"Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide (Paperback)

~ Sven Lindqvist (Author), Joan Tate (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sven Lindqvist, a traveler and historian, paints a broad-brush history of European colonialism, especially in Africa. Drawing his title from Joseph Conrad's fable Heart of Darkness, he turns up 19th-century newspaper accounts of British massacres of wounded Sudanese rebels after the siege of Omdurman, of German concentration camps in what was once called Southwest Africa, of a Belgian captain who decorated his flower beds with the heads of recalcitrant plantation workers. These incidents were not unusual, Lindqvist writes. Neither were they thought especially brutal by their perpetrators, for, he argues, colonialism was guided by a doctrine that placed Europe at the top of the evolutionary ladder and regarded non-Europeans as a separate species bound for extinction--a doctrine that found its ultimate expression in the Holocaust. This is an occasionally gruesome and always provocative study.

From The Washington Post

In spare but powerful prose, Lindqvist manages to weave together an impressive variety of themes to point to the continuity between prejudices and acts separated by continents and centuries.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: New Press (April 23, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565843592
• ISBN-13: 978-1565843592
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #323,732 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Horror, June 6, 2001

By	hugh riminton (Sydney) - See all my reviews

This review is from: "Exterminate All the Brutes" (Hardcover)

This short book doesn't attempt to say it all about genocide, racism, imperialism or the current state of Africa - but once you've read it, all those subjects will make a lot more sense.

It's beautifully written. In part it is a travel journal recounting Lindqvist's own slow journey across the Sahara. This is the least developed piece of the narrative, but it gives light relief to the other material. More substantial is Lindqvist's deconstruction of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," the iconic European novel of Africa. With a light touch, Lindqvist sets Conrad's writings in the context of Europe's developing ideas of Africa in the 1890s, as a glorious playing field, a treasure-house to be looted, a distant extension of the intrigues of the European capitals.

At its heart, Lindqvist's extended essay is a history of Europe's colonial instinct for genocide. He argues that Hitler's Holocaust was not an aberration in European history, but rather a logical extension of the policies used by the British in Sudan, the Belgians in the Congo, the French in Mali, and so on. Hitler's only difference was that he sought colonial expansion within the boundaries of Europe (a crime against humanity), rather than overseas (the spread of civilisation).

Lindqvist charts how European imperialists seized on the emerging theories of Charles Darwin to justify genocide on pseudo-scientific grounds. And also how Germany, not initially among the imperialists, spawned the most articulate opponents of colonialism. Later, when Bismarck set out to get an empire of Germany's own, funded by Germany's rising industrial might, the prevailing scientific philosophy in Germany became increasingly racist - setting the ground for Hitler.

People argue that since Lindqvist published this book, monstrous slaughters in Cambodia and Rwanda have destroyed his thesis. Not so. It is not hard to argue that both Cambodia and Rwanda's genocides were a reaction, at least in part, to European or American policies. Even if you choose not to accept that argument, there can be no denying that Lindqvist's fundamental thesis remains. Europeans in Africa (and elsewhere, including Australia) brought with them the civilisation of racism and the gun. All else is unimportant.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing and provocative, March 12, 2002

By	Matthew Cheney (New Hampton, NH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Sven Lindqvist has created here a fascinating, disturbing collage of history, journalism, and memoir -- a sometimes surreal exploration of the European impulse toward genocide.

Lindqvist develops a few theses, but his primary one is that imperialism leads to genocidal actions, and that no slaughter is completely unique when viewed in the context of history. He writes, "Auschwitz was the modern industrial application of a policy of extermination on which European world domination had long since rested."

This is an invaluable book for anyone looking for perspective on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" or 19th century European attitudes toward race and colonialism. It gives a damning picture not only of European actions in Africa, but of the educated European public's indifference to inhumanity. The writing is extremely clear and readable, compulsively so, because Lindqvist's technique is to offer tantalizing strands of ideas, all seemingly unrelated, and then slowly and shockingly bring them together as a whole. The organization and balance of the book's many pieces is magnificent.

There are no clear answers here. Lindqvist digs up a history most people would rather let lie. Its implications about humanity, all of humanity, are dark. But without facing them, we will never cease being accomplices to slaughter.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most disturbing books I have read in some time. ., February 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: "Exterminate All the Brutes" (Hardcover)

. . .and I say this as someone who has spent several years studying military history and is currently going through a period of reading first hand accounts of terrible happenings in Africa (such as "Me Against My Brother"). It adds historical continuity to the Nazi war against the Jews, and unfortunately that continuity leads straight back to Victorian England and other 19th century European powers (and certainly well back into history, but the author doesn't go that far as pointed out by other reviewers) and their "developmental" policies in their colonial empires.

It is an engaging read and structured in an interesting way. I only realized that it was a translated work after I read it, which is a great kudo to the translator. I would actually give it 4.5 stars simply because in many places it is unclear whether he is quoting historical texts without citation or just paraphrasing them, which can be an important distinction to keep clear. But not having so finely a graded scoring system I am erring on the good side.