* * * * *
_Native Life in South Africa, before and since the European War and
the Boer Rebellion._ By SOLOMON T. PLAATJE. P.S. King and Son, Ltd.,
London, 1916. Pp. 352.
Mr. Plaatje is a South African native, educated near Barkly West at a
mission school. He later studied languages and served as an
interpreter for important officials such as Duke of Connaught and Mr.
Chamberlain. He later rose to a position of some importance in the
Department of Native Affairs. He once edited a paper called _Koranta
ea Becoana_. He is now the editor of the _Tsala ea Batho_ (the
People's Friend). Although treating of questions concerning the
oppression of his people, his writings have been marked by moderation
and common sense. He is not an agitator, not a firebrand, and can,
therefore, be read with profit. Rather resenting the power of the
uneducated chiefs who rule by virtue of their birth alone, Mr. Plaatje
belongs to a new school of thought. He is making a new appeal for the
native.
Mr. Plaatje modestly disclaims any pretension to literary merit. He is
merely giving a "sincere narrative of a melancholy situation, in
which, with all its shortcomings," he "has endeavored to describe the
difficulties of South African natives under a very strange law, so as
most readily to be understood by the sympathetic reader." The author
had access to sources from which he obtained the facts presented. He
has made personal observations in the Transvaal, Orange Free State and
the Province of the Cape of Good Hope. He used other facts collected
by Attorney Msimang of Johannesburg. Organizing these facts, Mr.
Plaatje shows how the native has been maltreated and debased so as to
be considered a pariah of society in his own native land. In the
struggle between right and wrong, the latter has triumphed,
culminating in such an evil as the Native Land Act, an effort at class
legislation, the worst sort of discrimination and segregation in land
tenure.
One would have difficulty in believing that such barbarities could be
practiced within the British Empire, were it not for the fact that Mr.
Plaatje not only quotes from the act _in extenso_ but quotes also from
the debates in the Colonial Parliament to show that the intention of
the legislators was to restrict the native to their reservations or to
servitude among the white population to placate the extreme Dutch
Party in South Africa. In other words, the Colonial Parliament took
the position of Mr. J.G. Keyter, the member for Ficksburg, who said:
"They should tell the native, as the Free State told him, that it was
white man's country, that he was not going to be allowed to buy land
there or hire land there, and that if he wanted to be there, he must
be in service." The author is thankful for the assistance given the
natives by the British, but contends that the fortunes of the former
should not have been committed to the hands of the Dutch Republicans
without adequate safeguards.
The work will doubtless be successful as an appeal to the court of
public opinion, as it is intended. The case is ably and seriously put
and is supported by adequate evidence to warrant the author's
conclusions as to the enormity of the crimes against the natives. In
making this bold agitation for economic equality, this book may
materially influence future events in South Africa and in England. It
will doubtless lead British statesmen to conclude that the imperial
power cannot dissociate itself from the responsibility for native
affairs. The writer will attract attention too because of the novelty
in that this work is the product of the brains of an intelligent
native, who can think and express himself well on public questions. It
will be surprising to those Englishmen who have hitherto treated the
natives altogether as an uneducated mass incapable of thinking and
will certainly excite sympathy among those who believe in the
principles of liberty and justice.
* * * * *
_The Danish West Indies under Company Rule, 1671-1754._ With a
Supplementary Chapter, 1755-1917. By WALDEMAR WESTERGAARD, Assistant
Professor of History at Pomona College. Introduction by H. MORSE
STEPHENS. Macmillan Company, New York, 1917. Pp. 359.
This work is the history of a company of Danish merchants desiring to
avail themselves of the commercial opportunities of the New World. The
work was undertaken prior to the recent negotiations of the United
States for the purchase of the islands. It is the result of an attempt
to "identify and appraise" a number of official and other papers found
in the Bancroft Collection at the University of California. The study
of these documents led to further research in the Danish libraries and
archives, especially the archives of the Danish West India and Guinea
Company. The work then becomes a treatise on the rise and fall of a
great corporation with business as its objective rather than the
sketch of a mere colony. It has a number of helpful maps and
illustrations.
In writing this work, the author easily realized that treated as an
isolated subject it would be worthless. It is, therefore, dealt with
as a part of European history, that phase commonly characterized as
commercial expansion. He, therefore, in accounting for the Danish
interest in colonization and in estimating the part that nation
actually played, finds that the experiences of the Danes were fairly
typical of those of the Dutch, the French, the English and the
Spanish. The narrative then is a succession of accounts of
speculation, competition, prosperity and depression. There are
sketches of adventurers, buccaneers and pirates all brought forward in
such a way as to tell their own story.
The author directs attention to the West Indies as the great theater
in which was played the drama of history in the New World during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sugar is presented as king. The
author is chiefly concerned with the crucial test to which the company
was subjected, the establishment of the Brandenburgers at St. Thomas,
the leasing of Guinea and St. Thomas, the governorship of John
Lorentz, the plantation colonies of St. Thomas and St. John, the
introduction of slavery, the slave trade, the relations of the planter
and the company, the acquisition of St. Croix, and the career of the
company under a new charter. In the appendix there is such valuable
information as the list of governors in the West Indies and the
Guinea, the directors and board of shareholders in Copenhagen, the
first charter of the Danish West India and Guinea Company, the charter
of 1697, important letters of officials and the report of the board of
police and trade to King Frederick IV in 1716. One finds also the list
of slave cargoes arriving in the Danish West Indies, the list of
prices on St. Thomas from 1687 to 1751, West Indian sugar exported
from Copenhagen, the company's receipts and debts at St. John and St.
Croix, the capital invested in St. Thomas in 1747, the company's
business in cotton, returns on the company's capital, and other
statistics.
The supplementary chapter is an effort to connect as far as possible
the sketch set forth in the preceding part of the book with the events
leading up to the recent purchase of the group by the United States.
The work throughout necessarily deals with the contact of the Negro
with the European, as the African slaves constituted the class of
population to be exploited and, of course, were the factor essential
to the rise and growth of the company.