The Abiding Meaning of ‘Africa for the Africans’ in the Age of Imperialism

Abstract

Europe has not yet conquered native Africa; this is daily becoming patent, and the difficulties in the way of effecting this subjugation are varied and multipliable. The experience of the Germans in their contest with the Hereros in the Southwestern portion of the continent, has disclosed to their cost… the knowledge of what this means. England is not less fortunate, as the troubles in Natal would testify to, and the difficulties existing in both her Nigerian territories; all tending to the demonstration of the fact, that there must be something wrong somewhere… in the dealings between the native and the alien. … There have been but only two ways of opening up Africa, the peaceful and the warlike, the method pursued by a Livingstone, and that by a Stanley; but as to which of the two has proved of greater benefit to the outside world, let results bear out the testimony. It is not a little puzzling, noting the fact that in former years, and there can be no doubt that it may even be found so now in certain districts where the civilizing influences of modern machine destructives are unknown … the greatest safety to life and protection of his property has always been the lot of the foreign traveller, in his trot through the length and breadth of what was once fondly daubed the Dark Continent; unarmed and generally unaccompanied was the vogue of the period; whilst at the present time the greatest confusion and unrest prevail where the appearance of the Anglo Saxon is announced.…

‘Problems to be Solved’, in Lagos Standard, II July 1906