Episode #82 – What Went Down in the Congo Free State? (Part III)

Recounting the atrocities that took place in the Congo Free State during the reign of King Leopold II is a daunting process. It was a state where sadism was the norm and severed human hands became a grizzly form of currency. Still, a proper accounting of these horrors is essential to getting to truth of Leopold’s regime. How bad did things get in the Congo Free State? What did it take to end the crimes against humanity? Tune in and find out how the first African-American historian, Bob Marley, and the greatest act of pimpery in history all play a role in the story.

Works Cited

Ascherson, Neal. The King Incorporated: Leopold II in the Age of Trusts. Doubleday, 1974. Bierman, John. Dark Safari: the Life behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley. Hodder & Stoughton, 1990. Forbath, Peter. The River Congo: the Dictionary, Exploration and Exploitation of the World’s Dramatic River. Secker & Warburg, 1978. Hochschild, Adam. “In the Heart of Darkness.” The New York Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, www.nybooks.com/articles/2005/10/06/in-the-heart-of-darkness/. Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: the Plunder of the Congo and the Twentieth Century’s First International Human Rights Movement. Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Jeal, Tim. Stanley: the Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer. Faber, 2008. Rappoport, A. S. Leopold the Second, King of the Belgians. Hutchinson, 1910. Renton, Dave, et al. The Congo: Plunder and Resistance. Zed Books, 2013. Reybrouck, David Van, and Sam Garrett. Congo: the Epic History of a People. Fourth Estate, 2015. Stanard, Matthew G. Selling the Congo: a History of European pro -Empire Propaganda and the Making of Belgian … Imperialism. Univ Of Nebraska Press, 2015. “The Hidden Holocaust.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 May 1999, www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/13/features11.g22.