Saul David
Conquer & Divide
Land of Tears: The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa
By Robert Harms
Basic Books 537pp £30
The story of the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ – the period between roughly 1876 and 1912, when European nations added almost 10 million square miles of the continent and 110 million new subjects to their overseas colonial possessions – is well known to British readers. Less familiar is the tragic sequence of events at the heart of the process: the ruthless exploitation of the Congo River basin by Zanzibari traders, King Leopold II of Belgium and the French government.
A huge area roughly the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River, the Congo basin rainforest was characterised by its many languages, ethnic groups and distinctive ‘small-scale political units with flexible forms of leadership and authority’. But all this would change in the late 19th century as intruders arrived from both east and west. ‘From the East African coast’, writes Robert Harms, a professor of history and African studies at Yale, ‘came Arab and Swahili traders – subjects of the sultan of Zanzibar – in search of ivory and slaves. They were followed closely by British explorers looking for the source of the Nile, a quest that led Henry Morton Stanley to follow the Congo River downstream to the Atlantic Ocean in 1877.’ That same year, the Italian explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, with support from the government of France, entered the watershed of the Congo River from the west by traversing the Crystal Mountains.
It was the start of a brutal process of exploitation. Merchants
in search of ivory, captives, and rubber, who operated under the authority of the sultan of Zanzibar, the king of Belgium, or the government of France, entered the rainforest to strip it of its bounty. Ordinary people
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm