Erasing History
I have just finished King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschild, and I am appalled, but not surprised. During Leopold’s reign of terror in the Congo, during the late 19th and early 20th century, approximately 10 million people, about 50% of the population died. And we have forgotten it. We are taught about the Holocaust, and often Soviet Russia, but we have forgotten the horrors of rubber and ivory imposed not just by the Belgians but by the Brits, the French, the Germans, the Portuguese. We may have washed the blood from our hands, and hidden the bodies, let us only hope that some part of our conscience still whispers “Out, out damn spot.”