Page:West African Studies.djvu/342

 the Navigator. But the history of Portugal in West Africa from the days of the Navigator onwards wants writing. Sir A. B. Ellis fortunately gives us, in his history of the Gold Coast, an account of the part that Portugal played there, but, except for this region, you must hunt it up second-hand in the references made to it by prejudiced rivals, or in scattered Portuguese books and manuscripts. While as for the commercial history of Portugal in West Africa, although it has been an unbroken one from the fifteenth century to our own time, it has so far not been written at all. This seems to me all the more deplorable, because it is full of important lessons for those nations who are now attempting to exploit the regions she first brought them into contact with.

It must be noted, for one thing, that Portugal was the first European nation to tackle Africa in what is now by many people considered the legitimate way, namely, by direct governmental control. Other nations left West African affairs in the hands of companies of merchant adventurers and private individuals for centuries. Nevertheless, Portugal is nowadays unpopular among the other nations engaged in exploiting Africa. I shrink from embroiling myself in controversy, but I am bound to say I think she has become unpopular on account of prejudice, coupled with that strange moral phenomenon that makes men desirous of persuading themselves that a person they have treated badly deserves such treatment.

The more powerful European nations have dealt scandalously, from a moral standpoint, with Portugal in Africa. This one could regard calmly, it being in the nature of powerful nations to do this sort of thing, were it not for the airs they give themselves; and to hear them