A TRAINING SCHOOL FOR ELEPHANTS

Going deep into Africa.

By the end of 1875, King Leopold of Belgium, like many other Europeans, had become interested in the African Congo and its natural resources. In addition to the formal International African Association, whose mission was to “civilize” Africa, Leopold organized a shadow effort led by Henry Morton Stanley—the reporter who had “famously tracked down Livingston.” For a very public expedition, Leopold hired an Irishman, Frederick Falkner Carter, to lead from Dar es Salaam to Lake Tanganyika a caravan that included four trained Indian elephants and their mahouts, or trainers. Carter’s mission was twofold: to determine the feasibility of using elephants as transport across challenging terrain and to establish the foundation of a training school for African elephants. The ensuing journey saw the deaths of the overworked, undernourished elephants along with multiple missteps and abuses. Roberts, a British journalist and writer, excavates this story from archives across Europe and Africa while retracing Carter’s route, believing that “[t]he path the elephants took would be my passport into a region’s oral memory.” Roberts’ journey results in a broader story as she observes the continued political and environmental impacts of colonialism while discovering more context for Carter’s trip. In spite of Roberts’ interrogation of colonialism, her thoughtful approach to geographic and ethnic group naming, and her critical account of Carter’s journey and Leopold’s motivation, there is something uncomfortable in centering so much of the book around her own experiences as a British woman traveling in Africa in search of answers. Roberts misses the irony of positioning herself as the main character in this effort to remedy historical erasure.

A little-known episode of colonial African history paired with a conceptually problematic personal account.