King leopold's ghost discussion questions answers

Assignment 1: King Leopold’s Ghost King Leopold’s Ghost is a testament to the brutal behavior of the colonial period. As you read through the book, keep in mind that the atrocities in the Congo represent a single example of the negative impact of colonialization, but this also represents a reality felt by most of the world. Please provide concise responses (short, but impactful) to the following questions. Responses to each question will be about a paragraph and the total should not be longer than 3 pages. Successful responses will include references and evidence from the book, as well as insightful observations that demonstrate your ability to think critically. Format should use standard font (TNR, Arial), standard size (12), and a citation system when necessary. Submissions will be digital, so submit as either a .docx or .pdf. Any other formats will not be accepted. Unedited papers will lose points up to 25% of the grade, depending on the severity of the issues. 1. Between 1880 and 1920, the population of the Congo was slashed in half: some ten million people were victims of murder, starvation, exhaustion, exposure, disease and a plummeting birth rate. Is this the first time you’ve heard about the colonial experience of the Congo? Why do you think this massive carnage has remained virtually unknown in the United States and Europe? 2. After stating that several other mass murders “went largely unnoticed,” Hochschild asks, “why, in England and the United States, was there such a storm of righteous protest about the Congo (pg 282)?” Do you find his explanation sufficient? Why do some atrocities (the mass murders in Rwanda, for example) prompt little response from the United States and other western nations, while others (the "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo, for example) prompt military action against the perpetrators? 3. Those who plundered the Congo and other parts of Africa (and Asia) did so in the name of progress, civilization, and Christianity. Was this hypocritical and if so, how? What justifications for colonial imperialism and exploitation have been put forward over the past five centuries? (It may be useful to talk to Google about this. If you do, remember to cite your sources) 4. Hochschild writes that Leopold “found a number of tools at his disposal that had not been available to empire builders of earlier times (pg. 89).” What new technologies and technological advances contributed to Leopold’s exploitation of the Congo? What impact have these tools had on both the advancement and degradation of colonial or subject peoples? 5. How does Hochschild answer his own question, “What made it possible for the functionaries (think soldiers or mercenaries) in the Congo to so blithely watch the chicotte in action and . . . to deal out pain and death in other ways as well (pg 121)?” How would you answer this question, in regard to Leopold’s Congo and to other officially sanctioned atrocities? Briefly discuss one instance since 1990 that where “functionaries” participated in sanctioned atrocities. 6. Hochschild quotes Roger Casement as insisting to Edmund Morel, “I do not agree with you that England and America are the two great humanitarian powers. . . . [They are] materialistic first and humanitarian only a century after (pg 269).” What evidence supports or refutes Casement’s judgment? Would Casement be justified in making the same statement today? King Leopold's Ghost A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Adam Hochschild A MARINER BOOK Houghton Mifflin Company BOSTON NEW YORK FOR DAVID HUNTER (1916–2000) FIRST MARINER BOOKS EDITION 1999 Copyright © 1998 by Adam Hochschild All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's ghost : a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa / Adam Hochschild. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-395-75924-0 ISBN-13: 978-0-618-00190-3 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-395-75924-2 ISBN-10: 0-618-00190-5 (pbk.) 1. Congo (Democratic Republic)—Politics and government —1885–1908. 2. Congo (Democratic Republic)—Politics and government. 3. Forced labor—Congo (Democratic Republic)— History—19th century. 4. Forced labor—Congo (Democratic Republic) —History—20th century. 5. Indigenous peoples—Congo (Democratic Republic)—History— 19th century. 6. Indigenous peoples—Congo (Democratic Republic)—History—20th century. 7. Congo (Democratic Republic)—Race relations—History—19th century. 8. Congo (Democratic Republic)—Race relations—History— 20th century. 9. Human rights movements—History— 19th century. 10. Human rights movements—History—20th century. I.Title. DT655.H63 1998 967.5 —dc21 98-16813 CIP Printed in the United States of America QUM 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 Book design by Melodie Wertelet Map by Barbara Jackson, Meridian Mapping, Oakland, California Photo credits appear on [>]. In somewhat different form, portions of chapters 9 and 19 appeared in The New Yorker, and portions of chapters 5 and 16 in The American Scholar. CONTENTS Introduction [>] Prologue: "The Traders Are Kidnapping Our People" [>] PART I: WALKING INTO FIRE 1. "I Shall Not Give Up the Chase" [>] 2. The Fox Crosses the Stream [>] 3. The Magnificent Cake [>] 4. "The Treaties Must Grant Us Everything" [>] 5. From Florida to Berlin [>] 6. Under the Yacht Club Flag [>] 7. The First Heretic [>] 8. Where There Aren't No Ten Commandments [>] 9. Meeting Mr. Kurtz [>] 10. The Wood That Weeps [>] 11. A Secret Society of Murderers [>] PART II: A KING AT BAY 12. David and Goliath [>] 13. Breaking into the Thieves' Kitchen [>] 14. To Flood His Deeds with Day [>] 15. A Reckoning [>] 16. "Journalists Won't Give You Receipts" [>] 17. No Man Is a Stranger [>] 18. Victory? [>] 19. The Great Forgetting [>] Looking Back: A Personal Afterword [>] Notes [>] Bibliography [>] Acknowledgments [>] Index [>] INTRODUCTION THE BEGINNINGS of this story lie far back in time, and its reverberations still sound today. But for me a central incandescent moment, one that illuminates long decades before and after, is a young man's flash of moral recognition. The year is 1897 or 1898. Try to imagine him, briskly stepping off a crossChannel steamer, a forceful, burly man, in his mid-twenties, with a handlebar mustache. He is confident and well spoken, but his British speech is without the polish of Eton or Oxford. He is well dressed, but the clothes are not from Bond Street. With an ailing mother and a wife and growing family to support, he is not the sort of person likely to get caught up in an idealistic cause. His ideas are thoroughly conventional. He looks—and is—every inch the sober, respectable businessman. Edmund Dene Morel is a trusted employee of a Liverpool shipping line. A subsidiary of the company has the monopoly on all transport of cargo to and from the Congo Free State, as it is then called, the huge territory in central Africa that is the world's only colony claimed by one man. That man is King Leopold II of Belgium, a ruler much admired throughout Europe as a "philanthropic" monarch. He has welcomed Christian missionaries to his new colony; his troops, it is said, have fought and defeated local slave-traders who preyed on the population; and for more than a decade European newspapers have praised him for investing his personal fortune in public works to benefit the Africans. Because Morel speaks fluent French, his company sends him to Belgium every few weeks to supervise the loading and unloading of ships on the Congo run. Although the officials he works with have been handling this shipping traffic for years without a second thought, Morel begins to notice things that unsettle him. At the docks of the big port of Antwerp he sees his company's ships arriving filled to the hatch covers with valuable cargoes of rubber and ivory.