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
{218} 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 {219}
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.
[Sidenote: Egypt]
Egypt had freed herself from the suzerainty of Turkey about the date,
1830, of France's annexation of Algiers. Under an able ruler she
developed her resources and was well governed, but from about 1870
onward, under a far less able successor, both government and finance
fell into confusion.
In 1876 the British Government acquired by purchase the larger number
of the shares in the Suez Canal. As a short cut to India, the Suez
Canal was of vital interest to Great Britain. It was of vital
interest, too, that the traffic through it should be safe and well
conducted. This led to an inquiry into the condition of the Egyptian
government, which showed that unless these conditions were bettered
it was most unlikely that the Canal would be properly controlled and
made safe.
The outcome was that the English and French established themselves in
a joint control--it was called a Dual Control--over Egypt, in 1879.
Three years later, again, Egypt revolted against this control.
England asked France to join her in forcibly putting down the revolt.
France declined. England then invited the aid of Italy, for Italy
had an interest both in Egyptian affairs generally, and in the Suez
Canal especially, because she had established a coaling station,
where her ships might replenish their coal supplies, in Eritrea, a
district far down on the {220} west shore of the Red Sea. But Italy
also declined. Therefore Great Britain went in alone to restore
order.
The revolt was effectually quelled; but Great Britain dared not leave
the country to the mercies of a native or of a Turkish ruler. She
had to stay, in the very interests of Egypt herself. At the moment
of writing, Egypt has been given a large share of self-government, of
which she still has to prove herself altogether worthy.
And this burden of Egypt, thus undertaken, led on to the shouldering
of yet another, of the country southward, the Sudan. Really it is a
burden inseparable from the burden of Egypt, because the Nile, which
is Egypt's very life-blood, passes through it, and because it is, or
it was, the home of wandering slave-making Arab tribes always liable
to inflict raids on Egypt itself.
Hence arose expeditions and again expeditions, in some of which Great
Britain's arms suffered heavy reverse, against one or other of the
fanatical Arab leaders who arose and assumed the title of Mahdi. The
loss which stands out most tragically in England's memory is that of
General Gordon, at Khartoum, in 1885. It was not until 1898, and the
decisive defeat of the Mahdi by Lord Kitchener, that the problem of
the Sudan could be regarded as tolerably solved. We may note that
the manner of fighting of the Arabs was to charge in cavalry masses.
It is mode of attack which gives a target terribly exposed to the
fire of modern machine guns; and that gun has greatly diminished the
danger of civilised troops charged by those desert warriors.
In the south of Africa the burden of the white man had at first lain
chiefly on the shoulders of the Dutch, and the story of South Africa
in the nineteenth century is mainly the story of the shifting of that
burden to the {221} British. It was in the year of the battle of
Waterloo that the Dutch possessions, from the Cape of Good Hope
northward, were ceded to Great Britain by the King of the Netherlands.
[Sidenote: The Boers]
But the Boers, as the colonial Dutch were called--the name is akin to
German _bauer_, a peasant--were, and are, a people who valued their
nationality and their independence. It was not for more than thirty
years that they formally acknowledged the British rule, which in the
meantime had been extended to include the district of Natal. After a
few years of experience of that rule, the Boers made a great "trek,"
or exodus, and established themselves farther north, beyond the
British domination, in what was then called the Orange Free State.
And there it is possible they might have dwelt for many generations
as a free republic of farmers had it not been for the discovery, some
twenty years later, of the diamond mines in the Transvaal district,
farther north again, whither the Boers had by that time extended
their occupation.
The effect of that discovery was to attract to the region of the
diamond mines a rush, chiefly of British, but of variously mixed,
nationality. Ten years later the Transvaal was proclaimed a British
possession, and almost immediately the Boers went to war to maintain
its independence.
The war was inglorious for Great Britain and involved a serious
disaster to a considerable British force. It ended in a compromise
which did not promise much security for the future. The Boers
acknowledged the suzerainty of Great Britain and, subject to that not
very clearly defined control, were conceded the right of managing
affairs in the Transvaal. That was in 1881.
And from that time until the end of the century trouble grew and grew
between the increasing {222} population of the diamond fields and the
increasing numbers and strength of the Transvaal Boers. Britain's
position was difficult. These Boers had been the first to shoulder
the white man's burden--if we like to put it in that way. They had
been the first to drive out those black people who had owned the land
before them--if we prefer to put it so. Whichever way we prefer,
they had a right prior to that of those diamond finders, who came in
and bought up their farms at great prices and were not at all welcome
to the majority of the Boers whose farms did not happen to lie over
diamond-producing strata.
From that point of view, all the argument seems to be on the Boers'
side. But there is another point of view. These diamond searchers
had come in in a perfectly peaceful way. They brought much wealth to
the Boer Government which taxed them very severely, and really did
not give them fair and decent treatment. The result was the breaking
out, in 1899, of the great Boer War which went for a while so hardly
for Great Britain that it looked at one moment as if her armies might
be forced right back to the sea. Not only the Transvaal Boers but
those of the Free State, and of Natal, joined together. Fortunately
for Great Britain, Cape Colony, where the British element was
largest, stood firmly for the Empire. At length the fortune of war
turned, as more and more British troops arrived from oversea. By
1903 it was ended: the Boers surrendered at discretion.
And then was done one of the noblest and most generous and most
courageous acts that the whole of this Greatest Story is able to show
in the way of the treatment of a vanquished people by the victors: a
very large part of the independent rule for which the vanquished foe
had been fighting was voluntarily given to him. It was a tremendous
experiment--tremendous, in the most literal sense of the word; {223}
that is to say, an experiment to be feared. It seemed an immense
risk to take--thus to rely on the sense of gratitude of a beaten foe.
But that foe showed himself as generous in acceptance of the
experiment as Great Britain in making it. He proved his gratitude by
devoted service for the Empire in the Great War. It was a tremendous
experiment, wonderfully justified.
[Sidenote: The division of Africa]
It is not needful, for the purposes of this story, to go over in
detail the possessions, and their boundaries, of the various white
nations in Africa. The French have a huge area in the north-west,
reaching right down from Algeria to a junction with the Congo River.
The Belgian Congo lies between that French area and British Rhodesia,
which joins the other British colonies farther south. Great Britain
has Nigeria on the west coast and British East Africa on the east.
Portugal has Angola on the one side and Mozambique on the other, with
the large island of Madagascar, which is French, lying off it.
Abyssinia, easterly of the Sudan and bounded on the east again by the
British and the Italian Somalilands, is by far the greatest and most
interesting of the African countries still in the possession of a
coloured race. Even Morocco, just westerly of Algiers, is now under
French protection, and on either side of it lies a territory that is
under Spain.
These many and very different countries have not been won for the
white man without heavy fighting with the natives whom the white
intruders found there. Great Britain has had its severe campaigns
against the Kaffirs and the Zulus in the south. The Italians have
received very rough handling from the Abyssinians. Spain and France
still have their troubles in the north. But the white man has
prevailed, and must prevail increasingly as his better science puts
better instruments of war into his hands.
{224}
There remains one great nation not yet named in this chapter which
also had extensive possessions in Africa until the Great
War--Germany. It was not until rather a late date in the story that
Germany, under the strong hand of Bismarck, had been welded into a
nation at all. The year 1884, when the German Colonisation Society
was founded, may be taken as the date when she set to work with the
deliberate and avowed purpose of taking her place among the
colonising nations. It was less a matter, with her, of shouldering a
burden thrust upon her, than of going out of her way to seek the
burden, in her fear lest the other nations should possess themselves
of all the unclaimed spaces before she could stretch out a hand for
them.
Acting from this motive, she obtained, on the west coast of Africa,
the large territory of the Cameroons--now, since the Great War, under
the French mandate--of German South-West Africa--now under the
mandate of the Union of South Africa--and of German East Africa--now
under the mandate of Great Britain.
Of all these, the last was perhaps of chief importance from the point
of view of the Anglo-Saxon dominance, because there was a small
portion of its north-eastern boundary where it joined with the
Belgian Congo, and it was just this, and only this, junction which
intervened between the Anglo-Saxon protectorate of Uganda on the
north and the long lake of which the southern shore was part of
Rhodesia. That is to say, that this junction of Germany with Belgium
alone prevented an all-British route, by river, lake, or land, from
the Mediterranean mouth of the Nile to the Cape of Good Hope.
With the mandate to Great Britain of German East Africa, which was
one of the results of the Great War, that intervention has been
removed.
{225}
This then, in bare outline, is the way in which the burden of Africa
has been distributed on the shoulders of the white men.
SECTION II.--INDIA AND THE FAR EAST
[Sidenote: India]
Already we have seen something of the way in which the burden of
India came to be borne--the British East India Company, which was
purely a trading concern, being forced to take military measures, for
the defence of its trading stations and for the maintenance of good
order, at one time against the French who were aiming at the
establishment of an empire and at another against the native rulers,
or rather the mis-rulers, of the Indian States.
It was thus that the Company came to have an army in its pay and to
hold the control over extensive lands and many peoples. It was a
position never contemplated when the Company was formed, nor was it a
position entirely welcome to its directors. Continual additions had
been made to the territories over which its control spread. The most
notable perhaps were the addition of Cashmere in 1846, of the Punjab
in 1849, and of Oudh in 1856. Farther east even than India, to the
Straits Settlements and even to China itself, the authority reached
of this vastly overgrown trading concern. Obviously it involved a
control which could far better be undertaken directly by the British
Government than by a Company acting under its charter. But with that
typically British tendency to let things go on as they are going
until it is impossible so to let them go any longer, nothing was done
to transfer the Company's power to the Crown until the crisis came in
the shape of the most formidable rising of a coloured people which
the white man ever has {226} been called on to meet in the whole
course of taking up his burden. It is that known as the Indian
Mutiny--"mutiny," because it was mainly the affair of the native
soldiers in the Company's pay. This was in the years 1857 and 1858.
It threatened the very existence of the white man in the East, and
only a splendid heroism in resistance to heavy odds, and heroic
efforts and forced marches to relieve a situation nearly desperate,
saved the principal, though scanty, British force from being
annihilated. Once more the British wonderfully won through to a
final victory, but the events of the war had brought into clear light
the long known fact that the government of British India was an
affair which demanded the most direct attention of British statesmen,
with all the resources at their disposal. The East India Company
were relieved of their far too heavy burdens. The Crown took over
their responsibilities both in India and in the farther East.
The responsibilities of India were not only those which arose from
the troubles incidental to a rule over peoples of different race and
of religions--the Moslem and the Hindu--which brought them often into
collision with each other. There was another trouble which began to
menace like a dark cloud on the north-eastern boundary of the
country, where lay the independent State of Afghanistan bordering
with Persia on its east and with Russia on its north.
Russia had taken no part in that overseas colonisation by the other
great powers of Europe. She had vast spaces enough, contiguous to
her own bounds, over which she spread. Gradually she had annexed all
Turkestan, which brought her into direct contact with Afghanistan,
and she had been at frequent war with Persia over the question of the
Russo-Persian boundary on Persia's north-west. Both Persia and
Russia had ambitions to absorb that independent {227} Afghanistan
which lay in the corner where they joined, and where, but for
Afghanistan, they would join British India also. It was Britain's
policy to maintain Afghanistan independent, as a buffer between her
and those others, especially against Russia.
But it was to Persia, in the first place, that she had to say "hands
off," when Persia advanced to the important position of Herat, within
Afghan territory, in 1852. The result of campaigning and fighting
lasting over some five years was that a friendly agreement was
reached with Persia, which settled boundaries and left Herat to the
Afghans.
[Sidenote: Russia's menace to India]
But in 1887 Russia, from the north, pushed down, and was across the
Afghan boundary and advancing to that same Herat, when she was
checked only by very forcible representations made to her by Great
Britain. Britain herself had pushed her own Indian frontier forward
by the acquisition of Beluchistan in 1878. Russia withdrew her
forces for the time being, but all through that century and for some
years of the present, the dread that she would come down upon India
was always in the minds of British statesmen. There was more than
one moment when war seemed imminent. Possibly it was nothing but
Russia's own doubt of her effective fighting power which averted it.
No suspicion of her internal weakness was entertained in Europe
generally until it was revealed by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and
yet more clearly by the Great War of 1914-1918. But there is little
doubt that this small State of Afghanistan, which arose out of the
Moslem spread towards the East many centuries before, saved Britain
and Russia from disastrous collision. She had played the game that a
small State thus situated was likely to play, intriguing with the
great powers on either side of her and taking advantage of their
rivalry. More than once there has been war between her and Great
Britain. But she {228} remains an independent State and Britain's
friend to-day.
On India's north-eastern side Britain extended her Empire by the
acquisition of Assam in 1826, and later by that of Burma in 1886.
The French had taken to themselves Annam and Tongking in 1884, and
thus the British Burmese territory marched with French Indo-China, as
it was called, and both were bounded on their northern side by the
great Chinese Empire which stretched right up to Siberia.
[Sidenote: Affairs in China]
For the last hundred years or so, the story of China has been largely
the story of her efforts to prevent the foreigner from coming into
China and playing any part in her story.
Nevertheless we find the white man pushing on, in his eternal quest
for trade, not to be denied, founding trading stations at Chinese
ports. Generally it is only in submission to a show of force, or to
its active application, that these trading facilities, warehouses and
so on, are permitted to him. He is obliged to fight to be allowed to
establish them, and further, we find him fighting again to punish the
native people who have disregarded the agreements they have made with
him and who sometimes have killed the peaceful traders.
Out of the troubles thus arising came war between Britain and China
as early as 1840. The Chinese were quite incapable of seriously
opposing the large British force which was sent out. The result was
the conclusion of a commercial treaty which opened five principal
ports of China to British trading vessels and gave Britain possession
of the island of Hongkong. In 1854 Shanghai, one of the five ports
above named, was opened to the trade of all nations.
But still the attitude of the people and of the Government was
hostile to the foreigner. At any moment an uprising and a general
massacre might {229} happen. A few white missionaries, chiefly of
British and American nationality, penetrated into the country,
preaching Christianity at constant risk of their lives.
The year 1860 saw a great change in the relations of the white men
and the Chinese. Hitherto any fighting between them had been near
the coast and the great ports. Now, as a protest against the
ill-treatment of which the foreign traders were the victims and the
bad faith with which the Chinese broke the treaties, and also to
insist on the establishment of legations of the European Powers to
protect the interests of their nations, a strong combined force of
British and French marched on Pekin, the capital city, and looted and
burnt the sacred Summer Palace from which the Emperor had fled.
The really important result of the campaign was the shock which it
gave the Chinese and the conviction which it brought home to them of
the strength and determination of the white men. Thereafter they
treated the foreign traders with a consideration never paid them
before, and ministers representing foreign powers had their appointed
residences in Pekin.
It is true that as lately as 1900 a combined foreign force was
obliged to march in extreme haste on Pekin in order to save those
ministers, who were in great peril there. But it was peril arising
out of an insurrection against the Government, rather than
immediately from the Government's own action. Nevertheless it is
also true that the very clever old Empress, who was then ruler of
China, deliberately contrived to convert the activities of the
revolutionaries into an attack upon the foreigners, rather than upon
the Government itself. And it is to be noted that in co-operation
with that combined army, which thus again invaded China's once sacred
capital, was a force of the other branch of the yellow race, the
island branch, the Japanese.
{230}
The story of that island branch is certainly no less interesting than
that of the continental. At what point far back in the story they
branched off from a common stock we do not know, but it is more than
probable that they came from the same original source. We found
Kublai Khan, when master of China and of an immense part of the world
besides, sending out from China an expedition against the islanders,
of which the fate was much like that of the Grand Armada which the
masterful power of Spain launched against our own islands. Japan
kept her independence then, and has fought for it again and asserted
it conclusively far later.
[Sidenote: The awakening of Japan]
She too, in her story, seems to have repeated, as did China,
something very like the series of changes through which society
passed in Europe, with its feudalism and the rest of it. But whereas
in modern China this feudalism seems to belong to some era very, very
far back in her story, so that she has almost lost all memory of it,
with Japan, on the contrary, it is a very recent chapter--later even
than with us of Europe. It is a condition from which she has indeed
only just shaken herself free. 1867 is generally given as the date
at which Japanese feudalism passed. And it passed in a fashion for
which there is certainly no parallel in Western story. The Daimios,
who were the feudal lords, of their own accord agreed, as the only
means of ending their mutual fighting, to give up their local powers
into the hands of the Mikado.
The white men knew very little about Japan until the sixteenth
century. No overland travellers, like Marco Polo, had been there to
bring back news to the West. About the middle of the sixteenth
century a few Portuguese trading vessels touched it, and the very
famous Jesuit missionary Xavier introduced Christianity. Here,
however, as elsewhere, the Jesuits seem to have caused trouble by
interfering with politics, {231} and the exclusion of the foreigners
was enforced more strictly than ever. Gradually, especially towards
the end of the eighteenth century, trade with foreigners began to
grow, chiefly with the Dutch, the Russians, and the Americans.
But still Japan continued, like China, to hold aloof as much as
possible from all intercourse with the West, and with its science and
progress. America at length took the decided step of sending a
strong naval force and demanding the opening of a port to American
ships of trade. This was in 1850, but the real opening up of the
country did not begin until after the end of feudalism and the
establishment of the Mikado's single power in 1867. And then a most
extraordinary change did happen--a change perhaps more extraordinary
than any other of which we find record in the whole history of
mankind.
We may describe the story of China for many centuries as the story of
a people buried in a profound sleep. She shows but little immediate
sign of awaking from that slumber even to-day. The story of Japan in
the latter half of the nineteenth century we may designate as the
most astonishing awakening of a nation out of slumber that the world
has ever known.
Even now the part played by great China is only a passive, a negative
part (except, of course, so far as her own people are concerned), but
the part played by little Japan, though perfectly passive until some
two-thirds of the nineteenth century had gone, has been startlingly
vigorous and effective. The truth is that beneath the slumbering
surface the spirit of the people had always been active, inquiring,
ready for any novelty that struck them as valuable--in great contrast
to the indifference of the Chinese. Their seclusion had been forced
upon them by their rulers. When that enforcement ceased, they
welcomed with very keen intelligence all the progress in science and
thought which steam {233} and evolution had given to the West. In
religion and in art they seem to have been satisfied to follow their
own traditions, but they took every possible opportunity to learn
lessons that might be of practical use. Military experts were called
from Germany and naval experts from Great Britain to teach the art of
war by land and sea. Scientific, educational, and legal advisers
were engaged. The nation set itself with astonishing quickness to
learn all that the West could teach it, and within a few years the
efficiency of both army and navy were very thoroughly proved.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
{232}
[Illustration: OLD JAPAN: ENTRANCE TO THE TOMBS, TOKIO.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Sidenote: Korea]
On the coast of China, just opposite Japan, lay the independent State
of Korea. Its people were of the yellow race--not great fighters,
but they had successfully resisted some rather half-hearted efforts
of the Chinese to subdue them. Against the Chinese they invoked
Japanese help--and not in vain. Japan had an interest in this
country which lay just opposite her own islands, across a narrow sea,
and which gave an outlet for her own surplus population. Over the
Korean question, then, Japan and China came to war in 1894. The
Japanese armies met and repeatedly defeated the Chinese, in the north
of Korea and in the Chinese province of Manchuria just northward
again. At sea, it was evident that Japan still had much to learn,
for the Chinese for a while had rather the better of the naval
engagements. Finally the Japanese prevailed there also.
One result of that war was that Korea was formally declared
independent, but the Government was so feeble that the Japanese, in
the years that followed, gained more and more power over it. By the
terms of peace, the large island of Formosa was ceded to Japan. But
the war's most important result was to reveal to the Western powers
the weakness of China. Russia, thwarted in her advances towards
India, was pushing but eastward into Manchuria, and now {234}
encouraged China to resist some of the demands of the victorious
Japanese. In compensation, she obtained for herself certain
advantages, as the friend of China. China handed to her Manchuria,
partly as the result of pressure, partly of friendly persuasion.
What was of still more importance for her was that she acquired the
ice-free harbour of Port Arthur; for hitherto her only Pacific port
had been Vladivostock, farther north and often ice-bound.
It mattered comparatively little to Japan that Great Britain and
Germany, to balance these gains of Russia, demanded and took for
themselves, from the enfeebled hands of the Chinese, ports in the
same neighbourhood. What did matter was that the menace of Russian
power, and Russia's insatiable desire to expand, became more and more
formidable to her. But among the peace terms which she had not
failed to extort from China was a large money indemnity, and that
money she spent in buying ships of war.
So then, in 1904, as Russia grew more and more aggressive in her
eastward push, Japan, confident in her German-instructed army and her
British-instructed and greatly enlarged fleet, ventured on a kind of
David and Goliath contest. She declared war on the vast power.
[Sidenote: The Russo-Japanese War]
And, just as, through the test applied by this surprising little
island power in the Pacific, had been revealed the essential weakness
of great China, so now, to the astonishment of the world, was
revealed by the very same test the weakness of great Russia. The
Russian fleet, sailing from the Gulf of Finland, circumnavigated the
world to come into touch with the Japanese fleet awaiting it in
Japan's home waters; and at the very first touch that sea-worn fleet
of Russia was sent to the bottom, save for such inconsiderable
remnants as the Japanese allowed to remain afloat or to run ashore.
{235}
On land the fighting was hard. Port Arthur, strongly fortified, held
out bravely, but was invested and forced to yield. The Japanese
armies were victorious, driving the Russians back, but at price of a
continually lengthening line of communications as the battle rolled
north. The victories had cost Japan the very utmost that she could
afford. She consented to terms of peace which surprised Europe by
their moderation. But the details were of little importance compared
with the astonishing achievement. This little island State, scarcely
emerged out of its feudal era, had become, at a stroke, a great
modern power, the naval ruler of the Pacific, Great Britain's
counterpart in the East, and her ally on equal terms.
She might now gratify her wish about Korea, and formally declared it
a Japanese protectorate in 1910. The Russian menace was rolled back,
by the restoration of Manchuria in the same year.
In the Great War Japan more than confirmed her claim to high place
among the nations. She was active in scouring the sea for German
marauders of commerce, and very early in the war captured the port
which Germany had occupied in the Pacific, and so eliminated any
threat to her authority with which that occupation might threaten her.
Within so few years did Japan thus pass, from taking no part whatever
in the Great Story, to be one of the foremost actors.
Southward of the Japanese islands, the next most important group is
that of the Philippines, transferred, as we saw, from the sovereignty
of Spain to that of the United States as a result of the
Spanish-American war of 1897-8. Southward again, we come to those
islands of the Malay Archipelago chiefly dominated by the Dutch,
although Britain also has important possessions there and on the
Malay Peninsula itself.
And so, working yet farther southward through {237} innumerable
islands, we arrive at the huge British colonial territory of
Australia, with the two islands of New Zealand some twelve hundred
miles away towards the south-east.
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{236}
[Illustration: A STREET SCENE IN MODERN JAPAN.]
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SECTION III.--THE FAR SOUTH
[Sidenote: The far South]
That vast and wonderful responsibility, the burden of Australia, was
laid so lightly upon the Anglo-Saxon's shoulders that he has scarcely
felt the weight of it at all. Although second to none, and equalled
only by one, namely America, in its immense possibilities, it has
been less costly in blood and treasure than any other. Partly this
is because Australasia lies so remote that no other nation has
contested its possession with Great Britain, and partly because the
Australian native himself is (or was, for he has nearly disappeared)
so poor a specimen of humanity that he could put up no effective
fight for the home lands from which the white man was evicting him.
That is a remark, however, which by no means applies to the native
people of New Zealand, the Maoris. They were and are a fine people
of a very quick intelligence, very brave, and distinguished for their
oratory. We need not be surprised that they are so different from
the Australian natives, because, although we often think of Australia
and New Zealand as near neighbours, they are, as already mentioned,
twelve hundred miles apart. It is tolerably certain, from the
likeness of the language and other indications, that the Maoris are
of the same stock as the Samoans, in Polynesia.
It was not until the eighteenth century that the white man began to
take much notice of these great lands in the South. New Zealand was
the first to be proclaimed a British possession, in 1787, and the
{238} following year is the date of the beginning of the settlement
of New South Wales. The founding of the next Australian colony,
Queensland, was not until 1824, and five years later again began the
colonisation of Western Australia. South Australia was recognised as
a separate colony in 1834, and Victoria in 1851.
[Sidenote: Australia]
Of the settlement, and the claiming for the Anglo-Saxon, of these
glorious and vast possessions, there is but little to say in this
story, because each successive settlement was accomplished with
comparatively little interference by the natives and with none
whatever from any other white nation. The coast was found to have
some splendid harbours, most of the interior was excellent grazing
land, and later, profitable gold mines were discovered.
The chief drawback of Australia as a cattle and sheep producing
country has always been its liability to long droughts when no rain
falls and the grass perishes and the stock dies for lack of food and
water. Much trouble arose at one time from the foolish and
short-sighted action of the Government at home in transporting
criminals thither. In the first instance they were sent to New South
Wales and later to Queensland also. Many of these convicts escaped
into the bush, and, banding themselves together, became a terror, by
the name of bushrangers, to peaceful farmers. Obviously the families
of the convicts could not have been brought up in circumstances
likely to turn them into good citizens. It is all the more to the
credit of the country that it has such a fine population to-day.
The folly and the wickedness of thus filling up a grand new country
with the refuse ejected from the old was gradually realised.
Transportation of criminals ceased in 1868.
The Australian colonies continued to govern themselves as separate
units, under a constitution granted them by the Crown in 1850, for
just fifty years. In {239} 1900, by their own request, they were
welded into the Commonwealth of Australia, with a Governor-General
appointed by the Crown. The federated States are six, that is to
say, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and
Western Australia on the main land, with the island State of Tasmania
to the south.
Thus, shortly, it is possible to relate the story of the white man's
acquisition of this great continent of the South; but though its
story is so short and simple the importance of the part that it is
likely to play in the future of this Greatest of all Stories is quite
beyond our estimate, but is certain to be very large. Its vacant
spaces, ready for the immigrant, are vast. The difficulties created
by the droughts are being gradually overcome, as the means of
irrigation are improved. The population is vigorous and efficient.
Australia sent fighters of splendid bravery and splendid loyalty to
aid the mother country in the Great War. The world has yet to learn
the possibilities of this young and still undeveloped continent.
The story of New Zealand is very much the story of Australia, except
that the New Zealand white settlers did, for a while, suffer much
anxiety in their protracted warfare with the coloured race that they
found there. It was not until 1861 that the Maoris took up arms in
any force against the whites who were gradually driving them out of
their ancient territories. Had they known how to combine and act
together, and to take advantage of the concealment of the bush, they
might have been really dangerous to the white man's rule. But
jealousies between the tribes prevented their combination, and a
Quixotic pride in braving death and danger seems to have caused them
to deem it the act of a coward to creep upon the enemy undetected.
They chose rather to dash themselves upon {241} the defence in
frontal attacks which cost them very heavy losses. Even so the war
dragged on, in a series of intermittent fighting, for ten long years,
and in the terms of peace which ended it the Maoris secured for
themselves better conditions than before. Their bravery and fine
qualities had made an impression, and they received a liberal
recognition of their rights. They have proved themselves good
friends and citizens of the Empire in the years since.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
{240}
[Illustration: A SCENE IN NEW ZEALAND: MT. PEMBROKE.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Sidenote: New Zealand]
The products of New Zealand are very similar to those of Australia.
On the whole its climate is more agreeable, because cooler, to the
European. As a stock-raising country it has the advantage of not
being subject to the same risk of droughts. Assuredly the white race
thrives there and produces grand specimens of humanity. Even New
Zealand has perhaps not yet begun to play its full part in this
Greatest Story, but it has relatively little or none of the vast
empty space of the great Australian country. We may know, more or
less, the role that New Zealand is to play. Of Australia's share in
the drama of the future it is scarcely possible to make even a
conjecture.
Thus then, in broad and simple lines, I have tried to sketch the
manner in which the white man, and the Anglo-Saxon more than all
other white men, has been shouldering the world's burden. That is a
political sketch, showing the movements of some of the societies of
men and some of the changes in the boundaries of States. But during
the last hundred years of our Greatest Story the principal events
have been five, of which three only have been of this political
character. There is the unification of Italy into a nation, that is
the earliest. There is the consolidation of the German States into
the national unity of Germany, that is the second. There is the
assumption of his burden by {242} the white man, and especially of
the Anglo-Saxon, all the world over--that is the third.
The fourth and fifth are not of a political character at all; though
more important in our story than any political event. First of these
last two, because it came first in time, though I am not sure whether
we should rate it first in importance, is the application of steam
power to the working of machinery. The second is the discovery of
evolution, with all that the word implies, and its turning of men's
eyes with glad hope towards a splendid future for human life on the
earth, instead of a despairing regret for a vainly imagined splendour
in the past.
{243}
INDEX
ABOLITIONISTS, and Anti-Abolitionists, 212, 213
Abraham, Plains of, 133
Abyssinia, 223
Act of Settlement, the, 109, 115
Act of Supremacy, the, 49, 61
Afghanistan, 32 _et passim_, 104, 226, 227, 228
Africa, 4 _et passim_, 218 _et seq._
Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 114, 119
Akbar, Grand Mogul, 34, 67
Alaska, 182
Algiers, 45, 219, 223
Alsace, 206
Alva, Duke of, 57
Angola, 223
Anne, Queen, 101, 109, 110
Anne Boleyn, 47
Appomatox, 214
Assam, 208
Atlantis, 9
Aurungzeb, 104
Austerlitz, battle of, 171
Australia, 237 _et seq._
BALKAN States, the, 182
Barbadoes, 81
Bastille, the, 158
Batavians, the, 155
Bavaria, Elector of, 118
Beluchistan, 227
Bengal, 103, 104
Bermuda, 81
Bismarck, 205, 206
Blake, Admiral, 90
Boers, the, 221
Boer War, the great, 222
Bombay, 103, 104
Boston, U.S.A., 139, 141
Bourbons, the, 58, 60
Boyne, the, battle of, 100
Brahmans, the, 27
Brandenburg, Elector of, 112
Brazil, Emperor of, 208
Bristol, 107
Buddha, 22, 28, 29
Buddhism, 25 _et seq._
Bunker's Hill, battle of, 142
Burgoyne, General, 143
Burma, 208
CABOT, Sebastian, 11, 12
Calais, lost to England, 59
Calcutta, 104
Calendar Stone, the, 17
Calicut, 3, 4
Calvin, 58, 64
Cameroons, the, 224
Carolina, 102
Cashmere, 225
Catherine of Aragon, 41, 47
Catholic League, the, 73
Cavaliers, the, 84 _et seq._
Charles I., 65, 84, 85
Charles II., 94, 95
Charles V., 38 _et seq._
Charles XII., of Sweden, 112, 113
Chatham, Lord, 142, 143
Children of the Sun, the, 18
China, 19 _et seq._, 228 _et seq._
Clive, 131
Cloth of Gold, Field of, 39
Columbus, 1 _et seq._, 9
Commonwealth of Australia, 239
Confucius, 20, 21
Condé, Prince, 74, 81
Congo, the, 223
Congress, in America, 139
Constantinople, 36 _et passim_
Continental system, the, 173
Copenhagen, battle of, 171
Cornwallis, Lord, 143
Corsica, 119
Cortez, 10
Covenanters, the, 85
Crimean War, 203
Cromwell, Oliver, 65 et seq., 84 _et seq._
Cromwell, Richard, 92
Cromwell, Thomas, 48
Cuba, 216
Culloden, battle of, 120
Cumberland, Duke of, 120
DA GAMA, Vasco, 1 _et seq._
Daimios, the, 26, 230
Dannoura, battle of, 26
Darwin, 193
Declaration of Independence, 143
Declaratory Act, 140
Dettingen, battle of, 118
Diet of Worms, the, 44
Directory, the, 164
Drake, Sir Francis, 63, 88
Dual Control, the, 219
Dupleix, 124, 131
EAST India Company, 225 _et seq._
Edict of Nantes, 59
Egypt, 219 _et seq._
Elba, 175
El Dorado, 10
Elizabeth, Queen, 58 _et seq._
Eric the Red, 11
Eritrea, 219
Eugene, of Savoy, 118
Evolution, 193 _et seq._
FAMILY Compact, the, 127
Ferdinand, of Spain, 9
Ferdinand, Emperor, 55
First Consul, 169
Flodden, battle of, 40
Florida, 82, 101
Fontenoy, battle of, 118
Formosa, island, 107, 223
Francis I., 37 _et seq._
Francis Joseph, 197, 198
Francis, of Lorraine, 117, 118
Franco-German War, 205, 206
Frederick the Great, 117 _et seq._, 128 _et seq._
French, character of, 154 _et seq._
French Indo-China, 208
Frobisher, 62
"Fronde," the, 81
GARIBALDI, 203, 205
Genoa, 119
George I., 115
George III., 137 _et seq._
George V., 115
Georgia, 102, 182
German Colonisation Society, the, 224
German East Africa, 224
German Emperor, the, 206
German South-West Africa, 224
Ghurkas, the, 125
Goa, 8
Gold Coast, 103
Good Hope, Cape of, 104
Gordon, General, 240
Grand Alliance, the, 110
Grand Army, in Russia, 174
Grant, General, 214
Great Armada, 62
Great Llama, 32
Great Wall of China, 21
Great War, 227, 235
Grenville, Lord, 107, 139
Guinea, Gulf of, 5
Guises, the, 58
Gunpowder, discovered, 21
Gunpowder Plot, 72, 73
Gustavus Adolphus, 74 _et seq._
HABSBURGS, the, 78 _et passim_.
Hastings, Warren, 146
Havre, handed to England, 60
Hawaiian Islands, 216
Hawke, Admiral, 133
Henry VIII., 37 _et seq._
Henry IV., of Navarre, 59
Henry, Prince, the Navigator, 7
Herat, 227
Holland, 60 _et passim_
Holy Alliance, the, 195
Holy Roman Empire, dissolved, 171
Hongkong, 208
Huguenots, the, 73 _et seq._, 82
Huns, the, 22, 24
INCAS, the, of Peru, 18
Indian Mutiny, 226
Indulgences, sale of, 43
Industrial Era, 187 _et seq._
Inquisition, the, 56 _et seq._
"Interim," the, 50
Ireland, her ill-treatment, 121; Secret Societies in, 122
Isabella, of Spain, 9
Italian Parliament, the first, 203
JAMES I., of England, 69
James II., 93, 94, 109
Japan, 24 _et passim_, 230 _et seq._
Jesuits, the, 53, 54 _et passim_
KAFFIRS, the, 223
Keenlung, 125
Khakan, the, 24
Khartoum, 220
Kitchener, Lord, 220
Korea, 25, 233, 235
Kossuth, 197
Kublai Khan, 24, 26, 228
LA HOGUE, battle of, 93
Lama, the Grand, 100
La Vendée, 161
Laws of Manu, 28
Lee, General, 214
Leipsic, battle of, 176
Lepanto, battle of, 46, 68
Le Roi Soleil, 80
Leszynska, 113, 116
Leuthen, battle of, 131, 132
Lhasa, 106
London, 107
Lord Mayor, the, 71
Lorraine, 206
Louis XII., 37
Louis XIV., 80 _et seq._
Louis XVI., 157 _et seq._
Louis Napoleon, 200 _et seq._
Louis Philippe, 200
Louisiana, 82, 101 _et seq._, 180, 181
Luther, 38 _et seq._, 58, 64
Lutzen, battle of, 77
MADAGASCAR, 223
Madras, 88, 103, 124
Magellan, 12
Magyars, the, 197
Mahdi, the, 220
Mahrattas, the, 104
Malacca, 8
Malay Archipelago, 235
Malay Peninsula, 235
Malplaquet, battle of, 111
Mamelukes, the, 135, 183
Manchuria, 133, 234, 235
Manchus, 25, 106
Maria Theresa, 117 _et seq._
Marlborough, Duke of, 99 _et seq._
Maoris, the, 237, 239, 240
Mary, Queen of England, 55 _et seq._
Mary, Queen of Scots, 60
Mary, wife of William III., 99, 100, 109
Maryland, 102
Massachusetts, State of, 14
Maximilian, of Mexico, 215
Mazarin, Cardinal, 80, 81
Mazzini, 199, 201
Mexico, 208, 214, 215
Middle Class, the, 71
Mikado, the, 26, 230, 231
Minden, battle of, 133
Ming, dynasty, 24
Mississippi Bubble, 123
Mississippi, river, 103, 132
Mobile, 103
Moguls, the, 67
Mongols, the, 24 _et passim_; their decline, 51
Monroe Doctrine, the, 208, 214, 215
Montcalm, 132, 133
Montreal, 102, 132
Montenegro, 135
Morocco, 223
Mozambique, 223
Muscovy, 52, 66
NANTES, Edict of, revoked, 95
Napoleon Bonaparte, 119, 163 _et seq._
Naseby, battle of, 85
Natal, 221
National Assembly, the, 158
National Guard, the, 164
Navigation Act, the, 90, 92
Nawab, the, of Bengal, 131
Nelson, Lord, 171
Nestorians, the, 22, 23
Netherlands, the, 53 _et seq._
Newfoundland, 82
New Orleans, 103
New South Wales, 149, 238, 239
New Zealand, 149, 237 _et seq._
Nigeria, 223
Nirvana, 30
Northern League, the, 153
North German Confederation, 198, 205
North, Lord, 137
Nova Scotia, 88
OHIO, 103
Oldenburg, Duchy of, 134
Old Pretender, the, 120
Orange Free State, 221
Oudenarde, battle of, 111
Oudh, 225
PAVIA, battle of, 40
Peace of Alais, 78
Peace of Paris, 129
Peace of Religion, the, 51
Pekin, 106, 107, 209
Peninsular War, the, 173
Pennsylvania, 102
Persia, 226, 227
Peter the Great, 98, 113
Philip of Aragon, 99
Philip II., of Spain, 55 _et seq._
Philippine Islands, the, 88, 216, 235
Pilgrim Fathers, the, 65, 82, 84
Pitt, the elder, 129, 139 _et seq._
Pizarro, 10
Plassey, battle of, 131
Poland, 66 _et passim_
Polo, Marco, 24
Pondicherry, 124
Port Arthur, 234
Potala, the, 105, 106
Poyning's Act, 149
Prince Edward's Island, 88
Printing, in China, 21
Protestant Union, the, 74
Prussia, increasing power of, 116 _et seq._
Pultowa, battle of, 113
Punjab, the, 225
Puritans, the, 65 _et seq._, 84
QUEBEC, 82, 132
Queensland, 238, 239
Quiberon Bay, battle of, 133
RALEIGH, Sir Walter, 62
Renaissance, the, 35 _et seq._
Rhodesia, 223
Richelieu, Cardinal, 77 _et seq._
Robespierre, 161
Rodney, Lord, 144
Romanoffs, the, 75
Rosbach, battle of, 131, 132
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 156
Royalists, the, 84 _et seq._
Russia, 66 _et passim_, 226 _et seq._
Russo-Japanese War, 227
Ryswick, peace of, 93, 108
ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S Day, 59
St. Helena, island, 177
St. Lawrence, the, 82, 101, 102
Samoan Islands, 216
Saratoga, 143
Schleswig-Holstein, 134, 198
Secession, War of, 213
Sedan, 206
Seleucus, 31
Senegal, river, 5
Seven Years' War, 128 _et seq._, 198, 204
Shah Nadir, 125
Shakespeare, 66
Shanghai, 208
Sikhs, the, 104
Silesia, 117, 119
Silkworms, 23
Slavery, 211
Somaliland, 223
South Australia, 238, 239
South German Confederation, 198
South Sea Bubble, 123
Spanish-American War, 216
Spice Islands, 88
Stadholder, the, 153
Stamp Act, the, 139
States General, the, 157
States of America, Constitution of, 138
Steam Power, 185 _et seq._
Straits Settlements, 225
Suez Canal, 219
Summer Palace, sack of, 209
TAJ MAHAL, the, 124
Tartars, the, 24 _et passim_
"The Fifteen," 115
"The Forty-five," 120
Thirty Years' War, 75 _et seq._
Tiberine, Republic, 168
Timour, the Lame, 33
Tongking, 208
Tories, 111
Torgau, battle of, 129
Toulon, 164
Trafalgar, battle of, 171
Transvaal, 221
Treaty of Westphalia, 78, 79
Tripoli, 219
Tuileries, the, 164
Tunis, 45, 68, 219
Turkestan, 226
Turks, the, 36 _et passim_
UGANDA, 224
Union of South Africa, 224
United Provinces, 60
Utrecht, peace of, 111, 112, 114
VAN TROMP, 90
Venice, 37 _et passim_
Versailles, palace sacked, 158
Vespucci, Amerigo, 12
Victoria, 238, 239
Victoria, Queen, 115
Vineland, 12
Virginia, 81, 101
Vishnu, 30
Vladivostock, 234
Voltaire, 130
WALLENSTEIN, Count, 77
Wandewash, battle of, 131
Washington, George, 142, 144
Waterloo, battle of, 176
Wellington, Duke of, 173
Western Australia, 238, 239
Whigs, 111
William of Orange, 57 _et seq._
William III., 94 _et seq._
Wolfe, General, 87, 133
Wolsey, Cardinal, 39, 47
Wilberforce, 211
XAVIER, 230
YORK Town, 144
Young Italy, party, 119, 201
Young Pretender, the, 120
ZULUS, the, 223
THE END
THE GREATEST STORY IN THE WORLD
By HORACE G. HUTCHINSON, B.A.
Vol. I--From the Beginning of History to the Dawn of the Christian
Era. With Map and Illustrations. 3_s._ 6_d._
It is admittedly difficult to give to beginners just the proper
modicum of knowledge of ancient history to make the later ages
understandable, but such a task should not be impossible, and it is
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far as is consistent with sensible teaching, may not fail entirely in
its object.
The scene is laid in that centre of all early civilization, the
Mediterranean, and the fortunes of all the mighty nations that lived
and fought round its shores are traced in bold outline: Egypt, Crete,
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to this wonderful story. The author finally gathers all the threads
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The "Greatest Story" is here taken up at the point at which it was
left in the first volume; that is, about the year 100 A.D.
Throughout that first volume our land of Britain scarcely had a
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this second volume covers, men of Britain played a great role. The
World story thus becomes, in some measure, England's also. Moreover,
where there have seemed to be two or more ways open for the telling
of the story, the author has always tried to adopt what he calls the
English way, the way which seemed likely to bring it most warmly and
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This third and final volume deals with the period which must appeal
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The author, in his preface, explains how his work has been inspired
by Green's famous statement--that "England is only a small part of
the outcome of English history. Its greater issues lie, not within
the narrow limits of the mother island, but in the destinies of
nations yet to be. The struggles of her patriots, the wisdom of her
statesmen, the steady love of liberty and law in her people at large,
were shaping in the past of our little island the future of mankind."