A Brief History of African Stereotypes: Part 1: Broken, Helpless Africa Everything you know about Africa is wrong. No, no, not you in particular.  I’m thinking about a more general “you”—the American “you,” the Western “you,” and even the 18-to-22-year-old “you” who enrolls in my introductory African history classes. When I allow myself to think about it, it seems as though I spend as much time un-teaching African history as teaching it.  This reason is simple.  Most students come into my classes knowing next to nothing about the continent, and what little they know is wrong. It’s not their fault.  They’re very bright, they graduated from good high schools, and they’re (usually) eager to learn.  But the culture that surrounds them has filled their heads with images of Africa that blend myth with distortion.  Many of them, like most people in the West, imagine that Africa is: an unspoiled paradise of people and wild animals, living in harmony with nature; a primitive backwater trapped in a timeless, tribal past; a place where dangerous diseases and even more dangerous men wreak havoc;  an exotic wonderland of bizarre and outlandish people; and a broken place of collapse, death, and decay. Some of these stereotypes are contradictory, yet all of them are pervasive—so much so that Erik Gilbert and Jonathan Reynolds’ Africa in World History, a widely used university textbook, devotes its preface to unpacking them.  Anyone reading this post can undoubtedly come up with examples from American culture that reproduce and reinforce these stereotypes, from Disney’s The Lion King to last night’s report on CNN. I’m devoting Part 1 of this series on African stereotypes to “Broken Africa,” to tracing the geneology of stereotypical images—especially photographs—of African suffering, victimhood, and brutality, from the anti-slavery movement of 200 years ago to the blindspots and hubris of Invisible Children.
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A Brief History of African Stereotypes: Part 1: Broken, Helpless Africa

Everything you know about Africa is wrong. No, no, not you in particular.  I’m thinking about a more general “you”—the American “you,” the Western “you,” and even the 18-to-22-year-old “you” who enrolls in my introductory African history classes.

When I allow myself to think about it, it seems as though I spend as much time un-teaching African history as teaching it.  This reason is simple.  Most students come into my classes knowing next to nothing about the continent, and what little they know is wrong.

It’s not their fault.  They’re very bright, they graduated from good high schools, and they’re (usually) eager to learn.  But the culture that surrounds them has filled their heads with images of Africa that blend myth with distortion.  Many of them, like most people in the West, imagine that Africa is: an unspoiled paradise of people and wild animals, living in harmony with nature; a primitive backwater trapped in a timeless, tribal past; a place where dangerous diseases and even more dangerous men wreak havoc;  an exotic wonderland of bizarre and outlandish people; and a broken place of collapse, death, and decay.

Some of these stereotypes are contradictory, yet all of them are pervasive—so much so that Erik Gilbert and Jonathan Reynolds’ Africa in World History, a widely used university textbook, devotes its preface to unpacking them.  Anyone reading this post can undoubtedly come up with examples from American culture that reproduce and reinforce these stereotypes, from Disney’s The Lion King to last night’s report on CNN.

I’m devoting Part 1 of this series on African stereotypes to “Broken Africa,” to tracing the geneology of stereotypical images—especially photographs—of African suffering, victimhood, and brutality, from the anti-slavery movement of 200 years ago to the blindspots and hubris of Invisible Children.

A Secret Society of Murderers

Excerp from King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild.

At the dockside at Antwerp, Morel saw what the Elder Dempster ships were carrying. But he soon noticed that the records he carefully compiled for his employer did not conform with the trade statistics that the Etat Indépendant du Congo announced to the public. As he studied the discrepancies between the two sets of figures, he began to uncover an elaborate skein of fraud. Three discoveries shocked him:

The first was that the arms cargo sent to the Congo whose disclosure had so upset the secretary of state was not an exception; it was the rule: “Elder Dempster steamers employed in the Congo trade had been regularly shipping for the past few years prodigious quantities of ball cartridge and thousands of rifles and cap-guns either consigned to the State itself or to sundry Belgian “trading” Companies…. To what usage was this armament put?”

Morel’s second discovery was that somebody was skimming handsome profits off the top. To the tune of tens of millions of today’s dollars, “the amount of rubber and ivory brought home from the Congo in the Elder Dempster ships…. Into whose pocket did the unavowed surplus go?”

His final discovery lay starkly before him on the docks, as he watched the ships being loaded and unloaded, and it was confirmed in Elder Dempster’s records. There he found the most ominous message of all: “Of the imports going into the Congo something like 80% consisted of articles which were remote from trade purposes. Yet, the Congo was exporting increasing quantities of rubber and ivory for which, on the face of the import statistics, the natives were getting nothing or next to nothing. How, then, was this rubber and ivory being acquired? Certainly not by commercial dealing. Nothing was going in to pay for what was coming out.”

Morel was right. We now know that the value of the rubber, ivory, and there riches coming to Europe each year on the Elder Dempsters ships was roughly five time that of goods being shipped to the Congo that were destined for Africans. In return for the rubber and ivory, Morel knew, it was not possible that the Congo’s Africans were being paid in money—which he knew they were not allowed to use—or in goods that came from elsewhere, for Elder Dempster had the cargo monopoly. Clearly, they were not being paid at all.

Later in life, E.D Morel was to become good friend with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. But the young Morel made a deduction more far-reaching than anything accomplished by Holmes. From what he saw at the wharf in Antwerp, and from studying his company’s records in Liverpool, he deduced the existence—on another continent, thousands of mile away—of slavery.

“There figure told their own story…. Forced labour of a terrible and continuous kind could alone explain such unheard-of profits…. forced labour in which the Congo Government was the immediate beneficiary; forced labour directed by the closest associates of the King himself…. I was giddy and appalled at the cumulative significance of my discoveries. It must be bad enough to stumble upon a murder. I had stumbled upon a secret society of murderers with a King for a cronimam.”

With this brilliant flash of recognition by an obscure shipping-company official, King Leopold II acquired his most formidable enemy.

Colonialism, Africa and AIDS We are unlikely to ever know all the details of the birth of the AIDS epidemic. But a series of recent genetic discoveries have shed new light on it, starting with the moment when a connection from chimp to human changed the course of history. We now know where the epidemic began: a small patch of dense forest in southeastern Cameroon. We know when: within a couple of decades on either side of 1900. We have a good idea of how: A hunter caught an infected chimpanzee for food, allowing the virus to pass from the chimp’s blood into the hunter’s body, probably through a cut during butchering. As to the why, here is where the story gets even more fascinating, and terrible. We typically think of diseases in terms of how they threaten us personally. But they have their own stories. Diseases are born. They grow. They falter, and sometimes they die. In every case these changes happen for reasons. For decades nobody knew the reasons behind the birth of the AIDS epidemic. But it is now clear that the epidemic’s birth and crucial early growth happened during Africa’s colonial era, amid massive intrusion of new people and technology into a land where ancient ways still prevailed. European powers engaged in a feverish race for wealth and glory blazed routes up muddy rivers and into dense forests that had been traveled only sporadically by humans before. The most disruptive of these intruders were thousands of African porters. Forced into service by European colonial powers, they cut paths through the exact area that researchers have now identified as the birthplace of the AIDS epidemic. It was here, in a single moment of transmission from chimp to human, that a strain of virus called HIV-1 group M first appeared. In the century since, it has been responsible for 99 percent of all of the world’s deaths from AIDS — not just in Africa but in Moscow, Bangkok, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, New York, Washington. All that began when the West forced its will on an unfamiliar land, causing the essential ingredients of the AIDS epidemic to combine. It was here, by accident but with motives by no means pure, that the world built a tinderbox and tossed in a spark.
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Colonialism, Africa and AIDS

We are unlikely to ever know all the details of the birth of the AIDS epidemic. But a series of recent genetic discoveries have shed new light on it, starting with the moment when a connection from chimp to human changed the course of history.

We now know where the epidemic began: a small patch of dense forest in southeastern Cameroon. We know when: within a couple of decades on either side of 1900. We have a good idea of how: A hunter caught an infected chimpanzee for food, allowing the virus to pass from the chimp’s blood into the hunter’s body, probably through a cut during butchering.

As to the why, here is where the story gets even more fascinating, and terrible. We typically think of diseases in terms of how they threaten us personally. But they have their own stories. Diseases are born. They grow. They falter, and sometimes they die. In every case these changes happen for reasons.

For decades nobody knew the reasons behind the birth of the AIDS epidemic. But it is now clear that the epidemic’s birth and crucial early growth happened during Africa’s colonial era, amid massive intrusion of new people and technology into a land where ancient ways still prevailed. European powers engaged in a feverish race for wealth and glory blazed routes up muddy rivers and into dense forests that had been traveled only sporadically by humans before.

The most disruptive of these intruders were thousands of African porters. Forced into service by European colonial powers, they cut paths through the exact area that researchers have now identified as the birthplace of the AIDS epidemic. It was here, in a single moment of transmission from chimp to human, that a strain of virus called HIV-1 group M first appeared.

In the century since, it has been responsible for 99 percent of all of the world’s deaths from AIDS — not just in Africa but in Moscow, Bangkok, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, New York, Washington. All that began when the West forced its will on an unfamiliar land, causing the essential ingredients of the AIDS epidemic to combine.

It was here, by accident but with motives by no means pure, that the world built a tinderbox and tossed in a spark.

On David Graeber’s "Debt: The First 5000 Years"

David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years begins with a conversation in a London churchyard about debt and morality and takes us all the way from ancient Sumeria, through Roman slavery, the vast empires of the “Axial age”, medieval monasteries, New World conquest and slavery to the 2008 financial collapse. The breadth of material Graeber covers is extraordinarily impressive and, though anchored in the perspective of social anthropology, he also draws on economics and finance, law, history, classics, sociology and the history of ideas. I’m guessing that most of us can’t keep up and that we lack, to some degree, his erudition and multidisciplinary competence. Anyway, I do. But I hope that a Crooked Timber symposium can draw on experts and scholars from enough of these different disciplines to provide some critical perspective. My own background is in political philosophy and the history of political thought: so that naturally informs my own reactions as do my political engagements and sympathies. So mine is merely one take on some of the book’s themes.

Most people who work in the capitalist West are in debt: both individually and collectively. That indebtedness takes many forms. I have a mortgage, and I have to work to pay it off. Many of the consumer goods I enjoy are bought on credit. My students, thanks to “reforms” to the British higher education system initiated by “New Labour” and put into operation by the ConDem coalition will have massive debts that they will be seeking to redeem for their entire careers. My employer has long standing debts to the banks, underpinned by covenants that require that it carry out its business to certain standards or face unfavourable renegotiation of terms. The entire people of Greece are in debt and face, as a consequence, years of austerity and the loss of much of their political autonomy. And many other countries are in the same position. As Graeber points out near the beginning of his book, many third world countries, having been sold loans from pressurizing Western banks, loans that they can’t repay, have had to implement “austerity” and accept tough conditions imposed by international bodies, such as the IMF. Debt reflects on these recent events in historical perspective, seeking out precedents, but also giving an account of the emergence of the debt and money as social institutions and the way in which out ambivalent attitude to these is infected by the way our moral language and our folk conceptions of sociality are infected with ideas of debt, owing, repayment, obligation and the like.

“I am your fellow man, but not your slave” In September of 1848, the incredible Frederick Douglass wrote the following open letter to Thomas Auld — a man who, until a decade previous, had been Douglass’ slave master for many years — and published it in North Star, the newspaper he himself founded in 1847. In the letter, Douglass writes of his twenty years as a slave; his subsequent escape and new life; and then enquires about his siblings, presumably still “owned” by his old master. He even asks Auld to imagine his own daughter as a slave. It’s a lengthy letter, but perfectly written and such a valuable read. The final paragraph is also exquisite. I will now bring this letter to a close, you shall hear from me again unless you let me hear from you. I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery—as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening their horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. I shall make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy—and as a means of bringing this guilty nation with yourself to repentance. In doing this I entertain no malice towards you personally. There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege, to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.
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“I am your fellow man, but not your slave”

In September of 1848, the incredible Frederick Douglass wrote the following open letter to Thomas Auld — a man who, until a decade previous, had been Douglass’ slave master for many years — and published it in North Star, the newspaper he himself founded in 1847. In the letter, Douglass writes of his twenty years as a slave; his subsequent escape and new life; and then enquires about his siblings, presumably still “owned” by his old master. He even asks Auld to imagine his own daughter as a slave. It’s a lengthy letter, but perfectly written and such a valuable read. The final paragraph is also exquisite.

I will now bring this letter to a close, you shall hear from me again unless you let me hear from you. I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery—as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening their horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. I shall make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy—and as a means of bringing this guilty nation with yourself to repentance. In doing this I entertain no malice towards you personally. There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege, to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.

The Civil War, Part 2: The People Photo: Three different photographs of Peter, a slave from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ca. 1863. The scars are a result of a whipping by his overseer Artayou Carrier, who was subsequently fired by the master. It took two months to recover from the beating. These photographs were widely distributed in the North during the war. Also called “Gordon”, Peter later enlisted in the Union Army. Today’s collection is part 2 of 3, covering the people of the Civil War: the generals, slaves, civilians, politicians, and soldiers that lived through those turbulent years. Tomorrow, in part three I’ll be sharing some of the amazing three-dimensional stereographs of the war. (Be sure to see part 1 as well.) Keep in mind, as you view these photographs, that they were taken 150 years ago — providing a glimpse of a United States that was only 85 years old at the time. [48 photos]
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The Civil War, Part 2: The People

Photo: Three different photographs of Peter, a slave from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ca. 1863. The scars are a result of a whipping by his overseer Artayou Carrier, who was subsequently fired by the master. It took two months to recover from the beating. These photographs were widely distributed in the North during the war. Also called “Gordon”, Peter later enlisted in the Union Army.

Today’s collection is part 2 of 3, covering the people of the Civil War: the generals, slaves, civilians, politicians, and soldiers that lived through those turbulent years. Tomorrow, in part three I’ll be sharing some of the amazing three-dimensional stereographs of the war. (Be sure to see part 1 as well.) Keep in mind, as you view these photographs, that they were taken 150 years ago — providing a glimpse of a United States that was only 85 years old at the time. [48 photos]

The Civil War, Part 1: The Places

Last year marked the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, a milestone commemorated by The Atlantic in a special issue (now available online). Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. As brother fought brother and the nation’s future grew uncertain, the public appetite for information was fed by these images from the trenches, rivers, farms, and cities that became fields of battle. Today’s collection is part 1 of 3, covering the places of the Civil War: the battleships, prisons, hospitals, urban centers, and rural pastures where history was made. Tomorrow’s installment will feature some of the people involved in the conflict, and on Friday I’ll be sharing some of the amazing three-dimensional stereographs of the war. Keep in mind, as you view these photographs, that they were taken 150 years ago — providing a glimpse of a United States that was only 85 years old at the time. [48 photos]

A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.
—

Albert Camus

 
“To My Old Master,” letter from an ex-slave to his former owner in 1865 In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan—who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family—responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated). Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I’ll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end. (Source: The Freedmen’s Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress.) Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865 To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance. I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again. As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire. In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits. Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me. From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson.
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“To My Old Master,” letter from an ex-slave to his former owner in 1865

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan—who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family—responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I’ll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end.

(Source: The Freedmen’s Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

St. Petersburg: Paris of the North or City of Bones?

St. Petersburg was built as monument to the might of Imperial Russia - and the glory of the Tsar whose name it bears. Now Peter the Great’s ‘Window on the West’ plays host to this week’s G8 summit - and his vision is complete at last.

When G8 leaders sit down in St Petersburg next weekend, the ground beneath them will silently groan with the weight of the dead. Known as “the city built on bones”, St Petersburg’s foundations sit above the skeletons of the press-ganged slave labourers who toiled to erect it. Historians believe the remains of some 100,000 18th-century serfs are buried beneath its wide Parisian-style avenues and grand Italianate palaces.

Drawn from the length and breadth of the then Russian Empire, they expired from cold, from hunger, from disease, or if they were really unlucky, from the wolves. They gave their lives for the glory of then Imperial Russia and what they created, St Petersburg, stands as a monument to the single-mindedness of the Russian state.

When G8 leaders feast on caviar and quaff champagne, perhaps after discussing debt in the developing world, they are unlikely to spare a thought for the unfortunate slave labourers who built St Petersburg.

They should, for if they want to understand Russia and its complexities, once described by Sir Winston Churchill as “a riddle wrapped in an enigma”, they need look no further than St Petersburg’s incredible history. Its elegant palaces reek of European refinement and were deliberately built in a Western style in an attempt to bring Russia closer to Europe.

But more than three centuries later, it is an odyssey Russia has yet to complete, and St Petersburg is a testament to how difficult that journey has been.