A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races

Literature › Works

Johnston, Harry H. (1899). A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races. Cambridge Historical Series (ed. G. W. Prothero). Cambridge University Press.

Type	book
Scope	Wider apartheid literature
Method	synthesis review
Period studied	c.1100 BC–1898
Regions	Africa (continental), Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Rhodesia, Delagoa Bay, German South-West Africa
Themes	origins segregation, agriculture land, mining migrant labour, comparative theory, politics ideology elections, business and state
Citation key	johnston1899

Argument

A general narrative of Asian and European colonization of Africa, written at the height of the scramble by a colonial administrator. Johnston surveys the Phoenician, Arab, Portuguese, Dutch, British, French, German, Belgian and Italian presences, together with the slave trade, missions and exploration. For southern Africa he gives an imperial-partisan account of Dutch settlement, Boer-British conflict, the Kaffir wars, Natal's sugar and Indian labour, diamonds, Rhodes and the Jameson Raid. The conclusion sorts Africa into 'healthy' white-settler lands south of the Zambezi, 'tributary' states and tropical 'plantation colonies', and predicts black Africans will be pushed into low-lying 'reserves'. It is a primary document of period racial and imperial ideology, not an economic analysis.

Evidence and method

Secondary compilations (Theal, Lucas, Scott Keltie, Brown, Hertslet), Foreign and Colonial Office Blue Books, explorers' narratives, and the author's own service in Africa (Niger Delta, British Central Africa, Kilimanjaro, Tunis). No archival or statistical series; scattered figures on population, revenue and trade.

Place in the debates

• Imperial/settler vs humanitarian views of British policy at the Cape (Exeter Hall, Glenelg) (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Strongly pro-settler and pro-expansion. Blames Whitehall 'shilly-shally' and Lord Glenelg's frontier policy for Boer disaffection and the Trek, and criticises missionary attacks on the Boers.
• Racial hierarchy and 'natural' African labour and servility (scientific racism) (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Asserts negro docility, an aversion to continuous agricultural labour, and a natural fitness for servitude. This is period ideology, and later scholarship treats it as a source of that ideology, not as evidence about African societies.
• Partition of Africa and who should govern which territory (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Advocates white colonies in temperate southern Africa, with the black population confined to reserves in unhealthy lowlands and Indian immigration directed north of the Zambezi.

Findings

• Sugar plantations in Natal generated a labour demand that African men were said to meet poorly, which led to the importation of indentured Indian labour. (p. 175)

  These semi-tropical plantations brought about a fresh want-that of patient, cheap, agricultural labourers.

• Johnston asserts that African men resist continuous farm labour, an early statement of the stereotype used to justify compulsion in the labour supply. (p. 175)

  the black man, though so strong in body and so unaspiring in ideals, has as a rule a strong objection to continuous agricultural labour.

• Indentured Indian immigration to Natal began around 1860 and grew to some 42,000 by the late 1890s. White colonists opposed it for 'selfish reasons'. (p. 176)

  Nowadays the Indian population of Natal has risen to something like 42,000.

• The Boer republic used high tariffs to shut out outside contact, making life costly. Johnston ties this to the Rand's grievances. (p. 89)

  an exceedingly high tariff of import duties, which rendered many articles of necessity or luxury extremely expensive, and made civilized life five times as dear as in the adjoining Cape Colony.

• Under the Dutch East India Company the Cape became a slave-worked colony. Hottentots became serfs and fell in numbers, and Johnston treats this as the founding pattern of Boer-native relations. (p. 71)

  The Cape became a slave-worked colony, but on the whole the slaves were treated with kindness

• The Boers aimed to make Africans serfs and denied them equal rights, which Johnston presents as an early root of later racial subordination. (p. 82)

  he was determined to make of the native a serf, and denied him the rights of a man like unto himself.

• Rhodes's consolidation of the diamond mines and his gold ambitions drove the British South Africa Company charter of 1889 and the northward expansion. (p. 187)

  Mr Cecil John Rhodes, an Englishman who had brought about the consolidation of the mines at Kimberley and had acquired great wealth and a position of political importance at the Cape

• Johnston foresees a future racial division of space in southern Africa, with whites in the healthy interior and blacks in unhealthy lowland reserves. This anticipates the territorial logic of later segregation. (p. 281)

  the black man will be pushed by degrees into the low-lying, unhealthy coast regions of the south-east or into the rich but fever-stricken countries in the Zambezi valley

• The Cape colonial economy had a very small revenue base around 1850. It rested on wine, grain and wool, and after 1860 on railways financed to reach the diamond fields. (p. 177)

  The discovery of the Diamond fields gave railway extension an objective, and Kimberley became the goal which was finally reached in 1885

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Foreign Office and Colonial Office Blue Books on Africa and the slave trade, 1830-1898	commission or official report	1830-1898	Listed as the chief documentary guide, and cited as the evidence preserved on the Delagoa Bay claim and the Foreign Office response on Kilimanjaro.
Blue Books on the Delagoa Bay arbitration (MacMahon award, 1875)	commission or official report	1870s	The author reads the evidence preserved in Blue Books to judge that Portuguese claims covered only the northern shore and that the arbitrator's award was biassed.
Dr Robert Brown, The Story of Africa (4 vols, 1894-5)	secondary literature compilation	1680-1786	Supplies the slave import totals into the English-American colonies used to size the Atlantic trade.
Rev. S. W. Koelle, Polyglotta Africana	secondary literature compilation	19th century, Sierra Leone	Vocabularies taken from liberated slaves are used as evidence of the vast area from which slaves were drawn.
Duarte Lopes / Filippo Pigafetta, account of the Kingdom of Congo (1591)	secondary literature compilation	late 16th century	Source for the Congo kingdom, the Portuguese there and the introduction of maize, bananas and other crops.
Census at the Cape after thirty years of settlement	population census	c.1682	Gives the early Dutch settler population count.
Estimates of Cape Colony population, 1770 and 1791	official statistical series	1770, 1791	Population and slave figures illustrate Dutch Cape growth.
Cape Colony population and revenue figures, 1806, 1822 and 1850	official statistical series	1806-1850	Population, area and revenue totals show the growth of the colony under British rule.
Natal population and export figures, 1850s-1875	official statistical series	1850s-1875	Native population, Indian immigrant numbers and sugar export value document Natal's growth.
Portuguese East Africa revenue and expenditure and trade statistics	official statistical series	1508-1893	Used to claim Mozambique was always a fiscal drain and that trade was largely in British hands.
Convention of 13 August 1814 ceding the Cape to Britain (£6,000,000)	legislation gazette	1814	Shows the price paid for the Cape.
British compensation payments for slave abolition and treaty payments (Spain, Portugal)	official statistical series	1820-1836	Totals are used to argue Britain made monetary reparation for the slave trade.
Commission of inquiry into Algeria, 1870	commission or official report	1870	Mentioned as the basis for the shift from military to civil rule.
Ship and expedition accounts, Hanno's Periplus, Herodotus and classical geographers	secondary literature compilation	antiquity	Classical texts supply the evidence for Phoenician, Carthaginian, Greek and Roman contact.
Author's personal observation and fieldwork in Africa	author survey or fieldwork	1880s-1890s	First-hand experience is used for slave caravans, Algerian fusion, Kilimanjaro treaties and the Niger Delta.
Reports of Captain S. L. Hinde and the King of the Belgians' committee on Congo atrocities	commission or official report	1890s	Cited to substantiate the charge of cannibalism among Free State forces.
Explorers' published journals (Barth, Stanley, Livingstone, Park and others)	secondary literature compilation	1795-1898	Chapter X relies on travellers' narratives for the exploration record.
Newspapers: Mauritius Gazette, The Times, New York Herald, Daily Telegraph, French press	newspapers periodicals	1817-1898	Used for British claims over Madagascar, Stanley's sponsorship and French views on Abyssinia.
Bibliography of secondary works (Theal, Lucas, Keltie, Hertslet, Mercier and others)	secondary literature compilation	1856-1898	Works listed as the basis of the narrative synthesis.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Narrative political and diplomatic synthesis, chronological and by colonizing nation, resting on secondary histories, explorers' accounts and Blue Books, supplemented by the author's own participation and observation. Racial and climatic categories (three classes of Africa) are asserted from the author's judgement, and the argument on the future of Africa is speculative.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
Mozambique has been a costly dependency, with expenditure exceeding revenue every year from 1508 to 1893, and high duties stifle trade. (p. 55)	Unspecified Portuguese colonial accounts and tariff information, giving a deficit up to £50,000 and duties of 37 per cent ad valorem.	Partial data
The MacMahon award on Delagoa Bay was biased and Britain had a fair claim to the southern shore. (p. 58)	Blue Books evidence as read by the author, plus a rumour about the Marshal's wife.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Cape Colony was prosperous by 1850: population of 220,000, revenue about £220,000 and exports growing; the Cape under Dutch and Company rule never covered its expenditure. (p. 169)	Unnamed colonial statistics and estimates.	Partial data
Natal's native population grew rapidly under British rule, and Indian indentured labour arrived to meet plantation needs, reaching about 42,000 Indians by the 1890s. (p. 176)	Uncited colonial population counts.	Partial data
British trade with West Africa and the Niger has grown from a few hundred thousand pounds to about £6,000,000 a year since political control, which justifies continued government. (p. 280)	Unspecified trade returns.	Asserted
The Congo Free State's monopoly of ivory and rubber and its officers' atrocities were real but partly overstated by missionaries. (p. 227)	Missionary accounts, a committee of inquiry and Hinde's testimony.	Illustrative or anecdotal

The author's caveats

The author acknowledges that his work is an unpretending compilation and that evidence is often slight, for example on Madagascar's first inhabitants and the Portuguese envoys to Timbuktu. Some Delagoa Bay conclusions and the 1898 supplementary notes rest on press reports. He also notes that the particulars of an Anglo-German treaty may not be known until the arbitral verdict.

Gaps in the evidence

The work gives almost no systematic sources: figures on population, trade and finance are quoted without citation, and archival work with named files, censuses or trade returns would be needed to test the claims. Crucially for an economic-history audit, it has no data on labour, mining or land, and race claims are asserted without evidence. Colonial Blue Books, customs returns, Cape and Natal census figures and company records existed in 1899 and could have been used.

Replicability: Data poorly documented.