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GWC's Reviews > King Leopold's Ghost
King Leopold's Ghost
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A colonial morality play. The story in "King Leopold's Ghost" is a powerful one -- colonization taken to its extreme -- but the book is rendered mediocre by the author's trite moralizing, lack of historical rigor, and tiresome reliance on depicting every actor with either a halo or horns. Leopold, here an antagonist of extraordinary guile, is only weakly connected to the governmental and business interests with which he worked; the reader is given pages of anecdote concerning the king's depravity with nearly no overview of the system in which he operated. The final chapter is a model of the book's flaws. It considers the Belgian process of forgetting which followed their foray into colonialism aided by international sympathy during the first world war. Instead of pursuing this interesting and somewhat complicated topic in more detail, however, we are duly regaled with additional vignettes of heroism and villainy. The book then concludes with a sermon aimed squarely at us in the choir.
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October 2, 2007
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Michael
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rated it 5 stars
Nov 04, 2011 08:35PM
One star? Really? Something tells me if zero stars were possible you might have opted for zero. And, "...weakly connected...?" Half-way through and people have been convicted and sentenced to death with less evidence. Leopold was a monster who hypocritically claimed Christian beliefs while treating all non- whites as little more than animals. As was Henry Morton Stanley, I should add.
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Please note this is a review of the book, not of Leopold or Belgian colonialism. Obviously Leopold was a terrible guy but I find it hard to believe that all the responsibility falls on him and very few others, as the book implies. He was the head of a system that involved thousands of Belgians and a much larger international context. I learned almost nothing about that system in this book. Instead I learned a lot about what the author thinks about Leopold and Morel, which quickly became uninformative and boring. Hochschild has said he wanted to write a book that "brings characters alive, that brings out the moral dimension". I think he does this at the expense of a richer and more interesting history.
Is this a review about technical writing? One could equally critique Churchill's self absorbed WW Chronicles if you want to overlook content. Certainly for sheer content alone this is well above a basic three stars.... geeeez.....!
I would consider it more about content than technical writing, but maybe that's the same thing. Consider books on the Russian revolution. I could read one that depicts the Bolsheviks as heroes (e.g. John Reed) or villains (e.g. Richard Pipes), but I think it far more interesting to explore exactly how one urban workers' party was able to take control of a enormous nation of rural peasants (Orlando Figes). Figes's book is certainly more technical than the others, but it's well written and the content is far superior regardless of its academic origins. Hochschild is a similarly good writer, but he is more interested in judging dead people than telling a complex history. Secular morality plays and sermons don't interest me any more than religious ones, so I thought it was a waste of time.
Thanks for your insightful review. Can you recommend a different book on the subject that avoids the drawbacks of this book?
That horrendous moralizing you are so terrified of must have been rather harmless considering that nowhere in your review are the deaths of millions of people of Congo even remotely hinted at. If your precious sensibilities under unrelenting attack of moralizing take precedence over and deserve more attention than a loss of even one life, let alone millions, then I think that you have nothing to fear from the fiercest preachers trying to corrupt your whatever it is you have.
Lila wrote: "That horrendous moralizing you are so terrified of must have been rather harmless considering that nowhere in your review are the deaths of millions of people of Congo even remotely hinted at. If y..."Sounds like this book is much more in tune with your precious sensibilities than mine. Glad you enjoyed it.
"Good Lord! You must be Belgian." Sorry my bud. Can't beat that.
look, all those soldiers out of step....only my boy is marching in rhythm. yeah, right.
Don't necessarily agree with your review, but appreciate the different perspective. As @Steve asked ... is there a another book you'd recommend on the topic?
You must really hate Hochschild since you have written all this, and you put a ONE star to this book. Please read the book first ! Then write any reviews. That's how it goes.
I agree completely with your review GWC. The authors speculations on the motives of the different people in the book are baseless. We get a good view on what the author thinks, but not much else.
It's also a little sad that people are attacking your review as if to say "Well if you don't like the book, you must be for all the atrocities that occurred". Which, is obviously absurd.
Thanks for writing a great and objective review.
