The Journal of Negro History Volume II Part 46

[530] Knox, "An Historical Account of St. Thomas, West Indies," pp.

255-261.

[531] This doc.u.ment and the Will of Robert Pleasants were collected by Mr. M. N. Work.

[532] Annual Cyclopedia, 1867, pp. 19, 20.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS

_History of South Africa from 1795 to 1872._ By GEORGE MCCALL THEAL, Litt.D., LL.D. George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., London.

This work is intended to be a general history of South Africa in detail. It is to be completed as a revised edition in five volumes, three of which have already appeared. Each volume contains about 500 pages, is neatly printed and substantially bound. The work is well supplied with maps and charts reflecting the growth and development of the country.

The author of this history has lived in South Africa and has served as keeper of the archives of the Cape Colony. The preparation of this history has occupied his almost undivided attention during the last fifty years. He says that he has made the closest possible research among official doc.u.ments of all kinds. Apparently he has had little use for secondary material, but his large collection of books on South Africa has served him as a guide. The author a.s.serts that to the utmost of human ability he has striven to write without fear, favor or prejudice, to do equal justice to all with whom he had to deal. For this reason, he offers his work to the public as "not alone the only detailed history of South Africa yet prepared, but as a true and absolutely unbiased narrative." The work shows, however, that it is written in the att.i.tude of arrogating to himself the privileges of the superior group, exhibiting occasionally a bit of sympathy for the inferior, who had to be exterminated to make room for those chosen of G.o.d.

The first volume of the work deals largely with the conquest of the colony. It is mainly a narrative of the deeds of the conquering leaders of the colonists, closing with an account of the destruction of the Bantu tribes. In succession, we read here about the exploits of James Henry Craig, Earl McCartney, Major General Dundas, Sir George Younge, Jacob Abraham De Mist, J.W. Janssens, General David Baird, Du Pre Alexander, Lord Charles Somerset, Sir Rufane Shaw, and General Richard Bourke.

The second volume adheres in the beginning to the same sort of style, making the history of the whole colony center largely around the life of a single man, mentioning such characters as Sir Lowry Cole, Sir Benjamin D'Urban, Sir George Napier, and Sir Peregrine Maitland. In the 32d chapter, however, the work becomes more nearly historical in taking up the emigration from Cape Colony, and the abandonment of that country by many thousands of substantial burghers, who were intent upon seeking homes in the wilderness. This movement is further illuminated by a treatment of the emigrant farmers in Natal, the republic of Natal, its overthrow, its transitory state, and movements north of the Orange.

The third volume maintains the standard of the last part of the second in dealing with the Kaffir Wars, and sketching the conditions leading up to the grant of a liberal const.i.tution. It returns to the District of Natal from 1845 to 1857, discusses the creation of the Orange River Sovereignty, the abandonment of the Sovereignty, and the events north of the Vaal, in the South African Republic and Orange Free State from 1854 to 1857. In these last chapters the author brings out more prominently than elsewhere the conflict between the whites and the blacks, the correlated problems arising therefrom, and measures brought forward to solve them. The reader easily learns that the handling of the question in South Africa has not been very different from the method of attack in the United States. The South African method has, in some respects, been more cruel than that of the United States.

J. O. BURKE.

_Native Life in South Africa, before and since the European War and the Boer Rebellion._ By SOLOMON T. PLAATJE. P.S. King and Son, Ltd., London, 1916. Pp. 352.

Mr. Plaatje is a South African native, educated near Barkly West at a mission school. He later studied languages and served as an interpreter for important officials such as Duke of Connaught and Mr.

Chamberlain. He later rose to a position of some importance in the Department of Native Affairs. He once edited a paper called _Koranta ea Becoana_. He is now the editor of the _Tsala ea Batho_ (the People's Friend). Although treating of questions concerning the oppression of his people, his writings have been marked by moderation and common sense. He is not an agitator, not a firebrand, and can, therefore, be read with profit. Rather resenting the power of the uneducated chiefs who rule by virtue of their birth alone, Mr. Plaatje belongs to a new school of thought. He is making a new appeal for the native.

Mr. Plaatje modestly disclaims any pretension to literary merit. He is merely giving a "sincere narrative of a melancholy situation, in which, with all its shortcomings," he "has endeavored to describe the difficulties of South African natives under a very strange law, so as most readily to be understood by the sympathetic reader." The author had access to sources from which he obtained the facts presented. He has made personal observations in the Transvaal, Orange Free State and the Province of the Cape of Good Hope. He used other facts collected by Attorney Msimang of Johannesburg. Organizing these facts, Mr.

Plaatje shows how the native has been maltreated and debased so as to be considered a pariah of society in his own native land. In the struggle between right and wrong, the latter has triumphed, culminating in such an evil as the Native Land Act, an effort at cla.s.s legislation, the worst sort of discrimination and segregation in land tenure.

One would have difficulty in believing that such barbarities could be practiced within the British Empire, were it not for the fact that Mr.

Plaatje not only quotes from the act _in extenso_ but quotes also from the debates in the Colonial Parliament to show that the intention of the legislators was to restrict the native to their reservations or to servitude among the white population to placate the extreme Dutch Party in South Africa. In other words, the Colonial Parliament took the position of Mr. J.G. Keyter, the member for Ficksburg, who said: "They should tell the native, as the Free State told him, that it was white man's country, that he was not going to be allowed to buy land there or hire land there, and that if he wanted to be there, he must be in service." The author is thankful for the a.s.sistance given the natives by the British, but contends that the fortunes of the former should not have been committed to the hands of the Dutch Republicans without adequate safeguards.

The work will doubtless be successful as an appeal to the court of public opinion, as it is intended. The case is ably and seriously put and is supported by adequate evidence to warrant the author's conclusions as to the enormity of the crimes against the natives. In making this bold agitation for economic equality, this book may materially influence future events in South Africa and in England. It will doubtless lead British statesmen to conclude that the imperial power cannot dissociate itself from the responsibility for native affairs. The writer will attract attention too because of the novelty in that this work is the product of the brains of an intelligent native, who can think and express himself well on public questions. It will be surprising to those Englishmen who have hitherto treated the natives altogether as an uneducated ma.s.s incapable of thinking and will certainly excite sympathy among those who believe in the principles of liberty and justice.

_The Danish West Indies under Company Rule, 1671-1754._ With a Supplementary Chapter, 1755-1917. By WALDEMAR WESTERGAARD, a.s.sistant Professor of History at Pomona College. Introduction by H. MORSE STEPHENS. Macmillan Company, New York, 1917. Pp. 359.

This work is the history of a company of Danish merchants desiring to avail themselves of the commercial opportunities of the New World. The work was undertaken prior to the recent negotiations of the United States for the purchase of the islands. It is the result of an attempt to "identify and appraise" a number of official and other papers found in the Bancroft Collection at the University of California. The study of these doc.u.ments led to further research in the Danish libraries and archives, especially the archives of the Danish West India and Guinea Company. The work then becomes a treatise on the rise and fall of a great corporation with business as its objective rather than the sketch of a mere colony. It has a number of helpful maps and ill.u.s.trations.

In writing this work, the author easily realized that treated as an isolated subject it would be worthless. It is, therefore, dealt with as a part of European history, that phase commonly characterized as commercial expansion. He, therefore, in accounting for the Danish interest in colonization and in estimating the part that nation actually played, finds that the experiences of the Danes were fairly typical of those of the Dutch, the French, the English and the Spanish. The narrative then is a succession of accounts of speculation, compet.i.tion, prosperity and depression. There are sketches of adventurers, buccaneers and pirates all brought forward in such a way as to tell their own story.

The author directs attention to the West Indies as the great theater in which was played the drama of history in the New World during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sugar is presented as king. The author is chiefly concerned with the crucial test to which the company was subjected, the establishment of the Brandenburgers at St. Thomas, the leasing of Guinea and St. Thomas, the governorship of John Lorentz, the plantation colonies of St. Thomas and St. John, the introduction of slavery, the slave trade, the relations of the planter and the company, the acquisition of St. Croix, and the career of the company under a new charter. In the appendix there is such valuable information as the list of governors in the West Indies and the Guinea, the directors and board of shareholders in Copenhagen, the first charter of the Danish West India and Guinea Company, the charter of 1697, important letters of officials and the report of the board of police and trade to King Frederick IV in 1716. One finds also the list of slave cargoes arriving in the Danish West Indies, the list of prices on St. Thomas from 1687 to 1751, West Indian sugar exported from Copenhagen, the company's receipts and debts at St. John and St.

Croix, the capital invested in St. Thomas in 1747, the company's business in cotton, returns on the company's capital, and other statistics.

The supplementary chapter is an effort to connect as far as possible the sketch set forth in the preceding part of the book with the events leading up to the recent purchase of the group by the United States.

The work throughout necessarily deals with the contact of the Negro with the European, as the African slaves const.i.tuted the cla.s.s of population to be exploited and, of course, were the factor essential to the rise and growth of the company.

A. H. CLEMMONS.

_The Taxation of Negroes in Virginia._ By TOPTON RAY SNAVELY, Phelps-Stokes Fellow at the University of Virginia, 1915-1917.

Publication of the University of Virginia Phelps-Stokes Papers. Pp.

97.

This work is the result of the establishment at the University of Virginia of a fellowship through a gift from the trustees of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. The holder of this fellowship must "stimulate and conduct investigations and encourage a wider general interest among students concerning the character, condition and possibilities of the Negroes in the Southern States." Carrying out this plan the inc.u.mbents have organized cla.s.ses for study and conducted special investigations, a.s.signing related topics for study, bringing the results before cla.s.ses for discussion and sometimes securing distinguished men for lectures in this field.

In this dissertation the author has undertaken something new. No one had so far treated the taxation of the Negroes in any State. As taxation is an important concern of the commonwealth, it was believed that the way in which the State determined how this burden should fall on the Negro race would do much in bringing out an understanding as to the att.i.tude of the whites to the blacks. The author claims to have adhered strictly to the facts to give an unbiased interpretation of this phase of history. The work is well done in parts. It should have been amplified. The most valuable part of it is that which treats of the problem of taxation since the Civil War. In treating the antebellum period, the author shows a lack of breadth in that he does not connect the question of the taxation of Negroes with the struggle between Eastern and Western Virginia, which finally resulted in the disruption of the State. He does not show that the West wanted the increase in taxes, necessitated by the construction of internal improvements, obtained from a tax on slaves, as the mountaineers did not have many, while the East was anxious to tax more heavily cattle and the like which flourished beyond the Alleghanies.

During the colonial period and, at times, after the Revolution, Negroes paid a capitation tax. It is remarkable that the State of Virginia in 1814 collected $8,322 from 5,547 free Negroes. The same cla.s.s of Negroes paid $11,554 in 1863 at the rate of $2 a head.

Provision was made for the capitation tax in the Const.i.tution of 1867-68. In 1870 the prepayment was required of voters but because of corruption at the ballot box it was repealed. Delinquency followed and to counteract this the tax was made a lien on real estate. The Const.i.tution of 1901-02 made the poll-tax a political measure in providing that the payment of it six months in advance of election day should be a prerequisite for voting with a registration clause as another requirement. These provisions, it seems, have not been enforced and for that reason many Negroes are returned as delinquent.

In 1914 the whites showed a delinquency of thirty per cent, and the Negroes sixty per cent.

Taking up real estate, which is the princ.i.p.al source of all taxes paid by Negroes, the author confines himself to the period since the War.

The Negroes of Virginia had $12,464,377 subject to taxation in 1900 and $28,775,199 in 1914. The tax levy in 1910 was $48,173 and $93,245 in 1914, having almost doubled during the intervening years. The delinquency in real estate taxes too is much less than that in the case of capitation taxes.

In answer to the question as to whether the Negroes of the State are sharing its burden of taxation in proportion to their ability the author brings out some interesting facts. He finds it difficult to answer this question accurately. He shows, however, that Negroes composing 32.6 per cent. of the population pay only a small part of the $7,757,532 in taxes of all kinds. The real estate, capitation, personal property and income taxes paid by Negroes in 1914 aggregated $318,381, or 5 per cent. of the real estate taxes, 3.8 per cent. of the personal property taxes, 28.1 per cent. of the capitation taxes, and .000006 per cent. of the income taxes. In all the Negroes pay about 4.1 per cent. of the revenue of the State. This estimate is doubtless too low.

NOTES

Mr. A. E. Martin, of the Pennsylvania State College, will soon publish through the Filson Club _The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky to 1850_. Mr. Martin plans to bring this study down to 1870.

The New York Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada has published _The Lure of Africa_ by C. H. Patton.

W. M. Ramsay's _The Intermixture of Races in Asia Minor_ has come from the Oxford University Press.

The Harvard University Press has published _Ephod and Ark_, by W. R.

Arnold.

July number of _The Journal of Race Development_ contains two interesting articles: _On the Culture of White Folk_, by Dr. W. E. B.

DuBois, and _Psychic Factors in the New American Race Situation_, by George W. Elliss, K.C., F.R.G.S.

The July number of the _American Journal of Sociology_ contains a rather misinforming article on _The Superiority of the Mulatto_, by Mr. E. B. Reuter, and another on _Cla.s.s and Caste_, by Edward Alsworth Ross.

In the July number of the _South Atlantic Quarterly_ appears _The Black Codes_, by Prof. John M. Mecklin, of the University of Pittsburgh.

Prof. Benjamin Brawley will soon publish a work to be known as _The Genius of the Negro_.