I read this colossus quite a few years ago and decided to re-read it as research for a book I am writing about Africa. Thomas Pakenham presents a lengthy and very detailed tome on the European colonisation of the African continent, from the 1870s, and then leading up to the First World War. He vividly describes how the 3 Cs ... Commerce, Christianity and Civilisation, a triple alliance of Mammon, God and Social Progress would liberate Africa. Of course, there was the 4th C, Conquest, which with the aid of mechanised warfare devastated the continent. The five rival nations of Germany, Italy, Portugal, France and Britain treated the whole affair like a schoolboy’s brawl and Livingstone’s ‘Open Sore’ suppurated with more and more pus. At the centre of it all was the Belgian King Leopold with the Congo rubber trade, a slave driver if ever there was one, severing hands as punishment if quotas were unmet. The Germans were hardly any better with a policy of genocide against the Herero and Nama when they rebelled. Africans throughout the continent were treated as nothing more than Nyama (meat), with a beating by hippopotamus hide to keep them in place.Africa brought out the worst in humanity, crude and brutal tribalism on a massive scale. It is a wretched tale of savagery on almost every page, humans revealed for what they really are, from cannibal kings, despotic rulers, barbaric slave traders, psychotic and narcissistic colonial officials to the greedy and power-hungry politicians, generals and monarchs in Europe. There are plenty of tales too of famine, plague, malaria, dysentery and gangrenous ulcers the size of mushrooms filling the air with the stench of rotting flesh. Pakenham really packs in loads of history and entertains us with the death of Gordon, the escapades of Rhodes and of the terrible losses in the Boer War. Meanwhile, in the Tories’ club, the Carlton, it was ‘like the Zoological Gardens at feeding time.’ Hypocrisy, jingoism and imperialism unbound.In the 1950s and 60s, there was a scramble to get out as European Empires collapsed, just as Lord Lugard predicted. Pakenham says there has now been a return to the informal empire of trade and influence, with Europe giving Africa the aspirations for freedom and human dignity. Not too sure on that last point, I think a bit too generous, and with the Chinese arriving in ever greater numbers, the horror story of exploitation is far from over.With over 700 pages, it is quite a mammoth effort to read, and as others have mentioned difficult to retain all the facts, let alone the characters that contribute to the narrative. But if you persevere, you will be well rewarded with a story that is as much about the human condition, as it is to the historical details that Pakenham presents so lucidly.Finally, I am a travel writer myself and have spent many months travelling across Africa and visiting some 15 countries from Morocco down to South Africa. This book has certainly given me a great insight into why Africa is the way it is today, with the mishmash of old colonial borders and tribal conflict as ingrained as ever. It will definitely help when I get round to writing my book on Africa. (I’m currently writing about the Indian subcontinent). So get stuck in and while away those long hours as you’re waiting patiently in yet another airport departure lounge, just like me.Check out Terry's Travels