59 pages • 1 hour read
Adam HochschildKing Leopold's Ghost
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Essay Topics
Hochschild often bemoans the lack of African voices in the history of the Congo. Where does he find evidence of the African perspective on European imperialism, and does it give us a fuller understanding of the Congo during King Leopold’s time?
How does Hochschild use examples from twentieth-century wars, genocides and state-sanctioned mass murder to enhance our understanding of what happened in the turn-of-the-century Congo?
How does Hochschild’s account of the childhoods of Henry Morton Stanley and Leopold II enhance his exploration of the psychology behind imperialism?
How does Hochschild account for ordinary men’s ability to do extraordinarily bad things while working in the Congo? At one point, he compares the Congo to Nazi Germany, where ordinary men were able to take part in the Holocaust. In what other historical contexts has this kind of thing happened, and to what extent did racism play a role in it?
Hochschild makes many references to the Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag in order to compare these more recent historical events with what happened in the Congo. He also establishes the trans-Atlantic slave trade as the prime mover in the colonization of Africa by Leopold. However, Hochschild makes considerably fewer comparisons to the Native American genocide in the U.S. Explore the similarities and differences between these two examples of European imperialism, including the role of missionaries and military force in both.
Consider the role of chance in this story—from Hochschild’s own chance reading of a footnote about Mark Twain’s involvement in the Congo reform movement, which led to his writing King Leopold’s Ghost, to Jules Marchal’s chance reading of a Liberian newspaper article that mentions the millions who died under Leopold’s rule, which led to his writing his well-documented history of Leopold’s Congo. What other chance encounters with people or texts led to important books or changes of heart in this story? To what extent do these other chance encounters lead to interventions in the course of the Congo story?
Trace the references to Heart of Darkness in the book and write an analysis of Conrad’s novel that uses Hochschild’s history as its frame of reference.
Analyze how Hochschild uses his history of Leopold’s Congo to build a larger critique of imperialism and totalitarian regimes.
Analyze why the book is called King Leopold’s Ghost. Leopold does not die until Chapter 17, so why does Hochschild choose to place the emphasis on his “ghost,” or his legacy, in the title, when the majority of the book is devoted to what he does when he is still alive?
Explore how writing is described in this book, taking care to consider all kinds of writing—from the travel/adventure writing of Henry Morton Stanley, to the meticulous histories of people like George Washington Williams and Jules Marchal, to the many articles, reports and transcripts of testimony of people like Edmund Morel and Roger Casement. Other writers include William Sheppard, Joseph Conrad, and even Leopold—who was perhaps more of an “editor” than a writer. Consider in your exploration the role of writing in the context of history-making—how and why does writing matter in this particular story, and how does it matter for how we remember history in general?
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By Adam Hochschild
