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The Killer Trail: a Colonial Scandal in the Heart of Africa
Historian Bertrand Taithe here offers a gripping account of one of the most disturbing atrocities to take place during the European "scramble for Africa," a real life story that prefigures fictional accounts such as The Heart of Darkness. The Voulet-Chanoine mission left Dakar in 1898 for the Lake Chad region, hoping to establish effective borders between the French and British empires and "pacify" a notoriously belligerent region. The mission soon degenerated into a grisly display of colonial violence, leaving a trail of pillage, murder, and enslavement in its wake. When the story of its outrages reached Paris, there was a public uproar and a second mission was dispatched to investigate. Eventually, on July 14 1899, the two missions clashed in a dramatic shootout, which led Voulet and Chanoine to declare independence from France and to establish an African kingdom under their own rule. But their mad dreams of kingship were cut short when the African soldiers under their command mutinied and killed them both. Was this bloody episode the consequence of two men's madness, or of a far wider set of attitudes?
- GenresHistory
336 pages, Hardcover
First published October 22, 2009
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September 2, 2023
An excellent account of the Voulet-Chanoine mission* which became a scandal and more importantly its historical context in French Colonial history, the Dreyfus affair and its resonance in various ways down to current times.
The Voulet-Chanoine affair/scandal/horror has always had a place in French colonial/political history (though exactly what that place is has changed with time) and the countries of Niger and Chad but in English language countries it had, after newspaper reports at the time, been forgotten (rather like the Hereo and Namaqua genocide in Namibia). This started to change with Sven Lindqvist's excoriating account in 'Kill All The Brutes' and has continued, most recently with the British-Nigerian activist Femi Nylander 2020 documentary 'African Apocalypse'. Bernard Taithe's 'The Killer Trail' cannot, and does not try to, match the polemical or emotional strengths of the works I've mentioned, or many others, including the brilliant 1986 film Sarraounia by the Mauritanian-French director Med Hondo and the novel of the same name by the Nigerien author Abdoulaye Mamani, but what it does show is that what happened was more horrible because it was not in the least exceptional within the context of empire building in 19th century Africa.
It was not the deaths of Africans that made the Voulet-Chanoine mission a scandal, but the shooting of a superior officer, a colonel, while the 'scandal' became inextricably entangled in the Dreyfus Affair because one the two officers, Julien Chanoine, was the son of War minister Jules Chanoine (who was still insisting that Dreyfus, despite overwhelming exculpatory evidence, was guilty). The whole affair became more than simply a question 'war crimes' (to use a completely a historical term) but of the army, France's colonial mission and empire and the ongoing cultural divide that the Third Republic suffered from throughout its life. The actual murder, rape, enslavement and other obscene acts against Africans disappeared under the rubric of excesses caused by officers who were insane.
But the real story behind this scandal, and what Bertrand Taithe brings so clearly to the surface, was that Captains Voulet and Chanoine did nothing out of the ordinary. They did what they had done previously and which the French army had been doing since the invasion of Algiers in 1830 and which the officers who took over the Voulet-Chanoine mission would continue to do as they fulfilled its interrupted tasks. 'The Killer Trail' was not an aberration or case of white men going native, it was intrinsic to the building of all European African empires. Voulet and Chamoine were not 'innocent' they did horrible things but they thought they were doing them within a system that accepted them as the price to pay for creating an empire. As Taithe demonstrates, brilliantly, they were no different to those who committed crimes at Mai Lai or Abu Ghraib. All of these events were very quickly defined as 'exceptions' rather than as the systematic result of policies and actions created, sanctioned and allowed to flourish by politicians, commanders and multiple layers of command until they reach those at the coal face of action. Sneering at the 'I was only following orders' defence is fine but if you don't challenge a monolithic system that from the moment you enter it is designed to remove your individuality and create a cog in a machine that is based on absolute, unthinking obedience.
The real horror and tragedy of The Killer Trail, Abu Ghraib, Mai Lai and countless other occasions is, aside from their victims, our failure, as democratic societies, to willingly face up to what these vents tell us about our seriously flawed governments, their policies, our armies and the way, when push comes to shove, most of us respond to any moral challenge that requires, these days, more response or commitment then posting a smiley or frowning face on our phones.
Although this is a story about the French colonial empire it took place as the USA was committing barbarities in the Philippines and the UK in the Boer War, there were no clean hands and no 'good' empires. That in 2003 Niall Ferguson could write a book and host a tv show as a paean of praise to the British empire and in 2006 a French president try and insist that the 'positive aspects of the French empire' be taught in schools demonstrates that, at the best interpretation, idiocy is alive and well and at the worst that people who should know better will do anything for money or votes.
I cannot recommend Bertrand Taithe's book too much - although brilliantly researched and supported by bibliography and footnotes it is immensely readable and is a brilliant example of what good history writing should be.
*I am not going to rehash what this book is about - read the precise on Goodreads and google Voulet-Chamoine mission and you will have more background than you may want. Even if you don't read this book you should know about these things.
The Voulet-Chanoine affair/scandal/horror has always had a place in French colonial/political history (though exactly what that place is has changed with time) and the countries of Niger and Chad but in English language countries it had, after newspaper reports at the time, been forgotten (rather like the Hereo and Namaqua genocide in Namibia). This started to change with Sven Lindqvist's excoriating account in 'Kill All The Brutes' and has continued, most recently with the British-Nigerian activist Femi Nylander 2020 documentary 'African Apocalypse'. Bernard Taithe's 'The Killer Trail' cannot, and does not try to, match the polemical or emotional strengths of the works I've mentioned, or many others, including the brilliant 1986 film Sarraounia by the Mauritanian-French director Med Hondo and the novel of the same name by the Nigerien author Abdoulaye Mamani, but what it does show is that what happened was more horrible because it was not in the least exceptional within the context of empire building in 19th century Africa.
It was not the deaths of Africans that made the Voulet-Chanoine mission a scandal, but the shooting of a superior officer, a colonel, while the 'scandal' became inextricably entangled in the Dreyfus Affair because one the two officers, Julien Chanoine, was the son of War minister Jules Chanoine (who was still insisting that Dreyfus, despite overwhelming exculpatory evidence, was guilty). The whole affair became more than simply a question 'war crimes' (to use a completely a historical term) but of the army, France's colonial mission and empire and the ongoing cultural divide that the Third Republic suffered from throughout its life. The actual murder, rape, enslavement and other obscene acts against Africans disappeared under the rubric of excesses caused by officers who were insane.
But the real story behind this scandal, and what Bertrand Taithe brings so clearly to the surface, was that Captains Voulet and Chanoine did nothing out of the ordinary. They did what they had done previously and which the French army had been doing since the invasion of Algiers in 1830 and which the officers who took over the Voulet-Chanoine mission would continue to do as they fulfilled its interrupted tasks. 'The Killer Trail' was not an aberration or case of white men going native, it was intrinsic to the building of all European African empires. Voulet and Chamoine were not 'innocent' they did horrible things but they thought they were doing them within a system that accepted them as the price to pay for creating an empire. As Taithe demonstrates, brilliantly, they were no different to those who committed crimes at Mai Lai or Abu Ghraib. All of these events were very quickly defined as 'exceptions' rather than as the systematic result of policies and actions created, sanctioned and allowed to flourish by politicians, commanders and multiple layers of command until they reach those at the coal face of action. Sneering at the 'I was only following orders' defence is fine but if you don't challenge a monolithic system that from the moment you enter it is designed to remove your individuality and create a cog in a machine that is based on absolute, unthinking obedience.
The real horror and tragedy of The Killer Trail, Abu Ghraib, Mai Lai and countless other occasions is, aside from their victims, our failure, as democratic societies, to willingly face up to what these vents tell us about our seriously flawed governments, their policies, our armies and the way, when push comes to shove, most of us respond to any moral challenge that requires, these days, more response or commitment then posting a smiley or frowning face on our phones.
Although this is a story about the French colonial empire it took place as the USA was committing barbarities in the Philippines and the UK in the Boer War, there were no clean hands and no 'good' empires. That in 2003 Niall Ferguson could write a book and host a tv show as a paean of praise to the British empire and in 2006 a French president try and insist that the 'positive aspects of the French empire' be taught in schools demonstrates that, at the best interpretation, idiocy is alive and well and at the worst that people who should know better will do anything for money or votes.
I cannot recommend Bertrand Taithe's book too much - although brilliantly researched and supported by bibliography and footnotes it is immensely readable and is a brilliant example of what good history writing should be.
*I am not going to rehash what this book is about - read the precise on Goodreads and google Voulet-Chamoine mission and you will have more background than you may want. Even if you don't read this book you should know about these things.
December 29, 2015
Instructive and provocative. Great details and information given to illustrate the context of the time and of European thought in regard to colonization and the changing times over the turn of the 19th-20th century. While at times the writing is a bit cumbersome to read (American English comma rules are not used!), the book is well organized and allows for complete consideration of a wealth of relevant ideas, including concepts of trauma and guilt. Exceptional resources and citations (this is obviously an historical work). This is a great companion book for study of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
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