I am aware that this hardly bears out my statement that the Teutonic races are kindly, but as I have said “among themselves,” we will leave it; and to other people, the original inhabitants of the countries they overflow, they are on the whole as kindly as you can expect family men to be. A distinguished Frenchman has stated that the father of a family is capable of anything; and it certainly looks as if he thought no more of stamping out the native than of stamping out any other kind of vermin that the country possessed to the detriment of his wife and children. I do not feel called upon to judge him and condemn, for no doubt the father of a family has his feelings; and as it must have been irritating to an ancestor of modern America to come home from an afternoon’s fishing and find merely the remains of his homestead and bits of his family, it was more natural for him to go for the murderers than strive to start an Aborigines’ Protection Society. Though why, caring for wife and child so much as he does, the Teuton should have gone and planted them, for example, in places reeking with Red Indians is a mystery to me. I am inclined to accept my French friend’s explanation on this point, namely, that it arose from the Teuton being a little thick in the head and incapable of considering other factors beyond climate. But this may be merely thickness in my own head—a hopelessly Teutonic one.
However, the occupation of territory from population pressure in Europe we need not consider here; for it is not this reason that has led Europe to take an active interest in tropical Africa. It is a reason that comes into African affairs only—if really at all—in the extreme north and extreme south of the continent—Algeria and the Cape. The vast regions of Africa from 30° N. to 20° S., have long been known not to possess a climate suitable for colonising in. “Men’s blood rapidly putrifies under the tropic zone.” “Tropical conditions favour the growth of pathogenic bacteria”—a rose called by another name. Anyhow, not the sort of country attractive to the father of a family to found a home in. Yet, as in spite of this, European nations are possessing themselves of this country with as much ardour as if it were a health resort and a gold mine in one, it is plain they must have another reason, and this reason is in the case of Germany and England primarily commercial pressure.
These two Teutonic nations have the same habit in their commercial production that they have in their human production,—the habit of overdoing it for their own country; and just as Lancashire, for example, turns out more human beings than can comfortably exist there, so does she turn out more manufactured articles than can be consumed there; and just as the surplus population created by a strong race must find other lands to live in, so must the surplus manufactures of a strong race find other markets; both forms of surplus are to a strong race wealth.
The main difference between these things is that the surplus manufactured article is in no need of considering climate in the matter of its expansion. It stands in a relation to the man who goes out into the world with it akin to that of the wife and family to the colonist; the trader will no more meekly stand having his trade damaged than the colonist will stand having his family damaged; but at the same time, the mere fact that the climate destroys trade-stuff is, well, all the better for trade, and trade, moreover, leads the trader to view the native population from a different standpoint to that of the colonist. To that family man the native is a nuisance, sometimes a dangerous one, at the best an indifferent servant, who does not do his work half so well as in a decent climate he can do it himself. To the trader the native is quite a different thing, a customer. A dense native population is what the trader wants; and on their wealth, prosperity, peace and industry, the success of his endeavours depends.
Now it seems to me that there are in this world two classes of regions attractive to the great European manufacturing nations, England and Germany, wherein they can foster and expand their surplus production of manufactured articles. (1) Such regions as India and China. (2) Such regions as Africa. The necessity of making this division comes from the difference between the native populations. In the first case you are dealing with a people who are manufacturers themselves, and you are selling your goods mainly against gold. In the second the people are not manufacturers themselves except in a very small degree, and you are selling your goods against raw material. In a bustling age like this there seems to be a tendency here and in Germany to value the first form of market above the second. I fail to see that this is a sound valuation. The education our commerce gives will in a comparatively short time transform the people of the first class of markets into rival producers of manufactured articles wherewith to supply the world’s markets. We by our pacification of India have already made India a greater exporter than she was before our rule there. If China is opened up, things will be even worse for England and Germany; for the Chinese, with their great power of production, will produce manufactured articles which will fairly swamp the world’s markets; for, sad to say, there is little doubt but they can take out of our hands all textile trade, and probably several other lines of trade that England, Germany, and America now hold. India and China being populated, the one by a set of people at sixes and sevens with each other, and the other by a set of people who, to put it mildly, are not born warriors, cannot, except under the dominion and protection of a powerful European nation, commercially prosper. But England and Germany are not everybody. There is France. I could quite imagine France, for example, in possession of China, managing it on similar lines to those on which she is now managing West Africa, but with enormously different results to herself and the rest of the world. Her system of differential tariffs, be it granted, keeps her African possessions poor, and involves her in heavy imperial expenditure; but the Chinaman’s industry would support the French system, and thrive under her jealous championship. This being the case, it is of value to England and Germany to hold as close a grip as possible over such regions as India and China, even though by so doing they are nourishing vipers in their commercial bosoms.
The case of the second class of markets—the tropical African—is different. Such markets are of enormous value to us; they are, especially the West African ones, regions of great natural riches in rubber, oil, timber, ivory, and minerals from gold to coal. They are in most places densely populated with customers for England’s manufactured goods. The advantages of such a region to a manufacturing nation like ourselves are enormous; for not only do we get rid there of our manufactured goods, but we get, what is of equal value to our manufacturing classes, raw material at a cheap enough rate to enable the English manufacturers to turn out into the markets of the civilised world articles sufficiently cheap themselves to compete with those of other manufacturing nations.
In an Angola Market.