The Scramble for Africa: White Mans
Conquest of the Dark Continent from
1876-1912 by Thomas Pakenham
Excellent; Reading It For The Third Time...
White Mans Conquest of the Dark Continent
from 1876 to 1912
Personal Review: The Scramble for Africa: White Mans
Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876-1912 by Thomas
Pakenham
This really is a great book. No matter where you are in the book, you can
go back to the title page of each chapter and get the exact dates that the
chapter is covering.

The author does an outstanding job moving the story along
chronologically, literally in some places month-by-month, but never getting
bogged down.
This is not dry history; Pakenham brings the characters to life: Livingstone,
Stanley, Brazza, Gordon, et al. Really, really well done.
Every so often, while reading, one has to step back and look at big picture,
and the author provides great opportunities to do so. Occasionally one has
to recall history before 1876 to make sense of the European interest in
Africa.
1. Portugal needed west Africa to supply slaves for sugar cane industry in
Brazil.
2. England needed strategic sites in Africa for commercial
interests/maintain British Empire: Suez Canal, around the Cape, and to
some extent, down the west Coast.
3. France, little interest in colonial activity, but reluctantly forced into it to
counter Britain.
4. Germany, got in a bit late, but under Bismarck, the late years, the
Germans panicked, thinking the "door to Africa" was closing.
Pakenham does a great job explaining why/how the division of Africa
occurred. Once the colonies devolved into independence in the modern
era... well, that's a completely different story.
But if you want to see how/why the borders of today's African nations
developed, this is a great book.
I recommend the softcover, available at discount book stores, and carry it
with you on your flights, reading a chapter a day, but making marginal
notes to remind you of the big points when you start up reading again the
next day.
Most fun: reading this in light of post 9/11 -- Africa was the frontier for pan-
Islamism, and explains much of the current world issues.
This was first published in 1991. By that time, the Cold War was waning,
and the Mideast and Islamic issues were taking center stage. It makes me
think that the 2000 - 2008 American government having a Russian
specialist as SecState resulted in the missteps the US might have taken
during the past decade.
By the way, reading this history (especially the early chapters on west
Africa) after having just read Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter,"
really made the latter that much more interesting.

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