Xvi
INTRODUCTION
side. When that time does come, old ideals of national
seclusion will be rudely shattered. Whatever policies we
may accept as a nation — and in the light of recent events
it is impossible to forecast what they will be — the lessons
of statecraft should be learned from those whose enterprise
and whose blunderings have given us this page of history
— now blurred and stained with the blood of the vastest
tragedy in the history of civilization.
We have, therefore, more than a passing interest in the
account here given of the various types of European civil
ization in Africa. The fine and heroic work of British resi-
dents in the Niger region, for instance, thrown into con-
trast with the sordid, cruel methods employed in other
parts of the continent, the battle with disease and the con-
quest of natural obstacles — desert and tropical jungles —
are all parts of a common heritage in the new world-history
which the age of the industrial revolution has opened up.
It is not simply that we are affected by such things as the
increased output of African gold, which helps to raise the
price of all we buy and sell, but that with the emergence of
world-politics, we inherit something of the result of other
nations’ achievements and so make their past our own as
well. It is sincerely to be hoped that, in this transforma-
tion of our outlook, this book may contribute helpfully its
wealth of fact and breadth of view.
When the above paragraphs were written — for the first
edition of this book — the Great War had not yet become a
World War and few could have guessed that in the terms of
peace as they affected Africa, the influence of America, as a
member of the Peace Conference, would be exercised to
create a new era in colonial control. The mandate system
is, of course, no mere invention of American political insight.
The European powers had grown toward the conception of