WEALTH OF EMPIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1937, Page 18

WEALTH OF EMPIRE

THE REALM OF BRITAIN

ONE-FIFTH OF THE GLOBE

SOURCES OF RICHES

In the first part of the Coronation Oath, the King gave his promise in solemn words to govern according to their respective laws and customs the peoples not only of Great Britain and Ireland, but of "Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa, of your Possessions and other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, and of your Empire of India" (writes Jasper H. - Stembridge, geographical editor of the Oxford University Press, in the "Daily Telegraph"). Later- the Imperial Conference—representing the political life of the Empire at home and .overseas—assembled, under Mr. Baldwin's presidency, at St. James's Palace for consultation on problems -.which arise from those "laws and customs" and the relationship which each part bears to the other members of the Commonwealth. ■ ' . It. may be appropriate, therefore, to take a glance over the globe and bring to mind not only the principal constituents, but the small and scattered people—colonies, protectorates, and dependencies—whose allegiance to the Crown' has brought their delegate to London for the Coronation. It is remarkable that Britain, a small island-State on the north-western edge of Europe, should have become, in the space of three centuries, the centre of an Empire covering more than onefifth of the land surface of the world, and within whose, borders live onefourth of the human race. History affords- no .precedent for it and geography no parallel to it. MARITIME SUPREMACY. Why have Britain's Imperial ventures been more successful than those of any other nation? 'In part, the answer lies in her maritime supremacy, which has made possible'the forging of ties that are commercial rather than military. In part, it is due to motives of patriotism, religious fervour, desire for high adventure or hope of gain, but also .to qualities of character, grit, and. dogged perseverance. But in great measure Britain's achievements have been due to her ability to profit by her mistakes —such as those through which she lost the American colonies—to the elasticity of a system which adapts itself to changing conditions; and above all to the development of the Commonwealth ideal, and to that sense of trusteeship towards less advanced peoples' which have given a new meaning to ■ the word "Empire." ' i . For us the Age of Discovery may be said to have dawned in 1497, when Cabot's ■ little ship, after weeks :of buffeting by the Atlantic waves, reached- Newfoundland, now our oldest Dominion. Since then exploration, conquest, and * settlement have each played their part in adding to British territory the great regions of the Dominions, east and west. With the history and some of the problems of, the great Dominions and India we are familiar, but how few have an equal knowledge of our Colonial Empire, whose population is actually somewhat greater than that of the entire French Overseas Empire, the next in size and importance. IN TEMPERATE ZONES. Though our colonial' territories consist mainly of tropical possessions, inhabited by coloured races, yet some lie in the temperate zones. Among s the latter are our Mediterranean dependencies, the naval station of Bermuda, in the Atlantic.6oo miles east of the. United States, and the Falklands, whose wind-swept treeless islands, peopled by folk of British stock,.lie some 300 miles east of Cape Horn. The administrative. relationships of the Imperial Government to the many Crown Colonies, Protectorates,' and Mandated Territories, which it controls through the Colonial Office, are almost.as varied as the. respective histories of these possessions. Some of.the colonies, such as Southern Rhodesia, enjoy a large measure of self-government; but the majority, like Nyasaland, ■ stretching _ along the western shores of Lake Nyasa, are ad- ' ministered by a Governor who is assisted by an Executive ' Council and a Legislative Council. The Bahamas—the . West " Indian islands which have' become a popular resort of American tourists^-have an elective Assembly. . On the.other hand,, in St. Helena, the rocky island set in the- mid-Atlan-tic where Napoleon died in exile, the Governor., is assisted'by/an Executive Council only; in the arid protectorate of Somaiiland, whose i<bmadic herdsmen • send their hides across the gulf to Aden for re-export, the Governor .rules alone; while the affairs of Tristan da Cunha, whose, tiny island-group lies midway between the. Cape and South America, are managed by a Chief, who is Chairman of the Island Council. Some of the mandated territories, like Palestine, are controlled by the Imperial Government; but others —for example, what was formerly German New Guinea, for which the mandate was assigned to Australia—are administered by .Dominion Governments. UNDER CONDOMINIUM. • The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is governed by. Britain and Egypt. under a condominium; while the New Hebrides are ruled jointly by a French High Commissioner and the British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. Included in the jurisdiction of the latter are Pitcairn Island, inhabited by descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty, and the Gilberts and Solomons, which, like Fiji, and other verdant and sunny isles rising above the sparkling blue waters of the mid-Pacific, are famed for their coconuts and copra. In the Malay Peninsula, the Federated Malay States are- governed by native rulers, advised by, British residents; while the Crown' Colonies, which form the Straits Settlements, including ■ Singapore and Penang, are ruled by a Governor (assisted by Executive and Legislative Councils), whose authority extends to British North Borneo. He also acts as British Agent for the protected State of Sarawak, where the descendants of that adventurous Englishman, James Brooke, who •established himself as a rajah about the middle of the last century, still hold sway. The great naval and air base of Singapore placed at crossroads between India and China, Japan and Australia, has drawn to herself much of the trade of Malaya and the adjacent East Indies. Chief among the exports of Malaya are rubber, of which the country produces .some. 60 per cent, of the world's supply, and tin, of which its output exceeds that of any other State.' But the trade of Hong Kong, off the mouth of the SiKiang, the great waterway .of Southern . China, is greater than ■ that of any other port in the East. TROPICAL WEALTH. Of the many British islands scattered throughout "the Indian Ocean, Ceylon, the most important, is, of course, one of the foremost tea exporting countries; Zanzibar and Pemba, off the coast of Africa, once notorious as centres of the slave trade, now produce the bulk of the world's cloves; the Seychelles are noted for copra, cinna-

mori oil, and guano; and Mauritius— which, like the Seychelles, was first colonised by the French —supplies the United Kingdom with a large proportion of its cane sugar. Cane sugar is cultivated in many other parts of the Empire; in British Guiana, our only colony on the mainland of South America; in India, where th- crop is almost entirely consumed within the country; in Fiji, Natal, and Queensland. It is, of course, widely grown in Jamaica, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, the Leeward Islands', Barbados, Trinidad, and lesser British islands in the West Indies. British Honduras, that other colony in the Caribbean region, is noted for its mahogany, and also for its chewing gum. In the higher parts of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and other colonies' in East Africa there are numerous farms owned by Europeans who use, native labour for the production of such crops as coffee, cotton, sisal, and tobacco. But the number of white settlers U relatively small, and in our possessions in tropical East Africa there are, out of a population of some 20,000,000, only about 50,000 Europeans, the bulk of whom live in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia. ROMANTIC COLONIES. Of all our Crown colonies, Nigeria is one of. t^ie most interesting. No other British possession, except India, has so large a population. Few are inhabited by so many different tribes, varying in colour from a light hue to almost coal black, and in cultural development from naked savages to civilised Arab and Hausa folk. Nigeria's varied products include palm oil and kernels, so greatly in demand by manufacturers of soap; cotton lint, tin, and cocoa, but its output of this last commodity is far surpassed by that of its neighbour, the Gold Coast, where the story of the cocoa''industry reads like a romance. In 1878 there was not a single tree in the country; today there are over 180,000,000, and the Gold Coast produces nearly half the world's supply of cocoa. Nigeria, as was the case in so many of: our overseas territories, was first developed by a chartered company. Like 'those other West African colonies, the Gold Coast," the, Gambia, and Sierra Leone, it was founded (to use the descriptive French term) as a colonie d'exploitation. Yet none who have seen the splendid work being done in educational and health services, waging war on insect pests, and stimulating agriculture, and opening up the country by , building roads and railways, can doubt that such colonies ' as Nigeria-are being ruled for the benefit of the native population. The aim of the British administration is to establish, so-far as possible, a system of indirect rule through,'the chiefs, and to foster a spirit of mutual trust \ and co-operation. :