The Fortunes of Africa

Starred review from August 25, 2014
In a mammoth tome that’s as comprehensive as a single volume on an entire continent can be, Meredith (The State of Africa) looks at Africa through the lens of its native wealth. He begins, appropriately enough, with the statement that “ever since the era of the pharaohs, Africa has been coveted for its riches.” Working his way forward from that premise, he concentrates on one geographic area after another, up to the present day. Mansa Musa, the 14th-century emperor of Mali and the richest man the world has ever seen, and King Leopold II of Belgium, “owner” of the Congo and one of the world’s most despicable despots, make their requisite appearances alongside scores of other rulers, explorers, and generals. Meredith places the Atlantic slave trade in the context of the slave trades with other markets, including the enslavement of Europeans in North Africa. Gold, ivory, diamonds, and oil also receive their due as sources of wealth and conflict. Colonialism’s arc is traced, as are the disappointments, setbacks, and outright horrors of the postcolonial era. The completist will note absences, but this is the new standard against which future histories will be considered. Maps & 16-page photo insert. Agent: Felicity Bryan, Felicity Bryan Assoc. Ltd. (U.K.).

July 15, 2014
Broad-ranging history of Africa from the age of the pharaohs to the present, with a solid emphasis on economics.Former Observer correspondent and longtime Africa expert Meredith (Born in Africa: The Quest for the Origins of Human Life, 2011, etc.) delivers a richly detailed, occasionally plodding examination of a region of the world that, though central to human history, is too often overlooked, except by the economic powers that be-the World Bank estimates that 40 percent of Africa's wealth is held outside Africa. Concludes Meredith, "Africa thus remains a continent of huge potential, but limited prospects." People have always moved from place to place across the continent looking for access to its resources, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in vast waves, as when the Bantu-speaking peoples who originally lived in southern Cameroon spread across southern Africa. Yet, by Meredith's account, once those resources are in hand, they are always unevenly divided; the peasants of ancient Egypt may have had access to the water wheel and an elaborate system of irrigation, but they were also subject to an even more elaborate system of taxation "that kept them as poor as they had always been." That situation did not improve with the spread of Christianity and Islam, nor with the arrival of the colonial powers and the conversion of a vast part of the continent to a factory for the production of slaves for trans-Atlantic transport. As Meredith writes, by the 1600s, the European powers were looking far inland for slaves and had established great trading ports along Africa's west coast, "separated from one another by an average of ten miles." Small wonder that, absent so much human and natural capital, Africa has been immiserated for so long-a condition not improved by the widespread pattern of one-party or one-man rule today.A useful study, though less interesting than John Reader's Africa: A Biography of the Continent (1998).

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Starred review from September 1, 2014
In Belgium's colonization of the Congo, Joseph Conrad sees the vilest scrabble for loot in human history. However, as Meredith surveys the last five millennia, he identifies many other episodes when hungry opportunists have scrabbled for Africa's loot just as vilely as the Belgians ever did. Readers trace a dark strand of voracity connecting ancient Pharaohs, who slaughtered their Nubian neighbors for their copper and ebony, with modern titans who exploited the native Zulu, Xhosa, and Ndebele tribes for their gold, diamonds, and ivory. But no avarice inflicted greater pain than that of slave traders making merchandise out of Africa's most priceless resource: its people. Even after missionaries and other activists ended the international slave trade, the great powers of EuropeBritain, France, Italy, Germany, and Belgiumcontinued to oppress native African peoples, fighting each other for primacy in doing so. Sadly, Meredith discerns no end of rapacity when European colonizers withdrew, as home-grown dictators soon imposed their own corrupt and brutal regimes. In the concluding chapters, readers confront the challenges now facing progressive forces striving to bring democracy and justice to lands vulnerable to the violence of Muslim insurgents and the intrigues of Chinese entrepreneurs. A gripping tale of insatiable greedpersonal and collective.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

Narrator Kevin Stillwell delivers Meredith's extensive work--not so much a history of Africa per se as a history of its relations with Europe. Stillwell deserves special credit for care in weighing the meaning of sentences and working to make them clear through emphasis and emotional weight. He also exhibits good pacing and unflagging energy. But the audiobook is marred by mispronunciations. Stillwell seems to feel his way among its complex names and specialized terms, but even simple words are mispronounced, sometimes to the point of confusion to the listener. Even the mispronunciations aren't consistent; pronunciations can change in the space of sentences. The frequent, sometimes jarring errors make the audiobook difficult to enjoy. Stillwell deserved better publisher support. W.M. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine