AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE? BY JOHN H. HARRIS Author of Dawn in Darkest Africa (Smith, Elder & Co.,) WITH PREFACE BY SIR SYDNEY OLIVIER K.C.M.G., C.B. (Assistant Comptroller & Auditor, LONDON: 32 RUSSELL SQUARE, W.C.I PREFACE BY SIR SYDNEY OLIVIER, formerly Governor of Jamaica THE war has augmented the sensible importance of Africa and African peoples in the progresswhether it is to be through conflict or through co-operation of the complex life of our world, and especially that of the British Empire; since that Empire, according to the figures which Mr. Harris gives on page 20 of this book, controls about one-third of the total population of the continent, and not far from half the total number controlled by all European Powers taken together. The African peoples-that blended tissue of races, with all its varieties of locally adapted civilizations-in speaking and writing of which we are accustomed to bandy summary generalizations about "The Negro," "The Black Man," or more vulgarly "natives" or "niggers "-have both risen several degrees higher above the horizon of our general insular consciousness during the war, and have themselves, considering them and their transplanted blood-relations in America and the West Indies together, learnt a great deal 495890 |