THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA.
The extent of European territorial annexation of Africa, provisional, protective or positive, is quite surprising even to those who have kept pretty close watch of it. Of the eleven millions of square miles in Africa, six and one-half millions are attached to some European power; and of the four and a half unattached parts, half lie within the desert of Sahara.
That, therefore, is to say that all the continent of Africa that is habitable, except about two million square miles, is under European domination. Europe has annexed Africa. The “British East African Company” is practically another European State in Africa, for it is granted full powers to levy taxes and customs and to maintain an armed force. Whether another generation will look upon all this as civilized brigandage, or whether it is any better than free-booting of any other type, does not materially affect the facts
in the case. The British government, through its colonial or foreign office, nevertheless has authorized this company (new State) to carry on high piracy of much of the finest land in Central Africa filled with an industrious population, said to number about Lake Nyanza alone twelve millions of people. We are told that the company is composed of philanthropic gentlemen in London, and we have no doubt but that the ultimate result will be good—“the Earth will help the woman”—but it is nevertheless difficult to detect any under-lying moral principle above
“He may take who has the power
And he may keep who can.”
And while the lion and the lamb in this millennial reign lie down together in peace, it is because the lamb is inside of the lion.
But Great Britain is not alone in this missionary zeal that “out of the eater shall come forth meat and out of the strong shall come forth sweetness,” though her “sphere of influence” is a million square miles of the Dark Continent. France exercises the sweet charities of modern politics over 700,000 square miles, and Germany seeks to convert, en bloc, if not to Christianity, at least to modern German trade-gain, 200,000 square miles, about which she now disputes, to add to the 740,000 she has without debate already. Meanwhile the king of Portugal takes “military occupation” of a tract of land north of Loanda and creates an “attachment” for it to the king of Portugal; and the British government “annexes” that part of the Gold Coast between Cape Coast Castle and the delta of the Niger; and what with treaties, “military operations” and “protectorates,” Africa becomes rapidly a sort of “country store” run by European merchants.
Barring the radical ethical question in the case, perhaps we may rejoice in the bare hope that all this is “casting up the highway for the progress of Christianity;” but if what with rum and gunpowder these races are to be “civilized off the face of the Earth,” as we have done with our native American races, it would seem that there must nevertheless be a great reckoning day with the Christian powers, that they could find no better way of developing Africa than by fertilizing her soil with the carcasses of her sons.