American ideals, and other essays, social and political

by Theodore Roosevelt

Mr. Pearson points out with great clearness the groundlessness of this belief. He deserves especial praise for discriminating between the importance of ethnic, and of merely political, conquests. The conquest by one country of another populous country always attracts great attention at the time, and has wide momentary effects; but it is of insignificant importance when compared with the kind of armed settlement which causes new nations of an old stock to spring up in new countries. The campaigns carried on by the lieutenants of Justinian against Goth and Vandal, Bulgarian and Persian, seemed in the eyes of civilized Europe at that time of incalculably greater moment than the squalid warfare being waged in England between the descendants of Low Dutch sea-thieves and the aboriginal British. Yet, in reality, it was of hardly any consequence in history whether Belisarius did or did not succeed in overthrowing the Ostrogoth merely to make room for the Lombard, or whether the Vandal did or did not succumb to the Roman instead of succumbing to the Saracen a couple of centuries later; while it was of the most vital consequence to the whole future of the world that the English should supplant the Welsh as masters of Britain.

Again, in our own day, the histories written of Great Britain during the last century teem with her dealings with India, while Australia plays a very insignificant part indeed; yet, from the standpoint of the ages, the peopling of the great island-continent with men of the English stock is a thousand fold more important than the holding Hindoostan for a few centuries.

Mr. Pearson understands and brings out clearly that in the long run a conquest must fail when it means merely the erection of an insignificant governing caste. He shows clearly that the men of our stock do not prosper in tropical countries. In the New World they leave a thin strain of their blood among and impose their laws, language, and forms of government on the aboriginal races, which then develop on new and dimly drawn lines. In the Old World they fail to do even this. In Asia they may leave a few tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of Eurasians to form an additional caste in a caste-ridden community. In tropical Africa they may leave here and there a mulatto tribe like the Griquas. But it certainly has not yet been proved that the European can live and propagate permanently in the hot regions of India and Africa, and Mr. Pearson is right in anticipating for the whites who have conquered these tropical and sub-tropical regions of the Old World, the same fate which befell the Greek kingdoms in Bactria and the Chersonese. The Greek rulers of Bactria were ultimately absorbed and vanished, as probably the English rulers of India will some day in the future—for the good of mankind, we sincerely hope and believe the very remote future—themselves be absorbed and vanish. In Africa south of the Zambezi (and possibly here and there on high plateaus north of it,) there may remain white States, although even these States will surely contain a large colored population, always threatening to swamp the whites; but in tropical Africa generally, it does not seem possible that any white State can ever be built up. Doubtless for many centuries European adventurers and Arab raiders will rule over huge territories in the country south of the Soudan and north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and the whole structure, not only social, but physical, of the negro and the negroid peoples will be profoundly changed by their influence and by the influence of the half-caste descendants of these European and Asiatic soldiers of fortune and industry. But it is hardly possible to conceive that the peoples of Africa, however ultimately changed, will be anything but negroid in type of body and mind. It is probable that the change will be in the direction of turning them into tribes like those of the Soudan, with a similar religion and morality. It is almost impossible that they will not in the end succeed in throwing off the yoke of the European outsiders, though this end may be, and we hope will be, many centuries distant. In America, most of the West Indies are becoming negro islands. The Spaniard, however, because of the ease with which he drops to a lower ethnic level, exerts a much more permanent influence than the Englishman upon tropic aboriginal races; and the tropical lands which the Spaniards and Portuguese once held, now contain, and always will contain, races which, though different from the Aryan of the temperate zone, yet bridge the gulf between him and the black, red, and yellow peoples who have dwelt from time immemorial on both sides of the equator.

Taking all this into consideration, therefore, it is most likely that a portion of Mr. Pearson’s forecast, as regards the people of the tropic zones, will be justified by events. It is impossible for the dominant races of the temperate zones ever bodily to displace the peoples of the tropics. It is highly probable that these people will cast off the yoke of their European conquerors sooner or later, and will become independent nations once more; though it is also possible that the modern conditions of easy travel may permit the permanent rule in the tropics of a vigorous northern race, renewed by a complete change every generation.

Mr. Pearson’s further proposition is that these black, red, and yellow nations, when thus freed, will threaten the dominance of the higher peoples, possibly by military, certainly by industrial, rivalry, and that the mere knowledge of the equality of these stocks will cow and dispirit the higher races.

This part of his argument is open to very serious objections. In the first place, Mr. Pearson entirely fails to take into account the difference in character among the nationalities produced in the tropics as the result of European conquest. In Asia, doubtless, the old races now submerged by European predominance will reappear, profoundly changed in themselves and in their relations to one another, but as un-European as ever, and not appreciably affected by any intermixture of European blood. In Africa, the native States will probably range somewhere between the Portuguese half-caste and quarter-caste communities now existing on certain of the tropic coasts, and pastoral or agricultural communities, with a Mohammedan religious cult and Asiatic type of government, produced by the infusion of a conquering semitic or hamitic caste on a conquered negro people. There may be a dominant caste of European blood in some of these States, but that is all. In tropical America, the change has already taken place. The States that there exist will not materially alter their form. It is possible that here and there populations of Chinese, pure or half-caste, or even of coolies, may spring up; but taken as a whole, these States will be in the future what they are now, that is, they will be by blood partly white, but chiefly Indian or negro, with their language, law, religion, literature, and governmental system approaching those of Europe and North America.

Suppose that what Mr. Pearson foresees comes to pass, and that the black and yellow races of the world attain the same independence already achieved by the mongrel reddish race. Mr. Pearson thinks that this will expose us to two dangers. The first is that of actual physical distress caused by the competition of the teeming myriads of the tropics, or perhaps by their invasion of the Temperate zones. Mr. Pearson himself does not feel any very great anxiety about this invasion assuming a military type, and I think that even the fear he does express is unwarranted by the facts. He is immensely impressed by the teeming population of China. He thinks that the Chinese will some day constitute the dominant portion of the population, both politically and numerically, in the East Indies, New Guinea, and Farther India. In this he is probably quite right; but such a change would merely mean the destruction or submersion of Malay, Dyak, and Papuan and would be of hardly any real consequence to the white man. He further thinks that the Chinese may jeopardize Russia in Asia. Here I am inclined to think he is wrong. As far as it is possible to judge in the absence of statistics, the Chinaman at present is not increasing relatively as fast as the Slav and the Anglo-Saxon. Half a century or so more will put both of them within measurable distance of equality with him, even in point of numbers. The movement of population in China is toward the south, not the north; the menace is real for the English and French protectorates in the south; in the north the difficulty hitherto has been to keep Russian settlers from crossing the Chinese frontier. When the great Trans-Siberian railroad is built, and when a few millions more of Russian settlers stretch from the Volga to the valley of the Amoor, the danger of a military advance by the Chinese against Asiatic Russia will be entirely over, even granting that it now exists. The Chinaman never has been, and probably never will be, such a fighter as Turk or Tartar, and he would have to possess an absolutely overwhelming superiority of numbers to give him a chance in a war of aggression against a powerful military race. As yet, he has made no advance whatever towards developing an army capable of offensive work against European foes. In China there are no roads; the military profession is looked down on; Chinese troops would be formidable only under a European leader, and a European leader would be employed only from dire necessity; that is to repel, not to undertake an invasion. Moreover, China is merely an aggregate of provinces with a central knot at Pekin; and Pekin could be taken at any time by a small trained army. China will not menace Siberia until after undergoing some stupendous and undreamed-of internal revolution. It is scarcely within the bounds of possibility to conceive of the Chinaman expelling the European settler from lands in which that settler represents the bulk of a fairly thick population, not merely a small intrusive caste. It is, of course, always possible that in the far-distant future (though there is no sign of it now) China may travel on the path of Japan, may change her policy, may develop fleets and armies; but if she does do this, there is no reason why this fact should stunt and dwarf the people of the higher races. In Elizabeth’s day the Turkish fleets and armies stood towards those of European powers in a far higher position than those of China, or of the tropics generally, can ever hope to stand in relation to the peoples of the Temperate zones; and yet this did not hinder the Elizabethan Age from being one of great note both in the field of thought and in the field of action.

The anticipation of what might happen if India became solidified seems even more ill-founded. Here Mr. Pearson’s position is that the very continuance of European rule, doing away with war and famine, produces an increase of population and a solidity of the country, which will enable the people to overthrow that European rule. He assumes that the solidified and populous country will continue to remain such after the overthrow of the Europeans, and will be capable of deeds of aggression; but, of course, such an assumption is contrary to all probabilities. Once the European rule was removed, famine and internecine war would again become chronic, and India would sink back to her former place. Moreover, the long continuance of British rule undoubtedly weakens the warlike fibre of the natives, and makes the usurer rather than the soldier the dominant type.

The danger to which Mr. Pearson alludes, that even the negro peoples may in time become vast military powers, constituting a menace to Europe, really seems to belong to a period so remote that every condition will have changed to a degree rendering it impossible for us to make any estimate in reference thereto. By that time the descendant of the negro may be as intellectual as the Athenian. Even prophecy must not look too many thousand years ahead. It is perfectly possible that European settlements in Africa will be swamped some time by the rising of natives who outnumber them a hundred or a thousand to one, but it is not possible that the negroes will form a military menace to the people of the north, at least for a space of time longer than that which now separates us from the men of the River Drift. The negroid peoples, the so-called “hamatic,” and bastard semitic, races of eastern middle Africa are formidable fighters; but their strength is not fit for any such herculean tasks.

There is much more reason to fear the industrial competition of these races; but even this will be less formidable as the power of the State increases and especially as the democratic idea obtains more and more currency. The Russians are not democratic at all, but the State is very powerful with them; and therefore they keep the Chinese out of their Siberian provinces, which are being rapidly filled up with a population mainly Slav, the remainder of which is being Slavicized. From the United States and Australia the Chinaman is kept out because the democracy, with much clearness of vision, has seen that his presence is ruinous to the white race.