Lindsay Frederick Braun |
Review of Bertrand Taithe, The Killer Trail: A Colonial
Scandal in the Heart of Africa. Oxford/New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2009. Pp. xii, 324. ISBN
978-0-19-923121-8. |
The
heroic idea of the European soldiery in Africa and Asia at the end of
the nineteenth century has been a difficult conceptual foe to defeat
in the popular mind. Imbued through discourse with the essential
spirit of the nation, the explorer-adventurer purportedly represented
the height of industry, morality, and even piety. But episodes of
brutality, scandal, and immorality peppered the entire process of
colonial conquest and rule, raising the question of how colonial
military culture and the ideals of metropolitan Europe really
interacted. In The Killer Trail, Professor Bertrand Taithe
(Manchester) examines the catastrophe of the 1898-1899 Voulet-Chanoine
mission across the colony of French Soudan and considers its
connections to the contemporary Dreyfus Affair and other strands of
European thought to explore the intersection of colonial and
metropolitan politics, society, and culture. In the process, he ably
and accessibly situates this particular military adventure within the
convoluted French (and broader European) psychological and social
experiences of the nineteenth century, but he leaves important
silences in the process.
The
book's core subject is the mission sent east from Senegal in November
1898 towards Lake Chad, under the command of Capt. Paul Voulet and
Lt. Julien Chanoine. Its purpose was to conquer ("pacify") the
local peoples along its route, and, in connection with a force
traveling from the north, bring to heel the military usurper of the
ancient empire of Bornu, Rabih az-Zubayr. In traveling eastward,
however, the mission's columns left behind devastation born of extreme
reprisals and mass abductions, including some technically within the
British-protected Sokoto Caliphate, creating a potential diplomatic
hazard. Voulet and Chanoine were also severe in their treatment of the
African soldiers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) under their
command, going so far as to execute one who was legally a French
citizen.
Ultimately, stories of excesses led French authorities to send Lt.
Col. Arsène Klobb, administrator in Timbuktu, to apprehend the pair
and take charge of the mission. When Klobb caught up with the
Voulet-Chanoine force and its train of "retainers" (including many
slaves forced to serve the mission's porterage, soldiering, or sexual
demands) in July 1899, Voulet had his soldiers shoot down his superior
rather than give up his position. At this point, the classic narrative
suggests that Voulet and Chanoine were clearly insane and had
repudiated France to live as African warlords, but they were killed by
their own soldiers shortly thereafter. The junior subordinates of
Klobb and Voulet (Meynier and Joalland) then together carried the
expedition to a successful conclusion in Bornu, and through victory
escaped further scrutiny of their own brutality.
After
the first chapter retells the tale of Voulet and Chanoine, the
remainder of the book is devoted to understanding and analyzing its
context and content. Taithe states clearly that his purpose is to show
the so-called "insanity" of Voulet and Chanoine "in its true light, in
the midst of many such 'incidents' and as a reflection of what power
and weaponry do to men far away from home" (43). As an accomplished
historian of the French military and
late
nineteenth-century
European culture, Taithe is well equipped to explore the French
colonial military experience as an extension of European society and
culture. Through a bevy of examples from other French expeditions and
military actions of the period, he establishes that atrocities were
relatively widespread and not peculiar to Africa. Succeeding chapters
address broader features of European culture, prevalent ideas about
Africa, and the paradoxes of metropolitan and colonial mores about
slavery and civilization both in France and among other European
powers, clarifying the preconditions and precedents for military
excess. Ultimately, the metropolitan connection circles around the
Dreyfus Affair, as Julien Chanoine's father, the influential General
Jules Chanoine, was a consistent opponent both of Dreyfus and of
critics of his son in the wake of the disaster of 1899. Taithe's
discussion of this intersection—and the crisis of reputation in the
French military at that moment—is adroit, engaging, and enlightening.
The
re-examination of Voulet-Chanoine for the deeper meaning of particular
acts and utterances, and the demonstration of necessary connections to
a bigger picture in France and Europe more widely, thus comprise the
scholarly importance of The Killer Trail. Although the French
cases and their attendant literature are certainly less familiar to
English-speaking readers, most of Taithe's interpretations regarding
the period in general are well known to historians: for example, the
instrumentality of violence to European colonial conquest.[1]
Historians some time ago also recognized the prolongation of slavery
in Africa (and beyond) under other names and in other forms, whether
or not to support colonial rule and the self-aggrandizement of
imperialism's adventurers.[2]
The "moment of revulsion" against colonialism's visible excesses right
around the turn of the twentieth century is well recognized. This
found expression in critiques of colonialism in London and Paris, the
humanitarian urgings of the Congo Reform Association (including
Conrad's Heart of Darkness [1899]), the Ethische Politiek
of The Hague, and, in the United States, Mark Twain's radical
shift to anti-imperialist writing. For a more general readership,
however, many of these points may not be familiar, and Taithe's
analyses have an added currency in light of more recent U.S. and
European military adventures and scandals abroad.
The
major weakness of The Killer Trail is that, despite the
presence of Africans and Africa in the narrative, this is clearly a
history of Europeans, at whose door Taithe ultimately lays the
impulses behind colonial military excess.[3]
Nor does the author claim to be writing an African history, despite
some welcome glimpses of the cultural effects of Voulet-Chanoine and
colonial violence upon African cultures and societies, as in his brief
discussions of Hauka spirit possession (134-35) and of later
literary and film treatments of the Voulet-Chanoine mission (esp.
222-28). He is also clear that the literature he consults usually
ignores African narratives, understandings, and viewpoints, and,
though he is sympathetic to their importance, that limitation shows.
For instance, despite his recognition of colonial policies favoring
tribalization in some colonial systems (81), Taithe uses the term
"tribe" uncritically for African identities with no note of the
complex (and for colonialism, very relevant) baggage the word carries
or the contingent reality it obscures.[4]
He also unapologetically admits to using the archival renderings of
the names of "institutions or places that no longer exist" instead of delving into
Africanist orthography and usage (x). The wisdom of that particular decision
aside, privileging the French colonial archive in this way complicates
Taithe's search for the "true light."
Indeed, Taithe's reliance on archival reading (in France and Senegal)
and period literature may account for some mischaracterizations
relative to Africa. Examples include, in chapter five alone: the
uncritical acceptance of highly dubious Central African slavery
figures from 1889 (147), the disputable and uncited equation of Sierra
Leone and Liberia with the villages de liberté as abject
reservoirs of colonial forced labor (163), and a statement about the
South African War ("Boer War") that places its start in 1898,
misidentifies the Boer republics (the South African Republic and the
Orange Free State) and wrongly labels them "slave-holding" (170). Such
missteps contrast sharply with Taithe's meticulous handling of his
French material, although non-academic readers are unlikely to notice
the imbalance. In addition, much as in The Heart of Darkness
(which Taithe seeks to link with the Voulet-Chanoine adventure),
Africans themselves generally appear in The Killer Trail as
objects to be acted upon, not as subjects. It is strange that those
who bore the brunt of colonial military culture—as victims,
perpetrators, or otherwise—should have little direct agency or voice
in this story.
Bertrand Taithe redirects our focus from an old notion of colonial
military brutality as "insanity," disease, or a fall into "darkness"
contingent on the locale to the perception and reality of that
brutality as arising from the colonizers' own social and cultural
contexts. Readers looking for a history of European military culture
in the age of high imperialism or the forces then shaping French
imperial adventures will find The Killer Trail a pleasure to
read and a spur to re-evaluating their thinking about the period. But
those expecting a full assessment of the African contexts with due
attention to African voices will be disappointed. Taithe convincingly
upturns some old and pernicious myths about colonialism and its heroes
and scoundrels, but he reinforces the old centrality of the colonizers
as prime motivators in so doing.
The
University of Oregon
lfbraun@uoregon.edu
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[1] See, e.g., Crawford Young, The African
Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale
U Pr, 1994) 90-113.
[2] A couple of geographically relevant early
examples are Paul Lovejoy and Jan Hogendorn, Slow Death for
Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897-1936
(Cambridge: CUP, 1993); Martin A. Klein, "Slavery and Emancipation
in French West Africa," in Klein, ed., Breaking the Chains
(Madison: U Wisconsin Pr, 1993) 171-96. Taithe cites Klein's
Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge:
CUP, 1998) on the subject at least twice, although the book does not
appear in his bibliography.
[3] I am aware that referring to "Africa" and
"Africans" collectively (as with the terms "Europe" and
"Europeans") implies monolithic, oppositional categories
inadequate for analyzing the fine grain of the colonial encounter.
I do so only in the interest of concision.
[4] For a signal intervention on this point, see
Leroy Vail, "Introduction: Ethnicity in Southern African History,"
in Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa
(Berkeley: U California Pr, 1991) 1-19. More recently, see Thomas
Spear, "Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of Invention in British
Colonial Africa," Journal of African History 44 (2003)
3-27.
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