Summary of Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 John Rowlands, the man who would accomplish what Tuckey tried to do, was born in 1841. He was the first of five illegitimate children born to Betsy Parry, a housemaid. His father may have been John Rowlands, a local drunkard who died of delirium tremens, or a prominent and married lawyer named James Vaughan Horne.

#2 At fifteen, John left St. Asaph's and went to live with a succession of relatives. He was afraid he would be thrown out again, and so he decided to give himself a new name. He became Henry Morton Stanley.

#3 Stanley’s autobiography is full of exaggerations and lies. He left the Welsh workhouse in melodramatic terms: he leaped over a garden wall and escaped, he claims, after leading a class rebellion against a cruel supervisor named James Francis. But workhouse records show Stanley leaving not as a runaway but to live at his uncle's while going to school.

#4 Stanley's life was so entwined with disgrace that he had to invent events in his autobiography and journal entries about a dramatic shipwreck and other adventures that never happened. He went first to St. Louis, and then to San Francisco.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669356868

IRB Media

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Insights on Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

John Rowlands, the man who would accomplish what Tuckey tried to do, was born in 1841. He was the first of five illegitimate children born to Betsy Parry, a housemaid. His father may have been John Rowlands, a local drunkard who died of delirium tremens, or a prominent and married lawyer named James Vaughan Horne.

#2

At fifteen, John left St. Asaph's and went to live with a succession of relatives. He was afraid he would be thrown out again, and so he decided to give himself a new name. He became Henry Morton Stanley.

#3

Stanley’s autobiography is full of exaggerations and lies. He left the Welsh workhouse in melodramatic terms: he leaped over a garden wall and escaped, he claims, after leading a class rebellion against a cruel supervisor named James Francis. But workhouse records show Stanley leaving not as a runaway but to live at his uncle's while going to school.

#4

Stanley's life was so entwined with disgrace that he had to invent events in his autobiography and journal entries about a dramatic shipwreck and other adventures that never happened. He went first to St. Louis, and then to San Francisco.

#5

Stanley's career as a newspaperman took off in 1867, when he was sent to cover the Indian Wars in the American West. His reports caught the eye of James Gordon Bennett, Jr. , the flamboyant, hard-driving publisher of the New York Herald.

#6

European explorers began going to Africa in the 19th century to find minerals and slaves to feed the industrial revolution. They were hoping to find diamonds in South Africa in 1867 and gold some two decades later.

#7

The search for raw materials and Christian evangelism were all embodied in one man, David Livingstone, who traveled across Africa from the early 1840s to late 1860s. He was the first white man to cross the continent from coast to coast.

#8

Stanley’s story of finding Livingstone was shaped into a legend by his stream of dispatches and Bennett’s realization that his newspaper had one of the great human-interest scoops of the century.

#9

Stanley's expedition was a harsh and brutal taskmaster, and he saw Africa as essentially empty. He saw his future firmly linked to Africa.

#10

Stanley was rejected by his fiancée, Katie Gough-Roberts, when he returned to England. She had married an architect named Bradshaw, and when Stanley asked for the letters he had written to her, she refused to give them back except in person.

Insights from Chapter 2