In 1879 a forgotten Irish adventurer called Frederick Carter marched four tamed Asian elephants from the coast of East Africa to the edge of the Congo.
He was sent to establish a training school for African elephants so they could be used to transport cargo in place of vast armies of porters.
It’s a tale of ineptitude, hypocrisy and greed filled with powerful chiefs, ivory dealers, Catholic nuns and dissolute colonial officials set against the beautifully described landscapes of Tanzania, the Congo, Brussels, Iraq and India.
Sophy Roberts is the author of A Training School for Elephants and The Lost Pianos of Siberia. She was editor-at-large of Condé Nast Traveller and also writes regularly for Financial Times Weekend, covering remote destinations from Papua New Guinea to Kamchatka. When not on the road, she hosts the excellent Gone to Timbuktu podcast.
You can read more about her on her website, and follow her on Instagram. There’s also a website for the book featuring behind the scenes photos and videos.
We spoke about Frederick Carter’s forgotten journey, Leopold II’s Congo land grab, and oral memory keepers as custodians of the past.
These are the books we mentioned in the podcast:
We also mentioned:
King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild
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