Thomas Pakenham's 'The Scramble for Africa' 1991

 

Weidenfeld and Nicolson first edition - 1991

Wow, what an achievement. Pakenham's book, now thirty years' old, is a triumph of research and exposition. The canvas is vast, but he has managed to wrestle successfully with a myriad of sources and used them to back up his own visits to 22 of the 47 independent countries of Africa. No wonder he spent a decade working on the book. The result really is a tour de force.

Of course, it is impossible to give a detailed appraisal of such a huge book, but here are a few basic reactions.

• as with India and elsewhere, it is nearly incredible that so few controlled so many. Whether it was Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal or the King of the Belgians, each used a tiny amount of Europeans to lead exploration or establish and run colonies
• not until the late 1870s was there a real push to colonise rather than to trade (whether it be precious metals, ivory, rubber, oil, cocoa etc.) Only in the next two decades did the coastal forts and settlements expand up rivers (Niger, Congo etc) in pursuit of economic gain and, thanks to David Livingstone, Christian missionising (The Flag follows the Cross).
• the Scramble - above all between Britain and France and then, later, Germany, was led as much by individuals 'on the ground' - H.M. Stanley, Carl Peters, Frederick Lugard, George Goldie, Cecil Rhodes, Pierre Brazza, Jean-Baptiste Marchand - as by governments (although imperialists such as Joe Chamberlain and Gambetta were only too ready to support the intrepid explorers/colonists). Some leaders, such as Gladstone and Lord Granville, were usually opposed to any expansion; even Lord Salisbury was ambivalent. Others, like Bismarck, changed their minds about colonies. Apart from the strategic race for the Nile, the running had been left to individuals: enterprising capitalists such as Cecil Rhodes and George Goldie, humanitarians such as Lugard and Mackinnon, eccentric naturalists such as Harry Johnston.
• The brutality of all races, including the various African tribes, was shocking (and still is).
• Whilst there were clearly some genuine, upright, god-fearing missionaries, some were hand-in-glove with the dreadful behaviour of their secular compatriots - none worse than the silence of the Baptists and Roman Catholics in the Congo.
• the single-mindedness and bravery of the explorers and military officers was astounding. So many Europeans lost their lives in all the spheres - West, East, Central and South Africa - killed in battles, skirmishes, ambushes and, above all, diseases. For every well-known name - the Stanleys, Gordons, Marchands, Goldies, Wolseleys - there was a myriad of others, a few with memorial plaques on church walls back home, but most lost to the jungle etc. or, worse, eaten by cannibalistic tribes.
• the 'origin' of the Union of South Africa explains everything about its later tragic years.
• As for King Leopold of the Belgians - you need to read the book. No words here can sum up the evil done in his name, usually knowingly. Yet he died in his bed.

A few examples of the above:

1. (Uganda) Of all the freelance imperialists who promoted the Scramble, Lugard was to prove the most tenacious and, ultimately, the most successful. In the next forty years no other proconsul would put such a powerful moral stamp on the character of European rule in Africa. Significantly, both his parents were missionaries, and his hero was David Livingstone. Yet he had sailed for Africa more to cast away his life than to build an empire.
2. (German East Africa) Carl Peters was said to model himself on Nietzche's 'Superman'...not for him the usual euphemisms about the importance of 'firmness' and the regrettable need for 'vigorous measures'. He bragged to his readers about his 'exultation' as he shot down any African bold enough to oppose him, and boasted of the trail of destruction he had left along the valley of the Tana...
3. (German South-West Africa) ...the station officer at Jaune, Lieutenant Schenneman, who had taken a black mistress, heard rumours of her affairs with three Africans. He told his black servant to castrate the three men. The servant mistook his instructions, marched off with a party of soldiers and castrated the first three men he met in a nearby village. On another occasion, a Lieutenant Dominik was sent on an expedition to negotiate a treaty with the Bahoro. Instead, he shot down all the men and women in the village, and the fifty-four children that survived were put in baskets and drowned like kittens.
4. (Cecil Rhodes) These years between 1886 and 1890 were the most astonishing of Rhodes's astonishing life. It was as though he had been given the magical power to live four careers simultaneously and they were all telescoped into those four years. In Kimberley he was the Great Amalgamator, the Bismarck of the diamond mines. In Johannesburg astride the Rand gold-mines, he was a pioneer of goldbugs and Randlords. At the Cape he was the august Prime Minister of Cape Colony, trusted by both Afrikaners and the English-speaking community. Across the Limpopo he was to be a new kind of colonial imperialist, outflanking all rivals, Boers, Germans and Portuguese, as he pushed up into Mashonaland and the north. 

Pakenham's last chapter is entitled 'Scrambling Out' - The Scramble out of Africa in the eleven years from 1957 to 1968 was pursued at the same undignified pace, taking the world as much by surprise, as the Scramble into Africa more than half a century earlier. I am old enough to recall some of the newspaper headlines of this period, particularly Harold Macmillan's 'Wind of Change' speech.

1847:  Liberia    1910:  South Africa    1922:  Egypt    1941-2:  Ethiopia    1951: Libya

1956: Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan

1957:  Ghana

1958:  Guinea

1960:  Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Nigeria,                        Cameroon, Central Africal Republic, Gabon, Congo Republic, Zaire, Somali Republic,

1961:  Sierra Leone, Tanzania

1962:  Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi

1963:  Kenya

1964:  Zambia, Malawi 

1965:  The Gambia

1966:  Botswana, Lesotho

1968:  Swaziland, Equatorial Guinea

1969:  Algeria

1974: Guinea Bissau    1975:  Angola, Mozambique    1976:  Western Sahara    1977:  Djibouti

1980:  Zimbabwe

It is hard not to see the hundred years or so involvement by the European Powers in the continent (and some for much longer than that) as a mere interlude - albeit a rapacious one - in its grim history of inter-tribal violence, even genocide, and brutal, corrupt (yes, evil) dictators and autocrats. Aptly named "The Dark Continent".

I am going to read Martin Meredith's The State of Africa (2005) soon. It is subtitled A History of Fifty Years of Independence. Just reading the last few pages fills one with despair.