Why was King Leopold so Successful in suppressing information about Essay

Why was King Leopold so Successful in suppressing information about his congo ventures - Essay Example Today, the whole rubber terror created by King Leopold has been forgotten altogether, and is not discussed at all. In the book, King Leopold’s Ghost, the author Adam Hochschild refers to this fact as â€Å"the great forgetting.† The book sufficiently offers a well researched account of the brutality, greed and exploitation that Africans were offered by the King Leopold. Through this book, the author has made an attempt to revive all events of primary importance that speak of the long forgotten brutality that King Leopold displayed in Congo. Throughout the book, the concept of Leopold has been shown as larger than life. Paradoxically, the title of the book refers to the ghost of King Leopold, and not his physical being which raises many questions in the mind of the reader. The last chapter of the book named the â€Å"great forgetting† answers all of these questions and also talks about the biggest tragedy among all that have been talked about in the preceding chap ters. King Leopold made a lot of wealth from Congo and his operation made the Congolese incur a lot of cost in all respects. However, all of it suddenly came to an end after the independence of Congo in 1971. Belgium became a part of the European Union.