were instructed to bring back a hand or head for each bullet fired, to make sure that none were wasted or hidden for use in rebellions. Hochschild goes on to point out that the killing of the Congolese was not an elaborate program of the ethnic genocide, it nonetheless represented murder on a grand scale. This massacre, as I like to call it, killed between five and eight million Africans and I can't help but think of how devastating that must have been to their entire nation.In the early 1900's (1908 to be specific) when Moral began to publicize the events taking place in Leopold's Congo, Leopold attempted to destroy the evidence. For eight days the furnaces in Leopold's Brussels headquarters were at full blast, as Congo State archives were turned to ash. He sent word to his agent in the Congo to do likewise. Therefore the entire Belgian State followed the "Politics of Forgetting,".As it may have been so easy for them to forget I am quite sure that the residence of the Congo have not. The ghosts are unhappy there, I presume, and the gallons of slain blood have turned into hard clay but they have not forgotten. Considering it was in the early 1900's, it is most amazing and almost surreal to grasp the realization that in a time when black's in America were coming into their own, getting educated, and even going to the lengths of forming Greek organizations, that their fellow brother in Africa were being brutally mutilated and stripped of their humanity. Hochschild has done an exemplary job of writing this book by gathering details and evidence not to mention the wonderful writing skills that he's displayed throughout the entire book. In my opinion, the account of shocking and brutal nature of Belgian colonial rule, is worth reading on it's own, if only to remind us of the horror of the colonialism from which the US has recently escaped. And anyone with an interest in the way we car for or mistreat other humanbeings may find a great...
