Colonialism In King Leopold's Ghost

The intention of colonialism, though cloaked with moral justification, was clear from the beginning: in order to assert oneself as a dominant power, a country must steal, ravish and exploit the land, people and culture belonging to another. The belief that taking of foreign land was justified because a particular country had the power to do so with little genuine resistance was so prevalent during the late Nineteenth, early Twentieth centuries that it significantly, and tragically affected those colonized land. In Adam Hochschild’s novel, King Leopold’s Ghost, he details chronicles that events that shaped King Leopold of Belgium’s rule over the Congo in Africa, but also illustrates that what went on was not aberrant. Rather, it was example of a broader problem that plagued many Europeans countries in the decades leading up to World War One that led to the death of millions.

The “strong humanitarian veneer” (Hochschild 42) that Leopold used as the false justification for the harsh methods employed to control the Congo. This veneer contained a myriad of reasons that gave Leopold, and other Europeans the ability to move freely throughout the undeveloped world, destroying the land and its people along their way with limited resistance.
What occurred in the Congro, Hochschild writes, is “no worse than what happened in neighboring colonies” (Hochschild 280). The shocking realization that the reader is left with is that King Leopold’s Ghost was not a story about one evil man, but a single instance of the perils of colonialism that were all to common during this time. By allowing the reader to observe and understand the what happened in the Congo at a granular level, Hochschild underscores the importance of the historical context in which these events were occurring