Bad Deal congolese

Bad Deal in the Congo In the book King Leopold’s Ghost, the author, Adam Hochschild, commenting on two chiefs that sold their land to Stanley for a few pieces of cloth per month and signed themselves up for any labor that had to be done in the area, he says, “It was an even worse trade than the Indian’s in Manhattan. (72)” I would have to totally agree with him. One reason that I …

…they had no experience in trading with the Europeans and probably didn’t know what they were doing when they placed an X under their name on a document that was in a language that they could not read or write in at all. Indians on the other hand had some experience trading with the white man and would have been able to read the documents their signing because many of the tribes had translators.