Book Summary: Pakenham's Scramble for Africa

None of this is a laughing matter, but I thought I would start off with this one, like Obi-wan tells Anakin. Most battles in this book were decided by one simple factor: the side that had the Maxim gun won (read: slaughtered the other).

What is the Maxim gun? It was the world's first fully automatic machine gun, invented in 1884. And in battle - after battle - after battle: be it Uganda, be it Nigeria, be it Sudan, be it Matebeleland and Mashonaland (modern day Zimbabwe) it simply tore into the opposition. On the rare occasion: the white man even brought two.

Though Assegais (African spears) and animal hide shields were common weapons in the hands of African tribals, it is not that they did not have any guns. A thriving arms market emerged in Africa - in terms of guns and ammunition - and in atleast half the battles in this book, both sides of the conflict did have so-called modern gunpowder driven killing machines. But the ones in the hands of Africans were out-of-date weapons which did not stand up to the latest designs in the hands of the Europeans, in terms of effectiveness of range. And of those weapons, the Maxim was the apex predator.

It may be noted that this policy of selling out-of-date stock to third parties by weapons manufacturers is something that continues to happen today, for obvious reasons.

It may also be noted that of all the regions of Africa, only Ethiopia never came under foreign control. One of the reasons for this is way the Emperor(s) of Ethiopia successfully played off European powers against each other and managed to procure modern arms for their people. (It is unclear if the Ethiopians had access to the Maxim).

The Maxim was used in various formats: as an aggressive front line weapon to tear down (often mud) huts, on boats on river - shooting safely from a distance into towns, on the walls of a outpost - to defend against incoming attackers trying to reclaim their land, or even in times of peace - to show off the power of the white man. It was a tool of fear, as much as that of killing. Once the enemy understood the futility of fighting, they either gave up or scattered away.

But, we have gone too far into the story. We need to take a few steps back. Believe it or not, the Maxim was not the main key in taking over Africa. Sure, it may help the white man win a battle for an outpost in the middle of nowhere where he is severly outnumbered, but first he had to get there.

The Scramble for Africa started in 1870s. But, by this time the New World was already explored. For instance, Slave trade was outlawed by the British in 1807, in theory atleast. Cape Town was already a colony by this period - 1800 - switching hands several times. The Suez Canal opened in 1869. But, Africa was unexplored? How come?

By 1870's, when the narrative of this book starts, all 4 "sides" of Africa were already hemmed-in by outsiders. Both Cape Town and Egypt were under the external control of Britain and Ottoman Empire (which was already under the control of British) respectively. France (specifically French companies) had interest in the Suez. Egypt itself extended soutward, down the Nile, and included control of what is modern day Sudan. All over the northern coast, were other places of external influence like the France at Algiers, the Ottoman's control of places like Libya etc.

The key "external" player on the East coast were the Swahili, the Sultanate of Zanzibar, with the Arabs being the elite class. On the other side of the continent, we had Portuguese controlling the Angola. You see, by 1870s, most of Africa was locked away from the rest of the world. Till this point, the wealth inside - gold, rubber, ivory, diamonds all lay hidden away, safe. I mention the Swahili and the Portuguese separately for a reason. These two, by this time, for more than two hundred years dealt in the biggest export of Africa pre 1870s - slaves.

From the two sides of the continent, two pipelines - one Trans Atlantic and one Islamic ran, streaming slaves out of the continent. The way they did this was through local slave raiders/traders - men who would journey into the heart of Africa, crossing dark forests and dry deserts, round up innocent tribes men, women and children at the point of sword and gun and chain them up, and drag them back to the coast for export. A painful footnote of this already terrible business was the number of humans lost on the way back - either due to lack of food and water, or disease, or simply the hardships of the way to the coasts - be it the jungles, or the rapids where normal boats could well collapse after hitting breaks.

As bad as all that is, the interior of Africa stayed safe for a long time, due to these natural barriers. The occasional European explorer tried to travel to the heart, often with the aid of local slave raiders and "porters", but didn't make if far, before the 1870s. This changed in the 1870s.

So, what caused this change? What ended up opening the interiors? Why now?

Two technologies: quinine and the steamboat.

The steamboat, I have to mention was often "dismantle-able". The porters could break it up into sections and carry it over their heads and put together again on the other end. This was used quite often to cross un-navigatable sections of the rivers - due to rapids or waterfalls or rocks or just dead-end swamps.

The great rivers - Nile, Niger, Congo were the pathways into Africa. But pathways for whom? Soldier's carrying Maxim guns? No - that would come later, once the right villages were located and forts built. Instead, we have something more simple, harmless and unassuming at first glance, but the real instigators of the story.

In popular media, meaning Western led popular culture, the explorer is undeniably a hero figure. The likes of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, cut through the bush, go spelunking into unknown caves in the middle of hostile territory, jump and shoot and daringly get to the treasure.

As someone from the Global South, I always had a suspicion lurking somewhere underneath that the job title was made out to be more glamourous than it was. It is simple, really. It is not fun when it is your land that is being slinked into, it your treasure that is being looted and it is your culture and people being presented as primitive or cult-like. (I have always had this suspicion about museums as well - it is only nice from the Western point of view).

Reading this book confirmed this suspicion for once and all: in Africa, almost all the damage was done by explorers. They are the front-runners of this large unstoppable war machine. Do not be fooled, they are the real snakes.

This is how it worked: an explorer leads a ragtag gang of poor "porters" from the coast, through the rivers on steam boats. If they faced resistance (which they did face once in a while), he would use his superior firepower to cower the opposition - poor tribals in their villages on the riverbed. If he saw a good strategic place, with a peaceful enough tribe, he landed and bartered with the native King.

The white man would give the black leader rolls of silk, beads and trinkets (all loaded up, for this very purpose). In return, he would coax out of the leader a sign on a blank treaty form.

Usually this form granted full access to the explorer's country - the sole right to extract resources out of the land, trade and export out whatever resources they wanted, to the exclusion of any other white country. Most often, the black leaders didn't know what they were signing. In many occasions, against the more observant of local kings, the version of the treaty in the native language didn't match the one in the European language. Very convenient.

The explorer would travel up river, boats loaded with stocks of blank forms and return with signed versions, all neatly bundled to be sent back to his host country. The host country, would gain entire territories overnight, with no effort or expense on their part. The explorer becomes a hero in the papers: dashing adventurer bringing the three C's: Civilization, Christianity and Commerce to the dark continent.

We will go deeper into the three C's later. For now, you see, the journey up-river was never easy - even with the latest guns, bartering gifts, steamboats and free labour. The way was treacherous and unknown. This was beyond the edges of the map. So, the explorers did what they had to do. Firstly, they allied with the slave raiders when setting upstream - no one else knew the lay of the land better. Understandably, local villagers were cautious - many fled at the approach of the visitors.

So, it is understandable that explorers, the likes of the British piece of work Stanley or Carl Peters, the German counterpart, often never found anyone to trade with - for food. So, what did they do? They shot the villagers they did come across and took their food forcibily. What else were they supposed to do - turn back? Where they did find a strategic location, they setup an outpost (named after themselves of course), sometimes raised a flag of their nation, left some of their black servants to hold fort and continued onwards.

In the entire book, there was one man, the French explorer Brazza who showed any signs of decent behaviour. Just the one. So much for spreading the first C: Civilization.

Seeing that there wasn't much of the first C - Civilization to be seen from the West, let us go to the second C - Christianity.

In places where they could get their foot in, missionaries setup local outposts - with a church and a school where they taught young black boys their prayers and stuff. Where they could, they got the ear of the local ruler, often accompanied by the carrots of access to guns and medicine. Overall, there was very little impact of the second C, in my reading of the book.

By my very cursory estimate (these are numbers I am assigning - the book never puts any such quantification), 70-80% of African tribes were pagan. That said - there didn't seem to be any uniform pagan behaviour - some tribes believed in spirits and shamans. Some tribes were cannibals; we will talk more about that, but only a small minority.

The remaining were Islamic - from the influences of the Ottoman Empire in the north (Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan - which was an extension of Egypt really at this point) and the Sultanate of Zanzibar - centered in Zanzibar (this tiny island in the grand scheme of things) and emanting radially outward through modern day Tanzania, northern parts of Mozambique and Somalia. The book never makes it clear how many of these Muslims were Arab in origin and how many where native Africans or what was the mix.

Most of the conflict obviously happened between the Islamic groups and pagans or Christians (meaning Europeans) and pagans. The distribution of religion meant there did not seem to be any major conflict between Islamic and Christian groups. In one particular instance, there was an ironic pitched battle between Protestants and Catholics in the middle of nowhere.

While we are on the topic, the following pattern occured multiple times: a holy man of Islamic origin rallies a call to his bretheren and a powerful force emerges, carrying the book in one hand and sword in another. This group controls a large portion, fights other tribes and other European powers equally. This happens in Sudan and in the upper regions of the Niger river - in the south middle portion of Western Africa. Specifically, in today's terms, this would be south Mali, Burkina Faso, northern portions of Ghana, Togo, Benin, and parts of Niger and Nigeria.

Geographically, this is the Western half of what is called Sahel. It may be interesting to correlate this history with today's geopolitical scenario, specifically with the presence of outfits like Boko Haram and ISIS.

Uniquely, in all of Africa, Ethiopia stands out for being predominantly Christian, which arrived quite early, around 330 AD. Also, obviously we are not tracking the religion behaviour of whites - who were all obviously Christians whereever they were in mass - which at this point in time was only in South Africa. Then - it was not a single entity but composed of many groups - Cape Town, Transvaal, Orange Free State and Natal - composed of a mix of English, Dutch and local Africans. We will come back to this later.

Overall, the second C only played the occasional role. Sure, missionaries were to be found in the remotest places of Africa. They often played a supposedly third party observatory role - later in the Scramble when things had proceeded and a lot more Europeans came into the continent - but otherwise play quite a minor role - more smaller than I thought, at least according to the narrative here.

The real drive of the Scramble was the third C - commerce.

When explorers came back to their home countries with stacks of signed treaty forms, they promised new avenues to spread the 3Cs. But, this third C is what really caught fire.

To be clear, often the explorers oversold the true state of affairs. There is the seed of the modern false promises in advertisements right here. They sold their countries visions of El Dorado - it was always an imagined land full of gold and diamonds.

Heeding this promise, interested companies and wealthy individuals would sanction expeditions. Sometimes they would form Companies for this purpose immediately - other times they would lobby their government to support them in getting a foot in.

At a high level, this is the sequence of events that happened loosely. This is almost a summary of the entire book in itself.

1. Explorers go in and come back with signed treaty forms and oversell the potential to their country.
2. Wealthy parties form Companies for the purpose and lobbied their government to give a small armed force (the likes of a few hundred soldiers). Sometimes this worked and the companies tried to go back to setup a foothold.
3. Sometimes governments weren't sold in putting any money/effort into the enterprise and dragged their feet. This often happened due to the political climate within the country or due to more pressing affairs in other colonies (like other parts of the world like Afghanistan or India, or other parts of Africa).
4. Other countries would suddenly feel that maybe they were losing a potential treasure and authorized their own explorers and companies to go into the same lands.
5. Suddenly, the issue became one of prestige for the first country. Other explorers going and raising their country flags in the same or adjacent village somewere deep in Africa would be seen an affront to their own standing in Europe. So, they would scramble to send their own men.
6. Inevitable, a fight would break out somewhere - either between the soldiers of an European country and a local tribe or between two European countries (rare, but not never). Inevitably, since the forward force was small to begin with, the Europeans would gang-press local tribes to work for them or run a divide and conquer strategy to weaken their opponents.
7. The invading country (which upto this point would have been a few hundred soldiers and a few gunboats) would feel compelled to send a larger force, which would mean getting the approval of parliment. Depending on the current climate of the public and the representatives, this may or may not be approved.
8. After a few rounds of posturing between two European countries, or for their own standings in Europe, various kinds of understandings would take place between the European powers. For example, Britain would recognize France's ownership of Ivory Coast, in return for recognizing British supremacy over south Nigeria. All sorts of conflicts would emerge between European powers, none of which actually took into account the actual situation on the ground.
9. Eventually, some sort of stalemate would be reached, where everyone recognized everyone else's territory. Here, everyone only refers to White countries.
10. Now, each of them would be happy to look into extracting "value" out of the piece they had won. Searching the territory would show no fields of gold and riches. Instead, the value of a territory would be in more conventional ventures: palm oil, ivory, rubber.
11. Now, the companies would be left in charge to extract the value out of this. The country would help in setting up railways, to move goods out efficiently. For this, sometimes, the home countries taxpayer money would be used. But, this just meant that the country expected to make this money back.
12. The companies would obviously gang press local Africans to work under threat of force and death. This was basically slavery, hidden away behind a veneer of commerce. No other way to make the money back. Around 10-15 years of this, the profits would be through the roof, all of the initial investments made back severalfold.
13. Some white people, here and there, would come to understand how this money was actually made and try to counter this, by starting campaigns of awareness and petitioning their governments.
14. Some politicians try to address this, but in a lukewarm manners, since actually changing things will impact money making activities. Some 10-15 years later, some sort of token action is finally taken.

The book splits the Scramble into 4 chapters. I'll instead propose 3 phases:

1. Phase 1: just exploration by random adventureres.
2. Phase 2: the Scramble itself. Basically points 1-9 above.
3. Phase 3: end-stage value extraction. Points 10-14 above.

You can think of Phase 2 as the "Expand/Exterminate" portion and Phase 3 as the "Exploit" portion, with some overlap in timelines between these.

One of the most eye-opening things to me in this book was the cost, as in cash or literal money - not lives of people on either sides, and nothing else being the literal deciding factor in War. I am going to spend some time on this.

Firstly, maybe "war" or "battle" is too big of a word. "Skirmish", "Offensive", "Strike" or "Siege" may be better choices. Not to say that large scale battles didn't happen - they did, very rarely - maybe 3-4 times in this book. One example was in Sudan where Kitchener led a British (and Egyptian) army of around 25,000 people against a 50,000 sized Mahdist force at Khartoum.

Most battles were not like this though. This sort of battles with more than 5000 soldiers on either sides were few and far in between. They were usually in the order of hundreds, topping out at 3000 (no guarantees on anything, just my rough reckoning). Why? Sure, in a few cases, the situation did not demand it. But, in all cases it was due to budget constraints.

Yes, you read that right - budget constraints. Corporates are blamed today for pulling the plug on beloved products when the percieved cost of maintaining it is not too high. European governments did that in the Scramble - giving absolutely no care to even the lives of their own soldiers.

Every mission would need to be funded by the European taxpayer. Parliments would refuse to approve proposals to send in the required force based on other struggles ongoing at the time and the mood of the nation. This meant that requests for firepower at crucial junctions were delayed or outright denied - leading usually to the death of soldiers on the frontlines. Then, after some particular incident where white men would be slaughtered since they were heavily outnumbered, suddenly the home country would wake up and notice and approve further requests for force, sometimes overcompensating.

Of course, the governments did everything in their power to reduce the bill as much as they could. Whenever possible the hefty bill of war would be unloaded on to the "colony" supporting the operation. For eg, Sudan was nominally part of Egypt when the Mahdi carved it off as his own. So, British counter attacks to re-claim Sudan was footed on the Egyptian taxpayer who had absolutely no say in the matter.

More than 2/3rds of the "invading force" would be local allied tribes or black men from other parts of the continent. (Regular old "divide and conquer" strategy). In many battles, white men numbered in the tens as opposed to the hundreds of black men. This suited European armies just fine, given their low budget. The losses were proportional, obviously, and in many battles the invaders won without a single white man lost.

But, there is a pretty dark side to this too. In most of the cases, the White "captains" or "commanders" had little control on their Black allies. After victory, the European soldiers didn't or couldn't intervene in the Black attackers on their side from "enjoying the spoils of war". Women and children of the losing side were taken as slaves. Property was obviously looted. In some cases, when the European allies were cannibals, they feasted on the enemy after the battle. All this in the presence of their European leaders. Like I mentioned earlier, so much for the first C.

Now, you might say that the same outcome would have happened in the normal case of warfare between two competing tribes. But in these cases, one side only won against the another due to the superior weapons and the afforementioned Maxims. Another point is that such inner-tribe conflicts would obviously arise due to specific cases, say a new aggresive leader or scarcity of resources. Here, all the conflicts were artifically started by a white man to grab some African territory from the local leader for his own profit at the minimal cost possible.

This point is perhaps the crux of my learning from this book: in the process of colonization, there is an asymmetry that is forgotten. The fight is optional or best effort for the invader. It is do-or-die, life on the line for the invaded. It may well be one last fight for survival for the invaded; but it was just budget policy for the invader.

For me (and I suspect for everyone else in the Global South), colonization is a word filled with emotion. It is all-or-nothing. There is no holding back, no restraining (except tactically), throw everything that you got. To see the callous nature of the invaders, to see that it meant nothing more than the cheapest option available at that point, is a painful realization. It was never anything personal to them. Your independence (or lack of) was never that important to them.

To make the above point clearer, it is useful to understand the concrete policy of British at this time.

All countries had a "Foreign Office" responsible for managing their foreign affairs. Over the course of the book, we get to see the working of the "head" of the Foreign Office of each involved white country, second only to the Prime Minister (or King) in dictating the foreign policy - deciding where to stick their greedy fingers in, if the budget allowed it of course.

But, the Britain equivalent of this was split into three offices.

1. Colonial Office (CO): responsible for managing colonies - white, brown and black.
2. Foreign Office (FO): responsible for the official and un-official protectorate and mandates and the "invisible empire of trade"
3. India Office: to manage India

The CO, you can understand. It is important to note that most of the white Colonies were at this point, already given "self determination". I use the word "given" and it is important. Because the British Government (meaning the Offices) absolutely did that all the time. In many of the Colonies, a local self government was in-place - voted or controlled by the whites of course. The natives barely had a say in this.

India Office was special. The very existance of this separate office shows how important, business wise of course, India was to the British. Of the three offices, this one had no budget problems. So, a free hand to operate as needed, raising as much capital as needed - for armies, gunpower and engineering works. In fact, the British and the other countries hoped to find a new India in Africa.

The third office, FO is important to understand. Protectorates or mandates where territories which the British had an "understanding" with, but was too cheap to spend any money on. We have seen before the "filled-in treaty forms". The terms that the Europeans used with the Protectorates was:

1. Do what you want in your land.
2. We own all the rights to extract resources anywhere in your land and take it all for ourselves.
3. We dictate your foreign policy - with other European powers. So, a British mandate couldn't cut an alternative deal with France for example.

Most of the territory in Africa was under the FO of various countries. Why not the CO? Because Britain wouldn't spend a single pound to develop or protect the land, when they could simply bleed the land for free, at no cost!

In my list before, this happens during the sections 3-9. So, British companies would freely operate in the territory, at gunpoint, extracting local goods ranging from palm oil, rubber and ivory using forced labour. But, when another power, European like France, or a competing tribe would attack the people of the land, Britain would look the other way, unless the budget allowed it to make a stronger point. This was the whole point of the Protectorate - have your cake and eat it to.

Colonies were only needed, if the land was too valuable - like gold or diamond in South Africa, it had a sizable white population (like in South Africa) or investments were sunk in like railways (to extract and export goods efficiently or to move troops rapidly, nothing else). Until then, good business, was to depose out the local leaders, subjugate the locals, make a ton of money and lose the land if others invaded (the cost was only Black lives). In Nigeria for example, nothing more than the Company existed, with predictable results on law and order.

Seeing the India Office, I was simultaneously sad and happy. Sad, because the British found the loot worth enough to protect the golden goose.

Happy, because at least they had enough budget to prevent other European powers from scrambling in. The fights between the Dutch and the British in north South Africa, between France and British in Nigeria/Niger and in Sudan, for example. Each party ended up arming rivals and letting loose chaos. The effects of that remain till today, in the very shape of the African countries and the way tribes and languages are split across country borders willy-nilly.

Luckily, none of that happened in India. Kicking the Portuguese out of the Konkan coast was troublesome enough. With the number of seperationist factions that we already have, we are luckily that no proxy European war occured on our land, making things even worse for everyone.

One more interesting thing to note here is the power of the press. Even in this time period ~1870 onwards, nearly 150 years ago, the newspaper was very important towards shaping public opinion. And public opinion was the key to authorizing large budgets towards sending forces to the middle of nowhere, to carve off yet another piece of Africa.

In Phase 1, when explorers came back, there exploits were published in papers, drumming the public aware of the opportunities for the 3 Cs. Of course, where the press was, there was manipulation as well. I am reasonably sure that the papers didn't cover how Stanley shot innocent villagers in the face and took their food. That would be talked about only in the social clubs and those who knew the man.

In Phase 2, there were two kinds of reports. The first is the case of "One death is a tragedy, a hundred deaths is a statistic". These were the kind of news that tugged at heartstrings of the people - Gordon's last stand at Khartoum and his death made him an overnight hero. (The real story not published was that the British government botched the whole thing up by not responding to his repeated requests of reinforcements in time. The reinforcements that were sent dragged their feet through Egypt taking the most inefficient route, as if they were on a picnic. Full details in the book.)

This sort of news got people on the feet to a state of shock and fury where their representatives could safely authorize funds for a larger follow-up invasion force.

The second was more patriotic in nature - covering what other European countries were upto and how their own country was faring in this race. This had the same effect of getting people riled up for even more Colonization efforts.

But the press covered both support for the government and scathing criticism of government policy failures. In both cases, building a public perception was key. There were points in time, when the optimal move for a government would have led to bad press (due to public focus on a different internal issues such as Ireland or other parts of Africa or the world) and thus not taken. Later, when the situation would have become worse, the same government (now with public perception on their side), would overreact. In this, we see the power of the press - mostly for bad, but a power nevertheless.

In Phase 3, we see the more whistleblower type behaviour - when excesses of the colonies were being brought to public eye, by a small minority of truth seekers. But, to say that informing the public actually changed anything on the ground is a lie. It took a lot more effort to get governments to act and an informed public was not enough when business interest pointed the other way. Here, we see the limitation of the press.

Leopold, King of Belgium, was a master of using the press to his advantage. He ran publicity campaigns for his efforts through various backroom deals to ensure that the public got a very positive of him and a negative view of his opponents. Yes - using fake news or fake narrative in the press to discredit opponents happened even more than a hundred years ago - in plain newspapers. Important to keep this in mind when consuming news today, from various sources. Fake news has always been a thing, even with traditional news media and not a byproduct of modern social media.

Every European power was, on the inside, complete chaos.

Prime Ministers would get booted out dozens of times, as governments collapsed left and right - side effects of not having absolute majority in parliment. The same man would come back as PM in 6 months and lose the seat in another year. Policy continuity was a joke - successive PMs would have drastically different opinions on how to run the vast empire. Now, the people of Europe may have voted for this, but no one in Africa had any control on this chaos.

In the best of scenarios, the new ideas and decisions would trickle down slowly and take shape on the ground. Remember, this was a time when communication to the front-lines could take months. But this assumes that there was a clean chain of command, that juniors were actually interested in listening to their superiors. That, happened very rarely.

What happened instead was this. Every layer in the "management" had their own opinions and were autonomous to their interest, irrespective of what orders came from above. This was a sort of self-emergent deep state, if you will. In any case, it didn't reflect any clear public opinion or democratic decision.

The layer below the PM, was the FO, lead by a Foreign Minister. Often, the Foreign Minister had his own opinion on foreign affairs and didn't play ball with the PM's decision. Below the head of the FO, were the Secretary and other officials, each with their own ideas. All of these people (including the FM) were lobbied by companies to carry out their own interests.

Below the FO was the army, which had it's own politics - ranging from full-on factions to individuals with their own minds. Specific generals and soldiers would have their own ideas. For example, a situation might arise where the PM would like their country to back down without a conflict. But, the general on the ground however would like to use the opportunity to crush the opposition, win an easy battle and claim brownie points for himself, his batallion within the army. When this sort of thing would help his own personal career, why wouldn't he take the chance? Actual orders coming from above would be outright ignored or diplomaticlally "delayed" on the way.

One more layer in this game, was the local politicians, in case of colonies, for eg, South Africa. The local governer or PM would have their own plans which would not mesh with what the parent European country thought at that moment. Often, due to changing political circumstances up in Europe and it's parliments, decisions coming from so afar would change again and again. In comparision, these people, closer to the "action" often had a clearer picture.

This sort of mismatch between various layers, instructions flowing down, information flowing up and uncoordinated action on all layers was basically the norm of operation. Somehow, all of this worked.

Think of an empire like Britain or France, like one huge optimization problem. The various peoples and bodies comprising the government, corporations and media form the parameters of the function. The action of the empire was more or less a random walk, nothing as smooth as gradient descent. But, above all the chaos, there were a few objectives being optimized for or constraints that were always met. My reading was the following:

• Objective: maximize business, or material wealth produced or extracted
• Constraints: saving face with other European powers

At the end of the scramble, Africa was carved up between the European powers. Loosely, France was dominant in most of the West (with some British contention, like in Nigeria), Britain had a huge line top down on the right side (Egypt, Sudan - including South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and from the south, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia). Italy had small swathes around Somalia and Ethiopia, Germany had larger pieces in Namibia and Tanzania. Smack in the middle, the heart of Africa, the Congo (today's DRC, Republic of Congo, Gabon and Cameroon) was all Leopold, the King of Belgium (more about this later). This map from Wikipedia might help.

Getting here, to this stable configuration, was a long-drawn process, to say the least, with a million battles on the way. Battles, not just on the ground with guns. Battles in parliments, for budgets. Businessmen lobbying their governments. In the media, to strengthen a point of view, or to discredit the oppositions. Between politicians, within and without empires. Between wills of empires. Between corporations undercutting their competition. Between explorers, racing to plant the first flag. Between tribes, looking to survive.

Every explorer sold every part of Africa to European countries as rich in gold and diamonds. That didn't turn to be remotely real in most parts, but that doesn't mean Africa wasn't profitable. Different resources peaked at different times.

Palm oil was a staple export, especially from West Africa (mostly under British and French), but over time, the glut of export led to falling prices.

Ivory was always of value. It is heartbreaking to see export in tonnage of ivory, when you know that each piece comes from the death of an African elephant. But in this day, when African humans were not valued, why would the Europeans care about African elephants?

In the 1890s, the Congo found that rubber became the dominant export, outdoing even ivory. Why now? Because the pneumatic tyre for bicycles was invented by Dunlop in 1888. Over that decade, secretly, King Leopold went from losing money year after year in the Congo, to making insane profits.

Aside: the book just mentions Dunlop and continues on in a single line. You can read the Wikipedia page to get more context and marvel at the impact small-scale science can have on the world. The fact that a surgeon experimenting in his backyard to make better tyres for his child's tricycle led to a cyclist using them to win so many races in a row that the head of the cyclist association started a company. The fact that this led to a huge demand for rubber, enough to convert the Congo from loss leader into a money making machine, right at the time that Leopold was going to throw in the towel. Tyres have not changed much 130 years later, the brand Dunlop still exists fragmented under different holdings.

In most places, the white presence in Africa was limited to the explorers, soldiers and governers. They explored, fought, drew lines and spoke for the empire. In fact, for a big chunk of the book, there is no single white woman to be found anywhere.

What about civilians? Were they ever part of the colonolization process? Yes, they were, in select places where conditions like temperature were suitable. And believe it or not, they were one of the worst things to happen to Africa.

Let me repeat that again, if it is not clear. Of all the evils of this period, this one was the worst. This happened in South Africa, in Kenya, and in the German colonies - Namibia and Tanzania. Wherever the were White Settlers set foot, there was a recipe for trouble.

The formula was simple: the home country would encourage white families to move to Africa and take up the profitable venture of farming or homesteading. They wouldn't have to put in any effort - the actual work would be done by Black slaves or servants. But that wasn't the worst part.

This new burgeoning white population became the core vote-bank or people that the local government and home government served. This meant that many times, the cattle and the land of the local blacks were forcibly grabbed by the government and re-distributed to the white settlers under one pretext or another. In time, more white settlers came in, meaning more land taken from the natives for free.

The locals, who just lost their livelihood and land in their own homeland, would be forced to work the settlements for very poor compensations. Inevitably some rebellions did happen, uprisings where some white people would be killed. But, this was not taken lightly by the home country - since it involved white blood being spilled. They would react by sending larger white armies and quickly. All the convincing of parliment became quite smooth when White civilians in Africa were in danger. And more black people, free peoples and slaves would be put down. The cycle would start again with the newly captured goods - cattle and land.

Luckily for Africa, White settlement was quite limited, either due to reasons of temperature or unfavourable local conditions. The same cannot be said for other parts of the world. This sequence of events is exactly what happened in North America (including Canada) and in Australia and New Zealand where the locals have been completely exterminated. There are other books that cover this in detail, but the light that this book sheds on the process is enough for a reader to understand how this worked.

Herein lies yet another realization for the civilizations of the Global South: there is a fate much worse than being looted of your wealth and being broken up irrepairably, and that is being consumed so completely that your soul is not even a fleeting memory and what is left of you is now considered the Global North.

We have seen how the Empires sought to maximize profits from their "colonies". In late stages, this led to absolute trampling of the natives, their freedom, their livelihoods and their rights. The book covers this under the fourth chapter, I have marked it as Phase 3 in my classification above, points 10-14.

The book is brief on this. Honestly, I think this deserves a full book of it's own.

At a high level, this is what happened. In most cases, the "home" government didn't care about what happened in the colonies, leaving the local administration to take care of things. This administration, more of a thin veneer of a government, would only pander to white interests.

In places where there were no white settlers, which was most of Africa, white interest amounted to business. And business only wisher profit. Profit at the cost of pathetic treatment of blacks, often overworking them to death, in the business of extracting value - be it ivory, oil or rubber. Again, the local government, if it can be called that, was nothing more than a front for the Companies. Black slaves or servants were overworked, forced to meet impossible quotas, their families imprisioned as incentive.

I left Leopold for the last.

Leopold, King of Belgium, was one of the largest individual players in the Scramble. He played all of the other contenders, the European powers against each other, pouring his own money (not Belgium's) and winning a colony - the Congo - nearly 50 times the size of Belgium and profited hugely from his ventures. He was shrewd and cunning, calculating and pleasing and single handedly managed to outwit the other empires at their own games.

General public today (mostly the West, since not many else are even aware of this man) considers Leopold a monster - mainly for the atrocities that the Congo Free State unleashed upon the blacks in Phase 3 - the late stage of capitalism in Congo. You can easily find the kind of things that happened in the Congo - gruesome, horrifying things at that - the book does not cover this in detail and so I will not as well. Leopold is considered among the most villaneous of villains, evil incarnated.

But, I think this is a wrong reading of this. Painting Leopold a monster is not only disengous; it is dangerous. It is convenient to say that Leopold was a monster and that he did bad things. It may be true, but it is a false narrative - a shortcut. You see, this way of thinking simply makes a Scapegoat out of one man and brushes aside, easily, safely, comfortably, a clearer picture of history and reality.

Did a lot of cruelty happen in the Congo? Yes. Did he personally shoot people in the face like Stanley? No. Did he overlook what the Congo Free State government did? Yes. Was that any worse than what the Germans did in Namibia or even the French in their part of Congo? No.

In truth, Leopold was a Statesman of the finest level - he did exactly what the other empires did (be it Britain or France or Germany), but efficiently, cleanly and boldly. They all played the same game - but he, being one man, had a lot more control on the scheming. He played the media like a fiddle - simply buying positive opinions from different people from different ventures. He played the public - acting as a godfather for human rights, while simultaneously pulling strings to give himself complete control. He played individuals, flattering them and giving them exactly what they wanted in return for much larger results. He played a complicated game of deceit, risked all of his money and won it all back several times back.

Was Leopold a monster? Yes, but only if you say the same of the other empires, which did exactly what he did, just more slower and messily. It is easy to blame Leopold and close the story, but let us be clear about one thing. The other empires would have admired his moves, would have liked to emulate him, if only they could. Nothing has fundamentally changed in Western governance or in the structure of capitalism in the last 150 years. I would bet that his actions are not that different from many politicians or corporate leaders today.

So, Leopold is not a monster - he is just a convenient scapegoat. The real monsters are the incentives of the system that existed then and existed today: unfettered materialism and capitalism's one-pointed directive of maximizing profits at any cost. Everything that happened in Africa can be boiled down to these two points - still the driving forces behind Western civilization.

That became a long post. Hope that shed some light, some idea of the kind of points that this book raised.

The book really is only one portion of Africa's history. In time, I will pick up books that follow the history of Africa, post 1910s to present. Many of the problems that occur in Africa today stem directly from the events of the Scramble - the very shape of the borders were decided arbitrarily.

Though a lot of books exist on African history, this book is unique in giving the broader picture - focusing on the full continent, almost all the regions of Africa, instead of zooming in into any one country and narrating a linear history.

The book gives a small epilogue, which is no where near enough. The bottom-line is that the European powers never spent even a minute of effort in thinking about long-term governance or self sustainance in most of the African colonies. In fact, in the face of the events that occurred after this book - the World Wars - the ugly scheming and scrambling between the European powers in Africa, only exploded onto their own lands.

For my part, this was as much about colonolization, as it was about Africa. Immediate history of India, from the Indian perspective, is so much focused on the Independence struggle, that it does not give clear picture from the other side - how did the European powers actually work? Since, anything to do with my own people carries way more emotional weight, it was easier to read through African history and keep an objective viewpoint and obtain, hopefully, a clearer understanding of history.

These facts make this book, in my view, one of the most valuable pieces of non-fiction for everyone, especially those of the Global South, to understand this world better.