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"Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide Paperback – January 1, 1997

by Sven Lindqvist (Author), Joan Tate (Translator)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 389 ratings
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Now part of the eponymous HBO docuseries written and directed by Raoul Peck, “Exterminate All the Brutes” is a brilliant intellectual history of Europe’s genocidal colonization of Africa—and the terrible myths and lies that it spawned

“A book of stunning range and near genius. . . . The catastrophic consequences of European imperialism are made palpable in the personal progress of the author, a late-twentieth-century pilgrim in Africa. Lindqvist’s astonishing connections across time and cultures, combined with a marvelous economy of prose, leave the reader appalled, reflective, and grateful.” —David Levering Lewis

“Exterminate All the Brutes,” Sven Lindqvist’s widely acclaimed masterpiece, is a searching examination of Europe’s dark history in Africa and the origins of genocide. Using Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as his point of departure, the award-winning Swedish author takes us on a haunting tour through the colonial past, interwoven with a modern-day travelogue. Retracing the steps of European explorers, missionaries, politicians, and historians in Africa from the late eighteenth century onward, “Exterminate All the Brutes” exposes the roots of genocide in Africa through Lindqvist’s own journey through the Saharan desert. As he shows, fantasies not merely of white superiority but of actual extermination—“cleansing” the earth of the so-called lesser races—deeply informed the colonialism and racist ideology that ultimately culminated in Europe’s own Holocaust.

Conquerors’ stories are the ones that inform the self-mythology of the West—whereas the lives and stories of those displaced, enslaved, or killed are too often ignored and forgotten. “Exterminate All the Brutes” forces a crucial reckoning with a past that still echoes in our collective psyche—a reckoning that compels us to acknowledge the exploitation and brutality at the heart of our modern, globalized society. As Adam Hochschild has written, “Lindqvist’s work leaves you changed.”

Previous page
  1. Print length
    179 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    The New Press
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1997
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1565843592
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1565843592
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sven Lindqvist, a traveler and historian, paints a broad-brush history of European colonialism, especially in Africa. Drawing his title from Joseph Conrad's fable Heart of Darkness, he turns up 19th-century newspaper accounts of British massacres of wounded Sudanese rebels after the siege of Omdurman, of German concentration camps in what was once called Southwest Africa, of a Belgian captain who decorated his flower beds with the heads of recalcitrant plantation workers. These incidents were not unusual, Lindqvist writes. Neither were they thought especially brutal by their perpetrators, for, he argues, colonialism was guided by a doctrine that placed Europe at the top of the evolutionary ladder and regarded non-Europeans as a separate species bound for extinction--a doctrine that found its ultimate expression in the Holocaust. This is an occasionally gruesome and always provocative study.

Review

Praise for Sven Lindqvist and "Exterminate All the Brutes":

"A book of stunning range and near genius. . . . The catastrophic consequences of European imperialism are made palpable in the personal progress of the author, a late-twentieth century pilgrim in Africa. Lindqvist's astonishing connections across time and cultures, combined with a marvelous economy of prose, leave the reader appalled, reflective, and grateful."
―David Levering Lewis

"In spare but powerful prose . . . Lindqvist manages to weave together an impressive variety of themes [to] point to the continuity between prejudices and acts separated by continents and centuries."
―The Washington Post

"Lindqvist's disturbing, brilliant work of historical sleuthing deserves to be taken up in a thousand classrooms."
―Rob Nixon, Voice Literary Supplement

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The New Press (January 1, 1997)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 179 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1565843592
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1565843592
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 389 ratings

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Sven Lindqvist

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4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
389 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Poor audience member
5.0 out of 5 stars Genocide arises from the depths of human weakness
Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2021
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A convincing essay about what makes genocide possible and how one genocide can easily lead to another. As a person of Jewish descent, I’m not often comfortable hearing or reading that other genocides may have similarities to The Holocaust, not because those similarities don’t exist (because, of course, they do) but rather that I am always wary of the possibility that any rationale (no matter how well presented) might diminish the severity of that particular genocide. Nevertheless, I found Lindqvist’s essay fair and persuasive. While showing the historical trail that led to The Holocaust, a trail that killed people in other parts of the world as brutally and psychopathically as the Jews in Europe, Lindqvist does seem to eventually suggest something of a distinction between The Holocaust and many other genocides: the probability of a Jew being left alive to act as a slave was less than someone of another ethnicity at that time. Jews were meant to merely die. Therefore, this fact places The Holocaust in the same category as the killing of the Armenians by the Turkish government, the killing of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda, and any other mass murder where many members of a particular ethnic group are meant merely to die (such as Bosnian Moslems in Serbian controlled Bosnia). Having said that, it certainly does not diminish one’s nausea upon reading of the earlier genocidal conditions in the Congo and the Americas. Being a slave under those evil conditions is beyond intolerable. The “take home” message of the book (for me) is “what difference does it make in the end?” what the similarities and the differences between genocides are — genocide arises from the very depths of human weakness. We already know this fact -- now we must act to stop it wherever and whenever the disgusting rhetoric which feeds it is voiced and to make heard the voices of those who, because of genocide, cannot speak. This book makes that goal clear and imperative.
17 people found this helpful
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Ilya Grigorik
5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly powerful and relevant still
Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2006
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Exterminate All the Brutes is brief and disturbing; Sven Lindqvist unveils the realities and moral convictions we have almost completely repressed. Just as the author suggests, the book shatters the image we have of ourselves, but even more importantly, it is distressing how relevant his ideas and Conrad's `Heart of Darkness' are in the world today - again.

The title of the book is taken from Joseph Conrad's 1902 classic novel - Heart of Darkness. In it, the main character, Kurtz, goes to Africa to bring progress and culture to the uncivilized continent. He is dispatched to Africa as an ivory procurement agent, and as the story develops the reader is confronted with the unreal brutality of the colonial rule. Conrad's work intertwines the themes of `light of civilization' and `darkness of barbarism' and makes reader realize the hollowness of these phrases as Kurtz surrounds himself with chaos and mayhem. Sven Lindqvist develops this theme as he traces the imperial history of European colonialism and condenses it to a single sentence: "Exterminate all the brutes." European world expansion, he claims, and the employed tactics of extermination are the truths we like to forget. Preferring to externalize we look at the Holocaust as a historical aberration, a smear on the path of progress and enlightenment brought to the world by the Western societies. However, as the author points out, just as all of Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz, it would also be the European habits and political precedents that would lay the foundation for the atrocities of the Second World War. What was done in Africa, would be repeated in Europe - we know this, what we lack is the courage to face what we know and draw some conclusions.

The book culminates by pointing to the Holocaust, but one doesn't have to look far to see the same principles being applied in the world today; `Heart of Darkness' is applicable to every nation, culture and ideology. `Exterminate All the Brutes' is an incredibly powerful book.
35 people found this helpful
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Grandma Alice
5.0 out of 5 stars What have we done, and what do we still do?
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2021
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Breaks my heart. We are thus. Lindquist describes in language both poetic and scholarly the brutal path taken through the lands of others by "civilized" forces in the name of progress.The colonizers have all been murderers. Belgian, French, English, Spanish, German, American, and more. Kurtz continues to exterminate even to this day. The connecting threads are well laid out, all the way to Nazi Germany and beyond. Highly readable.
One person found this helpful
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W. R. Everdell
5.0 out of 5 stars From Empire to Genocide
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2010
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"Exterminate All the Brutes" is a superb, short history book. I bought it for students in my World History classes--in the used-book market--when it was out of print, but now it's back and that makes it cheaper. I wish I had had it when I was working on my own book, The First Moderns (1998)  The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought , which had a chapter on the invention of the concentration camp in 1895-1903 by Spain, Britain and the United States. The principal point which the author, Sven Lindqvist, makes (in the form of a memoir of his own reading, in relatively unadorned prose) is that there can have been no holocaust or holocaust-justifying in Germany in 1938-45 without their first having been holocausts and holocaust-justifying in 1860-1914 in places like Tasmania, Congo, Sudan and Iraq. Europeans have begun to understand this (the author, in fact, is a Swede). Americans--and Israelis--have a longer way to go.
-W. R. Everdell
9 people found this helpful
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Dr Omar Altalib
4.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read / semi historical
Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2023
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What I liked about the book is the description of the Algerian desert towns. Regarding European colonialism, there are interesting tidbits of information but it does need to have a stronger unifying theme
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Best historical book
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2023
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Well educated book all should read
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LERON G
5.0 out of 5 stars Very Insightful - A Must Read For Those Who Seek Enlightenment...
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2021
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Very Insightful - We reviewed book in our Book Club. All our members came away with a much better appreciation of the gravity of past injustices and how it shapes the narratives of the present...
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Jerry
5.0 out of 5 stars The Naked Truth.
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2021
Verified Purchase
Will the continuation of this historical approach, continuing to be practiced by self-appointed, 'Superior' Nation States address and reverse Western Capitalism's 'suicidal,' self righteous, Financial Growth, Fanaticism destroy our Earth?

I doubt it!
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

KimP
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended
Reviewed in Canada on July 12, 2019
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This book was extremely eye opening. Lindqvist discusses history in a manner that’s fair and approachable to everyone. I’ve already ordered two more of his books.
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apelsinas
5.0 out of 5 stars love it!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2015
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the book answered t the description, love it and definately recommend the seller!
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Francis Glorieux
5.0 out of 5 stars I knew that book which I consider as one of ...
Reviewed in Canada on April 13, 2015
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I knew that book which I consider as one of the major history books of the last 20 years.
I bought it to offer it to a friend
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