Hoheit,' which corresponds with our interpretation of our vague term 'Protectorate.' But when complete sovereignty or 'Landes Hoheit,' is conceded, they invariably stipulate that their local customs and systems of government shall be respected. On this point they are, perhaps, more tenacious than most subject races with whom the British Empire has had to deal; while their views and ideas of life are extremely difficult for an Englishman to understand. It is therefore certain that even an imperfect and tyrannical native African administration, if its extreme excesses were controlled by European supervision, would be in the early stages productive of far less discomfort to its subjects than well-intentioned but ill-directed efforts of European magistrates, often young and headstrong, and not invariably gifted with sympathy and introspective powers. If the welfare of the native races is to be considered, if dangerous revolts are to be obviated, the general policy of ruling on African principles through native rulers must be followed for the present. Yet it is desirable that considerable districts in suitable localities should be administered on European principles by European officials, partly to serve as types to which the native governments may gradually approximate, but principally as cities of refuge in which individuals of more advanced views may find a living if native government presses unduly upon them, just as in Europe of the Middle Ages men whose love of freedom found the iron-bound system of feudalism intolerable, sought eagerly the comparative liberty of cities."[1]
There are a good many points in the above classic passage on which I would fain become diffuse, but I
- ↑ Preface by Sir George Goldie to Vandeleur's Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger, 1898.
