BOOKS: Scramble For Africa

In the 1800’s six European countries, England, Germany, Italy, Belgium Portugal and France descended on the African continent and divided it up like a cake. The Europeans acquired 110 million new subjects many of whom were treated shabbily and with little regard for their humanity. It was a scramble for loot, land and slaves. In his 1992 book, “Scramble For Africa, “ Thomas Pakenham presents a comprehensive single volume account of that mad scramble for Africa that took place from 1876 to 1912. Thirty colonies were created during those years mostly without military conquest. The story is a sprawling one, complicated with many characters both good and bad, black and white. Pakenham does an excellent job distilling all these disparate facts into a story that is both comprehensible and enjoyable to read. Pakenham covers the exploits of the British in most detail however, the central figure that emerges in the book, the prime mover behind the exploitation of Africa, is King Leopold of Belgium whose actions more than anything else help to incite Europe’s voracious drive toward imperialism. Professing Christianity, commerce and civilization Leopold facilitated a way of thought, a justification and a mechanism to quickly extract from continent its unlimited wealth, both in manpower and natural resources. To Leopold what more nobler a reason could there be than to civilize the natives, to bring them out of their darkness and to give them a better way of life. Using this justification the Europeans quickly divvied up the continent into spheres of agreed upon influence and extracted a waste amount of wealth. What makes Pakenham’s book so good is how he controls the flow of events that make up this complex story, a story full of twist and turns, filled with people with different motivations from both people and governments. This is an excellent overall study of a European foreign policy that still affects the world and the people of Africa today. Recommended.