The Story of Mankind [180]
other book in the English language.
If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I probably
should have a certain affection for the hymns which I had
heard in my childhood. But my earliest recollection of music
goes back to the afternoon when my Mother took me to hear
nothing less than a Bach fugue. And the mathematical perfection
of the great Protestant master influenced me to such
an extent that I cannot hear the usual hymns of our prayer-
meetings without a feeling of intense agony and direct pain.
Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed
by the sunshine of the happy valley of the Arno, I might love
many colourful and sunny pictures which now leave me indifferent
because I got my first artistic impressions in a country
where the rare sun beats down upon the rain-soaked land with
almost cruel brutality and throws everything into violent contrasts
of dark and light.
I state these few facts deliberately that you may know
the personal bias of the man who wrote this history and may
understand his point-of-view. The bibliography at the end of
this book, which represents all sorts of opinions and views, will
allow you to compare my ideas with those of other people.
And in this way, you will be able to reach your own final
conclusions with a greater degree of fairness than would
otherwise be possible.
After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the
history of the last fifty years. Many things happened during
this period but very little occurred which at the time seemed
to be of paramount importance. The majority of the greater
powers ceased to be mere political agencies and became large
business enterprises. They built railroads. They founded and
subsidized steam-ship lines to all parts of the world. They
connected their different possessions with telegraph wires.
And they steadily increased their holdings in other continents.
Every available bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed
by one of the rival powers. France became a colonial nation
with interests in Algiers and Madagascar and Annam and
Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts of southwest
and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the
west coast of Africa and in New Guinea and many of the
islands of the Pacific, and used the murder of a few missionaries
as a welcome excuse to take the harbour of Kisochau on the
Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried her luck in Abyssinia, was
disastrously defeated by the soldiers of the Negus, and consoled
herself by occupying the Turkish possessions in Tripoli
in northern Africa. Russia, having occupied all of Siberia,
took Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having defeated
China in the war of 1895, occupied the island of Formosa and
in the year 1905 began to lay claim to the entire empire of
Corea. In the year 1883 England, the largest colonial empire
the world has ever seen, undertook to ``protect'' Egypt. She
performed this task most efficiently and to the great material
benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the
opening of the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a
foreign invasion. During the next thirty years she fought a
number of colonial wars in different parts of the world and in
1902 (after three years of bitter fighting) she conquered the
independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State. Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil Rhodes to
lay the foundations for a great African state, which reached
from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and had faithfully
picked up such islands or provinces as had been left without
a European owner.
The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used
the discoveries of Henry Stanley to found the Congo Free
State in the year 1885. Originally this gigantic tropical empire
was an ``absolute monarchy.'' But after many years of
scandalous mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian
If I had been born in a pleasant middle western city I probably
should have a certain affection for the hymns which I had
heard in my childhood. But my earliest recollection of music
goes back to the afternoon when my Mother took me to hear
nothing less than a Bach fugue. And the mathematical perfection
of the great Protestant master influenced me to such
an extent that I cannot hear the usual hymns of our prayer-
meetings without a feeling of intense agony and direct pain.
Again, if I had been born in Italy and had been warmed
by the sunshine of the happy valley of the Arno, I might love
many colourful and sunny pictures which now leave me indifferent
because I got my first artistic impressions in a country
where the rare sun beats down upon the rain-soaked land with
almost cruel brutality and throws everything into violent contrasts
of dark and light.
I state these few facts deliberately that you may know
the personal bias of the man who wrote this history and may
understand his point-of-view. The bibliography at the end of
this book, which represents all sorts of opinions and views, will
allow you to compare my ideas with those of other people.
And in this way, you will be able to reach your own final
conclusions with a greater degree of fairness than would
otherwise be possible.
After this short but necessary excursion, we return to the
history of the last fifty years. Many things happened during
this period but very little occurred which at the time seemed
to be of paramount importance. The majority of the greater
powers ceased to be mere political agencies and became large
business enterprises. They built railroads. They founded and
subsidized steam-ship lines to all parts of the world. They
connected their different possessions with telegraph wires.
And they steadily increased their holdings in other continents.
Every available bit of African or Asiatic territory was claimed
by one of the rival powers. France became a colonial nation
with interests in Algiers and Madagascar and Annam and
Tonkin (in eastern Asia). Germany claimed parts of southwest
and east Africa, built settlements in Kameroon on the
west coast of Africa and in New Guinea and many of the
islands of the Pacific, and used the murder of a few missionaries
as a welcome excuse to take the harbour of Kisochau on the
Yellow Sea in China. Italy tried her luck in Abyssinia, was
disastrously defeated by the soldiers of the Negus, and consoled
herself by occupying the Turkish possessions in Tripoli
in northern Africa. Russia, having occupied all of Siberia,
took Port Arthur away from China. Japan, having defeated
China in the war of 1895, occupied the island of Formosa and
in the year 1905 began to lay claim to the entire empire of
Corea. In the year 1883 England, the largest colonial empire
the world has ever seen, undertook to ``protect'' Egypt. She
performed this task most efficiently and to the great material
benefit of that much neglected country, which ever since the
opening of the Suez canal in 1868 had been threatened with a
foreign invasion. During the next thirty years she fought a
number of colonial wars in different parts of the world and in
1902 (after three years of bitter fighting) she conquered the
independent Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State. Meanwhile she had encouraged Cecil Rhodes to
lay the foundations for a great African state, which reached
from the Cape almost to the mouth of the Nile, and had faithfully
picked up such islands or provinces as had been left without
a European owner.
The shrewd king of Belgium, by name Leopold, used
the discoveries of Henry Stanley to found the Congo Free
State in the year 1885. Originally this gigantic tropical empire
was an ``absolute monarchy.'' But after many years of
scandalous mismanagement, it was annexed by the Belgian