Adam Hochschild | The Congo & King Leopold's Ghost In The Heart Of Darkness

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King Leopold's Ghost Book - https://www.amazon.com.au/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Adam-Hochshild/dp/0618001905

From 1885, for 13 years, one man, King Leopold II, owned, as his personal property, one of the largest pieces of geography on earth. The Congo is four times larger than France, it’s bigger than India, it’s bigger than Texas, Alaska, California & Montana combined - the equator runs right through it’s middle and makes it the second largest rainforest on the globe - it’s impossibly rich in resources, and desperately poor in economics. In those 13 years of private ownership, Leopold oversaw potentially one of the most brutal regimes of extraction the world has ever known. The population was estimated to have halved in those 13 years, more than 10 million deaths. It was an exploit in mass slavery, mass death, bodily mutilation and mass extraction. Ivory and wild rubber were in high demand, and so under the guise of media manipulation and PR mastery, Leopold convinced the world that these goods were in fact being traded with, rather than extracted from, the Congo. 

The horror, however, could only be concealed for so long. A fella by the name of Ed Morell who worked for a shipping company in Liverpool noticed the bounty of ivory and rubber arriving from the Congo, with only men and arms making the journey back. His suspicion grew, he found accounts from missionaries and others who had been, and mounted a campaign to undermine the constant wall of propaganda Leopold had financed.

In 1908, the Belgium state purchased the Congo off Leopold… where the country remained a colony of Belgium until 1960. 

And for a myriad of reasons, for which we address in the podcast, the Congo today is still on the back foot. Kinshasa, the capital city already has a bigger population than Paris, and is projected to be as much as 40,000,000 by 2050. The Congo today is among the most resource rich nations on earth, but among the least developed. It still attracts the same predation for extraction as it ever has, although all together less forceful and less violent

The man I speak with on the podcast today wrote the definitive history of this period. His name is Adam Hochschild, he’s an author, journalist and historian and wrote in 1998, 'King Leopold's Ghost'. 

00:00 Congo's Dark History & Adam Hochschild
03:03 Leopold's Brutal Regime
09:02 Modern Parallels of Exploitation
12:11 The Unique Case of King Leopold
14:58 The Mechanics of Control & Media Manipulation
20:45 Campaigning Against Atrocities: The Legacy of Morrell
34:22 Colonialism and Forced Labor: The Belgian Congo
36:16 The Rubber Boom and Its Consequences
38:09 Criticism Of The Book & Congolese Resistance
42:57 Nationalism and Colonialism: Morel's Perspective
44:48 The Impact of Colonialism on Modern Nations
47:17 Geography and Development: The Congo's Challenges
49:51 Natural Resources and Corruption
52:27 The Future of the Congo: A Grim Outlook
57:22 Serendipity

(There was an technical difficulty right at the end of the conversation, which is why it cuts off) 

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