King Leopold's Ghost

Written by:
Adam Hochschild
Narrated by:
Geoffrey Howard

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
42
Narrator
10
Release Date
July 13, 2010
Duration
12 hours 42 minutes
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 slavelabor regime the premier humanrights 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 eyeopening 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.
Reviews
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Peter Chollet

Excellent history that puts the events in question into the context of other world events. Dives into the social, political, and other conditions present. Only issue is that you still receive instructions to turn tapes over. Really should be edited out.

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Kenneth A.

The book was a good history about Africa and Belgian rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; but I don't care for authors that seem to judge the past through 21st century, "woke" eyes. Nonetheless, this was a good continuation of my latest subject of interest, post WBTS exploration, from Africa, and the Polar regions. There was much crossover of characters.

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Anonymous

All history is not glorious this certainly was the other side. Leopold was destructive greedy and played games with resources as many other European countries did. However I guess we need to know this history

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Demetrius F.

This was a good book, very insightful interesting information about the dark continent ...

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