King Leopold's Ghost. Adam Hochschild

 Paperback in excellent condition. No blemishes, text is neat and clear. Published 2006. 376 pages

In the late 1890's, a young British shipping official, named Edmund Morel, began to notice something that made him suspicious. When ships docked from the Congo (the new colony that Leopold the 2nd , the Belgian King claimed for himself), the holds were full of precious cargo, like rubber and ivory. However, when the ships sailed back to the Congo, they carried nothing in exchange, except for soldiers, military supplies and firearms. It dawned on him that there could only be one source for the lucrative cargo... slave labour on a vast scale!! Morel abandoned his job and became the greatest investigative journalist of his time. He, almost single-handedly made the slave labour regime  and the millions of lives it took, into a cause that united the whole world.