The newer movement of expansion has been national rather than one of persons or prns leged companies, and its chief field of operation has been the eastern hemisphere, rather than the western, as was the case with the earlier period of exploration and colonization. Africa. Oceania and Australasia have been forcibly colonized, while economic exploitation has been vigorously cultivated in Asia This statement does not, however, ignore the extensive com mercial exploitation of Latin America by Euro pean nations and the United States. The significance of this more recent period of ex pansion has been vividly described by Professor Shotwell: 'Conquistadors, clad in khaki or glittering in belmetted display, have proclaimed to most of the savages of the globe that they belong henceforth to European nations. On the wharves of London there are goods from Ger man workshops for the merchant adventurers of today to carry off to Bantus or Negritos. Piles of coal from Cardiff lie inside the coral reefs of Australasian islands, for the ships which come to break the silence of farther Hebrides than Wordsworth dreamed of. But for the historian there is more significance than romance in such events. The men whom Joseph Conrad and Kipling describe are responsible for the trans formation of Africa and Asia. And that trans formation in its turn is mainly responsible for those policies of imperial expansion, of com mercial and colonial rivalries which underlie the causes of the present war.' The effects of the new imperialism upon the political and diplo matic events and tendencies of the last half century in Europe have been most profound Scarcely a dominating alliance or an armed conflict has existed which has not been more or less directly a result of overseas policies and ambitions, while these policies have very fre quently even determined the characteristics and trends of domestic politics, as well as the des tinies and careers of statesmen.
While it cannot be doubted that much of the older policy of thorough-going exploitation has been carried over into the new imperiahste movement since 1870, it is certain that a some what higher moral level has prevailed in the activities of the colonizers. There has been it Least some rhetorical, though often h. • recotenition of a moral obligation in t e "shoe man s burden' and of the duty of elevating the cultural standards of the natives There can be no question that even Karl Peters and the agents of Leopold of Belgium treated the natives of Africa with a greater degree of far ness and honesty than can be discerned in she relations of the 'Puritans of New England with the Indians of the di'trict See HISTrirf. If -IP N ; I sni • s Revottermst ; Nattily atis POPULATIoN, GROWTH Of; Ilisstosis 2 The Rediscovery and Partition of Afri-t The Expinration' — Africa has during his•one times presented great ethnographic contra's., her inhabitants varying all the way from star ethnologists now believe to have been the origi nal North African ancestors of the white race to the pygmy Negrilloes of the equatorial forests The cultural contrasts have not been less marked. At least three times in historic eras, in ancient Egypt, in the Alexandrian Age, and during the Saracen hegemony in the Middle Ages. northern Africa was the seat of the most advanced type of human culture, while the dis tricts south were at all times inhabited by some of the most backward of savages. Down to 1870 Europeans had made little progress in the way of opening up the African continent. The Arabs had pushed southward along the coast carrying with them the propaganda of Islam and developing the deplorable slave trade. in the middle of the 15th century the Portuguese began their explorations which were to carry them around the Cape of Good Hope to India. In the 17th century the Dutch tended to displace the Portuguese, and after 1795 the English began to make inroads upon the Dutch settle ments. Despite some scattered trading posts
the French made no permanent conquests of importance until the acquisition of Algeria fol lowing 1830. Spain possessed a few trading posts of little consequence, and Prussia•in 1720 abandoned the settlement made on the coast of Guinea by the Great Elector in 1681. Yet all of these advances, significant as they were, had failed to penetrate more than a narrow and incomplete fringe around the western and south ern portion of the continent. But on the eve of the new imperialistic developments following the °Ms* scientific curiosity, religious propa ganda, and journalistic enterprise were leading men to carry on those epoch-making explora tions which revealed to enthusiastic European and American capitalists the economic and com mercial potentialities of the 'Dark Continent.* This process of exploration has been clearly summarized by Professor Harris: °Fortunately, at the time when the European states began to think seriously of colonial expansion, the inter est of Europe in the Dark Continent, as a field for commercial and economic activity, was aroused to a degree never before known. Con siderable information existed concerning certain portions of Africa and its general contour, for, in the 40 years prior to 1870, a large part of the continent had been explored; but few persons, except scholars and geograers, had taken particular notice of it. 1880. indeed, Mungo Park. Major Laing and M. Caille had gone from the west coast up the Gambia and Senegal rivers, found the upper waters of the Niger and Timbuctu and crossed the Sahara to Tangier and Tripoli, while Clapperton and Denham were exploring the Central Sudan from Lake Chad to the Niger River, and the brothers Lander down that stream to its mouth. Dr. Henry Barth spent the years 1850 to 1855 in the scientific: study of the language, peoples and geography of the region just mentioned (west of Lake Chad) including the kingdom of Sokoto Farther south, on the east coast, Paul di! Chaillu traveled over the Gaboon River district between 1856 and 1868; and, in the interior, David Livingstone explored the Zam besi River, the region about Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, and crossed the continent to Ben rota& during the 18 years following 1851. Meanwhile, Burton, Speke and Grant, coming up from the east coast, had discovered Lake Victoria Nyanza and the headwaters of the Nile; and Sir Samuel Baker, traversing the whole of that river from the north to the south, found its other source in Albert Nyanza. But it was the work of Dr. Nachtigal, who in 1869 to 1871 studied carefully the eastern Sahara and Sudan; of Cameron, who crossed the whole continent from the Zanzibar Coast to Ben guella between 1873 and 1875; of Savorgnan de Brazza, who explored scientifically the whole region between Libreville on the Cahoon and the north banks of the Kongo and Ubangi rivers from 1874 to 1884; and of Henry M. Stanley, who found Livingstone in 1873, that drew the attention of the general public to Africa. Books were written, money raised, and colonial so cieties formed with the purpose of inducing people to study African conditions and to start colonies. By the time Stanley returned from his second journey in 1877, with the news of the discovery of the great Kongo River and its tributaries, the statesmen and the intelligent public of Europe were taking a very considerable interest in African affairs. The general topog raphy of the continent had been mapped,— in outline, at least,—the location of all the im portant lakes and waterways pointed out, and the possibilities of the different sections as sources of wealth and trade for Europe as certained with a fair degree of accuracy.' See Arms.