Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
In 1880 the continent of Africa was largely unexplored by Europeans. Less than thirty years later, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained unconquered by them. The rest - 10 million square miles with 110 million bewildered new subjects - had been carved up by five European powers (and one extraordinary individual) in the name of Commerce, Christianity, 'Civilization' and Conquest. The Scramble for Africa is the first full-scale study of that extraordinary episode in history.
Moving on 100 years, we’ve got The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham. He’s writing about the turn of the 19th century, is that right?
Yes, the Treaty of Berlin and the scramble that that set off. It is the set text on that most vital and defining period in terms of the West’s engagement with Africa. He writes beautifully and it’s massively encyclopedic in its breadth of scholarship. You can’t understand anything about contemporary Africa without reading that book.
There are shocking are the tales in it, aren’t there, of how the colonialists behaved?
It’s really devastating. He’s the first guy that I’m aware of who really put the hatchet into King Leopold of Belgium, for whom the Democratic Republic of Congo, as it is now, was a private estate until the Belgian government took it off him in 1909.
Private estate? But it’s the size of Western Europe!
It was literally his private property. And the estimates vary, but he murdered the most gigantic numbers of people in forcing them to grow rubber. Thomas’s book covers the despotic evil of people like Leopold, and the sort of contemptuous arrogance of Rhodes – who conquered Rhodesia partly by introducing smallpox-infected blankets as gifts to the Matabele [now Ndebele]. The book brilliantly deconstructs the personalities of these people, and it is, of course, meticulously researched. It’s also a compelling read, like an absolutely gripping novel.
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War correspondent Sam Kiley is the author of Desperate Glory: At War in Helmand with Britain’s 16 Air Assault Brigade. Kenyan-born, he was educated in England and he has now covered 30 conflicts in more than 20 countries. Married with two children, he lives in rural Suffolk.
