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There are times when this book is like a long, endless slog through dense jungle with water and food running low and the natives looking unfriendly and most of the porters giving up and going home; but still the far distant waters of some undiscovered river beckons the fevered brain. It is dense with detail. There are two whole continents involved and this astonishing thirty years changes at least one of them into something unrecognisable, and all for reasons that were, initially at least, perfectly admirable. Stamping out the scourge of slavery was a major aim, and so were commerce and education, so-called civilising influences, if we can refrain from a hollow laugh when using such a phrase. Nothing wrong with trade and nothing wrong with the free flow of information, but that's not really what happened at all, is it?
Despite the influence of Livingstone's Three Cs - commerce, Christianity and the other one - there was no real desire or drive for empire in Africa, at least not by anyone who mattered. Britain had its informal empire, trade networks up and down the coast, and they didn't want the expense of anything else.. But mad-capped hare-brained explorers charged off through the interior and fractious settlers in the south caused trouble and poor old Egypt became a luckless pawn in the maneuverings of the Great Powers and the most evil arsehole of the 19th century, King Leopold of Belgium played his long, cunning game, and suddenly countries who could not afford to go to war with each other were competing furiously for domains and dominions and protectorates and colonies they mostly didn't want or need and for which they paid vast quantities in blood and treasure, and for which the Africans who lived there paid even more.
There are a lot of ugly atrocities in this book. A lot of war and a lot of adventure and a lot of international intrigue. It makes for hair-raising reading, but Pakenham keeps a crisp even tone throughout, writing lucidly and clearly. The reader might buckle under the sheer weight of it all, but the book itself never does. There aren't many likeable figures, European or African, a bare handful of women get mentioned in passing and precious few moments of levity, though the repetition of Gordon's phrase about throwing in the sponge must surely count as a kind of running joke. Less funny is the final chapter which begins with a cautiously hopeful description of the independence ceremony of Zimbabwe in 1980.
Despite the influence of Livingstone's Three Cs - commerce, Christianity and the other one - there was no real desire or drive for empire in Africa, at least not by anyone who mattered. Britain had its informal empire, trade networks up and down the coast, and they didn't want the expense of anything else.. But mad-capped hare-brained explorers charged off through the interior and fractious settlers in the south caused trouble and poor old Egypt became a luckless pawn in the maneuverings of the Great Powers and the most evil arsehole of the 19th century, King Leopold of Belgium played his long, cunning game, and suddenly countries who could not afford to go to war with each other were competing furiously for domains and dominions and protectorates and colonies they mostly didn't want or need and for which they paid vast quantities in blood and treasure, and for which the Africans who lived there paid even more.
There are a lot of ugly atrocities in this book. A lot of war and a lot of adventure and a lot of international intrigue. It makes for hair-raising reading, but Pakenham keeps a crisp even tone throughout, writing lucidly and clearly. The reader might buckle under the sheer weight of it all, but the book itself never does. There aren't many likeable figures, European or African, a bare handful of women get mentioned in passing and precious few moments of levity, though the repetition of Gordon's phrase about throwing in the sponge must surely count as a kind of running joke. Less funny is the final chapter which begins with a cautiously hopeful description of the independence ceremony of Zimbabwe in 1980.