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Rachel Columb
HIST2313H
Mason
November 1, 2009
An Ideal Divided
At first glance, strict Victorian ideals seem to have played a major role in smoothing the
way for the great cover-up Adam Hochschild explores in King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of
Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. The discriminatory, paternalistic tendencies and
broad use of euphemisms applied by those involved helped not only to disguise what was really
happening but to justify it. Such enabling is easy to pick out in Hochschild’s portrayal of the
“bad guy” figures of Henry Morton Stanley and King Leopold II, but the same factors also
created the personalities of men like George Washington Williams and Edmund Dene Morel.
These men had Victorian ideals ground just as deeply into their minds; it shows through their
actions and writings. However, they act as the “good guys” whose views and goals were
radically different from Leopold’s and Stanley’s regarding the Belgian Congo. How could these
men act so differently if they were all raised upon the same over-arching societal foundations?
Even Hochschild seems at a loss to explain this phenomenon although he explores each man’s
life extensively. Perhaps then, Victorianism is not as much of an enabler as it seems and
something else lies behind the difference between hero and villain. Perhaps instead, the
difference lies in how the individual interprets the ideas on hand.
King Leopold II and Henry Morton Stanley made great use of Victorian ideals to achieve
their goals. In order to colonize the Congo without arousing suspicion, King Leopold created
organizations with misleadingly philanthropic names and had numerous documents published to
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cover up realities. One of his first organizations, the International African Association, was
essentially one of his many “strawmen and dummy corporations” in reality composed of just the
king (Hochschild 281). Leopold shrewdly took advantage of the ethnocentricity of his day. Not
one would have wondered why an African voice could not be heard in an African association.
Europeans, as the better culture, had the right to their position of dominance. In his two volume
travelogues, Stanley also wholly engaged that condescending mindset. In one encounter with
natives who were in all likelihood more afraid than menacing, Stanley notes that “the beach was
crowded with infuriates and mockers…I opened on them with the Winchester Repeating Rifle.
Six shots and four deaths were sufficient to quiet the mocking” (Hochschild 49). He touted the
bloody, unnecessary paths he blasted through the jungle as noble and vital deeds, taking
advantage of the same belief in European superiority in his readers. Despite often being lies,
such statements were entirely Victorian in attitude and therefore easily swallowed by the
populace.
The Congo’s exploiters were not the only ones to be products of the prevailing outlook of
their time period. Although George Washington Williams and E. D. Morel were horrified by the
mass murder, slavery, and exploitation occurring in the Congo, they still acted in similar ways to
Leopold and Stanley. The radical E.D. Morel believed as strongly in colonialism as Leopold
himself, albeit, with a drastically different view of what colonizers were supposed to do with the
natives. Morel patriotically praised England’s system of colonies in African territories even as he
very publically attacked Leopold’s “unique form of evil” (Hochschild 213). In this sense, Morel
has the same paternalistic, ethnocentric mindset of the average person in the early twentieth
century, but with an additional sense of justice that transcended boundaries of space and race. He
is not entirely a case apart although, later in his career as advocate for the Congolese, Morel
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lobbied for the return of African lands to the Africans (Hochschild 272). Ahead of his time in
many ways, Morel was still grounded in the one in which he began.
George Washington Williams was also grounded in this fashion. Like Stanley, he can be
considered nothing if not a florid embellisher of facts. He studied briefly at a lesser-known
university but when he spoke about his life, the school’s name mysteriously “came out sounding
like Harvard University” and a doctoral degree appeared out of thin air (Hochschild 103).
Stanley’s lies were more comprehensive than Williams’s sly extrapolation. His name was not
even his own (Hochschild 23). Unlike Stanley, Williams tried to be as truthful and accurate as
possible when he wrote about the Congo. There was no need to tweak those facts—nothing could
possibly be worse. Lying is not what makes these men Victorian, but a Victorian attitude
certainly induced these men to lie. Both Stanley and Williams came from severely
underprivileged and victimized backgrounds. Stanley clambered his way up from a workhouse
and Williams was an African-American in a period where blacks were treated almost as if they
were still slaves. Victorians did not only demean outside cultures. “Lesser” individuals such as
the poor and blacks inside their society suffered as well. To overcome the judgmental attitudes of
their fellows, Stanley and Williams decided to cover up their meager backgrounds with, in one
case total imagination, and in the other grand flourishes. Where the lying stopped however was
another matter.
Despite such similar approaches to presenting themselves to the world around them, these
men acted as polar opposites in the Congo. Seeing the Victorian influences on the distinct
characters of Stanley, Williams, Leopold and Morel is not a difficult task, but explaining how
such polar opposites can be molded from the same society is. Just what makes one man use
vague euphemisms and sly phrasing to cover sinister plots while another is just as determined to
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expose the truths with similar methods? Especially troublesome is the fact that all four of these
men were essentially paternalistic in their views of other cultures, not worlds apart as might be
expected.
Viewing Victorian ideas as essentially two-sided might help explain this incongruity. To
every idea there is a polished surface and a smudged reality, an ideal and a practice. Take the
paternalistic impulse for example. It is founded on the thought that Europeans are better or more
important than everyone else, but there is also a genuine wish to share European advances with
others to help them better themselves. There are both invasive and benevolent perspectives
within this one concept. One individual might choose to use this for material or personal gain,
believing that other “savage” peoples, being less advanced, do not matter and can therefore be
exploited. A different individual might be equally invasive, but really believe in doing something
good for Africans by showing them civilized European ways, and therefore treat natives more
kindly. While under today’s lens both views are seriously flawed, if we look at a dual definition
of paternalism objectively, the first interpretation can be attributed to the mindset of the
“villains” Leopold and Stanley and the other to the humanistic “heroes” Williams and Morel. So
a Victorian view of other cultures does not contradict the actions of the heroes since there are
multiple interpretations of that view with contradictory outcomes. The heroes only chose to see a
different aspect of the idea of the “white man’s burden” than did Leopold and Stanley.
The reason Leopold and Stanley ended up pitted against Williams and Morel despite
adhering to the same cultural values comes down to simple personal choice. As much as each
man was a product of the time he lived in, he was not controlled by it. Practically the opposite, in
fact. Each man had the ability to bend a standard Victorian ideal into a shape that fit his own
inclinations without overreaching the limits of the ideal. Leopold and Stanley bent the exact
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same ideal in the opposite direction from Williams and Morel. Before that decision, each man
was essentially made of the same material, capable of choosing the same path. Their differences
are as simple as a choice; push or pull, left or right?
Victorian ideals cannot be altogether dismissed as influencers of the colonization era, nor
should they be. They provide a unique way of interpreting the events that took place in the
Congo throughout the twentieth century. However, they do not solve the intriguing discrepancies
between Leopoldian supporters and dissenters. Individual interpretation of the goals of Victorian
ideals played a much bigger role in influencing events than the ideals themselves. Leopold,
Stanley, Williams, and Morel all looked at the world through Victorian eyes but when it came
time to move the hands, four pairs raced in opposite directions; two squeezing, two attempting to
repair. Considering the players in the Congo tragedy as individuals influenced by, but not
defined by the ideals and biases of their time has lasting implications not only for the Congo but
for interpretations of other events in other eras as well. Paternalistic as Morel and Williams were,
they still stood for what was just; proof that to blame a man’s actions on the culture or the time
period in which he lived is misguided. Men may begin with the same general preconceptions of
the world around them, but as they enter that world, there are endless choices to be made. It is
those choices that define the man and his world.
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Works Cited
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial
Africa. Mariner Books: Boston. 1999.