The Killer Trail: A Colonial Scandal in the Heart of Africa by Bertrand Taithe

Author:Bertrand Taithe [Taithe, Bertrand]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, non-fiction
ISBN: 9780199231218
Goodreads: 7453782
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2010-12-18T02:09:51+00:00

a leak in the newspaper La Liberté on 28 August. The government then

chose to favour absolute sincerity in the communication of whatever

news [we had] received. This sincerity was manifest in the integral

publication [in Le Figaro] of the report Granderye and, if not integral,

as complete as their rather confused content allowed, of the telegrams

of Lieutenant Pallier.36

189

c o n s p i r a c y t h e o r i e s a n d s c a n d a l s

News coverage of the Voulet–Chanoine affair lasted a long

time. This was partly because information was not forthcoming

in sequence. Gaps and delays between various telegrams and

letters confused matters. Voulet’s correspondence from April

did not arrive until July, August, and September, well after his

death. The parliamentary debates kept it alive and the enquiry

sustained interest. In this sense it mimicked the Dreyfus affair

which had, among other things, trained journalists to doubt any

official version of events and led them to imagine conspiracies

where they could not find evidence.37

With the army unwilling to budge and the government keen to

bury once and for all the divisive trial, the Dreyfus affair ended

in a compromise. Thanks to Jules Chanoine and most military

officials, Dreyfus was found guilty in Rennes despite mounting

evidence to the contrary. The new minister of war sought to

appease the armed forces with this verdict but also to prepare

for a discrete rehabilitation of the innocent man. Thus the trial

ended with the very odd verdict of guilty of treason but with

unprecedented attenuating circumstances.38

The Dreyfus camp was divided between his personal partisans and the partisans of his cause. The former were open to

a deal with the government; the latter, around Clemenceau,

would not accept anything less than a complete and instant

rehabilitation. They wanted the army to recognize its crime

while the family around Reinach wanted to save a man. Captain Dreyfus himself was at the end of his mental and moral

resources. His health was at stake and when the government

which included radicals and socialists, all Dreyfusards, offered a

presidential pardon with the promise of a later review, Dreyfus

accepted the iniquitous judgement. The compromise was seen

by the minister of war as a way of appeasing both the military

and the Dreyfusards. By the time of the verdict Voulet and

Chanoine were known to be dead. The Soudanese danger was

190

c o n s p i r a c y t h e o r i e s a n d s c a n d a l s

over. With the Dreyfus trial so potentially damaging to the army

having ended in this rather humiliating manner recently it was

obvious to all that neither the army nor the government wanted

to open a long and soul-destroying enquiry into the events of

Soudan. The government could ill afford another direct confrontation with the armed forces. Indeed the government found

a political solution by relieving the army of its government of

the colony, abolishing Soudan altogether in October 1899 and

carving up its territory between other existing colonies despite

the colonialists’ lobby.39 Soon afterwards a new colonial army

was established on 7 July 1900, which officialized but also regulated the existence of this specific force.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.