The Dark Places of the Earth

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."

So here, too, SW Michigan, and the Pottawatomie removal, what they call the "Trail of Death."

The "removal" took place in 1838. There is a remarkable journal of the escorting military officer. What does his journal have in common with the voices we hear in Heart of Darkness? Here is one entry:

Monday 1st Oct. Early in the morning we left Island Grove - traveled over a dry prairie country, 17 miles, we reached our encampment near Jacksonville at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Nothing occurred during our march except a child fell from a wagon and was much crushed by the wheels running over it. It is thought the child will die. Tonight some of the chiefs reported 2 runaways who left this morning. During the evening we were much perplexed by the curiosity of visitors, to many of who the sight of an emigration or body of Indians is as great a rarity as a traveling caravan of wild animals. Late at night the camp was complimented by serenade from Jacksonville Band.

Richard Taylor has created a website with the history of the Pottawatomie removal from SW Michigan and Northern Indiana.
Does Kurtz' judgment fall here as well?

I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair.

What horrors form the basis, are fulfilled now daily in the continuation, of your and my 'civilization'?

"I myself never made any lethal injections."

King Leopold's Ghost is a narrative of horror and genocide (1) not so far from us in time. My grandfather (below) was a grown man at the time the holocaust in the Congo occurred.




There are many events described in King Leopold's Ghost that I can't simply get out of my head. Hochschild talks about how people who knew what was happening tried to psychologically distance themselves, to excuse themselves of responsibility. In this context he talks about Dr. Johann Kremer, a physician at Auschwitz, who justified himself watching orderlies make lethal injections into people he selected -- "I myself never made any lethal injections." (p.122)

The Europeans forced Africans to capture the slaves, lead the chain gangs, order the troops, do the whipping and killing that they, the Europeans, demanded. Of course, as with Dr. Kremer, this does not remove their responsibility. It makes them more guilty for involving others in their crime.


There were Europeans and Americans who acted on what they saw. George Washington Williams, H.D. Morel, Roger Casement, and William Sheppard emerge from this book as true heroes. But, there were far too few heroes, and far too many who simply went along.

What of those who lived during the time, such as my grandfather, but never bothered to look into what was going on? What of them?

And, in 2008, what of us?

(1) I use that word "genocide" even though Hochschild refuses it (p.225). As far as the Europeans were concerned the Africans were an "ethnic group" and their program of slavery and robbery amounted to a campaign to annihilate them. Indeed, Hochschild says that the population was "reduced" by 50%.

Cecil Rhodes

No one in class signed up to write about Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), so I thought I could pitch in. One of the richest men in the world, Rhodes was a huge figure in the British colonial domination of Africa, as this image suggests. The image is a political cartoon created when Rhodes announced plans to put a telegraph between South Africa and Egypt -- both British colonies. Rhodes also tirelessly advocated for an enormous "Cape to Cairo" railroad, that would link the British colonies up and down the east side of Africa.

Born in England, Rhodes managed to obtain almost a complete monopoly of the diamonds in South Africa -- far and away the world's most important source of diamonds. He started the De Beers Diamond Company, the powerful international diamond monopoly depicted in the recent movie "Blood Diamond."

A governor in the Cape Colony of South African, Rhodes helped instigate the Boer War (see Peter's blog). He tricked, cheated, and threatened various African people out of their land to eventually control the area that became the country Rhodesia, named after Rhodes himself. (Now called Zimbabwe.)

Rhodes was a complete racist. He believed that the "British race" was destined to rule all others and for that reason he was a huge advocate of the British empire, wanted even to put America back under British rule. He created a secret club and a world famous scholarship program to bring promising young men from the colonies to England where they could be trained as leaders of the British empire. These Rhodes Scholarships continue today -- one of those who received this award and studied at Oxford was Bill Clinton, later to be the US president.

Here is a famous quote from Cecil Rhodes,

We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.

Village in Transformation

The images used in the virtual world, the Village of Umuofia, come with permission from the Jones Photographic Archive of photographs of Southeastern Nigerian art and culture. Jones was a District Officer in Nigeria from 1926 to 1946, and in 1950 he wrote The Ibo and Ibibio Speaking Peoples of S.E. Nigeria. (I wonder how the book might compare to that not so mythical book The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.)

His photographs were taken perhaps a generation after the events narrated in Things Fall Apart, and many practices including dress, housing, religion, still were similar to the precolonial period. As you can see from studying the archive, and like many Western anthropologists of the period, Jones sought out and photographed "traditional" culture and artifacts. For that reason the picture (above) of a mixed collection of village houses, some traditional and some, clearly Western, especially interests me.

In this picture we can clearly see at least three kinds of structures -- I imagine they are houses -- one a traditional round hut, another with a tile or perhaps tin roof, and a third type, on the right, that is more Western, with square walls, hinged doors and windows. The boys seem to have Western style clothes. This blending of tradition and new was something that I saw in almost all of the villages I visited in Senegal in 2003.

Joyful Social Life in Things Fall Apart

This time rereading Things Fall Apart I am struck by the many subtle portrayals of a joyful social life of the Ibo. I wonder what scenes in the novel strike you in this way. Early on Unoka, Okonkwo's father, remembers the cool evenings of the harmattan and the arrival of kites -- the soaring raptor pictured here,

Old men and children would then sit round log fires, warming their bodies. Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites that returned with the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to them.

Or preparing for the New Yam Festival,

Okonkwo's wives had scrubbed the walls and the huts with red earth until they reflected light. They had then drawn patterns on them in white, yellow and dark green. They then set about painting themselves with cam wood and drawing beautiful black patterns on their stomachs and backs. The children were also decorated...

(By the way, apparently the New Yam Festival is still an important Igbo celebration.) One of the joys of this novel is the way it celebrates Igbo life -- and that stands in a contrast to problems in the society, and to the changes that are to come. I think Achebe wants us to see the beauty in the Igbo way of life, and to see how tragic it is that it falls, or, perhaps more accurately, is torn, apart.