Martin Kopischke reviewed King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild
Still a must-read, 20 years later
4 stars
When King Leopold’s Ghost was published two decades ago, its only briefly blipped on my radar, leaving me with the vague impression that of the hells European colonisation created in Africa, Léopold’s (and subsequently Belgium’s) Congo was located in the deepest circles. Historical colonialism, however, beyond being bad on principle, was not an issue the liberal German Left was worried about at the end of the 20th century – in part because sympathy for the post colonial struggle was de rigueur, in part out of the entirely unfounded feeling that we Germans got out of that particular pickle just in time.
Fast forward 20 years, and Germany is beginning to acknowledge its colonial past, leaving no way to dismiss the story of the colonial Congo as some other nation’s problem. Colonialism, it turns out, was hellish everywhere, with the German colonies no exception (the chicotte, the rhino hide …
When King Leopold’s Ghost was published two decades ago, its only briefly blipped on my radar, leaving me with the vague impression that of the hells European colonisation created in Africa, Léopold’s (and subsequently Belgium’s) Congo was located in the deepest circles. Historical colonialism, however, beyond being bad on principle, was not an issue the liberal German Left was worried about at the end of the 20th century – in part because sympathy for the post colonial struggle was de rigueur, in part out of the entirely unfounded feeling that we Germans got out of that particular pickle just in time.
Fast forward 20 years, and Germany is beginning to acknowledge its colonial past, leaving no way to dismiss the story of the colonial Congo as some other nation’s problem. Colonialism, it turns out, was hellish everywhere, with the German colonies no exception (the chicotte, the rhino hide whip that became eponymous with forced labour and cruelty in Congo, had a name in the German colonies where it was in use, too: Nilpferdpeitsche), and much of Hochschild’s account of the horrific slaughter of about ten million people through, as a consequence of, or as an incidental of violent resource extraction feels like a shameful past we Europeans have in common. Léopold II, Roi des Belges, might have been a particularly greedy bugger, but he was not doing anything much other, less unsavoury, characters, didn’t.
All of which is to say that Hochschild’s book still hits all the right notes long after its original publication. Although not an academic work, it is thoroughly researched, well balanced, always aware of its limitations and blind spots, and so superbly written you will sometimes forget that the breathless yarn you are reliving is one of something that, half a century before the Nuremberg Trials, a prescient observer called “a crime against humanity“.
