The preceding chapter is an attempt to account for the geo-graphical distribution
of the three great divisions of mankind up to the beginning of written history,
about seven thousand years ago. But it is only the more settled groups of
Caucasians and Mongoloids who furnish historical data. The Caucasian is
essentially migratory, and the pioneers of his great movements have had things
other than literature to challenge their attention. The inhospitable forests of
Europe were more difficult to subjugate than the fertile valleys of the
Euphrates and the Nile, and in Europe, there were not servile hordes of Negroid
and mongoloid peoples among whom the Caucasians could reign as aristocrats and
thus gain opportunity for intellectual pursuits. With the pioneering groups of
early Caucasians we cannot deal fully because of scarcity of records, but we
may confidently infer that they were slowly preparing the great cultures of the
present.
Much of Babylonian restlessness falls within the historic period. Assyria rose
to dominion. Egypt and Phoenicia attained affluence through the industries and
commerce, and by them, if not before, the continent of Africa was
circumnavigated (305 B.C.). The ships of Solomon brought gold from the land of
Ophir (probably the ancient gold mines of Rhodesia). Within the historic period
the Eastern Aryans (Nordics) extended conquest and control over the inhabitants
of India, a hybrid people, the result of fusion of the earlier Caucasian
migrants there with Negroid and mongoloid aborigines. From India, during the
historic period, the Aryans passed south into Oceania and east on the mainland
into Cambodia, reinforcing the primitive Caucasian elements in these lands, and
building in Java and Cambodia, magnificent temples and great cities. Western
Aryans (Nordics) subjugated much of Europe and, by establishing aristocracies,
superimposed the civilizations of Greece and Rome.
Greek influence penetrated far and wide; and troops, well trained by Philip,
conquered, under Alexander, most of the known world. Roman legions subdued
Cartage and Greece, and Rome reigned supreme in a wide-flung empire, everywhere
creating stability of government and facilitating travel. The Roman domination
of the world led to the massing in Italy of tens of thousands of foreigners,
white, yellow, black, and mongrel, and the fusion f these with the Roman
populace has created a mongrel Italic race which, apart from certain Nordic
elements, is essentially inferior to the founders of the republic.
With the above salient facts in mind to enable us to grasp anew the white
man's early tendency toward conquest and migration, we may refer to the later
period of history, from the beginning of the Christian era to the present.
White Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and India, by conquest and culture, were
dominating and assimilating the less capable of their own race and the
Mongoloids and Negroes, there was, in the North, a nucleus of pure Caucasians,
untainted with inferior blood, preparing to fill the pages of history.
In the first century B.C., Caesar has used friendly Nordic tribes to repel
the unfriendly Nordics who were beginning to make their pressure felt. Nordic
allies and Nordic mercenaries contending in behalf of Rome strengthened her
imperial policies for a period of more than five hundred years. At last Rome
herself fell prey to the Nordic. Teutonic tribes, debouching from their forest
homes, overran the whole of Europe. The fierce warriors whom Roman legions had
long since learned to dread found none to stay their conquests. Sometimes they
fought naked to show the Roman armies their contempt for snow and ice. With
them came their women, who fought beside the men upon many bloody battlefields.
This deluge, extending over a period of more than three centuries,
conditioned the civilized world to development along Teutonic lines. It
re-Caucasianed the south of Europe. It placed Teutonic rulers on every throne
of Europe. Many German tribes, forming part of the great conquest, were
assimilated by their conquered peoples who, in all instances, were more
numerous than the victors. Among those who retained race purity, at least
approximately, were the Lombards of North Italy, the Northern Franks (French),
who conquered Gual and gave their name to the new possession, and the Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes, who subjugated the British Isles. It should not escape our attention
that it is the Teutons which retained closest relation to the home land, that
led in European progress. The tribes that became isolated were eventually
submerged by the surrounding populations, but the road to the north remained
open to Saxon, Frank and Lombard.
In the eighth century, A.D., the great Arab religious movement was
initiated. Incited by Mohammed, frenzied leader of a fanatical religion, the
Arabs and their co-religionists quickly conquered Egypt, and proceeding
westward from Egypt, in an amazingly short time the remainder of North Africa.
Crossing into Spain, the Moslem warriors overran that peninsula, sweeping all
before them until they encountered a Teutonic army at Poitiers. To the east,
the Moslem conquerors spread through Persia to western India, everywhere
imposing their religion upon the inhabitants. From India and from Arabia, the
Muhammadans invaded Oceania, profoundly influencing every land which fell before
their might. The fanatical Moros of the Philippines, of whose fearlessness
American soldiers will bear witness, are Moslems, possibly partly Caucasian in
race, a result of the extension of the Muhammadans eastward.
Hurled back from Europe, the Moslem turned to Negro Africa for easy
conquest. During the past thousand years they have extended race and influence
from the Mediterranean southward to the Negro Belt beyond the Sahara. From the
East Coast the Arab influence reached Lake Victoria Nyanza and the headwaiters
of the Nile. There is but little doubt that Arab Muhammadans crossed the
continent of Africa long before Stanley made his memorable journey. From
Zanzibar, the Arab established his control on the mainland as far south as the
present province of Portuguese East Africa, while his influence spread far
inland. At Bwana Mkubwa, Northern Rhodesia, the author was entertained by a
Muhammadan Negroid chief who wore the customary Moslem fez and robes. This
point is probably two thousand five hundred miles south of the Mediterranean
and nearly a thousand miles west of the Indian Ocean on the East Coast. That
this isolated region should have a Negroid Muhammadan aristocracy ruling the
purer Negroes is evidence of the wide spread Moslem faith in Africa.
Possessed of a religion which encouraged concubinage and plurality of wives,
of a faith which drew a religious line; but not a color line, in matrimony, the
Caucasian Arab has, throughout the most of Africa, become mongrelized.
In the next great Caucasian migration, Nordics displaced the Semites. Born
in Teutonic (Lombard) Italy, Columbus was sent by Teutonic Spaniards (Goths) in
search of a western passage to India. The discoveries of Columbus resulted in
the migration of Teutonic peoples to North America and of Latins, or mongrel
Teutons, to South America. But these migrations are of recent date and do not
require further attention at this point.
The important African movement of the Negroes during the historic period is
that of the Bantu, whose migrations had carried them southward to the
neighborhood of Natal at the time the Portuguese were rounding the Cape of Good
Hope; a more recent extension of these people enabled them to reach Cape Town.
From the standpoint of the color problem, with which this volume is more
immediately concerned, the important Negro movements of the historic period
have been involuntary. Captive Arabs in order to escape servitude to the
Portuguese offered, as payment for freedom, to conduct the Portuguese to a land
whose people would readily become slaves. It was thus that the Europeans
entered the slave trade. The Portuguese at first carried their Negro slaves to
the agricultural provinces of Portugal and Spain. But as the colonization of
the New world progressed and the Indian proved unsatisfactory in service, there
arose a demand for Negro slaves beyond the Atlantic. Other nations; Spanish,
Flemish, French, English, Danish, Swedish and North American colonials, entered
the slave traffic, which, from the first, was highly remunerative.
As a result of the Negro's enforced migration, there are at present more
than twenty millions of African descent in the New World and, if a normal rate
of increase continues, there should be approximately sixty millions of Negroes
and Negroids in the Americas at the end of this century.
Considering China as the racial center of the Mongolian domain, we find to
the west and north of the confines of the Chinese peoples proper, a
yellow-white hybrid group of Mongolians stretching from Lapland in Europe across
Asia to Japan, but dipping southward in Western Asia to include the still more
highly Caucasianized Mongoloids, the Turki peoples (Turks). These white-yellow
hybrids speak an agglutinating tongue known as Ural-Altaic. The Chinese proper
speak a monosyllabic language. To the south and partly to the west of the
chinese proper (Tibet, Siam, French Indo-China), Mongoloids or Chinese mixtures
with Caucasic or Negroid people number many millions.
The historic movements of the yellow race assume two main phases; the slow
advance in all directions by Chinese colonists and the Mongoloid military
irruptions westward into Europe. Chinese and hybrid Caucasians, such as are
still found in Manchuria and Korea, reached Japan carrying with them bronze
weapons and assimilated or drove northward the stone age Caucasians of that
country. Remnants of this primitive Caucasian people are yet found in the
northern island, Yezo. The Mongolian race has readily interbred with all
peoples with whom it has come in contact. The next chapter will deal with this
phase of the color problem.