German colonies, a plea for the native races

A PLEA FOR THE

NATIVE RAGES

!Y SIR

NET

JOHN MURRAY

GERMAN COLONIES

! GERMAN COLONIES

A PLEA FOR THE
NATIVE RAGES

BY SIR HUGH CLIFFORD

l\

K.C.M.G., GOVERNOR AND COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE GOLD COAST

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1918

Aix RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

An urgent problem — The German colonies — Value of German
colonies — Germany a bad neighbour — Justice for defence-
less peoples ....... pp. 1-6

II

True and false Imperialism ..... pp. 7-8

III

Good government and Self-government — Democracy and Auto-
cracy— The white man's reign of law — The African — The
ideal administrator — Responsibility to the natives pp. 9-15

IV

Early colonists — Ruthless methods — Magellan — England and
Holland — The Dutch East India Company — Portuguese
cruelties — English and Dutch rivalry — Dutch successes —
The Dutch system — India — Olive's work in India — Empire
founded on trade — Hastings' Administration — New methods
of government — Protection of the natives — Impeachment
of Warren Hastings — Burke and Hastings — British idea of
ruling — English ideals ..... pp. 16-35

V

The slave-trade in Africa— The Peace of Utrecht— The Germans
I'1 at St. Thomas — English and French in Africa — England
and the slave-trade — The national conscience — Slave-trade
assailed — Denmark, France and Sweden — England takes
the lead — England's action — Napoleon's opinion — Progress
of British colonies — Force of public opinion — Might and
right . . .... pp. 36-50

VI

The Straits Settlements— Treaty with Holland, 1871— The
Dutch in Sumatra ..... pp. 51-54

VII

English and Dutch methods — Monopoly and exclusion pp. 65-57

;

vi CONTENTS

VIII

The Burmese War, 1885 — A new era — Germany moves — The
/ scramble for colonies — Uncertain boundaries — Grasping

Germany — German methods — Diverse colonial policies —
Dutch and German systems — German brutality — Despotic
rule — German tyranny — Use of torture — Flogging — The
German decrees — The " rope end " . . pp. 58-74

IX

Sleeping sickness — The case of Dagadu — Release of Dagadu

pp. 75-78

X

Germans and native women — German patronymics pp. 79-81

XI

Migration and the rains — Tribal understanding — The labour
question — Germans and native labour — Effect of German
^/ methods — Movements of native labour — German " effi-

ciency " . . . . . . pp. 82-89

XII

Expropriation of natives — Work or flogging . . pp. 90-92

XIII

The Herreros — Treatment of Herreros — The Herrero war —
.^ German savagery — The attack on Belgium . pp. 93-98

XIV

The African native — The German system — Germans as con-
querors— " Revolts " — Restrictions on natives — Robbing
the natives ... . pp. 99-105

XV

Native soldiers — More outrages — German indifference

pp. 106-109
XVI

Principles of colonisation — German intervention — Germans not
"white men" — German crimes . . . pp. 110-114

XVII

Questions to be solved .... pp. 115-116

GERMAN COLONIES

A PLEA FOR THE NATIVE RACES

THE question of the retention by the Allies or the
restoration to Germany of the colonies which the
latter has lost, as an immediate consequence of
her acts of unprovoked aggression in Europe, is
one which will, of course, mainly be determined
by the character of the peace eventually secured.
Even if the statesmen of Europe and America
find themselves at last in a position to dictate
terms to Germany, there is a certain danger that
they may fail to attach to this matter the import-
ance which rightly belongs to it.

The innumerable intricate problems that will
demand solution in Europe will perhaps merit
and will certainly receive the first consideration ;
and as colonial affairs are remote from the experi-
ence and do not greatly excite the interest of the
electorates of Great Britain, of France, or of the
United States, it is to be apprehended that this
question may be treated at the peace conference
as a mere matter of expediency. Were this to
befall, it would amount to a disaster of the first
2 l

AN Ufe&ENT PROBLEM

fo ia the decision to be arrived at
principles of vital importance are at stake.

Civilisation, as represented by the democracies
of Europe and America, is on its trial in this
matter before the wliole non-European world. The
coloured races are waiting to see whether the im-
portance of their interests is to receive recognition
at the hands of the Allies, whether the sense of
responsibility of the white nations for the welfare
of the peoples of the non-European world is to be
proof against the temptation to follow the line
of least resistance, whether there is to be established
one law for the white races and another for the
rest of mankind with regard to the rights of small
and defenceless peoples to fair and just treatment,
and whether the loyal and often enthusiastic
assistance which many of these peoples have
afforded to Great Britain and to France in the
hour of their need is to be acknowledged or ignored.

It is to be apprehended that the comparatively
low intrinsic value of the erstwhile German colonies
may be allowed to affect the judgment of the
allied statesmen when the question of their fate
comes up for decision. With the exception of
South- West Africa, no one of these colonies is, in
any true sense, a " white man's country."

Even Damaraland and Great Namaqualand,
though they contain valuable deposits of diamonds
and minerals, and considerable areas suitable for
pasturage, are greatly handicapped by the inade-
quacy of their water-supply. The difficulties
which they therefore present to effective colonisa-
tion by Europeans are comparable to those

THE GERMAN COLONIES 3

experienced in Western Australia — a country which
they in some respects resemble. It remains to
be discovered whether their natural wealth will
suffice to defray the inevitably heavy cost of their
development.

German East Africa and the Cameroons cover
extensive areas, enjoy at different altitudes a
great variety of climate, are capable of immense
development, and are sources whence valuable
supplies of raw materials may be drawn. They,
however, are not places in which Europeans can
permanently reside, or in which the families of
white men can successfully be reared.

Togoland shares with them these disabilities ;
and though it was the only German colony that
was able to defray the cost of its own administra-
tion, it produces an annual revenue which compares
unfavourably with that yielded by a single average
district in the neighbouring British Colony of the
Gold Coast. Its real value to Germany was
strategical, the great installation at Kamina
forming, until its destruction by the Germans in
August, 1914, the pivotal point of their overseas
wireless system. It constituted the connecting-
link between Berlin, on the one hand, and Dar-
es-Salaam in East Africa, and Windhoek, in South-
West Africa, on the other ; and though it was
only in existence as a working installation for less
than four weeks, it flashed messages across the
Atlantic during the first month of the war that
warned more than two million pounds' worth of
German shipping to take refuge in American
ports.

4 VALUE OF GERMAN COLONIES

For the rest, German New Guinea is the home
of intractable savages, is unsuitable for the habita-
tion of white men, and is apparently impossible
of development with the aid of its native popula-
tion alone. The colony of Kiao-Chau, which
Germany wrested from China, and the islands of
the Pacific which she annexed during the concluding
years of the nineteenth century, were mainly
valued by her because they gave her a firmer
position in the politics of the Far East and of
Australasia than she otherwise would have occu-
pied, and secured to her a louder voice in discus-
sions arising from them.

No one of these colonial possessions, therefore,
is in itself a territory of such value that any other
Power need greatly covet it ; and this being so,
it has been suggested in some quarters that the
restoration of her colonies to Germany, while
vastly important to her, is a proposal to which
the Allies need raise no very strong objection.
There is, moreover, a certain body of opinion,
even in the allied countries, which favours the
view that it would be, in some sort, unfair to
exclude Germany from the " place in the sun " of
which the war has deprived her. Others add that
such exclusion would be short-sighted, and a grave
political mistake. Germany, they argue, being a
great nation, must be allowed a sufficient outlet
for her surplus energies — must be suffered to
resume the position of a World-State which, in
common with the other principal European Powers,
she occupied before the war ; and that to attempt
to prevent this would be vindictive and unreason- '

GERMANY A BAD NEIGHBOUR 5

able, and lacking in justification alike on grounds
of policy, principle and expediency.

Germany, however, has proved herself a singu-
larly bad and restless neighbour, and the Com-
monwealth of Australia and the Dominion of
New Zealand will have much to say in opposition
to any proposal to restore to Germany her former
colonies in the Pacific. The Union of South Africa
will also bring great pressure to bear to prevent
the reversion to Germany of Damaraland and Great
Namaqualand, which were conquered by General
Botha ; while China, which is now one of the
Allies, and Japan also, will strenuously resist the
reoccupation of Kiao-Chau by Germany.

The fact that no such powerful influences will be
arrayed against any proposal that may be made for
the restoration of the remaining former posses-
sions of Germany in Africa — German East Africa,
the Cameroons and Togoland — renders it all the
more probable that the principles that should
govern decision in these cases may be obscured
and overshadowed by considerations of convenience
and expediency. The impression may even be
created that something in the nature of an act of
generosity or of magnanimity will be performed
by the Allies if they relinquish all claims to these
extensive territories ; and as the populations
immediately concerned are inarticulate and have
no powerful neighbours with direct interests in
the matter to come forward as the champions of
their cause, this notion may perhaps gain a fairly
wide credence.

In this connection, however, it is well to recall

6 JUSTICE FOR DEFENCELESS PEOPLES

the fundamental contentions for a recognition of
which the Allies, during the past four years, have
been doing strenuous battle. Reduced to their
elements they are : firstly, the assertion and
vindication of the principle that, in international
affairs, right must not be allowed to succumb to
mere brute force ; and secondly, that justice, fair
play, peace and security, must be insured and
guaranteed to small and defenceless peoples. It
is the purpose of these pages to examine how far
the restoration to Germany of her former pos-
sessions in Africa is compatible with the establish-
ment of these principles.

n

IN his admirable and suggestive work, The Expan-
sion of Europe, Professor Ramsay Muir writes :

The terms " Empire " and " Imperialism " are
in some respects unfortunate, because of the sug-
gestion of purely military dominion which they
convey ; and their habitual employment has led
to some unhappy results. It has led men of one
school of thought to condemn and repudiate the
whole movement, as an immoral product of brute
force, regardless of the rights of conquered peoples.
They have refused to study it, and have made
no endeavour to understand it ; not realising that
the movement they were condemning was as
inevitable and as irresistible as the movement of
the tides — and as capable of being turned to
beneficent ends. On the other hand, the implica-
tions of these terms have perhaps helped to foster
in men of another type of mind an unhealthy spirit
of pride in mere dominion, as if that were an end
in itself, and have led them to exult in the exten-
sion of national power, without closely enough
considering the purposes for which it was to be
used. Both attitudes are deplorable, and in so
far as the words " Empire," " Imperial," and
" Imperialism " tend to encourage them, they are
unfortunate words. They certainly do not ade-
quately express the full significance of the process
whereby the civilisation of Europe has been made
the civilisation of the world.

8 TRUE AND FALSE IMPERIALISM

The currency which these descriptive labels
have acquired is the more to be regretted at the
present time because they savour of " Csesarism,"
of despotism, of " shining armour " and of " the
mailed fist " —of all the things, in a word, of which
the German Kaiser and the aggressive tyranny for
which he stands are the appalling culminations.
No associations could be more nicely calculated
to affront and antagonise democratic opinion, or
to predispose it to distrust any system that has
with them even a nominal connection.

This is the very irony of mischance ; for if its
principles and its purposes were rightly under-
stood, that which, for want of a better name, we
call " Imperialism " should make its strongest
appeal to those very schools of political thought
which to-day incline to decry and suspect it.
Unless an attempt be made to grasp those prin-
ciples and clearly to apprehend those purposes,
it is to be feared that the popular judgment may be
prejudiced from the outset concerning a question
which is of the utmost importance to unnumbered
human beings. Of these, in connection with the
restoration to Germany or the retention by the
Allies of the colonies of East Africa, the Cameroons
and Togoland, the fate of some 12,000,000 souls
is at this juncture hanging in the balance.

tni

THE late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman once
stated it to be his opinion that " good govern-
,v ment can never be a satisfactory substitute for
self-government." He was at that time the
Liberal Prime Minister of Great Britain, and his
aphorism succinctly summed up a conclusion at
which communities of British stock, at home and
abroad, had long ago arrived. It was faith in this
deep-rooted conviction, and a confident belief in
self-government as the best panacea that can be
applied to the grievances of any community of
European blood, that led the Government of which
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was the head, to
grant full autonomy to the Transvaal and to the
Orange Free State within four years of the con-
clusion of hostilities in South Africa. That act
was perhaps one of the most daring political
experiments in recorded history, and it has been
abundantly justified by its results.

It would not be safe to conclude, however, even
from so triumphant an object-lesson as this, that
the remedy that went so far to heal the recent
wounds of a white community in South Africa
is equally applicable to the needs of every non-
European people. It is well to realise that what
we call self-government — viz. any form of govern-
ment " of the people, by the people, for the people "
3 9

10 GOOD AND SELF-GOVERNMENT

— is the exclusive product of the European charac-
ter and intellect. In the non-European world it
finds its closest counterpart, not among the refined
and cultured races of the East, but in the political
organisations of certain small and primitive
African tribes ; but with this very qualified
exception, popular control of the executive is a
system which is quite foreign to the political con-
ceptions of non-European races. A study of the
latter (reveals the fact that their natural genius,
throughout the whole of their recorded history,
has worked for the establishment of autocratical
forms of government, no less certainly than that
of the European nations has instinctively aspired
toward democratic ideals.

Of this an illuminating modern instance is
supplied by the contrast presented by the United
States of America and the Republics which occupy
the central and southern portions of that -continent.
The former are peopled by men of European stock,
amid whom the negroes form a more or less
negligible political minority ; and here the system
of government that has been evolved is democratic
alike in substance, in spirit and in practice. In
the republics of Central and Southern America,
on the other hand, the proportion of men and
women of pure European descent to the rest of
the population is very small ; and here, though
the form of government adopted is democratic,
self-government, as it is understood in Europe and
in the United States, has never been sought for
or attained.

Independence of foreign control, which is quite

DEMOCRACY AND AUTOCRACY 11

another thing, has been secured ; but though they
are nominally republics, these States have always
been ruled by individual autocrats, such as Diaz
in Mexico and Castro in Venezuela, or else by no
less autocratical and arbitrary groups and cliques.
Revolutions have been common enough, and the
number of politicians who have laid claim to the
high-sounding title of " The Liberator " almost
defies the power of computation ; yet these political
convulsions have never aimed at anything beyond
the transfer of arbitrary powers from one individual
or group to another. They have not attempted
to control or to modify the character of the
authority to be wielded by the victors. In other
words, the natural genius peculiar to the European
and to the non-European characters respectively,
has here asserted itself in each instance, and has
produced the form of government which is its
distinctive fruit.

Similarly, it is possible to search the long history
of Asia without disinterring a single instance of a
revolution which was designed to effect a change,
not in the personality of the autocrat, but in the
autocratical system of his government.

The same may be said to apply to practically all
non-European countries ; and even the revolu-
tions which the present century . has witnessed
successively in Persia, in Turkey and in China —
though each has borrowed much of its inspiration
and all its catch- words from the political traditions
of the West — have been designed to place the
exercise of arbitrary power in new hands, not to
limit or to modify the character of the power to

12 THE WHITE MAN'S REIGN OF LAW

be exercised. Indeed, these recent political up-
heavals are chiefly interesting because they show
that the leaven of European influence is surely,
if slowly working, and because they encourage the
hope that more liberal systems of administration
may yet be evolved at some future date by some
of the non-European nations.

The choice which in the past has lain open to
the more politically backward peoples, therefore,
has not been a choice between self-government and
good-government, for to the former they have
never aspired, and the latter, under their own
rulers, they have very seldom experienced. In-
deed, the bulk of the population has never sought
or obtained any effective voice in the matter of
their administration, beyond assisting upon occa-
sion to pull down one autocrat and to set up
another in his place.

When, therefore, Europeans have .intervened
in the administration of these countries, the alter-
native presented to the people has been the
unfettered tyranny of native autocrats, on the
one hand, and the establishment by a foreign
nation of a reign of law, on the other. The choice
of the populace has unerringly selected the latter ;
and though in some places and among the more
advanced races of the non-European world the
ideal of self-government has dawned, at a later
period, upon their consciousness, this has only
occurred after the white man's reign of law has
first been solidly established, and it is to be recog-
nised as a direct result of association with Euro-
peans and of education upon lines devised by them.

THE AFRICAN 13

The most thorough-going advocate of democratic
institutions should therefore realise that, in the
case of primitive peoples such as those which
inhabit German East Africa, the Cameroons and
Togoland, unadulterated native rule is not popular
or desired by the bulk of the natives. It means
the oppression of the weak by the strong, the
tyranny of might, the abnegation of law, the per-
formance of various bloody rites, and perennial
intertribal strife — in a word, all the things which
are most abhorrent to the principles of democracy ;
and the only remedy for these anarchical con-
ditions is the imposition from without of an ordered
system of jurisdiction based upon justice and equity.

Provided that this actually is the character of
the rule established in their midst, the history
of the non-European world shows that for the
populations immediately concerned, the voice of
material advantage is wont to speak in far more
persuasive tones than that of racial or national
sentiment, the latter being ideas which do not
greatly flourish in these regions of the earth. In
nearly every instance, experience of European
systems of administration makes the native
population acquainted with justice and fair treat-
ment for the first time, and the abrupt contrast
which these things present to the local methods
of government breeds pari passu confidence in
the impartiality of the white man and distrust of
the administrative capacity of men of their own
race.

The work of government, as every practical
administrator knows, is mainly a matter of dull,

14 THE IDEAL ADMINISTRATOR

painstaking drudgery, and of close attention to
detail. It may have its moments of inspiration,
of achievement and of success ; but save for the
professional politician, such moments are of rare
occurrence.

Administrative work, if it is to be efficiently and
satisfactorily discharged — more especially in the
circumscribed arenas of the colonial world, where
the rulers and the ruled ordinarily come into very
close contact with one another — demands the
possession by the administrator of the very quali-
ties which are least frequently found in combination
among the indigenous inhabitants of these coun-
tries. They are diligence, sustained interest,
vigilance, incorruptible purity of official action and
intention, indifference alike to popular praise and
blame, and — to quote the words of the oath of
office which is administered to the Governors of
British colonies — a firm determination to "do
right by all manner of people, according to law,
without fear or favour, affection or ill-will."

These qualities formed no part of the equip-
ment of the native autocrats who ruled these
countries before the coming of the white men.
They were, save in the matter of diligence and
sustained interest, at least as conspicuously absent
in the first European exploiters of the non-
European world. During the past four hundred
years, however, the morality, no less than the
civilisation of Europe has made notable advances ;
and to quote Lord Mor ley's words :

In respect of territories not self-governing, the

RESPONSIBILITY TO THE NATIVES 15

sense of possession has given place to the sense
of obligation, justifying our rule by bringing
security, peace and comparative prosperity to
lands that never knew them before ; here we are
fulfilling our mission.

This sense of responsibility toward the native
populations of the non-European world was slow
in developing among the colonising nations of the
West. It owed its inception to British statesmen,
and it has since been assiduously cultivated and
insisted upon by the people of Great Britain. That
is our greatest achievement as a nation in those
portions of colonial world which are inhabited by
politically backward races, just as in the Dominions
the establishment of autonomy is a special feature
of British colonial policy.

In order to trace the growth of this sense of
obligation and responsibility, it is necessary
briefly to recall the circumstances which led to
the incursions of the white nations into the non-
European world, and the motives whereby, at
different periods, the invaders were actuated.

IV

EUROPEAN exploration and colonisation, which
had their beginning in the fifteenth century, owed
their primary impulse to commercial and economic
necessity. The free flow of Asiatic merchandise
into Europe was stemmed by a double barrier.
During the close of the Roman Empire maritime
intercourse between the East and the West had
become regular and well- established. Hippalus, a
pilot of Greece, for example, was the first who
ventured to make use of the monsoons in order
to sail across the Indian Ocean ; the Periplus of
the Erythrean Sea, perhaps the earliest book of
sailing directions in the world, shows that many
of the seas and ports of the East were well known
to the mariners of the West ; while in the reign
of Claudius, as Pliny records, even from distant
Ceylon an embassy found its way to the Court of
Rome.

The rise of Muhammadanism in the Middle
East in the seventh century cut Europe off from
direct commerce with Asia almost entirely for
hundreds of years ; and the middleman's monopoly
of Asiatic trade, which was established by Venice
and shared by other Italian States, enriched
those who enjoyed it at the expense of the rest of
Christendom. It was the necessity of breaking
free from these trammels that set the sea-captains

16

EARLY COLONISTS 17

and pilots of Prince Henry of Portugal venturing
further and further adown the dreadful coast of
Africa, that caused Columbus to sail for America,
and that impelled Vasco da Gama, following in
the footsteps of John Infante and Bartholomew
Diaz, to storm his resolute and choloric way round
the Cape of Good Hope.

None the less, both the Spaniards in the New
World and the Portuguese in Asia — as became
peoples who for generations had suffered many
and grievous things at the hands of the Moors —
were inspired, not only by a love of adventure
and a lust for wealth, but also by a strong religious
motive. This is found cropping up in all manner
of unlikely people and improbable circumstances ;
for though the Ten Commandments did not bulk
big on their horizon, both nations regarded their
invasion of the non-European world in the light
of a new and greater Crusade. Their greed, their
brutality and their profligacy were unrestrained ;
yet on occasion — as for instance when Cortes
risked the whole success of his great adventure
in Mexico by his destruction of the Totonac idols
—they were ready to place the cause of their
religion before any mere mundane considerations
of prudence, policy or material advantage.

For the most part, however, their Christianity
served to put a finer edge upon their natural
cruelty, rather than to excite in them any feeling
of pity or mercy toward the hapless victims of
their aggression. Their fanaticism ordinarily sup-
plied them with a moral justification for their least
justifiable actions, and the only champions of the
4

18 RUTHLESS METHODS

native populations at this time were the heroic
missionary priests, of whom both Spain and
Portugal produced a creditable number. Yet even
their humanitarianism was the humanitarianism
of the sixteenth century, and St. Francis Xavier
himself approved the establishment of the Inquisi-
tion at Goa.

Thus the expansion of Europe had its beginning
in an appalling record of ruthlessness and ill-
doing. The white men, east and west, proved
themselves to be violent, grasping, aggressive folk,
who would not live and let live. They claimed
not only the best, but the whole. They would
not rest contented even with the lion's share, such
as the Muhammadan,s had so long enjoyed of the
sea-borne trade of Asia. They respected no rights
of person or of property ; wherever they were
strong enough to enforce it, they insisted upon a
monopoly alike of commerce and of power ; and
in the attainment of their desires they knew neither
pity nor scruple. Their only redeeming qualities
were the reckless courage which Spaniards and
Portuguese alike displayed, and the exalted faith
in their mission, as a people chosen of God, whereby
even the vilest of the filibusters appear at times to
have been inspired.

Until late in the sixteenth century the famous
Bull of Alexander VI more or less effectually
secured to Spain and to Portugal the monopolies
of the discoveries of the West and the East which
it respectively conferred upon them. Even the
Protestant Powers paid it due regard, not out
of reverence for the Papacy, but because at that

MAGELLAN 19

time the political edicts of the Pope constituted
the only recognised international law, and Euro-
pean statesmen therefore hesitated to ignore
them. It is noteworthy, indeed, that it was the
Catholic Powers of Spain and France that were
the first respectively to evade and to defy the
provisions of the papal decree.

Magellan, who had been present at the taking
of Malacca in 1511, had afterwards corresponded
with his cousin, Francisco Suraiio, who had
accompanied the first Portuguese fleet despatched
to explore the Spice Islands, and had remained
permanently in Ternate and Timor. When, there-
fore, Magellan offered his services to the King
of Spain, he was able to collate the cherished
geographical secrets in the possession of both the
Iberian nations. This led him to identify the
great ocean beyond the American continent, which
had been discovered by Balboa in 1511, with the
boundless sea that lay, according to native report,
to the east of the Moluccas. The existence of a
passage round the southern extremity of America
was inferred from the analogy of the Cape route
to the East, and thus Magellan conceived the
tremendous enterprise which has immortalised his
name. His ships reached the Spice Islands in
1521, and seven years later the Frenchmen Jean
and Raoul Parmentier sailed from Dieppe and
penetrated as far east as Sumatra, going and
returning round the Cape of Good Hope.

These incursions into their Asiatic preserves,
however, did not effect any very material dis-
turbance of the immensely valuable trade monopoly

20 ENGLAND AND HOLLAND

enjoyed by the Portuguese, whose apprehensions,
for many years after their arrival in the East,
were excited solely by the possibility of Turkish
reprisals. Had the Muhammadan Powers been
able at this juncture to combine, it is probable that
they might have regained the mastery of the
Indian Ocean of which the Portuguese had deprived
them ; but the war between Turkey and Egypt
rendered any concentration of naval forces in the
Red Sea impossible, and the Battle of Lepanto
in .1571, by crippling Turkey, put an end for ever
to the Muhammadan menace in the eastern seas.
Meanwhile the seamen and merchants of England
and Holland had been spending themselves in
expeditions the prime object of which was the
discovery of a way to the East via the north of
the American or of the European continents ; and
though the Elizabethan adventurers harried the
Spanish Main, and Drake circumnavigated the
globe and called at the Moluccas in 1577-80, it
was not until after the defeat of the Armada in
1588 that any direct and serious challenge was
offered by the Protestant nations of western
Europe to the ascendency that had been established
by their Catholic rivals. The loss of the command
of the sea, which Spain and Portugal, now united
under the sceptre of Philip II, had suffered, was
the determining factor in the situation ; but Dutch
and British enterprise was stimulated by the rapid
leakage which occurred about this time of the
exclusive geographical and other information which
these nations possessed, and which they had so
long and so jealously guarded.

THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY 21

The Dutch East India Company despatched its
first fleet from the Texel, under the command of
Cornelius Houtman, in 1595 ; while the British
Company received its first charter at the end of
1599, and began its adventurous career by sending
Lancaster on his second raid into the Portuguese
East early in the following year. The prime object
of both these great commercial corporations was
to secure a share of the Asiatic trade, which at
that time was infinitely the most valuable in the
world.

Whereas the Dutch Company, however, Vas
from the outset a truly national venture, the
English Corporation, characteristically enough,
was no less distinctively a purely private concern.
The statesmen and merchants of Holland felt that
in attacking one of the main sources of Spanish
wealth they were dealing a heavy blow to their
arch-enemy, Philip II ; but though Englishmen,
of the generation that had witnessed the defeat of
the Armada, may well be supposed to have been
animated by similar sentiments, they showed in
Asia a far keener interest in commerce than in
politics, and as their countrymen in distant lands
have since not infrequently experienced, they
could not count upon much active support from
their Government at home. Moreover, the English
Company was desirous of avoiding hostilities where
possible, on account of the expense which they
entailed, and they grudged money even for purposes
of defence, the which, so long as they continued
in some sort to co-operate with the Dutch^ formed
a constant subject of complaint by Holland.

22 PORTUGUESE CRUELTIES

It is probable that any European nation of the
sixteenth century which had enjoyed the oppor-
tunities that fate accorded to the Spaniards and
the Portuguese would have comported itself toward
the native populations which it encountered very
much as did these two Iberian peoples. The influx
of the Dutch and the English into Asia toward
the end of the century marked, however, a distinct
improvement in the standard of conduct of white
men in the East. This was due to policy, not to
any innate moral superiority possessed by the
newcomers, the latter being anxious to impress
the natives favourably by the adoption of a more
friendly and conciliatory attitude.

The Portuguese, by the time that the Dutch
and the English arrived upon the scene in force,
had suffered severely from the demoralisation
that almost inevitably results from a complete
emancipation from restraining influences. This
had led to the commission by them of every kind
of excess, had sown throughout the East a bitter
crop of hatred, and had produced a progressive
degeneracy that now materially reduced their
power of resistance. The " Portugal " found every
man's hand against him from one end of Asia
to the other ; and the Dutch and the English
were quick to profit by the situation thus created.
By the natives they were at first hailed as deliverers,
and the former were eager to enter into alliances
with them. Accordingly the great fabric, which
the genius, courage and energy of men like Almeida
and Albuquerque had reared up and consolidated
in little more than a decade and a half, and which

ENGLISH AND DUTCH RIVALRY 23

the folly and the vices of their successors had
deeply undermined during the years that followed,
collapsed almost at the first assault. The capture
of Malacca by the Dutch in 1641 led to the elimina-
tion of the Portuguese, and by that time the long
rivalry between the Dutch and the English had
already culminated in the practical withdrawal of
the Portuguese from south-eastern Asia.

For a period the fact that both were Protestant
nations, and that they were, in some sort, leagued
together for the overthrow of the Catholic Por-
tuguese, had made them attempt to work in
unison. Differences, however, speedily arose. The
principal bone of contention was the Spice Islands,
English claims to which were based upon Drake's
visit to them during his voyage of circumnaviga-
tion, while the Dutch claimed monopolistic rights
by virtue of conquest from the Portuguese, and
on the ground of effective possession.

The Dutch, moreover, were strong advocates
of expenditure upon forts and fleets and arma-
ments, and complained that the English Company
would not contribute its fair share of expenses
incurred on these accounts. They had the advan-
tage of constant and effective support from their
Government, while even the massacre by them of
the English factors at Amboyna failed to stir the
anaemic James and the embarrassed Charles to
any adequate action, and it was left to Cromwell
to exact belated compensation from the States
General a full generation after the event. That
massacre and the loss of prestige which it entailed
forced the English Company, little by little, to

24 DUTCH SUCCESSES

abandon its enterprises in the Malayan Archipelago,
and this, in its turn, produced notable results
upon both Dutch and British colonial policy.

The retirement of the English from the lands
of south-eastern Asia left the Dutch in uncontrolled
possession, and conferred upon them a freedom
from restraint such as had formerly been enjoyed
in even greater measure by the Portuguese. A
century and a half of time had come and gone
since the latter first set about the establishment
of their monopoly of the sea-borne trade of Asia,
and the civilisation of Europe had made during
that period notable advances. The solidity of the
Dutch national character, moreover, was to a
great extent proof against the temptations to
which their European forerunners had succumbed ;
but the weakness of the native kingdoms of the
Malayan Archipelago enabled them with impunity
to indulge in tyrannical and oppressive practices
which if attempted in India would have led to
the expulsion or to the extermination of the
European merchants. To quote Signor Giordani's
work, The German Colonial Empire :

The Dutch dedicated themselves more par-
ticularly to the great monopoly of spices, and
in order that this might not escape from their
hands, organised a mercantile government, sus-
picious, vigilant and exclusive, which did not
admit foreign vessels into their ports, except under
vexatious control and restrictions. They destroyed
all the pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove trees,
the production of which exceeded the normal
consumption, in order to maintain high prices.

THE DUTCH SYSTEM 25

They addressed .themselves, in fact, in a charac-
teristically methodical and businesslike way, to
the merciless exploitation of their colonial pos-
sessions, which from first to last have been regarded
by them as sources whence the government of
Holland should annually draw a substantial
revenue. Law and order they have established ;
but their fiscal system, which is mainly borrowed
from that of native governments, but is adminis-
tered with European efficiency, not with the
casual laxity that formerly rendered it bearable,
imposes a cruel burden upon the people. Though
the proselytising spirit, which made the rule of
the Portuguese specially odious in Malayan
lands, forms no part of the Dutch policy, scant
sympathy is shown to the native population in
other respects ; and throughout the colonial pos-
sessions 01 Holland the Government systematically
keeps everything in readiness for anticipated
insurrection.

Since the end of the seventeenth century the
Dutch system of colonial administration has under-
gone considerable improvements, but it is still
distinguished by three special features. These are,
firstly, that the colonies are primarily administered
for the benefit of Dutchmen, secondly, that the
revenues which they produce go to swell those
of the mother country, instead of being exclusively
used for the development of the land which pro-
vides them, and thirdly, that equality between
white men and the natives is regarded as an
inadmissible proposition. Emigration from the
Dutch colonies is closely watched and carefully
5

26 INDIA

restricted ; yet everywhere in British Malaya
immigrants from these islands are to be found.
Emigration from the British to the Dutch colonies,
on the other hand, is unknown. That single fact
is in itself, perhaps, a sufficient comment upon
the virtues of the rival systems as judged from
the standpoint of the natives.

The arrogant exercise of power to which their
Malayan experiences had accustomed them, proved
a bad training for the sort of work that awaited
white men in India, where really powerful Native
States were in existence. The Dutch, therefore,
never achieved any important or permanent success
in this newer and larger field of enterprise, upon
which the English East India Company fell back,
more or less in despair, after their failure to
compete with Holland for the trade of the Spice
Archipelago.

In India, so long as the Moghul Empire main-
tained its ascendancy, European merchants never
dreamed of territorial expansion. They were
completely at the mercy of the native rulers, and
they had no means of exacting redress from them
even when the treatment received was of the most
humiliating or cruel description.

With the break up of the Moghul Empire, how-
ever, and as a consequence of the universal anarchy
which marked its decline, an even more intolerable
situation was created, and not only European
commerce, but the very lives of the factors were
for a space in the utmost jeopardy. A plain
alternative presented itself. Either the white
merchants must contrive to establish a reign of

CLIVE'S WORK IN INDIA 27

law and order, under which they, at any rate,
would be secure from oppression, or they must
abandon the enterprise to which they had clung,
in spite of every conceivable discouragement and
difficulty, ever since the collapse of the Portuguese
monopoly of the sea-borne trade of Asia at the
beginning of the seventeenth century.

The policy of utilising the rivalry of native
princes to this end, and the expedient of training
and disciplining native troops on the European
model, which Macaulay mistakenly regarded as
the invention of Dupleix, had been adopted by
the Spaniards in America and by the Portuguese
on the Coromandel Coast from very early in the
sixteenth century. The Dutch, too, in Malaya,
had made use of similar methods whenever the
opportunity presented itself ; and Dupleix's
achievement in fact consisted merely in employing
them in India upon a scale of unprecedented
ambition and magnificence.

Clive was quick to appreciate their possibilities,
and his genius made of them far more effective
instruments than they had ever proved in the
past. The object which he had in view, however,
was not territorial expansion or the extension of
British jurisdiction, as such things are to-day
understood by Englishmen, for the East India
Company which he served was engrossed by a
single preoccupation — profitable, and if possible,
peaceful commerce. When French intrigues and
the rapidjgrowth of French influence threatened the
expulsion of its factors from India, it fought
the French and the native princes whose policy

28 EMPIRE FOUNDED ON TRADE

the French inspired. When lawless native poten-
tates persecuted or massacred its agents, it fought
and defeated them ; but enterprises of this
description were shirked as long as possible, and
when undertaken were entered upon with extreme
reluctance. For the instrument which was at
work in India, it must be remembered, was not
the British Government, but instead was a com-
mercial company, which entertained at this time
no political or territorial ambitions, which regarded
expensive campaigns and the extension of its
responsibilities with marked disfavour, and which
desired above all things to be suffered to carry
on its legitimate business of money-getting in
peace and quietude.

This, indeed, is the keynote of the policy of the
English in India during the seventeenth century, if
that can be called a policy which led to the acquisi-
tion of an empire, not of set design, but merely
as a by-product, trade being throughout the real
object aimed at. Even after Clive's extraordinary
successes, the Company was perfectly content to
be no more than the whisper behind the thrpne
of the Nawab of Bengal ; was bent upon securing
nothing save commercial advantages for itself ;
and was not in the least concerned to protect the
native population from the oppression or from
the exactions of their rulers, provided only that
the steady flow of its trade sustained no inter-
ruption therefrom.

The first step in this direction was taken by
Warren Hastings. He, to quote the words of
Professor Ramsay Muir,

HASTINGS' ADMINISTRATIONS 29

pensioned off the Nawab, took over direct
responsibility for the government of Bengal, and
organised a system of justice which, though far
from perfect, established for the first time the
Reign of Law in an Indian realm. ... In the midst
of the unceasing and desolating wars of India, the
territory under direct British rule formed an island
of secure peace and justice. That was Hastings'
supreme contribution : it was the foundation
upon which arose the fabric of the Indian Empire.
. . . His work was to make British rule mean
security and justice in place of tyranny ; and it
was because it had come to mean this that it
grew, after his time, with 'extraordinary rapidity.

Yet once again the motive which actuated this
innovation was commercial security and advantage,
not political ambition, far less any recognition of
an obligation on the part of the English to ameliorate
the condition of the native population.

None the less, Hastings, working more mightily
than even he perceived, set up during his govern-
ment of Bengal a wholly new ideal for white men
serving and ruling in non-European lands. Until
then they had been content to exploit the riches
of the countries into which they had penetrated,
and to concern themselves with their internal
affairs only so far as European interests might be
benefited or advanced by such intervention.
Henceforth Englishmen, at any rate, were to
regard the establishment of law and order, and
the protection of the natives from tyranny and
oppression, as essential parts of their duty. This
was to impart to them a new sense of responsibility
and obligation toward the native races with which,

30 NEW METHODS OF GOVERNMENT

all over the world, it was fated that they should
be brought into contact. It is this, more than
any other single thing, which has led to the ex-
pansion of the colonial empire of Great Britain in
tropical and subtropical lands.

In Hastings' day the idea that the establish-
ment of European ascendancy in the non-European
world should confer upon the native populations
emancipation from tyranny and injustice — that
it was part of the business of the white men to
be the protectors and defenders of the people
against wrong and oppression, not merely their
pitiless exploiters — was an entirely novel con-
ception. It had played no part in the conquests
of Spain and Portugal. It had not entered into
the calculations of the Dutch in their thorough
and methodical exploitation of the Malayan
Archipelago. It had found no place in the ambi-
tious schemes of Dupleix. It was an invention of
the English ; and since, as we have seen, Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman's aphorism strikes no
answering chord in the hearts of the bulk of the
peoples of non-European lands, the Reign of Law,
which the British now inaugurated in India, and
which has been the most notable of Great Britain's
achievements throughout the tropical and sub-
tropical world, acted as a magnet which, in these
hitherto lawless regions, attracted to itself an
ever-increasing multitude of mankind.

But Warren Hastings' administration is also
memorable because it effected yet another revolu-
tion in the methods whereby the government of
non-European populations had up to that time

PROTECTION OF THE NATIVES 81

been conducted by white men ; and this again
was a characteristically English innovation. Isa-
bella of Spain, it is true, had intervened to secure
the repatriation of certain natives of South
America whom one of her governors had transported
to Europe ; but the main preoccupations of the
sovereigns of Spain and Portugal had been, not to
afford protection to the native populations, but
to exploit the wealth of the newly discovered lands,
and to prevent their viceroys from assuming
positions of too great power and independence.
Their thought, in fact, had been for themselves
and for their own revenues and authority, not for
the hapless victims of their conquests.

The States-General of Holland had never had
occasion to entertain similar suspicions or appre-
hensions concerning their governors ; but they
had given them a very free hand, and they had
not been over-curious about their treatment of
the natives, provided that their administrations
were financially successful. It was left to the
Commons of England to come forward as the
champions of the native races of the non-European
world, and to enquire with Brutus-like severity into
the conduct of the very man who had laid the foun-
dation-stones upon which British rule in India and
in the tropics has since reared so mighty an edifice.

It was in 1773 — eighteen years after the Battle
of Plassy — that the British Parliament and Govern-
ment first intervened and assumed a measure of
responsibility for the affairs of the East India
Company which, in one form or another, had been
*n existence ever since 1599. The Parliamentary

32 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS

proceedings taken against Clive, however, were
not only inconclusive, but were also designed
merely to check corruption on the part of the
Company's servants ; and they owed much of
their venom to men whose own rapacity he had
been instrumental in restraining.^

The impeachment of Warren Hastings in 1788
occupies a wholly different plane of importance.
It is as notable a landmark in the history of British
territorial expansion as was the revolution in govern-
ment of non-European lands by white men which
the object of its attack had inaugurated in Bengal.
That revolution substituted the Reign of Law for
the Reign of Anarchy, and determined the principle
that this for the future was to be the prime object
of and the sole justification for an extension of
territory and jurisdiction in non-European coun-
tries. The impeachment established the no less
important principle that unfettered power was
never, in any circumstances, to be exerted in such
countries by a British administrator, and that
distance was to anord to him no immunity from
the control exercised by the laws of England and
by the public opinion of his countrymen.

We assert, [said Burke, speaking as the mouth-
piece of the Commons of England], we assert that
ne is bound to use that power according to the
established rules of political morality, of humanity,
and equity. ... We affirm, that in his relations
to the people of India he was bound to act accord-
ing to the largest and most generous construction
of their iaws, rights, usages, institutions and good
customs,

BURKE AND HASTINGS 33

The prosecutors took far too little account of
the difficulties of the situations with which Hastings
had been confronted. They ignored the constant
pressure which had been put upon him by the
directors of the Company in London to send
home more money. They experienced the common
inability to differentiate between the conditions
that prevailed in India and those with which life
in England had familiarised them ; and they
allowed their generous indignation to blind them
to the greatness of Hastings' achievements, and
to the immense services which he had rendered
alike to Great Britain and to the people of Bengal.

Burke, moreover, who had so much to say on
the subject of Indian codified law, failed to perceive
that in lands where the executive is a law unto
itself, no precept, written or oral, can restrain the
excesses of arbitrary power. " An order is an
order till you be strong enough to disobey it," says
the Indian proverb ; and all the native rulers of
the kingdoms of Hindustan, who had enjoyed
real authority, had invariably possessed the
necessary strength whenever the law chanced to
run counter to their convenience. In these cir-
cumstances, the existence of elaborate legal codes
did not signify that their provisions were observed.
Though the point escaped Burke, this was known
to the population of Bengal by bitter experience,
and Hastings had won their gratitude precisely
because he had set up in their midst a system of
law to which all men alike were required to bow.

The Lords acquitted Hastings, thereby adopting
the course which most men are to-day agreed was
6

\

34 BRITISH IDEA OF RULING

the best, having regard to all the circumstances
of an admittedly difficult case. His impeachment
by the Commons of England none the less deter-
mined the principle once for all that the British
colonial administrator was himself to be the
obedient servant of the law.

This was a conception of the position of a ruler
that was completely foreign to the ideas and to
the experience of the native populations through-
out the non-European world. It had never there
been entertained by the government of any other
European country in matters where its own
interests were not in question, and where the
well-being of a subject people was alone at stake.
It was first conceived by British statesmen, and
it has since been constantly reasserted and en-
forced. Even to this day, on the outskirts of some
of those 'empires which the Powers of Europe
have carved out for themselves, it differentiates
British rule of .backward populations from the
jurisdiction that is exercised over them by the
administrators of other nationalities.

The vindication of these principles of colonial
administration in 1788 was but the beginning of
a long and painful climb from the depths of that
dark valley in which repose, amid the bones of
their victims, the earlier records of European
tyrannies and oppressions in the non-European
world.

But the first upward steps along that toilsome
ascent were taken by Englishmen, impelled by no
necessity save the dictates of conscience, a sense
of moral responsibility and obligation, and above

ENGLISH IDEALS 35

all by a characteristic love of fair play. In their
colonial empires some European nations have
followed in the footsteps of Great Britain, while
some have lagged behind ; but with the exception
of the Americans, who, as late comers in the Philip-
pines, were able to profit by a laboriously acquired
experience, no European Power has climbed so
high or has so nearly attained to the summit
which our forefathers in the eighteenth century
set themselves resolutely to scale.

THE impeachment of Warren Hastings was only
one of many signs that the national conscience of
Great Britain was surely, if slowly, awakening on
the subject of our treatment of, and our obligations
to, the native populations of the non-European
world. In 1789 — the year following that which
witnessed the acquittal ' of Hastings — Wilberforce
moved in the House of Commons his first resolu-
tion condemning the slave-trade.

This traffic had been inaugurated by the Por-
tuguese during the closing years of the fifteenth
century, but it was not long in assuming the
character of an international enterprise of the
first magnitude.

West Africa was, of course, the main source of
supply. In the fringe of forest- country which in
this region extends from the sea-board to a dis-
tance of some 200 miles into the interior, the
tse-tse fly and the Trypanosomce, acting in unholy
alliance, have dominated the land and have had
a preponderating influence in the fashioning of
its history. Trypanosomce of various species cause
sleeping-sickness in human beings and breed a
devastating murrain among cattle and horses.
The population of the forest area has thus been
deprived of the use of beasts of burden, an accident
which has discouraged commerce in any save

36

THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA 37

easily transportable articles ; and as the jungles
in which the tribes dwelt furnished each com-
munity with all necessaries, none of the principal
incentives to peaceful intercourse and to cultural
improvement have here been in operation.

To this is largely to be ascribed the primitive
cultural condition of the natives when the West
Coast of Africa was first visited by Europeans
during the latter half of the fifteenth century.
A certain trade in gold, in ivory and in slaves
had been in existence for several hundreds of
years with the Arabs. Muslim caravans crossed
the Sahara or penetrated from the shores of the
Indian Ocean to the western limits of the Sudan,
and trade with them was carried on by the negroes
of the West Coast of Africa at certain recognised
depots situated at the edge of the forest-country.
Into the latter the Arabs rarely entered, for their
way was barred by the tse-tse and the Trypanosoma
which destroyed their horses and paralysed their
mobility.

The arrival of the Portuguese, who presently
had to compete with half the nations of Europe,
effected no change in the character of the West
African trade, but it diverted it from its ancient
channels, and by stimulating it to an unprecedented
degree, immensely increased its volume. A better
and more easily accessible market was at once
opened for gold and ivory, and as soon as European
energy and enterprise were brought to bear upon
the slave-trade, that traffic quickly assumed pro-
portions unprecedented in history.

In the estimation of the Europeans of that

38 THE PEACE OF UTRECHT

period there was nothing repugnant to morality
in this form of commerce. In the Roman Catholic
world it had the express approval of the Papacy,
while by the Protestant nations Biblical precedents
could with ease be quoted in its justification ; and
in truth the notion that the inhabitants of the
non-European world were to be recognised as
possessing any of the rights claimed by Christians
was a conception wholly foreign to contemporary
ideas. Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, France,
Sweden, Denmark and the Germans of Branden-
burg all competed for the trade according to the
measure of their several abilities ; and the share
which each secured was mainly determined by
their relative maritime power, and later by the
demand for slaves in the colonies of the New World
which certain of these nations had acquired.

When in 1712 the Peace of Utrecht put an end
to the long wars' in which Marlborough had taken
so triumphant a part, Queen Anne announced to
the assembled peers and commoners of England
that, as part of the spoils of victory, " Spain
would yield to us the fortress of Gibraltar, the
whole island of Minorca, and the monopoly in
the trade in negroes for thirty years."

This announcement aroused considerable popular
enthusiasm, and nothing, perhaps, could more
strikingly illustrate the attitude of the European
mind toward this traffic at the beginning of the
eighteenth century.

It would be tedious to attempt to trace in detail
the growth and decay of the settlements in West
Africa which were established by the various

THE GERMANS AT ST. THOMAS 39

nations of Europe, beginning with the Portuguese
in 1471, and ending with the Germans of Branden-
burg, who obtained their forts on the Gold Coast
and a portion of the island of St. Thomas in 1681
and 1685 respectively, and took a part in the slave-
trade with the aid of vessels hired from the ship-
owners of Holland.. As this, however, is the
solitary colonial venture of Germany of any
importance which bears an earlier date than the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, it is neces-
sary briefly to describe it.

Frederick William, the Great Elector, was heart
and soul for colonial enterprise, but his people
accorded to his projects a very tepid support.
He first strove to form a Brandenburg Company
of the East Indies, on the model of Holland and
England, but in this attempt he failed somewhat
ignominiously, and the rivalry of the Dutch
caused his first effort to establish a German settle-
ment on the Gold Coast also to miscarry.

Subsequently, however, forts were erected at
two or three points in that locality, and the
Brandenburgers also established themselves on
the island of St. Thomas. For a space the new-
comers took as active a part as they were able
in the slave-trade ; but though the spirit was
willing, the flesh was weak. The German colonists
developed no aptitude for their new task ; they
could not compete successfully with their European
rivals ; and by 1688, when Frederick William
died, the debts of the Company already amounted
to £100,000. Less than a quarter of a century
later the portion of the island of St. Thomas

40 ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN AFRICA

which the Brandenburgers had secured was sur-
rendered without compensation to the Danish
Company ; the Germans had been evicted from
the Gold Coast by the Dutch and the English ;
and the solitary colonial venture upon which the
Hohenzollerns were to embark for a century and
a half ended in humiliating failure and commercial
bankruptcy.

The share which each of the European nations
had secured by 1791 in the West African slave-
trade may be conveniently illustrated by the
following table :

Nationality.

Ports.

Annual Export of
Slaves.

British
French
Dutch
Portuguese .
Danish

14
3
15
4
4

30,000
20,000
4,000
10,000
2,000

Total ....

40

74,000

The Brandenburgers, as we have seen, had
failed to " make good," and the Swedes had been
eliminated by the Danes. Of the five nations still
actively engaged in the traffic, the proportionate
share of each had been determined by the con-
siderations already mentioned, and the largest
interest in the trade had therefore naturally been
acquired by Great Britain and by France. France
had at that time more extensive possessions in the
West Indies than Great Britain, which had also
recently suffered the loss of her American colonies.

ENGLAND AND THE SLAVE-TRADE 41

On the other hand, the British were gradually
acquiring an ever-increasing preponderance in the
carrying-trade of the world, and this was the
factor which caused her stake in the slave-trade
at the end of the eighteenth century to exceed
that of her leading rival by fifty per centum,
and to approximate to two-fifths of the whole
traffic. Yet it was in England, whose material
interests were thus involved to a far greater extent
than was the case with any other nation, that
the agitation for the abolition of the slave-trade
had its beginning, and it was there that it was
maintained, in the face of every obstacle, until
the object aimed at was at last achieved. It is
well to remember, moreover, that this act of
sacrifice was made by Great Britain voluntarily,
not in obedience to any external pressure or
influence, but solely at the dictates of a strong
moral impulse.

That which is sometimes rather slightingly
alluded to as " the nonconformist conscience," has
played a great and a noble part in English history.
Its exponents, more especially when engaged in
arraigning their country or accusing their country-
men, have not always been distinguished for the
impartiality or for the soundness of their judgment.
Indeed they have all too frequently appeared to
start upon the assumption that England and
Englishmen must be held to be guilty, or at any
rate in the wrong, until they have proved them-
selves to be innocent and in the right — the which
is a negation of the first principles upon which
the criminal law of England is based. This has
7

42 THE NATIONAL CONSCIENCE

betrayed them into the commission of many
mistakes and into the perpetration of some injus-
tice, and it has laid them open to charges of
prejudice, unfairness, and even lack of patriotism.

When all this has been admitted, however, the
fact remains that the influence which they have
exerted has been wholesome, for it has taught the
nation to examine its conscience in the light of
certain stern precepts of morality ; and of late
years it has been reinforced by the rationalists,
who find in philosophic liberalism a no less un-
yielding code. The late Cecil Rhodes spoke of
this school of English political thought as a mani-
festation of " unctuous righteousness " ; but it is,
in a much truer sense, the product of the English-
man's innate love of fair play.

Its failures of judgment and of temper are
almost invariably to be traced to the fact that it
has believed itself to be championing the cause
of the " under dog." When it has been harsh to
its own countrymen it has been because it was
convinced that they could take care of themselves,
and that their -alleged victims could not. When
it has arraigned its country it has done so, not
through lack of patriotism, but because it so loved
England that it was jealous for her honour and
fair fame, and would have her hold herself, like
Caesar's wife, above suspicion. It has been a
thorn in the flesh of many a British man of action ;
but who can doubt that it has helped to reform
many abuses, to restrain many excesses, and that
it has done much to purify England's rule in non-
European lands, and to make of it the least selfish

SLAVE-TRADE ASSAILED 43

and the most liberal system that any European
nation Jias yet devised ?

It was the " nonconformist conscience " in
England that first became uneasy on the subject
of tlie slave-trade. George Fox had denounced
it as early as 1671 ; and the Society of Friends
began the agitation in earnest in 1727. Five and
forty years, however, were to elapse before a court
of law was to rule that the landing of a slave in
Great Britain forthwith conferred emancipation
upon him ; and the first motion against the traffic
was not moved in the House of Commons until
1776. Thereafter followed a struggle which lasted
for thirty years, and in which, from 1780 onward,
all the religious denominations in England took
an active part.

The agitation assumed the character of a verit-
able crusade. The abolitionists brushed as;de all
pleas and sophisms which sought to justify, or
to palliate the iniquity of the traffic. They cared
nothing for the material advantages which a
preponderating share in the trade were supposed
to confer. They were undaunted by the great
political and social influences, and by the immense
wealth that were arrayed against them. They
endured with equanimity the contempt, the ridi-
cule, arid at last the hatred which they inspired.
They were derided as faddists, condemned as
revolutionary assailants of the sacred rights of
property; they were buffeted, mocked and spat
upon.

Theirs was an unpopular cause, and their only
incentives for espousing it were a sense of duty

44 DENMARK, FRANCE AND SWEDEN

and their conviction that their country was par-
ticipating in the perpetration of a great crime.
For a weary period they were voices crying in the
wilderness, or rather in the heart of an angry
crowd that howled them down ; but they persisted
stubbornly, and eventually on March 23rd, 1807,
a Bill abolishing the traffic was passed through
both Houses of Parliament.

To Denmark, however, belongs the credit of
being the first European nation to forbid partici-
pation in the slave-trade to her nationals, a law
to that effect being enacted in 1792 which came
into operation in 1802. By the former date,
however, Denmark's share in the traffic had
dwindled until it had become smaller than that
of any other country that was engaged in it, and
her action did not therefore call for any very
heroic sacrifice.

In France, where enthusiasm in the cause of
humanity took the place of the religious motives
whereby the English abolitionists were inspired,
the Abbe Gregoire had succeeded in May 1791 in
securing a vote from the National Assembly
prohibiting the traffic in slaves. This was repealed
in the following September, and it was left to
Napoleon during the Hundred Days to decree the
abolition of the trade. This, however, was not
made effective until 1818, and its final enactment
was largely due to British influence, the measure
having been urged strongly upon Louis XVIII
during the negotiations which followed the banish-
ment of Napoleon to Elba.

Meanwhile Sweden had followed suit in 1813,

ENGLAND TAKES THE LEAD 45

and Holland in 1814, and in the latter year Great
Britain and the United States bound themselves
by treaty to do all in their power to suppress the
trade. In this work British sea-power was the
principal instrument ; and indeed it is not too
much to say that the traffic could never have
been put down had not England been, not only a
consenting party, but the most active agent of
its suppression. Not content with this, she bribed
Spain in 1820 by a payment of £400,000, and
Portugal in 1830 by an indemnity of £300,000, to
come into line with other European Powers in
this matter, thus expending more both of force
and of money than any other nation upon the
object which her people now had so near at
heart.

A much more difficult matter was the question
of emancipation, for though Adam Smith had
condemned slavery on economic grounds, the
belief was wide-spread that liberation would spell
ruin for the West Indian colonies. The abolitionists
never slackened in their efforts, however, and
when once they had succeeded in convincing the
British electorate that the action which they
demanded was called for in the name of justice
and fair play, their cause was won. Once again
it was Great Britain — the country which, with the
exception of the Southern States of the American
Union, stood to lose most by emancipation — that
was first in the field. The necessary Act of
Parliament was passed in August 1838. France
followed in 1848, Holland in 1863, and Portugal
in 1878 ; while in the United States a great and

46 ENGLAND'S ACTION

terrible war had to be fought before the question
could finally be decided in favour of emancipation.

Looking backward, one is disposed to wonder
that anything so infamous as the traffic in slaves,
and the hardly less iniquitous system of plantation
slavery should have been tolerated so long. In
those days, however, the hearts of men were not
so tender nor were their sympathies so wide as
they have since become. As late as *1819 some
190 crimes were punishable in England with
death. Executions took place in public until
1868, and twenty years earlier were frequently
witnessed both by men and women of apparent
refinement. These things alone are sufficiently
indicative of the comparative callousness of public
feeling during the earlier part of the nineteenth
century, and a consideration of what they imply
makes it all the more wonderful that Great Britain,
at immense financial sacrifice — emancipation alone
cost her taxpayers £20,000,000 — and under no
external pressure, should have taken the action
she did between 1808 and 1837.

Just as she had been the first of the European
nations to realise and to recognise the rights of
the native populations of the non-European
world to equitable treatment and to claim due
respect for their customs and susceptibilities —
just as she had been the first to determine that,
in the interests of those populations, her colonial
administrators should be denied that arbitrary
power which is so liable to abuse even in the
hands of the wisest and most sympathetic — so
now she resolved that no considerations of material

NAPOLEON'S OPINION 47

gain or advantage, no dread of financial ruin, and
no fear of the powerful interests she was assailing,
should induce her to consent to the perpetuation
of systems of which her national conscience dis-
approved. Had she willed otherwise, there was
no force in existence that could have compelled
her to take the course which she now voluntarily
adopted. Her position as a great maritime Power
was impregnable ; without the aid of her Navy
the trade could never have been effectually sup-
pressed, and the general public opinion of Europe
was by no means strongly in favour of suppression.
Might was hers, and she was free to make of it
what use she would. She elected to employ it in
the cause of right — to use it, in fact, in the only
manner wherein might can find its justification.

The national attitude of mind of which this
was a manifestation has often proved difficult
of comprehension to the statesmen of other
nations, and has not infrequently been regarded
by them as a mask which serves to cover a cal-
culating hypocrisy. Napoleon when at St. Helena,
as Lord Rosebery records,

could not understand, and posterity shares his
bewilderment, why the British had derived so
little benefit from their long struggle and their
victory. He thinks they must have been stung
by the reproach of being a nation of shopkeepers,
and have wished to show their magnanimity. . . .
It was ridiculous, he said, to leave Batavia to the
Dutch, and Bourbon and Pondicherry to the
French. . . . Your ministers, too, [he says,]
" should have stipulated for a commercial mono-

48 PROGRESS OF BRITISH COLONIES

poly in the seas of India and China. You ought
not to have allowed the French or any other
nation to put their nose beyond the Cape. . . .
At present the English can dictate to the world.

On this subject Professor Ramsay Muir writes :

The Cape was, in fact, the most important
acquisition secured by Great Britain by that
treaty [the treaty of. 18 15]; and it is worth noting
that while the other great Powers who had joined
in the final overthrow of Napoleon helped them-
selves without hesitation to immense and valuable
territories, Britain, which alone had maintained
the struggle from beginning to end without flagging,
actually paid £2,000,000 to Holland as a com-
pensation for this thinly-peopled settlement. She
retained it mainly because of its value as a calling-
station on the way to India.

For, once again to quote Professor Ramsay Muir :

In 1818 Britain stood forth as the sovereign
ruler of India. This was sixty years after the
battle of Plassey had established British influence,
though not British rule, in a single province of
India ; only a little over thirty years after Warren
Hastings returned to England, leaving behind
him an empire still almost limited to that single
province. There is nothing in history that can
be compared with the swiftness of this achieve-
ment, which is all the more remarkable when we
remember that almost every step in the advance
was taken with extreme unwillingness. But the
most impressive thing about this astounding fabric
of power, which extended over an area equal to
half of Europe and inhabited by perhaps one-

FORCE OF PUBLIC OPINION 49

sixth of the human race, was not the swiftness with
which it was created, but the results which flowed
from it. It had begun in corruption and oppres-
sion, but it had grown because it had come to stand
for justice, order and peace. In 1818 it could
already be claimed for the British rule in India
that it had brought to the numerous and con-
flicting races, religions, and castes of that- vast
and ancient land, three boons of the highest
value : political unity such as they had never
known before ; security from the hitherto un-
ceasing ravages of internal turbulence and war ;
and above all, the supreme gift which the West
had to offer to the East, the substitution of an
unvarying Reign of Law for the capricious wills of
innumerable and shifting despots.

Napoleon, characteristically enough, attributed
the moderation of Great Britain after Waterloo
to sheer stupidity, or alternatively to a dread of
the adverse public opinion of the other European
nations which might be excited were she to profit
too greedily by her victory.

The real restraining influence, however, was
public opinion in Great Britain itself, which in
the mass has always been strongly averse from
annexations. For more than a decade she had
been carrying on a desperate campaign against
the spirit of conquest of which Napoleon was the
living embodiment. The combined sentiment of
the nation was strongly opposed to any imitation
of his methods. Who can doubt that if the
conquest of India could only have been effected
by the adoption of a deliberately aggressive policy,
that course would have been at once rejected by
8

50 MIGHT AND RIGHT

the British Government and by Parliament ? As
it was, British dominion grew throughout the
non-European world, not of set design, but for
the reasons which Professor Ramsay Muir so
forcibly explains ; and at a moment when, as
Napoleon said, England could " dictate to the
world," her statesman were content to purchase
from Holland a colonial possession which the
latter had lost as her punishment for allying
herself with the tyrant of Europe. In so acting,
they were unquestionably complying with the
strong feeling of their countrymen that, in public
no less than in private affairs, the rules of fair
play, decency and equitable conduct should be
observed.

That this should prove incomprehensible to
Napoleon is not surprising. It has been and is a
mental attitude which is no less unintelligible to
modern Germany, and indeed to any Power which
regards might as the only law, and considers that
it imposes upon its possessors no corresponding
obligations.

VI

DURING the rest of the nineteenth century two
further phases of the colonial expansion of Europe
were destined to be witnessed. Of these the first,
which lasted until 1878, was a period when colonies
were in disfavour throughout Europe. Bismarck
was a strong " no colonies " man. Even so
sagacious and far-seeing a statesman as Disraeli
spoke of them as " millstones about our necks " ;
the Government of India complained that the
Straits Settlements, which it then administered,
were useless encumbrances ; the Times in a leading
article advocated the cession of Canada to the
United States ; and in 1865 a Select Committee
of the House of Commons, reporting upon the
British settlements in West Africa, strongly
recommended gradual withdrawal from all of
them, with the sole exception of Sierra Leone.
This exception was made because Sierra Leone
had been established as a place of residence for
emancipated and rescued slaves — Zachary Macaulay
was one of its earliest governors ; and it was not
considered fair to abandon these people to the
none too tender mercies of the natives of the
interior.

The almost universal belief in the worthlessness
of colonial possessions was, at this time, a very

51

52 THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS

genuine sentiment, and nowhere did this con-
viction prevail more strongly ihan in Great
Britain ; yet in spite of this her over-seas empire
steadily expanded. With the growth of Aus-
tralia, New Zealand and the rest we are not
here concerned ; but in the tropics the twin
policies of withdrawal and of non-extension of
jurisdiction were over and over again determined
upon and frustrated.

In West Africa, for instance, the raiding of the
coast districts by the Ashantis forced upon the
British Government the choice between protecting
the Fanti and other tribesmen from nameless
outrages, or abandoning them to their fate. The
trade of the Gold Coast was then a much less
valuable thing than it is to-day, but withdrawal
would also have entailed its extinction. The
Ashanti War of 1873-4 was accordingly under-
taken, and thus within a few years after the Com-
mittee of the House of Commons had urged
abandonment, Great Britain in this region found
herself finally committed to the task of intro-
ducing law and order into the West African
Hinterland.

Similarly, in the Straits Settlements the expan-
sion of trade, and especially the development of
the tin-mining industry by Chinese immigrants,
presently produced a situation in the Malay States
of the Peninsula, the indefinite continuation of
which was clearly intolerable. Treaties were
entered into with the Sultans of P£rak and S clangor
and with the Chiefs of the Negri Sembilan, with
the sole object of securing a stable and moderately

TREATY WITH HOLLAND, 1871 53

equitable system of government, such as is dear
to the heart of Europeans and to the peace-loving
Chinese, but found little favour with the Malayan
rulers of those days. Here, as in so many other
kindred instances, the object aimed at was the
establishment of law and order in the interests
primarily of trade, but also in no small degree
because the miseries endured by the native popu-
lations excited genuine pity and indignation.
For indeed the time was drawing near when the
European sense of the fitness of things forbade
toleration of tyranny and anarchy in countries
in close proximity to the settlements which white
men had established.

For the rest, toward the close of this period
during which colonial possessions were in scant
repute, the British Government took steps to
make her tropical territories as compact as cir-
cumstances permitted, and was at pains to remove
as far as possible any potential seeds of dissension
with other European Powers that might lie hid
in them. The most important of these measures
was the treaty entered into with Holland in 1871,
whereby Great Britain surrendered its ancient
settlement at Bencoolen and withdrew all claims
in the island of Sumatra, the Dutch waiving
similar claims on the main land of the Malayan
Peninsula, and ceding to Great Britain its remain-
ing forts on the West Coast of Africa. Prior to
this an attempt had been made by the two nations
to exchange certain of their West African stations
in order to make the sphere of influence of each
geographically continuous.

54 THE DUTCH IN SUMATRA

The natives of the areas which Great Britain
proposed to cede so stoutly resisted the attempts
of the. Dutch to establish their authority over them
that the proposals had to be abandoned, and
Holland finally withdrew from the Gold Coast, and
received in consequence concessions in Sumatra
which, at that time, were certainly of greater
value than those which she had surrendered in
Africa. The local results of this arrangement are
instructive. The Ashantis promptly raided El-
mina, the principal Dutch fort which Great Britain
had acquired — an act which necessitated the
short but not altogether decisive Ashanti War
of 1873-4.

In Sumatra, on the other hand, the abandon-
ment of Acheh, which had for many years enjoyed
the* nominal protection of Great Britain, led to
a war of obstinate resistance to Dutch authority,
which endured for more than a quarter of a cen-
tury, and strained the financial resources of
Holland's colonial possessions to near the breaking-
point. One incident connected with this struggle
was the capture in 1883 by the Achehnese of the
crew of the shipwrecked British steamer Nisero,
who were held as hostages for many months, the
chiefs of Acheh declaring that they would not
give them up unless and until the British pro-
tectorate over their country was restored.

VII

"!N 1825," Professor Ramsay Muir writes of
the colonial possessions of Great Britain, " this
empire was the only extra European empire of
importance still controlled by any of the historic
imperial powers of Western Europe."

He should not have forgotten to include that
of Holland, for apart from the fact that it to-day
comprises an area of well over 800,000 square miles
in extent, with a population of nearly 38,000,000
souls, it has in another respect a peculiar import-
ance. This attaches to it because the principles
upon which it is governed are in abrupt contrast
to those which Great Britain has adopted, and
indeed, with slight modifications, approximate to
those which this country had discarded before
the end of the eighteenth century.

The policy of the British Government has been :
firstly, to regard the revenues derived from non-
European possessions, not as perquisites of the
Mother Country, but as funds which should be
exclusively devoted to local services and to the
development of the territories in which they are
raised. Secondly, to demand no financial con-
tribution from them on account of the Royal Navy
with the upkeep of which their own existence is
bound up ; and to require payment for ^military

55

56 ENGLISH AND DUTCH METHODS

purposes sufficient only roughly to cover the
disbursements made by the Imperial Exchequer
for their garrisons and fortifications. Thirdly, to
hold even the balance between the European
settlers and the native population, ensuring the
protection of the one, and preventing the unfair
exploitation of the other, by retaining full control
of the administration, but at the same time
admitting representatives of both to a share in
local counsels by appointing them to seats upon
colonial Legislatures. Fourthly, to restrict cus-
toms duties to the requirements of revenue, to
refrain from the imposition of preferential tariffs,
and to throw British Crown Colonies and Pro-
tectorates open to the trade of all the world,
without seeking to secure for British subjects
any commercial advantages over their rivals of
other nationalities. Fifthly, to insist upon com-
plete equality before the law of all inhabitants of
these possessions without distinction of race,
nationality, creed or class. And finally, to respect,
and as far as possible to refrain from interference
with the religions, the customs, and the institu-
tions of the native populations provided they are
not repugnant to natural justice, equity or good
conscience.

Of Dutch methods something has already been
said. Here it is only necessary to insist upon
the fact that Holland has always regarded her
colonies as direct sources of revenue, and their
maintenance and administration as matters which
are primarily to be conducted in the interests,
not of the native populations, but of Dutchmen.

MONOPOLY AND EXCLUSION 57

They, too, have abstained from interference with
the religions and customs of their colonial subjects ;
but they have looked upon native institutions
mainly as convenient instruments for the extor-
tion of labour and taxes, and they have never
admitted, even in theory, any equality between
Dutchmen and the coloured populations of their
colonies. For the rest, to quote the words of the
late Mr. Alleyne Ireland, " the keynote of Dutch
policy is monopoly and exclusion." The incidents
in Malaya and West Africa just recorded will
serve to show which of the two systems — that of
Great Britain or that of Holland — finds the more
favour with the people of the non-European world.

VIII

THE second phase of the colonial expansion of
Europe which synchronised with the concluding
quarter of the nineteenth century, was the period
when the Great Powers of the civilised world of a
sudden awoke to a new appreciation of the value
of over-seas possessions, and with it to a desire
for world-empire. Professor Ramsay Muir dates
the beginning of this phase from the Berlin Con-
ference of 1878, but it received its first impulse
from the expansion of the French colonial empire,
which in its turn was a direct result of the Franco-
Prussian war of 1870. The defeat which France
had sustained, and the loss of prestige by which
it was accompanied, led to the carving out by her
of empires of immense extent alike in Africa and
in Indo-China, though in both localities she had
secured, prior to that period, considerable com-
mercial and territorial interests.

These projects were at first regarded by Bis-
marck with somewhat contemptuous approval,
the more so since they threatened to complicate
Anglo-French relations ; for though France was
only engaged in extending her possessions in
south-eastern Asia, her sudden activity as sud-
denly translated questions of colonial expansion
into the arena of European international politics.

58

THE BURMESE WAR, 1885 59

This inevitably imparted a new impulse to the
territorial expansion of Great Britain in the East,
since it kindled a desire to forestall inconvenient
encroachments, and effectually to secure the
land communications and the commerce of her
existing possessions.

Thus the Burmese War of 1885 had for its
object, not only the ending of the anarchical
rule at Ava which so long had adversely affected
commerce in British Burma, but also to seek a
natural boundary with China in the gorges of the
upper Mekong, a policy which was dictated by the
rapidly- expanding French empire in Indo-China.
The subsequent extension of the British pro-
tectorate over the eastern and northern States
of the Malay Peninsula, with which Great Britain
had not previously interfered, is also to be traced
to the same source.

Professor Ramsay Muir, however, writes as
follows, and the question of the exact date is of
no material importance.

The Congress of Berlin in 1878 marks the close
of the era of nationalist revolutions and wars in
Europe. By the same date all the European
States had found a more or less permanent solu-
tion of their constitutional problems. With equal
definiteness this year may be said to mark a
new era in the history of European imperialism ;
an era of eager competition for the control of the
still unoccupied regions of the world, in which
the concerns of the remotest countries suddenly
became matters of supreme moment to all Euro-
pean Powers, and the peace of the world was

60 A NEW ERA

endangered by questions arising in China or Siam,
in Morocco or the Soudan or the islands of the
Pacific.

For when the peoples of Western and Central
Europe, no longer engrossed by the problems of
Nationalism and Liberalism, cast their eyes over
the world, lo ! the scale of things seemed to have
changed. Just as, in the fifteenth century,
civilisation had suddenly passed from the stage
of the city-state or the feudal principality to the
stage of the great nation-state, so now, while the
European peoples were still struggling to realise
their nationhood, civilisation seemed to have
stolen a march upon them, and to have advanced
once more, this time to the stage of the world-
state. For to the east of the European nations
lay the vast Russian Empire, stretching from
Central Europe across Asia to the Pacific ; and
in the west the great American Republic extended
from ocean to ocean, across 3,000 miles of terri-
tory ; and between these and around them spread
the British Empire, sprawling over the whole
face of the globe, on every sea and in every con-
tinent. In contrast with these giant empires,
the nation-states of Europe felt themselves out
of scale, just as the Italian cities in the sixteenth
century must have felt themselves out of scale
in comparison with the new nation-states of
France and Spain. The indifference of Europe
to the outer world, and her disbelief in the value
of over-seas possessions, died out, and was replaced
by an eager resolve to achieve the new standard
of the world-state before it was too late.

It was then, and not till then — like labourers
entering the vineyard Yrell after the eleventh
hour had struck — that Germany leaped into the

GERMANY MOVES 61

colonial arena. Her merchants and traders had
taken full advantage of the openings afforded to
them by the peaceful and prosperous conditions
which had been established by the British through-
out the colonial world and in places like the
treaty ports of China, which they had been largely
instrumental in rendering habitable for Euro-
peans. In all the colonies of Great Britain and
in the United States of America, whither a large
portion of Germany's surplus population was
perennially flowing, her subjects had enjoyed
equality of opportunity and an open hospitality ;
and by virtue of their immense industry, their
meticulous attention to detail, their intelligence
and their methodical ways many of them had
achieved marked success.

The task of colonial administration,- however,
was one to which their nation had never addressed
itself. The few isolated attempts made by Ger-
mans to form settlements in South America and
in West Africa on their own account had ended
in ignominious failure. No previous training or
experience, no inherited tradition, had fitted
them for this novel form of enterprise ; and
indeed their highly- organised, machine-like and
rigid system of government was of its very nature
wholly unsuited for transplantation to, and was
very difficult of adaptation to the purposes of
what Mr. Kipling has described as " the raw
and the naked lands " of the .non-European world.
The colonial empires established by other Euro-
pean Powers — even those of Spain and Portugal
which had owed so much to the keen personal

62 THE SCRAMBLE FOR COLONIES

interest taken in them by successive sovereigns —
had all received their main stimulus from a
genuine, spontaneous national impulse.

Nothing of the sort was discernible in Germany.
Though official propaganda was used to flog and
galvanise public interest in a colonial policy into
existence, it continued to be feeble and languid ;
and it was the German Government, mainly at
the bidding of William II, that determined of a
sudden to " hack " out a colonial empire for
Germany, in spite of popular indifference, in
order that the Fatherland might claim to rank as
a world- state with Great Britain and Holland,
with France, Russia and the United States of
America.

The German Government was late in the field,
and it was sadly and rather resentfully conscious
of the fact. It came, not after the manner of the
European Powers of the first five and seventy
years of the nineteenth century, to preserve and
extend existing interests in countries over-sea,
and to establish order, good government and peace
in lawless lands wherein it had a direct stake,
but instead much in the same spirit of conquest
and plunder whereby the early filibusters of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been
actuated./ The immediate result was to pre-
cipitate a sudden " scramble " for territory —
especially in Africa, hitherto the least exploited
of the continents — an event 'which, with the
exception of the Great War into which the world
has since been plunged through the same agency,
is perhaps the least creditable incident in the

UNCERTAIN BOUNDARIES 63

recent history of the European nations. Some
excuse may possibly be found for the other Powers
which engaged in it, inasmuch as Germany's
raid upon the colonial world compelled them in
self-defence to establish satisfactory boundaries
and to forestall her threatened encroachments ;
but here, as ever, the Government of William II
brought not peace but a sword.

In Africa, for example, the definition of boun-
daries by meridians of longitude and parallels of
latitude, though convenient to the European
Powers, entailed the merciless severance of tribes
which have as keen and close a sense of nationality
as have the English or the French themselves.
The wails of protest from the chiefs and people
subjected to this treatment were recorded at the
time in official documents, and make pitiful
reading. In the worst days of the slave-trade no
such collective injury had, in the estimation of
these poor folk, been inflicted upon the tribesmen
of Africa ; and one does not envy the British
officers who had to carry out the behests of the
chancelleries of Europe, and to turn a deaf ear
to the frantic prayers addressed to them. In
many instances they were compelled to take away
cherished Union Jacks by force from chiefs and
people who were vehement in their determination
not to receive the German flag in its place, and
were indifferent to the anger they aroused in the
German officers who were the witnesses of these
demonstrations.

In the past, since early in the seventeenth
century, the extension of European dominion in

64 GRASPING GERMANY

non-European lands had been a gradual and a
natural growth. Jurisdiction over wider areas
had, for the most part, been undertaken with
extreme reluctance, and had been asserted in
order to secure existing interests or to facilitate
commerce by establishing law and order in
troubled and troublesome territories adjacent to
European settlements.

The colonial policy of Germany, on the other
hand, had no such incentives of local expediency
for its justification. She' came into the non-
European world "as a roaring lion walketh
about, seeking whom he may devour." Her
claims were based, not upon work which she had
done in the past, not upon actual colonial interests
which it was necessary that she should protect
in the present, but solely upon her desire to become
in the future a world-state like her neighbours.
In a word she was bent upon plundering, and
was in no wise concerned to justify her actions.
She thus introduced into the practice of European
territorial expansion a wholly immoral element,
which was only not new because it was, in effect,
a revival of the spirit in which the conquests of
Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth century had
been undertaken. In this connection Professor
Ramsay Muir notes that there is

one fact which differentiates the settlement of
Africa from that of any other region of the non-
European world : that it was not a gradual, but
rather a very sudden and unprepared achieve-
ment ; and that it was based in most cases not
upon the claims established by work already done,

GERMAN METHODS «5

but simply upon the assertion that extra-European
empire was the due of the European peoples,
merely because they were civilised and powerful.
Especially was this the case with the empire which
Germany carved out for herself in Africa during
the course of the next generation. In a degree
unparalleled in the history of European imperial-
ism, the German colonial empire was the result
of force and of design, not of a gradual evolution.
... It fell almost wholly within regions where,
until its acquisition, Germany had been practically
without any material interests. In every case
British trade had previously been far more active
than German in these regions ; yet although the
protectionist policy of Germany threatened to
eradicate all rival interests, no serious difficulties
were raised : the British Prime Minister publicly
declared that if Germany wished to acquire colonies,
her co-operation in the work of civilisation would
be welcome.

Thus, in the space of little more than four
years, was the colonial empire of Germany acquired.
It remains for us to examine the principles upon
which she elected to govern these colonies, the
uses to which she put them, and most important
of all, the fashion in which she " co-operated in
the work of civilisation " in the dominions which
she had so suddenly annexed. In what follows I
shall confine myself to German colonial methods
as practised in South- West Africa, in the Cameroons,
in Togoland, and in East Africa, these being the
territories which, for reasons already explained,
it is most to be feared may incur the danger of
being restored to Germany at the conclusion of
hostilities.

10

66 DIVERSE COLONIAL POLICIES

Germany, like the United States of America
when the latter assumed charge of the Philippine
Islands, being a late-comer in the colonial world,
had at her command the laboriously accumulated
experience of the other European nations which
had preceded her in this field of activity and enter-
prise. She was free, therefore, to model her
administration, and to frame her economic system
in her newly acquired colonies, in accordance
with any formulae that had been worked out for
themselves by other colonising peoples. In this
sphere of human industry various schools of thought
had arisen, of which, as we have seen, that of the
British and that of the Dutch represented two
opposed and strongly contrasted types. France
had adopted a line of policy of her own — one which
is less liberal, less accommodating, and much more
paternal and interfering than that of the British,
but far more generous and considerably less rigid
than that of the Dutch.

Of the principles and methods of her colonial
system it is not necessary here to make any examina-
tion ; but those who are curious in such matters
may be referred to the work of that very candid
critic, M. Leopold de Saussure, Psychologic de la
Colonisation Francaise dans ses Rapports avec les
Soci&es Indigenes. It is interesting to note—
and the fact is eloquently illustrative of the widely
different national character of the two peoples—
that when the United States and Germany each
had to make a choice of the models upon which
its colonial policy was to be fashioned, the former
selected the British, the latter the Dutch system

DUTCH AND GERMAN SYSTEMS 67

for adaptation in the administration of its new
possessions. On this point Signer Giordani writes :

The German colonial system, so young in
years, ever remains the oldest system, because
the most tyrannic, the most oppressive and illiberal,
as opposed to the English — liberal par excellence.
It represents the intensive exploitation of the
colony to the detriment of the native population,
and is nothing but a derivative of the rigid mer-
cantile organisation created by the Dutch — and
already supplanted by England — yesterday as
to-day.

It would be grossly unjust to Holland, however,
to suggest that the Germans, though they selected
for their guidance the general principles of the
Dutch colonial system, in preference to those
which have found favour with the British, proved
themselves to be wise, skilful or creditable pupils.
The Dutch, no matter what the defects of their
methods may be in the judgment of colonial
administrators of other schools of thought and
policy, undeniably possess a certain aptitude for
the government of non-European populations.
They may not make the natives contented, but
they do make them diligent. They may not
grant them any large measure of freedom, but they
do secure to them a certain degree of prosperity.
They rule their colonies primarily for the benefit
of Holland and of Dutchmen, but incidentally they
confer upon the people the inestimable blessings
of peace. The Germans, by an oppressive and
iniquitous system of forced labour, also succeeded
in making their native subjects accept^the curse

68 GERMAN BRUTALITY

of Adam ; but for the rest, once more to quote
Signor Giordani :

It is superfluous to-day, while we look on
shuddering at the martyrdom of Belgium, to give
particulars of the methods of colonisation practised
by Germany in South Africa, in order to ascertain
how the Germans, such capable directors of banks
and conquerors of markets, are, owing to defects
of race, unfitted for colonisation ; colonisation,
that is to say, considered as a work of education
and the elevation of barbarous races. Whenever
the Germans have a mission to fulfil, otherwise
than one founded on a banking system, or some
commercial stake, or on some barrack regulation,
a mission of a moral nature that ought to prevail
over brutal commercial advantage, they show
themselves devoid of all elementary gift of intui-
tion, of all capacity for adaptation and government ;
theirs alone the power to crush and to suppress.
And to civilise even the country of the Hottentots,
it is not enough to substitute for entire populations
niurdered, railways and machines ; neither is it
lawful, after so many years of colonial experience
in Africa, to propose to treat with like measures
the natives of Damaraland and the Arabs of the
coast of East Africa.

I shall presently have occasion to show that the
language here used is not exaggerated. For the
moment, however, our immediate concern is with
some of the fundamental principles upon which
Germany based her administration of the native
populations which a too complacent Europe had
suffered to fall under her dominion.
' As Professor Ramsay Muir has well said in a

DESPOTIC RULE 69

passage already quoted, " the supreme gift "
which Europe has been able to offer to the peoples
of the non-European world is " the substitution
of a Reign of Law for the capricious wills of in-
numerable and shifting despots." It is precisely
because Germany, as a matter of deliberate policy,
denied this gift to the native inhabitants of her
African colonies that her whole system of adminis-
tration of them stands eternally condemned. In
common with other European Powers operating
in Africa, she was instrumental, after her own
fashion, in suppressing inter-tribal warfare, and
in stamping out certain barbarous practices, such
as human sacrifice and the like.

On the other hand, the only criminal codes
promulgated in these territories were made by
express provision to apply exclusively to their
European populations. As regards the natives,
who of course formed the vast majority of her
colonial subjects, no definition of offences was
ever attempted, it being left to the judgment of
each individual German official to decide for
himself firstly, what in his opinion constituted
an offence, and secondly, the nature and extent
of its appropriate punishment. Thus the native
populations in the German colonies, far from
being relieved from the uncertain incidence of a
tyrannical rule, were deliberately and formally
handed over by the Colonial governments, with
the sanction and approval of the Imperial Govern-
ment in Berlin, " to the capricious wills of in-
numerable and shifting despots."

For the majority of Europeans, as any medical

70 GERMAN TYRANNY

man of experience will bear testimony, residence
in the hot climates of the tropics has at the best
of times a somewhat fraying effect upon the nerves
and temper. The mental condition which results
causes many white men to become unduly
" touchy " and hypersensitive — to make them
suffer from the kind of unreasonable ill-humour
which men in the eighteenth century were wont
to call " spleen." In such a mood a man is quick
to imagine affronts, to detect covert insult in
quite innocent looks and gestures, to give way to
anger on the slightest provocation, or on no pro-
vocation at all. To allow a man so situated a free
hand to declare any act to be a crime at his sole
discretion, and with it power to mete out any
punishment that may seem to him to be appro-
priate, is an almost unthinkable piece of folly
and wickedness ; yet this is precisely the policy
which the German Government deliberately
adopted.

At the time of the outbreak of the Great War,
Germany had had ample occasion to learn what
an incentive, nay, what an invitation to commit,
on the one hand excesses, and on the other constant
petty acts of tyranny, this system offered to her
colonial officials. None the less, the German
Government and the majority of the representa-
tives of the German people continued to approve
it ; and even the late Herr Bebel and the Socialists
in the Reichstag, while manfully protesting against
the results of German colonial administration,
failed apparently to realise that it was the system
itself that was radically and criminally at fault.

USE OF TORTURE 71

The only decrees of the Imperial Chancellor
which relate to the jurisdiction to be exercised by
German officials over the natives are in the nature
of departmental instructions to the officials them-
selves. Of these the most recent, which are
understood to mark a more advanced and liberal
policy than those hitherto in vogue, bear date
1896. One of them, which was issued on
February 17th of that year, provides :

In proceedings at law where natives are con-
cerned, any measures for the purpose of obtaining
confessions or declarations other than those
allowed by the German Rules of Court are for-
bidden.

The infliction of unusual punishments, par-
ticularly in cases of suspected guilt, are likewise
prohibited.

That the use of torture for the purposes named
had, as a matter of fact, been pretty freely resorted
to by German officials is, unfortunately, notorious,
and here receives official confirmation ; for the
phrase " unusual punishments " must be read in
conjunction with the following section which
occurs in a Decree dated April 22nd, 1896.

The admissible punishments are :
Corporal chastisement (whipping, flogging), fines,
imprisonment with hard labour, imprisonment in

chains, death,
i
.••'•.

o

A sentence of flogging ^is to be carried jDut with
an instrument approved by the Governor, that of
a sentence of whipping with a light cane or switch.

72 FLOGGING

A sentence of flogging or whipping may specify
a single or double flogging or whipping.

The second case must not take place until after
the expiry of two weeks.

An executive order by the Governors of the
German colonies reads as follows :

The instrument of punishment sanctioned by
the Governor is a rope's end about 60 centimetres
long and 2 to 2j centimetres. thick. Only ropes'
ends issued by the Government may be used.
These must be softened by being beaten with a
hammer or piece of wood before being used.
When travelling floggings must be also carried
out by means of the prescribed instrument.

No woman could lawfully be flogged, and a lad
under sixteen years of age could only be whipped.
Arabs and Indians, too, were exempted from
flogging. These, however, were comparatively
recent innovations. There were also other elabor-
ate regulations relating to flogging, which, in
theory at any rate, were calculated to prevent
abuse.

There are, however, two salient points which it
is necessary to note. The instructions contained
in these decrees, while they require that a record
of the punishments inflicted should be kept and
forwarded every quarter to the Governor, are
silent as to any form of trial being a necessary
preliminary to punishment, and make no pro-
vision for evidence being taken and committed
to writing. The second point is that flogging
stands first on the list as the most ordinary of

THE GERMAN DECREES 73

44 admissible punishments." While, therefore, cor-
poral chastisement was the usual manner of
punishing a criminal offence, its infliction could
be ordered by a German official on almost any
pretext without any risk of intervention by a
higher authority.

Thus in Lome it was a common practice for a
German trader to inform the nearest Government
officer that such-and-such a native had insulted
him, and this sufficed, without any further enquiry
or trial, to cause the individual named to be
awarded five-and-twenty lashes. That number,
as has been seen, was the legal maximum fixed
by the Chancellor's Decree of 1896, but in the
opinion of German officials it was inadequate, and
it was only on rare occasions that any less number
of strokes were awarded.

In British colonies, of course, corporal punish-
ment is forbidden by law, except for a few specified
offences, for example, rape, indecent assault,
etc. ; and so rigid are the rules in this matter
that no flogging can be inflicted by a magistrate,
even after a formal trial, until the sentence has
been submitted to and approved by the Chief
Justice. Similarly, a flogging may not be inflicted
upon a recalcitrant convict in a colonial prison
until the sentence has received the sanction of the
Governor who, in his turn, is required to furnish
to the Secretary of State for the Colonies a quar-
terly return, giving full particulars of the punish-
ments of this character which he has authorised.

The German decrees are elaborate in their
provisions concerning the delegation of powers of
11

74 THE "ROPE END'*

punishment by the Commissioners in charge of
districts to their European subordinates ; but the
power to delegate was vested in them, and in
practice almost every German official, from men of
the rank of a non-commissioned officer upward,
had authority to cause any native to be awarded
twenty-five lashes whenever, in his opinion, he
had deserved correction.

The " rope end " so meticulously described in
the passage quoted above, was in practice a for-
midable whip fashioned from three interwoven
strands of stout hempen rope. When Lome, the
capital of Togoland, was captured by the British
in the first week of August 1914, these whips were
found forming an apparently essential part of the
furniture of all bungalows inhabited by German
officials, and of certain of their offices. In the
stores of the local Public Works Department they
were kept ready for issue in neatly trussed bundles
of ten to the packet — fairly convincing evidence
that a perennial supply was needed, and that
the whips disappeared in use. It was not for
nothing that the Germans, from one end of Africa
to the other, were known to the natives by the
nickname of " the twenty-fivers."

IX

NOT content with making the native population
subject to no fixed criminal law ; with leaving
the task of determining what acts, omissions,
words or gestures constituted an offence to the
whim of every individual German official with
whom they might come in contact ; and with
empowering the former to inflict corporal punish-
ment therefor at their discretion, the Colonial
Government rigidly excluded the public from its
law courts and caused all cases to be heard in
camera, when formal trial was not altogether
dispensed with. Legal process, however, was not
regarded as in any way essential where a native
subject of the Fatherland was concerned, not
only in the case of trifling offences adjudicated
upon by minor officials, but in much more serious
circumstances.

Chief Dagadu of Kpandu in Togoland related
the following facts to the present writer. They
may be taken as a typical instance of German
colonial procedure.

The' Germans, he said, issued an order that the
necks of men should be examined. (This, of
course, was for the purpose of detecting the swollen
glands which indicate the early stages of sleeping-
sickness, a disease which is endemic in this part

76

76 SLEEPING SICKNESS

of West Africa, but which attains to no alarming
proportions as the bulk of the native population
is immune.) Men who were found to have enlarged
glands were removed from their homes, and taken
to a camp which the Germans had established on
a neighbouring hill at a place called Kluto. Shortly
after their removal, said Chief Dagadu, these men
died. He obviously attributed their demise to
their segregation at Kluto, though it was probably
due to the disease from which they were suffering,
no very effective remedy for it having at that
time been found.

No effort appears to have been made to explain
to the natives, or even to their chief, the scientific
and philanthropical objects which the Germans
had in view. It is not in accordance with German
ideas of dignity to condescend to such a course,
though it is probable that no explanation that a
white man could offer would convince an African
of a bush district that imprisonment for life,
usually attended by premature death, was a just
punishment to inflict upon a man for the crime
of having a swelling in his neck.

Dagadu went to Misahohe, the capital of his
district, and later to Lome itself, where he had
an interview with the Governor, Herr Brukner,
and humbly begged that his people might be
suffered to live and die in their own homes, no
matter what the condition of their glands. The
request was refused, and Dagadu returned to his
home at Kpandu. The only message of comfort
which he brought back to his people was that the
Germans were about to experiment with a new

THE CASE OF DAGADU 77

drug which they had reason to think would prove
more efficient than that hitherto employed by
them.

Not long afterwards the present writer paid a
visit to Togoland, and in the course of it spent a
few hours at Kpandu. A week or two later Dr.
Griinner, the Commissioner in charge of the
Misahohe district, arrested Dagadu. He was
detained for two months in the prison at Misahohe
without charge made, and without trial. He
subsequently learned that he was accused of
having written two letters, one to the German
Minister for the Colonies, and one to me, arraigning
German rule in Togoland. Neither of these letters
was ever produced then or later ; Dagadu has
consistently asserted that he never wrote any
letters of the kind ; and the one which is alleged
to have been addressed to me certainly never
reached its destination. None the less, still
without trial or even being called upon formally
to plead, Dagadu was taken to Lome, and was
thence shipped to Duala in the Cameroons, where
he was lodged in an association- ward in the common
gaol. His son, his nephew and one of his wives,
who had followed him to Duala, were allowed
to see him once a month.

He remained in the prison at Duala some nine
months ; but upon a certain day shells from a
British cruiser began to fall thick and fast among
the public buildings of the German capital, and
its defenders determined to beat a retreat. Two
days later the German gaoler entered Dagadu' s
cell in tears, wrung him by the hand and, leaving

78 RELEASE OF DAGADU

the doors open, took his departure sobbing
bitterly.

Dagadu made his way to the quarter of the
town in which his wife was living with her com-
panions ; and as soon as the British and French
troops had landed, he put himself in communica-
tion with the English general, and was by him
shipped back to Togoland. His arrival at the
railway station at Misahohe, whither all his tribe
had assembled to greet him, was a dramatic and
moving spectacle ; and the old man, almost
smothered by his people, who swarmed about him
like bees about their queen, was carried over the
hills in triumph to Kpandu.

FROM the foregoing it will be seen that the
German system of rule in their colonies, even
where it can claim to have established a state of
order, has not so much as contemplated the intro-
duction of a system of law ; that it accords to
the native no rights of person ; that it renders
him liable to punishment without any legal pro-
cess ; that he is not even permitted to know what
acts constitute offences ; and that power of
corporal punishment is placed in the hands of
subordinate officials upon whom no close check is
kept, while the colonial Government itself does
not hesitate to deport its subjects without trial.
Such a system, it will be realised, would inevitably
lead to abuses even if the men who administered
it were the kindest and most merciful members
of the human family. The men in question,
however, were — Germans. The world knows by
the experience of the past four years something
of what that one word implies, even in localities
where the public opinion of the civilised nations
must be supposed to have acted, in some small
degree, as a restraining influence.

But in the African colonies the only public
opinion in active operation was itself German.
The natives were always regarded as a " con-

79

80 GERMANS AND NATIVE WOMEN

quered people," and to-day the meaning which
that term bears in German parlance is also
sufficiently notorious. Where pity, chivalry and
decency failed, as they failed in Belgium, to
restrain Germans from the commission of the
worst excesses, how think you did it fare in the
seclusion of the African bush with defenceless
negroes and negresses, who were not even white
folk like the more recent victims of German
cruelty, brutality and lust ?

These pages are concerned with the German
system of colonial administration, rather than
with the abuses and tyrannies which it was so
nicely calculated to facilitate. It is none the less
necessary to mention that the freedom of their
womenkind from molestation by white men is a
matter of the first importance to native populations.
Feeling on the subject runs very high ; and
though in West Africa, for instance, succession is
traced through the mother, native law expressly
excludes a white man's bastard from the enjoy-
ment of certain tribal privileges. This in itself
will suffice to show the disfavour with which unions
between white men and native women are re-
garded.

In the German colonies, however, the highest
officials, not excluding governors, chief justices
and the like, saw nothing shameful in the almost
open practice of concubinage ; and an example
such as this could not but be productive of a very
low standard of morality among their subordinates.
When to this we add the fact that German officials
had the power to punish any who chanced to

GERMAN PATRONYMICS 81

offend them, and it will be realised how completely,
in this important matter of the protection of their
women, the natives were placed at the mercy of
their white masters.

On October 18th, 1913, Grand Duke Adolf
Friedrich of Mecklenburg, who at that time was
Governor of Togoland, issued a law forbidding
natives to assume or make use of German patro-
nymics. The reasons which rendered the pro-
mulgation of this measure locally desirable were
sufficiently scandalous and notorious ; but it was
not possible by this, or by any similar means, to
preserve the " good name " of highly placed
Germans in the African colonies. That was
something which by their own misconduct they
had irretrievably lost.

12

XI

THESE were not the only respects in which the
German conception of the fashion in which the
task of " co-operating in the work of civilisation "
should be performed entailed serious encroach-
ments upon the liberties and rights of the natives
in their abruptly acquired African colonies.

Throughout the tropical world the labour
question is one of perennial difficulty, though it is,
of course, more acute in some regions than it is
in others. It differs from labour questions in the
civilised world because in the tropics, speaking
broadly, there is no permanent artisan class, the
average native being, on the contrary, a small
landed proprietor, even though he may on occa-
sion, in order to meet his personal convenience,
be ready to work for a wage. He is not by nature
venturesome, and so long as things go well
with him in his native village, and provided the
produce of his land can supply him with the food,
raiment and other necessaries which represent the
modest requirements ,of himself and those im-
mediately connected with him, he has scant
inclination to quit his home or to embark in any
unusual form of labour at a distance from it. In
these hot climates, however, the cultivator is
more completely dependent for his prosperity

82

MIGRATION AND THE RAINS 83

upon a sufficient and regular rainfall than are
agriculturists in other parts of the world ; and
the occurrence of a drought may at any moment
reduce him and his to very considerable straits.
On such occasions the young and able-bodied
members of the rural communities throughout a
wide area may be compelled to seek work at a
distance in order to relieve the necessities of the
rest, and during bad seasons neighbouring labour-
markets will be glutted, while in good ones they
are liable to be proportionately depleted.

The European- owned tea- estates of Ceylon, for
instance, are worked by a labour force of Tamils
which numbers half a million or more. The men
and women who compose it are voluntary immi-
grants from the less fertile regions of the Madras
Presidency, and while in Ceylon they regularly
remit money to their relatives in India, and
eventually return to their homes when they have
amassed the funds they require. By watching
the readings of the rain-gauges of Southern India,
it is possible to forecast with considerable accuracy
the volume of this stream of migration to and
from Ceylon in any given year, so completely is
the latter regulated by the former. Ceylon itself
carries a population of over 4,000,000 souls, yet
very few Sinhalese can be induced to work upon
the estates. They live in a country where the
rainfall is both regular and abundant, and they
very naturally prefer the cultivation of their own
land to work done for a wage on the property of
other people.

The average native of tropical Africa is very

84 TRIBAL UNDERSTANDING

similarly situated. A certain area of land, en-
closed within loosely defined boundaries which
are often the subject of acute disagreement, is
recognised as the exclusive property of a given
tribe ; and though portions of it may belong in a
special fashion to particular sections of the tribe
or to certain clans and family groups, the pos-
session of this land, as the collective property of
the community, is the foundation upon which
the whole tribal system of the Africans is ordinarily
based. The tribesmen have always been accus-
tomed to keep in repair, by means of communal
labour, the trade-routes which pass through their
territory ; but for the rest they have been free
to work on their own account, and as much or
as little as seemed good to them. Each individual
has been at liberty to claim his share of the tribal
lands for the cultivation of his food-plots, to
exploit the produce of the tribal forests, and to
build his hut from the material yielded from them.

A ready market for the oil and kernels obtained
by him from the self-sown palm- trees has been
furnished by European traders, and thus in the
fringe of forest- country along the coast his
principal requirements have without difficulty
been satisfied. He accordingly has no inducement
to sever his connection with all his friends and
relations, and to seek employment at a distance
from his home, the more so since the work of
cultivation and of exploiting jungle produce, as
he understands^these things, is of a very unexacting
type.

In the coast towns a class of artisans is coming

THE LABOUR QUESTION 85

into existence, but the main labour forces through-
out tropical Africa are recruited from the com-
paratively barren interior whence pressure of
circumstance, such as periodically operates in
Southern India, from time to time compels emi- /
gration. The labour markets of tropical Africa,
however, are never overstocked, and the work of
development upon which Europeans are here
engaged demands an ever-increasing supply of
able-bodied toilers. Railways cannot be con-
structed, metalled roads cannot be made, buildings
erected or mines worked unless the necessary
labour is available ; and when the voluntary
co-operation of the natives cannot be enlisted to
furnish this requirement, the temptation to resort
to compulsion is apt to be strong.

The African whose country is being developed,
it is argued, if he will not spontaneously assist in
the work, should be compelled to do so ; but
this is not a point of view that commends itself
to the natives. Taken in bulk, they have no
great desire to see the work of development pushed
forward upon European lines, though they are
quick enough to profit by the new facilities afforded
to them. Their preoccupation is to supply their
actual wants at the cost of a minimum of toil ;
to lead the life to which they are accustomed
with as little extraneous interference as possible ;
and to confine their public industry to such forms
of communal labour as have the sanction of their
tribal customs. To compel them to toil on public
works, or in 'mines or on plantations, is to upset
the entire scheme of their existence.

86 GERMANS AND NATIVE LABOUR

In the British colonies of tropical Africa this is
recognised, and nothing in the nature of com-
pulsion is attempted ; yet for the most part they
suffer from shortage of labour less acutely than
do corresponding areas under the rule of other
European nations. This is due to the fact that
it is notorious among the native populations that
a " stranger " is more free to come and go in
British territory than anywhere else. In a British
colony he will not become liable to pay heavy
direct taxes, will not have to suffer the harassing
attentions of too inquisitive officials, will not find
himself immeshed in a maze of incomprehensible
regulations, will not be constantly getting into
trouble without clearly knowing why, and will be
at liberty to work or loaf according to how the
spirit moves him. If, therefore, circumstances
compel him to seek work at a distance from his
home, he very usually selects a British colony as
the scene of his activities. Family affections and
interests and tribal ties are all strong in him, and
sooner or later, if all goes well, he hopes to return
to his own people. In the meantime, however,
the British colonial labour markets are the richer
by his presence.

The Germans in their African possessions speedily
found themselves " up against " the labour ques-
tion, and having regard to the standpoint from
which they regarded native questions, they forth-
with resorted to compulsion. Now the African of
the tropical bush areas is accustomed, as has been
said, to keep open the trade-routes through the
country belonging to his tribe by a system of

EFFECT OF GERMAN METHODS 87

communal labour. To transport such labour to
a distance, however, and to compel it to build
roads on the European model through territory
claimed by some other tribe was a monstrous
iniquity, judged from the native point of view.
It not only entailed exile from their homes, the
suspension of the cultivation of their land and
other private afi'airs necessary for the support
of their dependents, but it placed them, in their
opinion, in a servile position vis-d-vis the tribes-
men of the district whose development was being
effected by their labour. Yet this was the system
to which, in Togoland for instance, the Germans
had recourse upon a large scale, and the results
are peculiarly instructive.

To begin with, the wide-spread discontent
which was aroused had a very stimulating effect
upon emigration, and Togoland natives streamed
into the neighbouring British colony of the Gold
Coast precisely as water runs down hill. The
disturbance occasioned in the pursuit by the
natives of their ordinary avocations became more
and more acute as the able-bodied portion of the
population annually decreased in numbers. To
avoid the corvee and other ills to which the prox-
imity of German officials subjected the people,
small family groups removed to distant spots and
there cultivated their land ; but as head-carriage
was the only means of transport whereby their
produce could be conveyed to market, and as
this work had to be performed by the cultivators
themselves, the remoteness of their farms caused
a great deal of time and labour to be wasted on

88 MOVEMENTS OF NATIVE LABOUR

carrying, with the result that the volume of their
annual crops was greatly reduced.

As a net result, at the time of the British occu-
pation of Togoland, the Germans had a fine
system of roads, which in their day had been
much admired by Mrs. Gaunt and other super-
ficial and casual observers ; but the only vehicles
that passed over them were two motor-cars
belonging to the Government, and a few hand-
carts the property of the local Public Works
Department. They had a thoroughly disgruntled
and resentful native population, cultivating its
crops in out-of-the-way holes and corners, and
carrying the dwindling bulk of its produce on their
heads to market along those roads ; and though
the latter were pleasing to the eye, they had
retarded, not advanced, the development of the
colony.

At the end of two years after the capture of
Lome, the natives having in the meantime been
relieved of forced labour in distant districts, and
freed from their terror of the white men, 33 per
cent, more land was under cultivation in the
British sphere than at any period under German
rule, and most of the farms were newly opened
areas situated in close proximity to the railways
and highways. Meanwhile, such was the prosperity
which had resulted from half a century of more
liberal rule across the border in the Gold Coast,
that, in the same year, a neighbouring tribe
acting on its own initiative was paying an Italian
contractor £8,000 to build a motor-road for its
members, leading from their cocoa-gardens in

GERMAN "EFFICIENCY" 89

the plains to their towns on the summit of the
Akwapim range, the object of which was to enable
the cultivators to spend their week-ends in the
bosoms of their families.

A great deal has been said and written in praise
of the superior " efficiency " of German methods
even in the colonies of the Fatherland, but though
we be content to eliminate all higher standards
of comparison, and to judge them purely by gross
material results — the meanest of all criteria —
they must even then be admitted to have proved
a deplorable failure. The machine-made system
of colonial administration which the Germans
instituted was based upon a cold academical
calculation concerning what course was most
likely to conduce to the advantage of Germans.
Theoretically it may have been sound enough ;
but in practice no system of administration which
is the product of the brain alone, untempered by
any of the principles of a higher morality, un-
touched by human sympathy, and inspired through-
out by a brutal selfishness, can bring anything
save misery to those to whose affairs it is applied,
and disappointment to the men' who invent and
apply it.

13

XII

As has been noted, the whole tribal structure of
the native communities of Africa is based upon
the exclusive ownership of their land. Any
interference with it, therefore, strikes at the root
of native institutions and is violently resented
by every tribe and by every individual composing
it. The natives are aware that, in the past, no
tribe has ever lost any of its territory save as the
direct result of a defeat inflicted upon it in battle.
Expropriation, therefore, is felt by the natives of
Africa to be as much a moral as a material injury.
v The loss of their tribal property is keenly resented,
for it curtails the rights of user which each indi-
vidual in the community has regarded as the
exclusive privilege of himself and his fellow
tribesmen ; but a still more passionate sense of
grievance is caused by the fact that the material
loss places the tribe, in the opinion of its members,
in the humiliating position of a despoiled and
conquered people.

The Germans took no account of such senti-
ments. They desired to secure large areas for
conversion by German speculators into cultivated
estates, and the British system of allowing the
native tribal authorities to make their own bargain
with the would-be concessionaires, subject only

90

EXPROPRIATION OF NATIVES 91

to its revision in the interests of the former by a
Concessions Court, did not appeal to them. Ac-
cordingly the colonial Government stepped in and
expropriated the land desired by German planters.
In many instances, it paid compensation to the
tribes concerned upon a scale determined by itself ;
but this did not meet the objections of the natives,
whose resentment was caused by the fact that the
land was being taken away from them whether
they objected or consented.

In Togoland, where tribes were compelled to
accept compensation in spite of all their protests,
the money paid over to them was regarded by
them as tainted, and no man would have aught
to do with it. At the time of the British occupa-
tion the coins were often produced, apparently
precisely as they had been received, the chiefs
and people begging to be relieved of the custody
of money, the possession of which was regarded
as a humiliation.

To obtain labour to work on plantations which
had thus been brought into being was, of course,
impossible unless compulsion were resorted to ;
for no native would willingly do a hand- stroke
upon estates, the very existence of which was
looked upon as a standing insult and offence to
the tribes which had been dispossessed. Ac-
cordingly, the German colonial Government found
it necessary to compel the natives to help open
up and cultivate these plantations, though the
forced labour was now exacted, not for public
purposes, but for the benefit of private companies
and individuals. A fair, though by no means

92 WORK OR FLOGGING

extravagant, rate of wage was paid to the labour-
ers ; but, as they were given the alternative of
working on these properties or of being flogged
until they consented to do so, the distinction
between the system so established and ordinary
slavery must be admitted to be a fine one.

XIII

IN the foregoing examination of the German
colonial administrative system the concrete ex-
amples quoted have, as far as possible, been taken
exclusively from the records in Togoland. This
course has been followed of set purpose, because
Togoland was at once the most peaceful and the
most prosperous of the German colonies in Africa ;
and because, with the exception of a massacre of
Konkomba tribesmen at Yendi in northern Togo-
land — the men and women of the tribe, on that
occasion, being lured to the administrative head-
quarters of their district by friendly representa-
tions, and then treacherously surrounded and shot
down — Germany's peculiar fashion of " co-operat-
ing in the work of civilisation " was here less
pronouncedly outrageous than it was elsewhere.
Thus in Togoland it is possible to watch the
German system of colonial administration working
at its best and amid the most favourable circum-
stances.

It will have been noted that both in the matter
of labour and of land, the Germans persistently
ignored the native point of view, and paid no heed
to the sanctity which attaches, in the estimation

93

94 THE HERREROS

of a primitive people, to their immemorial customs
and to the traditional sentiments connected with
them. When, in 1788, Burke laid it down that
in our relations with the people of India we were
" bound to act according to the largest and most
generous construction of their laws, rights, usages,
institutions and good customs," he enunciated a
principle which experience has shown to be as
vitally important from the standpoint of policy
and expediency, as it is from that of morality
itself. It is because this principle was not so
much as dreamed of in the German philosophy
of colonial administration that the attempts
of the Fatherland to govern peoples of the non-
European world and to develop their countries
has been, not only a failure, but a monstrous
tragedy.

The worst and most notorious example of the
inability of the Germans to understand native
sentiment and ideas, to realise their importance,
and to grasp the necessity of sympathising with
and deferring to them, is supplied by the pitiful
story of the Herrero and Damara Hottentots of
South- West Africa.

At the time of the German occupation of this
territory — an act of acquisition which admittedly
had for its justification the slenderest foundation
of existing German interests in this region — the
native population was estimated to number be-
tween 750,000 and 1,000,000 souls. To-day it
has dwindled to about 200,000 — in itself a suffi-
ciently blistering comment upon German colonial
methods. The cause of the war of extermina-

TREATMENT OF HERREROS 95

tion, of which this depopulation is the result,
should be examined with some care.

The area of the German colony in South- West
Africa was some 384,000 square miles — about half
as large again as that of Germany itself ; but the
greater portion of it is sour, arid, waterless country,
though in certain localities tracts are met with
which are suitable for pasturage. The natives of
the more favoured regions were a pastoral people,
whose worldly possessions were their land and
their cattle. Without their land, over which
their herds perpetually roamed at large, the cattle
could not be maintained, and the entire foundation
upon which their communal life was based would
be undermined.

The German colonial Government, however,
could not suffer such large areas of comparative
fertility to be monopolised in this prodigal fashion,
and a policy of expropriation was accordingly
resolved upon. This met with resistance naturally
enough, but the Opposition offered to the European
invaders was not of so stubborn a character that
it could not be overcome. It was not until the
Germans began to lay violent hands upon the
herds of the Herreros and Damaras that every
man's hand was forthwith turned against them ;
for here a deeply ingrained religious sentiment of
the people came into play.

Though these tribesmen had long been accus-
tomed to sell their surplus cattle over the border
in Cape Colony, and though they were now ready
similarly to dispose of them to their new masters,
certain of their herds were regarded by them as

96 THE HERRERO WAR

being in some peculiar manner the property of
their gods, and these it was sacrilege to part with
in any circumstances. Such fine distinctions did
not have any weight with the Germans, and
accordingly when the cattle belonging to the
people had dwindled in numbers, partly owing to
the restricted areas now available for pasturage,
and only the sacred herds were usually available
wherewith to satisfy debts due to German traders,
the colonial Government did not hesitate to
sequestrate them.

This meant war which, from the German point
of view, was not altogether undesirable. The
Hottentots were poor material from which to
recruit labour forces ; the sight of them and their
live-stock sprawling over the only fertile districts
in the territory was a constant offence to economi-
cal German eyes ; as cultivators of the soil they
were beneath contempt, and were judged to be
incapable of sustained effort. They were to be
accounted, therefore, mere useless cumberers of
the earth, and their systematic extirpation was
determined upon in the holy name of Kultur.

The policy embarked upon was carried out with
characteristic German thoroughness ; yet even so
it was a task that occupied several years. The
Hottentots, fighting for their gods as well as for
all their poor worldly possessions, turned upon
their oppressors with the desperate ferocity of
trapped and tortured animals. Appalling things
were done by them to any Germans who had the
ill fortune to fall into their hands ; but the out-
rages perpetrated by these hapless savages never

GERMAN SAVAGERY 97

attained to the magnificence or to the ruthlessness
of the German counter-effort. No quarter was
given. The natives, men, women and children,
were driven in thousands into the waterless desert,
and even then were followed up and slaughtered
with every circumstance of atrocity as they lay
dying of thirst. The story has been often told,
and revolting details cannot add to the hideousness
of the facts.

It is well to remember, however, that in Damara-
land the exterminators of the Hottentots were
men of the race whose doings in Belgium stand
recorded in the awful pages of the Bryce Report ;
that here they were not dealing with men and
women and children of European blood, whose
kinship to their conquerors might be supposed to
awake some feeble impulse toward compassion,
but with defenceless negroes, whose pleas for
mercy were unintelligible, and whose extermina-
tion had been undertaken as an act of deliberate
policy. If unspeakable horrors and cruelties were
perpetrated in Belgium in the full sight of an
outraged civilisation, is it to be wondered at if
the doings of the Germans in the seclusion of
South-West Africa, when divorced utterly from
all restraining influences and from all fear of
eventual retaliation, beggared the worst of the
enormities committed by the Spaniards and the
Portuguese in the early years of the sixteenth
century ?

It is also worth noting that while these things
were going forward without any effective protest
being raised in Europe, the agitation anent the
14

98 THE ATTACK ON BELGIUM

Belgian atrocities in the Congo was being stage-
managed by those distinguished patriots, the late
Sir Roger Casement and Mr. E. D. Morel, and
Germany, with an eye to possible territorial
expansion in Africa, was joining in the hue and cry.

XIV

THE war with the Hottentot tribes of Damaraland
is the most notorious of the various campaigns
upon which Germany embarked as soon as her
" spheres of influence " had received concrete form
through the instrumentality of international agree-
ments ; but the spirit of frank brigandage, by
which her sudden entry into the colonial world
had been inspired, continued to fashion her policy
in the lands which her diplomacy had won. These
territories had been surrendered to her demand
by the other colonising nations of Europe, and
though the mere assertion of her claims had
sufficed to make them hers, she was perhaps
justified in regarding them as the captives of her
bow and spear. This, at any rate, was the aspect
which they wore in her eyes, for she entered them,
not in the role of a liberator, but in that of a
conqueror. She had made good her claim to
them as against the rest of the civilised world by
virtue of her " mailed fist " and her " shining
armour " ; it remained for her to win them from
their indigenous inhabitants by a more forcible
application of the policy of " blood and iron."

Taken in bulk, the natives of Africa are among
the most prosaically utilitarian of mankind.
Even when sentiment carries them away, it will

99

100 THE AFRICAN NATIVE

usually be found that adherence to it has, in
their judgment, a more or less close connection
with material considerations. Thus, when the
Herreros fought and died to resist the laying of
sacrilegious hands upon their sacred cattle, they
were probably inspired by the belief that the
calamities which would result from the wrath of
their outraged gods were more to be dreaded than
any horrors that human beings could inflict ; for
subconsciously the African appears to be for ever
keeping a running account with life.

For instance, he has a hearty and inherited
dislike of work, which is the more easily compre-
hensible when it is remembered that in the tropics
over-exertion frequently precipitates an attack of
malarial fever — the onslaught of an enemy which
is for ever lurking watchful in his blood. He
can be induced to overcome this aversion when
he stands in need of a regular income ; but if
you increase his wage with the object of attracting
more labour, he is apt proportionately to reduce
his hours of toil, since he can now secure the money
he wants at a smaller sacrifice of comfort and
convenience. Similarly, though he is conservative
by nature, he will accept innovations willingly
enough provided he is convinced that the balance
of advantage warrants such surrender of senti-
ment. He requires, however, to be fully per-
suaded that real and tangible benefits will accrue
to him as a result of his decision ; and as he is
at once suspicious and cautious, he is not prepared
to take anything on trust.

Such a people are not very difficult to lead,

THE GERMAN SYSTEM 101

provided they be patiently and sympathetically
treated ; but, on the other hand, they are well /
nigh impossible to drive. The Germans regarded
the latter course as the only policy that their
dignity rendered appropriate. They were not
content to allow their influence and jurisdiction
gradually to extend by a process of natural growth.
They did not attempt to convince the African
that material advantages were to be secured by
the acceptance of their rule ; but they were bent
upon showing him that condign punishment
would be the lot of any who hesitated to accept it.

This, of course, was the surest way to excite
passionate and practically universal opposition ;
and indeed a more intimate acquaintance with the
German system of colonial administration speedily
convinced the natives that they had, in fact,
nothing to gain, and a great deal to lose by sub-
mitting themselves to it. They found that the
advent of these strangers, while seriously inter-
fering with many of their most cherished customs
and traditions, gave them nothing in exchange
save harder conditions of life, more severe taxation,
longer hours of labour, more frequent punishments,
and less personal freedom. Even when, as in the
case of the attempted campaign against sleeping-
sickness in Togoland, the Germans were inspired
by the most laudable motives, they were so scorn-
ful of native opinion, and so ignorant of the art
of dealing with a primitive people, that their most
humane efforts were made to wear the guise of
cruelty and oppression.

But above and beyond all this, German rule

102 GERMANS AS CONQUERORS

did not even confer upon the people of her colonies
the easily recognisable blessings of an even-
handed justice ; and far from bringing peace, it
plunged district after district into war — not the
comparatively mild intertribal warfare to which
the natives were more or less accustomed, but
protracted struggles with an enemy no less savage
and ruthless than themselves, who was armed
with weapons of destruction of a diabolical effi-
ciency and precision.

War, then, German war, waged with the bru-
tality and the cynical cruelty of which Germans
have proved themselves even in Europe to be
such past-masters, was the first and principal
gift which the Fatherland conferred upon her
African subjects in the name of progress and
civilisation. We have already glanced at the war
of extermination in South- West Africa ; but in
her East African colony and in the Cameroons,
Germany was no less successful in antagonising
the whole native population. Africans have
shown themselves very generally ready, when a
fight is over, to shake hands and to make friends
to-day with their opponents of yesterday. They
are not naturally or by temperament good haters ;
but they are possessed of much robust self-respect,
and, even after defeat, they will not contentedly
accept the position of a conquered people.

This, however, is the standing which German
policy has assigned to the native populations of
her colonies from the beginning, and accordingly
the extension of her jurisdiction has always met
with resistance, and never for a moment has her

" REVOLTS " 108

rule stood " broad based upon a people's will."
Alike in East Africa and in the Cameroons, her
colonial record is one of armed conquest, followed
by frequent " revolts." Knowing what we know
to-day of German methods of making war, it is
unnecessary to fill in the details, and the following
bald statements of fact, extracted from Signor
Giordani's work, may be allowed to speak for
themselves. Of East Africa he writes :

In this part of Africa, as in other African colonies
of Germany, the natives continued to revolt,
partly stirred up by the Arabs, who, supported
in their turn by the Sultan of Zanzibar, feared
injury to their commerce, partly driven by the
methods and behaviour of the Germans, who did
not take local customs and conditions into account
and conducted themselves as in a conquered
country, parading their ownership. In 1890 the
revolt, hitherto constant, was after various alterna-
tions of fortune quelled by Hermann von Wissmann.

And of the Cameroons :

It was soon necessary to send a military ex-
pedition to quell serious disorders, and the sloops
Olga and Bismarck were sent to protect the imperial
troops in the continued and sanguinary combats
which they were obliged to wage along the coast.
A year later, in 1885, the Germans were able to
begin their explorations into the interior, and
in 1892 they reached the Benue, after a long
series of fierce contests with the natives, who for
several years more and more frequently compelled
the Germans to send armed forces at the cost of
valuable lives. Still more bitterly contested was

104 RESTRICTIONS ON NATIVES

the last advance towards Lake Chad, where the
Germans had been forestalled by the French,
nor had German dominion any better fate in the
regions along the coast. There, owing to the
scanty ability displayed by successive governors,
the discontent of the native traders showed itself
openly, and the negroes of Dahomey, who con-
stituted the police force, rose in rebellion. The
revolt did not produce serious consequences, and
the men of Dahomey were replaced by Sudanese.

i

There are two points touched upon in the last
quoted passage that call for some comment. The
discontent of the native traders here alluded to
was occasioned by the inequitable German system
which deliberately withheld from them all equality
. of commercial opportunity. To the European
merchants was reserved the exclusive right of
importing and exporting goods. Thus if a native
desired to trade in articles of European manu-
facture, he was compelled to obtain his stock from
the very men with whom in the retail business
of the colony he was about to compete. In prac-
tice, of course, this meant that the white trader
could always undersell him, and that the only
course open to the native was to act as a salesman
working on a commission for some European
firm. Similarly, no native was allowed to export
his own produce, but instead was compelled, if
he would dispose of it at all, to sell it to an Euro-
pean, the white merchant being thus placed in a
position of commanding advantage.

All this, of course, was in strict conformity
with the German view that colonial possessions

ROBBING THE NATIVES 105

in Africa were to be maintained and developed for
the exclusive benefit of Germans ; but it was a
system which successfully robbed the native
inhabitants of those colonies of the last of the
material advantages that might be expected to
attend the establishment of a stable form of govern-
ment in their midst. The more intelligent sections
of the community bitterly resented being thus
treated as serfs by strangers who had come into
their country, not only uninvited and'undesired,
but in the face of a passionate resistance, and the
experience had upon their energies a paralysing
effect. No populous non-European country in the
world has ever prospered unless its indigenous
inhabitants have been at once contented and
prosperous. This, however, is a fact which the
Germans never appear to have appreciated, and
their aggressive and expensive military policy, in
combination with their shortsighted and selfish
commercial system, sufficed to render insolvent
even the richest of their colonial possessions, such
as East Africa and the Cameroons.

15

XV

ANOTHER point of considerable importance re-
mains to be noted. The German colonial system
was in form and character a military despotism,
merciless exploitation supported by overwhelming
force constituting, in German eyes, the sole means
whereby primitive peoples were to be governed,
their countries developed, and the light of civilisa-
tion made to shine in the dark places of the earth.
It was in miniature a practical application of the
theories which have worked such ravages in
Europe and throughout the world during the past
four years ; and it had for its foundation the
characteristic German glorification of militarism.
The superhumanity of the soldier, which was held
to place him in some degree above the law to
which common men conformed, was a conception
which had been sedulously inculcated in Germany
during the concluding thirty years of the nine-
teenth century, and it was perhaps only natural
that German administrators should carry it with
them to their colonies in Africa.

Now the experience of other European nations
in primitive countries has taught very emphatic-
ally that the task of preventing the oppression of
indigenous populations by natives who have been

106

NATIVE SOLDIERS 107

trained and armed by white men to act either as
soldiers or as police is, in any circumstances, one
of considerable difficulty. Abuse of authority by
native subordinates of this type can only be
checked by constant vigilance, by encouraging
aggrieved persons freely to report any wrongs
done to them, and by punishing misconduct with
the utmost severity.

Any such line of action, however, was dia-
metrically opposed to the German idea of what
was due to the soldier. They regarded him as the
incarnation of their authority, and they wished /
him to inspire fear, the distinction between fear
and respect being one that is not very readily
appreciated by the German mind.1 Accordingly
the native soldiers in the German colonies con-
stituted a privileged class, whose members were
free to commit almost any excess without fear of
punishment provided their victims were natives,
and so long as they yielded an implicit obe-
dience to their German masters. Thus was
fashioned yet another scourge for the backs of
the unhappy folk whom the European Powers
had handed over to the mercies of the
Fatherland.

Native testimony is to be had in abundance
of the fashion in which the African soldiers of
Germany harried and oppressed them, but here
it will perhaps suffice if a single illustration /
of their methods be cited. It is chosen because

1 Was it not loudly proclaimed in Berlin that the outrages
committed in Belgium would inspire " respect" for the German
army?

108 MORE OUTRAGES

every detail connected with it is on official
record.

In 1913 cases of yellow fever occurred in the
Gold Coast, and these, in accordance with the
provisions of an international convention, were
duly notified to the governments of all neigh-
bouring West African colonies. The government
of Togoland forthwith placed a cordon of soldiers
along a portion of its frontier to prevent any one
passing over from the Gold Coast ; but it failed
to notify its own native population, or the British
officers just across the boundary, of the action it
had taken. Many of the natives of the Kwitta
district hi the Gold Coast cultivate land in Togo-
land, and are accustomed daily to cross the border
to visit their farms.

No notice having reached them that the frontier
was closed to them, a little party of natives
attempted to pass the cordon, the very existence
of which was unknown to them. The first thing
that they knew was that fire was opened on them,
and one of their number, an old woman, fell
grievously wounded. Her only offence, be it
remembered, was that she had attempted to pass
a cordon of German native soldiers ; but the
ruffian who had shot her forthwith proceeded to
club her to death with the butt end of his rifle.
This is sufficiently illustrative of the methods
which the native soldiers of Germany had been
taught to regard as appropriate when dealing
with the people of the country ; but the really
significant fact connected with this incident is
that, though this brutal and senseless murder was

GERMAN INDIFFERENCE 109

proved, the man who committed it was through-
out supported by the German authorities at Lome,
and neither compensation nor adequate apology
was offered for this outrage perpetrated upon a
British subject.

XVI

ENOUGH has now been said. We have seen how
the European invasion of the non-European world,
when in the sixteenth century it had passed
beyond the stage of its first tentative gropings,
had its beginning in aggression, violence and
cruelty. We have seen how, in spite of certain
temporary improvements in its character which
were for the most part dictated by policy and
expediency, European dominion continued until
late in the eighteenth century to be conducted on
purely selfish principles, and to be mainly a record
of grievous injustice and ill-doing.

We have seen that the peoples of the non-
European world were originally regarded by white
men as standing possessed of no rights of person
or of property ; and how foreign to contemporary
opinion, during a period of well nigh three hundred
years, was the idea that the extension of European
power and jurisdiction carried with it any duties
or obligations towards the native populations
subjected to them. We have seen how the first
assertion of this principle emanated from the
Commons of England, at the moment when Great
Britain was standing on the very threshold of
her immense empire in India ; how she was the
first of the European nations to declare that

no

PRINCIPLES OF COLONISATION 111

expansion must mean the establishment of a
reign of law to which rulers and ruled must alike
submit themselves ; that the employment of
arbitrary or despotic methods of government by
British administrators was illegal and inadmis-
sible ; and that " the largest and most gejnerous
construction " was to be placed by them upon
native " laws, rights, usages, institutions and
good customs."

We have marked how new was this conception
of the duty owed by the white nations to the
peoples of the lion-European world, but how
vigorously and persistently Great Britain cham-
pioned it — how in its cause she risked apparent
ruin and cheerfully submitted to great financial
sacrifices, and this at a time when her predominant
sea-power gave her so commanding a position
throughout the non-European world that she was
utterly free to take in these matters whatever
course seemed good to her. We have seen, too,
how that idea grew and gathered strength, until
at the present time, in Great Britain and in the
United States at any rate, all schools of political
thought which command attention and respect
are agreed that European power and jurisdiction
in non-European lands find in the moral and
material benefits which they confer upon the
indigenous inhabitants their sole raison d'etre and
their one and only justification.

Thus, in the fullness of time, it has come to be
accepted amongst us as axiomatic that where
Europeans assume responsibility for the adminis-
tration of territories inhabited by primitive and

112 GERMAN INTERVENTION

backward races, these lands must primarily be
governed for the benefit of the native populations ;
that they must be freed from the payment of any
tribute to the Mother Country, and must be
allowed to devote their revenues to the develop-
ment of their own resources ; that they cannot,
without gross injustice, be made to accord any
special or exclusive privileges to Europeans ;
that the natives must be protected from unfair
exploitation ; and that upon them must be con-
ferred the largest measure of personal freedom,
peace, order, security and equality of opportunity.
Such were the principles of colonial administra-
tion which Great Britain had successfully established
throughout the length and breadth of her tropical
dominions, and they were rapidly winning ad-
herents in other lands by reason of the extra-
ordinarily satisfactory results which attended
their adoption.

Then, in an evil hour, impelled by no higher
motive than a fierce hunger for possession, Ger-
many shouldered her way into the colonial world,
and in four years carved out for herself an immense
empire in non-European lands. Forthwith the
hands of time were thrust backward, and there
began once more in the territories which an
European nation had acquired a reign of tyranny
and of brute force. Every wise and generous
principle which experience had inculcated and
the good conscience of other European nations
had approved was straightway discarded.

We have seen her relying upon military might
as the sole instrument wherewith to spread new

GERMANS NOT "WHITE MEN" 113

ideas among primitive peoples, to wear down
their opposition and to compel their sullen obe-
dience. We have seen her bringing to these
hapless folk not peace but a sword ; not a reign
of law, but a reign of terror ; not even-handed
justice, such as the most backward races are quick
to understand and to appreciate, but the legalised
oppression of innumerable petty tyrants. We
have seen her exploiting her new possessions for
the exclusive advantage of white men, and showing
a cynical contempt for native rights and senti-
ments. We have seen her using her invincible
power, not for the elevation of the native popula-
tions, by affording them increased opportunities
for development and offering new achievements
to their ambition, but employing it solely for
purposes of conquest and repression. We have
seen her, not conferring freedom, peace, security,
happiness and contentment, but misery, blood-
shed, oppression, slavery and an enduring sense
of wrong.

This is Germany's record during her short reign
over the fair and gracious territories in Africa
which have now been torn from her grasp. We
may thank God that throughout the Dark Con-
tinent " white men " and " Germans " are regarded
and spoken of by the natives as two utterly distinct
species of mankind ; but the fact remains that
during .the past five and thirty years Germany
Jias besmirched the escutcheon of Europe in
Africa with all the stains that of old befouled it
during the first two centuries of the invasion of the
non-European world by the nations of the West.
16

114 GERMAN CRIMES

The early conquerors were at least inspired by
a high spirit of adventure, by dauntless courage
and by an exalted faith in their mission. They
faced tremendous odds and they enjoyed no such
vast superiority of equipment over their op-
ponents as belongs to the Europeans of our own
day. Though they sinned greatly, they sinned
after the manner of their age, and had for their
excuse its comparative barbarism. It has been
left to the Germans in Africa to reproduce, in
infinitely more squalid circumstance, the crimes
of the European conquerors of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. But they have throughout
enjoyed perfect safety from any really effective
retaliation, and they have had for their inspiration
nothing more worthy than a gross material
ambition.

XVII

THEBE is yet one more point that must be borne
steadily in mind when the time arrives to deter-
mine the fate of the former colonies of Germany
in Africa. Their native populations fared badly
enough ere ever they had given to Germany any
special or grievous cause for wrath. Since the
outbreak of war, by welcoming the invading forces
of the Allies and hailing them as their deliverers,
they have offended in German eyes past all possi-
bility of forgiveness. In many instances, chiefs
and people alike have afforded active assistance
to Germany's enemies, and have thereby irre-
trievably compromised themselves. They know
what to expect if their former masters are suffered
to return ; and to-day the people of Europe and
America cannot pretend that this knowledge is
not shared by them in equal measure.

Will the white men in whom they have trusted
deliver them to the torturers till all the debt be
paid ? Will the civilised world consent, as a
mere matter of convenience and expediency, once
more to surrender to so ruthless, so cruel, so
selfish and so incompetent an exploiter of colonial
territory the helpless people whom a war of
Germany's own making has, for the moment,
rescued from the grip of their oppressors ?

115

116 QUESTIONS TO BE SOLVED

Those are the questions which the natives of
Africa, in all the lands over which European rule
extends, are asking themselves to-day. In their
judgment the reputation of Europe and of the
United States of America stands or falls by the
answer that may be returned to them.

Printed by Hcuell, Watson A Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, England

RETURN TO the circulation desk of any
University of California Library
or to the

NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station
University of California
Richmond, CA 94804-4698

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS
2-month loans may be renewed by calling

(415) 642-6753
1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books

to NRLF
Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days

prior to due date

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

NOV 27

MAY n 6

^

APR 1 3 2004

U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY