Review of "King Leopold's ghost" on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
"“Those who are conquered,” wrote the philosopher Ibn Khaldūn in the fourteenth century, “always want to imitate the conqueror in his main characteristics — in his clothing, his crafts, and in all his distinctive traits and customs.”"
King Leopold II raped and plundered Congo for 25 years. An estimated 10 million Africans were killed in his quest for riches (half of Congo's population). Among all the brutality in Congo, the rubber harvest is singled out as especially horrendous. (This period of terror is stamped into the Mongo language where "to send someone to harvest rubber" is an idiom meaning "to tyrannize.")
Belgium bought the colony from Leopold in 1908, but they made few structural changes.
After "independence" Lumumba offered a brief flicker of hope, but there was no way Western capitalists would tolerate his talk about economic independence as a requirement for true independence. He was assassinated in 1961 to …
"“Those who are conquered,” wrote the philosopher Ibn Khaldūn in the fourteenth century, “always want to imitate the conqueror in his main characteristics — in his clothing, his crafts, and in all his distinctive traits and customs.”"
King Leopold II raped and plundered Congo for 25 years. An estimated 10 million Africans were killed in his quest for riches (half of Congo's population). Among all the brutality in Congo, the rubber harvest is singled out as especially horrendous. (This period of terror is stamped into the Mongo language where "to send someone to harvest rubber" is an idiom meaning "to tyrannize.")
Belgium bought the colony from Leopold in 1908, but they made few structural changes.
After "independence" Lumumba offered a brief flicker of hope, but there was no way Western capitalists would tolerate his talk about economic independence as a requirement for true independence. He was assassinated in 1961 to allow the continued exploitation of the country and extraction of its vast natural resources by Western corporations.
In 1965, Lieutenant General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seized control of the country, and, as the author of this book points out, "Aside from the color of his skin, there were few ways in which he did not resemble the monarch who governed the same territory a hundred years earlier. His one-man rule. His great wealth taken from the land. His naming a lake after himself. His yacht. His appropriation of state possessions as his own. His huge shareholdings in private corporations doing business in his territory. Just as Leopold, using his privately controlled state, shared most of his rubber profits with no one, so Mobutu acquired his personal group of gold mines — and a rubber plantation. Mobutu’s habit of printing more money when he needed it resembled nothing so much as Leopold’s printing of Congo bonds."
King Leopold's ghost still looms large over Congo, as the shadow of European imperialism still looms large over large parts of Africa south of Sahara. But in Europe most people believe our exploitation of Africa is a thing of the past.