Word: tuareg
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Douglas Porch's The Conquest of the Sahara, it's not so easy. While the story is told from the perspective of the colonial-French, their swath of death and mutilation across "the world's greatest desert" hardly makes them lovable. On the other hand, their opponents, the Tuareg desert tribesmen and their sometime allies the Chaamba Arabs, are at least as treacherous as the French. No one likes a story without sympathetic characters, and the only ones in Conquest of the Sahara are the nameless Arab and Black peasants and slaves who are robbed, raped, and murdered by both...
...appointed via government connections to lead expedition across the Sahara to Point B. He is given C Francs and D assistants, collects E colonial troops in French Algeria, and, most importantly, F camels. Along the journey treacherous native guides mislead the party, and contacts with the mysterious Tuareg people increase. After G weeks of near-starvation, the raiders appear and massacre the expedition...
...Porch tendency is to criticize the actors for making mistakes. "Any man with a sense of self-preservation would have executed an about-face and turned home," he chidingly writes of Paul Flatters, who led the first and second expeditions. As it happens, Flatters is cut down by the Tuareg four pages later. Porch knew it would happen the reader whew it would happen-the chapter is, duh, called "The Massacre" -but how could Flatters have known it without Porch's convenient historical hindsight? Still Porch's wry and occasionally snide writing makes for good reading and that' more important...