Tag Archives: Imperialism

Thomas Packenham, The Scramble for Africa

Pakenham, Thomas. The scramble for Africa. New York: Perennial, 2003. Print.

Good book for talking about history as narrative, particularly for how the alleged need to “tell a good story” allows one to get away with all sorts of stuff. Is one looking through narrative in order to “compose up” an analysis of causality that derives out of the sequence of events? Or is narrative its own reward?

E.g., is there in the detail of a narrative account of the Scramble either a good theory of its causation or a significant argument against various theories? I think both, actually. The narrative account almost intrinsically lends itself to a Robinson-and-Gallagher approach: the peripheral actors seem so dominant in the events, at least as Packenham tells it. But note the two narratives that get mostly boxed out: you could also tell a narrative of interstate relations set in Europe in which the Scramble is an “episode” and you could tell a much more scattered, less coherent story of African initiatives, responses, actions, which is what Boahen et al largely set out to do in the UNESCO history. To tell the story as Packenham does is already loading the dice in favor of a R&G style approach in which the empire arises out of various accidents, dispersed ambitions, personal error etc.

Also though this is a story to appreciate independent of the question of whether it supplies a “causal engine” for European colonialism in Africa. But note again the stories it provides: mostly stories of the empowered or engorged agency of various “Europeans in empire”, which actually has a pretty tight feedback loop into “why Europeans wanted to be in imperial situations”, that they imagined (and so produced) a magnification of their importance in the narrative of events.

Worth thinking about the people and specific events to pull out of this, and which people and events do not emerge as “of the Scramble” even though they are active “in the Scramble”. People: Rhodes, Gordon, Faidherbe, Stanley, Leopold, Colenso, Shepstone, Emin Pasha, Ceteshwayo, Mutesa, Wolseley, de Brazza, Gladstone, Courcel, Gambetta, Disraeli, Umar Tall, Bismarck, Muhammed Ahmad (Mahdi), Kirchner, Kirk, Peters, Samori Ture, Mackay, Lugard, Abushiri, Salisbury, Khama, Johnston, Jameson, Yohannes, Menelik, Chamberlain, Lobengula, etc.

So what kind of people do not appear in such a list and yet are important? It’s a list entirely composed of sovereigns, military leaders, and political leaders–absolutely the classic Great Men. There must be another list that is neither Representative or Average Men in opposite (e.g., not Kas Maine) but people with more oblique roles in shaping the Scramble “on the ground”. People also in places that are not the central agonistic theaters of “the Scramble” but that are important to its unfolding, or where actual conquest happens at some other time or fashion.

Also episodes: Anglo-Zulu War, Pioneer Column/Ndebele Uprising, Race for Fashoda, Jameson Raid, Anglo-Boer Wars, Maji-Maji, Emin Pasha Relief Column, etc.–all of them the same kinds of military & occasionally diplomatic events.

Left out: almost all Africans. Even African sovereigns get almost no psychological representation in this account while there is tons of attention to the psychological interiority of Stanley, Rhodes, Colenso, de Brazza, you name it. There’s plenty of people who can be talked about in this way.

Left out: almost all stories that are “in” the Scramble but suggest there are other dynamics or things going on besides the military/diplomatic events.

Left out: readings of or reactions to the Scramble’s events among various (or any) publics save for a few framing statements.

Left out: any sense of the complexity of the periodization of the story–Faidherbe, for example, creeps in, despite acting years earlier, while the lateness of the actual imposition of administrative authority in many territories is almost wholly unacknowledged.

Left out: any territory where something was happening but it didn’t involve dramatic military showdowns.

Etc. It’s such an antiquated kind of history, even for a popular account. Students were shocked it was written in 1991, most of them assumed it was far older. Question is, could someone write a largely narrative account of the Scramble–or even a more analytic/interpretative account that wasn’t just a new overarcing theory of causation like Cain & Hopkins’ “gentlemanly imperialism”, that would read differently than this? I think yes. Certainly of episodes in the Scramble (Parsons King Khama and Emperor Joe for example.)