WHEN THREE WRITERS TOOK ON A MONARCH
Popular writers and advocacy have a long history dating back to Jonathan Swift’s incendiary modest proposal. Since then, writers ranging from Mary Shelley to Upton Sinclair used the pen as a clarion. The tradition continues but the turn of the 20 th century, perhaps inspired by Sinclair’s The Jungle (weak literature but potent muckraking), saw a rise in literary activism and one cause that seemed to unite an assortment of writers was a horror that was hidden from most of the world by a powerful imperial force. But the literary world was almost unanimously aghast at the terror King Leopold II was reigning on the Congo in the name of Belgium. It is evidence of the King’s acknowledgment of the inhumanity of his crimes that he allowed few foreign correspondents into the Congo Free State since taking over in 1885 and the punishment for those caught enlightening the outside world of the human butchery was often deadly. A few missionaries and reporters did manage to alert the worl...