But until science solves the problems of tropical disease, East
and Central Africa must not be looked upon as an area for white
colonization. Perhaps they will never be a white man's country in any
real sense. In those huge territories the white man's task will probably
be largely confined to that of administrator, teacher, expert, manager,
or overseer of the large negro populations, whose progressive
civilization will be more suitably promoted in connection with the
industrial development of the land.
[Sidenote: The Germans discouraged white settlement.]
[Sidenote: Natives compelled to work for planters.]
[Sidenote: German system more profitable one.]
It is clear from their practice in East Africa that the Germans had
decided to develop the country not as an ordinary colony, but as a
tropical possession for the cultivation of tropical raw materials. They
systematically discouraged white settlement; the white colonists, with
their small farms, gradually building up a European system on a small
scale, who are a marked feature of British colonies, were conspicuously
absent. Instead, tracts of country were granted to companies,
syndicates, or men with large capital, on conditions that plantations of
tropical products would be cultivated. The planters were supplied with
native labor under a government system which compelled the natives to
work for the planters for a certain very small wage during part of every
year; and as labor was very plentiful, with seven and a half millions of
natives, the future for the capitalist syndicates seemed rosy enough.
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