If you’re looking for a historical book about how the Europeans systematically exploited Africa, this is not the book for you. This is hybrid personal memoir into Africa along with numerous references to the European perspectives on justifying imperialism and genocide in Africa. One of the most notable things is that European imperialism, colonialism, and genocide occurred in waves, each facilitated by jumps in weapons and transportation technology. Much of the deeper parts of Africa had avoided colonialization and imperialism until a number of important factors: the Europeans had invented repeatable rifles which the African musket-makers could not replicate, and they created steam-engine boats that could traverse further down rivers upon which they mounted powerful canons. A lot of people think that European imperialism reached its peak with America but ignore or forget that European imperialism and genocide occurred in Africa at the turn of the 20th century.
Today, we all recognize Adolf Hitler as perhaps one of the greatest villains in history, but of course, the only reason for this is that he was someone who committed imperialism, colonialism, and genocide upon white people. We consider Genghis Khan another great villain of history, because he too, committed imperialism and colonialism against white people. Yet, countless Europeans and later American-Europeans committed imperialism, colonialism, and genocide, yet are not considered villains in history. Many are considered heroes including British royalty and American Presidents. Few people even know who King Leopold II was much less know he committed genocide in Africa. It is almost poetic justice that the Europe that invented imperialism, colonialism, and genocide would suffer from its very own, turning its very own invention upon itself with incredible industrial devastation and ruthlessness. Of course, it’s not poetic at all that the Communists would turn that industrial devastation upon themselves and the Americans would turn it against East Asians and today, Arabs.
White people thought they were the superior race, and they believed they were doing the world a service by spreading their particular brand of culture and religion around the world by exterminating what they considered savage and inferior cultures and religions and in many cases, people. The discovery of evolution simply put a little pseudo-scientific twist on things leading to the idea that white people could not only cull nonwhites from humanity, but they could cull their very own who were defective, disabled, or beholden of unpopular political views. It was all a scam to justify the most abhorrent, savage, horrific, immoral, grotesque, surprisingly creative, and guiltless atrocities in the history not only of humanity but all of nature. The Europeans were certainly superior in their application of cruelty, inhumanity, and thuggery.
The book is disjointed and confusing, perhaps meandering much like a river through the ‘darkness’ of Africa, and it gives you this sort of haunting, semi-conscious feel much like the novella Heart of Darkness, punctuated by factoids that bring you back to reality. It’s definitely a different tact than simply beating you over the head with facts about how awful Europe behaved in Africa. I’m not sure it was as effective for me. The Anarchy, which covered the British rule over India came across as more effective using more conventional historical book formatting.
The story of European imperialism, colonialism, and genocide is often told vaguely with great efforts of obfuscation, meandering, doubletalk and hypocrisy. The story should not be like that, and that is why I believe this book fails. The story should be clear cut, simple, full of tables of people killed and displaced, a list of treaties broken, a list of villains, etc. Whenever people lie about something, they’ll make it hard for you to follow their story, and that is what this book achieved. It sounds almost like it’s covering up something not uncovering something. Yet another meandering, confusing description of a rather simple thing, Europeans going around stealing and killing and acting like the very brutes they purport to be saving the world from.
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