The Scramble For Africa by Thomas Pakenham (1990) & The State of Africa by Martin Meredith (2005)
The Scramble For Africa. This is just fascinating – surely one of the strangest few decades in history. Other than the pretty horrific behaviour of the colonists – who, perhaps Brazza excepted, were tremendously low-rent graspers and cheats (as well as plain brutal) – what most strikes me is how shoestring the whole business was. Regions the size of France “claimed” by a few dozen troops, etc. I’ve actually read this before – but the weird format (it’s all chronological, rather than by area) meant I struggled to piece together the whole arc of regions like the Congo. So I only read the central Africa sections in sequence this time, about half the book.
The State of Africa. This dovetails almost perfectly, and is basically a complete history of post-colonial Africa. It is a bit dispiriting. One interesting take is Meredith puts the blame fairly squarely on the corruption of the various “Big Men” dictators that arose and ruled almost immediately after independence (the obvious structural problems: absurd borders, diverse cultures lumped together, lack of infrastructure etc are of course dwelt on too). But he also emphasises the good character of plenty of them before they got into power: I was cheering on Nkrumah in the Gold Coast/Ghana in his impassioned campaign for independence and suffering arbitrary imprisonment, but on Meredith’s account it seems like that almost immediately upon assuming the presidency, he became aloof and isolated. Apart from “power corrupts”. I find this degradation of character – how do brave, virtuous people go on to do really terrible things – pretty interesting, and it’s sort of glossed over.