Many paradoxes rose because of this way of thinking and it was characteristic of the era that man did not face paradoxes with any plan to solve them. There was the religious paradox: the contradiction between the Golden Rule and the use of force to keep human beings in their appointed places; the doctrine of the White Man's Burden and the conversion of the heathen faced by the actuality of famine and pestilence and caste. There was the assumption of the absolute necessity of poverty for the majority of man in order to save civilization for the minority, for the aristocracy of mankind which was the same time the chief beneficiaries of culture. There was the frustration of democracy: lip service was yielded to the idea of the rule of the people but at the same time the mass of people were kept so poor and through their poverty so diseased and ignorant that they could not carry on successfully a modern state or modern industry. There was the paradox of peace: I remember once before the First World War stopping in at the Hotel Astor to hear Andrew Carnegie talk to his peace society. War had begun between Italy and Turkey but said Mr. Carnegie blandly, we are not talking about peace among unimportant people; we are talking about peace among the great states of the world. I walked out. Here I knew lay tragedy and the events proved it for the great states went to war in jealousy over the ownership of little people.

### *insert*

The paradox of the peace movement of the nineteenth century is a baffling comment on European civilization. There was not a single year during the nineteenth century when the world was not at war chiefly, but not entirely, these wars were for the subjection of colonial people. They were carried on by Europeans and at least 150 separate wars can be counted up during the heyday of the peace movement. What the peace movement really meant was peace in Europe and between Europeans while for the conquest of the world and because of the suspicion which they held toward each other every nation maintained a standing army which steadily grew in cost and menace.

There can be no doubt but that one of the causes which distorted the development of Europe was the African slave trade. We have tried to re-write its history and meaning and made it occupy a much less important place in the world's history than it deserves.

The result of the African slave trade and slavery on the European mind and culture was to degrade the position of labor. Despite the fact that the nineteenth century saw an upsurge in the position of labor and a fight toward economic equality and political democracy this movement and battle was made fiercer and less successful because in popular opinion labor was degrading and to be avoided by the acquisition of wealth; luxury and plenty for the few and poverty for the many was looked upon as inevitable in the course of nature. In addition to this it went without paying that the white people of Europe had a right to live upon the labor and property of colored peoples of the world. In order to establish the righteousness of this point of view science and religion, government and industry were wheeled into line. The word Negro was invented and used for the first time in the world's history tying color to race and blackness to slavery and degradation. The white race was pictured as pure and superior; the black race as dirty, degenerate and inevitably inferior; the yellow race as sharing much of this color inferiority, and mixture of race as the prime cause of degradation and failure in European civilization. Everything great, everything fine, everything really successful in human culture was white. In order to prove this black people in India and Africa were labelled as white if they showed any trace of progress and on the other hand any progress by black people was attributed to some intermixture, ancient or modern, of white blood or some influence of white civilization.

This logical contradiction influenced and misled science. The same persons agreed about the inferiority of mulattoes and warned against miscegenation and at the same time attributed the preeminence of a Dumas, a Frederick Douglass or a Booker Washington to their white blood. A system at first conscious and then unconscious of lying about history and distorting it to the disadvantage of the negroes became so wide spread that the history of Africa ceased to be taught, the color of Memnon was forgotten and everything effort was

was made in archeology, history and biography, in biology, psychology and sociology to prove the all but universal assumption of the scientific basis of the color line. Without the winking of an eye printing, gun-powder, the smelting of iron, the beginnings of social organization, not to mention political life and democracy, were attributed exclusively to the white race and to Nordic Europe. Religion sighed with relief when it could bas its denial of the ethica of Christ and the brotherhood of man upon the science of Darwin, Gobineau and Reisner. It was bad enough in all conscience to have the consequences of this thought, these scientific conclusions and ethical sanctions to fall upon colored people the world over but in the end it was even worse when one considers what this attitude did to the European worker.

From the early Christian communism and sense of human brotherhood which began to grow in the Dark Ages and blossomed in the Renaissance, and came first to white workers in England, France and Germany, the iron law of wages, the population doctrines of Malthus and the bitter fight against the early trade unions, the first efforts at education and particularly the threats toward political democracy, aroused an antagonism which the French Revolution did not dream. It was this bitter fight that exacerbated the class struggle and resulted in the first bitter and furious expression of communism and attempt at revolution. The unity of apprentice and master, the Christian sympathy between rich and poor, the communism of medieval charity, all were thrust into the new straight-jacket of thought: poverty was the result of sloth and crime; wealth was the reward of virtue and work. The degraded yellow and black people were in the places which the world of necessity assigned to the inferior and toward these lower ranks the working classes of all countries tended to sink safe as they were raised and supported by the rich, the investors, the captains of industry. In some parts of the world notably in the Southern states of America the argument went further than this: frank slavery of black folk was a better economic system than factory exploitation of whites. It was the natural arrangement of industry. It ought to be extended certainly where colored people were in majority. For

a half century before 1861 the bolder minds of the South dreamed of slave empire embracing
the American tropics and extending eventually around the world. While their thought did not
~~go~~ to a final appraisement of white laboring classes, they certainly had in mind that
must
the class of
these classes might rise or fall, must be forced into rich employers with political power or
like the poor whites of the South be pushed down beside or even below the working slaves.

~~R~~ This philosophy had sympathy in Europe. Without doubt a large majority of influential
public opinion in England and possibly in both France and Germany favored the South at the
outhbreak of the Civil War and sternly set its face against allowing any maudlin sympathy
with "darkies" half-monkeys and half-men in the stern fight for the survival of European
domination of the world. Widespread insensibility to cruelty and suffering spread in the
white world and to guard against too much emotional sympathy with the distressed of the
world, every effort was made to keep women and children and the more sensitive men deceived
as to what was going on not only in the slums of white countries but all over Asia, Africa
and the islands of the sea. Elaborate writing disguised as interpretation and the testimony
of so-called experts made it impossible for charming people in Europe to realize what their
comforts and luxuries cost in sweat, blood and death, in their and in others' despair elsewhere in
the world and even on their own door step.

A gracious culture was built up, a delicately poised literature treating the
little intellectual problems of the rich and well-born, discussing some matters of manners
and convention and omitting the weightier ones of law, mercy, justice and truth. Even the
evidence of the eyes and senses was denied by the mere weight of reiteration. The race
that produced the features of a Darwin or a Winston Churchill was always beautiful while
a Toussaint and a Menelik must be ugly because they were black. The concept of the
European gentlemen was evolved: a man of well-bred manners of meticulous grooming,
but which does not hesitate to use machine guns against assegaians.
of knightly sportmanship and invincible courage even in the face of death. An ideal of
sportmanship which reflected the Golden Rule and yet in the fact of this not only in business

and in industry right within white countries but over Asia and Africa, lying, murder, theft, rape, deception and degradation of the same sort and kind that leaves a world aghast when they read today of the Nazis did in Europe. Together with this there grew up in Europe and America an astonishing ideal of wealth and luxury: the man of independent income who did not have to work for a living, who could indulge his whims and fantasies, who was free from all compulsion either of ethics and hunger became the hero of novels, of drama and of fairytale. This wealth was built in Africa especially upon diamonds and gold, copper and tin, ivory and mahogany, palm oil and cocoa, seeds extracted and grown, beaten out of the blood stained bodies of the natives, transported to Europe, processed by wage slaves who were not receiving enough to become educated and healthy human beings, and then distributed among prostitutes and gamblers as well as among well-bred followers of art, literature and drama.

Cities were built, ugly and horrible, with regions for the culture of crime, disease and suffering but characterized in popular myth and blindness by wide and beautiful avenues where the rich and fortunate lived, laughed and drank tea. National heroes were built up by lopping off their sins and cannonizing their virtues so that Gladstone had no connection with slavery, Chinese Gordon did not get drunk and smoke; William Pitt was a great patriot and not an international thief. Education was so arranged that the young learned not necessarily the truth but that aspect and interpretation of the truth which the rulers of the world wished them to know and act upon.

In other words we had progress by poverty and that poverty was not simply the poverty of slaves of Africa and the peons of Asia but the poverty of the mass of workers in England, France, Germany and the United States. Art, both in building, painting and literature, became cynical and decadent. Literature became realistic and therefore pessimistic. Religion became organized in social clubs where well-bred people met in luxurious churches and gave alms to the poor. On Sunday they listened to sermons, "Blessed are the meek", "Do unto others even as you would that others do unto you", If thy enemy smite thee, turn

the other cheek", "It is more blessed, to give than to receive"; listened and paid no more practical attention to these high precepts than as though they had said, as in very truth they ought to have said, "Might is right", "Do others before they do you", "Kill lest you be killed", "Make profits by any method and by any cost so far as you can escape the lenient law". This is a fair picture of the decadence of that Europe which led human civilization during the nineteenth century and looked unmoved on the writhing of Africa.

Chapter 10

WHITE L ecters OF THE WORLD

The dyn of the twentieth century found white Europe master of the world and the
white race almost universally recognized as not only the ruling race but the race for whose
benefit the rest of the world existed. Never before in the history of civilization has self-
worship of a peoples accomplishment reached the heigth that the worship of white Europe
reached in this era. fifty years of Europe than a cycle of events sang Tennyson and Kipling
answered with the white Man's burden, the metaphor of this great strong masterful giant with
mighty intellect, clear brain and unrivalled moral stamina, who was conducted the world to
the last heights of human culture. Yet within less than a half century this magnificent self-
worship structure had crushed to the ground.

Why was this? It was from no lack of power. The power of white Europe and North
America was unquestionable. Their science dominated the scientific thought of the world.
The only writing called literature was that written by English, French, Germans and
Italians with some recognition of Spain and the United States. The Christian religion as
represented by the Catholic Church and the leading Christian denominations were
the only systems of belief recognized as real religon. Under heathism was comprehended
the Mohammedans, Buddhists, Shintoists and others. But the most tremendous expression of
power was economic: the industrial organization and integration of modern industry in
management and work, in trade and manufacture had its power concentered in England, France,
Germany and the United States. All Asia and eastern Europe which was an appendage, all
Africa, China, India and the islands of the sea, Central and South America and the
Caribbean were dominated by Europe, while Scandinavia, Holland and Belgium were silent co-
partners in this domination. The domination showed itself in its final form in political
power either through direct rulership, as in the case of colonies or indirect economic power
backed by military pressure exercised over the backward nations. It was pretty definitely

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assumed in the latter part of the nineteenth century that this economic domination was but a passing phase which in time would lead to colonial absorption. Particularly was this true with regard to Asia. India was already a part of the British empire and Burma. The future of China depended upon the way in which Europe decided, that China would be divided between the British empire and the Germans, American trade, Franace and Russia. It was a matter simply of time and agreement. General consent had long since decided that China could no longer rule itself. With regard to South America there was hesitancy but the determination that these countries must obey the economic rulers of the world was clear. So that the world looked forward to political and economic domination by Europe and North America and toward a more or lews complete approach to the colonial status. The methods by which this would be brought to pass began with the slave trade and was carried on by the transportation of Asiatic coolies. But this was only part of the story. An English clergyman has described some phases of the pressure of Europe on the rest of the world. Speaking of the Indians of America, Howitt says

"All the murders and desolations of the most pitiless tyrants that ever diverted themselves with the pangs and convulsions of their fellow-creatures, fall infinitely short of the bloody enormities committed by the Spanish nation in the conquest of the New World - a conquest, on a low estimate, effected by the murder of ten millions of the species! After reading these accounts, who can help forming an indignant wish that the hand of Heaven, by some miraculous interposition, had swept these European tyrants from the face of the earth, who like so many beasts of prey, roamed round the world only to desolate and destroy; and more remorseless than the fiercest savage, thirsted for human blood without having the impulse of natural appetite to plead in their defence!" Howitt, Colonization and Christianity, pp. 61

## Howitt turns to India

"But the celebrated Alphonso Albuquerque made the most rapid strides, and extended the conquests of the Portuguese there beyond any other commander. He narrowly escaped with his life in endeavouring to sack and plunder Calicut. He seized on Goa, which thenceforward became the metropolis of all the Portuguese settlements in India. He conquered Molucca, and gave it up to the plunder of his soldiers. The fifth part of the wealth thus thievishly acquired, was reserved for the king, and was purchased on the spot by the merchants for 200,000 pieces of gold. Having established a garrison in the conquered city, he made a traitor Indian, who had deserted from the king of Molucca, and had been an instrument in the winning of the place, supreme magistrate; but again finding Utimut, the renegade, as faithless to himself, he had him and his son put to death, even though 100,000 pieces of gold, a bait that waw not easily resisted by these Christian marauders, was offered for their lives. He then proceeded to Ormuz in the Persian Gulph, which was a great harbour for the Arabian merchants; reduced it, placed a garrison in it, seized on fifteen princes of the blood, and carried them off to Goa. Such were some of the deeds of this celebrated general, whom the historians in the same breath in which they record these unwarrantable acts of violence, robbery and treachery, term an excellent and truly glorious commander. He made a descent on the isle of Ceylon, and detached a fleet to the Moluccas, which established a settlement in those delightful regions of the cœa, the sago-tree, the nutmeg, and the clove. The kings of Persia, of Siam, Pegu, and others, alarmed at his triumphant progress, sought his friendship; and he completed the conquest of the Malabar coast. With less than forty thousand troops the Portuguese struck terror, says the historian. 'into the empire of Morocco, the barbarous nations of Africa, the Mameluc, the Arabians, and all the eastern countries from the island of Ormuz to China.'" Howitt, Colonization and Christianity, pp. 176, 177

"To secure the dominion of these, they compelled the princes of Ternate and Tidore to consent to the rooting up of all the clove and nutmeg trees in the islands not entirely under the jealous safeguard of Dutch keeping. For this they utterly exterminated the inhabitants of Banda, because they would not submit passively to their yoke. Their lands were divided amongst the white people, who got slaves from other islands to cultivate them. For this Malacca was besieged, its territory ravaged, and its navigation interrupted by pirates; Negapatan was twice attacked; Cochin was engaged in resisting the kings of Calicut and Tranacore; and Ceylon and Java have been made scenes of perpetual disturbances. These notorious dissensions have been followed by as odious oppressions which have been practised at Japan, China, Cambodia, Arracan, on the banks of the Ganges, at Achen, Coromandel, Surat, in Persia, at Bassora, Mocha, and other places. For this they encouraged and established in Arobos a system of kidnapping the inhabitants for slaves which converted that island into a perfect hell. Howitt, Colonization and Christianity, p. 194

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"Unfortunately, we all know what human nature is. Unfortunately the power, the wealth, and the patronage brought home to them by the very violation of their own wishes and maxims were of such an overwhelming and seducing nature, that it was in vain to resist them. Nay, in such colours does the modern philosophy of conquest and diplomacy disguise the worst transactions between one state and another, that it is not for plain men very readily to penetrate to the naked enormity beneath." Howitt, Colonization and Christianity, p. 209

"But if there ever was one system more Machiavelian - more appropriative of the shew of justice where the basest injustice was attempted - more cold, cruel, haughty and unrelenting than another, - it is the system by which the government of the different states of India has been wrested from the hands of their respective princes and collected into the grasp of the British power." Howitt, Colonization and Christianity, p. 210

"What then is this system of torture by which the possessions of the Indian princes have been wrung from them? It is this - the skilful application of the process by which cunning men create debtors, and then force them at once to submit to their most exorbitant demands. From the moment that the English felt that they had the power in India to 'divide and conquer', they adopted the plan of doing it rather by plausible manoeuvres than by a bold avowal of their designs, and a more honest plea of the right of conquest - the ancient doctrine of the strong, which they began to perceive was not quite so much in esteem as formerly." Howitt, Colonization and Christianity, p. 212

"The first step in the English friendship with the native princes, has generally been to assist them against their neighbours with troops, or to locate troops with them to protect them from aggression. For these services such enormous recompense was stipulated for, that the unwary princes, entrapped by their fears of their native foes rather than of their pretended friends, soon found that they were utterly unable to discharge them. Dreadful exactions were made on their subjects, but in vain. Whole provinces, or the revenues of them, were soon obliged to be made over to their grasping friends; but they did not suffice for their demands. In order to pay them their debts or their interest, the princes were obliged to borrow large sums at an extravagant rate. These sums were eagerly advanced by the English in their private and individual capacities, and securities again taken on lands or revenues. At every step the unhappy princes became more and more embarrassed, and as the embarrassment increased, the claims of the Company became proportionably pressing. In the technical phraseology of money-lenders, 'the screw was then turned', till there was no longer any enduring it." Howitt, Colonization and Christianity, pp. 213, 214

We may turn now to the conquest of Africa. The Portuguese, Dutch and English decimated the West Coast with the slave trade. The Arabs depopulated the East Coast. The Dutch came into South Africa and exterminated or absorbed the Bushmen and the Hottentots. The Bantu moved down meeting the English and Dutch and for a century war and disorder ensued until at last the English secured control of the diamonds, gold and copper of South

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Africa. Slowley the English pushed into the west and east coasts. They overthrew Benin and Ashanti while the French conquered Dahomey and the remains of the Mandingo, Haussa and other kingdoms. The British pitted Christianity against Islam in East Africa and let them fight it out until at last Uganda became a British protectorate. Madly the Zulu Chaka fought against British and Dutch but guns were more powerful than assigai. In Abyssinia the natives drove back English, Egyptians and Italians and the Madhi with his black Mohammedan hordes came in from the west and drove England and Egypt out of the Sudan but the threat of the French and their possible alliance with Abyssinia brought the English back with machine guns. It is said that Kitchener's warfare against the followers of the Madhi was so brutal

that even the British Tories were revolted. His own brother-in-law said to him: "Well, if you do not bring down a curse on the British Empire for what you have been doing there is no truth in Christianity." His desecration of the Mahdi's tomb even Winston Churchill called a "foul deed." And when Kitchener found that even the promoters of the inexcusable war could not swallow this last, he tried to put the blame of the desecration onto Gordon's nephew by making absolutely false accusations. (See "My Diaries," Vol. I, Wilfred Scawen Blunt)

Graves,

P. XXI 'Benvenuto Cellini Had no prejudice against himself'

Everywhere is this sordid tale of deception, force, murder and final subjection. We need hardly recall the opium war in China by which the British followed by Americans and French forced the Chinese into subjection and used revolts like that of as excuse for further aggression.

The singular thing about this whole European movement of aggression and dominance was the further development of reasons for it. Missionary effort during the nineteenth and early twentieth century was widespread. Millions of pounds and dollars went into the conversion of the heathen to Christianity and the education of the native. Some few efforts, as in Liberia and Sierra Leone, were made early in the nineteenth century to establish independent countries but this was before Europe realized that political domination was necessary to full exploitation. Slowly the Sudan from the Atlantic to the Nile was conquered. Slowly Egypt

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itself passed under the control of Europe and the Egyptian Sudan. The resistance of Nubia and Ethiopia was almost in vain down until the twentieth century. Black South Africa fought bitterly and endlessly; West Africa fought brilliantly and continually. But in all this development the idea presisted in European minds that no matter what the cost in cruelty, lying and blood that the triumph of Europe was to the glory of God and the untrammelled power of the only people on earth who deserved to rule; that the right and justice of their rule was proven by their own success and particularly by their great cities, their enormous technical mastery over the powers of nature, their gigantic manufacture of goods and systems of transportation over the world. At first the work of conquest and exploitation was left in the hands of private companies: the East India Company and the West India Companies, the Niger Company, the South African Company, the East African Company. Then when these companies stole, murdered and cheated to such an extent that the facts could not be suppressed, governments themselves came into control with Curbing of the more outrageous excesses, rationalization of the whole system. Science was called to help. Students of Africa especially, since the ivory-sugar-cotton-Negro-complex of the nineteenth century, became every hag-ridden by the obsession that nothing civilized is Negroid and if evidence of high culture in Africa must be white or at least yellow. The very vocabulary of civilization expressed this idea: the Spanish word Negro from being a descriptive adjective was raised to the substantive name of a race and then deprived of its capital letter. The yellow peoples became synonymous with weakness, deception and moral laziness. Then came efforts to bring harmony and cooperation, unity among the exploiters. Newspaper correspondent who had received world-wide publicity because of his travels in Africa was hired by the shrewd and unscrupulous king of a little European state to establish an international country in central Africa for the evangelization of the natives and the development of trade. Thus arose the Congo Free State and by balancing the secret designs of German, French and English against each other this state not only became one of the worst centers of African exploitation but the beginning of the partition of Africa mong European powers. It was designed to form a pattern for similar partition of Asia and the South Sea. The Berlin Congress and Conference followed.

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The products of Africa began to be shared and distributed around the world. The dependence of civilized life upon products from the ends of the world made the everyday citizen tied closer and closer to the exploitation of each colonial area: tea and coffee, diamonds and gold, copper and vegetable oils, nuts and dates, pepper and spices, olives and cocoa, rubber, hemp, silk, fibres of all sorts, rare metals, valuable lumber, fruit, sugar. All these things and a hundred others became the necessity of modern life and modern life thus was built around colonial ownership and exploitation. The cost of this exploitation was enormous in all senses of the word. The colonial system caused more deaths than actual war. In twenty-five years famines in India at the beginning of the nineteenth century starved a million men and famine was bound up with exploitation. Widespread monopoly of land to deprive all primary sources of support were carried out either through direct ownership or indirect mortgage and exorbitant interest. Disease had to be encouraged and could not be checked; tuberculosis in the mines of South Africa, syphilis in all colonial regions, cholera, leprosy, malaria. One of the worst things that happened was the complete and deliberate breaking-down of cultural patterns among the suppressed peoples. It is said that in the Congo Valley outside of direct slavery and slave wages, this breaking up of the patterns of human life, "Europe was staggered at the Leopoldian atrocities, and they were terrible indeed; but what we, who were behind the scenes, felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror - in a word, a veritable avalanches of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo tribes. DWN in Africa."

So in Ashanti it was not merely conquest, it was the cultural horror at the desecration of the Golden Stool and the blasphemy of royal power. Perhaps the worst thing in Europe about the colonial system was the contradiction which arose and had to arise, with regard to the whole situation. Poverty and extreme poverty in colonies had to be made the cause of wealth and luxury in Europe. The results of this poverty must be disease, ignorance and crime. They had to be represented as natural characteristics of backward peoples.

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Education for colonial people must inevitably mean unrest and revolt; education, therefore, had to be limited and used to inculcate obedience and servility lest the whole colonial system be overthrown. Ability, self-assertion, resentment among colonial peoples must be represented as irrational efforts of unfortunate folk to attain that for which they were not by nature fitted and to prove the unfittness of most human beings for self-rule and self-expression every device of science was used to adduce proof: evolution to prove that Negroes and Asiatics were less developed human beings than whites; history so written as to make all civilization the development of white people; economics so taught as to make all wealth mainly the technical accomplishment of white folk based on the brute toil of colored peoples; brain weights and intelligence tests were used and distorted to prove the superiority of white folk. The result was a singularly complete domination of the world by Europe and North America and a culmination and tempo of civilization singularly satisfactory to the majority of writers and thinkers at the beginning of the twentieth century. But it was a result that was however, contradictory and fatal as the next few years quickly showed.

The proof of this came first from the colonial peoples themselves. Almost un-notices, certain un-listened to, there came from the colonial world reiterated protest, prayers and appeal against the suppression of human beings, against the exclusion of the majority of mankind from the vaunted progress of the world. It was with eyes fixed upon this aspect of civilization that the whole colonial imperialism of the nineteenth century rose to this final contradiction. Frankel the complacent servant of capitalists and their defender in his *Capital Investment in Africa* wrote recently

> THE WEALTH ACCRUING FROM THE PRODUCTION OF DIAMONDS IN SOUTH AFRICA HAS PROBABLY BEEN GREATER THAN THAT WHICH HAS EVER BEEN OBTAINED FROM ANY OTHER COMMODITY IN THE SAME TIME ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

In the face of this declaration to the nations of the world issued by the colored people of South Africa says

Why was this? It was from no lack of power. The power of white Europe and North America was unquestionable. Their science dominated the scientific thought of the world. The only writing called literature was that written by English, French, Germans and Italians with some recognition of Spain and the United States. The Christian religion as represented by the Catholic Church and the leading Protestant denominations were the only systems of belief recognized as real religion. Under heathism was

But the most tremendous expression of power was economic power.