The Scramble for Africa
Thomas Pakenham
In barely three decades a few European powers carved up a continent.
Pakenham's narrative history recounts how, between roughly 1876 and 1912, Europe partitioned almost all of Africa, driven by rivalry, greed, and the ambitions of explorers, kings, and adventurers. Built on extensive archival research, it made the diplomacy and violence of conquest legible to general readers. It remains the standard popular account of the partition and the treaties that fixed its borders.
Its legacy. Its maps of imposed frontiers still describe the political geography of Africa today.
- Author
- Thomas Pakenham
- First published
- 1991
- Genre
- History
- Theme
- Colonialism and Its Critics
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