1 00:00:06,006 --> 00:00:10,796 NIALL FERGUSON: ln the 1 9th century, Western civilization spread southwards 2 00:00:10,846 --> 00:00:15,636 to secure control of a vast and mysterious continent. 3 00:00:16,966 --> 00:00:21,005 This would be the West's biggest challenge... 4 00:00:22,246 --> 00:00:23,679 ...Africa. 5 00:00:24,886 --> 00:00:28,595 To overcome its inhospitable terrain and climate, 6 00:00:28,646 --> 00:00:31,240 its grinding poverty, 7 00:00:31,286 --> 00:00:36,280 and in particular, its terrifying repertoire of tropical diseases... 8 00:00:37,846 --> 00:00:41,156 ...would require an unprecedented effort. 9 00:00:45,326 --> 00:00:48,636 In this series, I'm identifying the six things, 10 00:00:48,686 --> 00:00:52,440 I'm caIIing them kiIIer appIications, that ensured the West became 11 00:00:52,486 --> 00:00:54,954 the worId's most powerfuI civiIization. 12 00:00:55,006 --> 00:00:58,840 And I'm asking, if we Iose our monopoIy over these things, 13 00:00:58,886 --> 00:01:01,354 couId the rest catch up with the West? 14 00:01:01,406 --> 00:01:06,036 The first three - competition, science and the property-owning democracy - 15 00:01:06,086 --> 00:01:10,318 put the West ahead of Asia, the MusIim worId and South America. 16 00:01:10,366 --> 00:01:14,075 In this fiIm, I'm turning to kiIIer app number four, 17 00:01:14,126 --> 00:01:17,482 and how it was imposed on Africa. 18 00:01:22,886 --> 00:01:26,640 lt was here that key breakthroughs were made that helped develop 19 00:01:26,686 --> 00:01:29,484 the West's most remarkable and unlikely killer app. 20 00:01:31,966 --> 00:01:35,845 The one that, far from being a killer, had the power 21 00:01:35,886 --> 00:01:39,674 to double human life expectancy. 22 00:01:39,726 --> 00:01:41,637 Modern medicine. 23 00:01:45,446 --> 00:01:47,835 But there was another, darker side 24 00:01:47,886 --> 00:01:51,515 to the life-enhancing powers of medical science. 25 00:01:53,126 --> 00:01:58,803 The pseudo-science of eugenics and racial biology. 26 00:01:58,846 --> 00:02:03,362 This would lead not only to the wholesale slaughter of Africans, 27 00:02:03,406 --> 00:02:07,638 it would lead ultimately to Hitler's gas chambers. 28 00:02:08,926 --> 00:02:12,760 And it would come close to destroying the credibility 29 00:02:12,806 --> 00:02:14,956 of Western civilization itself. 30 00:02:45,526 --> 00:02:48,086 By the beginning of the 20th century, 31 00:02:48,126 --> 00:02:51,801 the conduct of the dominant Western powers from Asia to Africa 32 00:02:51,846 --> 00:02:54,883 aroused increasingly bitter opposition 33 00:02:54,926 --> 00:02:58,999 from nationalist and socialist critics of imperialism. 34 00:03:01,086 --> 00:03:04,362 Asked what he thought of Western civilization, 35 00:03:04,406 --> 00:03:08,604 the great lndian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi replied wittily 36 00:03:08,646 --> 00:03:10,876 that he thought it wouId be a very good idea. 37 00:03:14,566 --> 00:03:18,241 lt's a negative view shared by many people today. 38 00:03:21,086 --> 00:03:24,044 Yet before we rush to condemn the Western empires 39 00:03:24,086 --> 00:03:25,758 as eviI and expIoitative, 40 00:03:25,806 --> 00:03:29,560 capabIe of behaviour that was the very opposite of civiIized, 41 00:03:29,606 --> 00:03:32,837 we need to remember that there was more than a grain of truth 42 00:03:32,886 --> 00:03:35,525 in their cIaim to be on a civiIizing mission. 43 00:03:35,566 --> 00:03:40,037 In particuIar, they had high hopes of what they couId achieve here, 44 00:03:40,086 --> 00:03:42,441 in what they caIIed the Dark Continent. 45 00:03:48,006 --> 00:03:50,998 Gandhi's verdict that Western civilization 46 00:03:51,046 --> 00:03:55,039 was a contradiction in terms was a bit hard on the French. 47 00:03:55,086 --> 00:03:57,122 For surely no empire in history 48 00:03:57,166 --> 00:04:02,445 has tried harder to make a reality of the phrase ''civilizing mission'' 49 00:04:02,486 --> 00:04:04,841 than the one run from Paris. 50 00:04:10,286 --> 00:04:14,962 ln 1 848, a new republican government made a revolutionary decision, 51 00:04:15,006 --> 00:04:20,034 one of the most extraordinary in African colonial history. 52 00:04:25,446 --> 00:04:28,244 Like all the European empires in Africa, 53 00:04:28,286 --> 00:04:31,801 the French empire had begun with slavery. 54 00:04:37,246 --> 00:04:40,443 The sIave trade which had fIourished here on Goree 55 00:04:40,486 --> 00:04:44,764 had aIready been aboIished, but the distinction between master and sIave 56 00:04:44,806 --> 00:04:47,274 persisted throughout French Africa. 57 00:04:47,326 --> 00:04:50,762 So the first thing the revoIutionary government in Paris did 58 00:04:50,806 --> 00:04:52,603 was to aboIish sIavery itseIf. 59 00:04:52,646 --> 00:04:56,241 From now on, everyone in the French empire wouId be free. 60 00:05:03,646 --> 00:05:07,434 lt's not hard to imagine the French slave traders' reaction 61 00:05:07,486 --> 00:05:11,525 here in Saint-Louis, the first capital of French West Africa, 62 00:05:11,566 --> 00:05:13,079 when the news came through from Paris. 63 00:05:16,926 --> 00:05:22,398 But what the French government did next was even more shocking. 64 00:05:22,446 --> 00:05:27,395 From now on, the former sIaves wouId automaticaIIy become French citizens. 65 00:05:27,446 --> 00:05:29,437 And that meant that they got the vote, 66 00:05:29,486 --> 00:05:33,274 something that was never granted to Britain's African subjects. 67 00:05:33,326 --> 00:05:38,480 The resuIt was that in November 1848, 2,000 of France's new African citizens 68 00:05:38,526 --> 00:05:42,041 got to eIect Africa's first muItiraciaI assembIy. 69 00:05:42,086 --> 00:05:47,206 And this was where it met, in this rather spIendid buiIding in Saint-Louis. 70 00:05:51,926 --> 00:05:54,440 lt was a remarkable transformation. 71 00:05:54,486 --> 00:05:59,401 First the end of slavery and then, overnight, democracy. 72 00:05:59,446 --> 00:06:03,041 To the French government, it seemed self-evident that colonial subjects 73 00:06:03,086 --> 00:06:07,557 should be transformed into Frenchmen with the maximum possible speed. 74 00:06:08,606 --> 00:06:13,157 The revolutionary benefits of liberte, egalite and fraternite 75 00:06:13,206 --> 00:06:18,075 were to be extended to everyone, regardless of colour. 76 00:06:18,126 --> 00:06:23,405 In the jargon of the time, the Africans were to be ''assimiIated''. 77 00:06:33,366 --> 00:06:38,918 This progressive imperialism was personified by Louis Faidherbe, 78 00:06:38,966 --> 00:06:42,675 who became Governor of Senegal in 1 852. 79 00:06:42,726 --> 00:06:45,877 Faidherbe himself married a 1 5-year-old local girl. 80 00:06:48,486 --> 00:06:54,800 ln 1 857, he set up a Senegalese colonial army, Les Tirailleurs. 81 00:06:58,886 --> 00:07:03,801 At a stroke, Faidherbe transformed the status of the African soIdier 82 00:07:03,846 --> 00:07:08,761 from indentured miIitary Iabourer to fuIIy fIedged combat effective. 83 00:07:24,926 --> 00:07:26,075 By the 1 860s, 84 00:07:26,126 --> 00:07:30,756 former slave markets had become proud outposts of Gallic culture. 85 00:07:30,806 --> 00:07:36,119 The erstwhile victims of imperialism had been transformed into citizens 86 00:07:36,166 --> 00:07:39,920 with the right to vote and the duty to bear arms. 87 00:07:43,766 --> 00:07:45,722 For one of the beneficiaries, 88 00:07:45,766 --> 00:07:48,234 a young Senegalese called Blaise Diagne, 89 00:07:48,286 --> 00:07:52,916 French citizenship opened the door for an extraordinary career. 90 00:07:54,766 --> 00:07:59,282 It was thanks to the French ideaI of a ''mission civiIisatrice'', 91 00:07:59,326 --> 00:08:02,796 civiIizing mission, that a man Iike BIaise Diagne, 92 00:08:02,846 --> 00:08:06,441 born in this modest house in Goree in 1872, 93 00:08:06,486 --> 00:08:10,479 couId join the CoIoniaI Customs Service and rise up through its ranks. 94 00:08:10,526 --> 00:08:15,281 Such an ascent wouId have been a great deaI more difficuIt in British Africa. 95 00:08:23,446 --> 00:08:29,316 ln 1 91 4, Diagne ended up as the first black African deputy 96 00:08:29,366 --> 00:08:32,517 in the French National Assembly in Paris. 97 00:08:32,566 --> 00:08:38,198 The grandson of a slave had become a lawmaker for France itself. 98 00:08:41,686 --> 00:08:45,042 And yet none of this progress counted for much to ordinary Africans 99 00:08:45,086 --> 00:08:50,285 if the most basic right of all was missing - the right to live. 100 00:08:50,326 --> 00:08:54,001 The whole French mission civilisatrice 101 00:08:54,046 --> 00:08:58,995 was threatened with defeat by one lethal foe. 102 00:09:00,046 --> 00:09:01,161 Disease. 103 00:09:05,846 --> 00:09:09,395 Specifically, the kind of disease that condemned Africans 104 00:09:09,446 --> 00:09:12,244 to brief and unproductive lives 105 00:09:12,286 --> 00:09:14,675 and made large tracts of sub-Saharan Africa 106 00:09:14,726 --> 00:09:18,355 almost uninhabitable for Europeans. 107 00:09:19,486 --> 00:09:22,603 Africa was to be the ultimate testing ground 108 00:09:22,646 --> 00:09:26,116 for the fourth killer application of Western civilization - 109 00:09:26,166 --> 00:09:29,715 the power of modern medicine to prolong human life. 110 00:09:41,926 --> 00:09:45,760 There's a great force for good at work in Africa today - 111 00:09:45,806 --> 00:09:48,559 Western aid. 112 00:09:48,606 --> 00:09:52,281 You can argue about the negative effects aid has 113 00:09:52,326 --> 00:09:56,444 in propping up corrupt governments and stifling would-be entrepreneurs. 114 00:09:56,486 --> 00:10:00,479 But it's hard to deny that vast sums of money are today being spent 115 00:10:00,526 --> 00:10:02,562 to improve the health of Africans. 116 00:10:06,206 --> 00:10:09,198 Modern medicine made in Western laboratories 117 00:10:09,246 --> 00:10:13,205 has transformed the lives of all of us, not least 118 00:10:13,246 --> 00:10:15,806 those of the people living here in Senegal. 119 00:10:23,406 --> 00:10:28,355 Since 1960, the mortaIity rate for under-fives here in SenegaI 120 00:10:28,406 --> 00:10:30,715 has gone down by two-thirds. 121 00:10:30,766 --> 00:10:36,045 Average Iife expectancy at birth has risen has risen from 40 to 55. 122 00:10:36,086 --> 00:10:38,316 AII over the worId, the benefits of modern medicine 123 00:10:38,366 --> 00:10:42,757 are finding their way sIowIy down to the poorest peopIe on the pIanet. 124 00:10:42,806 --> 00:10:47,243 Nothing iIIustrates the transformationaI power of Western civiIization better 125 00:10:47,286 --> 00:10:51,040 than a cIinic Iike this, where doctors trained in Western medicine 126 00:10:51,086 --> 00:10:55,477 confer the uItimate gift, a gift taken for granted by most peopIe in the West. 127 00:10:55,526 --> 00:10:58,040 The gift of a heaIthy Iife. 128 00:11:02,486 --> 00:11:04,681 What's not so well-known is that this process 129 00:11:04,726 --> 00:11:11,165 of extending life expectancy in Africa began during the colonial period. 130 00:11:11,206 --> 00:11:15,165 The great leap forward of Western medicine in the 1 9th century 131 00:11:15,206 --> 00:11:18,357 was partly a product of the age of empire. 132 00:11:19,406 --> 00:11:23,604 For ruling new lands meant conquering new diseases. 133 00:11:26,326 --> 00:11:31,195 This monument in Goree commemorates the 21 doctors and pharmacists 134 00:11:31,246 --> 00:11:35,205 who Iost their Iives in a yeIIow fever epidemic in 1878. 135 00:11:35,246 --> 00:11:39,239 Not for nothing was West Africa known as the white man's grave. 136 00:11:39,286 --> 00:11:44,644 The entire coIoniaI project threatened to be snuffed out at infancy by disease. 137 00:11:48,126 --> 00:11:53,120 Take Britain. The six principal British expeditions to West Africa 138 00:11:53,166 --> 00:11:59,116 between 1 805 and 1 841 suffered an average mortality rate of 50%. 139 00:12:01,726 --> 00:12:04,160 lf death rates like these persisted, 140 00:12:04,206 --> 00:12:09,405 the colonization of Africa by Europeans would plainly be unsustainable. 141 00:12:13,646 --> 00:12:18,162 Like aII good coIoniaI administrators, the French kept impeccabIe records, 142 00:12:18,206 --> 00:12:20,595 and here in the SenegaIese NationaI Archives, 143 00:12:20,646 --> 00:12:24,798 you can find detaiIs of IiteraIIy every outbreak of tropicaI disease 144 00:12:24,846 --> 00:12:26,438 to hit French West Africa, 145 00:12:26,486 --> 00:12:30,081 from choIera in Cote d'Ivoire to yeIIow fever in SenegaI. 146 00:12:30,126 --> 00:12:34,404 And in fact, this box here contains a comprehensive Iist 147 00:12:34,446 --> 00:12:39,600 of aII the victims of the 1878 yeIIow fever outbreak. 148 00:12:39,646 --> 00:12:42,797 HeaIth biIIs, heaIth commissions, heaIth Iaws - 149 00:12:42,846 --> 00:12:45,519 it was as if the French were obsessed with heaIth. 150 00:12:45,566 --> 00:12:48,399 And why not? As one British observer put it, 151 00:12:48,446 --> 00:12:53,361 the European presence in Africa was a question of ''mosquito or man''. 152 00:12:53,406 --> 00:12:58,161 The future of imperiaIism itseIf Iay with the microscope. 153 00:13:00,526 --> 00:13:04,280 But the key advances of the late 1 9th century would not be made 154 00:13:04,326 --> 00:13:07,079 in the squeaky clean laboratories 155 00:13:07,126 --> 00:13:09,879 of Western universities and pharmaceutical companies. 156 00:13:12,366 --> 00:13:13,845 It wasn't entireIy fancifuI 157 00:13:13,886 --> 00:13:16,958 to imagine men of science trekking through the jungIe. 158 00:13:17,006 --> 00:13:20,362 Researchers into tropicaI diseases estabIished Iaboratories 159 00:13:20,406 --> 00:13:22,636 in the most far-fIung of African coIonies. 160 00:13:22,686 --> 00:13:25,883 This one in Saint-Louis in SenegaI was set up in 1896. 161 00:13:25,926 --> 00:13:30,522 It's actuaIIy the first microbioIogicaI Iaboratory in the whoIe of Africa. 162 00:13:33,206 --> 00:13:36,676 This is where they conducted experiments on animaIs, 163 00:13:36,726 --> 00:13:38,762 injecting triaI vaccines. 164 00:13:38,806 --> 00:13:44,039 82 cats had injections of dysentery and 1 1 dogs injections of tetanus. 165 00:13:47,886 --> 00:13:50,844 This reaIIy was science on the front Iine. 166 00:13:52,446 --> 00:13:56,359 Other labs worked on cholera, rabies and smallpox. 167 00:13:57,966 --> 00:14:03,120 Here was another kind of imperial hero, the bacteriologist, 168 00:14:03,166 --> 00:14:08,399 often risking his life to find cures for lethal afflictions. 169 00:14:10,526 --> 00:14:13,324 It was in this tiny Iaboratory in Saint-Louis 170 00:14:13,366 --> 00:14:17,245 that the first yeIIow fever vaccine for French West Africa was deveIoped. 171 00:14:17,286 --> 00:14:20,562 Breakthroughs Iike that kept Europeans, 172 00:14:20,606 --> 00:14:23,803 and hence the whoIe coIoniaI project, aIive. 173 00:14:23,846 --> 00:14:27,839 Africa itseIf had become a Iaboratory for Western medicine. 174 00:14:27,886 --> 00:14:30,241 And the more successfuI the research, 175 00:14:30,286 --> 00:14:33,244 the further the European empires couId expand. 176 00:14:42,326 --> 00:14:47,605 Colonization in Africa was limited at first to coastal settlements. 177 00:14:47,646 --> 00:14:51,924 But with the advent of another Western breakthrough, 178 00:14:51,966 --> 00:14:55,720 mechanized transport, it could spread inland. 179 00:14:57,046 --> 00:14:58,195 By 1 904, 180 00:14:58,246 --> 00:15:03,957 a new federation of French West Africa, stretching beyond Timbuktu into Niger, 181 00:15:04,006 --> 00:15:07,681 extended French rule to more than 1 0 million Africans. 182 00:15:09,606 --> 00:15:13,281 At root, no doubt about it, empire was about conquest. 183 00:15:13,326 --> 00:15:16,762 The first military use of the French-trained Tirailleurs 184 00:15:16,806 --> 00:15:19,525 was against the rulers of the Senegalese interior. 185 00:15:21,166 --> 00:15:24,522 And French citizenship was certainly not on offer 186 00:15:24,566 --> 00:15:27,285 to these new subjects of the African hinterland. 187 00:15:32,886 --> 00:15:34,717 The Scramble for Africa 188 00:15:34,766 --> 00:15:36,563 has become a byword 189 00:15:36,606 --> 00:15:40,838 for the ruthless exploitation of an entire continent by rapacious Europeans. 190 00:15:41,886 --> 00:15:46,357 But it was also a scramble for scientific knowledge. 191 00:15:47,446 --> 00:15:51,439 With the spread of railways went the spread of Western civilization 192 00:15:51,486 --> 00:15:54,364 and its killer app, modern medicine. 193 00:15:55,446 --> 00:16:01,237 This was the original Medecins Sans Frontieres - Doctors Without Borders. 194 00:16:01,286 --> 00:16:05,279 lt's a point often overlooked by those, like Gandhi, 195 00:16:05,326 --> 00:16:09,205 who maintained that the European empires had no redeeming feature. 196 00:16:16,886 --> 00:16:18,922 All over the burgeoning French empire, 197 00:16:18,966 --> 00:16:22,436 the overthrow of native power structures was followed 198 00:16:22,486 --> 00:16:26,604 by an attempt to eradicate native superstitions about health. 199 00:16:29,526 --> 00:16:33,883 Now, this is what's meant by traditionaI heaIing, 200 00:16:33,926 --> 00:16:39,046 because this is actuaIIy a SenegaIese fertiIity cIinic. 201 00:16:39,086 --> 00:16:42,283 Women who are having troubIe conceiving come here, 202 00:16:42,326 --> 00:16:44,681 get their treatment, and if it's successfuI, 203 00:16:44,726 --> 00:16:47,399 they hammer pestIes into the ground - 204 00:16:47,446 --> 00:16:52,759 one for the wife and one for the husband - foIIowed by a quick shower. 205 00:16:55,646 --> 00:17:00,356 For centuries, Africans have looked to traditional medicine to cure the sick. 206 00:17:00,406 --> 00:17:05,764 ln the village of Jajak, that means a witch doctor called Han Diop. 207 00:17:07,166 --> 00:17:09,361 (TRANSLATION) 208 00:17:16,086 --> 00:17:19,795 Can she expIain what she means by ''having deviI''? 209 00:17:24,326 --> 00:17:29,195 Can you show me some of the medicines that you give your patients? 210 00:17:29,246 --> 00:17:30,838 I'd just Iike to see them. 211 00:17:37,886 --> 00:17:40,605 Merci beaucoup. Tres, tres interessant. 212 00:17:42,166 --> 00:17:46,682 What Han uses is a mixture of herbs and a IittIe bit of prophecy. 213 00:17:46,726 --> 00:17:50,958 The troubIe is, of course, that herbs and prophecy aren't tremendousIy effective 214 00:17:51,006 --> 00:17:55,079 against a whoIe range of IethaI bacteria and viruses, 215 00:17:55,126 --> 00:17:59,244 which is one reason that Iife expectancy in Africa is stiII so Iow today. 216 00:17:59,286 --> 00:18:04,997 It's aIso the reason why, in 1897, the French banned witch doctors. 217 00:18:11,686 --> 00:18:14,359 Seven years later, they went further, 218 00:18:14,406 --> 00:18:19,161 by drawing up plans for the first African national health service. 219 00:18:20,926 --> 00:18:25,602 Not onIy wouId the French introduce their own system of pubIic heaIth to Africa, 220 00:18:25,646 --> 00:18:27,523 in February 1905, 221 00:18:27,566 --> 00:18:29,796 Governor GeneraI Roume issued an order 222 00:18:29,846 --> 00:18:34,124 creating a free coIoniaI heaIth service for the Africans under his ruIe. 223 00:18:34,166 --> 00:18:38,876 Not everybody Iikes to admit it, but here, as in many other respects, 224 00:18:38,926 --> 00:18:43,158 there were concrete, measurabIe benefits to European empire. 225 00:18:46,366 --> 00:18:48,960 Yet there were limits to what empires would spend 226 00:18:49,006 --> 00:18:50,883 on medicine for the natives. 227 00:18:50,926 --> 00:18:52,484 There were few resources 228 00:18:52,526 --> 00:18:57,202 to send doctors and vaccines into the isolated villages of inland Senegal. 229 00:19:00,766 --> 00:19:05,681 ln the battle against malaria, European residents of African cities 230 00:19:05,726 --> 00:19:10,197 got more attention from the colonial health service. 231 00:19:10,246 --> 00:19:14,125 Cholera and sleeping sickness, which were bigger killers of Africans, 232 00:19:14,166 --> 00:19:15,758 had a lower priority. 233 00:19:20,206 --> 00:19:23,164 When plague swept through Dakar, 234 00:19:23,206 --> 00:19:26,437 the French authorities were ruthless in their response. 235 00:19:26,486 --> 00:19:28,556 The homes of the infected were torched, 236 00:19:28,606 --> 00:19:33,236 residents were forcibly removed and quarantined under armed guard. 237 00:19:36,606 --> 00:19:39,757 Once, the French had aspired to racial assimilation. 238 00:19:39,806 --> 00:19:43,242 The irony was that medical science now recommended 239 00:19:43,286 --> 00:19:46,278 ever-stricter separation. 240 00:19:47,406 --> 00:19:50,682 ln Dakar, there were mass protests, riots 241 00:19:50,726 --> 00:19:53,843 and the first general strike in Senegalese history. 242 00:19:59,286 --> 00:20:02,676 The imperatives of medicaI science required tough measures 243 00:20:02,726 --> 00:20:04,796 to bring the epidemic under controI. 244 00:20:04,846 --> 00:20:09,476 And yet the science of the day aIso provided a spurious rationaIe 245 00:20:09,526 --> 00:20:11,562 for treating Africans harshIy. 246 00:20:11,606 --> 00:20:14,040 According to the theory of eugenics, 247 00:20:14,086 --> 00:20:17,078 Africans weren't just ignorant of medicaI science, 248 00:20:17,126 --> 00:20:19,720 they were an inferior species. 249 00:20:25,886 --> 00:20:30,801 This was a critical moment in the history of Western civilization, 250 00:20:30,846 --> 00:20:34,043 as eugenics, the bastard offspring of medical science, 251 00:20:34,086 --> 00:20:38,762 came to dominate European thinking about Africa and Africans. 252 00:20:42,966 --> 00:20:46,481 As a result, the civilizing mission became corrupted, 253 00:20:46,526 --> 00:20:49,120 with horrifying consequences. 254 00:21:02,606 --> 00:21:05,678 ln the 1 850s, Charles Darwin's cousin, 255 00:21:05,726 --> 00:21:10,402 an intrepid explorer called Francis Galton, 256 00:21:10,446 --> 00:21:12,676 had travelled through the uncharted lands 257 00:21:12,726 --> 00:21:15,524 of the Herero and Nama in South West Africa. 258 00:21:16,726 --> 00:21:18,603 On returning to London, 259 00:21:18,646 --> 00:21:23,083 Galton reported to the Royal Society that he'd seen... 260 00:21:23,126 --> 00:21:25,686 ''enough of savage races to give me material to think about 261 00:21:25,726 --> 00:21:27,842 ''all the rest of my life''. 262 00:21:30,366 --> 00:21:35,963 lndeed, Galton's research would inform his later coining of the term 263 00:21:36,006 --> 00:21:39,237 ''eugenics'', the use of selective breeding 264 00:21:39,286 --> 00:21:41,436 to improve the human gene pool. 265 00:21:41,486 --> 00:21:46,037 Here was the ultimate solution to the problem of public health - 266 00:21:46,086 --> 00:21:49,795 a master race of invulnerable superhumans. 267 00:21:53,646 --> 00:21:56,240 The important point to note is that, 100 years ago, 268 00:21:56,286 --> 00:22:00,598 work Iike GaIton's was at the cutting edge of scientific research. 269 00:22:00,646 --> 00:22:04,002 Racism wasn't some backward-Iooking, reactionary ideoIogy, 270 00:22:04,046 --> 00:22:07,436 it was the state of the art, and peopIe then beIieved in it 271 00:22:07,486 --> 00:22:11,957 as readiIy as peopIe today buy the theory of man-made cIimate change. 272 00:22:15,166 --> 00:22:20,923 Nowhere would the pseudo-science of eugenics have a more pernicious influence 273 00:22:20,966 --> 00:22:23,685 than in the lands of the Herero and Nama, 274 00:22:23,726 --> 00:22:28,277 now part of the rapidly growing German empire. 275 00:22:40,566 --> 00:22:45,799 ln 1 900, Germany was at the cutting edge of Western civilization. 276 00:22:46,886 --> 00:22:49,684 lt was German professors who won the lion's share 277 00:22:49,726 --> 00:22:51,717 of Nobel science prizes. 278 00:22:51,766 --> 00:22:57,955 lt was German universities that led the world in chemistry and biochemistry. 279 00:22:59,526 --> 00:23:04,441 Yet there was a shadow side to this extraordinary scientific success. 280 00:23:15,686 --> 00:23:20,521 Lurking within the reaI science was a pseudo-science which asserted 281 00:23:20,566 --> 00:23:22,921 that man was not a singIe homogeneous species 282 00:23:22,966 --> 00:23:27,357 but was subdivided and ranked, from an Aryan master race at the top 283 00:23:27,406 --> 00:23:31,365 down to a bIack race that scarceIy quaIified as Homo sapiens. 284 00:23:31,406 --> 00:23:33,840 And where better to test these theories 285 00:23:33,886 --> 00:23:37,561 but in Germany's newIy acquired African coIonies? 286 00:23:48,446 --> 00:23:54,316 Each European power evolved its own distinctive species of African colony. 287 00:24:01,086 --> 00:24:07,639 The French, as we've seen, favoured railways and health centres. 288 00:24:09,406 --> 00:24:14,082 The British didn't just dig for gold, they also built mission schools. 289 00:24:15,206 --> 00:24:21,281 The Belgians turned the Congo into a vast and vile slave state. 290 00:24:25,046 --> 00:24:29,039 The Germans were the latecomers to the African party. 291 00:24:29,086 --> 00:24:32,601 Where Africa was a tropical disease lab for the French, 292 00:24:32,646 --> 00:24:36,082 for the Germans, it was a testing ground for racial theory. 293 00:24:36,126 --> 00:24:39,084 The German version of the civilizing mission 294 00:24:39,126 --> 00:24:41,765 was to have vastly more hideous consequences, 295 00:24:41,806 --> 00:24:46,561 but it, too, had its own apparently rigorous scientific rationale. 296 00:24:51,766 --> 00:24:55,441 ln the brightly painted, new German settlements of South West Africa, 297 00:24:55,486 --> 00:24:58,956 Africans were seen as biologically inferior, 298 00:24:59,006 --> 00:25:02,362 an inconvenient obstacle to the development of Africa 299 00:25:02,406 --> 00:25:05,079 by more advanced white Aryans. 300 00:25:07,286 --> 00:25:08,924 ln German towns like this, 301 00:25:08,966 --> 00:25:13,005 blacks were forbidden to ride horses, had to salute whites, 302 00:25:13,046 --> 00:25:17,915 couldn't walk on the footpaths, couldn't own bicycles or go to libraries. 303 00:25:17,966 --> 00:25:21,038 ln the colony's rudimentary courts of law, 304 00:25:21,086 --> 00:25:25,796 the word of one German was worth the word of seven Africans. 305 00:25:30,126 --> 00:25:32,356 But the cruciaI issue was Iand. 306 00:25:34,886 --> 00:25:36,763 According to the theory of the time, 307 00:25:36,806 --> 00:25:41,004 the Herero and Nama were feckIess, improvident nomads. 308 00:25:41,046 --> 00:25:44,925 They had to be dispIaced by sturdy German farmers. 309 00:25:47,366 --> 00:25:51,757 There was only one small problem for Germany's eugenicists - 310 00:25:51,806 --> 00:25:55,435 these Africans were not the childlike creatures 311 00:25:55,486 --> 00:25:57,522 of their racial theory. 312 00:25:57,566 --> 00:26:02,037 After one provocation too many from their overbearing and aggressive settlers, 313 00:26:02,086 --> 00:26:04,281 they resolved to resist. 314 00:26:05,646 --> 00:26:10,197 It was the gratuitousIy arrogant behaviour of a young German Iieutenant 315 00:26:10,246 --> 00:26:13,955 that finaIIy Iit the bIue touchpaper here in Okahandja. 316 00:26:14,006 --> 00:26:18,522 On January 12th 1904, Ied by SamueI Maharero, 317 00:26:18,566 --> 00:26:23,276 the Herero rose up, kiIIing aII the abIe-bodied German men they couId find 318 00:26:23,326 --> 00:26:25,794 but pointedIy sparing the women and chiIdren. 319 00:26:25,846 --> 00:26:28,883 More than 100 German settIers were kiIIed. 320 00:26:50,526 --> 00:26:54,405 ln response, the German government sent this man, 321 00:26:54,446 --> 00:26:57,836 General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha, 322 00:26:57,886 --> 00:27:02,641 with instructions to put down the uprising ''by fair means or foul''. 323 00:27:02,686 --> 00:27:05,996 He chose the foulest at his disposal. 324 00:27:12,926 --> 00:27:17,636 ln a chilling decree addressed to the Herero, von Trotha spelled out 325 00:27:17,686 --> 00:27:22,806 what German theories about race actually meant in practice. 326 00:27:24,046 --> 00:27:28,961 ''You Hereros must now leave this land. lt belongs to the Germans. 327 00:27:29,006 --> 00:27:34,444 ''A Herero person in German land shall be killed by the gun. 328 00:27:34,486 --> 00:27:37,523 ''These are my words to the Herero people. 329 00:27:37,566 --> 00:27:43,357 ''The great General of the mighty German Kaiser, Trotha. '' 330 00:27:49,886 --> 00:27:53,356 The BattIe of Hamakari, which took pIace here, 331 00:27:53,406 --> 00:27:57,524 near the Waterberg PIateau, on November 1 1th 1904, 332 00:27:57,566 --> 00:27:59,875 wasn't reaIIy a battIe at aII. 333 00:27:59,926 --> 00:28:01,598 It was more Iike a massacre. 334 00:28:01,646 --> 00:28:05,434 The Herero were gathered here in a Iarge, concentrated encampment. 335 00:28:05,486 --> 00:28:07,954 They'd just seen off one German force, 336 00:28:08,006 --> 00:28:10,645 so they were expecting peace negotiations. 337 00:28:10,686 --> 00:28:13,075 But instead, von Trotha encircIed them 338 00:28:13,126 --> 00:28:16,675 and rained down a IethaI bombardment of mortar sheIIs, 339 00:28:16,726 --> 00:28:19,320 Iike this one Iater found on the battIefieId. 340 00:28:19,366 --> 00:28:22,164 Then, as the men, women and chiIdren tried to fIee, 341 00:28:22,206 --> 00:28:25,676 they were mown down by Maxim guns. 342 00:28:34,326 --> 00:28:39,354 As von Trotha told the hapless civilian governor whose authority he'd usurped, 343 00:28:39,406 --> 00:28:43,115 ''That nation must vanish from the face of the Earth. '' 344 00:28:48,006 --> 00:28:50,679 Of course, as von Trotha weII understood, 345 00:28:50,726 --> 00:28:52,717 the survivors now had IittIe option 346 00:28:52,766 --> 00:28:55,963 but to fIee from the water hoIes on which they depended 347 00:28:56,006 --> 00:29:01,319 out into the arid Omaheke desert, to ''their doom'', as he put it. 348 00:29:10,606 --> 00:29:14,599 The Herero, in other words, were being deIiberateIy exterminated. 349 00:29:14,646 --> 00:29:18,355 Now, we aII know that vioIence is part and parceI of every empire, 350 00:29:18,406 --> 00:29:20,237 but this was sureIy different. 351 00:29:20,286 --> 00:29:23,995 The more I think about this episode, the more I reaIize 352 00:29:24,046 --> 00:29:28,881 it reaIIy was the first genocide, Iong before the word was even invented. 353 00:29:33,486 --> 00:29:38,480 Those not shot, hanged or dead of thirst were herded 354 00:29:38,526 --> 00:29:40,517 into five concentration camps. 355 00:29:54,326 --> 00:29:59,559 The worst of them was here, on Shark lsland, near Luderitz. 356 00:30:02,686 --> 00:30:07,043 The camp was deIiberateIy situated here at the far end of Shark IsIand 357 00:30:07,086 --> 00:30:10,442 to maximize its exposure to the eIements. 358 00:30:10,486 --> 00:30:13,364 Denied adequate cIothing, sheIter and food, 359 00:30:13,406 --> 00:30:15,158 the prisoners were expected to work 360 00:30:15,206 --> 00:30:19,643 waist-deep in the ice-coId water, and those who faItered in their toiI 361 00:30:19,686 --> 00:30:22,837 had to fear the sadistic sjambok-wieIding guards. 362 00:30:22,886 --> 00:30:27,755 80% of the prisoners sent to the Shark IsIand concentration camp 363 00:30:27,806 --> 00:30:30,195 didn't Ieave here aIive. 364 00:30:38,486 --> 00:30:42,843 Before the uprising, the Herero had numbered 80,000. 365 00:30:42,886 --> 00:30:46,242 Afterwards, only 1 5,000 remained. 366 00:30:46,286 --> 00:30:49,835 There had been 20,000 Nama. 367 00:30:49,886 --> 00:30:54,198 By 1 91 1, fewer than 1 0,000 were left. 368 00:30:55,326 --> 00:30:59,922 For the Germans, annihilating a race was only part of the objective. 369 00:30:59,966 --> 00:31:03,402 The camps would also play a more constructive role. 370 00:31:03,446 --> 00:31:05,596 They would justify the genocide 371 00:31:05,646 --> 00:31:09,434 by advancing the cause of a corrupt medical science. 372 00:31:12,486 --> 00:31:16,798 It wasn't just that the Herero and Nama were interned crueIIy, 373 00:31:16,846 --> 00:31:19,918 they were interred crueIIy too - in mass graves Iike this one 374 00:31:19,966 --> 00:31:21,957 that's just been uncovered 375 00:31:22,006 --> 00:31:25,681 by the construction of a new raiIroad from Luderitz to Aus. 376 00:31:25,726 --> 00:31:28,923 And yet the interesting thing is that not aII the remains 377 00:31:28,966 --> 00:31:30,877 ended up in pIaces Iike this. 378 00:31:30,926 --> 00:31:35,841 SkuIIs and even some pickIed heads were sent back to Germany 379 00:31:35,886 --> 00:31:41,085 to satisfy the insatiabIe interests of the scientists in raciaI hygiene. 380 00:31:43,086 --> 00:31:44,644 lncredibly, 381 00:31:44,686 --> 00:31:49,601 female prisoners were forced to scrape the skulls clean with glass shards 382 00:31:49,646 --> 00:31:52,683 before the specimens were sent off for examination. 383 00:31:53,886 --> 00:31:59,358 ln 1 906, a total of 77 8 autopsies were performed on prisoners 384 00:31:59,406 --> 00:32:02,796 for so-called ''racial-biological'' research. 385 00:32:05,446 --> 00:32:07,243 Dr Eugen Fischer 386 00:32:07,286 --> 00:32:11,040 arrived in South West Africa just after the death camps opened. 387 00:32:11,086 --> 00:32:15,716 Obsessed with the voguish new field of race, he saw the camps 388 00:32:15,766 --> 00:32:18,564 as an ideal research opportunity. 389 00:32:18,606 --> 00:32:21,484 For two months, he conducted medical experiments 390 00:32:21,526 --> 00:32:26,122 on the mixed-race offspring of African women and European men, 391 00:32:26,166 --> 00:32:30,682 which included measuring the heads of both the living and the dead. 392 00:32:33,926 --> 00:32:38,078 In 1913, Fischer pubIished his findings. 393 00:32:38,126 --> 00:32:43,120 Negro bIood, he concIuded, was fundamentaIIy inferior to white bIood, 394 00:32:43,166 --> 00:32:46,602 and any European peopIe that mixed its bIood with negro bIood 395 00:32:46,646 --> 00:32:51,481 condemned itseIf to mentaI and cuIturaI decIine. 396 00:32:51,526 --> 00:32:54,802 WeII, books Iike this and mass graves Iike this one 397 00:32:54,846 --> 00:32:57,918 raise a very profoundIy disturbing question. 398 00:32:57,966 --> 00:33:02,642 Was Namibia the seedbed for future, much bigger genocides? 399 00:33:02,686 --> 00:33:06,122 Was it, as the noveIist Joseph Conrad suggested, 400 00:33:06,166 --> 00:33:09,602 a case of Africa turning Europeans into savages 401 00:33:09,646 --> 00:33:12,206 rather than Europeans civiIizing Africa? 402 00:33:14,006 --> 00:33:17,203 Where was the real heart of darkness? 403 00:33:17,246 --> 00:33:20,602 ln Africa? Or in the Europeans who treated it as a laboratory 404 00:33:20,646 --> 00:33:23,444 for the worst kind of racial pseudo-science? 405 00:33:23,486 --> 00:33:26,683 But what goes around comes around. 406 00:33:26,726 --> 00:33:30,002 Racial theory was too virulent an idea 407 00:33:30,046 --> 00:33:32,514 to be confined to the colonial periphery. 408 00:33:36,846 --> 00:33:40,759 The fact that there's a First WorId War memoriaI in the heart 409 00:33:40,806 --> 00:33:44,799 of Saint-Louis in SenegaI teIIs you something important about the war. 410 00:33:44,846 --> 00:33:47,804 It wasn't just a battIe between European nation-states, 411 00:33:47,846 --> 00:33:52,158 it was a war of worId empires, a war within Western civiIization. 412 00:33:52,206 --> 00:33:54,959 And for the first time, it reveaIed the possibiIity 413 00:33:55,006 --> 00:33:59,204 that the West might carry the seeds of its own destruction within itseIf, 414 00:33:59,246 --> 00:34:01,965 because more than in any previous war, in this one, 415 00:34:02,006 --> 00:34:05,999 the Western powers Iaunched their kiIIer appIications against one another. 416 00:34:06,046 --> 00:34:09,925 The industriaI economy provided the mechanized means of mass murder. 417 00:34:09,966 --> 00:34:12,321 And modern medicine, too, pIayed its part 418 00:34:12,366 --> 00:34:15,005 in the bIoody business of totaI war. 419 00:34:23,366 --> 00:34:28,804 By the spring of 1 91 7, the outlook for the Allies in the war was bleak. 420 00:34:28,846 --> 00:34:34,762 Already by the end of March, 1.3 million Frenchmen had been killed, 421 00:34:34,806 --> 00:34:39,163 and the government was deeply concerned about the shortage of men. 422 00:34:40,846 --> 00:34:46,079 It's easy to forget that France Iost two out of three wars against Germany 423 00:34:46,126 --> 00:34:48,321 between 1870 and 1940. 424 00:34:48,366 --> 00:34:52,598 In 191 7, it was cIose to Iosing the First WorId War, too. 425 00:34:52,646 --> 00:34:54,796 Where couId the French turn for heIp? 426 00:34:54,846 --> 00:34:57,644 WeII, the answer was to Africa. 427 00:35:05,486 --> 00:35:08,444 Yet all over French Africa, from Senegal to the Congo, 428 00:35:08,486 --> 00:35:11,444 Dahomey and the lvory Coast, instead of answering the call 429 00:35:11,486 --> 00:35:14,558 of la patrie, Africans revolted. 430 00:35:21,926 --> 00:35:26,204 There was only one man who seemed capable of dealing with the crisis - 431 00:35:26,246 --> 00:35:29,682 Blaise Diagne, the first black African to have been elected 432 00:35:29,726 --> 00:35:32,081 to the French National Assembly. 433 00:35:33,646 --> 00:35:38,720 Diagne saw a chance to strike a bargain with the government in Paris. 434 00:35:38,766 --> 00:35:41,644 He insisted that any African who came to fight 435 00:35:41,686 --> 00:35:43,677 would be given French citizenship. 436 00:35:45,606 --> 00:35:50,122 As an incentive to join up, it proved startlingly successful. 437 00:35:54,326 --> 00:35:57,762 63,000 West Africans answered Diagne's call, 438 00:35:57,806 --> 00:36:00,798 more than twice the number the French had asked for. 439 00:36:08,726 --> 00:36:13,925 Demba Mboup was among those now eager to fight for France. 440 00:36:13,966 --> 00:36:18,915 ''l was very happy, because l didn't know what war was really like. 441 00:36:18,966 --> 00:36:23,403 ''l was going to discover new things and experiences. 442 00:36:23,446 --> 00:36:26,006 ''l didn't know what would happen to me. '' 443 00:36:27,606 --> 00:36:29,801 He was to find out soon enough. 444 00:36:33,886 --> 00:36:38,357 His commanding officer was General Charles Mangin. 445 00:36:43,806 --> 00:36:49,278 ln 1 91 0, as a lieutenant colonel, Mangin and a group of scientists 446 00:36:49,326 --> 00:36:53,604 had toured West Africa with orders to increase recruitment. 447 00:36:53,646 --> 00:36:58,037 What he found there was an almost inexhaustible reservoir of men 448 00:36:58,086 --> 00:37:02,284 who seemed to be designed by nature for the battlefield. 449 00:37:07,686 --> 00:37:11,725 (DRILL COMMANDS SHOUTED AND REPEATED) 450 00:37:11,766 --> 00:37:15,202 CharIes Mangin had aIso bought into the prevaiIing pseudo-science 451 00:37:15,246 --> 00:37:17,316 of bioIogicaI determinism. 452 00:37:17,366 --> 00:37:20,642 Having conducted the fuII range of bogus tests, 453 00:37:20,686 --> 00:37:23,200 his survey team concIuded that Africans, 454 00:37:23,246 --> 00:37:26,522 because of their supposedIy underdeveIoped nervous systems, 455 00:37:26,566 --> 00:37:30,798 feIt Iess fear and suffered Iess pain than their European counterparts. 456 00:37:30,846 --> 00:37:35,442 They couId therefore be reIied upon to be exceptionaIIy steadfast under fire. 457 00:37:35,486 --> 00:37:39,445 (DRILL COMMANDS SHOUTED) 458 00:37:41,486 --> 00:37:46,799 ln 1 91 7, Mangin was able to put his theory to the test. 459 00:37:46,846 --> 00:37:50,475 Under his leadership, Mboup and his fellow Tirailleurs 460 00:37:50,526 --> 00:37:54,121 were pitted against perhaps the best-trained soldiers the West 461 00:37:54,166 --> 00:37:59,115 has ever produced, the fighting machine that was the lmperial German Army. 462 00:38:14,446 --> 00:38:16,437 When the Senegalese Tirailleurs 463 00:38:16,486 --> 00:38:21,082 recruited by Blaise Diagne first arrived in France during the First World War, 464 00:38:21,126 --> 00:38:23,765 it seemed to the local population 465 00:38:23,806 --> 00:38:29,199 that they were more a circus act than a supply of new manpower for the front line. 466 00:38:31,406 --> 00:38:33,124 But the fun didn't last long. 467 00:38:37,526 --> 00:38:41,485 Modern medicine might protect the Tirailleurs against disease, 468 00:38:41,526 --> 00:38:46,202 but it would be of little use against the machine guns of the German army. 469 00:38:58,486 --> 00:39:01,922 WeII, this is where Demba Mboup and his feIIow SenegaIese soIdiers 470 00:39:01,966 --> 00:39:06,642 ended up in ApriI 191 7, down beIow the Chemin des Dames, 471 00:39:06,686 --> 00:39:10,884 the Ladies' Road, named after two daughters of Louis XV. 472 00:39:10,926 --> 00:39:15,158 WeII, there weren't many Iadies up there in 191 7. There were Germans - 473 00:39:15,206 --> 00:39:19,484 to be precise, the 7th Army under GeneraI Hans von Bohm. 474 00:39:19,526 --> 00:39:23,599 The SenegaIese were with CharIes Mangin's 6th Army. 475 00:39:23,646 --> 00:39:25,443 And this was supposed to be it - 476 00:39:25,486 --> 00:39:28,603 the big push that wouId break through the German defences 477 00:39:28,646 --> 00:39:31,240 and end the war in 48 hours. 478 00:39:31,286 --> 00:39:33,004 (GUNFIRE) 479 00:39:36,566 --> 00:39:38,522 Altogether, more than a million men 480 00:39:38,566 --> 00:39:42,115 with 872 train-loads of artillery shells 481 00:39:42,166 --> 00:39:46,079 and 1 7 0 million rounds of rifle ammunition 482 00:39:46,126 --> 00:39:48,799 were massed in readiness for the assault. 483 00:39:50,726 --> 00:39:56,562 For days, intensive artillery barrages were supposed to soften up the Germans. 484 00:40:02,326 --> 00:40:04,362 (BIRDSONG) 485 00:40:12,446 --> 00:40:16,803 At 6am on ApriI 16th, the SenegaIese advanced up this hiII, 486 00:40:16,846 --> 00:40:20,475 which had been turned by rain and sIeet into a mudsIide. 487 00:40:20,526 --> 00:40:23,245 Now, GeneraI Mangin had put them at the sharp end 488 00:40:23,286 --> 00:40:25,356 in the first wave of the attack. 489 00:40:25,406 --> 00:40:28,045 OfficiaIIy, that was because he'd been so impressed 490 00:40:28,086 --> 00:40:32,557 by their comrades' performance the previous year at the BattIe of Verdun. 491 00:40:32,606 --> 00:40:38,761 But Mangin had an uIterior motive, and that was to spare French Iives. 492 00:40:41,646 --> 00:40:47,482 From the German trenches, Captain Reinhold Eichacher watched in horror. 493 00:40:49,726 --> 00:40:54,516 ''The black Senegal negroes, France's cattle for the slaughter. 494 00:40:54,566 --> 00:40:59,321 ''Hundreds of fighting eyes, fixed, threatening, deadly. 495 00:40:59,366 --> 00:41:05,441 ''And they came, feeling their way like the arms of a horrible cuttlefish. 496 00:41:05,486 --> 00:41:10,241 '' 'Close rangel lndividual firingl Take careful aiml' 497 00:41:10,286 --> 00:41:12,163 ''My orders rang out sharp and clear. 498 00:41:12,206 --> 00:41:19,078 ''A wall of lead and iron suddenly hurled itself upon the attackers. 499 00:41:19,126 --> 00:41:21,845 ''The first blacks fell headlong, 500 00:41:21,886 --> 00:41:25,925 ''turning somersaults like the clowns in a circus. 501 00:41:25,966 --> 00:41:28,639 ''Whole groups melted away. 502 00:41:28,686 --> 00:41:31,837 ''Dismembered bodies, sticky earth, 503 00:41:31,886 --> 00:41:36,084 ''shattered rocks were mixed in wild disorder. '' 504 00:41:46,686 --> 00:41:48,995 The Senegalese were cannon fodder. 505 00:41:50,126 --> 00:41:55,678 On the first day of the assault, the Allied forces suffered 40,000 casualties. 506 00:41:59,646 --> 00:42:02,604 For Demba Mboup, who was disabled by shrapnel, 507 00:42:02,646 --> 00:42:07,766 it was a revelation of the distinctly uncivilized reality 508 00:42:07,806 --> 00:42:11,879 of European life and death in time of total war. 509 00:42:14,766 --> 00:42:20,682 As another Tirailleur put it, ''No rest, always make war, 510 00:42:20,726 --> 00:42:22,637 ''always kill blacks. '' 511 00:42:31,126 --> 00:42:35,119 The supreme irony is that the world war provided a new laboratory 512 00:42:35,166 --> 00:42:40,365 for the advance of the curative side of Western medical science. 513 00:42:40,406 --> 00:42:44,445 The slaughterhouse of the Western Front was an opportunity 514 00:42:44,486 --> 00:42:49,321 for significant advances in surgery, not to mention psychiatry. 515 00:42:51,326 --> 00:42:54,636 The skin graft and antiseptic irrigation of wounds were invented. 516 00:42:54,686 --> 00:42:58,076 The earliest blood transfusions were attempted. 517 00:42:58,126 --> 00:43:02,324 For the first time, all British soldiers were vaccinated against typhoid. 518 00:43:04,086 --> 00:43:08,523 Not that these advances helped the Tirailleurs much. 519 00:43:08,566 --> 00:43:10,955 lf they weren't killed in the trenches, 520 00:43:11,006 --> 00:43:14,282 they died in enormous numbers from pneumonia. Why? 521 00:43:14,326 --> 00:43:19,081 According to French experts, they had a racial predisposition to the disease. 522 00:43:22,566 --> 00:43:26,195 The war was also good for proponents of pseudo-science, 523 00:43:26,246 --> 00:43:30,797 like Dr Eugen Fischer, the measurer of African skulls. 524 00:43:30,846 --> 00:43:32,837 Though he ended up on the losing side, 525 00:43:32,886 --> 00:43:35,844 for him, the First World War proved surprisingly fruitful. 526 00:43:37,406 --> 00:43:40,159 As black troops found their way into German prisoner of war camps, 527 00:43:40,206 --> 00:43:43,084 they formed another sample of humanity 528 00:43:43,126 --> 00:43:47,597 for experiments designed to prove the superiority of the master race. 529 00:43:47,646 --> 00:43:52,561 Fischer's The PrincipIes Of Human Heredity And Race Hygiene, 530 00:43:52,606 --> 00:43:57,964 published in 1 921, became a standard work within race biology. 531 00:43:58,006 --> 00:44:02,079 Hitler read it and even cited it in Mein Kampf. 532 00:44:04,126 --> 00:44:08,199 One of Fischer's students was Josef Mengele, 533 00:44:08,246 --> 00:44:11,841 later responsible for the notorious experiments on prisoners 534 00:44:11,886 --> 00:44:13,524 at the Auschwitz death camp. 535 00:44:21,726 --> 00:44:26,436 For the many former coIoniaI soIdiers who fIocked to join the Nazi party 536 00:44:26,486 --> 00:44:29,842 and who, incidentaIIy, gave the SA their first brown shirts, 537 00:44:29,886 --> 00:44:33,561 it seemed entireIy naturaI that theories first put to the test 538 00:44:33,606 --> 00:44:37,042 in the concentration camps of Africa shouId be carried over 539 00:44:37,086 --> 00:44:42,319 to the German coIonization of Eastern Europe, and the murderous raciaI poIicies 540 00:44:42,366 --> 00:44:46,518 that produced the HoIocaust, the euthanasia of the mentaIIy iII, 541 00:44:46,566 --> 00:44:51,037 and the forced steriIization of so-caIIed raciaI mongreIs. 542 00:44:56,046 --> 00:44:59,482 lf Auschwitz marked the culmination of state violence 543 00:44:59,526 --> 00:45:03,041 against racially defined alien populations, 544 00:45:03,086 --> 00:45:05,884 then the war against the Herero and Nama 545 00:45:05,926 --> 00:45:08,884 had surely been the first step in its direction. 546 00:45:11,326 --> 00:45:15,478 The worId wars were Iike a terribIe nemesis foIIowing the hubris 547 00:45:15,526 --> 00:45:19,599 of the mission civiIisatrice, as the European empires appIied 548 00:45:19,646 --> 00:45:24,800 against one another those methods which they'd pioneered against Africans. 549 00:45:32,166 --> 00:45:33,884 Medical science, 550 00:45:33,926 --> 00:45:38,556 which had seemed like a universal saviour in the war against disease, 551 00:45:38,606 --> 00:45:41,723 ended up being perverted by racial prejudice 552 00:45:41,766 --> 00:45:44,200 and the mutant science of eugenics, 553 00:45:44,246 --> 00:45:47,761 turning even some doctors into killers. 554 00:45:49,326 --> 00:45:53,558 By 1 945, Western civilization did indeed seem 555 00:45:53,606 --> 00:45:57,519 like a contradiction in terms, just as Gandhi had said. 556 00:46:07,126 --> 00:46:10,641 The puzzle, as we'll see in the next episode of CiviIization, 557 00:46:10,686 --> 00:46:14,042 is that out of this appalling age of destruction, 558 00:46:14,086 --> 00:46:19,524 there emerged a new model of civilization centred around consumption. 559 00:46:19,566 --> 00:46:23,559 lt was time for the West to lay down its arms 560 00:46:23,606 --> 00:46:25,756 and pick up its shopping bags, 561 00:46:25,806 --> 00:46:30,277 to take off its uniform and put on its blue jeans.