How Russia tried to colonise Africa and failed | Opinions

“Remember, you are white, a man of the superior race,” this was one of the rules Lieutenant Grigorii Chertkov espoused while deployed in Africa in the service of the Russian Empire in 1897. He was part of a delegation sent by Russian Emperor Nicholas II to Ethiopia to establish a formal Russian diplomatic mission with the aim of bringing the African country into the Russian imperial fold.

In the eyes of the African people who saw the Russian convoy make its way from a port in Djibouti to Addis Ababa, the Russians were probably hardly distinguishable from any other European colonial…