A scandalous scramble

Empires in the Sun might conjure up romantic visions for some, but this book’s essence is distilled in its subtitle, ‘The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa’. Lawrence James’s panoramic survey of imperial and then neo-colonial subjugation of the African continent between 1830 and 1990 is a timely reminder, if any were needed, of the devastating consequences of chauvinistic nationalism and expansionism. Violence, inflicted on a continent wracked by the slave trade, internal wars and epidemics, is the dominant theme: empire-building is always brutal.

France’s conquest and settlement of Algeria, the first European colony in Africa in modern times, sets the scene. Between 1830 and 1875, an estimated 875,000 Algerians were killed, approximately one third of the total population. A similar number are believed to have died in the famines of 1867 and 1868, disasters exacerbated by land seizures. Meanwhile, 385,000 European settlers had arrived by 1881. Pursuit of La Gloire by a nation desperate in the mid-19th century to avoid ‘sinking to the level of Romania or Greece’ was, we are told, ‘far more than just an exercise in national and dynastic vanity. Its ultimate and astonishingly ambitious objective was to absorb Algeria into France, and to fill it with European colonists.’

The other horrors of the competitive ‘scramble for Africa’ by European powers are also evenly recounted. There is no need for sensationalism: the facts about what happened in the Congo due to the ambitions of King Leopold II of Belgium, to the Herero and Nama in German South-West Africa (and simultaneously to hundreds of thousands in German East Africa, though the Maji-Maji rebellion and its consequences are not mentioned), and to those corralled into British internment camps during the South African (or ‘Boer’) war of 1899–1902 speak for themselves. It is a moot point whether any distinction can or should be drawn regarding the intentions behind such atrocities or their magnitude.