It seemed to me that if any public utility at all were to be attached to my own modest effort, it could more fittingly be sought in the direction of handling, from an independent outsider’s point of view, problems of actuality in their setting of existing circumstances and conditions; and in emphasizing a fact sometimes apt to be forgotten. I mean that in these Dependencies the Native is the important person to be considered, quite as much from the Imperial as from any other standpoint, interpreting Imperialism as personally I interpret it, to signify a good deal more than painting the map red and indulging in tall talk about “possessions” and about “inferior races.” In Nigeria, the Nigerian is not, as some persons appear to regard him, merely an incidental factor but the paramount factor. Nigeria is not a Colony; it is a Dependency.
The West African native has two classes of enemies, one positive, the other unconscious. The ranks of both are not only recruited from members of the white race: they are to be found among members of the West African’s own household. The first class corresponds to the school of European thought concerning tropical Africa, whose adherents object to the West African being a land-owner, and whose doctrine it is that in the economic development of the country the profits should be the exclusive appanage of the white race, the native’s rôle being that of labourer and wage-earner for all time.
In the fulfilment of the rôle thus assigned to him, some of the adherents of this school, those with the longest sight, would be quite prepared to treat the individual native well; others would cheerfully impose their will by brutal violence. That is a temperamental affair which does not touch the essence of the deeper issue.
To this class of enemies belong some of the educated or half-educated Europeanized natives whom our educational and religious system divorces from their race, and who, having no outlet and bereft of national or racial pride, betray the interests of their country into the hands of its foes.
The second class is to be met with among the ranks of those who, by striking at slavery and abuse, have rendered enormous benefit to the West African, but who were also unwittingly responsible for fastening upon his neck a heavy yoke, and who, not only with no motive of self-interest, but, on the contrary, with the most generous desire to minister to his welfare, are to-day in danger of ministering to his undoing. It is not easy to affix any particular label to those influences which, in the political field, contributed so powerfully in handing over the Congo to Leopold II. (afterwards strenuously co-operating in freeing its peoples from his grasp) and in placing two million West Africans in Liberia under the pettily tyrannous incompetence of a handful of American Blacks. They are partly educational, partly philanthropic, partly religious. The basis of sentiment animating them appears to be that a kindness is being done to the West African by the bestowal upon him of European culture, law, religion and dress, and that, having thus unmade him as an African, those responsible are in duty bound to support the product of their own creation in its automatic and inevitable revolt against authority, whether represented by the Native Ruler or by the European Administrator. In the form it at present takes, and in the circumstances too often accompanying it, this is not a kindness but a cruel wrong.