Lost White Tribes

Riccardo Orizio

In Lost White Tribes CNN Italia journalist Riccardo Orizio reports from some of the strangest societies in the world. While the book's American subtitle "The End of Privilege and the Last Colonials" is wildly off target (these are not peoples who ever belonged to the colonial classes) it is indeed a look at white societies hidden away in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

In the Dutch burghers in Sri Lanka and the confederate die-hards in Brazil Orizio finds communities in declining health and relatively poorly off. Worse still is the predicament of the Germans in Jamaica, the Baster population in Namibia, the Blancs Matignon in Guadeloupe and (poorest of all) the Poles in Haiti. In most cases these populations are desperately poor and deluded about their importance to the rest of the world. The Haitian Poles still wait for their Polish Pope to return and rescue them while the Matignon are hungry for visits from their supposed kin, the French aristocracy.

Most of these groups face hostility from the surrounding population and, in some cases, the accusations that they've become dangerously inbred appears to stand up to Orizio's scrutiny. And the strange impression you get from the book's short section of photos is ... most of these people, er, aren't actually all that white.

Also strange is Orizio's failure to tie these six essays together and provide any kind of overview. Perhaps they began life as separate magazine articles. And, individually, each story is fairly loosely told, with the author dipping into a bit of history here and there in between direct reportage. For long periods Orizio disappears, then he's back again centre stage. At times it's hard to know whether his interlocutor is truly a valuable representative of the community or simply the only passer by willing to talk to the Italian stranger.

It shouldn't therefore be a surprise that the short foreword is by Ryszard Kapuscinski, grand-daddy of this kind of travel writing.