One hundred years ago
THE DUTCH, who are at home an effi- cient people, make a horrid mess of their foreign possessions. The natives in South Africa regard them with horror, and in the Eastern Archipelago will not yield except to positive force. Moreover, the Dutch do not display capacity. With their endless wealth they ought to have conquered the whole archipelago forty years ago, but they hardly advance a step. They will not have Borneo, now, for we are there, they have been at war with Acheen for twenty years, and this week the people of Lombok, aided by the Balinese, have cut off a whole detachment, killing an extraordinary proportion of officers. The English would do all the work in three years, the natives submitting to regular laws and paying regular taxes. Something in the Dutch irritates the dark races profound- ly, and one wonders what it is. It is said to be their cruelty; but they are not more cruel than the native leaders themselves, and it is certainly no want of efficiency. We suspect it is the feeling which induces them to treat dark men exactly as if they were animals, some- times kindly and sometimes cruelly, but always with a grave immovable con- tempt; but then what does that feeling arise from? It is wholly apart from the insolence of the French, and the pas- sionless aloofness of the English, and the rigidity of the Germans; and sug- gests the dominance of some idea.
The Spectator 8 September 1894
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