Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/125

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The Green Bag.


100 LITERARY

NOTES.

BY no means the least valuable of the many books which the possibility that the United States may become a colonial power, or the fact that it has become such already, — which shall we say? — has brought from the press is The History of Colonization? by Henry C. Morris, of the Chicago bar. The plan of the book is excellent. After a preliminary chapter in which the essential elements of successful colonization are pointed out — power in the parent state; density of population, excessive competition, and surplus of labor, producing a desire for new fields of work; excess of capital; production greater than the demands of home consumption and of buyers in independent foreign lands, — there follows a rapid, but discriminating, review of the colonization of antiquity,— of the Phoe nicians, whose aim was commercial develop ment by peaceful means; of the Carthaginians, who were the first to act on the principle of con quest in colonial matters, and who sought to make their possessions a source of power as well as of wealth; of the Greeks, whose conquests were, as a rule, peaceful, and whose colonial system was a most efficient force in the spread of civilization; of Rome, whose victorious troops were followed by, or transformed into, the per manent occupants of conquered lands. Coloni zation of the Italian cities is next outlined; briefly, the early efforts of Amalfi and Pisa, and more fully, the ever-interesting struggles of Flor ence, Genoa and Venice. Monopoly of trade, the destruction of competition, an extremely harsh policy of protection, — this was the policy of the Italian republics. Coming to modern times, the second half of the first volume is devoted to Portuguese, Span ish, Dutch and French colonization. Dutch methods receive deserved attention, especially the methods of the Dutch East India Company, — a company as Noël says, "without model in antiquity or in the middle ages, and destined to serve as a type for those which were to follow it." To quote from the book before us, " Mo nopoly became the watchword of the Dutch, a craze in favor of extensive combinations pre vailed. The tendency to exclusively, privileged 1 THE HISTORY OF COLONIZATION, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By Henry C. Morris. New York : The Macmillan Company. 1900. 2 vols. Cloth. ?4 .00. (pp. xxiv + xui + 842.)

associations was then as marked in the Neth erlands as the inclination to trusts in the United States at the present time." Yet, in a broad way, Dutch activity made for the freedom of trade, by leading in the attack on the doctrine of closed seas. Incidentally is noted the interesting fact that in 1672, when Louis XIV was menacing the independence of Holland, the Dutch, rather than submit, had resolved voluntarily and en masse to emigrate to Java and there reconstruct their state. The first of these two volumes, interesting as it is, is, after all, but introductory to the more important part of Mr. Morris' work, namely, the narrative of English colonization. In modern times the colonial systems of Spain and of Eng land exemplify the two leading types in this field of action, the underlying principle of the former system being " the right of the parent state to draw all possible benefit and advantage for itself from the colonies, irrespective of the inter est of the latter," while the aim of the English system has been to " construct, organize, never exhaust, but rather strengthen the dependency, let it cost the mother country what it may." Par ticularly interesting, in view of the problems before the United States in Porto Rico and Hawaii, on the one hand, and in the Philip pines, on the other, are the two chapters on later English colonization in the West Indies and in the Crown Colonies, respectively. It remains to be said only that out of a large knowledge of his subject Mr. Morris has pro duced a work which, in a relatively small com pass, gives a clear, concise and readable history of colonization. Especially to be commended as of value to those wishing to make a more detailed study, are the numerous notes with which the text is fortified, and the seemingly very full bibliography, of some thirty pages. THERE is always an added interest in a book written by one who is, to use a slang phrase, "on the inside," and this holds true of Dr. Farrelly's recent book ' on the South African ques tion. For the author, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Cape Colony, has had unusual oppor tunities to study the problem in his official 1 THE SETTLEMENT AFTER THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA. By M. J, Farrelly, LL.D. New York : The Macmillan Company, 1900. (pp. xv + 323).