Thesis Statement Of King Leopold's Ghost

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great

King Leopold II developed his dream for colonization at an early age. Before he even took the throne he was on the lookout for unconquered land that could later be in his possession. The king wanted to become rich as a result of his new land through the process of trading. Once King Leopold II set his sights on the Congo, he would not give up until the land was his. He connived, manipulated and conned his way into the land. He did not care who got hurt; he just wanted his dream to be fulfilled.

European powers began to take over territories throughout the continent of Africa during the 19th century. Historian Adam Hochschild’s depiction of King Leopold of Belgium was written in 1998 and titled, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Hochschild talked extensively about the greed for money and slavery resulting in the genocide of the Congo and the protests of humanitarians that followed the King’s exploitation of Africans. In his thesis, the author stated that “[t]his is the story of that movement, of the savage crime that was its target, of the long period of exploration and conquest that preceded it, and of the way the world has forgotten one of the great mass killings of recent history.”

The book aims to show the beginning to the end of a colony and increase public awareness of the atrocities committed in most colonies during the 1800s and into the 1900s. Hochschild does this using King Leopold II of Belgium, who was able to grab the Congo in the scramble for land in Africa. Leopold had always seen Belgium as a neutral weakling in the sense that there was no land to explore. By the time Leopold came into power, all of the land of the known world had been colonized. All that was left on the map was the large blank spot of Africa. Leopold saw the chance of creating Belgium’s first colony, and he took it.

King Leopold was abusing his position of power to exploit the Congo for it’s raw materials, it can be said that the vivid cruel and gruesome images Conrad conveys in the book are merely mirroring the harsh reality of the brutalisation in Africa. One could therefore conclude that due to Conrad’s own experiences in the Congo he has to tell his story through a framed narrative, as it may be too difficult for him to share his story in the first person. Whether this was the case or not, it is clear than in ‘Heart of Darkness’ Conrad reveals the abuse of power to be ever present in the colonial age that Conrad lived in, and he demonstrates the abuse of power as something to be wary of and to fear, as it can result in madness.

Throughout this novel we see Leopold’s secrecy as he convinces hundreds of people of his pure intentions to create an area of free trade and prosperity of the African people. He did this by holding conferences such as the Geographical Conference. There he explained his fictitious aspiration for the abolishment of the slave trade and for peace in Africa. This colonial

Imperialism has been a strong and long lasting force, oppressing societies for generations on end. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, thoroughly presents how the Belgian Congo is continuously affected by this concept and ideology. Throughout this story, Kingsolver manipulates each family member and individual within the book to better show Western and European ideas and attitudes, to convey the large amount of hypocrisy, in the foreigner’s actions.

Throughout the book Hochschild shows the dedication of Morel, and major roles that characters played to shape the history of the Congo like Stanley, and William Sheppard (who was one of the most outspoken out of all American Congo missionaries.) The author examined the Congo because it shows how extreme colonialism is and what it was like for people that were under a colonial rule. I think this book has a clear meaning and thesis, Hochschild wanted to expose what happened in the Congo because he felt like it had been covered up and he wanted to paint the readers a picture that they would never forget. My theory is I don’t believe that King Leopold was there for the greater good and to better the Congolese people. I think it’s obvious from

King Leopold's Ghost tells a story of the Belgian King Leopold II and his misrule of an African colony, named (at the time) the Congo Free State. It is a wild and unpleasant story of a man's capacity for evil and the peculiar manifestation of it.

King Leopold’s Ghost is a nonfiction book about Imperialism in Africa written by Adam Hochschild. Hochschild was born in New York in 1942 and graduated from Harvard in 1963 with a B.A. degree in history and literature (Interview with Adam Hochschild). He worked as a reporter for a daily newspaper for two years and then he went on to writing and editing magazines. In 1986 he wrote his first book, and then twelve years later he wrote his second: King Leopold’s Ghost. Hochschild said he writes about subjects he’s interested in. In the introduction to King Leopold’s Ghost he states that he knew nothing about the history of the Congo until he noticed a footnote in a book (Hochschild 3). Hochschild said that when you come across something striking, you remember where you were when you read it. In this particular experience he was in an airliner crossing the United States. He read a quotation by Mark Twain about the caliber of what happened in the Congo and was startled (3), this sparked his interest in the Congo and inspired him to start researching to see if the mass murders he read about were true.

“To Europeans, Africans were inferior beings: Lazy, uncivilized, little better than animals... In any system of terror, the functionaries must first of all see the victims as less than human, and Victorian ideals about race provided such a foundation” (Hochschild 121). The society in which King Leopold II lived shaped his view that the people of Africa were inferior, that their lives were significant, and this idea began to spread to most of Europe. This allowed the Belgian king to focus on his main purpose of colonizing the Congo: money. Despite his portrayal that his main motivation for colonizing the Congo was not profit, King Leopold was definitely motivated by money, and and because of this motivation he turned a blind eye to what was happening in

1.Why did Hochschild write King Leopold’s Ghost? And what themes is he trying to convey to the audience? 2. Hochschild mentions African, Arab, and European slavery. What are the differences between the three?

In the Congo he saw polished ivory, tactile rubber, and an abundant workforce. Leopold, as the explorer Henry Morton Stanley would say, “had the ‘enormous voracity to swallow a million of square mills with a gullet that will not take in a herring’” (Hochschild, 191). Hochschild, after describing the king’s bounty (worth almost 200 million francs), details all of the superfluous and lavish monuments, palaces, and projects Leopold planed

In the first part of Hochschild’s book, he describes the actions and desires that led King Leopold to seize the Congo Free State, the rules he broke and how he manipulated the nations with his righteousness of combating slavery- even though figured such as George Williams and ____ began speaking out against him. Hochschild describes King Leopold II as rude, revolting and awkward as he was growing up. His characteristics only began to drift towards persuasive and cunning when he discovered his curiosity in the colonization of new land. Conveniently, many European countries had no interest in colonization. When Leopold gained power, and searched for his lovely colony, their ambivalence resulted in him creating a colony on his own account.

The pushing of boundaries ends in in the action of thieving the natives of the land, regardless of who they are. The Portuguese took anyone that they wished to, including both freemen and non-freemen, regardless of if they were “sons of the land” or “the sons of noblemen and vassals...” (Mbemba 635). The king of Congo, in an effort to quell this sequence of actions regarding the theft of ones in his nation, sets place a law that limits who may be taken and who may not (Mbemba 636). However, this does little good for the nation. In fact, it's brought to light that the Portuguese merchants complain to be offended by such a measure (Mbemba 636). It begins to become obvious that the king of Congo is losing control of the Portuguese merchants in his own country, and also his power of the nation as a whole. By presenting the cause of distress, as well as what has been done to avoid an unsavory situation, the king of Congo presents himself as virtually blameless in the fall of the loss of his own power and for the disintegration of his own country, while positioning the king of Portugal in such a way as to lay blame.