This is an ethnographical and historical study of the native races of South Africa. The author of the work is a member of the race whose life he has described. To some extent, then, he has told here his own story, "relying somewhat on the life of the people in interpreting the psychological aspect which must be invaluable to a foreigner." As this book, however, is replete with quotations from various works of white men who have seen the country only from the outside, and the work contains no evidence that the writer has extensively traveled in his own native land, it drifts too much in the direction of a summary of what these various travelers have thought of Africa. The book, moreover, is not altogether scientific; and fraught with too many of the opinions of others who should know less about Africa than the native himself, it does not satisfy the need for a definitive account of the life and history of the various peoples of South Africa. On the whole, however, it is far in advance of most works bearing on the achievement of that continent and is certainly a step in the right direction, when the story of Africa will be told as it must be told by the native of Africa himself.
The book begins with an interesting introduction of that part of the work called The Revelation, which consists of an account of the antiquity of man in Africa, prehistoric Africa, the unveiling of South Africa and the distribution of the primitive races. In that portion of the work styled The Past there is a valuable summary of African ethnology, setting forth the various stocks of the southern part of the continent, their manners and customs, moral conduct, religious beliefs and language. This portion of the work is valuable, because it is a brief summary of valuable matter scattered through a large number of volumes.
In that part of the work styled The Present there is much matter which may be found in almost any history of Africa. What is said about missionaries, missions, the South African wars, and the like, may be found in various works, and in some more extensively treated. In those chapters bearing on the education of the Bantu, the relation of the races and the attitude of the government to the natives, there are adequately set forth the race problem in that part of the world and the effort toward its solution as expressed in such strivings of the natives as the Bantu National Congress and the Bantu Press. There is, moreover, the reaction of an intelligent native of Africa to the impressions made upon him by the European civilization there implanted.
The author does not seem to be very hopeful. On the whole, the ring of the book is rather pessimistic. Yet he mentions intellectual possibilities as well as impossibilities, bright prospects for religious developments as well as an unfavorable religious outlook, social and economic prospects favorable and unfavorable, and finally the hope that relations between the races may be amicably adjusted so as to secure to the black and white the privileges of a common government.
An American History. By Davis Saville Muzzey, Ph.D. Revised edition. New York, Ginn and Company, 1920. Pp. 537.
This new edition of the author's former work brings the narrative down to the spring months of the year 1920. The author has entirely recast that part of the book following the Spanish war and has made considerable changes in the preceding chapters to emphasize the social and economic factors in our history. Some illustrative material has been added, the maps have been improved and the bibliographical references brought down to date.
This book follows the line of the most recent writers of American history in giving less attention to the problems of the early periods to treat somewhat in detail movements culminating in our day. It does not contain so much about the discovery and exploration of the new world and gives only limited space to colonial history. The treatment of the birth of the nation, the development of the Constitution and the rise of political parties, is more interesting. The author is more elaborate in his discussion of the sectional struggle between the North and South, the crisis of disunion and the Civil War. The drama of reconstruction, however, is decidedly neglected; but the problems confronting the people thereafter are more extensively treated.
When a reader in quest of the truth has read this text-book of American History, however, he will be compelled to ask the question as to why there appears throughout this volume references to the achievements of all groups influencing the history of this country, and there is no mention whatever of what the Negroes, constituting a tenth of the population of the United States, have thought and felt and done. It is unreasonable to think that such a large element of the nation could be so closely connected with it without having decidedly influenced the shaping of its destiny, and history shows that the record of the Negro race in the western hemisphere is so creditable and far-reaching that it is impossible to write the history of the United States and omit the achievements of this group. Professor Muzzey's American History, therefore, is not a balanced and unprejudiced account of the rise and progress of the United States, but such a treatise as he believes that the American mind will absorb, and such a story as conforms with the biased minds of pseudo-American historians who do not desire to publish to posterity the achievements of all the people of this country.