Not so much a novel, more a collection of tales about a District Commissioner in Africa during colonial rule.
Fundamentally racist, it portrays the Africans as childish, ignorant and bellicose who must be ruled using corporal and capital punishment; white people who seek to educate the Africans and who see them as having rights are frequently murdered; Sanders keeps order with soldiers and machine guns. The implicit values espoused in this book are horrid and make it difficult to read.
The author, Edgar Wallace, was a hugely prolific and hugely popular writer of thrillers from 1905 until his death in 1932; Sanders of the Rivers (written 1911) inspired a series of works. His other popular works were the Four Just Men series; he also wrote the original screenplay for King Kong. His immense popularity suggests that he tapped into the zeitgeist of the time. It is instructive to read books such as this if only to understand the values of popular culture at the time and to be thankful at how far we have come from that in only just over one hundred years, even if we have not yet progressed far enough.
I also found it interesting that Wallace adopted short sentences, short paragraphs and a very direct tell-don't-show (past tense third person) style.
Wallace spent some time in South Africa as a soldier and journalist, so presumably he had some background on which to base his stories. His books are mostly out of print in the UK, presumably because they are too racist to publish, but wikipedia says that Wallace still has a readership in Germany.
Selected quotes:
- "Gold-leaf imposed upon the lead of commerce" (Ch 1)
- "The people hesitated, surging and swaying, as a mob will sway in its uncertainty." (Ch 2)
- "For many years have the Ochori people formed a sort of grim comic relief to the tragedy of African colonization." (Ch 3) There are occasional indications that Wallace is aware the colonialism is an evil system but fundamentally he has espoused and incorporated its basic values: that one man's life is worth more than another's and that this valuation depends upon the colour of his skin.
- "The Isisi Exploitation Syndicate, Limited, was born between the entree and the sweet" (Ch 4) The word 'exploitation' is at least frank. But the exploiter is a (disguised) Jew and Wallace demonstrates his racism includes anti-semitism.
- "the green path to death" (Ch 4)
- "There had been good crops, and good crops mean idleness, and idleness means mischief." (Ch 5)
- "Heroes should be tall and handsome, with flashing eyes; Sanders was not so tall, was yellow of face, moreover had grey hair." (Ch 6)
- "You who do not understand how out of good evil may arise must take your spade to some virgin grassland, untouched by the hand of man since the beginning of time. Here is soft, sweet grass, and never a sign of nettle, or rank, evil weed. It is as God made it. Turn the soil with your spade, intent on improving His handiwork, and next season - weeds, nettles, lank creeping things, and coarse-leaved vegetation cover the ground." (Ch 8) He uses this to suggest that missionaries are bad for Africa but by extension it suggests that education is bad for poor people.
- "He had sown ... the seed of an idea that somebody was responsible for their well-being." (Ch 8) Wow! Wallace was a fascist in so many ways.
- "He was in the despondent mood peculiar to men of action who find life running too smoothly." (Ch 9)
- "The wise goat does not bleat when the priest approaches the herd." (Ch 9)
- "As he walked, you saw the muscles of his back ripple and weave like the muscles of a well-trained thoroughbred." (Ch 12)
- "A story about Africa must be a mystery story, and your reader of fiction requires that his mystery shall be, in the end, X-rayed so that the bones of it are visible." (Ch 13)
- "'Puck-apuck-puck-apuck-puck' went the stern wheel slowly, and the bows of the 'Zaire' clove the calm waters and left a fan of foam behind." (Ch 13)
June 2022; 159 pages
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