Colonial expansion

“ I have but proved the necessity of French colonial expansion in colonies of exploration.
If we wish to turn our distant possessions to account, the criminal of yesterday, the dangerous member of society, might go there, and in directing industrial or commercial enterprises find legitimate employment and a fair return for all his intelligent efforts and for the work and study of his youth.
There is plenty of labour to be obtained out there, for it is only the natives, of whatever tribe or colour, whose temperament is hostile to manual work. ”

“ The third cause of the world’s commercial progress during the past century has been colonial expansion. Germany, France, and other countries, influenced by the great success of the United Kingdom, have established colonies in different parts of the world, and assumed control over uncivilized peoples, until there are now 125 colonies, protectorates, and dependencies. ”

“ Therefore it is so interesting to watch this gradual expansion of the national idea of empire based entirely, instinctively, and rightly on the colonies we were founding. The whole “earth hunger” of Great Britain, if viewed in its natural light, is the opening of new lands for trade, the extension of colonial empire by true colonists, men who mean to make the new realm their permanent home, and the preserving intact, with a good series of supply stations along these unmarked ways, the roads that unite Great Britain with her colonial children. ”

“ Yet the idea of colonial expansion was of slow growth in Germany, and when Prince Bismarck at length acted Africa was the only field left to exploit, South America being protected from interference by the known determination of the United States to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, while Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain already held most of the other regions of the world where colonization was possible. For different reasons the war of 1870 was also the starting-point for France in the building up of a new colonial empire. ”

“ Neither does an aggressive colonial policy make for unnecessary or meaningless wars. It is true, of course, that colonial expansion increases the number of possible occasions for dispute among the expanding nations; but these disputes have the advantage of rarely turning on questions really vital to the future prosperity of a European nation. ”

“ The Negro slave trade was the first step in modern world commerce, followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an article of commerce were shipped as long as the traffic paid. ”

“ Now anybody who will look at the modern world with his eyes open will know perfectly well that this sort of expansion and progress is one to which the modern world is especially prone. In every quarter of the globe, especially in South America and Africa, there is a perpetual pressure of colonial ambition which would at any moment take advantage of this principle. ”

“ People who early develop powers of expansion, like the English, or who, like the French and Russians, formulate and execute vast territorial policies, secure for their future growth a wide base which will for all time distinguish them from late-comers into the colonial field, like Germany and Italy. These countries see the fecundity of their people redounding to the benefit of alien colonial lands, which have been acquired by enterprising rivals in the choice sections of the temperate zone. ”

“ At more than one period, English colonists have been accused of believing that “it is the undoubted right of every Englishman to settle where he likes, to behave as he sees fit, and to call upon the Mother-Country to foot the bill.” [759] This, however, is not merely a colonial characteristic: it is the spirit developed upon every frontier, as the later history of American westward expansion may be called upon to illustrate; and, as we have pointed out, the whole chain of colonies formed the long encircling frontier of England. ”

“ The special interest of the first half of the seventeenth century is that in the trading and colonial experiments of this period the character of the work which was to be done by the three new candidates for extra-European empire was already very clearly and instructively displayed. They met as rivals in every field: in the archipelago of the West Indies, and the closely connected slaving establishments of West Africa, in the almost empty lands of North America, and in the trading enterprises of the far East ”

“ Although the partition of Africa gave the German Empire nearly one million square miles and an obvious opening for colonization and power, the inexperience and ineptitude of German officials in Colonial government, the dislike, also, of Germans for emigration and the fact that the movement of settlers abroad steadily decreased in late years, tended to prevent, on the Continent, an expansion which would have been assured under British colonization and business effort. ”

“ The Democratic party does not oppose expansion when expansion enlarges the area of the Republic and incorporates land which can be settled by American citizens, or adds to our population people who are willing to become citizens and are capable of discharging their duties as such. ... "A colonial policy means that we shall send to the Philippine Islands a few traders, a few taskmasters and a few officeholders and an army large enough to support the authority of a small fraction of the people while they rule the natives. ”

“ This, it was felt, could not safely be left to the operation of mere chance; and one of the great advantages of colonial possessions was that they enabled the country which controlled them to deal in a scientific way with its surplus population, and to prevent the reproduction of unhealthy conditions in the new communities, which was apt to result if emigrants were allowed to drift aimlessly wheresoever chance took them, and received no guidance as to the proper modes of establishing themselves in their new homes. The great apostle of this body of colonial theory was Edward Gibbon Wakefield ”

“ The antipathy of the English settlers to the Indians was far too great to lead to the sort of miscegenation which was encouraged by the French in their part of the continent, and to which reference will be made later. In the British colonies the half-breed was looked upon as an Indian, whereas in the French colonies, as generally in all Colonial countries that had the Roman imperial tradition and the Roman Catholic religion, the half-breed was assimilated to the European group. ”

“ We augur well of this Imperial arrangement, not merely because it forms a fitting acknowledgment of colonial enterprise, but because we may venture to see in it the beginning of a new policy, by which the Home Government frees itself, once for all, from the imaginary, or, at any rate, to it, the needless costs and difficulties of founding new colonies. Colonies already established and prosperous may be left to perform this duty, and they may be so left all the more readily when, as in this case, they are prompt to take the duty in hand, with all its outlay and trouble. ”

“ To some extent, then, the colonial growth of France is artificial; at least, it is not based on the imperious need which drives forth the surplus population of Great Britain and Germany. Nevertheless, so far as governmental energy and organising skill can make colonies successful, the French possessions in West Africa, Indo-China, Madagascar, and the Pacific, have certainly justified their existence [453] . No longer do we hear the old joke that a French colonial settlement consists of a dozen officials, a restaurateur, and a hair-dresser. ”

“ Remember, that for modern civilisation among the Outeroos, the world is indebted to the colonial enterprise and success of Britain; but remember, too, that it is not always the ‘colonising nations,’ but the ‘colonists’ of the ‘colonising nations,’ that carry the standard of social progress to advanced grounds. ”

“ One thing is, however, indispensable to the success of this or any other system of Colonial Government. You must renounce the habit of telling the Colonies that the Colonial is a provisional existence. You must allow them to believe that, without severing the bonds which unite them to Great Britain, they may attain the degree of perfection, and of social and political development, to which organised communities of free men have a right to aspire. ”

“ How liberal a construction has been given to the distinction between imperial and colonial questions is shown by the fact that the whole of the unappropriated lands in the regions behind our American and Australian colonies have been given up to the uncontrolled disposal of the colonial communities, though they might, without injustice, have been kept in the hands of the imperial government, to be administered for the greatest advantage of future emigrants from all parts of the empire. ”

“ For a nation to plant out large bodies of colonists on comparatively unoccupied lands, as in Africa or Australia or Canada, in a deliberate and organized fashion, with every facility towards co-operation and success, and yet on the principle of leaving, each colonial unit plenty of freedom and autonomy, would not be a very difficult task, nor a very expensive one, considering the end in view. ”

“ It was a period of growth, not simply in the direction of a vast material prosperity and a rapidly increasing population, but in national sentiment, which made itself felt everywhere. Wherever we turn during those years, we discover a steady decline of the colonial influence. ”

“ We venture to say that colonial empire has been one of the greatest curses of modern Europe. What nation has it ever strengthened? What nation has it ever enriched? What have been its fruits? Wars of frequent occurrence and immense cost; fettered trade; lavish expenditure, clashing jurisdiction, corruption in government, and indigence among the people. “What have Mexico and Peru done for Spain, the Brazils for Portugal, Batavia for Holland? Or, if the experience of others is lost upon us, shall we not profit by our own? ”

“ I trust that the British North American Colonies will, in reply to the above remark, send forth such a voice of attachment to their mother country that will encourage her people at home and embolden them to come forward in aid of great colonial measures, resulting as they must do in universal benefit to the empire. ”

“ The support of the power and the maintenance of the political preponderance of Great Britain in the scale of nations, depend upon colonial possessions. To render colonies most efficient, and most advantageous for her general interests, it is indispensably necessary that these should be planted in the Tropical world, the productions of which ever have been, are, and ever will be, eagerly sought after by the civilized nations of the temperate zones. ”

“ The citizen of the United Kingdom has often been compelled to regard the colonies as great dependencies which increased his responsibilities and multiplied his difficulties without returning to the mother-country, under their present organization, strength in men or resources, or even in exclusive commercial advantage. Every new colony or colonial interest was to him something new to defend, and augmented the burden of Empire. ”

“ The bloody Indian wars, which harassed the people for a part of the first century; the restrictions on the trade of the Colonies, added to the discouragements inherently belonging to all forms of colonial government; the distance from Europe, and the small hope of immediate profit to adventurers, are among the causes which had contributed to retard the progress of population. ”

“ Thus, even leaving sentiment aside, the balance of material advantage to the Colonies is great and real; while their self-government is complete, for the mother country never interferes with any matters of colonial concern, unless in the rare cases where a matter primarily local may affect the general relations and interests of the whole empire. ”

“ Moreover, our general accounts do not, for the most part, adequately treat of those economic and imperial relations which are of fundamental importance; for the one outstanding fact concerning any American colony in the colonial period is that it was a dependency, and formed merely a part of a larger and more comprehensive imperial and economic organization. ”

“ It is a matter of most interesting reflection that after the nations of the Old World, from which we took our being, had sought for many years to gain wealth and strength and profit by the enforcement of a narrow and mistaken colonial policy, the revolt of the colonies of the New World brought to the mother nations infinitely greater blessings even than they were seeking. ”

“ You will get nothing done in tropical Africa except under the influence of individual men; but your West African Governor, though not controlled by the Councils within the colony, is controlled by a power outside the colony, namely the Colonial Office in London. Up to our own day the Colonial Office has been, except in the details of domestic colonial affairs, a drag-chain on English development in Western Africa. ”

“ In every case a colonial empire was the mirage which beckoned to those land-hungry peoples from behind the golden haze which hangs over the African coast-line, and in every case their African adventures ended in disappointment and disaster. After an interim of centuries, in which the roads and ramparts and reservoirs built along that shore by those primeval pioneers have crumbled into dust, the troop-laden transports of a regenerated Italy have followed in the wake of those Greek galleys, those Roman triremes, and those Spanish caravels. ”

“ England superintends this colonial development from far away, and says herself that perhaps when the fruit is quite ripe it will fall naturally from the tree and begin another life even more independent than its first. No matter — the real bonds, at least the economic and commercial ones, will endure and relations with the mother-country will always increase. ”