"Well written, vivacious...he is steeped in his subject." - Literary Digest, 1905
"May be regarded as the complete history and exposure of the Congo Free State." -St. James Gazette
"He has a grasp of the subject such as is probably possessed by no one else." -Morning Post
E. D. Morel's 1905 book, "King Leopold's Rule in Africa" is a chronicle of ghastly outrages and terrible oppressions on the part of Belgian officials in the Congo under the misrule of Leopold II. The book is a wondrous marshaling of facts from exhaustive personal African researches, official reports, parliamentary debates, travelers' and missionaries' letters.
In the 1880s King Leopold II of Belgium became the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, extracting a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the native population to harvest and process rubber. Under his regime millions of the Congolese people died.
Starting in 1900, Morel put new life into the campaign against Congo misrule with a series of articles and several books detailing his discoveries about the Congo Free State trade imbalances. His inside information made him a powerful voice against the exploitation.
With minute care Mr. Morel in his 1905 book pictures the Congo native in his comparatively barbarous state, and contrasts it with the shocking degradation and physical cruelty that followed the commercial slavery into which he was plunged through the white man's greed of gain.
There is a surfeit of horrors in his book. The story of beatings, maimings, starvation and burnings might seem incredible did not the author furnish overwhelming proof from every source, official and unofficial—the letters of missionaries, published diaries of travelers, consular reports, commercial records, debates in the House of Commons. Every source of supply is ransacked and the proofs laid bare.
It is putting it mildly to say that he is steeped in his subject, for the freeing of Congoland from a slavery worse than any known to the modern world seems to have become an obsession with him. Considering the mass of material, the book is well written, vivacious in style, and the pictures taken from actual life heighten the vividness of the narrative.
About the author:
Edmund Dene Morel (1873 –1924) was a British journalist, author, pacifist, and member of parliament.
Morel's "King Leopold's Rule in Africa" is a well regarded historical resource, being cited in the following modern works:
• Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination, Ann Laura Stoler - 2013
• After Representation?: The Holocaust, Literature, and Culture, R. Clifton Spargo, 2009
• The Racial Hand in the Victorian Imagination, Aviva Briefel - 2015
• Conrad in Africa: New Essays on "Heart of Darkness", Attie De Lange, 2002
• Trade as Guarantor of Peace, Liberty and Security? Padideh Ala'I, 2006
• History in Africa, 2009
• A Historical Guide to Joseph Conrad, John Gerard Peters - 2010
• Ends of British imperialism, William Roger Louis - 2006
• The Dust of Empire, Karl Ernest Meyer - 2003
• Fictions of Empire, John Kucich - 2003
• Richard L. Sklar, 2002
• Encyclopedia of African history, Kevin Shillington - 2005
• The Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Catherine Wynne - 2002
Other works by Morel include:
• Affairs of West Africa
• The British Case in French Congo
• Red Rubber
