07.11.09
My Comments on “Exterminate All the Brutes” One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide
A couple weeks ago I finished reading Sven Lindqvist’s book, “Exterminate All the Brutes” One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide. I had stumbled across his book while looking for other books related to Africa. I had just finished reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, so seeing that Lindqvist found inspiration to write his book due in part to Conrad’s book, I decided to read it.
I found Lindqvist’s writing style interesting in that he actually traveled to Africa, retracing areas related to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness while at the same time writing and researching African and European history through historical records, scientific research of the day, and popular literature to get a feel of the social climate during the turn of the century. The primary focus was on European colonialization and how it was viewed and justified in society. At first Lindqvist focuses on colonialization of parts of Africa like the Congo and describes how the development of more powerful and efficient weapons resulted in the ability of Europeans to more fully subjugate and exploit the Africans. For centuries, the Europeans had been trying to exploit parts of Africa’s rich natural resources, but were unable to fully penetrate the interiors due to the harsh environment and the ability of the natives to fight back. As European weapons evolved, they were able to wipe out the natives at safe distances, where the natives wouldn’t even see the attack coming. The superior firepower of the Europeans allowed them to decimated the populations of the Africans such as the Congolese. As Lindqvist examines the colonialization of parts of Africa, he also takes into account the history of colonialization overall. The result of colonialization, whether in the Americas, Australia, India, or Africa, often amounts to mass killings and even genocide of the native inhabitants of the new colony. Examples cited were the Tazmanians, the Gaunches, and the Hereros who were completely exterminated, while other examples given were parts of Latin America: West Indies, Central America, Mexico, and the Andes. Lindqvist writes:
“In Mexico alone there may have been 25 million people when the Europeans arrived in 1519. Fifty years later, the number had fallen to 2.7 million. Fifty more years later there were 1.5 million Indians left. Over 90 percent of the original population had been wiped out in a hundred years.
“The great majority of those people did not die in battle. They died quite peacefully of disease, hunger, and inhuman labor conditions. The social organization of the Indians had been wrecked by the white conquerors, and in the new society only a small fraction of the Indians was as yet usable, for, as a labor force for the whites, the Indians were of low quality. And there were may more Indians than the few whites could exploit with existing methods.”
Lindqvist also comments on the history of the indigenous American population of the U.S. He writes:
“About five million of the indigenous American population lived in what is now the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, half a million still remained. In 1891, at the time of Wounded Knee–the last great massacre of Indians in the United States–the native population reached rock bottom: a quarter of a million, or 5 percent of the original number of Indians.”
The pattern Lindqvist outlines is that genocide is a common component or result of colonialization. Yet, although that fact was known, the loss of lives were always justified by one explanation or another such as the greater good of “civilizing the savages.” Later, with the popularization of Darwin’s ideas of evolution and the survival of the fittest, the genocides resulting from colonizations were more easily rationalized that the natives were just inferior and thus inevitable that their inferior races would die out.
More recently there have been debates or assertions as presented by Ben Stein’s movie, “Expelled,” that the Darwinian theory of evolution promoted the extermination of the Jews during WWII by instilling the idea that there were inferior races. However, Lindqvist asserts that mass murders and genocides were already being committed throughout various parts of the world throughout history, and that Darwin’s theory of evolution did not cause those murders and genocides, but rather gave it a comfortable explanation which more easily justified them. As such, Lindqvist asserts that the Jewish Holocaust was actually a result of German colonialization and not really unique. Germany had joined the bandwagon of colonialization too late in the game, and there was less land to be “grabbed.” With their growing population, there was becoming less and less elbow room. In order to make more room for the Germans, the “unwanted” needed to be eliminated or cleared away. This is what was done in other colonies, but since they were far away from Europe, many atrocities could be commited unchecked. But since Hiltler’s expansion or “colonization” was in Europe, his actions were more easily seen and scrutinized and thus viewed more harshly. Lindqvists explanation does seem to answer my questions of why so many massacres can and have happened throughout many parts of the world, but we mostly only hear about the Jewish Holocaust. In the older days of colonialization there was more uncharted land to grab and those lands were thousands of miles away from public scrutiny. Any atrocity could be committed unchecked, unlike in the close scope in Europe. Lindqvist uses not only the current literature of the day, but also the scientific literature being promulgated to show the prevailing thoughts of the day. He quotes such works as Anthropoligie der Naturevolker, The Decent of Man, Origin of Species, Anthropogeographie, Politische Geographie, Volksdienst, Alldeutsche Blatter, etc. to show the rational that was becoming pervasive in their society and helped promote the idea of colonializtion as a “natural outcome” and even a necessity. To support this even further, I recall reading in “When Medicine Went Mad,” there were claims the Germans admired the United States and tried to emulate Americans by exterminating the weak (there was a movement in the U.S. at one point to exterminate the mentally retarded and some cases were followed through). The Germans also cited the black slavery and sequestration of the blacks in the U.S. and as a result, the United States of America was in a sense a roll model for them. When one looks at all these angles, what Lindqvist asserts makes a lot of sense.
But Lindqvist doesn’t stop there. He goes on to point out that much of all this is plain to see by anyone who is honest and willing to see. That is, there is so much documentation of all this that it really is quite plain. Lindqvist gives a story of Voulet and Chanoine as an example. Their bloody rampage across Chad, which resulted in the murder of innocent villagers and the French Lieutenant-Colonel Klobb, was very well documented with “boxes” of testimonies but was soon forgotten and left without justice. As are many of histories massacres, not because we do not have the facts, but rather because in has been profitable to deny and suppress such knowledge.
I’m sure there is much more that can be discussed from Lindqvist’s book. This is definitely an important contribution to our society and I highly recommend anyone to read this book. Definitely two thumbs up for “Exterminate All the Brutes” One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide by Sven Lindqvist. While it was originally written in Sweden, the English translation is quite good.
Marlakins
