Novel

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost, (New York: Houghton Mifflin), 1998

"Stanley was a harsh taskmaster. 'The best punishment is that of irons,' he explained in one of his letters to Brussels, 'because without wounding, disfiguring, or torturing the body, it inflicts shame and discomfort'...Stanley became known by the Africans who worked for him as Bula Matadi or Bula Matari, 'Breakstones'. Stanley himself preferred the grander translation 'Breaker of Rocks', and claimed that it was bestowed on him when he taught awed Africans how to use a sledgehammer and when they saw giant boulders dynamited as he built the train through the Crystal Mountains." p.. 67-68

"By the time Stanley and his officers were done, the blue flag with the gold star fluttered over the villages and territories, Stanley claimed, of more than 450 Congo basin chiefs. The texts varied, but many of the treaties gave the king a complete trading monopoly, even as he placated European and American questioners by insisting that he was opening up Africa to free trade. More important, chiefs signed over their land to Leopold, and they did so for almost nothing...The very word treaty is a euphemism, for many chiefs had no idea what they were signing. Few had seen the written word before, and they were being asked to mark their X's to documents in a foreign language and legalese. The idea of a treaty of friendship between two clans or villages was familiar; the idea of signing over one's land to someone on the other side of the ocean was inconceivable." pp. 71-72

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