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In 1886, the stakes rose when gold was discovered in Transvaal, the Afrikaner republic, which was soon overwhelmed by British gold seekers, the uitlanders. In 1890, Rhodes, now thirty-seven, was elected premier of the Cape, and moved to limit African rights. ‘The native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise,’ he said. ‘We must adopt a system of despotism.’ Then, chartering a paramilitary British South African Company, he pushed British power into Transvaal and northwards into the African kingdom of Lobengula, king of the Ndebele, son of the founder Mzilikazi, ex-general of Shaka, who had conquered the kingdom during the 1820s. Commander of 20,000 warriors, husband of twenty wives, ruler since 1868, Lobengula had successfully limited British infiltration, but Rhodes and his paramilitaries, organized by his irrepressible henchman Leander Jameson, a gun-toting doctor,^* provoked war. Lobengula mobilized. At Shangani, 6,000 fighters, armed with Martini–Henrys and spears, attacked Rhodes’s posse, who had a singular advantage: the Maxim.

Arriving in England in 1882 from the United States, after losing the electric bulb war to Edison, Maxim had met an American who advised, ‘Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other’s throats with greater facility.’

At Shangani, five Maxims killed 1,500 Matabele in minutes, ‘like mowing grass’; a week later, they killed another 2,500. ‘The shooting,’ said Rhodes, ‘must have been excellent.’ The public was impressed with British technology. ‘Whatever happens,’ wrote Hilaire Belloc, ‘we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not.’ But the trouble with new technology is that competitors can buy it too, and soon the British would be on the receiving end. His prestige shattered, Lobengula was poisoned, the kingdom’s destruction aided by a shrewd neighbouring Tswana king, Khama the Great. British settlers poured in, naming the territory Rhodesia, but when Rhodes turned to break Khama, he was outwitted. Khama, a Christian convert, travelled to London and appealed to the government, which shamed by Rhodes’s predations, allowed the king to keep Bechuanaland (Botswana).^* ‘It’s humiliating,’ grumbled Rhodes, ‘to be utterly beaten by these n*****s.’

In December 1895, Rhodes orchestrated an invasion of Transvaal, backing Dr Jameson and 600 mercenaries, who were easily shot down by Afrikaner farmers. The prime minister Lord Salisbury was incensed. Rhodes resigned as Cape premier. Jameson took the blame.^* Kaiser Wilhelm ordered German troops to intervene against Britain but was restrained by his ministers.

Weeks after the Jameson raid, an African monarch proved the limits of European conquest. On 1 March 1896, at the valley of Adawa, 14,000 Italian troops attacked the Ethiopian army.

MENELIK AND EMPRESS TAYTU: AFRICAN VICTORY

Like Germany, Italy was a touchy new country, desperate to catch up with the Anglo-French. Its premier Francesco Crispi, an authoritarian nationalist and dramatic populist known as the Loner who had fought with Garibaldi, was an aggressive imperialist. ‘Crispi wants to occupy everywhere,’ joked the king Umberto, ‘even China and Japan,’ adding, ‘Crispi’s a pig but the essential pig.’ Close to Bismarck, with whom Italy was allied, Crispi seized Massawa, a territory he named Eritrea (from the Latin term for the Red Sea, Mare Erythraeum), but when he planned to expand into Ethiopia, he encountered the most talented African leader of the imperial age: Menelik II.

He was the young prince who had been a prisoner and son-in-law of the capricious Emperor Tewodros. After Tewodros’s suicide, he mourned the emperor but submitted to Emperor Yohannes, who installed him as king of Showa. For seventeen years he was married to an untameable noblewoman, Princess Befana, who promoted her sons by previous marriages and repeatedly tried to overthrow him. After their divorce, he grieved for her: ‘You ask me to look at these women with the same eyes that once gazed upon Befana?’ Third time lucky, he married Taytu Betul, a potentate from Gojjam and Gondar in the north who had been married three times before and could field her own regiment.