Suchergebnisse

On the basis of recent books & articles on race relations in the Portuguese colonies in Africa, some reflections are offered. It is observed that in Portugal, as elsewhere, att's are conflicting, fashions change, & varying policies are uppermost at diff times. The Portuguese in Africa, so it is stated, are promoting multiracialism as a policy now, at the very moment when its individual biological exercise has become less necessary & less popular than at any time in their history. Since there are now more white women available, white men in Africa are less interested in black women. The elimination of race prejudice among the white inhabitants of Angola & Mozambique will require positive measures of educ & indoctrination. Officials will have to preach a doctrine that they themselves have only recently learned. No judgment is made upon the merits of the new Portuguese policy, though its historical foundation is analyzed. It is pointed out that what may appear as racial discrimination may in reality be no more than the disdain of the rich for the poor. One of the reasons why Portuguese admin'ors of earlier generations were supporters of forced labor for African M's was that they did not see why these people should be better off than the laborer of Portugal-in-Europe, working from dawn to dusk for a pittance under the broiling Lusitanian sun. Race prejudice, alongside the absence of race prejudice, existed in the Portuguese dominions before 1825 & persisted into the 19th cent. Many Portuguese historians were convinced of the inherent inferiority of the Negro race. The Portuguese were not the only ones who held such views. The official policy now calls for respect for African culture & values, something that would be wholly foreign to earlier generations of Portuguese for whom the African was a 'savage.' M. Maxfield.

I can best summarize the content of this paper by exhibiting four quotations:A trading community like early Victorian England, which can still profitably employ all its capital in its mills and ships, becomes indifferent to the acquisition of territory, and even tends to regard the colonies previously acquired as a useless encumbrance. That was the normal state of mind of our commercial classes during the middle years of last century. They dealt in goods, and in order to sell goods abroad, it was not necessary either to colonise or to conquer. To this phase belongs the typical foreign policy of Liberalism, with its watchwords of peace, non-intervention, and free trade. The third phase, the modern phase, begins when capital has accumulated in large fortunes, when the rate of interest at home begins to fall, and the discovery is made that investments abroad in unsettled countries with populations more easily exploited than our own, offer swifter and bigger returns. It is the epoch of concession hunting, of coolie labour, of chartered companies, of railway construction, of loans to semi-civilised Powers, of the "opening up" of "dying empires." At this phase the export of capital has become to the ruling class more important and more attractive than the export of goods. The Manchester School disappears, and even the Liberals accept Imperialism. It is, however, no longer the simple and barbaric Imperialism of the agricultural stage. Its prime motive is not to acquire land, though in the end it often lapses into this elementary form of conquest. It aims rather at pegging out spheres of influence and at that sort of stealthy conquest which is called "pacific penetration." The old Imperialism levied tribute; the new Imperialism lends money at interest.