Word: morel
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Morel is the true hero of this story, and he dedicated nearly a decade of his life exclusively to this cause. He estimated that he wrote over 20,000 letters concerning the Congo as of 1908, and it is precisely this sense of passion which Hochschild illustrates so beautifully in his portrayal of Morel. As the story progresses into the second section of the book, "A King at Bay," it becomes as much a story of hope, perseverance and triumph as a story of death and destruction...
Late in the 1890s, a young shipping executive named Edmund Dene Morel stands on the shipping docks of Antwerp, Belgium. Amidst the hustle and bustle of ships destined for the Congo, he meticulously records trade statistics for his employer, the shipping firm Elder Dempster. As Morel watches the sailors unload case after case of rubber and ivory from the incoming ships, he suddenly notices that the numbers don't match up. In these brief moments, standing on the dock in Antwerp, Morel finds himself amidst one of the largest slave-operations of this century...
...efforts of Morel and others eventually pressured Leopold into giving up what had previously been solely his colony, but not before the King had personally made what would amount to a profit of $1.1 billion in today's currency. Yet, Hochschild does not provide a fairy tale ending of prosperity in the Congo. Instead, he stays true to his historical roots by presenting an accurate, if not uplifting, portrait of life in the Congo post...
...atrocities of the Congo mounted, the first major human rights initiative of this century was launched with Morel at the helm. Morel had a short but impressive list of predecessors in the movement to end the killings in the Congo, starting with George Washington Williams, the first African-American member of the Ohio state legislature (as well as a prominent minister, lawyer and journalist). In a letter written to the U.S. Secretary of State, Williams wrote that Leopold's Congo was "guilty of crimes against humanity," a full half-century before the same phrase was used in the Nuremberg trials...
...fascinating aspect of Hochschild's story involves the sheer modernity of the crisis. Morel's constant coverage of the Congo in pamphlets, newspapers, mass meetings, novels and even church hymns amounted to a public relations campaign on an immense scale. And although Morel was successful, Leopold was his own best popularizer. He ordered that a copy of his propagandist pamphlet, The Truth about the Congo, be placed next to the Bible in the sleeping compartment of every luxury train in Europe...