CHAPTER XVIII
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN
SECTION I.—AFRICA
I have taken the above heading for this chapter because it indicates truly the manner in which the dominion of the white man over many of the coloured races has been thrust upon him. There is a good deal of misunderstanding on the subject. Really the world-wide dominion of the British Empire, to take the most conspicuous example, has been forced upon the mother country. There is an idea, and some of our rival nations have specially encouraged it, that those overseas dominions have been won by our aggressive spirit, land-grabbing and desirous of ever acquiring new possessions. Even we ourselves are rather apt to attribute it to the adventurousness of our ancestors; as if they had gone out seeking adventures like the knights-errant of old.
If we regard the events as they actually did happen we must confess the process much more prosaic. No doubt very adventurous and heroic deeds were done during its course. We have every right to be proud of our Anglo-Saxon race on their account. But our principal reason for pride is to be found in what the race has done, less in aggression, than in defence. It was Britain that was very largely concerned in humbling the overweening ambition of Spain, in baulking the arrogance of Louis XIV., in thwarting the projects for world empire of Napoleon.
But what happened in the spread of the white man's power all over the world was that he went here and there, in the first place, and settled, for purposes of trade. We have seen the Portuguese going down the west coast of Africa for slaves and gold and ivory; Spain crossing the Atlantic for the treasures of El Dorado, the supposed city of gold; Portuguese, Dutch, and English going easterly to India, and farther, all to see what they could bring back.
They settled. Then they found that, in order to trade peaceably, and with tolerable security, they had to take control of the city or territory in which they settled.
That is, in few words, the story of the whole process. The settlements were at first along the coasts, and then gradually extended inland, as the boundaries of the districts already settled were everywhere threatened by the unsettled peoples outside the boundaries. We saw the process in action in the British Empire in India.
That is the common story. It is a little varied by the special circumstances of such countries as Australia and parts of South America which favoured the raising of sheep and cattle. There the settlers extended their boundaries not so much for security as to gain more pasture lands.
Somewhat thus, then, is the manner in which the white man has been forced, if he would develop the earth so as to afford support for its increasing population, to take this burden on his shoulders.
Africa, being so accessible to Europe, was the first of the new countries to which Europeans went trading in their ships. In a very early chapter of the story we have seen that many of the ports along the north coast of Africa, which is the Southern Mediterranean shore, were nests of pirates preying upon the trading shipping. That was a condition of affairs which became more and more intolerable to Europe as the trade increased. It was with the approval of all Europe that the French in 1830 captured and took Algiers, which was the headquarters of the Moorish pirates. They extended that possession over the whole of Algeria till they reached the Turkish possession of Tripoli, which, again, extended to Egypt easterly.