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King
Leopold's Ghost
The Plunder of
the Congo and the Twentieth Century's
First Great International Rights Movement
by Adam Hochschild
- Book Description
In the 1880's, as the European powers were carving up
Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the
vast and largely unexplored territory surrounding the
Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the
Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and
ultimately slashed the population by ten million--all
while shrewdly cultivating his international reputation
as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose this
secret crime finally led to the first great international
human rights movement of the 20th century in which
everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury
participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting
portrait of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a
man as cunning as any of the great Shakespearean
villains. It is also the deeply involving story of those
who fought Leopold and of the explorers, missionaries,
and rubber workers who witnessed the horror. With a cast
of characters richer than any novelist could invent, this
book will permanently inscribe these too long forgotten
events on the conscience of the West.
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