King Leopold's Ghost Book Review

There are a couple of different reasons as to why the genocidal tendencies stemming from Belgium's King Leopold "and its immediate aftermath" (Hochschild 233) -- which were responsible for the mass deaths in Africa at the turn of the 20th century -- and other greedy Western imperialists remained mostly unknown throughout the United States and most of Europe. Keeping their deadly actions unknown enabled these imperialists to propagate them and to continue to rape the continent and the people of Africa. If individuals in Western society would have become aware of these facts there could have been more measures created to reduce the autonomy and the devastation wreaked by such tyrants.

Conrad's view of human nature was changed by what he witnessed in the Congo in a way that was definitely worse than his previous regard for human nature, specifically as it applied to Westerners....
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