King Leopold's Ghost

 

 

 
King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild chronicles the pillage, plunder, and wanton destruction of the people and the land of the Congo by Belgium during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

A well-researched and written book, Hochschild is quick to point out that the wholesale destruction of the Congolese was one of the first genocides of the twentieth century, wiping out about half of the Congo’s population of 20 million.
 

Western colonialism, never a pretty thing to study, is here shown in its most dismal colors.  Hocschild’s book is an important testimony to an event few people outside Congo remember, and that Belgium wants to forget.