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