AFRICA AFRICA
region of wide-spread savagery, the chances for the
growth of each self-produced civilization are
necessarily small, because each little centre of effort
toward this end is always exposed to destruction from
the neighboring masses of pure savagery; and therefore
progress is often immensely accelerated by outside
invasion and control. In Africa the control and guidance
is needed as much in the things of the spirit as in the
things of the body. (1910.) Mem. Ed. V, 362-363; Nat.
Ed. IV, 312.
____________. As a field sure to yield valuable results
to the student of early or primitive man, Africa holds a
rank second to no other. Its vast extent; its amazing
diversity, and the wide physical and cultural differences
among its countless inhabitants, all conspire to make
this great continent an inexhaustible source of
archaeological and ethnographic interest. The need for
scientific research in Africa is in proportion to the
complexity and numbers of the problems presented by
so great a field. . . .
All kinds of problems await the archaeological
explorer and investigator in Africa. They range from
the existence of a blond element in the Berber stock,
and the existence, of a possible similar element among
the ancient Libyan invaders of Egypt, to the questions
raised by the strange architecture of the cities southwest
of the Sahara, such as Timbuktū. They include the
ethnic changes due to infiltration, among the
agricultural East African and Middle African negroes,
of a northern pastoral type with very distinct physical
and cultural characteristics. Isolated finds of stone
implements in Somaliland, on the Upper Nile, in the
Congo basin, and along the Zambesi, suggest still other
archaeological questions regarding the early history of
man in Africa. The tasks which await the ethnologist
are of no less importance. The problems which at the
present day are presented by the primitive tribes still
existing in Africa are legion, be they those concerning
low savages such as the Pigmies of the great central
forests, or those concerning the relatively advanced
Berbers and Abyssinians. They include the difficult but
important problems of ethnic drift and change, of the
small linguistic “islands” with which Africa abounds,
and of great racial migrations. (Introduction, dated
August 10, 1916.) Harvard African Studies I, Varia
Africana I. (Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass.,
the greatest diminution of population, are those where
native control has been unchecked. The advance has
been made in the regions that have been under
European control or influence; that have been
profoundly influenced by European administrators, and
by European and American missionaries. Of course the
best that can happen to any people that has not already
a high civilization of its own is to assimilate and profit
by American or European ideas, the ideas of
civilization and Christianity, without submitting to alien
control; but such control, in spite of all its defects, is in
a very large number of cases the prerequisite condition
to the moral and material advance of the peoples who
dwell in the darker corners of the earth. Where the
control is exercised brutally; where it is made use of
merely to exploit the natives, without regard to their
physical or moral well-being; it should be unsparingly
criticised, and there should be resolute insistence on
amendment and reform. But we must not, because of
occasional wrong-doing, blind ourselves to the fact that
on the whole the white administrator and the Christian
missionary have exercised a profound and wholesome
influence for good in savage regions. (At celebration of
Methodist Episcopal Church, Washington, January 18,
1909.) Mem. Ed. XVIII, 343-344; Nat. Ed. XVI, 260-
261.
AFRICA-FUTURE OF. The twentieth century will
see and is now seeing the transformation of Africa into
a new world. Within a few years its vast domain has
been partitioned among various European nations.
These nations are expending enormous sums of money
and utilizing their best statesmanship and colonizing
abilities in the development of colonial empires of wide
extent and extraordinary material possibilities.
Steamship-lines encircle the continent. A continental
system of railways and of lake and river steamboats
will soon extend northward from Cape Town six
thousand miles to Cairo, while branch lines will unite
the east and west coasts at several points. The latest
results of science are being utilized in mining and
agriculture, while scholarly experts in different centres
of Europe are studying the questions of native
languages and religions, as well as the best methods of
advancing civilization among the many millions of
native peoples. The wealth of the commerce which will
be developed cannot be estimated. The white man rules;
but there is only one white man on the continent to one
hundred others, who are either barbaric black heathen
or fanatical Mohammedans.
Self-interest and competition will, I believe, unite
in making the governments fair to the people, and the
indomitable energy of the ad-
1917.)
AFRICA—CONQUEST OF. There have been very
dark spots in the European conquest and control of
Africa; but on the whole the African regions which
during the past century have seen the greatest cruelty,
degradation, and suffering,
[4]