Reading Schedule and Background Material

[Marieke]

Hana wrote: "I'm just thrilled to find some other folks to share the reading with! Mind if I add some of best finds as I go along? You can take a look at my ongoing research here: https://www.goodreads.com/rev..."

definitely share! let's spark some conversation! my copy of the book has been staring daggers at me and i need to pick it up again.

[Hana]

I finished the book last week and thought it excellent, well worth the time and effort. While I found myself turning to other sources to fill in the inevitable gaps, it was a splendid introduction.

I particularly appreciated Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora for context on Africa during the Caliphates and Ottoman Empires, and for insights on the collision between European powers and the Islamic-influenced areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

A Traveller's History of North Africa is proving a very good introduction to Carthage, Roman Africa and the Byzantine Empires.

The Shadow of the Sun is an old favorite travelog by the superlative Ryszard Kapuściński that I'm re-reading.

There have to be some positive things going on in Africa. Any ideas?

[Manu]

Hi Hana,

Re Islam's Black Slaves, you might like to Google its author, Ronald Segal. Segal died in Britain in 2008. His obituary in the Guardian was written by my cousin Denis Herbstein.

After nearly 50 years his "The Crisis of India" is still worth reading. I was living in Bombay when it was published. My recollection is that the Indian government banned it. The copy I ordered was in much demand.

Sample:
"Nehru never wished to be a tyrant, but he became one – not a great one but a petty one, and not through will but through vacillation. He reigned but did not rule, he commanded but did not conduct, he arbitrated where he should have resolved. His Cabinet consisted in the main of courtiers, chosen for their personal loyalty or influence or political past, for everything but their policies. And because, inevitably, they did not promote his own ideas, he governed by intervention, not control. His was the tyranny of confusion and caprice. He failed – not because he antagonized too much, but because he was afraid to antagonize enough. He never realized that his worst enemies were his own party, undermining his policies, debasing the coinage of his thought. He was not resolute, only obstinate. He retained Ministers whom he should have dismissed for corruption or incompetence or flagrant disloyalty, because he regarded criticism of them as a reflection on himself, and he dismissed Ministers whom he should have retained for their allegiance to his own beliefs, because his support of them did not in itself still the carefully mounted campaigns of criticism. He said and did more than any Indian in modern history to secularize his people, yet he allowed his spokesmen to inflame religious feelings by threatening calamitous consequences for the Muslim minority if Kashmir were surrendered to Pakistan. He fought the power of caste, yet permitted his party to deploy it in electoral tactics. He reverenced the rule of law, yet detained political opponents without trial. He despised corruption and recognized its dangers, but he sat by, silent, while political colleagues, and even relatives, openly engaged in it. He was brilliant, but he was not wise, for the wise have the ability not just to perceive, but also to adopt and pursue the best means for accomplishing an end. He was embarrassed by a richness of ends and a poverty of means. He was not disciplined, he was a romantic repressed. He was impatient with detail – he pursued policy in swoops – and the intricacies of administration merely irritated him. He was lustrously original, but originality must be based in the present if it is to achieve any change. Nehru was wrapped in visions of the future so tightly that he lost sight of the disorder and dismay everywhere around him. Above all, he was not ruthless and he was vain – as none knew better than the parasites who surrounded and threatened to consume him."

[Hana]

Segal's obituary in the Guardian was very interesting--particularly since I would never have guessed his communist political stance from his book. The ability to step outside of one's own frame of reference is, sadly, quite rare and he seems to have had that gift.

I'll have to see if I can find a copy of his book on India, as well as the one he wrote on the Atlantic slave trade.