The Scramble for Africa touches upon another point that I think people like Hochschild are loth to admit. Colonialism in Africa was, aside from South Africa, where the mines led to fabulous wealth, and Congo, where Leopold’s brutal monopolistic pseudo-slave state was able to maintain an unheard-of profit margin on rubber during the rubber boom, a huge economic loss for the colonial powers. Colonial agents died in their thousands of tropical fevers, malaria and other diseases that Europeans were unused to. At a certain point, the Great Powers were fighting over places just to extend their territory as an end in itself, with no thought as to the utility of the lands they were claiming.