Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Le Bon Gustave
Title : Algeria and the Ideas Prevailing in France Concerning Colonization
Year : 1887

Link download : Le_Bon_Gustave_-_Algeria_and_the_Ideas_Prevailing_in_France_Concerning_Colonization.zip

In the economic battle between the Western world and the Orient, a battle which undoubtedly will be one of the heaviest preoccupations of the 20th Century and will inevitably lead to more destruction and spilled blood than the most calamitous wars of passed times, the colonies will clearly be called upon to play a first-rate role. One can hardly dispute the interest that we have in keeping the small number of them that we possess, and we therefore should not remain indifferent to that which affects them. When one closely examines the administration of the colonies established by diverse European peoples, one sees that it is based on a small number of very plain principles. These principles, necessarily engendered by experience, and which consequently ought to be the same everywhere, vary on the contrary in a considerable manner from one people to another. “From one people to another” is perhaps too much to say because, with regard to the ideas concerning colonization, one can distinguish among the European nations two classes—one made up by we French alone, and the other comprising all the other nations. This latter—the other European nations—established colonies in order to keep them and to draw profit. Superior to these shabby preoccupations, and not unmindful that divine Providence has given us the role to convey to different peoples of the world the benefits of our civilization and the institutions that the world envies us for, we try to govern them with out institutions and ideas. Institutions and ideas are unfortunately rejected with complete unanimity. Certain of our good duty, we nevertheless have kept persisting in our doctrines, with the result being that up to this day a sufficient number of disastrous operations have occurred that convincingly prove that, with respect to colonies, our grand principles are, as much from the theoretical point of view as from the practical point of view, lamentable errors. ...