A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races by Harry Johnston

We have now seen the result of these race movements during three or four thousand years, which have caused nations superior in physical or mental development to the Negro, the Negroid, and the Hamite to move down on Africa as a field for their colonization, cultivation, and commerce. The great rush, however, has only been made since 1881, and may be said to have begun with the French invasion of Tunis. Now there remain but two small portions of the map of Africa which are uncoloured, that is, attributed to the independent possession of a native state. These tracts, theoretically independent, or the overlordship of which is international, are the Negro Republic of Liberia on the West coast and the Ethiopian Empire in North-east Africa. The whole remainder of the continent is now allotted to the dominion, overlordship or exclusive political direction of some one European, Christian power: Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, or Spain. Morocco, on the extreme north-west of the continent, the bulk of whose trade was formerly with England, and whose principal seaport was once in English hands, has now France for a protector, educator and disciplinarian, and Spain for recolonizer. There is Egypt, in the occupation and under the control of Britain, though still nominally a tributary state of the Turkish Empire. Since this book was first published in 1898, the truculent Muhammadan state of Wadai has been annexed and conquered by France, together with Baghirmi and Kanem, Aïr and the Saharan oases. Darfur is under Anglo-Egyptian suzerainty; Tripoli, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan are annexed to Italy as the future "Colony" of Libya; and British rule has been made very real over the eastern Fula States of Nigeria and Bornu. The South African Republic and Orange Free State are part of the Union of South Africa. Even Liberia has recently entrusted its finances to the indirect control of its original parent, the United States. Only Abyssinia-now the Empire of Ethiopia in very fact, since 1900-remains theoretically independent; and even Abyssinia is aware that three European powers-Britain, France, and Italy-while guaranteeing her independence, have in a sense agreed to take joint action if she should abuse that independence to the commercial or political injury of their interests. Abyssinia, for many reasons connected with her history, her religion, and her sturdy assertion of independence deserves more than any other state of Africa to preserve her national self-respect and her sovereign status, provided she will abstain from offence, and recognize her geographical and racial limitations. But if through ambition she should attempt to arm and to lead the peoples of the Sudan against the new order of things which is being patiently introduced by Great Britain, she will find herself restricted once more to the African Switzerland which has been the nucleus and the last refuge of this Semitico-Hamitic people. Liberia by studiously following American advice and educating herself on the right lines to be an African Negro State and not an African parody on a tiny scale of the vast United States of North America, may play an important part some day in the political development of West Africa.