THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
A fifth period of African history is that of effective exploration of the interior by Europeans between 1840 and 1875. In this Explora*- Peri°d the missionary Livingstone tions preceded Stanley. But Stanley, fol-
and the lowing Burton and Speke and Grant ^fAf t"1°n an(^ Cameron, and seeking to find Livingstone, turned the attention of the world to the vast commercial value of Africa. A sixth p?riod is the period of partition, beginning when Great Britain, after taking possession of many of the best territories in the southern part of the continent, occupied Egypt in 1SS2. In the eager rush of the European powers which followed, the great continent, has been parceled out as a gold-field is parceled out by prospectors who protect by men with guns the stakes they have hastily driven into the soil, and who only then sit down to estimate the value of what they have secured in the scramble. So to the present day the history of Africa is a history of what outsiders have done in the continent rather than of what the people of the country have done or thought or planned.
4. Religion and Missions: A rapid survey of the
modern political divisions of Africa will be given
under the name of each. It seems
1. Native weU; however, to make here a few
e lgrions. generaj remarks upon some religious and social peculiarities of the people of the continent as a whole. The religion of Africa in its untouched and natural condition is not properly idolatrous. There is almost always some sense of a supreme being, who is a spirit, and from whom all power has originally proceeded. The actual religious observances of the people, however, except where they have been affected by Mohammedanism or by Christianity, are forms of spirit-worship connected with the use of fetishes (see Fetishism). Mohammedanism has become an indigenous religion in Africa. It rules absolutely the religious thought of nine-tenths of the people
2. Mo- 0{ the northern parts of the continent,
anism " an(^ controls in a less degree millions south of the Sahara from the Nile to the Niger. As a civilizing force Mohammedanism has value. The first thing the awakened negro does under Mohammedan influence is to obtain a decent robe wherewith to cover himself. Islam wherever it goes ends cannibalism. Its scheme of religious motive in life is to commend religion by making it " easy " to those who find restraint hard. It teaches a certain proportion of the people to recite Arabic litanies of praise to God, and to read Arabic; but to the great mass of the negroes its effect includes neither knowledge of Arabic nor information on the dogmas of Islam. It encourages war in a positive and very real sense; its slaveraids know no amelioration through the change from the tenth to the twentieth century; and they are barely less brutalizing than the man-eating raids which they have displaced. The weakness of Mohammedanism as a civilizing force is that it can not raise men to a level higher than the old Arabian civilization which it is proud to represent. And it is a fact of the deepest meaning, from the missionary point of view, that negroes who have
become Mohammedans are equipped with an assurance of righteousness and knowledge which makes them almost impervious to Christian instruction.
The Protestant missions, on the other hand, bring to their converts the Christian civilization of the twentieth century with its 3. Protes- blessings and enlightenment. The Missfons. belief that the commonest man will be elevated by study of the Bible, makes the literary culture of African languages a first principle in every mission. More than 100 of the tribal dialects have been reduced to writing, and have been given an elementary Biblical study apparatus which improves as the capacity of the people develops. In the process the language itself becomes in some degree purified, and its words enriched by more profound meanings, until the language receives power to express feelings. In South Africa hundreds of native Protestant churches lead independent ecclesiastical lives under native pastors. It is perhaps too soon to claim that anything is proved by the moderate successes of a century of Protestant missions; but at least it is not out of place to emphasize the wide difference of aim between the two great branches of the Christian Church now working for the regeneration of the tribes of Africa.
African missions encounter difficulty from the European colonists. Their aim is quite different from that of the colonists. This alone would make friction and mutual opposition probable. But the aim of the colonist is sometimes . . ". aggressively opposed to that of the mis- Missions. si°nary. That aim was frankly stated by the German Koloniale Zeitschrift early in 1904 as follows: " We have acquired this colony not for the evangelization of the blacks, not primarily for their well-being, but for us whites. Whoever hinders our object must be put out of the way." Such assumption of the right of might is found not only in German Southwest Africa; but in the Portuguese colonies, where the slavetrade is still brutally active; in some of the French colonies, where the cruelties of the local administration broke De Brazza's heart; and in the Kongo Independent State, where mutilations and other cruelties mark the Belgian rubber trade and are glossed over by the assurance that the cutting off of hands is an old native custom. The same spirit often appears in British colonies in Africa, but there it is repressed by the government. Where the colonist acts on the " might is right " principle the missionary works a stony soil.
The colonist has had occasion from the very beginning of missions in Africa to complain that one effect of them is to make the people (( 5- Tne self-assertive. This is not a fault, Move-8,31 provided the self-assertion does not ment." pass the limits of mutual right. During the last five or six years a movement among the native Christians of South Africa has attracted much attention. It is what is known as the " Ethiopian movement." Its watchword is " Africa for the Africans "; and its aim is to place all African churches under strictly African leader-