about the individual, haunting details of the Congolese catastrophe but also about its universality and pertinence to the human condition. King Leopolds Ghost won several literary prizes, awards, and citations in 1999 including, as noted on the books cover, being a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. Deservedly so. Hochschild brought global attention to one of the modern eras most heinous crimes by deftly crafting his narrative to capture the hearts and minds of a global audience, proficiently illuminating African historys heart of darkness.
Works Cited
Blume, Harvey. Slaughter Rule: Belgiums King Leopold ran the Congo like a prison camp -- until international pressure forced him out. The Boston Phoenix. 10 Sep. 1998. Web. 27 July 2010.
Gwyn, Richard. African Holocaust Remembered. The Toronto Star. 10 Oct. 1999. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 10 Aug. 2010.
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