THE FUTURE OF THE DARK PEOPLES. A MONG the hundred interesting
ideas in Mr. Pearson's book on "National Life and Character," of which we spoke last week, the most interesting to the present writer is his view of the chronic struggle between the West and the East, between the White and the Dark or Yellow races of the world. Mr. Pearson's opinion upon that subject is almost dia- metrically opposed to that which at present regulates the action of political and commercial mankind. Europeans and North Americans almost universally believe that the White man is destined to subjugate, and therefore govern, and therefore exploit the world ; that his force, whatever its origin, will always be the superior one ; and that he will by degrees direct all Indians, Chinese, Africans, and natives of Spanish America ; and, in directing, use them, if for their advantage, still also for his own. That is, we take it, the root-belief of all White politicians and traders, the principle upon which they struggle so fiercely for prestige in Asia, and the idea upon which they justify their treaties, arrangements, and expenditure of energy to secure the partition of Africa. Mr. Pearson, though not the least in the world of a Negro-phile, a man doubtful, indeed, whether the inferiority of the coloured races may not prove to be one of the permanent laws of Nature, disbelieves this theory entirely. He points out with crushing cogency that the White man never has quitted, and probably never can quit, a comparatively small temperate zone, comprising Europe, part of North America, a bit of South America, Australia, and a small section of Africa; and has not, therefore, limitless room in which to expand. His territory is comparatively small and infertile, and he can- not, therefore, multiply, except in a ratio which is slowly diminishing as population grows too thick for comfort; and, we may add, though Mr. Pearson does not, as the soil he occupies begins from over-cultivation to show signs of that steady decrease in fertility, which is, we take it, one grand danger of Europe, especially in Germany and Russia, and of all the older settlements in North America. There is, therefore, no chance of his settling any large fresh area or clearing any new land of its people, as the Spaniards cleared the West Indies of Caribs, and the English are clearing Australasia of its aborigines. The high standard of life, moreover, which the White man has adopted, his thirst for comfort, and the conse- quent difficulty of maintaining him, limits his advance, and will, in the end, compel him, possibly through a universal opinion in favour of very late marriages—signs of which are already visible in every cultivated stratum of White society —to restrict the increase of his numbers. The Dark races, on the other hand, and the Yellow races, possess already the richest sections of the earth's surface ; they can live anywhere where the knowledge demanded for successful cultivation is not too great ; and they show in all such regions a marvellous facility of increase. Even in South Africa, where the White man can plough and yet remain healthy, the Dark man is becoming fast the most numerous element in the population. He is winning the race in the semi- tropical half of cultivable North America, he is swal- lowing up the White man all through South America, except Chili and Argentina, and he is multiplying everywhere undisturbed on the general continent of Africa. In India, his increase already constitutes the most pressing of economic problems for the White Government to solve; and there are entire States almost empty, like Persia and Burmah, in which he can find almost limitless room, while his own peninsula is far from being as yet completely filled. Finally, the Chinese increase so rapidly that it is necessary to prevent their swarming into North America and Australia, that they throw off colonies into the Eastern Archipelago, and that they, are refilling great empty provinces like Kasllgar -and Manehooria.
The White man, conquering or guiding or teaching the Dark men is but removing the natural checks upon their increase, such as anarchy and famine, while he is edu- cating them in the knowledge which will enable them to drive him out. Slowly but surely they will use that knowledge, and the White man, who has become, through the conditions of his civilisation, incapable of vast and effective reassures designed only to clear a space for him- self or to perpetuate his ascendency, will sullenly but quietly recede, and exchange the task of governing the world for that Of sofreialiag his own lot in his own limited portion of the earth,—which, we may add, if the Chinese, armed to a man with rifles, ever begin, under an Emperor of military genius, a steady tramp Westwards through Mongolia, Persia, and the old Ottoman dominion, he may have difficulty in reserving to himself. The world will not be the heritage of the White, but only its temperate division ; and that he may have to keep, as Germany keeps her own heritage now, by patient
endurance, wearing discipline, and constant readiness for war.
That is, we think, the substance of the argument upon which Mr. Pearson has lavished such a wealth of evidence and illus- tration ; and in the present writer it certainly excites no pre- judice. He has always maintained that the limits to White colonisation are absolute ; and that while the conquest of the Dark races by their White relatives may be a temporary duty, as part of the work necessary to secure the world's future, it is a work which will of necessity be a temporary one. The whole history of the world shows that the colours will not dwell amicably together, and that though they occasionally mix, as the Aryan and the aborigine did in India, they have for the most part resolved to abide in separate continents. There is no Dark race in Europe, no White race in Asia; no man, not black or half-caste, among those who, till a recent day, possessed the whole of Africa. Of four great efforts of Europe to subdue a great section of Asia, three have failed, and the fourth, which is now in progress, has succeeded for less than a century and a half, and already shows symptoms of exhaustion. The dominion of Alexander passed away ; the dominion of Rome was overthrown by Asiatics, and the won- derful, persistent rush of the Crusaders was resolutely beaten back,—perhaps of all the phenomena in history the one which most needs elucidation from the philosophic historian. India, it is true, has been conquered and organised, but the Indian Empire of Britain is a kind of miracle, and there are signs abroad, almost too patent to be mistaken, that it draws near its end. India almost demands, does already pray for, self-government, and Britain is almost ready to make,
under decorous forms, that immense concession. The present writer, therefore, has no grand difference with Mr. Pearson to urge him into controversy, and yet he doubts, in spite of many of his own convictions, whether the evidence is yet sufficient for confident prediction. Cer- tainly he is not convinced of the justice of all Mr. Pearson's arguments. Europe, which in dismissing her dominant castes—castes evolved by centuries of battle and effort—has lost much of her energy, may derive from democracy a new force, which it is quite possible may not be impeded in its external action by mental scruples. The hatred of the colours for each other is not an evanescent peculiarity, and it is about to receive a terrible intensification. The economic contest between Brown and White has already commenced, as Mr. Pearson perceives, and will be im- mense alike in its results and in the sufferings that they will produce. It is probable that there is no great trade, from the manipulation of iron to the making of furniture, in which the Asiatic cannot undersell the European to such a degree that the latter must either defend himself from com- petition, if that be possible—which we disbelieve, if the Asiatic is free—or must accept an indefinitely lower standard of wages, and therefore of comfort. The Asiatic has all the materials, has the habit of working in association, and needs nothing but a knowledge, which, in all departments, he is rapidly acquiring. We do not believe that when the process is complete the White man will love the Dark man, for whom, indeed, even as it is, when in contact with him, his sympathy is but small. The American of the sub-tropics never treats the Negro as a human being like himself. The Anglo- Indians in the Mutiny, though they shrank from torture, slaughtered when needful without reserve. Any outrage in China upon White men arouses a storm of indigna- tion not distinguishable from hate ; nor in preventing such outrage, if they became frequent, would human lives be taken into account. The true sentiment of the Afrikander towards all Dark men is the sentiment of the slave-owner, merciful or merciless according to individual temperament. We doubt the gentleness of the White man once engaged in a deadly contest with Ulla Dark one ; and that contest must arise before Mr. Pearson's problem is worked out. As to the mere increase of numbers, that seems to us of no account. In the first place, we know nothing of the law of increase, which may stop as suddenly as it began, and which may be exposed to resisting forces such as famines, epidemics, or decline of fertility in the soil, which the Whites could neither prevent nor seriously palliate. Famines in our own time have literally extirpated the population of great provinces in China, and nothing is more probable than a Middle-Age epidemic in India, wherds-7 have hardly affected sanitation, except in a few Buropegi in
cities, and certainly have not so affected it as to counter- balance the sanitary mischiefs inherent in an increased crowding of the population. As for the failure of fertility in the soil, one great drought would reduce whole provinces to deserts, and there are signs that a cycle of deficient rainfall is a calamity to be reasonably apprehended. Numbers, however, matter nothing. No possible increase of Asiatic and African numbers could give to the peoples of those two continents the numerical preponderance which the Browns of India enjoy already over the Whites, and in spite of which the Whites continue to bear rule. Nor is there any evidence that a great religious movement, either in China or India, might not bring to the side of the Whites hosts of Dark warriors, bound to the intruders by creed or necessity, and numerous enough to furnish an armed caste as strong, in proportion to dominion, as the Roman army at the control of the Triumvirs. The future will not depend on the comparative numbers of the Dark and White races, but on the energy, the morale, and the wisdom of purpose of the latter; and about these things, who shall predict with confidence P We admit, with Mr. Pearson, signs of decay of energy in Europe, signs especially of a great wobbling of the general conscience, which now justifies tremendous acts of severity like the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, and again is horrified to shell a village of pirates otherWise inaccessible ; but we have no proof sufficient that this is not a momentary phase of the White mind. This only we know, that contest between the colours is inevitable before any great change can occur; and that contest as yet has roused in the White man a terrible energy before which the Dark man has usually seemed incompetent to stand. He often endures, as Mr. Pearson has pointed out, and yet multiplies and advances ; but only once in history has he met the armed rush of Europe on equal terms and flung it back defeated. That now, as ever, Asia and Africa will survive all European effort and remain Asiatic and African still, is, as the present writer conceives, by far the most probable forecast ; but it rests on past experience rather than any argument which ought finally to convince j licious men.
Previous page
