The story of King Leopold of Belgium’s brutal regime in the Congo Free State, during the late 19th century, is one of the darkest and most important in global history. It is a story of horror - the murky depths of the human soul pushed to its primal limits, European colonialism and the first Scramble for Africa, royalty and politics, celebrity, and modernity. From that pit of depravity, in which the Congolese people endured unimaginable suffering at the hands of their dehumanising western drivers, the first human rights campaign was born, and one of the most seminal novels of all time. So, how was it that the Congo, Africa’s as yet unplundered, un-impenetrable, and deeply mysterious core in the late 1870’s, became the private financial reservoir of one ambitious monarch, while Europe looked on? What occurred during the reign of terror he unleashed there, and why? And, who was King Leopold himself, the troubled, cunning and utterly twisted individual behind it all? Join Dominic and Tom as they lead us - following in the footsteps of Henry Morton Stanley, the explorer who first pierced the shadowy veil of the Congo in Africa’s interior, and let it bleed into the hands of King Leopold himself - deep into the heart of darkness. As the curtain is lifted from the Congo’s formerly obscuring unknowability, her people's grotesque future of abominable exploitation is revealed, along with man’s capacity for evil, and the demonic greed of one man in particular… EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Editor: Vasco Andrade Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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When I was a little chap, I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America or Africa or Australia and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time, there were many blank spaces on the Earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map, I would put my finger on it and say, when I grow up, I will go there.
There was one, the biggest, the most blank, so to speak, that I had a hankering after. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery, a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness.
But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest, curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land. "'Dash it all!' I thought to myself. "'They can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water. Steamboats!'
Why shouldn't I try to take charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street but could not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me. So that is Marlowe, the hero and the narrator of Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, which was first published in Blackwoods magazine in 1899. It famously provided the inspiration for Apocalypse Now about the American experience in Vietnam. But
It was originally written about the European colonial experience in Africa, probably the greatest, the most influential, possibly the most controversial book about that ever written, about the moral dangers of colonialism and also about the sense of the darkness that lurks in the heart of the human soul. The darkness in that title, Heart of Darkness, has many different levels.
There's also the darkness that is London. So Marlowe is talking about this on a boat on the River Thames, narrating it to three friends. So the sense that the darkness in Africa is reflecting the darkness in the heart of the European is kind of at the heart of the idea of the book, isn't it, Dominic?
It is indeed, Tom. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll get on to Heart of Darkness next week because we'll do an episode about Joseph Conrad and about this book, which is one of the most influential books, I would argue, of the modern age.
And it's a book that I think anticipates so much of the culture of the 20th century in wrestling with kind of man's capacity for evil and the possibilities of violence and brutality that have been opened up by kind of globalization and by history. And so we'll get onto that next week. It's a book rooted in Conrad's own experience.
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