King Leopold's Ghost A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

... Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost which tells the story of the exploitation of rubber in the Belgian Congo and the horrendous genocide that emerged out of that...

And then the final candidate, which Adam Hochschild mentions in his book, King Leopold's Ghost, is a guy called Leon Rom.

And Adam Hochschild in his brilliant book, King Leopold's Ghost, that we've mentioned quite a lot, he says, Someone feted for life as a small town bank clerk or a plumber in Europe could instead become a warlord, an ivory merchant, a big game hunter and a possessor of a harem.

So in the book King Leopold's Ghost, there are long narratives of kind of these hideous, bloody mutiners where forced public units have turned against their officers.

There's a brilliant book on this called King Leopold's Ghost by the American writer Adam Hochschild. We'll be borrowing from that book very liberally.

Not an uncontroversial book itself. And in next week's bonus episode, we'll talk about some of the arguments about that book.

There's a brilliant example in the book, King Leopold's Ghost, a terrifying example.

And one of my sources is King Leopold's Ghost, which is really big, a really good book by Adam Haaschild.

And the Stanley that Adam describes as a monster who shot his way through the Congo to discover the source of the river,

It was as if through his handwriting he were trying to pull himself out of disgrace and turn the script of his life from one of poverty to one of elegance.

And one of my sources is King Leopold's Ghost, which is really big, a really good book by Adam Haaschild.

And the Stanley that Adam describes as a monster who shot his way through the Congo to discover the source of the river, shot his way back out and then connived a bunch of African chiefs to hand over their land by making them sign treaties they couldn't read and giving them cloth in return.

It was as if through his handwriting he were trying to pull himself out of disgrace and turn the script of his life from one of poverty to one of elegance.

Henry held out for six weeks before changing sides he had been through hell with his fellow southerners and felt disloyal but as a foreigner embroiled in the war by chance of his new significance Stanley's behavior was not forgivable.

what we learned in the textbooks was that Leopold was the greatest benefactor the Congo ever had because he sacrificed his fortune for the Congolese.

keep your head down, think small, look after yourself. These constituted the lessons of Leopold. The spirit once comprehensively crushed does not recover easily. For 75 years from 1885 to 1960, Congo's population had marinated in humiliation. No malevolent witch doctor could have devised a better preparation for the coming of a second great dictator.

King Leopold's Ghost

It was as if through his handwriting he were trying to pull himself out of disgrace and turn the script of his life from one of poverty to one of elegance.

In 1869, Stanley received an urgent telegram from Bennett, his boss. Come to Paris on important business.

And the Stanley that Adam describes as a monster who shot his way through the Congo to discover the source of the river,

shot his way back out and then connived a bunch of African chiefs to hand over their land by making them sign treaties they couldn't read and giving them cloth in return.

It was as if through his handwriting he were trying to pull himself out of disgrace and turn the script of his life from one of poverty to one of elegance.

that he promptly agreed to do so

she came home one day and she was reading this book, King Leopold's Ghost which is all about the terrible colonial crimes of King Leopold, of Belgium in the Congo, in the Belgian Congo.