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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a readable introduction to some African history,
By Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The dark kingdoms: The impact of white civilization on three great African monarchies (Hardcover)
The subtitle of this work is "the impact of white civilization on three great African monarchies". The author states that many African kingdoms succumbed to the pressure of a new civilization and new technology. Some tried to adapt to the new ways, others retreated or fought against them. It mattered little which tactic they adopted. Most African kingdoms disappeared under the onslaught of European colonialism. A few survived, but always as puppets or anachronisms living at the mercy of a colonial power. Scholefield's aim is to tell the story of three such kingdoms---the old kingdom of Congo, Dahomey, and Lesotho---widely separated geographically, but sharing similar struggles. He does so on the basis of English language sources only.South African-born author of seven novels by 1974, Alan Scholefield comes to comparative history with a gift for story-telling and capturing interesting details. THE DARK KINGDOMS is certainly well-written and will keep your attention. Whether or not it is professional history is another question. I would say that this volume is excellent for whetting one's appetite for a knowledge of African history, for getting students interested in various questions in the field, and as a starting point for further readings. However, the author does not stick to his topic, often wandering into byways and circumlocutions that are fascinating, but produce no ammunition for his stated aim of describing the impact of Europe on Africa. The tendency is most acute in the section on Dahomey, where Richard Burton, his life and activities in Africa take over from the matter at hand. I felt that Scholefield really does not say what impact Europe had on Dahomey, other than a kind of postscript in which he tells how the French finally took over, while his chapter was entirely on the English ! The chapter on Lesotho and its relations with English, Afrikaaners, and other African peoples is best, perhaps because the story is most familiar to the author. In addition, too much time may have been spent detailing lurid episodes of cannibalism, ritual murder, the slave trade, tribal wars, etc. This always draws in readers, true, but is it necessary for a serious history ? In conclusion, I cannot say THE DARK KINGDOMS is bad. There are interesting illustrations and three decent maps. The author attempted to be fair in his portraits, he wrote interestingly, and I enjoyed the book. Is it good history ? Did he write what he said he was going to write ? These questions made me hesitate to give it four stars, but I do so on the basis of readability.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dated but still interesting look at Africa,
By Here is how Scholefield judged the kingdoms at the end of their periods of first (and greatest) impact from the whites: "Unlike the Old Kingdom of Congo, which opened its arms to the white man too wide, unlike the Kingdom of Dahomey, which shut its doors too firmly, Moshesh (of Lesotho) was a man who understood whites." Moshesh maintained independence, balancing off Britons and Afrikaaners. Today, Congo has remains mired in the savagery that gripped the land when its ancient rulers proved unable to cope with the ambitions that Portuguese weaponry roused in them. Lesotho, despite having a chance to show how an African polity could develop differently from those that had suffered a colonial overlordship, was little different from the ex-colonial states until AIDS swept into the country. While Lesotho is not nearly the worst state in Africa, it isn't doing well, either, and it had to go through nearly the same Marxist thuggery as the average "emerging" nation. Who would have guessed that Dahomey (now Benin), the Slave Coast, the continuous cannibal feast, would now look like the most modern state in West Africa. Admittedly, that's a low bar, but still. Scholefield, a novelist from South Africa, is a graceful and intelligent writer. "The Dark Kingdoms" does not pretend to break new ground nor to present in-depth history of societies. He uses the accounts of the early European visitors, naturally personal. The first encounters were dominated by the personalities of a few men, mostly Africans. What the majority of the people thought did not count for much. With local dressing, the response of local strongmen (and not just in Africa) was to get access to superior weaponry to enlarge their petty sovereignties. The Congolese seem to have also been the most sincere in adopting the outsiders' religion. They ended up in a nasty dynastic war. According to more academic historians, Congo had had something of a centralized government, with a capital that was, just barely, able to live off a typically unproductive countryside. The wars destroyed the capital and the country was too poor ever to build a replacement. This is about the condition today, too. In Dahomey, firearms lifted a minor group, formerly oppressed by better-situated neighbors, into impressive oppressors themselves. Rather like the Aztecs, nobody in the vicinity cried when Dahomey stumbled over its succession problems. Dahomey/Benin's current status as a poor but comparatively free and liberal state is so odd that it requires considerable explanation. Nothing in Scholefield's exposition throws any light on it. His section on Lesotho comes from a much later period, better documented. Moshesh had some of his sons educated, so more of an African version of events is available, too. Scholefield is a great admirer of the old murderer. If ever a country had a father, it was Moshesh. One of Africa's biggest problems is that its indigenous social/political units were so small. Modern states have to be big, and Africa has had a hard time scaling up. Lesotho is just a tiny place even after Moshesh's empire-building, with a population a little over 2 million. "The Dark Kingdoms" also serves as a marker document of how the outside world, or at least an educated, sympathetic individual in it, thought of Africa as it started "emerging."
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