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A history of the colonization of Africa by alien races

Chapter 3: PREFATORY NOTE
By Harry Johnston
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About This Book

The work surveys successive external influences on the African continent from prehistoric migrations through ancient Mediterranean settlements, Islamic expansions, and later European imperial ventures. It traces patterns of settlement, trade, and administrative change introduced by Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Arab, and later colonial arrivals, and discusses racial and population movements, including coastal and island colonizations. Chapters combine narrative history with maps and chapter-end notes to illustrate political boundaries and areas of racial mixing. The text explains how successive waves of external contact reshaped local polities, economies, and administrative systems across different regions of the continent.

PREFATORY NOTE

The Editor of this Historical series asked me in 1898 to compile this work on the History of African Colonization. Even at that date there existed a number of standard books on the history of African Exploration (Dr J. Scott Keltie and Dr Robert Brown), on the history of South Africa (McCall Theal and Sir Charles Lucas), and on the Map of Africa by Treaty (Sir Edward Hertslet). But no attempt had yet been made to summarise and review in a single book the general history of the attempts of Asia and Europe to colonize Africa during the historical period. The original edition of this book published in 1898 was exhausted by the following year, and in the next reprint certain additions were made; while to the reprint of 1905 a new chapter was contributed giving the latest developments in the European colonization of Africa.

A further issue of the work having been contemplated seven years later, the Cambridge University Press agreed that I should rewrite the whole book from beginning to end and enlarge it considerably, so that it might be brought level with our more complete knowledge of African history in 1912, and at the same time continue the story down to the present year.

Much has happened since 1905 which forms an essential part of the history of the colonization and development of Africa by alien races. The old maps have been revised and new ones drawn.

The first edition of this work contained the antique feature of a dedication. I hesitate to repeat this formally, yet I might mention that the names I associated in 1898 with my treatise on the Colonization of Africa were those of Sir George Taubman Goldie (Nigeria); Viscount Kitchener of Khartūm (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan); Monsieur René Millet (formerly French Resident-General in Tunis), “who has shown how well a Frenchman can administer a great dependency when allowed liberty of action”; and Major Hermann von Wissmann (formerly German Imperial Commissioner in Africa), “who founded the State of German East Africa, and who has done more than any living German to establish and uphold the prestige of that great nation in the darkest parts of the Dark Continent”. I still think that under the guise of a dedication I chose notable instances of strong and wise men doing good work in Africa, not only for the colonizing nations, but equally for the subject peoples of backward race. Their work in its importance has stood the test of time. What Mons. Millet did in Tunis has been—or should be—made the model of an administration under which France may succeed in regenerating Morocco. It is tempting to add other great names to this list, but if, for example, one inserts that of Cecil Rhodes, then in common justice one must mention David Livingstone, John Kirk, H. M. Stanley, Joseph Thomson, Frederick Lugard, George Grenfell, E. N. Roume, and Franz Stuhlmann, and many others who have brought about the recent opening-up of Africa by the white man.

H. H. JOHNSTON.
Poling,
December, 1912.