Arthur Conan Doyle

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

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. Conan Doyle became outraged upon learning of the abuses of human life that were committed as a result of Belgian King Leopold II's efforts to conquer and strip the Congo of its natural resources. In little more than a week in 1909, he documented the human rights abuses in The Crime of the Congo. 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.