Book Review - Good-Bye Dolly Gray by Rayne Kruger

 Good-Bye Dolly Gray: the Story of the Boer War by Rayne Kruger

London: Pan Books, 1974 (first published 1959)    ISBN 03300238612

Apart from (even in?) South Africa, how many of the combatant nations remember the Boer War of 1899-1902? My hometown has a magnificent memorial in the main street commemorating the 250 Victorians who died fighting in South Africa, but I'm sure most passers-by these days assume the memorial is to World War One if indeed they notice it at all.

The Boer War was the progenitor of many things: blockhouses and barbed wire entanglements, concentration camps, armoured trains, mounted infantry, and not least the participation of most of the Empire. Kruger's book, originally published when some combatants were still alive, is a good "traditional" narrative history of the conflict, covering the military and the political quite well, the social less so.

"The Boers said the war was for liberty. The British said it was for equality. The majority of the inhabitants, who were not white at all, gained neither liberty or equality." This quote from the final pages of the book is pithy, and is not far from the truth. The Great Trek, undertaken the generation previous to that fighting this war, was undertaken so that the Boers could maintain their independence from the British, who had taken the Cape Colony and Natal for their own. The Orange Free State and Transvaal were in nearly all senses independent states, which both sides found acceptable.

That is, until gold was discovered in the Transvaal. The rush brought many foreigners (Uitlanders) to the state, mainly British. Fearing loss of control, the Transvaal government restricted the franchise of non-Boers. The Uitlanders complained to the Crown. The British had long harboured a desire to unite their colonies with the Boer republics to create a South African state. They thought that supporting the Uitlanders in their claim for representation may be a way to achieve such an outcome via the franchise and demographic takeover. So, like many other wars and revolutions throughout history, the fundamental cause of the Boer War was essentially about taxation without representation.

Militarily, the British Empire was always going to win a long drawn-out struggle. The best the Boers could hope for was to make Britain pay such a price that they would make terms. Eventually this is basically what happened in 1902, when the Boers recognised the suzerainty of the English and South Africa became a reality, but the Boers maintained their culture and language and eventually gained political preponderance over the new territory via their own demographic takeover. The War spilled much blood and spent much treasure to only reach a position that could realistically have been negotiated.

The opposing military forces could not have been more different in 1899. The initial British force, under General Buller (whose reputation suffered an irretrievable collapse during this conflict owing to his caution and tactical blunders) might have been wearing khaki and carrying modern Lee Metford rifles, but were old-fashioned in other ways. Their huge columns, with baggage trains consisting of thousands of carts drawn by oxen, officers that ensured that they brought with them champagne, baths and other luxuries, were no match for the Boers. Boer mobile commandos, who lived off the land (supported by many residents), were incredibly mobile owing to their horsed infantry that travelled without impedimenta, and were tactically supple as everyone had a say in how battle was commenced and fought.

Unfortunately the unique structure of the Boer fighting force also became a weakness as the war developed. With no fixed military structure, Boers came and went from the battle-ground as they pleased, and each commando could decide to engage how it chose to, whether that supported Boer strategy or not.

The British eventually dominated the battlefield through combining two seemingly opposing principles, which they fused into a strategy which eventually brought the Boers to the negotiating table. The first was to create units that copied the Boer way of fighting: mobile columns of mounted infantry, lightly equipped, that could cover distance quickly to bring the enemy to heel. The second was the construction of thousands of blockhouses - small forts that linked together into a military fence across the country. By using the mobile columns to push the commandos onto the lines of blockhouses, the British eventually wore down the Boer forces so much that their will to continue fighting began to fail. The Boers had hoped since the start of the war that their cousins who lived in Cape Colony and Natal would rise in rebellion and support them. This support did not materialise even after the Boers "invaded" the Cape and caused much trouble there. This fact also helped seal the fate of the Boers.

The British, while eventually "winning", also paid a heavy price. As many wars have, the Boer War brought down a government, and also a way of governing. The many failures of both politics and military during the war led to the British public losing faith in the rule of the upper classes. The Liberals took over politics, and the British officer class, where commissions were bought rather than earned, was dismantled after the war by Kitchener, who was the modernising leader of the forces in South Africa.

Kruger's book lists a catalogue of military blunders, with the British consistently underestimating the capabilities of the Boers, and the Boers suffering from too much or too little caution, often failing to press home their advantage or fruitlessly attacking points that were too strong. Early in the war the Boers laid siege to Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberly. They failed to take any of these places, and if they had the war may have taken a different turn.

By the same token, if Buller had moved more decisively and had more tactical nous, the Boers may not have won their early victories and in fact might have suffered defeats that may have led to them putting down their rifles much earlier than they did.

Kruger spends a few chapters on the political aspects of the war, particularly in England, but glosses over the politics of the participation of the Empire in the war, as well as the politics of the Cape Colony and Natal during the conflict. While he describes the concentration camps, again it is a side-issue in this book to the descriptions of the military activity.

If you want to get a grip on the military progression of the Boer War, Good-Bye Dolly Gray (the title comes from a well-known song from the era) is not the worst place to start.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham

The Scramble for Africa: 1876-1912 by Thomas Pakenham

London: Abacus, 1992 (first published 1991)    ISBN 0349104492

If ever there was an over-used phrase, it is "Tour de Force". I've probably over-used it myself over the years, along with everybody else. However, if any book truly deserved to have that phrase applied to it, it is surely this one.

Most of us of a certain age think we know the story of colonial Africa: Livingstone, Stanley and Brazza, Rhodes and the Boer War, and of course the horrors of the Congo. The fact that is most impressed on my mind after finishing this book is how quickly it all happened: Brazza helped discover the Congo for Europeans and lived to present a report on the horrors of the concession system there, while Lugard, who won Uganda for the British lived to see the outbreak of the Second World War.

So what did happen in those forty-odd years? Interestingly, most of the time is was not the activity of countries willingly expanding their empires, but (mostly) people chasing the almighty dollar that dragged Europe into the heart of Africa. Many of the colonies mentioned in Pakenham's book began as concessions for business interests, who were trying (and often failing) to make money from the land.

Until the advent of the Europeans, the main way money was generated in Central Africa was via the slave trade. While the Europeans ostensibly abhorred the trade and tried to stop it, in practice they often collaborated with the (mostly Arab) traders and turned a blind eye to the practice. In fact many of the companies effectively enslaved their workers while subjecting them to horrible punishments.

The attempt to abolish the slave trade was one step in brining to Africa Livingstone's three "Cs": Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce. "Civilization" was brought to the natives in the form of commissioners and troops to keep them in line, and sometimes education up to primary school level, but always suppression of native rights (and rites). "Christianity" came along and worked hand-in-glove with the civilizers, and often turned a blind eye to the excesses and atrocities that took place. "Commerce" mean that the Africans were expected to work for virtually nothing, getting "paid" in cheap consumer goods and useless fripperies.

Nothing that occurred during these years was good for the native populations of land taken over by Europe. And in fact not much good came from Africa for many Europeans. The enormous amounts of money expended on the colonies by the European powers was not expended on lifting their own poor out of misery, and many of the administrators and troops sent to Africa suffered long periods of isolation, usually disease and sometimes death. The only winners in the end were the businessmen, who usually found a way to at least get their money back, by selling out to their governments.

The question that this raises is why did governments condone, support and then take on these colonies? It is a good question to ask, and several answers can be attempted.

For England, the key to all its moves in Africa was - India. Strategically, England needed ports and way-stations to enable their Fleet - both naval and merchant - to traverse between India and "home". Hence their early occupation of Cape Colony and Natal. Once the Suez Canal was built it became strategically necessary for England to control Egypt as well. Then they needed to control the Nile, and so were drawn into the Sudan.

Further south, Rhodes's creation of his own state north of the Boer Republics meant that these intransigent people became a thorn in the side of British dominance, especially when it was becoming clear back in Europe that Germany was no longer a dependable friend of England. The fact that many inhabitants of the Cape were Boers added to the mix, and the result was the second Boer War (Pakenham also describes the First Boer War in detail).

For Germany and for France, Britain was the reason they made their moves in Africa, for the most part. France in particular tried to thwart British expansion in West Africa, often without a clear idea of strategic intent: the expedition to take Fashoda being a classic case-in-point.

Then there was Leopold II of Belgium. He wanted an empire because, well just because he wanted one, and he could afford to buy his own. The Congo became his personal fiefdom, a money-making exercise, and a catalogue of horrors that inspired Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The story of the exposure of the abuses that occurred in The Congo is a model of all the abuses that happened elsewhere as well - slaughter, dispossession, exploitation, cruelty, all in the name of personal and imperial aggrandisement.

Pakenham has written a gripping and readable story in this book, but it is by no means the complete story of Europeans in Africa: the Portuguese are hardly mentioned and Africa north of the Sahara is not a major part of the work. The focus is on Central Africa: the Niger and Congo, through to Uganda, Ethiopia and the south, with the Mahdi, Gordon and Kitchener thrown in for good measure.

The pathos of the story - the inevitable destruction of the local populations and ways of life - is well-related by Pakenham. The people that drove history forward in Africa: Stanley, Rhodes, Kruger, Brazza, Cetshwayo, Goldie, Jameson, Lugard, Morel, Menelik II, Mwanga, Carl Peters, Tippu Tip, and those in Europe that pulled the strings - Gladstone, Leopold, Salisbury, Chamberlain, Grey, Bismark, Delcasse are all delineated well and seem to speak with their own voice in the book.

The final chapter briefly covers the dissolution of these empires over an even shorter period (about 12 years) than it took to acquire them. The book (in the edition I read) has useful apparatus - good maps, a useful timeline and bibliography, as well as photographs of most of the leading players.

It's now over thirty years since this book was written, but if you want a (relatively) comprehensive overview of how Europe "ate" Africa, this book is well-worth reading.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - England's Pride by Julian Symons

 England's Pride: the story of the Gordon Relief Expedition by Julian Symons

London: White Lion Publishers, 1974 (first published by Hamish Hamilton 1965)

ISBN 085617548X

Many years ago I, like tens of thousands of other Melburnians, emerged from the underground railway station at Parliament and walked past a statue of General Gordon on my way to work. Paid for by public subscription, it is an indicator of how shocking to the Empire his death was, and in how much esteem he was held. I wonder how many commuters today even know who he is?

Certainly in 1884 everyone in England knew him - a hero from his service in China, and seen as a moral exemplar owing to his efforts to eradicate slavery in Africa, "Chinese" Gordon seems the quintessential Victorian hero - doing good work in far-flung places, wildly eccentric, and a favourite of the Queen.

Gordon ended up in the Sudan mainly owing to Gladstone's unwillingness to spend money on a military intervention there. In fact he had decided that the Anglo-Egyptian force in Khartoum should be withdrawn, rather than face the forces of the Mahdi, who's rebellion was gathering strength. The newspapers were pushing for a relief force to be sent, but the Government decided that they could just send Gordon, hoping his cachet would be enough to enable an orderly withdrawal, assuage public opinion, and curtail any unnecessary expense.

Unfortunately for Gladstone and his government, Gordon was a poor choice for such an assignment. Firstly, Gordon was a Christian visionary: hardly a good choice to try and pacify an Islamic insurgency. Secondly, he followed his own path, revealed to him by God, as he thought. Sent to arrange a retreat he instead fortified Khartoum and set himself to withstand a siege.

Soon enough he was surrounded by Mahdist forces, and it was public opinion - whipped up again by the newspapers - that forced the Government to send an expedition to relieve Gordon and bring him safely back to Egypt. If the Mahdi was defeated in the process, all the better.... so much for saving money!

England's Pride is the story of the expeditionary force that was sent up the Nile to relieve Gordon: a story of success and failures, of battles and massacres, and of Victorian attitudes and characters such as Generals Wolseley, Buller and Stewart, Colonels Barnaby and Butler, Lord Charles Beresford and most famous probably today Kitchener, who played a minor but important role in what came to pass in 1884-5.

Once Gladstone was finally convinced that rescue of Gordon was needed, the army decided the best course of action was to trans-ship the force up the Nile in small whaling boats to a forward base at Korti, and then send a force across the desert on camel to Metemmeh before continuing on to Khartoum.

The story therefore is mainly one of logistics and movement rather than fighting: the logistics and movement were in fact bigger obstacles to the army than any of the Arab warriors that they met on the battlefield. Moving thousands of men up the Nile over multiple cataracts (some of which were at the time un-mapped) was a huge undertaking, requiring mammoth efforts not only from the troops themselves, by the boatbuilders who built over 400 whalers in quick time, and also the Canadian guides (voyageurs) who were employed to manoeuvre the boats up the river safely to their destination (which in great part they managed).

The provision of camels proved to be a major problem. There were never enough for the army's needs and those they did have became severely over-worked. In fact one of the main reasons that reprisal against the Mahdi's forces for his sack of Khartoum (which occurred two days before the first British steamer came in sight of the town) was discontinued was that the British had too few camels to engage in effective campaigning.

Symons maps all this out well, and also provides a good synopsis of the final days of Gordon and the battle of Abu Klea. He charts the fate of those involved in the expedition - who prospered and who didn't, and a useful chapter speculating whether there was any chance that relief of Gordon was ever a realistic prospect. Symons thinks that those who became scapegoats at the time were unfairly treated and concludes that if anyone was to blame, it was Gordon for not communicating his position effectively enough to Wolseley, and Gladstone for delaying his decision to send a relief force. Wolseley's army, all things considered, did about as well as it could have in the situation.

What struck me most in this retelling of a great Victorian epic was how the situation rings through the ages - vacillating politicians and bickering military leaders leading to disaster is a story as old as time, and as recent and tomorrow's news.

England's Pride is a solid exposition of an interesting, if now semi-forgotten, piece of Empire history.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Monty His Part in my Victory by Spike Milligan

 Monty: his Part in my Victory: War Biography Vol. 3 by Spike Milligan, edited by Jack Hobbs

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978 (first published 1976)          ISBN 0140045031

It is arguable, but it's quite possible that Spike Milligan was the funniest human being in history. I have grown up with him, listening to The Goon Show in my early years, the Q shows, and buying into his absurdist humour, which is slowly fading from herd memory (the amount of people in a crowded room that "get" a Milliganism when it's dropped is getting fewer and fewer and time marches on).

For some reason I never got around to reading his biographies of his time spent in the army in World War Two - formative years for him in a creative sense, but also very traumatic. I read the first part  which covered his entry into the forces and training, and now for some reason am reading the third part, which deals with his time in Africa after the defeat of the Axis in Tunis (I think Spike would approve of reading his four-part trilogy out-of-order).

This book - highly and funnily illustrated - is a collection of vignettes of an army at rest after victory, enjoying the spoils of war (i.e. getting drunk as much as possible), and of Milligan's membership of the Battery Concert party, the beginnings of the surrealist mayhem that became The Goon Show.

This volume did not make me laugh out loud as much as volume one, but was still well worth an hour or so's time.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - El Alamein to the River Sangro by Field Marshal Montgomery

El Alamein to the River Sangro by Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

London: Arrow Books, 1960  (First Published 1948)

Like many of the Allied Generals of World War II, "Monty" has become a controversial figure. Many deride his character, and his caution, but there is little doubt as to  his popularity with the troops under his command. He is mainly remembered now for his leadership of the Eighth Army in the Desert Campaign against Rommel, which is dealt with in the first half of this book.

While Montgomery's memoirs were very outspoken about those he didn't like (he managed to make many enemies during the war, and they weren't all German or Italian), El Alamein to the River Sangro is a very understated and factual account of his command of the Eighth Army. It is very much a description of the disposition of his forces, his development of battle plans and the changes he made on the run during battle, and some forays into the difficulty of what we now call logistics (Montgomery uses the term "administration").

And it was the logistics that Monty was determined to get right before committing to battle at El Alamein in 1942. The war in the Desert to that stage had seen the front yo-yo from Libya to Egypt and back again, as either the Allies or the Axis reached the end of their supply tether. Montgomery's emphasis on ensuring adequate supply, reserve troops, and also insisting on close co-operation between ground and air forces meant that he could attack knowing that he could keep pressing forward.

The Desert war in particular suited Montgomery - set piece battles, followed by movement, with the battle ground being of a size and shape that meant only one General was needed. There were more difficulties for him in Sicily and Italy, where he became second-in-line to the American forces: something he suffered for the rest of his war, to his chagrin.

I was somewhat disappointed by this book - I was hoping to feel more of Monty's character shining through the pages, but I guess I'll have to read his memoirs to get that. I think a reader with a general interest in both the Desert and Italian Campaigns would do better reading a broader history, and those wishing to understand the man himself would do better to read his memoirs.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Lords of the Atlas by Gavin Maxwell

Lords of the Atlas : the rise and fall of the House of Glaoua, 1893-1956 by Gavin Maxwell

London: Longmans, 1966

I guess when most people think about Morocco, they think of beaches, holidays, and maybe the life of literary types who spent time there. Or perhaps the movie Casablanca. That, and a vague knowledge that there has been a low level insurrection that has been going on in the South of the country for the whole of my life, is pretty much the sum of my knowledge of the country.

Gavin Maxwell on the other hand is probably best known for his books on raising and protecting otters in Scotland - I was set Ring of bright water as a text in my schooldays, a book I enjoyed a lot. What he has written here is history of a sort: he's taken the life of Thami El Glaoui as the centrepoint to look at the history of Morocco in the first half of the twentieth century, and written a satisfying tale of greed, power, and tragedy that works well for those who don't know too much background to the story.

Morocco in the late nineteenth century was much as it had been for hundreds of years - the Sultan, based in the North of the country for the most part, was nominal ruler of all of Morocco, but really had little real power beyond the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. These areas were ruled by ambitious families, one of which was the Glaoua. In 1893 the Sultan passed through the Glaoua's territories with his army in a bad way, leaving his antiquated cannon in possession of Madani El Glaoui as he traversed the Atlas back to Rabat. This cannon, the only one in Morocco not in the Sultan's control, enabled the Glaoui to dominate neighbouring tribes.

Maxwell, in describing the rise of Madani and Thami from minor tribal chieftains to kingmakers and powerful warlords, passes briefly over the history of the Sultans, making much of the brutality of the times, and of the gradual French incursion into the country. He shows how World War One led the French to rely more and more on people such as The Glaoui to enforce their colonial policy, and how The Glaoui was only to happy to help, as this alliance enhanced his power and territorial control in the South.

He makes much of The Glaoui's popularity in Europe (particularly England and France) in the 30s, something that history has erased, but possibly similar to the Aga Khan in later times. People travelled to his court as a sort of adventure tourism, which The Glaoui was happy to encourage. Meanwhile Thami ran his fiefdom in the traditional way, with hundreds of concubines, possibly over a hundred children, and many of his subjects and enemies rotting in his vast dungeons.

Having raised his standard alongside the French, Thami had no time for any members of the burgeoning independence movement - his concern over Sultan Mohammed V's support for independence led him to organise a coup to replace him, which was supported by the French. Unfortunately the people of Morocco didn't support the change of ruler, and unrest increased. After the second assassination attempt on his life, the new Sultan lost interest, and the French began to realise that they would be better off re-instating Mohammed V. This meant betraying the trust of Thami El Glaoui, which he felt keenly, even as cancer was beginning a concerted effort on his life.

In almost his final act, Thami prostrated himself before the re-instated Sultan, and died soon after. Not long after that, his family were dispossessed of their land, money and titles, much as happened in previous centuries.

Maxwell has written an entertaining history, written as a tragedy, and none the worse for that. This is not the book to turn to for a thorough history of Morocco, but as an insight into a particular era, it's a good read, and the photographs and drawings throughout the text add to the atmosphere.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - "Exterminate all the brutes" by Sven Lindqvist

"Exterminate all the brutes" by Sven Lindqvist, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate

London: Granta Books, 1997                                                    ISBN 1862070172


This is a book of investigation - Lindqvist became fascinated by Conrad's Heart of darkness, and specifically the line "exterminate all the brutes" written by the character Kurtz, in his report about the natives. Lindqvist is driven to find out why Conrad wrote the story, and why he had Kurtz write that sentence.

This leads Lindqvist on a physical journey through the Sahara, and a historical journey back through the literature of colonialism, to try and divine where and how Europeans came to treat the natives so brutally. By searching back through the literature of pioneering writers of anthropology and biology, he shows us how the originally shocking idea that creatures could become extinct gradually came to be used as justification for Europe's brutal expansion into America, Africa and Australia. The concept that 'inferior' races were destined to die out, so it didn't matter - in fact it was merciful - to help them on their way gradually took hold of the European polity through the application of biological theories to political outcomes.

The skill in Lindqvist's book is in the layout: by the time he is elaborating these theories for the reader he has already shown that the destruction of African, Australian and American peoples had little to do with natural selection and a lot to do with institutionalised brutality, theft of land, and superiority of weaponry. These people were done to death, they didn't die out. Particularly nasty examples of this are shown in the treatment of Tasmanian Aboriginals, the Herero people of Southern Africa and the tribes of the Sudan.

Conrad not only had first-hand experience in the Congo, but at the time of writing Heart of darkness he was well aware thanks to his circle of friends and reports in magazines that his story would resonate as a protest against the "civilization" of the barbarous races.

Lindqvist intersperses his many short chapters with views of the towns he visits (In Salah, Tamanrasset, Agadez, Zinder) and the people in those towns. At first these vignettes seem random, but after a time the reader realises that Lindqvist is showing us the innate humanity of these people, making what happened to them all the more barbaric.

The final part of the book shows us that all this "scientific" racism led almost inexorably to the theory of Lebensraum, that had such a horrific effect on the 20th century. Lindqvist makes two points here - the first is that Hitler, in using this theory to justify his activities, was looking backwards rather than forwards, as the idea that a country needed land to become great had been shown to be wrong by Germany, which had grown to be a great power without colonial territory. The second point is that we don't have to look to far back into human history to find the precursors to the Nazi insanity, and it comes from the history of England, France, Germany, America and other places. The Third Reich was the final most horrific flowering of a process that begun when Georges Cuvier posited that species could become extinct.

To end this review with some quotes: the book begins "[t]his is a story, not a contribution to historical research. It is the story of a man travelling by bus through the Saharan desert and, at the same time, traveling by computer through the history of the concept of extermination. In small, sand-ridden desert hotels, his study closes in on one sentence in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "Exterminate all the brutes."

Why did Kurtz end his report on the civilizing task of the white man in Africa with these words? What did they mean to Conrad and his contemporaries? Why did Conrad make them stand out as a summary of all the high-flown rhetoric on Europe's responsibilities to the peoples of other continents?"

And a quote from the end of the book: "Imperialism is a biologically necessary process that, according to the laws of nature, leads to the inevitable destruction of the lower races. Things of that kind could be said. But the way it actually happened, what it really did to the exterminators and the exterminated, that was at most only implied.

And when what had been done in the heart of darkness was repeated in the heart of Europe [Nazi genocide], no one recognized it. No one wished to admit what everyone knew."

"Everywhere in the world where knowledge is being suppressed, knowledge that, if it were made known, would shatter our image of the world and force us to question ourselves - everywhere there, Heart of Darkness is being enacted."

"You already know that. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions."

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe

Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe (illustrated by Uche Okeke)

London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1967 (many editions extant)

ISBN 0435900013


This is a book that I probably should have read a long time ago - in fact I'm surprised I didn't read it at school, as it has all the attributes for a good senior school novel (I probably read To kill a Mockingbird instead). Chinua Achebe became a lion of African literature, and in great part it was this book that forged his reputation.

A tragedy, this novel tells the story of Okonkwo, a fierce warrior and big man in his village. A man with an improvident father, Okonkwo made himself into a respected man through the force of his own will, and his willingness to work. Like many self-made men across the World, regardless of culture, Okonkwo was a hard man to others, especially his wives and children.

Okonkwo's temper gets him into trouble, as does his desire to be seen to be doing what a successful man should do. These traits estrange him from his eldest son, in what will become a crucial part of the story. Through a terrible accident, he is also estranged from his village, being exiled for seven years for accidentally killing a young man.

The first part of the novel sets up Okonkwo's personality, and the life and times of his village. The deliberately simple language that Achebe uses helps bring the reader into the daily life of an Ibo village, and the description of the important and subtle rituals, and the food gathering activities, are described in a way that soon makes the reader comfortable with what is happening.

The second part of the novel brings the wider world to the villages of Umofia, when white missionaries penetrate the Ibo lands as Okonkwo is serving the final part of his exile. By the time Achebe gets to this section, the reader has some sort of understanding of the local gods and spiritual life, and he shows well how Christianity intruded into the Ibo world and turned it upside down, helped by the rule of force from Lagos.  Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, joins the new religion, to Okonkwo's shame.

When Okonkwo gets back to his home village, it is to find that much has changed. Not only is there a church, but also a courthouse, and Okonkwo finds that the things that were once important are so no longer. The clash between British law and the culture of the Ibo lands Okonkwo in prison, and his rage and shame at being on the wrong side of the "law" leads almost immediately to murder and suicide.

It is the final paragraph that really sends a chill down the spine, and seals the tragedy of Okonkwo's life - the District Commissioner is thinking on Okonkwo's story and the book he is considering writing - "One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. ....[O]ne must be firm in cutting out the details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger."

Achebe's writing, which includes many traditional activities and tales, almost becomes a fable in itself; as someone who had lived through the white invasion, he no doubt wished to record as much as he could, while at the same time showing how the change to traditional practices have led to the extinction of the old ways.

There is some subtle writing here: Okonkwo is both a victim and perpetrator - Achebe shows him as a very flawed man - and his reaction to the changes in his society are exacerbated by his pride and quick temper. The back-and-forth between one of the early Missionary fathers and a big man in one of the villages about God and religion is humorous and instructive, showing how it could be seen that Christianity and the local religions were different in degree more than anything else.

The skill of Achebe the novelist is in writing what is no doubt an anti-colonial novel, that works so well as a story. I can see why it's a stalwart on school curricula.

Recommended.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Kaiser's Holocaust : Germany's forgotten genocide and the colonial roots of Nazism

The Kaiser's Holocaust : Germany's forgotten genocide and the colonial roots of Nazism, by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen

London; Faber and Faber, 2010                                                         ISBN 9780571231416 

Goring, Von Epp, Von Schiefflin, Leibensraum, Konzentrationslager - just a few names and words that pop up through this book that show the links between Germany's short-lived African empire and what was meant to be the thousand year empire of Hitler and the Nazis.

Germany came late to the scramble for Africa, and South-West Africa (current-day Namibia) was to be their South Africa, a place where Germans could settle, farm, and create a little Germany on the shores of another continent, much as the British and French had managed in their various colonial outposts.

Millions of Germans had emigrated to the USA in the 1800s, to escape the misery of overcrowded cities, and many Germans, up to and including the Kaiser thought that this great movement of people could be diverted to German colonies, where the Empire would gain from the pioneering spirit of these people, rather than have them assimilate to the US, where their German heritage quickly disappeared.

Olusoga and Erichsen begin this book by describing the coastline of Namibia - and what a forbidding place it is - the Skeleton Coast, a place of shipwreck and disaster, flanked by the coruscating dunes of the Namib desert. In what was typical in the Victorian era, some speculators set up a settlement at Luderitz, and basically through blackmail and trickery got the German government to support the venture with money and troops. The first unsuccessful governor of the territory was Herman Goring's father, who was relieved of the duty after failing to cope with the native peoples, the Herero and the Nama. Meanwhile, Wilhelm II, a vain and ridiculous man in many ways, was deeply concerned that his Reich was small potatoes in the scramble for Africa. He decided to get serious, and installed General Von Trotha, a veteran of previous African adventures, as the military governor of German South-West Africa. Von Trotha had definite views on how to deal with the natives - enslave and exterminate them. He had met with success in other parts of Africa, but the Nama and Herero had long exposure to the Boers of South Africa, and had incorporated some of the Boer culture into their own lives - including fine horse and rifle-manship. Von Trotha's Schutztruppe was ill-equipped and ill-led, and at first made little headway against the skilled warriors of the Herero, who did not allow themselves to be drawn into a set-piece battle. Battle did come to them eventually, when Von Trotha surrounded the main Herero force at the Battle of Waterberg, which was actually a massacre - the largest contingent to be killed was that of Herero women and children. The remainder of the Herero were hounded into the desert, to be picked off one-by-one. The remaining Herero were placed in concentration camps, the most notorious of which, at Shark Island at Luderitz, became the final resting place of more than 3,000, who were worked and starved to death. A further unknown number died building railways, in what became a dedicated project to wipe out a people, and claim their land.

This is all documented here in detail, along with the grubby manoeuvres at the Versailles conference where Britain and France used the Herero massacre to claim the former German colonies as their own - South Africa became the controller of South-West Africa, and soon began to obscure the early history of the colony, to placate the German settlers, and to allow their own racial fantasies to be acted upon.

The last section of the book details the connexions of many of the early Nazis to the colonial project, whether former members of the Shcutztruppe such as Von Epp, or racial scientists such as Eugen Fischer, who was a guiding light of the bizarre racial theories of the Nazis. While Olusoga and Erichsen make the case that many of the racial laws were based on the experience of the Herero in South-West Africa, I think they fail to make their case that the German project of empire in Eastern Europe had much basis in the earlier African activities, beyond lip-service.

As an overview of what has become a forgotten episode of history, and one that rings through the ages down to today, this book is well worth a read.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell