In Southwest Africa, Hottentot mulattoes crossing from the Cape caused widespread change.  They were strong men and daring fighters and soon became dominant in what is now German Southwest Africa, where they fought fiercely with the Bantu Ova-Hereros.  Armed with fire arms, these Namakwa Hottentots threatened Portuguese West Africa, but Germany intervened, ostensibly to protect missionaries.  By spending millions of dollars and thousands of soldiers Germany has nearly exterminated these brave men.

Thus we have between the years 1400 and 1900 a great period of migration up to 1750, when Bushmen, Hottentot, Bantu, and Dutch appeared in succession at Land’s End.  In the latter part of the eighteenth century we have the clash of the Hottentots and Bechuana, followed in the nineteenth century by the terrible wars of Chaka, the Kaffirs, and Matabili.  Finally, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, we see the gradual subjection of the Kaffir-Zulus and the Bechuana under the English and the final conquest of the Dutch.  The resulting racial problem in South Africa is one of great intricacy.

To the racial problem has been added the tremendous problem of modern capital brought by the discovery of gold and diamond mines, so that the future of the Negro race is peculiarly bound up in developments here at Land’s End, where the ship of the Flying Dutchman beats back and forth on its endless quest.

FOOTNOTES: 

[34] Stowe:  Native Races of South Africa, pp. 215-216.

VIII AFRICAN CULTURE

We have followed the history of mankind in Africa down the valley of the Nile, past Ethiopia to Egypt; we have seen kingdoms arise along the great bend of the Niger and strive with the ancient culture at its mouth.  We have seen the remnants of mankind at Land’s End, the ancient culture at Punt and Zymbabwe, and followed the invading Bantu east, south, and west to their greatest center in the vast jungle of the Congo valleys.

We must now gather these threads together and ask what manner of men these were and how far and in what way they progressed on the road of human culture.

That Negro peoples were the beginners of civilization along the Ganges, the Euphrates, and the Nile seems proven.  Early Babylon was founded by a Negroid race.  Hammurabi’s code, the most ancient known, says “Anna and Bel called me, Hammurabi the exalted prince, the worshiper of the gods; to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, to go forth like the sun over the black-head race, to enlighten the land, and to further the welfare of the people.”  The Assyrians show a distinct Negroid strain and early Egypt was predominantly Negro.  These earliest of cultures were crude and primitive, but they represented the highest attainment of mankind after tens of thousands of years in unawakened savagery.