June 11th, 2013, 23:07
Before we land on Zanzibar there is some catching up to do with the Ladybird book. As well as the boat race on Lake Victoria and the school in Uganda, there were at least two more pages, + their illustrations, for Kenya.
Here you have the classic vague justification for colonialism: the original inhabitants weren't exploiting their land properly, so they deserved to lose it to people who knew how to make money from it! This is illustrated by perhaps the most remarkable picture in the whole little book:
The artist has essentially painted typical English countryside, familiar to the early '60s British children for whom the book was produced. This has led to the imported sheep having to be unrealistically squeezed into a cornfield. It is pretty obvious who's Lord of All he Surveys. But, as the text most patronisingly mentioned, 'the farm workers were Africans, who were very clever with the machinery.' (OK as long as it's a Massey Fergusson tractor rather than a Kalashnikov rifle).