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The Sword and the Cross: Two Men and an Empire of Sand


Grove Press
Nonfiction, Biography/History
Themes: Frontier Tales, Religious Themes
***+

Description

During the 1800's, as European encroachment slowly illuminated the depths of Darkest Africa, France found itself the accidental and reluctant owner of Algieria, a rebellious and predominantly Muslim colony on the north coast, beyond which was little more than sand, rock, and hostile natives in the vast Sahara Desert. Little as they could afford to establish a colony, Paris was bound and determined not to lose it, having suffered numerous international humiliations and setbacks. And so, hoping to tame the unpromising desert, France dedicated millions of francs, thousands of lives, countless wild schemes for grandeur and glory, and two extraordinary men.
Charles de Foucauld, an aristrocrat who epitomized the gluttonous selfishness of Europe's elite, first came to Algiers as an immature calvaryman, but found himself entranced by the desert and its people. His adventures devoured most of his lifetime, crossing land unseen by white men and taking him from spoiled son of wealth to penniless, devout Christian determined to die a martyr's death among the fearfully unpredictable Tuareg nomad tribes.
Henri Laperrine, in the service of France's disaster-frought military, found himself in a world where conventional war strategy and the clueless, contradictory orders of his superior officers (who had never set foot on African soil) no longer applied. Amongst terrifyingly brutal attacks and counterattacks by soldiers and natives alike, he rose to an impossible challenge and set about taming the untameable Sahara.

Review

Today, when most of the globe has been explored and the rest seems of import only to the odd scientist or anthropologist, it's easy to forget that, not so long ago, the world was a vast and, in some respects, far more brutal place. The "civilized" countries that today decry genocide and war atrocities committed far worse sins on far grander scales in their attempts to claim what they saw as their land by divine superiority, atrocities whose echoes resound today. Foucauld and Laperrine were products of an entirely different culture and mindset than modern readers likely understand, yet that in no way diminishes the astonishing feats they managed. This is yet another example of how truth can be stranger, or at least more unbelievable, than fiction. At every turn, the nation and the military they thought they were supporting did their level best to undermine their efforts, and the Sahara itself proved an enemy which bested countless men. Reading about the men they had to work with (or against), not to mention the absolute, stubborn incompetence of so many officials when confronting the brutal realities of life in a land where water was an illusion, and undrinkable as often as not, it's amazing any Europeans survived this era of history at all. The names and places got a bit thick, and at times the politics bogged things down, but on the whole this is an interesting portrait of two men thriving where many failed to survive. (And, once again, I found myself reminded of just how inadequate my own education was; we never learned anything about this era of world history in school.)

 

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