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paper2neurons 's review for:
medium-paced
In school, what I learned about Africa in the 1800s was the end of the slave trade near the start of the century and the partitioning of Africa near the end. For fun in high school, I also read King Leopold's Ghost (highly recommend), which gave some more knowledge of what happened after the partitioning of Africa. This book fills the gap in how Europe conquered the continent.
When reading this, expect riveting politics:
- Europeans publicly argue they should control Africa to eradicate slavery, despite buying slave-made cash crops and avoiding invading those states to continue to buy such crops.
- French protestant missionaries fight for enforcing emancipation laws against the French state that wants to ignore them, and then drop the fight when money runs dry.
- An African French-protestant missionary advocates for, while also fighting against, a very white church.
- The suppliers of peanuts, mostly grown with slave labor, fight over prices with the consumers of peanut oil in Europe, as peanut oil becomes replaced by cheaper oils from India.
- A religious fanatic group (the leader sacrifices his child), conspire with other political groups, to takeover an African state.
- Farmers encounter mysterious peanut diseases
- Scientists rely on racism to claim peanuts originated in Africa against ample the evidence that they originated from South America.
I felt like I learned a lot in this book about a specific period of time and group of people. Given the title, I expected more biology and science, but it was nice and well written. If you think it might be interesting, I'd recommend it.