Below is a list of the key texts available on the subject of the Congo Free State, the movement for Congo reform and the key figures involved:
Ascherson, N. The King Incorporated: Leopold the Second and the Congo. London: Granta, 1999.
Budd, L. J. Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Burroughs, R. African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform. London: Routledge, 2018.
Casement, Sir Roger. The Eyes of another Race: Roger Casement’s Congo Report and 1903 Diary. Edited by O’Siochain, S. & O’Sullivan, M. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2003.
Cline, C. A. E.D. Morel, 1873-1924: The Strategies of Protest. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1980.
Conrad, J. Heart of Darkness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; Boston, Mass.: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2011.
Cookey, S.J.S. Britain and the Congo Question. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd, 1968.
Ewans, M. European Atrocity, African Catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State and its Aftermath. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Franklin, J. H. George Washington Williams: A Biography. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Gondola, C.D. The History of Congo. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2002.
Grant, K. A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884-1926. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Grant, K. The Congo Free State and the New Imperialism. Bedford: St. Martin’s, 2016.
Grant, K. ‘The Limits of Exposure: Atrocity Photographs in the Congo Reform Campaign,’ in Heide Fehrenbach and Davide Rodogno (eds.), Humanitarian Photography: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp.64-88.
Hochschild, A. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. London: Pan Macmillan, 1998.
Jensen, L., Poddar, P., and Rajeev S. A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures – Continental Europe and its Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
Jones, J. E. In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884-1936. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
Kaplan, J. Mr Clemens and Mark Twain. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966.
Laqua, D. The Age of Internationalism and Belgium, 1880–1930: Peace, Progress and Prestige. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013.
Louis, W. R., Morel, E. D. & Stengers, J. E. D. Morel’s History of the Congo Reform Movement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.
Miers, S. Slavery and Antislavery in the Twentieth Century. Lanham, Md.; Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
Moyn, S. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2012.
N’Daywel, I. Histoire générale du Congo. Paris, Brussels: De Boeck & Larcier, 1998.
Nzongola-Ntalaja, G. The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History. London: Zed Books, 2002.
Ó Síocháin, S. Roger Casement: Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2008.
Pavlakis, D. British Humanitarianism and the Congo Reform Movement, 1890-1913. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2015.
Seymour Cocks, F. E. D. Morel: The Man and his Work. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1920.
Stannard, M. G. Selling the Congo: A History of European Pro-Empire Propaganda and the making of Belgian Imperialism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
Van Hove, J. Congoism: Congo Discourses in the United States from 1800 to the Present. Transcript Verlag, 2018.
Wynne, C. The Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism, and the Gothic. London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.
Vanthemsche, G. Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1908. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Vanthemsche, G. ‘The Historiography of Belgian Colonialism in the Congo.’ in Europe and the World in European Historiography, edited by Csaba Lévai. Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2006.
- Journal articles
Below is a list of recommended journal articles produced on the Congo, ranging from topics such as religious influence, humanitarianism and anti-imperialism:
Broeker, G. ‘Roger Casement: Background to Treason’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol.29, No.3 (1957), pp.237-245.
Savage times come again”‘: Morel, Wells, and the African Soldier, c.1885–1920’, English Studies in Africa, 59:1 (2016), pp.40-51.
‘Transatlantic Dimensions of the Congo Reform Movement, 1904–1908′, English Studies in Africa, 59:1 (2016), pp.18-28.
Clay, D. ‘”David vs Goliath”: The Congo Free State Propaganda War, 1890-1909,’ International History Review, Vol.43, Issue 3 (2020), pp.457-474.
Clay, D. ‘”A Clash of Titans”: Big Business and the Congo Reform Movement,’ History: The Journal of the Historical Association, Vol.107, Issue 374 (2022), pp.97-120.
Cline, C. A. ‘E.D. Morel and the Crusade against the Foreign Office’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol.39, No.2 (1997), pp.126-137.
Cline, C. A.. ‘The Church and the Movement for Congo Reform’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, Vol.32, No.1 (1963), pp.46-56.
Cullinane, M. P. ‘Transatlantic Dimensions of the American Anti-Imperialist Movement, 1899-1909’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, Vol.8, Issue 4, 2010, pp.308-309.
Daniels, J. ‘The Congo Question and the Belgian Solution’, North American Review, Vol. 188, No. 637 (Dec., 1908), pp. 891-902.
‘Congo Utopia’, English Studies in Africa, 59:1 (2016), pp.63-75.
‘Of Degenerated Heroes and Failed Romance: King Léopold’s Congo in Popular European Literatures’, English Studies in Africa, 59:1 (2016), pp.52-62.
Grant, K. ‘Christian Critics of Empire: Missionaries, Lantern Lectures, and the Congo Reform Campaign in Britain’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 29:2 (2001), pp.27-58.
Harlan, L. R. ‘Booker T. Washington and the White Man’s Burden’, The American Historical Review, Vol.71, No.2 (January, 1966), pp.441-467.
Hawkins, H. ‘Mark Twain’s Involvement with the Congo Reform Movement: A Fury of Generous Indignation’, The New England Quarterly, Vol.51, No.2 (1978), pp.147-175.
‘New Light on the Writing of H.M. Stanley’s The Congo and the Founding of its Free State (1885)’, English Studies in Africa, 59:1 (2016), pp.76-84.
Louis, W. R. ‘Casement and the Congo’, The Journal of African History, 5 (1964), pp.99-120.
Mitchell, A. ‘Reviews’, review of King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschild, History Today, August 1999.
‘Building Congo, Writing Empire: The Literary Labours of Henry Morton Stanley’, English Studies in Africa, 59:1 (2016), pp.6-17.
Pavlakis, D. ‘The Development of British Overseas Humanitarianism and the Congo Reform Campaign’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Volume 11, Number 1 (Spring 2010).
‘To Reform an Imagined Congo: Novelists Tackle the Congo Rubber Scandals’, English Studies in Africa, 59:1 (2016), pp.29-39.
Slade, R. ‘King Leopold II and the Attitude of English and American Catholics towards the Anti-Congolese Campaign’, Zaire, 11 (June 1957), pp.593-612.
