low. . . . In Cuba, Santo Domingo and some of the republics of Central America, and certain of the states of the Brazilian Confederation, where the children of slaves constitute the greater portion of the population, internal disorders are continual. A black republic, Hayti, demonstrates by its revolutionary history the political incapacity of the negro race." (Calderon.) This writer sees in the mulatto the evil result "of the inferior elements of the races that unite," and states that "the mixbreed is weak in character and body and is given to gross passion." From the North American viewpoint it will readily be admitted that the white man, and the white man only, can develop Latin America. When North America and Europe begin to act upon this conviction they will find a residue of whites in this great area of miscegenation who will readily welcome the coming of North Americans and Europeans, who will by the increase of their numbers finally redeem Latin America from its mongrelization. "Only a plentiful immigration can establish the shattered equilibrium of the American races." (Calderon.) Let us give all honor to the whites who have withstood four centuries of hybridization. They constitute, together with later immigrants, but ten per cent of the population, but they and their kind are the hope of the future, the nucleus of the Caucasian population that shall eventually fill the continent. CHAPTER IX CIVILIZATIONS THAT ARE IMPERILED THROUGH CONTACT WITH COLORED RACES: SOUTH AFRICA Forty-six years after the English had settled at Jamestown (1607), Hollanders founded a colony at Cape Town at the southern point of Africa. The African colony was a half-way station on the sea route from Europe to India and was generally used for this purpose until the opening of the Suez canal. Settled by Hollanders, the colony was later strengthened by the arrival of Germans and by French Huguenots (Protestants who were compelled to flee from France). French Huguenots were mainly of Teutonic extraction, and the South African is, or was, as purely Teutonic in blood as were the American colonists from Holland and England. The settlers were a people like unto ourselves, and it should be borne in mind that in this chapter we are not dealing with an alien race. Differences between the evolution of South Africa and that of the United States will have been determined by isolation of the former or by local environment, not by race. South Africa did not receive a bountiful supply of Euro pean immigration, was deprived of a close cultural contact with Europe, and was given the task under these limitations of perpetuating a civilization which was to be in daily contact with the African negro. When the Dutch settled at the Cape, the southern extremity of the continent was occupied by Hottentots and Bushmen.1 The Bantu (Kaffirs) were not farther south than Natal, but were then, as they had been for centuries, slowly pressing before them or exterminating the inhabitants of that territory since known as Cape Colony. The white man, invading the Hottentot lands from the south, eventually met the black man invading the Hottentot lands from the north. The first armed contest between black and white for possession of Hottentot territory did not occur until 1779, three years after the war for American independence had begun. From this time, the country was in constant disturbance, war following war for three quarters of a century. England and Holland fought for sea supremacy, and England won. English forces occupied Cape Town in 1795 and remained until 1803. They came again in 1806 and remained as conquerors until 1814, in which year the colony was ceded to Great Britain. 1Three divisions of the negro family are represented in South Africa-the dwarfish and brutish Bushmen; the Hottentot, taller and lighter skinned than the Bushmen; and the Bantu, or large blacks governed by a distinctly lighter colored aristocracy. Of the Bantu, the Zulu and Kosa are best known to Europeans living apart from Africa. |