King Leopold’s Ghost - Adam Hochschild
King Leopold’s Ghost - Adam Hochschild 
At the turn of the century, the scramble for Africa was just beginning. Most of the colonial powers had gobbled up the lands on the coast, but the vast interior was still mostly unexplored by Europeans. It was into this that an ambitious explorer (Henry Morton Stanley) and the king of a small country (Belgium’s King Leopold II) would set into motion one of the great crimes against humanity of modern time.
Under the guise of humanitarianism, Leopold set up a personal kingdom in the Congo and enslaved the populace first ravaging the countryside for ivory, then the jungles for rubber. During Leopold’s reign, 10 million Congolese would die from overwork, malnutrition, or violence perpetrated by Leopold and the companies that worked for him. Joseph Conrad’s work as a riverboat captain in Leopold’s Congo Free State led him to write Heart of Darkness.
Out of this darkness though, the first great human rights movement of the 20th century was born. Led by missionaries journalists first(several who were Americans of African descent), and then by a former dockworker(E. D. Morel) and British diplomat (Roger Casement) they galvanized the western world to recognize horrors that were being hidden under talk of free commerce and humanitarianism. Both sides used the press in a very modern fashion to swing public opinion to their respective side.
Hochschild’s book is a informative and disturbing read for anyone interested in human rights, Africa, history, or colonialism. I would highly recommend it.
