The Crime of the Congo by Arthur Conan Doyle, History, Africa

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Two of the reformers who led the effort to stop the carnage in Africa were Edmund Dene Morel and Roger Casement, upon whom Conan Doyle based the characters of Edward Malone and Lord John Roxton in The Lost World. Although these two were later discredited and Conan Doyle repudiated them, his involvement with the tragedy of the Belgian Congo not only influenced The Crime of the Congo, but also his classic, The Lost World. The book was intended as an expose of the situation in the so-called Congo Free State (labelled a rubber regime by Conan Doyle), an area occupied and designated as the personal property of Leopold II of Belgium and the serious human rights abuses occurring. Indigenous people in the region were being brutally exploited and tortured, particularly in the lucrative rubber trade.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote many more novels, stories and works of nonfiction than the immortal tales of Sherlock Holmes. His interests, also, were broad-ranging.