The Race to Fashoda: European Colonialism and African Resistance in the Scramble for Africa (1988)
Before 1870, the abandoned Egyptian fortress at Fashoda, on an obscure juncture of the White Nile, meant little to the outside world or, indeed. to most Africans. But suddenly, because of emerging rivalries between the Western powers, the rise of European colonialism, and its own strategic location, Fashoda became the focal point of an intense and bloody campaign involving England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. This struggle also, unwittingly gave rise to a burgeoning resistance movement on the part of Black Africa—a movement that would culminate in the independence rebellions of the twentieth century.
Based on a wealth of previously unpublished documents, The Race to Fashoda tells intense, fascinating detail the story of Europe's incursions into Africa in the nineteenth century—and, for the first time, tells it from the perspective of the Africans themselves, many of whom were waging an arduous, often successful war against encroachment. Along the way David Levering Lewis demonstrates how the race to Fashoda, one of the most grueling episodes in the "Scramble for Africa," fostered the European political tensions that would lead inexorably to World War I and forever change the face of the Western world.
Here is a story as complex and stirring as any adventure tale, with a cast of characters to match: the driven, manipulative explorer Henry Mort on Stanley, who slaughtered thousands for the benefit of the front pages back home; African resistance fighters Tippu Tip and Samori Ture among the first to organize their compatriots against the European onslaught; Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, the consummate career officer, who fought the Africans, the British, and his country's unstable political climate to be the first to reach Fashoda—only to be ordered, once there, to hand it over to the British; Herbert Kitchener, Marchand's great rival, whose ingenious railroad brought him closer and closer to victory as the race drew to its climax; Abdullahi, the Sudan's xenophobic khalifa, who paradoxically found himself ruler of the continent's most contested piece of real estate; King Leopold II of Belgium, who pursued his share of the Congo with the sly acquisitiveness of a spoilt child; the shrewd Ethiopian monarch Menilek II, who swiftly learned how to use European vanity and conflicting interests to his own advantage; and the enigmatic Austrian Jew Eduard Schnitzer, who, as "Emin Pasha;" retreated into the jungle and commanded a private native army with all the resourcefulness of Conrad's Mr. Kurtz.
With its dramatic reconstructions and provocative viewpoint, The Race to Fashoda will stand as an insightful, compelling addition to our understanding of this key moment in modern history.