Chapter XVIII: Conclusions and Forecasts

We have now seen the result of these race movements during three or
four thousand years, which have caused nations superior in physical
or mental development to the Negro, the Negroid, and the Hamite to
move down on Africa as a field for their colonization, cultivation,
and commerce. The great rush, however, has only been made since
1881, and may be said to have begun with the French invasion of
Tunis. Now there remain but two small portions of the map of Africa
which are uncoloured, that is, attributed to the independent
possession of a native state. These tracts, theoretically
independent, or the overlordship of which is international, are the
Negro Republic of Liberia on the West coast and the Ethiopian Empire
in North-east Africa. The whole remainder of the continent is now
allotted to the dominion, overlordship or exclusive political
direction of some one European, Christian power: Britain, France,
Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, or Spain. Morocco, on the extreme
north-west of the continent, the bulk of whose trade was formerly
with England, and whose principal seaport was once in English hands,
has now France for a protector, educator and disciplinarian, and
Spain for recolonizer. There is Egypt, in the occupation and under
the control of Britain, though still nominally a tributary state of
the Turkish Empire. Since this book was first published in 1898, the
truculent Muhammadan state of Wadai has been annexed and conquered
by France, together with Baghirmi and Kanem, Aïr and the Saharan
oases. Darfur is under Anglo-Egyptian suzerainty; Tripoli,
Cyrenaica, and Fezzan are annexed to Italy as the future “Colony” of
Libya; and British rule has been made very real over the eastern
Fula States of Nigeria and Bornu. The South African Republic and
Orange Free State are part of the Union of South Africa. Even
Liberia has recently entrusted its finances to the indirect control
of its original parent, the United States. Only Abyssinia—now the
Empire of Ethiopia in very fact, since 1900—remains theoretically
independent; and even Abyssinia is aware that three European
powers—Britain, France, and Italy—while guaranteeing her
independence, have in a sense agreed to take joint action if she
should abuse that independence to the commercial or political injury
of their interests. Abyssinia, for many reasons connected with her
history, her religion, and her sturdy assertion of independence
deserves more than any other state of Africa to preserve her
national self-respect and her sovereign status, provided she will
abstain from offence, and recognize her geographical and racial
limitations. But if through ambition she should attempt to arm and
to lead the peoples of the Sudan against the new order of things
which is being patiently introduced by Great Britain, she will find
herself restricted once more to the African Switzerland which has
been the nucleus and the last refuge of this Semitico-Hamitic
people. Liberia by studiously following American advice and
educating herself on the right lines to be an African Negro State
and not an African parody on a tiny scale of the vast United States
of North America, may play an important part some day in the
political development of West Africa.

What is Europe going to do with Africa? It seems as though there
were three courses to be pursued, corresponding with the three
classes of territory into which Africa falls when considered
geographically. There is, to begin with, that much restricted
healthy area lying outside the tropics (or in rare instances, at
great altitudes inside the tropics), where the climate is salubrious
and Europeans can support existence under much the same conditions
as in their native lands. Here they can freely rear children to form
in time a native European race; and in these regions (except in
parts of South Africa) there is no dense native population to
dispute by force or by an appeal to common fairness the possession
of the soil. These lands of the first category are of relatively
small extent compared to the mass of Africa. They are confined to
the districts south of the Zambezi and the Kunene (with the
exception of the neighbourhood of the Zambezi and the eastern
coast-belt); to the fifty thousand square miles on the mountain
plateaus of Northern Rhodesia, and about a hundred and thirty
thousand on the highlands of Nyasaland, Katanga, South and Central
Angola, Uganda and British East Africa; to the northern half of
Tunisia, a few districts of north-east and north-west Algeria and
the Cyrenaica (northern projection of Barka); and to parts of the
northern projection of Morocco. The second category consists of
countries like much of Morocco, Algeria, southern Tunis, and
Tripoli; Barka, Egypt, Abyssinia and parts of Somaliland; where
climatic conditions and soil are not wholly opposed[227] to the
healthful settlement of Europeans, but where the competition or
numerical strength or martial spirit of the natives already in
possession are factors opposed to the substitution of a large
European population for the present owners of the soil. The third
category consists of the remainder of Africa, mainly tropical, where
the climatic conditions make it impossible for Europeans to
cultivate the soil with their own hands, to settle for many years,
or to bring up healthy families. Countries lying under the first
category I should characterize as being suitable for European
colonies, a conclusion somewhat belated, since they have nearly all
become such. The second description of territory I should qualify as
“tributary states,” countries where good and settled government
cannot be maintained by the natives without the control of a
European power, the European power retaining in return for the
expense and trouble of such control the gratification of performing
a good and interesting work, and a field of employment and
profitable enterprise for a few of her choicer sons and daughters.
The third category consists of “plantation colonies”—vast
territories to be governed as India is governed, autocratically but
wisely and as far as possible through native chiefs and councils,
with the first aim of securing good government and a reasonable
degree of civilization to a large population of races at present
inferior in culture and mentality to the European. Here, however,
the European may come, in small numbers, with his capital, his
energy, and his knowledge to develop a most lucrative commerce, and
obtain products necessary to the use of his advanced civilization.

It is possible that these distinctions may be rudely set aside by
the pressure of natural laws one hundred, two hundred years hence,
if the other healthy quarters of the globe become over-populated,
and science is able to annul the unhealthy effects of a tropical
climate. A rush may then be made by Europeans for settlement on the
lands of tropical Africa, which in its violence may sweep away
contemptuously the pre-existing rights of inferior races. But until
such a contingency comes about, and whilst there is so much healthy
land still unoccupied in America and temperate Africa, it is safer
to direct our efforts along the lines laid down in these three
categories I have quoted. Until Frenchmen have peopled the north of
Tunis and the Aures Mountains of Algeria, it would be foolish for
their Government to lure French emigrants to make their homes in
Senegambia or on the Congo; until Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange
Free State, the Transvaal, and Rhodesia south and north of the
Zambezi are as thickly populated with whites as the resources of the
country permit, it would be most unwise to force on the peopling by
Europeans of Sokoto or the coast lands of British East Africa. On
the other hand, however healthy the climate of Egypt may be, it is a
country for the Egyptians, and not for Englishmen, except as
administrators, instructors, capitalists, or winter tourists. Since
we have begun to control the political affairs of parts of West
Africa and the Niger basin our annual trade with those countries,
rendered secure, has risen from a few hundred thousand pounds a year
to about £10,000,000. This is sufficient justification for our
continued government of these regions and their occasional cost to
us in men and money.

In the north of Africa the white Berber race will tend in course of
time to weaken in its Muhammadan fanaticism, and to mingle with the
European immigrants as it mingled with them in ancient times and in
the middle ages, when it invaded Spain and southern Europe. The Arab
will gradually draw aloof, and side with those darker Berbers, who
will long range the Sahara wastes unenvied; or else he will betake
himself to the Sudan, and lead a life there freer from European
restrictions, even though it be under a loose form of European rule.
The Egyptians will probably continue to remain the Egyptians they
have been for untold centuries, no matter what waves of Syrian,
Libyan, Hittite, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Turkish, French or
English invaders swept over the land; but they will probably come
within that circle of confederated nations which will form the
future British Empire—nations of every origin, colour, race,
religion, united only by one supreme ruler, and the one supreme bond
of peace, mutual defence, and unfettered interchanging commerce. The
Negro or Negroid races of all Africa between the Sahara Desert, the
Red Sea, and the Zambezi will remain negro or negroid, even though
here and there they are slightly lightened with European blood, and
on the east are raised to a finer human type by the immigration of
the Hamites, the interbreeding of Arabs, and the settlement of
Indians. It is possible that there may be a considerable overflow of
India into those insufficiently inhabited, uncultivated parts of
East Africa now ruled by Britain and Germany. Indians will make
their way as traders into British Central Africa, but these
territories north of the Zambezi will be governed also in the
interests of an abundant and powerful negro population, which before
many years have elapsed will be as civilized and educated as are at
least a million of the negro inhabitants south of the Zambezi at the
present day. South of the Zambezi great changes will take place. The
black man may continue to increase and multiply and live at peace
with the white man, content to perform for the latter many services
which his bodily strength and indifference to health permit him to
render advantageously. But as the white population increases from
one to twenty millions it will tend to reserve to itself all the
healthy country in the south of Africa, and inland on that great
central plateau which stretches up to and beyond the Zambezi; and
the black man will be pushed by degrees into the low-lying, tropical
coast regions of the south-east and of the Zambezi valley—regions
which with much of Bechuanaland and Nyasaland must for an indefinite
period be regarded as a Black Man’s Reserve.

The European nations or national types which will predominate in the
New Africa are the British (with whom perhaps Dutch will fuse), the
French and the French-speaking Belgian, the German, the Italian, the
Greek, and the Portuguese. The Spaniard may be met with on the
North-west coast and in Morocco and Western Algeria; the Portuguese
may have in Angola a second Brazil, but this dream will dissolve
disenchantingly unless this nation can soon recover national energy
and divert her thousands of emigrants annually to Portuguese Africa
rather than to Portuguese- or English-speaking America. Portugal
itself requires colonists and ought to be able to support not a
discontented six but a prosperous fifteen millions of people.
Italy’s share of colonizable territory may be comparatively small
under her own flag, and Greece may have none at all, but the north,
the north-east, and north-central parts of Africa will teem with
busy, thrifty, enterprising Italian and Greek settlers, colonists,
merchants and employés[229].

The great languages of New Africa will be English, French, Italian,
Portuguese, Arabic, Hausa, Swahili, and Zulu. It is doubtful whether
German will ever become implanted as an African language any more
than Dutch has taken root in the Malay Archipelago. It is true that
Dutch in a corrupted jargon has become a second language to the
Hottentots and a few Bantu tribes. But Dutch is simpler in
construction, and easier of pronunciation to a negro than German. I
have observed that in the Cameroons the Germans make use of the
“pigeon” English of the coast as a means of communication with the
people when they do not speak in the easily acquired Duala tongue.
In East Africa, on the other hand, they use Swahili universally,
just as the Dutch use Malay throughout their Asiatic possessions.
English may not become the dominant language in all countries under
British influence in Africa. It will certainly become the universal
tongue of Africa south of the Zambezi, and possibly, but not so
certainly, in British Central Africa, where, however, it will have
the influence of Swahili to contend with. In British East Africa, in
Zanzibar, and in Uganda the prevailing speech will be the easy,
simple, expressive, harmonious Swahili language, a happy compromise
between Arabic and Bantu. In Somaliland, Egypt, the Sahara, and the
Sudan Arabic will be the dominating language; but Italian, French,
and English will be much used in Lower Egypt. Italian, Arabic, and
French will remain coequal in use in Barka, Tripoli, Tunis, and
Eastern Algeria; French and Arabic (French perhaps prevailing) in
Algeria; and French will make its influence felt in Morocco (though
it will contend there with Arabic and Spanish), and right across the
Western Sahara to Senegambia and the upper Niger. English will be,
as it is now—either in jargon or correctly spoken—the language of
intercommunication on the West coast of Africa from the Gambia to
the Gaboon. French, Swahili and Portuguese will prevail in the Congo
basin; Portuguese in Angola; and Hausa in Nigeria and around Lake
Chad. In Madagascar French will predominate, mingling in the Komoro
Islands with Swahili.

Paganism will disappear. The continent will soon be divided between
nominal Christians and nominal Muhammadans, with a strong tendency
on the part of the Muhammadans towards an easy-going rationalism,
such as is fast making way in Algeria, where the townspeople and the
cultivators in the more settled districts, constantly coming into
contact with Europeans, are becoming indifferent to the more
inconvenient among their Muhammadan observances, and are content to
live with little more religion than an observance of the laws, and a
desire to get on well with their neighbours. Yet before
Muhammadanism loses its savour, there will probably be many
uprisings against Christian rule among Muhammadan peoples who have
been newly subjected to control. The Arab and the Hamite for
religious reasons may strive again and again to shake off the
Christian yoke, but I strongly doubt whether there will be any
universal mutiny of the black man against the white. The negro has
no idea of racial affinity. He will equally ally himself to the
white or to the yellow races in order to subdue his fellow black, or
to regain his freedom from the domination of another negro tribe.
There may be, here and there, a revolt against the white rule in
such and such a state; but the diverse civilizations under which the
African will be trained, and the different languages he will be
taught to talk, will be sufficient to make him as dissimilar in each
national development as the white man has become in Europe. And just
as it would need some amazing and stupendous event to cause all Asia
to rise as one man against the invasion of Europe, so it is
difficult to conceive that the black man will eventually form one
united negro people demanding autonomy, and putting an end to the
control of the white man, and to the immigration, settlement, and
intercourse of superior races from Europe and Asia. Difficult, this
conception may be, in the light of past history, and because
language counts for so much, but not impossible. Any repetition of
Leopoldian tactics on a large scale, any gross oppression of the
negro in South, East, West or Central Africa might fuse all culture
differences, blend black and yellow men of diverse religious beliefs
and superstitions in one blazing rebellion against the white race
which might avail to wreck the new and the growing European
civilization now spreading so fast over Africa. But otherwise the
indigenous races of Africa will grow up into being black or brown
British subjects (unless we deny them all suffrage), Frenchmen,
Portuguese or Germans. Great white nations will populate in course
of time South Africa, North Africa, and Egypt; and rills of
Caucasian blood will continue, as in the recent and the remote past,
to circulate through Negro Africa, leavening the many millions of
black men with that element of the white-skinned sub-species which
alone has evolved beauty of facial features and originality of
invention in thought and deed. But the black—or, as it will be in
the future, the brown—race will, through bowing to many an influence
and submerged by many an invasion, in the long run hold its own
within limits, and secure for itself a large proportion of the soil
of Africa. All predictions as to the future of the Dark Continent
seem futile in face of the unexpected, the strange, the unlooked-for
which arises in Africa itself. A new disease may break out which
destroys the negro and leaves the white man standing; or
unconquerable maladies may be evolved which sweep the white man away
or make it too dangerous and unprofitable for him to settle on the
soil of tropical Africa. On the other hand, remedies for all African
diseases may be found, and it may be no more dangerous to the white
man’s health to reside at Sierra Leone or on the Upper Congo than it
is for the indigenous black man. No doubt, as in Asia and South
America, the eventual outcome of the colonization of Africa by alien
peoples will be a compromise—a dark-skinned race with a white man’s
features and a white man’s brain.