King Leopold's Ghost; We Charge Genocide

[Rakesh Bhandari]

The estimate of those killed in the rubber trade range from 9 to 17
million people; those tortured and maimed far exceeds that.  I reviewed
Jacques Depelchin's history, From the Belgian Congo to Zaire:  Towards a
Demystification of Economic and Political History (CODESRIA Books) for the 
journal Race and Class in 1994. I have not read Hochschild's book (or a
review of it) but it seems to focus on the efforts of E Morel whose Black
Man's Burden was reprinted by Monthly Review in the early 1970s (Morel
however was less humane at home; from what I understand he shared the
outrage of the Germans that the French would use  African troops in the
Rhineland after victory in WWI--one person who writes perceptively  about
fears of loss of white prestige is Frank Furedi).

 Also worth reading is Mark Twain's King Leopold's Soliloquy.
At home I have a book which was published inititally in Russian in the 30s
and then translated and republished in the 70s; the author was a black
South African who developed Lenin's theory of imperialism to explain the
atrocities of European domination of Africa. I can't remember the author's
name (he died from pneumonia in Russia in the 30s, so the story goes)nor
the title--which I fear says something about my own concession to the
value put on African lives. I believe the title is Forced Labor in
Colonial Africa.  

rb