The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876-1912

Pakenham succeeds in writing a comprehensive history of the scramble for Africa. His writing style is clear and he is an expert at providing just enough juicy historical context and biographical details to keep the reader interested in a very complex subject. To fully understand the scramble, you have to understand domestic realities in the colonizing countries, shifting alliances and rivalries amongst the European powers, and intricate geographical details that played a key role in determining the form and the success of the colonial experiment. Pakenham is strong on providing just enough context on the state of the political rivalries in England, France, and Germany that affected how aggressively the Europeans pursued colonialism.


The focus here is on the scramble for Africa, not the experiences of the Africans, except in areas where the African experience played a big part in shaping the success and policy of the European powers. There's also an emphasis on "scramble", areas where European powers were competing for territory, and little treatment on areas like Mozambique, where Portugal had a longstanding claim for territory. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just the author's choice in determining the scope of this book. Likewise, most of the sources are from the journals of Europeans who participated in the exploration and military campaigns. I'd be interested to know if there's any Afrocentric complement to this treatment of the scramble.

On the other hand, Pakenham's perspective helps make this book an excellent window into pre World War I European history. It's clear how the rivalries involved in the scramble were a major contributor to the nationalism, expansionism, and alliances that set the sides for World War I.

To get the most out of this book, it's best to have access to a good historical atlas to understand the geography. There are a lot of people involved, but I found that I only occasionally needed to refer back to earlier chapters or look up someone's name on wikipedia to keep track of the major themes.

I found this to be well-written history and I strongly recommend this for anyone interested in understanding the motivations and characters behind African imperialism.

4.5 stars

Thomas Pakenham's Scramble for africa is a very good book on a fascinating subject. Colonizing africabegan well before the book's opening 1876 conference hosted by Belgium's King Leopold II, but after this event, according to the book, the "scramble" was on. European nations, primarily Great Britain and France, but also Belgium, Germany, and even Italy, sought territorial gains. This is imperialism at its nadir.

The author implies a hodge-podge, willy-nilly scramble for land that resulted in Europe dominating Africa within a quarter century from the book's 1876 opening. David Livingston, Pierre Brazza, Lord Salisbury, and others based political and professional legacies on what happened in Africa. Great Britain found a way to emerge as the leading colonizer, so one could state they "won" the scramble.

But Pakenham covers nearly every aspect of the European domination of the dark continent. The book is fast-paced and well written. The reader will not be disappointed.

It would be an understatement to write that Thomas Pakenham embraced an ambitious project in crafting a comprehensive, single-volume history of the European colonization of Africa over the course of some four decades a century ago. Few authors could have succeeded after having bitten off so much. Fewer still could have made it accessible to the layman and an immensely enjoyable read at that. Pakenham is the rare talent able to pull off such a feat.

The story Pakenham tells involves countless actors, but at the center of the great conquest from beginning to end is the Belgian King Leopold, whose imperial actions, clothed in the righteous language of development and humanitarianism, did more than anyone else to spur on the exploration and exploitation of Africa. As Pakenham describes him, "Leopold was a Coburg millionaire, a constitutional monarch malgre lui, a throwback from the age of absolutism, with the brain of a Wall Street financier and the hide of an African rhinoceros." From his ostentatious palace at Laeken, Leopold kept a close eye on developments in the exploration of Africa and saw in it his great opportunity to make a fortune, all in the name of the "3 Cs": Christianity, Commerce, and Civilization.

The "3 Cs" served as the foundation for most European imperialist of the time - Henry Stanley, his rival Pierre Brazza, Sir George Goldie, Frederick Lugard and others. A twenty-first century cynic could argue that the European intervention in Africa was motivated by capitalist greed, pure and simple. But Pakenham argues that a genuine desire to help the continent develop through the guiding light of Christianity was a central and perhaps the most important motivating factor in the decision to engage in African adventures by key elements in London, Paris and elsewhere. That said, commerce provided the extra pull that made large-scale action inevitable. After the early reports from Livingstone, himself a genuine and sincere Christian humanitarian, Africa captured the fascination of Europe with the potential of untold riches in this last unexplored frontier on earth. Indeed, the early years of "the Scramble" resembled a stock market bubble as investors rushed in motivated primarily by the fear of losing out by dithering on the sidelines.

One of the more surprising aspects of European colonialism in Africa, especially the British in the early years of the Scramble, is how much they conquered with such little direct government investment. London frequently leveraged private enterprise to do the heavy lifting on the ground and direct foreign investment to develop the local infrastructure. Companies were given charters by London and had the exclusive right to make their fortunes under the protective flag of the British Empire. The most notable examples were Sir George Goldie's Royal Niger Company that exploited the trade in modern day Nigeria and Cecil Rhodes' various enterprises mining diamonds and gold in the republics of South Africa.

The difficult part about Pakenham's "Scramble" is that there are so many actors over so many decades operating on so many fronts that it is a challenge to keep everything straight - Isandlwana, Adowa, Majuba, Khartoum, Fashoda, Omdurman, etc. But Pakenham's prose is so engaging that the reader becomes absorbed and presses on.

In sum, "The Scramble for Africa" is a delightful read and a great overview of an unprecedented exercise in foreign domination and exploitation, the legacy of which we very much live with today. Much of the material is presented at a high level. For instance, Pakenham has also authored an authoritative 500-page history of the Boer War, an event that is covered in "The Scramble" in a mere 25-page chapter late in the book. So those with an interest in specific episodes of African colonialism will be better served with more focused works, but no other book will piece all the parts together so well.

A beautifully written account of the partition of Africa by European imperialism. Though the emphasis is definitely on the British Empire and the author is rather vague on the economic factors involved, this remains an excellent narrative history with many lessons for the present.

I have read much about Africa. As for the colonial period, this book pulls it all together. The author does an excellent job of covering a wide span of history, including military campaigns, political strategy and intrigue and a host of contributing factors to provide a detail review of how colonialism occured and what drove it across the face of Africa. I would love to see another installment by Pakenhan of the subsequent period, addressing the drive for independence and its resulting successes and unfortunate failures.