King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain through African Eyes

In 1895 three Bechuana chiefs from southern Africa traveled to London to implore Queen Victoria not to turn their territories over to the empire builder Cecil Rhodes. King Khama and his associates won a few concessions, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. In their travels, however, they helped sway British public opinion to a more sympathetic view of indigenous issues in Africa, especially by favorably impressing the liberal clergy. Basing his account of the Bechuana leaders' tour of Great Britain on contemporary newspaper reports, Neil Parsons carefully reconstructs their itinerary, which included a strange stop at Madame Tussaud's famous wax museum. King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White Queen is more than a narrative of events: in its pages, Parsons does a fine job of discussing the contradictions of imperial rule and of competing ideas of power and justice.