One can learn a great deal about a society by understanding its literature – especially its popular literature, and of the Victorian Era, one could argue that this book was perhaps one of the most popular.  It was written at the height of empire – imperialism was not a dirty word, but was felt by all to be spreading modernity and civilisation across the globe.  It was this sentiment that stood at the heart of the Victorian sensibility.  King Solomon’s Mines similarly has this sentiment at its core.  Despite the fairly blatant imperialist actions of our leaders – it can hardly be said to be the spirit of our contemporary society.  This is what makes reading this book so fascinating.

While it is an entertaining read in its own right – still I couldn’t help but cringe at the overt racism, sexism and uncritical moral superiority of the white men as they adventure across the African continent.  This is an astonishing fact when you consider that this was the Harry Potter of its day – in popularity – that its ideals were shared by an entire generation.  This books represents how the average person thought and felt about their world, and as a portrait of a culture, it is very interesting indeed.

The story concerns the adventures of Allan Quatermain, who serves as the narrator of the novel, as he journeys with his companions, Captain Good, Sir Henry and the Zulu native Umbopa to find Sir Henry’s brother who became lost searching for the legendry King Solomon’s Mines.  It was the first ‘Lost World’ novel and spawned a genre that continues to produce examples today such as Indiana Jones and The Mummy.  It is entertaining, full of excitement and laugh-out-loud funny to boot.

It’s not an accident that I should some day have come to read this novel – even though its popularity has waned considerably – and perhaps only tenuously holds its place as a classic.  Nor is it an accident that my last name should match the last name of Rider Haggard’s – he is my great uncle (throw in a few more greats for good measure).  I was introduced to it by my grandfather, but being a somewhat disinterested teenager, I never read it while he was alive – much to my great regret.  Nevertheless my grandfather, through great encouragement of the book itself, inducted me into its values.  As he was my introduction to this book you will perhaps forgive me a short digression as I introduce it to you through his eyes.

My grandfather himself was born perhaps a generation too late.  He saw first hand the second world war that destroyed the British empire – and the post-colonial society that replaced it.  He lived in Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) before Mugabe came to power – and left before the last remnants of British society were swept away (with no illusions about what that would mean in the long run).  For my Grandfather, King Solomon’s Mines was a window back into an old world that he had been consistently denied.  By the time I was old enough to begin understanding such issues the colonial ideal was dead.  But he still believed in it.  The idea was that more fortunate peoples owed it to the less fortunate to share in their success.  For him, the motivating principle of colonialism was not greed, but ‘noblesse oblige’ – great power implies great responsibility.  King Solomon’s Mines represented that best of British spirit to a popular culture that believed it through and through.  How astonishingly stark a comparison it makes to all the related literature that followed Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

I think it’s appropriate that the image of greed is fore grounded by Haggard throughout the novel.  The diamond mine itself is the title.  But there is a cautionary dimension.  As the novel relates, all those that seek the diamonds out of greed end up either failing miserably or perishing in some misadventure.  Our protagonists are seeking the lost brother of Sir Henry.  When they make it to the mine itself, it is only after they have performed noble deeds across the land of the Kukuanas (a fictional lost tribe of Zulu like warriors that live beyond an impassable desert).  When they offer to go to war for their friend Umbopa, he offers them the treasures of Solomon as a reward for their help – but only Quatermain acknowledges that he would include this as his motive as he’s a “practical man”.  Once the war is done, Haggard begins to create a sense of deep foreboding about the treasure.  Gagool, the old witch that leads them to the treasure, makes repeated mention of the white man’s lust for white stones and juxtaposes that with the grizzly end that she predicts for them – as though it is their greed that will be their undoing.  Indeed, after being trapped by Gagool in the cave of riches, they hardly care to take more than a handful – their near death experience causing them to regret their lust for limitless wealth.

The civilising colonial spirit gets a strong run.  There is hardly a thought of going native in any kind of a Kurtz like fashion.  The closest any of them come to it is the character of Good who develops a romantic relationship with a beautiful Kukuana girl.  But this entanglement is explicitly frowned upon by Quartermain who echoes the girl’s own words to the effect that  ”the sun cannot mate with the darkness”.  Even when she dies Quartermain sees that as preferable than Good actually taking up a relationship with her – such is the revulsion to the idea of going native in any sense.  Similarly, the white travellers try their hand at civilising the Kukuana tribe.  The evil king regularly murders members of his own army for no reason than having been singled out by a witch.  Quatermain and his companions exact a promise from Umbopa such that in exchange for their help in overthrowing the king, he must promise to end the barbaric practice and never condemn a man without a fair trial.

But for a noble, civilizing spirit, it has its darker side.  The patronizing superiority of the Victorian attitude is thrust in our faces at every opportunity.  The white men assume the mantle of gods among the Kukuana people, using their guns and an extremely convenient eclipse of the sun to prove it.  The issue of English superiority over the African is made evident even when the narrator is approving, for example:

And when Umbopa the Zulu presumes to speak as an equal to Sir Henry, Quatermain tells us:

To be engaged in any kind of civilizing enterprise, as was Victorian England, there simply must be this kind of feeling of superiority.  It’s embedded in the logic.  The result is a racism far worse than any ascribed to Conrad by the likes of Chinua Achebe.

There are other oddities about this book which are somewhat off-putting.  A whole chapter is given over to an elephant hunt.  It is totally irrelevant to the larger plot and contributes nothing.  We cringe nowadays at such senseless slaughter since we know that this attitude has led to the endangerment of the elephant as a species.  What’s astonishing about this chapter is the enjoyment and gaiety of description.  In contrast with the chapter that describes the random murders of the Kukuana tribesmen, one might think Haggard was being ironic.  But he’s not.  Their butchery is fine, but that of the Kafirs is not.

One might feel we haven’t come very far since those days.  The neo-conservatives talk about their civilizing mission in Iraq – their quest to spread their superior ideals.  And maybe there’s a significant percentage of us who buy into that story.  But imagine this novel, re-written for today, set in Iraq, with a group of Americans looking for lost Arab treasure.  On their way, they set about showing those “savage” Arabs the right way to live – teaching them about democracy and the like.  Do you think such a novel would be as popular as Haggard’s was?

I think it very unlikely