Congo Free State
Joseph Conrad’s novel "Heart of Darkness", originally published in 1899 as a three-part series in "Blackwood's Magazine", inspired by his service as a captain on a steamer on the Congo 12 years before, sparked an organized international opposition to Leopold's exploitational activities. In 1900, Edmund Dene Morel, a part-time journalist and head of trade with Congo for the Liverpool shipping firm Elder Dempster, noticed that ships that brought vast loads of rubber from the Congo only ever returned there loaded with guns and ammunition for the "Force Publique". Morel became a journalist and then a publisher, attempting to discredit Leopold's regime. In 1902, Morel retired from his position at Elder Dempster to focus on campaigning. He founded his own magazine, "The West African Mail", and conducted speaking tours in Britain.
Chinua Achebe
The first comprehensive rebuttal of Achebe's critique was published in 1983 by British critic Cedric Watts. His essay "A Bloody Racist: About Achebe's View of Conrad" defends "Heart of Darkness" as an anti-imperialist novel, suggesting that "part of its greatness lies in the power of its criticisms of racial prejudice." Palestinian–American theorist Edward Said agreed in his book "Culture and Imperialism" that Conrad criticised imperialism, but added: "As a creature of his time, Conrad could not grant the natives their freedom, despite his severe critique of the imperialism that enslaved them". Building on Watts and Said, Nidesh Lawtoo argued that "underneath the first layer of straightforward opposition ... we find an underlying mimetic continuity between Conrad's colonial image of Africa [in "Heart of Darkness"] and Achebe's postcolonial representation" in "Things Fall Apart".