ISLAND OUTPOSTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 June 1937, Page 3

ISLAND OUTPOSTS

ENRICH BRITAIN’S REALM. 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 London “Daily Telegraph’’).

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 brought their delegates' to London for the Coronation. It is remarkable that Britain, a small island-State on the north-west-ern edge of Europe, should have become, in the space of three centuries, the centre of an Empire covering more than one-fifth of the land’ Surface of the world and within whose borders' live one-fourth of the hitman race. History affords no precedent for it, and geography no parallel to it. Why have Britain’s Imperial ventures been rilore successful than those of any other nation? \ln 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.”

in TEMPERATE ZONES. * For us the Age of Discovery may II be said to have dawned in 1497, when k Cabot’s little ship after weeks of (j buffeting by the Atlantic waves, reached Newfoundland, now our old- £ est dominion. Since then explora- f tion, conquest and settlement has 1 each played its part in adding to J* British, territory the great regions of I the Dominions, east and west. AVith the history and some of the problems of the great dominions and 3 India we are familiar, but how few I have an equal knowledge of our I Colonial Empire, whose population is actually somewhat greater than that I of the entire French Overseas Empire, the next in size and importance. 4 Though oui’ colonial territories con- 1 sisf mainly of tropical possessions, in- * habited by coloured races, yet some lie in the temperate zones. Among |r the latter are our Mediterranean de-, z, pendencies, the naval station of Ber- (t muda, in the Atlantic 600 miles east j of the United States and the Falk- <« lands, whose wind-swept treeless is- 1 lands, peopled by folk of British stock, I lie some 300 miles east of Cape Horn. , . p I The administrative relationships ot 1 the Imperial Government to the many fa Crown Colonies, Protectorates and 3

Mandated Territories which it controls through the Colonial Office, . are almost as varied as the respective histories of these possessions. Some of the colonies, sucli as ; Southern Rhodesia, enjoy a large measure of .self-government, but the majority like Nyasaland. stretching along the western shores of Lake Nyasa, are administered 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.

OUT TO THE PACIFIC. 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 Somaliland, whose nomadic herdsmen send their hides across the gulf to Aden for re-export, the Governor rules alone; while the affairs of Tristan du 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. 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 ot the latter are Pitcairn Island, inhabited by descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty, and the Gilberts and Solomons. which, like Fiji, and othei teidant and sunny isles rising above the sparkling blue waters' of the midPacific, are famed . for their coconuts and copra. In the Malay Peninsula, the Venerated Malay Slates are governed by native rulers, advised by British lesidents: while the Crown Colonies, which form the- Straits Settlements, including Singapore and Penang, are ruled by a Governor (assisted by Executive and Legislative Councils), whoso ..nthority extends to British North Borneo. He also acts as British Ag-tit tor the protected State of Sarawak. where the descendants of that adventurous Englishman. .James Brooke, who established himself as raja about the middle of the last century. still hold sway. The great naval and air base of Singapore placed at the 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 Si-Kiang, the great waterway of Southern China, is greater than that of any other poi i in the East.

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, oil' the coast of Africa, once notorious us centres of the slave trade, now produce the bulk of the world s cloves; the Seychelles are noted for

copra, cinnamon oil and guano, -an Mauritius—which like the 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 ol South America: m India, where the crop is almost entirely consumed within the country: in b iji. Natal and Queensland. it is. ol course, widely grown in Jamaica. St. Vincent. St. Lucia, l tie Leeward Island. Barbados. Trinidad and lesser British islands in Hie West Indies. British Honduras, that other colony m the Curibbc region, is noted lor its mahugitnv. and also lor its chewing gum.

Al-’lllCA’S POPULACE

In the higher parts of Kenya. •Uganda. Tanganyika and other colon-

ies in East Africa there are numerous itims owned by Europeans who te native labour for the production ot • neb crops as coffee. cotton, sisal and tobacco. But the number of white

. hitlers is relatively small, ami in our possessions in tropical East Allied there arc. out of a population ol some 20.tiun.000. only about aU.noo Europeans, the bulk of whom live m Kenya and Soul hern Rhodesia. Of all our Crown colonies. Nigeria is Olio Of the most interesting. No other British possession, except India, has so largo a population, rew) are’ inhabited by so many different > tribes, varying in colour from -a light hire to almost coal black, and in ciilfilial development, from naked savages to civilised Arab and Hansa folk. ■ , i I Nigeria's varied products include palimoil and kernels, so greatly in do-1 mind by manufacturers of soap: cotton lint, tin and cocoa, but its output of this last commodity is far stirI assed by that of its neighbour, the Gold Coast, where the story of the cocoa industry reads like a romance. In IS7S there was not a single tree tn the country: to-day there are over ISU.OUOJWO. mid the Gold Coast pro-

duces nearly half the world's supply of cocoa. Nigeria, as was the case in so manj 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 colonic d’exploitation. Yet none who have seen the splendid woik bein» idonc 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 arc being ruled tor the hi nefit of native population. The aim of the British administration is to establish, so far as possible, a system of indirect rule through the chiels. and to foster a spirit of mutual trust . and co-operation.