I was impressed with Thomas Pakenham’s sweeping history, The Scramble for Africa. He managed to weave the various stories from the various parts of the Continent over a period of roughly forty years (1881-1912), with a brief postscript that was perhaps a bit too optimistic about Zimbabwe under Mugabe’s dictatorship.

Pakenham shows how colonialism in Africa had, for quite some time, been “indirect” colonialism, an affair of private traders and isolated ports held by the navies of the Great Powers of Europe. Then, over the course of just a few years, as the European Powers began to see their neighbors as competitors, even enemies, a mad dash began to seize territories. Some of the stories were more sordid than others, but none of the colonial powers come out looking like angels.

The British were perhaps the best, if only because they were the most cynical to begin with. When private companies were causing them problems in the Kingdom of Buganda (Uganda), they promptly took over the colony and set about building a railroad, hospitals and schools. On the other hand, in South Africa they routinely acquiesced to the worst impulses of the Afrikaaners and blithely ignored appalling work conditions in the Kimberley mines run by Cecil Rhodes (who had also essentially stolen Mashonaland and Matabeleland in his own private colonial experiment).

The French were not as bad as others, though more through neglect and mismanagement than as a result of any redeeming qualities. The Germans were atrocious, responsible for the genocide of the Hereros and Nama (Hottentot) peoples in South West Africa (Namibia) and their brutal suppression of the maji rebellion in German East Africa (Tanzania). Luckily, Germany lost all its colonies in 1918, and until independence the former German concerns were run with a lighter, more humane hand.

Of course the Congo was the worst of all, the private fief of King Leopold of the Belgians. And it is at this point that I make a brief excursus to discuss a second book that I have recently read, King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild. While Hochschild’s effort was certainly useful in many ways, explaining the abuses of Leopold’s colonial agents with far more detail than Pakenham could (after all, Pakenham wrote about every corner of the Continent), it is also a politically motivated book, as evidenced by Hoschschild’s closing statement: “At the time of the Congo controversy a hundred years ago, the idea of full human rights, political, social, and economic, was a profound threat to the established order of most countries on earth. It still is today.” In short, Hochschild seemed confused as to whether he was documenting history or raising the red flag of socialist utopianism.

Hochschild also went to great lengths to stress that native voices are “silent”, that we must rely on Europeans for all of the accounts of the Congo. Pakenham, however, had no problem quoting Congo leaders, including the great Gongo Lutete, who as the King of Katanga helped Francis Dhanis overthrow the Arab-Swahili slave states on the Eastern borders of the Congo. Dhanis is mentioned in passing once in Hochschild’s book, and Gongo is entirely absent, most likely because he didn’t fit into Hochschild’s politically motivated narrative (though why, I couldn’t say – he was betrayed by other Belgian colonial agents and hanged himself in prison in despair before they could execute him).

As a result, Pakenham’s history was far more enjoyable. At around 900 pages, it was certainly far more voluminous. It also lacked Hochschild’s attempt at creating a patronizing “noble savage” mythology to juxtapose with the evil colonialists. The Scramble for Africa has no such illusions. The colonizers are not painted with broad strokes of generalized evil (nor should they be), nor are the natives shown as naïve or uniformly good. Pakenham quotes the wonderful letter sent by King Koko of Brass (in the delta of the Niger River) to the British government: “We are now very, very sorry indeed, particularly in the killing and eating of parts of [the Niger Company’s] employees.” But these things happen, so what are you going to do?

One of the other things that struck me about The Scramble for Africa is that many of the crises that beset the colonial powers in this era seem to be repeating themselves now. The Mahdi Rebellion in Sudan is eerily reminiscent of the Islamic State of today, complete with its penchant for beheadings and an apocalyptic spin on Islam. Tellingly, the European Powers just let them do their vicious and barbaric thing, ignoring their pseudo-state for eighteen years before sending Kitchener (and with him, a young Winston Churchill) to show the world just how many sword-waving lunatics can be killed with one properly sited Maxim Gun at virtually no casualties to the modern army. I can’t help but think the US should let the powers of the region deal with the Islamic State and not waste American lives or money on a totally useless war that the Iranians, Turks and Saudis are perfectly capable of fighting without us for the next eighteen years.

Additionally, the tension between the Islamic slave-raiders in the north of Nigeria and the non-Islamic settled tribes of southern Nigeria seems to be replaying itself in the bloody farce that calls itself Boko Haram. Goldie of the Niger Company played the two off one another brilliantly at the time, and although Boko Haram may not be a direct successor to the earlier Fulani states in northern Nigeria, there are certainly precedents that explain the current tension in non-religious terms (the Biafra State being another example).

The Scramble for Africa touches upon another point that I think people like Hochschild are loth to admit. Colonialism in Africa was, aside from South Africa, where the mines led to fabulous wealth, and Congo, where Leopold’s brutal monopolistic pseudo-slave state was able to maintain an unheard-of profit margin on rubber during the rubber boom, a huge economic loss for the colonial powers. Colonial agents died in their thousands of tropical fevers, malaria and other diseases that Europeans were unused to. At a certain point, the Great Powers were fighting over places just to extend their territory as an end in itself, with no thought as to the utility of the lands they were claiming. The Fashoda incident is probably the height of this delusion, as the British Empire and the French nearly went to war over a totally useless collection of mud huts in a malarial swamp with no natural resources or strategic value (the village of Fashoda, or Kodok as it is now called, is on the Nile in South Sudan today and still consists of little more than a few huts in the same malarial swamp). The Great Powers were positioning themselves for the coming war in Europe by playing the colonial game. After World War I, the issue wasn’t really if the colonies needed to be freed, but how and when. Despite this recognition, independence, when it did come, was unplanned and sudden and led to further disruptions, coups, wars and ethnic strife.

I enjoyed The Scramble for Africa greatly and highly recommend it.