Book Review - M: Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati

 M: Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati, translated by Anne Milano Appel

London: Harper, 2021 (original Italian publication 2018)    ISBN 9780062956118

Wow. What a book! The first book in a five-part series of novels that deals with the political life of Benito Mussolini, M: Son of the Century is a massively gripping (as well as being, at over 700 pages, simply massive) description of Mussolini's rise to power, beginning with the first meeting of the fascists, and concluding with him gaining a total grip over parliament after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti in 1924.

While this is a novel, it has a very documentary feel, with the short chapters evoking real events, with interspersed newspaper reports, telegrams and other archival material. The effect is a little like a kaleidoscope, each chapter (from a different character's viewpoint) adding a piece to the chaotic picture that was Italy after World War One, and on into the 1920s.

 And chaotic it was - Scurati evokes the turmoil of a country that "won" the war but gained no dividend from the peace that followed. Veterans particularly were disaffected, as socialism gained ground - Mussolini had been a high ranking socialist before the War, but left precisely because they didn't support it. 

The violence of the rise of Fascism, the ineffectiveness and fatal factionalism of the Socialists, and Mussolini's constant shifting of his alliances and strategies are what drives this book forward. The internecine power plays within the Fascists, especially when power beckoned, and Mussolini's struggle to control his party are especially well described. The characters of the main protagonists are also well drawn; not only the Fascists such as Mussolini himself, but also Balbo, Dumini, Marinetti and Rossi, but also Fascism's political opponents such as Bombacci, Turati, Croce, Salandra and of course Matteotti. Mussolini's lover Margherita Sarfatti is a major character in the novel - mentor and perhaps even eminince grise in the early part of the novel, but discarded once Mussolini ascends to the Prime Ministership, she becomes somewhat of a tragic figure, as does Rachele, Mussolini's wife, who is not much more than a cipher in the book.

If you are interested in Italian history and literature, I can recommend this book - there is also an Italian television mini-series that is worth catching up with.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Little Field Marshal by Richard Holmes

 The Little Field Marshal: A Life of Sir John French by Richard Holmes

London: Cassell, 2005 (first published 1981)              ISBN 0304367028

Who has heard of Sir John French now? Virtually no-one, and yet at his peak he commanded the British Army on the Western Front at the beginning of World War One. This after a storied career in the cavalry, where he fought in Sudan and most famously in the Boer War (where he made his name), and stints as Inspector-General of the Army and Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS). Richard Holmes' book is a thorough look at both the personal and military sides of a complex man who generated loyalty and disdain in almost equal measure.

French in many ways was not the typical cavalry officer of the late Victorian era. He didn't come from a privileged background, and in fact transferred to the army from a burgeoning naval career. He was a serial womanizer which quite often got him into trouble in his early years, and led to a long estrangement from his wife and his children. His passionate nature was something that surfaced again and again during his career; several times he threatened resignation to get his way on various issues.

French's first time in battle was during the campaign to relieve General Gordon in Khartoum, when he commanded a troop of cavalry against the Dervishes. He carried himself well, and this led to him becoming an important commander during the Boer War, during which he became a hero after leading several brisk cavalry actions against the Boers. He was a cavalryman through and through, very much a believer in the role of the cavalry to both reconnoitre, and to take advantage of any breakthroughs by the other commands. These tactics worked well in South Africa, but were useless in France a decade and a half later.

That intervening decade and a half is for me the most interesting part of the book. French went to work modernising the army as he saw it - in some ways visionary in imagining how it was to be deployed in a Continental war, and in some ways quaintly reactionary in his steadfast refusal to countenance the cavalry giving up their lances (to become, as he saw it, mere mounted infantry - a fascinating part of that debate was that Erskine Childers, of Riddle of the Sands fame, wrote a book opposing French's ideas).

It was during this period that French came up against the limit of his abilities. A good tactical commander of cavalry, he could not effectively make the leap from that level to the broader job of CIGS. He had no feel for, liking of, or skill at the staff work that was required to make the most effective use of large forces of troops. He was fortunate in South Africa that he had Haig under his command, who was an excellent staff officer (and a close friend until their falling-out in 1915). French was the type of officer that liked to lead from the front and leave the staff work to others.

This in many ways was to bring about his downfall in 1915 - he failed to grasp that industrialised warfare required an industrialised approach to logistics, manpower distribution and planning. He wasn't up to the task, but as Holmes points out it is unfair to judge him too harshly for the reverses of the British early in the war, as nobody really knew what the new warfare looked like. French was too optimistic about the ability of troops to attack, and couldn't take the long view of some of his colleagues, yet when he was sent back to England to command the Home forces, he had enough vision to pave the way for the creation of the RAF, as well as keeping up the numbers of trained troops for the Front.

French was Anglo-Irish in descent, and always loved Ireland. He had a part to play in the Curragh Incident, where again he didn't cover himself in glory as far as the politicians were concerned - French had a tin ear for politics, as well as for money (he was perennially broke). In 1918 he was sent over to Ireland to become Lord Lieutenant, to try and quash the incipient rebellion that bubbled through the country. French flattered himself that he understood the Irish, and thought that Sinn Fein was not actually a popular movement. He favoured military control, but felt he had not enough troops to enforce it. Once again he couldn't read the political tea-leaves and was on the wrong side of most of the decisions taken during his time there.

It was an adventurous life, and one that Holmes captures well. He has a lot of sympathy for French and is prepared to go into bat for him when necessary, but is not afraid to criticise his decisions and actions when required.

The best way to sum up the man is to quote from the final paragraph of this book - "French was not a great general. He was a brave man and a good cavalry leader, and cared deeply about his profession. But in many respects he never transcended the nineteenth century, and his attempts to solve the tactical and strategic conundrums of 1914-15 were fatally marred by his undisciplined intellect and mercurial personality. Yet he should not be allowed to sink, disdained, into oblivion. Even those who knew him warts and all agreed that, whatever his shortcomings as a tactician, strategist, or indeed politician, 'French, in the sacred fire of leadership, was unsurpassed...'"

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

 The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017        ISBN 9780393089059

Thanks to Christopher Nolan's film, The Odyssey is having a little time in the sunshine of notice. As I write this review, I've yet to see the film (although I've read/seen quite a few reviews!), but in preparation I thought I would read the poem for the first time since my early twenties (i.e. several decades ago).

I chose the Emily Wilson translation for a few reasons - it's current, it was of interest on the internet because it's the first translation by a woman and I wanted to see what the fuss was about and whether the sex of the translator made a difference (it doesn't really), but mostly because it was the copy closest to hand when I decided a re-read was on the cards.

On the whole, it is an excellent translation for the twenty-first century. Wilson has used iambic pentameter as her metre, but it's not a self-consciously poetry, she has used (mostly) a very slightly heightened language, but the story is very easily understood and very readable, and she has provided the reader with a good introduction to the poem and the milieu in which it was written, what it might mean both then and now, excellent notes, glossary, pronunciation guide and useful maps. It's a complete package.

Of the apparatus, it is the Translator's Note that is most interesting. It is an excellent essay on the difficulties not only of translating the poem and making it accessible to a modern audience, but also on the weight that earlier translations bring to bear on anyone who attempts it. It's well worth reading, and would serve as a good guide for readers of any translation of anything, especially poetry.

The poem is best-known for Odysseus's adventures fighting the Cyclops, hearing the Sirens, skirting Scylla and Charybdis, the Lotus Eaters etc., but in many ways those are minor bits of excitement in what is a much bigger story that Homer (Wilson's introduction speculates well on who Homer might have been) is trying to tell.

Whereas The Iliad is a story about war and glory, The Odyssey is much more a story of overcoming the difficulties life throws up at us, the choices we make (and the ones we don't) and the consequences of our actions. Like much of the greatest literature, within it's narrative The Odyssey gives the reader pause to think about their own life and reflect on how much all of our stories can be seen to be reflected in Odysseus's struggles. Everyone should have their own interpretation of The Odyssey, it seems to me.

Mostly, in my view, it's a book about coming home, and about not giving up on that ideal. Homer is too sophisticated to give us a happily ever after, but coming back to where you are known and loved and wanted is at the heart of the story. Fear of what it means to not be those things is also here - for much of the poem Odysseus, through his deceitfulness and trickery is trying to ascertain whether his home does indeed know him, love him and want him.

Wilson has her own views on this, and on other things, which don't necessarily gel with mine, but which like the poem itself are worth thinking about and responding to in a thoughtful way. One of the interesting things about The Odyssey is that there are so many powerful women portrayed in it, many of whom have a lot of control over Odysseus, which seems remarkable for something written thousands of years ago. I think the depiction of women in the poem speaks to age-old questions that, even in patriarchal warrior societies, still need to be reckoned with, and Wilson has thoughtful things to say about that, as well as on the depiction of slavery and the actions of the gods.

This is an excellent book in every way - a great translation well supported with supplementary material. If you have watched the film and want to go deeper, I can highly recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Slim the Standardbearer by Ronald Lewin

 Slim the Standardbearer: a biography of Field-Marshall The Viscount Slim by Ronald Lewin

Ware, Herts.: Wordsworth Editions, 1999 (first published 1976)  ISBN 184022214X

This is a workmanlike biography of an interesting man. The major part of the book focusses on Slims' Burma Campaign, which in a sense is right and proper, but I when I finished the book I felt a little short-changed, as Slim has written so well about that himself. I was hoping for a little more insight into the man than this book delivered, but it was still worth reading to remind oneself of what an extraordinary life he led.

The son of a failed businessman, Slim dreamed of an early age of joining the army, but funds (lack of) seemed to scupper that wish, until the advent of war in 1914. Despite the myth that Slim became a Field-Marshall from the ranks, he was actually commissioned immediately as a second lieutenant owing to his time spend before the war in the Birmingham University OTC (despite not being a student at the University - the first example of "Slim's luck"). He was sent to Gallipoli, where he was wounded: after his recovery he was sent to Mesopotamia to assist in the relief of Kut, where he was wounded a second time. 

After the war he was transferred to the Indian Army where he served with Gurkhas. It seems that this was one of the happiest times of his life - there was much low-level action against rebellious tribes, he met and married his wife, and slowly made his way through the ranks, impressing at Staff College in Delhi and at the Imperial Defence College.

Interestingly he also spent these years writing short stories for money (even though Lewin's book is only just short of a hagiography, Slim's nose for cash runs through the book, from ensuring expense accounts were suitably large, to augmenting his pension in any way he thought he could), which I think is a fascinating insight, although one that Lewin doesn't ponder too much.

Although he is famous for his campaigning in Burma in World War Two, he also served in Ethiopia against the Italians (where he was wounded yet again), and in Iraq, before being sent East. There, in Burma, he famously led the retreat back to India, and then the advance back to Rangoon, through a series of excellent strategic and tactical manoeuvres, and (with the close support of Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of the South East Asian Theatre) working his way through the politics of logistics, supply and recalcitrant commanders (Wingate, Stilwell).

This is the major part of Lewin's work, and he describes well what is required of someone commanding an Army, and how the fighting is just one part. It was in Burma that Slim's ability to get people to follow him, his ability to listen, to plan on the run, and to connect with the average soldier were so much on display. Burma in many ways was (and is) a forgotten campaign, and so Slim's capability has been lost in time as the European and Pacific Campaigns have garnered most of the glory. He was probably the best British field commander of the War.

After the War Slim finally got the job for which he had been destined for a long time - Chief of General Staff. It was a difficult time to undertake the role, with the Army moving from a wartime footing to understanding what it's role would be during the Cold War. Slim instituted many reforms during this time.

Then seemingly out of the blue he was asked to be Governor-General of Australia. He took on the role with gusto, and was again a trailblazer, being the first of the "modern" G-Gs, touring the country and being a force for unification, while trying to stay outside of politics.

His final years as Constable of Windsor Castle were ones of enjoyment and social activities, before his decline and death in 1970.

Lewin's book covers this all in appropriate detail, but with little verve or insight - there is a later biography by Robert Lyman which may be better than this one.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Gatton Man by Merv Lilley

 Gatton Man by Merv Lilley

Ringwood, Vic.: McPhee Gribble Publishers, 1994       ISBN 0869143344

I first read Gatton Man many years ago, not long after it was published. I had at the time just read Rodney Hall's Captivity Captive which had begun my long-term fascination with the Gatton murders. On my first reading of Gatton Man I was convinced that Lilley may have indeed been the son of the murderer, but on this re-reading many years later it seems to me a much thinner claim.

Which is not to dismiss this book as a waste of a reader's time. Part memoir, part biography of his father, Gatton Man is a story of the other Australia that doesn't make it into what we tell ourselves of our white beginnings - no pastoral stations and glorious cattle runs, no comfortable suburban life with weekends at the beach or the footy, but a life of hard scrabble on small acreages, scratching the barest of livings, and growing up with little education and fated to live a hard life amongst hard people.

In Lilley's case, the small acreage he grew up on was near Rockhampton in Queensland. He was the youngest of four children, who all worked (slaved) for their psychopathic father, W.J. Lilley. W.J. was extremely violent, a schemer who charmed his way into and out of trouble, and was a pederast and a rapist. Merv Lilley's tales (the memoir is more a series of vignettes than a chronological narrative) are about the drudgery of work mixed with fear of what W.J. might do, a world in which each child looked out for themselves before anything or anyone else. Lilley's mother did what she could, always at the risk of a thrashing from W.J., which could (and did) occur at any moment.

The other characters around the farm, itinerant workers, tramps, tin scratchers and gold miners and other farmers, created an ever-changing dynamic of people who could help, might need help themselves, who could be a friend or an enemy depending on the situation. Merv managed to extract himself from the situation entirely by joining up in World War Two. The "skills" he learned from growing up, both with his fists and his brain, served him well during his stint in uniform, and later when he became a communist and committed union activist around Queensland (Merv Lilley eventually married the author Dorothy Hewett and became a member of the left-wing literary scene in Australia).

All of this is fascinating and worth reading in and of itself but what of Lilley's central claim about his father, that he was the perpetrator of the triple murder of the Murphy siblings at Christmas time 1898 near the town of Gatton? The first section of the book provides the reader with a study of a man who could certainly be capable of such a crime. The second section attempts to prove the case.

This section of the book quotes verbatim quite a lot of evidential statements made to the commission of enquiry into the murders. Lilley is very interested in a man called William Day, who arrived in the Gatton area just before the murders, gaining work with Clarke, the butcher. Day left soon after the murders. He was, as they would say now, a "person of interest" at the time, and as Lilley lays out the various statements of detectives and others at Gatton, it does seem to a reader that he would indeed be a prime suspect in the case. After Day moved on, he eventually disappeared into history, although there were people who said he joined up to fight in South Africa and was killed there.

Lilley suggests that it was in fact his father that was William Day. He explains how he may have come up with the nom-de-plume, links the witnesses statements as to Day's cantankerous character to his father's own ways, and lets us know that his father did join up to fight the Boers. Lilley posits that W.J. did so to escape any heat that might be lingering in the investigation, and to cover his tracks. On his return, so Merv writes, he was careful for quite a few years with how and where he presented himself, until he was sure that he no longer could be linked to William Day or to Gatton.

While this all seems plausible, Merv has no hard evidence to back up any of his claims. On this re-reading, I see much more clearly the straw men that Lilley has set up so that he can knock them down all the more easily. He has no confession, he really has nothing to hang his hat on which could be accepted in a court of law as proof, beyond the fact that his father was working itinerantly around Queensland at the time, vaguely fits the description given by (some of) the witnesses who may have seen the killer, and that he soon joined up to go to South Africa. There would have been many young men who could fit that bill.

So, while Gatton Man fails in its main premise, it is still a wonderful insight into pioneering Australia, as well as into one of the most notorious crimes of the Nineteenth Century, which to this day remains unsolved.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - To the Islands by Randolph Stow

 To the Islands by Randolph Stow

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975 (first published 1958)     ISBN 0140700013

There can be little doubt that Randolph Stow is in the top tier of Australian novelists. His works are in turn spiritual, allusive and wonderfully descriptive. Tourmaline is one of the best Australian books I have ever read, and The Merry-go-Round in the Sea is universally recognised as a great coming-of-age novel. To the Islands is another remarkable book, and it's astonishing he wrote a novel with such insight into aging and the approach of death when he himself was only in his mid-twenties.

(Before I go any further I'll mention that Stow heavily revised his novel for the 1982 re-publication: this review is of the first version of this book, published by Penguin in the 1970s.)

Stow quickly sets the scene in this book: a remote mission settlement in the north of Western Australia, where the long-serving superintendent Heriot has lost his faith in the ability of the government or the church to improve the conditions of the native inhabitants. We learn that he lost his wife and pregnant daughter over the years, believing his daughter was killed by her husband Rex. We learn in the first pages that Rex has just returned to the mission for the first time since Heriot's daughter's death.

When Heriot hears of Rex's return, his bitterness and anger overflows, and in a fit of anger confronts Rex during a cyclone and leaves believing he has killed him. He flees the mission during the storm, but is followed by one of the natives, Justin. Heriot had intended to commit suicide, which Justin's presence prevents, and so they journey through the country together. The journey, for Heriot is physical, mental and spiritual. He by turns strips away the layers of his personality, his grief and his anger. He is assisted in the process by Justin's presence - Justin's purity of spirit and focus on what is important in life help Heriot to move to a place of peace, where he no longer is angry with what has happened to him, or at the petty injustices that occurred during his life. At the end, by the sea, almost in sight of the Islands (the mythical Islands that the dead travel to in the native beliefs of the area), he is ready to pass on, acknowledging that "my soul is a strange country."

Interspersed with Heriot's journey is the story of the search for him undertaken by staff and natives from the mission. It turns out that Heriot's attack had not killed Rex, who joins the search, reflecting on what he has done wrong and hoping for a reconciliation, which does occur after a fashion.

To the Islands is many things, one of which is a foray into and an examination of the ethics of white colonialism in Australia. As the narrative develops, we learn that Heriot originally joined the mission to expiate the racial guilt he felt over not being able to forestall a massacre of the local black population which occurred in the 1920s. Heriot was the first of a new generation of whites that entered the black story at that time, determined to help Aborigines rather than kill them, even if that help was paternalistic and ineffective. Now, at the time described in the book, Heriot is the last man standing of that generation, and dealing with the ascent of the next generation: moving from paternalism to a more partnership-based relationship. The Aboriginals too, embodied in the character of Rex, are becoming more assertive in that relationship, beginning to demand to be heard, and to have agency in their own lives.

Heriot has spent so long and put so much into the mission that it has hollowed him out - he cannot connect with the new generation of white residents, but because of the approach the mission took with the natives he has no true and meaningful friendships with them either, even though Stow makes it clear during Heriot's journey that Justin, with his uncomplicated loyalty and love, could have been such a friend.

Stow captures and describes many things in this book - the tragedy of the circumstances of the native peoples, the experience of a man losing his reason to live and suffering a complete breakdown, the feeling of despair that comes when there is nothing to be done. The simple depth of this story is wonderful - I emphasise that Stow was only about 23 when he wrote this, which takes my breath away.

Stow's skills in descriptive writing are immense - this is a big story in a short book, with description of the physical world and the mental world within concise, but with a limpid clarity that makes you go back to try and work out how he did it.

This is a marvellous book. Highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

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 - Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

 Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated from the French by Robert Baldice

London: Penguin Books, 1990 (first published in French in 1938, this translation first published 1963)

ISBN 0140181806

My first foray into Sartre, and Sartre's first novel. A novel that I'll mull over for quite some time. A story of angst, a struggle to find the meaning of - or at least some meaning in - life. The claim on the back cover of the edition I read is that this is Sartre's first foray into the ideas and philosophy that became known as existentialism. The novel takes the form of a diary of Antoine Roquentin, who is temporarily residing in Bouville where he is undertaking research into a biography that his is writing of an aristocrat from the Revolutionary era.

Antoine is going through a crisis, through which he is stripping away the layers of his life one-by-one. As the diary moves on he becomes less and less sure of his place in the world, of his views about his fellow man and society more generally, and finally about the physical world itself.

He grapples with these questions via interactions with people in the town, in the cafes, the library and on the street, and with the physical buildings, parks and trees that surround him. What does it mean to be a person - if the present is the only thing that actually exists, how can a human life have a trajectory or meaning (we create ourselves and the world through storytelling).

But what is it that we are telling ourselves? How can we be sure of anything when the past doesn't exist or things are merely things and cannot hold other meanings? "Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance." The book, and Antoine, seem to be heading to the most nihilistic of endings - Antoine even moves beyond the idea of suicide, as to do the deed is just as meaningless as anything else.

The climax of the diary is Antoine meeting his former girlfriend Anny in Paris. She has come to the same conclusions about life as Antoine, and is resigned to "mere existence". Antoine hopes for some sort of reconciliation, as during the meeting he realises that he has in fact missed her presence, but their meeting concludes with Anny explaining how that part of their life is over. Having long since realised that his book is pointless, Antoine returns to Bouville one last time before moving to Paris, and, in what I see as a deliberate ironical twist, begins to think about writing a different sort of book, a book very similar to the one the reader is reading...

Nausea is, I think, both a product of its time and its author. Sartre's existentialism - Antoine's ennui and disaffection - spring from the trauma of World War One: what is meaning after such slaughter, what meaning can the past have and what does the future look like when the old certainties no longer hold? It is also a young man's book. Many of Antoine's insights are not revelatory to someone older, so I wonder if some of the dramatic impact of the thought in this novel was lost on me. I actually bought this for my eighteen year old son who has an interest in philosophy, so I will be interested in his reaction once he has read it.

As someone who has read quite a bit of modernist fiction, it is interesting that so many different people in Britain and Europe were working with fiction in a similar way at a similar time - it really does reflect a change in how people (middle-class people to be sure) viewed themselves, society, and the world at large. In my opinion Nausea fits into that tradition.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

 Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

London: Jonathan Cape, 1998              ISBN 0224051709

A novel that was not at all what I expected and perhaps an outlier in terms of winners of the Booker Prize. This is the first Ian McEwan book I have read, and for some reason I had in my mind that he was only a writer of serious, "worthy" and dense fiction. Thinking about that I wonder if that's because I formed an opinion entirely from looking at the covers of his books, not to mention the portentous (usually one-word) titles.

So to Amsterdam, with its image of nineteenth-century duellists on the cover of my (second) hardback edition. The first pages of the book, where four lovers of the same woman (Molly) attend her funeral, are indeed portentous. The lovers are: an editor of a London newspaper, a famous composer, the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom and Molly's husband, a publisher.

We soon learn that Vernon (the editor) and Clive (the composer) are friends even if they were rivals at one stage for Molly's affections. We learn that both of them loathe Julian (the Foreign Secretary) both for his politics and the fact that he took Molly away from them. Naturally they feel unkindly toward George (the husband) for officially "winning" Molly, and for refusing them permission to visit during the final days of her illness, which we learn was both physically and mentally degrading.

In the next section of the novel the reader discovers that Vernon is engaged in a battle with his staff to turn around his paper's fortunes - he intends to take it more "downmarket", to the disgust of much of the longstanding staff ("the Grammarians"). Clive meanwhile is working on a commission to write a symphony. Rocked by the manner of Molly's death, Clive asks Vernon if he would see Clive euthanized if he sunk to Molly's level. Vernon agrees, on the proviso that Clive would do the same for him.

Meanwhile George, who happens to have a financial interest in the paper Vernon runs, shows Vernon some pictures Molly had taken, of Julian in drag, which as it turns out is his secret vice.. Vernon realises this is his chance to destroy Julian personally and politically. He goes to Clive for advice and they have a blazing argument - Clive cannot see Julian's point of view at all.

Clive goes to the Lake District to try and get inspiration to finish his symphony all the time brooding over his row with Vernon. While walking, Clive witnesses a man attacking a woman at the very moment he receives the inspiration he needs to finish his symphony. Instead of helping the woman, he chooses to write down his thoughts.

Vernon goes ahead with the plan to publish the photos of Julian, and the pre-publicity begins to turn around the paper's fortunes. A junior staffer comes to him to let him know that much of the staff is in fact behind him but too fearful of the Grammarians to speak out, which fortifies Vernon. However, the day before publication Julian's wife holds a press conference where she reveals the photographs and stands by her husband. Julian has been out-manoeuvred by his junior staff who takes over the paper. Clive sees the paper and is disgusted in Vernon and sends him a postcard stating he should be sacked.

Meanwhile, thinking back to a conversation with Clive about his trip, Vernon realises that Clive had witnessed an attack from a serial rapist, and rings Clive to tell him to go to the police. Clive refuses because he is in the middle of finishing his symphony. Another argument ensues, and Vernon rings the police to let them know Clive was a witness.

These actions destroy the friendship, with both Clive and Vernon (illogically) feeling that the other had sabotaged their careers. It's here the story turns to farce. They both independently determine that the other had gone mad, and so under the terms of their pact it was their duty to euthanize the other.

They meet in Amsterdam, where Clive is rehearsing his symphony (which is a failure because Vernon had sent the police around just as Clive was inspired for a grand finale to the piece, which he never got to complete). Both of them have employed dodgy euthanasia doctors to do each other in, which is duly what happens.

The novel ends with Julian and George escorting the bodies home. While riding out the photograph scandal and staying in parliament, Julian's dreams of becoming Prime Minister are dashed. George has the final lines, relishing his "victory" over the other lovers, and contemplating a memorial service for Molly where his relationship with her takes centre stage.

The story is clearly absurd, yet it is compulsively readable. It starts very much as a novel of middle-class manners and morals, populated by the sort of people you might meet in a book by Le Carre. McEwan has indulged in his love of music and the countryside with the character of Clive - we are treated to many pages of description of composing, and walking through the Lake Country, which well convey the deep sense of joy that can come from those activities. McEwan also has a fine grasp of the particularities of middle-class England which he describes well.

Is there deeper meaning in this book? It's a short book with a strong narrative drive, but it does delve into the meaning of friendship, the moral choices we make, and how we have an endless capacity to deceive ourselves. Vernon thinks he's outsmarting everyone while he's being outsmarted by his junior, Clive starts to think that he is a genius, only for the reader to be told at the end of the novel that his symphony was a pastiche.

The fragility of friendship and our failure to grasp other's point of view are also on display, coming from an impossibility to truly know one another - "[w]e lay mostly submerged, like ice floes with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white." Ultimately the book centres around the moral choices the characters make - while he takes all this to absurd lengths, he makes his points with sharp painful jabs - the choices make the reader gasp at times.

All that being written, I'm not sure how to take this novel - is it a comment on middle-class morals, is it a comment on being wary of judging other's choices, or is it just a good, darkly humorous, story? It's definitely a page-turner but perhaps, for a Booker winner, a little too lightweight. A good novel, but not a great one.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Henry Lawson: the Man and the Legend by Manning Clark

 Henry Lawson: the Man and the Legend by Manning Clark

Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995  (first published 1978 as In search of Henry Lawson)

ISBN 0522846955

There is no doubt that Henry Lawson is one of the formative figures in the great flowering of Australian literature that bloomed from the 1880s through to the early years of the Twentieth Century, and one of the writers to describe what it was like to actually live in Australia during this time, especially in the Bush.

His life in many ways was a long drawn out tragedy - the life of an alcoholic writer - early promise, a period of intense successful activity, and a long decline to an inevitable early death. Although their stories are different, the arc of Lawson's life is similar to other such writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald (You can read my review of The Thirsty Muse, which goes into detail about these three writers and others, here).

Lawson very much saw himself in his moments of grandeur as the voice of Australia, as did the author of this biography of him. Manning Clark saw himself as an oracular historian of our land, with his theories of "enlargers" and "straighteners" and a view of Australian history that was intensely nationalist. These views, aligned with Clark's orotund and florid prose style, mean that this book is at times lop-sided, more difficult to read than it needs to be, and conclusions reached that don't necessarily follow the known facts.

Firstly I have to address misogynism - not Lawson's, but Clark's. He consistently downplays or slurs the women in Lawson's life, particularly his mother Louisa. Louisa Lawson was a pioneer for the rights of women in Australia, a successful businesswoman, and a litterateur in her own right (there is a great biography of her written by Brian Matthews, which I have reviewed here), but Clark paints her as the ultimate straightener in Lawson's life. On the other hand, Clark praises Lawson's father, who was an itinerant drunk. He doesn't describe Lawson's wife Bertha in a kind light either, although she worked hard as she could for Henry and especially their children. It's very noticeable and very odd, and an indication that Clark has a particular story to he wishes to tell, rather than necessarily following where the story leads him.

Clark sees Lawson in this book as a genius with a terrible flaw (the "monster" - alcohol). In terms of literary output, Clark sees the short stories - especially those written in the 1890s about the Bush - as the pinnacle of his achievements, comparing them in some ways to Chekhov and Dostoyevsky in their insights into human nature and the struggle to survive. He also shows how they reveal a developing purely Australian character type, which Lawson's stories helped solidify as the mythical "true Aussie" - phlegmatic, tough, and always ready to help his mates in their times of trouble.

His poetry gets less praise from Clark: although he lauds the sentiments, he notes that in terms of craftsmanship he was somewhat lacking - his disease meant that he quite often would dash off verse (especially later in his life) for money.

Indeed for his whole life money (the lack of it) was a problem for Lawson. He was unable to hold down any "normal" job, and as he continually pointed out there was not enough money in poetry and prose in Australia to make a living. This led him to write for newspapers both as a regular job (with The Boomerang in Queensland) and also to contribute to muck sheets such as The Truth. As he descended into full-blown alcoholism he took to begging and borrowing from friends and strangers to not only pay for the drink, but maintenance for his wife and children (the failure to do so landed him in jail on more than one occasion).

Clark is desperate in this biography to portray Lawson as a true great, a gifted genius with real insight into the human condition. I think that he fails to make the case, even though he has skewed this version of Lawson's life to try and do so. Which is not to state that Lawson was a minor figure - far from it.

Is this book a successful biography of Henry Lawson? On so many levels it isn't... yet, it has given me the desire to go back and read his stories and poetry again, so it isn't all bad.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hitler's Army by Omer Bartov

 Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich by Omer Bartov

New York: Oxford University Press, 1991                        ISBN 0195068793

This book was written at a hinge-point in our modern history: published in 1991 when the certainties of Cold-War Europe were disappearing and a new united Germany was allowed to come to be. This change in the political scene led to a wellspring of historical effort and post-revisionism about Germany's recent history. It had suited Cold-War confrontation to paint the horrors of the Third Reich as the result of an appalling dictatorship imposed on an unwilling populace - the Germans were all "victims" of the Nazis. This view posited that the soldiers that served in Hitler's army were not Nazis or Nazi sympathisers, did not willingly partake in the horrors of the regime, and were in many respects dupes of the hierarchy, such was the revisionist history of the mid Cold-War era.

In Hitler's Army Bartov sets out to question this idea, positing that - especially on the Eastern Front - the Wehrmacht was indeed more than willing to engage in criminal acts, spurred by an internalization by the troops of the tropes of Nazi propaganda and ideology.

Bartov's first steps in setting out this argument require him to dispel the idea that the Wehrmacht was merely an army rather than an instrument of Hitler's will. He demolishes the idea that Germany fought for so long because a) they were highly mechanized, and b) the army was organized around a "primary group" of soldiers drawn from the same area, and that these two things helped make them better fighters.

Through the use of simple statistics Bartov successfully demolishes both positions. Even in June 1941 when Germany invaded Russia, it was the Soviets who were the more mechanized army. This gap widened dramatically as the Germans failed to replace lost materiel and the Russians (and Americans via Lend-Lease) massively increased their production.

The staggering losses of men during the war in Russia (losses which rapidly rose from the very beginning of Operation Barbarossa) very quickly made the idea of a "primary group" impossible to maintain. In fact even by 1943 many groups were already ad-hoc, with whole regiments disappearing and joining with other remnants into "battle-groups".

So, if the revisionist historians were wrong: that it was not technical prowess and group cohesion that kept the Wehrmacht in the field, what was it that did? This is the major focus of Hitler's Army. Bartov contends that far from being duped by the Nazis, many (most?) soldiers duped themselves, by twisting reality to the point where they almost saw the War backwards. Soldiers saw Russian brutality and squalor at the Front as confirming what their propaganda had told them, without reflecting that what they were seeing was the brutality and squalor inflicted on the Russians by Germany.

They even came to believe in a sense that they were engaged in a preventative war, stopping the invasion of Europe by the Untermensch. The soldiers came to believe that they had a civilizing mission (even while destroying villages, massacring Jews and "Partisans") and so became increasingly frustrated when Russians continued to fight. 

This combined with an almost religious belief in the rightness of Hitler became in the end a fatal self-delusion: for example the thought that Hitler would sacrifice his soldiers pointlessly (in Stalingrad for example) was too absurd to be believed, so it wasn't.

Some of this thinking - this self-delusion - has an internal rationality when looked at from the viewpoint of an individual soldier. No soldier can find it easy to admit that their sacrifice will be in vain, or is in pursuit of an evil cause. Irrational belief in a final victory when all the evidence suggests the opposite must be maintained to avoid despair. These are in some ways natural responses.

As is the attempt after the defeat to try and deflect any responsibility for their actions, or indeed responsibility for believing in the cause. When your victors in pursuit of their own ends allow that deflection to stand, and indeed re-use some of the same men in rebuilding German armed forces, then alternatives to the truth easily become the accepted version of events.

A lot of the above is now well known and accepted by the serious student of Nazism and World War Two, but in 1991 Bartov was one of those scholars (like Goldhagen and Evans) who brought a new unprejudiced light to bear on the evidence. His arguments are mostly sound.

This is one for the serious student of World War Two.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster

 The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992              ISBN 019285271X

(The text of this edition first published 1989 in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland)

If I check out my DNA profile on Ancestry, it tells me that I'm more than fifty percent Irish. My father's family is almost completely Irish (with a little Danish), while my mother is Scottish, English and Welsh. Because I grew up in my mother's home town rather than my father's, it is the Scottish connections that I absorbed growing up, so I know more history of Scotland than I do of Ireland. In fact the only Irish history I've absorbed is the internecine battles between Catholic and Protestant in Ulster which have been in the news, and the Dublin of James Joyce which has been in my books.

I mean to set out to correct that, and I have started (as you would) with the Oxford history. It's a relatively short book into which to pack a few thousand years of history, and so it's fair to say that parts of the book can seem like a list of "kings" rather than a true history. In fact in many ways, despite attempts by the authors to move away from an "old fashioned" history that focusses on political and military machinations, that's mostly what the reader gets, sometimes to their confusion as the roll-call of petty rulers adds up as one turns the pages.

History is what happens from day-to-day, and it's the job of the historian to try and knock events into shape to tell us a story - particularly in a book like this; a narrative of the creation of a people and a state. The authors in this book question the hackneyed themes of Irish history - the perfidy of the English and the iron control of the Catholic Church over the faithful, and the inevitability of sectarian conflict.

Rather than iron control from over the Irish Sea, this book portrays an England that, while seeking profit for sure, rarely had a coherent strategy for dealing with the land and the people that it had taken centuries to control. It was the internecine warfare between rival chieftains (probably a more appropriate term than kings) that led to the intervention in Irish affairs by the English, who arrived initially with thought of plunder and ongoing riches.

Once the English realised that Ireland was not as rich as was thought, it rapidly became an afterthought in English affairs, only brought to the forefront when rebellion threatened. The Irish began the long process of trying to accommodate themselves to English norms, if they lived East of the Shannon. The more unproductive lands of the West were, generally speaking, left to themselves, which created a wealth and status divide that existed well into the modern era.

It was really only after the Act of Union in 1800 that Irish nationalism began to grow, and that sectarianism became an issue. The Catholics looked for equality, and when moves were made in that direction the Protestants began to fear for their privileged place in society, and the downward spiral of English rule began, culminating in the creation of a "two-state solution" in the twentieth century, which left many of the festering issues unresolved.

This book is clear, but very dry and formal in style, which for me as a neophyte had too much detail without enough explicatory material to make full sense of it. That said, I now feel that I have an overall structure in my mind of Irish history with which to continue my journey.

 

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

London: Fourth Estate, 2010 (first published 2009)     ISBN 9780007230204

Of course I had heard of Wolf Hall before I had read it, after all, who hasn't? It's my contrarian nature rather than anything else that has led to fifteen years elapsing between the publication of this book and my reading of it. To my detriment, I have an irrational reluctance to read prize-winning novels. As is often the case, it was my wife who led me to read this book, and as is usual I'm glad she did because it's a magnificent book (and dare I say a worthy prize-winner...).

Wolf Hall takes as its subject Thomas Cromwell, his rise to power and his machinations in the Court of Henry the Eighth. Specifically, the book covers the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, the annulment of Kathryn of Aragon's marriage to Henry, the rise of Anne Boleyn, and all that this meant for those in the Henrician Court.

The difficulty that arises when a novelist takes on a historical subject is for them to successfully straddle the lines between historical fact, literary necessity, and narrative flow. In some senses Thomas Cromwell is an excellent subject for such treatment. We know what he did when he was in power, just enough about his early life to weave a good tale, but little enough about his character to enable a good writer to go to town.

And Hilary Mantel is a good writer. I haven't read any of her other works, but if they are all this good I will read them all. She deftly creates a believable milieu for the court not only of Henry, but also of Wolsey, and of Cromwell himself. Her use of language is not too old-fashioned, but nor is it jarringly modern. She can evoke a scene or a character in a few words, or if needed spend pages creating the tension required to move the plot forward. Most of all she creates believable characters not only of Cromwell and those around him, but also of Wolsey, More, Kathryn, Anne and Henry himself.

Cromwell is the "hero" of the book, and is by no means portrayed as the heartless reformer that historical legend has given us to believe. He is a man of much experience, and excellent reader of his fellow man (although perhaps not so much of women), not afraid to send men to their death if required, but preferring to take the path of mercy and pragmatism when he can. He is, in this book, a complete and complex man. Mantel delineates all her characters well, giving the reader an understanding of why they have turned into who they are. Anne Boleyn is a creation of her class-climbing and grasping family; Mary Boleyn is a victim of the same family, used as a tool against her wishes. Henry is a creation not only of his family history, but has also been enabled by Wolsey. Wolsey thought he could control Henry to his own advantage, right up until the moment he couldn't. Cromwell was intelligent and ruthless enough to step in and enable Henry's wishes when no-one else could.

Of course we the reader know the outcome of this saga, but Mantel is adept at portraying the story and history on the move with many possible outcomes, not just the one that came to pass.

Wolf Hall really is a wonderful book on every level. Highly recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

- some quotes from the book that made it into my commonplace book are listed below -

"Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's uncollected sins."

"There it is: if you are so lenient with yourself as to insist on living with a woman, then for the sake of your soul you should make it a woman you really don't like."

"At some point he must have slept. When daylight came, the room felt so empty it was empty even of him."

"He doesn't believe that the dead come back; but that doesn't stop him feeling the brush af their fingertips, wing tips, against his shoulder."

"Flint-face and keen-eyed, he is lean as a gnawed bone and as cold as an axe head."

"His eyes are drawn unwillingly to the cheese; it is pitted and wobbling, like the face of a stable boy after a night out."

"But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to complain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frighten people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires."

"... it's all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it's no good at all if you don't have a plan for tomorrow."

"If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy;"

Book Review - Boon: in the Firing Line by David Boon and A. Mark Thomas

 Boon: in the Firing Line an autobiography with A. Mark Thomas

Sydney: Sun Australia, 1993        ISBN 0725107243

I've read quite a few cricket books and it's fair to say the quality is variable, especially when it comes to cricketers writing about themselves. This "autobiography" falls more toward the disappointing side of the ledger, despite the fact that David Boon is one of the all-time-great Australian cricketers with, I am sure, a fund of excellent stories to tell.

The reasons why this book is not what it could be are several-fold. Firstly, it's a book written before Boon's career was over - much is made of his lost opportunity to score a century at Lord's in 1989, but of course he scored a magnificent 150 on his next visit, so time has healed that wound. There is nothing about his fielding to Warne (famously catching the hat-trick ball in Melbourne), or watching him bowl, because this is a halfway-house of a book.

The main reason why this book is less than it could be is the fact that despite being termed an autobiography, I'm sure David Boon didn't write a word of it. It's clearly a book written by Thomas, based on interviews with the man himself and other people considered significant to the story. Unfortunately, Thomas has a clunky formulaic style of writing, and spends a lot of the time discussing the matches in general, instead of Boon's part in them.

It is also a curiously constructed book - a brief chapter on formative years, and Boon's time playing for Tasmania, before sections on playing England, the West Indies, and New Zealand before a final section where various people (Geoff Marsh, Richard Hadlee, the commentator Neville Oliver, Boon's wife and his first coach) write their opinions of the man.

Boon is famously a shy man and one of few words, but by far the best parts of the book are when he relates a story about a particular match, with a comment that is simultaneously cutting and funny. The book shows him as a team man first and foremost - a firm friend, but someone who's wrong side you should avoid if possible.

As a cricket tragic of a certain age (the same generation, if slightly younger) than David Boon, the description of particular matches and players brings back some great personal memories of watching those series, through both painful and glorious times for the Australian cricket team.

It's just a shame that the book provides no real insights into Boon the man, or Boon the player. I picked this book up for two dollars in my local op-shop, and that's about the worth of it.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Be

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