The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-11-04
MARCH OF THE WHITE MAN.
The Astounding Change Wrought in Two
Centuries-A Possible Conflict.

The Astounding Change Wrought in Two
Centuries-A Possible Conflict.
lLondon SPECTATOR
Among the little noticed but most i'm
portant facts In the history of the world
is the enormous recent increase in num-
Der of white men in it. 1t is barely two
centuries (16S2) since those races,
though even then the most energetic of
mankind, formed but a small fraction
in the total of humanity-prob-
ably 10 Ter cent. OF the whole
and were by no mQans certain that they
could defend themselves against the re-
mainder. The stream of Asiatic con-
quest had never stopped, for the Turks
were at the gates of Vienna; an African
fleet was dominant in the Mediter-
ranean; Asia knew nothing of the
whites except in one or two tolerated
settlements on the coast fringe of India;
Africa belonged exclusively to Africans,
and though the whites had mastered
South America, where, read in the light
of subsequent history, their conquests
were incredibly rapid, most part of
North America still felt Indian wars to
be terrible and even formidable events.
Even 100 years later the white people,
though under the operation of the still
unexplained law which at one time fos-
ters and another time restricts the
growth of a people, were increasing
slowly, and were still only $50, 900, 600,
or probably seventh of the population
of the globe. They had, indeed, an
nexed the two Americas and northern
Asia, thus quintupling the area of their
estate upon the planet, and probably
multiplying their fixed wealth by at
least twenty fold-a country being
always the largest item in the wealth of
any race or nation-but they had only
begun to settle in the western continent;
they had but commenced to conquer in
southern Asia; they had visited, but
not occupied Australia, and in eastern
Europe and western Asia they were
only slaves to an Asiatic horde.
The century, however, ending 1854
has been marked by an alliance so rapid
and so uubrOken as TO be scarcely credi-
BILE, and to present one of the most
startling facts in history. The white
race in and out of Europe, under the
influence of. some still mysterious call
upon their energies, have multiplied
nearly three-fold, and are to-day, as
Mr.. K. Giffen has shown in his recent
address to the Statistical society, 49,
900, 900. As there is no evidence of
any corresponding increase in the dark
races, and as, indeed, such increase has
been, outside India, nearly impossible,
the white men are now, by the best cal
cuIations, one-third of the entire popu-
latiOn of the world, instead of being,
as they were only two centuries ago; a
little more than I0rper cent.
They have, moreover, if anything, in
creased in physical strength, and have
so developed in brain, and consequent
power o. organization, that it may be
doubted if the whole remainder of man
kind, even if all were reduced to equal
weapons, could seriously injure the
white third, which again, if it chose to
act together and employ without pity
the weapons its intelligence has enabled
it to construct, could iR few years re-
duce the remainder of the world TO an
uninhabited desert.