The Story of the Cape to Cairo Railway and River Route, from 1887 to 1922.

WEINTHAL, Leo (ed.).

Edité par London: The Pioneer Publishing Company Limited, 1923-26

A propos de cet article

First edition, complete with the map volume, of this suitably lavish tribute to one of the most glorious failures of the empire, the project conceived by Cecil Rhodes as "The Iron Spine and Ribs of Africa". By 1914 there was already a 2,600-mile link from Cape Town to Bukama in the Congo; two sections of river steamer and an isolated length of Congolese railway took the route to Stanleyville. In the north, the line was continuous from Cairo to Luxor and from Wadi Halfa to Kosti; these two sections were connected by 250 miles of Nile steamer, but the route to cross uncharted parts of the northern Congo and southern Sudan was not even surveyed by the time of publication, and the scheme was never completed. Weinthal produced this encyclopaedic work as "a belated but substantial tribute to Rhodes's idea. As an advisory board for this Brobdingnagian project, Weinthal recruited every possible survivor with a connection to Rhodes and to colonial Africa, every likely expert on the continent, and every amenable viceroy, sirdar, and colonial governor, from the general manager of the South African Railways to Sir Abe Bailey, Flinders Petrie, and Lord Lugard. The contents include essays on the history, society, and natural conditions of the African states to be traversed by the prospective railway; the mercantile potential of these states and the benefit of rail transport; the railway engineering feats undertaken in East Africa; touristic topics, such as ethnographic studies of tribespeople; big-game hunting; the "mysteries" of the Great Zimbabwe; the progress of colonial society in Cairo; and genial fantasies concerning the future of an "unlocked" continent that would be crossed by great silver airships stopping airily at new cities to disembark their passengers; merchants, mining engineers, and families of colonial administrators" (Merrington). Other prominent contributors were Sir Percy Fitzgerald on "Cecil Rhodes and Dr. Jameson;" Sir Harry Johnston on the native languages along the route; the late Captain Selous on big game; and Flinders Petrie on "The Trail of the Ancients on the Route"; there is also an extract from Churchill's My African Journey, accompanied by a portrait. Typescript labels and library plates to the front free endpapers record the bequest of this set to Barclays Bank by Lady Caulcutt, widow of Sir John (1876-1943), longtime director of Barclays, in 1944. See Merrington, "A Staggered Orientalism: The Cape-to-Cairo Imaginary", in Poetics Today 22.2, Summer 2001. 4 quarto text vols and 1 map portfolio. Profusely illustrated with mounted photographic portraits, half-tone plates (many folding) and text illustrations, and folding maps, most in colour (of which 12 in the map porfolio). Original black hard-grain half or quarter morocco, green cloth sides, spines lettered and decorated in gilt. Extremities lightly bumped and rubbed in places, corners worn (bumped in map porfolio), scattered faint marking to sides, mild finger-soiling to edges of text-blocks, two small punctures to vol. 1 spine, contents clean and fresh. A very good set.

N° de réf. du vendeur 120708

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Story of the Cape to Cairo Railway and River Route, from 1887 to 1922.
• Éditeur: London: The Pioneer Publishing Company Limited, 1923-26
• Édition: Edition originale