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The cover of King Leopold's Ghost

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschild, 1998

Adam Hochschild tells how King Leopold II of Belgium seized the Congo as a private colony run on forced rubber labor, and how a few campaigners exposed the terror.

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22 parts, about 34 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Traces how one king's private colony hid a forced labor system behind a philanthropic image and cut the population by about half
  • Shows how paid press, staged inquiries and burned archives let mass atrocity drop out of public memory
  • Follows the shipping clerk, missionaries and consul who built an international human rights campaign from ledgers and testimony

Who it is for

  • Readers who want the history behind Heart of Darkness
  • Students of colonialism and modern African history
  • Activists studying how human rights campaigns win attention

What the summary covers

  1. Introduction1 min
  2. Prologue: "The Traders Are Kidnapping Our People"2 min
  3. "I Shall Not Give Up the Chase"1 min
  4. The Fox Crosses the Stream2 min
  5. The Magnificent Cake1 min
  6. "The Treaties Must Grant Us Everything"1 min
  7. From Florida to Berlin2 min
  8. Under the Yacht Club Flag1 min
  9. The First Heretic2 min
  10. Where There Aren't No Ten Commandments2 min
  11. Meeting Mr. Kurtz1 min
  12. The Wood That Weeps2 min
  13. A Secret Society of Murderers1 min
  14. David and Goliath1 min
  15. Breaking into the Thieves' Kitchen1 min
  16. To Flood His Deeds with Day1 min
  17. A Reckoning3 min
  18. "Journalists Won't Give You Receipts"1 min
  19. No Man Is a Stranger2 min
  20. Victory?2 min
  21. The Great Forgetting2 min
  22. Looking Back: A Personal Afterword2 min

Recommended by

  • Robert HarrisBritish novelist
    All the tension and drama that one would expect in a good novel

About the author

  • Adam HochschildAmerican author, journalist and historian
    • Born in New York City.
    • Graduated from Harvard with a BA in History and Literature.
    • After Harvard in 1963 he worked briefly as a civil rights worker in Mississippi, served in the army, and then became a newspaper reporter, mostly at the San Francisco Chronicle.
    • He cofounded Mother Jones magazine in 1976.
    • He has written for The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine and The Nation.
    • A longtime lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, he has also been a Fulbright Lecturer in India and a Regents' Lecturer at UC Santa Cruz.
    • In 2009 he received an award from the American Historical Association, and in 2014 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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