Britain, Germany and Colonial Violence

in South-West Africa, 1884-1919: The

Herero and Nama Genocide Mads
Bomholt Nielsen
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Britain, Germany and
Colonial Violence in
South-West Africa, 1884–1919
The Herero and Nama Genocide

Mads Bomholt Nielsen

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies

Series Editors
Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, UK

Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a well-­
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lenged, colonial rule. The collection includes transnational, comparative
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 Mads Bomholt Nielsen

Britain, Germany and

Colonial Violence in
South-West Africa,
1884–1919
The Herero and Nama Genocide
Mads Bomholt Nielsen
Ministry of Higher Education and Science
Copenhagen, Denmark

ISSN 2635-1633     ISSN 2635-1641 (electronic)

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
ISBN 978-3-030-94560-2    ISBN 978-3-030-94561-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94561-9

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 Map of German South West Africa

Picture 1 Map of South West Africa with tribal lands and German Presence,
1890, National Archives of Namibia, Blue Book Draft, ADM 255
 Acknowledgements

This book is the culmination of a long journey. When I moved to London

in 2012 to do an MA at King’s College London, I was able to expand on
my interest in British and German colonial history with the support of
Richard Drayton and Francisco Bethencourt—who would both eventually
supervise my PhD dissertation. I owe them both my gratitude for seeing
potential in me and for expertly helping to turn my rather incoherent ideas
into something sensible. My PhD dissertation was eventually examined by
Chris Clark and Saul Dubow who also gave me wonderful advice on where
to improve (and perhaps most importantly, revise) the dissertation. After
my PhD, I moved back to the University of Copenhagen as a Postdoc,
where I was lucky enough to be mentored by Stuart Ward. I wish to thank
Stuart for always taking the time to give me advice and pushing me when
I needed it.
Being funded by the Carlsberg Foundation for another project, which
overlaps with the preparation of this book, I was able to visit archives
around the world and conduct research—of which much has gone into
this book. Of all the funding bodies that are providing vital financial sup-
port for early career scholars, the Carlsberg Foundation has proven to be
an incredibly generous and understanding support. I owe them my grati-
tude. Several people have also helped in the preparation of the book. The
team at Palgrave: Lucy Kidwell and Raghupathy Kalyanaraman have both
shown great patience and understanding in what it is, writing a book dur-
ing a pandemic and working from home. The anonymous reviewers also
deserve credit for their in-depth and constructive feedback, which helped
shape the book and clarify its purpose and scope.

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On a personal level, this book could not have been completed without
the support of friends and family. My parents who always supported and
believed in me were crucial in helping me through my years as a PhD stu-
dent in London. Among my close friends, Ali Adjorlu, Christian Weber
and Henry James Evans have proven to be the most loyal and understand-
ing friends. I must especially commend their ability to take work com-
pletely off my mind and for lending an attentive ear for whenever I vented
my frustrations. Parts of the book were written in the company of my
friend and colleague, Thomas Storgaard, during our ‘writing sessions’
which provided the most productive, focused and stringently organized
work environment one could imagine. I must also express my gratitude to
my friend, Daniel Steinbach. Daniel provided feedback and comments on
early drafts and gave me advice on how to improve the book in terms of
content, style and, above all, structure. Discussing the writing process
(and the affairs of the world) with Daniel while strolling through parks or
sitting at a café have lifted the quality of the book immensely and made the
writing itself more enjoyable.
Finally, there are two people I must thank above everyone else: my son
August and my wife Anna. The patience and unyielding support they have
given in the process of completing this book cannot be understated. I am
grateful for every minute of wonderful distraction they both have given
me. Had they not, writing this book would have been immensely more
difficult. This book is therefore dedicated to them both—not so much for
its ominous topic, but for the effort that has been put into writing it.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Colonial Violence in Southern Africa at the Turn of the

Twentieth Century 15

3 Imperial Cooperation and Anglo-German Diplomacy 43

4 Concerns and Non-Cooperation 71

5 Case 609: African Refugees in British Territory 93

6 Knowledge and Reactions121

7 Atrocity Narratives and the End of German Colonialism,

1918–19153

8 Conclusion193

Cited Works203

Index225

ix
 Abbreviations

A.B.I.R Anglo-Belgian-India Rubber

APS Aborigines’ Protection Society
BAB Bundesarchiv (Lichterfelde, Germany)
CAB Cabinet Papers
CMP Cape Mounted Police
CO Colonial Office
FO Foreign Office
GSWA German South West Africa
NAN National Archives of Namibia (Windhoek)
PMC Permanent Mandates Commission
NASA National Archives of South Africa (Pretoria)
SCC Special Criminals Court
SWA South West Africa
TNA The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom)
WNLA Witwatersrand Native Labour Agency
WO War Office

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 July 1919—less than a week after

Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles—Lord Curzon, Leader of the
House of Lords, proclaimed the treaty to be ‘the end of a tragic chapter in
the history of the world’. Germany’s defeat was not only the downfall of a
nation, but of the ‘Prussian character, which is incompatible with good
government and the ordered progress of the world’. One of the stains of
this Prussian character on the world was the German colonial empire,
which had ‘a record of force and fraud and ruthless disregard for the inter-
est of the native people’. Indeed, ‘German rule’, Curzon asserted, ‘was
characterised by almost undeviating harshness, and in some cases revolting
cruelty. Under this system, vast areas of territory were depopulated. Some
tribes, like the wretched Herero’s in South-West Africa, were literally
exterminated.’ The ‘absolutely overwhelming’ evidence of German bru-
tality and violence, he declared, meant that the ‘13-14,000,000 dark-­
skinned men’ in the German colonies, ‘could not be abandoned’.1
Colonial violence was at the crux of the British and dominion campaign
to end German colonialism during the Paris peace conference after World
War I. Equipped with reports and evidence of German colonial misrule
and ‘wishes of natives’ to be under British rule, the British and dominion
governments successfully portrayed the confiscation of Germany’s colo-
nies as an act of humanitarian interventionism.2 The most influential and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Bomholt Nielsen, Britain, Germany and Colonial Violence in
South-West Africa, 1884–1919, Cambridge Imperial and Post-
Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94561-9_1
2 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

renowned piece of evidence presented on German colonial violence was

the 1918 Foreign Office Blue Book, entitled Report on the Natives of
South-West Africa and their Treatment by Germany. Compiled after the
South African invasion of German South West Africa (GSWA) in 1915,
the report—conventionally referred to as ‘the Blue Book’—provided a
detailed account of German atrocities against the Herero and Nama, espe-
cially during the rebellions of 1903–8.3 German counter-insurgency dur-
ing these rebellions notably involved the use of concentration camps and
orders for the outright extermination of Africans. Approximately eighty
per cent of the Herero population and fifty per cent of the Nama popula-
tion perished in what is generally agreed to be the first genocide of the
twentieth century. This violence, the Blue Book concluded, should ‘con-
vince the most confirmed sceptic of the unsuitability of the Germans to
control natives, and show him what can be expected if the unfortunate
natives are ever again handed back to their former regime’.4
The Blue Book indicated that Britain was unaware of the violence in
GSWA before the 1915 invasion.5 Indeed, if Britain had been aware of the
violence at the time it occurred, any association, involvement or failure to
protest would significantly undermine attempts to confiscate German col-
onies on the grounds of violence and misrule. Yet, before 1914, Britain
and South African authorities were not just aware of the violence in GSWA,
but had cooperated with the Germans on a number of occasions. Moreover,
the extensive colonial borders and the trans-nationality of colonial regions,
where Africans, traders and information, for example, crossed the borders
relatively freely, meant that knowledge of the atrocities was widespread.
Above all, the placing of British military attachés with German forces in
GSWA from February 1905 meant that the British government was in
possession of detailed reports on the violence while it actually occurred.6
The fact that no official protest against German colonial violence and mis-
rule was launched until 1918 is indicative of the intricate links between
colonial violence on the one hand and politics and diplomacy on the other.
Indeed, the different international, imperial and diplomatic contexts of
1903–8 and 1918–19 respectively, were determining factors in how colo-
nial violence was presented to suit specific aims and interests. Thus, the
post-war denunciation of German colonialism intentionally obscured the
underlying and deeper level of interaction that existed during the Herero
and Nama rebellions.
This book concerns what can ostensibly be called ‘the British factor’ in
German colonial violence in GSWA. Through the eyes of British and Cape
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

statesmen, officials and colonial officers, it examines British and South

African (Cape Colony until 1910 and hereafter the Union of South Africa)
perspectives on, and involvement in, German colonial violence in GSWA
until the end of German colonialism in 1919. The book thus revolves
around two basic questions: How did a neighbouring colonial power react
to and perceive colonial violence and atrocities such as those committed
by Germany against the Herero and Nama? Further, what factors deter-
mined the different reactions, views and policies taken by the neighbour-
ing colonial power? In considering colonial violence in a trans-imperial
light, which accounts for both metropolitan and colonial contexts (whereas
trans-colonialism concerns the latter), this book attempts to show that
histories of colonial violence cannot be contained within nationally demar-
cated colonial borders. Instead, it occurred in a context in which other
colonial powers were involved either directly or indirectly. This occurred
on several levels that transcended the immediate space where colonial vio-
lence was perpetrated as the atrocities in GSWA were, for instance, per-
ceived and responded to by Britain in the context of European, imperial
and colonial considerations.
The intention of this book is to connect the developing scholarship on
colonial violence to broader historical themes of political, diplomatic and
imperial histories. A recurring problem with the scholarship on colonial
violence is arguably that it remains compartmentalised in nationally
deduced colonial empires. This book thus sets out to challenge this com-
partmentalisation of the colonial world, telling the story of German colo-
nial violence through the eyes of its colonial neighbour. Surprisingly few
studies of colonial violence move beyond the confines of German, French
or even British colonial histories. Instead, comparisons are widespread—in
particular, colonial violence is deemed ‘softer’ in British colonial history
than that perpetrated as part of Belgian or indeed German colonialism,
serving, as Kim Wagner has noted, to perpetuate narratives of British
exceptionalism as a particularly benign colonial power. However, brutal
and racialised colonial violence was as much a feature of British imperial-
ism as it was of German colonialism.7 Such casual comparisons or juxtapo-
sitions, though, are intended for inward elucidation: to either distinguish
a specific colonial type or make histories of colonial violence normative in
a nationally compartmentalised colonial historiography. Indeed, like impe-
rial history as a whole, it is characteristic of colonial violence as a sub-­
theme that the links between empires have not been as thoroughly examined
as those within empires.8
4 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

Despite criticism of the pervasive notion of Britain as a more benign

and ‘soft’ colonial power than others, the image still prevails in the ‘empire
debate’ and historically, with British statesmen and the public generally
conceiving of Britain as the most enlightened colonial power.9 This self-­
identification derives from the humanitarianism that emerged out of the
abolitionist movement in the late eighteenth century. Humanitarian dis-
course remained a central ideology of empire in Britain, sustaining both its
moral and legal basis.10 After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and
slavery in 1833, humanitarianism remained a key ideology and it was con-
stantly re-invented by influential lobby groups such as the Aborigines’
Protection Society or the Congo Reform Association which publicly pro-
tested against colonial mistreatment and violence.11 For the British gov-
ernment, humanitarian discourses were widespread within Whitehall and
anti-slavery remained a ‘blessed word’ in the Colonial Office because of its
central position as a view of British government officials, politicians and
the general public and because, by the mid-nineteenth century, it had,
according to Andrew Porter, become a ‘vital component of Britain’s
national and imperial identity’.12 Within this humanitarian discourse was
an inherent revisionist agenda towards the institution of empire, in which
moral standards, often reduced to notions of development, civilisation and
anti-slavery, were embedded as justifications for colonial rule. In other
words, seemingly benign views became a driving force for imperial
expansion.
Such moral expectancy, however, did not align with the oppressive
nature of colonial rule. At the crux of the moral underpinnings of imperi-
alism was a contradiction between the humanitarian expectancy of empire
and its violent reality.13 Furthermore, pervasive humanitarian notions also
put colonial rule ‘on trial’ and facilitated criticism of mistreatment and
violence.14 As Alice Conklin has shown in the context of French West
Africa, the civilising ideals colonial states were expected to uphold, did not
align with the widespread practices of coercion and forced labour in the
colonies. To overcome this clear contradiction, each situation could be
amended and explained. Thus, while coercion was seemingly morally inex-
cusable, forced labour was claimed to ‘improve’ colonial subjects, prevent-
ing natural racial ‘degeneration’.15 Humanitarianism was therefore not
necessarily the opposite of biological racial determinism. Rather, racial
attitudes were embedded in the discourse of ‘civilising’ and ‘protection’.
Crucially, humanitarianism remained a key context in which colonial vio-
lence was construed and reacted to. It was a widespread moral norm
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

associated with the purpose and justification of empire; meaning, that

when Germany so overtly violated the humanitarian expectancy in colo-
nial rule, this discourse formed a central backdrop in which reports, state-
ments and information on violence were read.
While the image of more benign British colonisers remains, German
colonialism has long been correctly associated with excessive violence and
brutality, not only in GSWA but also in other colonies such as German
East Africa, where the character and cruelty of Carl Peters—‘the German
Rhodes’—and his Deutsch Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft (German East Africa
Company) epitomised colonial oppression and violence.16 Peters and his
followers have been described as cultivating ‘a cult of violence’ in which
Africans were degraded—treated like animals and used as forced labourers,
with blatant racial ideology directing the establishment of German colo-
nial rule.17 Furthermore, German military forces also brutally suppressed
two major colonial wars—the Wahehe rebellion (1891–8) and Maji Maji
rebellion (1905–7). In the latter, the main German aim was to punish the
rebels and prevent future rebellions, leading to excessive use of violence
and corporal punishment.18 The suppression of the Herero and Nama
rebellions in GSWA, however, is arguably the most noteworthy example of
German colonial violence. The German government acknowledged it as a
genocide on 28 May 2021 after years of pressure from scholars and activ-
ists and negotiations with the Namibian government. GSWA, therefore,
remains the most prominent example because of the widespread belief that
the genocide against the Herero and Nama constituted a precursor or
‘testing ground’ for the Holocaust. The use of concentration camps, med-
ical experiments on prisoners and the overt racism characterising this
genocide presents a clear imagery of parallels and comparisons to the
Holocaust and has led to a rekindled ‘colonial Sonderweg’, with the roots
of Nazism supposedly found in Namibia.19 Such view is of course deriving
Hannah Arendt’s and Aimé Césaire’s respective stipulation that colonial
methods of oppression ‘boomeranged’ and instigated total war and totali-
tarianism in Europe.20 This has had significant consequences on the histo-
riographical context in which German colonial violence in GSWA is
currently understood. The towering shadow of the Holocaust functions as
an end-point, whereby history is perceived retrospectively and contained
within German national history.21 Not only is such a perspective reductive,
it also points to German historical exceptionalism in terms of violence and
genocide, applying both to German national and colonial history.22 This
stands in contrast to the intensive entanglements and connections of
6 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

colonial spheres—drawing connections with the Holocaust, whether

intentionally or unintentionally, mainly serves to obscure the colonial con-
text. Consequently, as Reinhart Kössler noted, if GSWA remains transfixed
in a trajectory leading up to the Holocaust, ‘the overall question of colo-
nialism is easily lost sight of’.23
It is tempting to approach German colonial violence in GSWA from a
British perspective for a number of reasons: there is a strong empirical
basis for such an approach as extensive numbers of sources relating to
German colonial violence can be found in British and South African
archives. Geographically, the colonial borders between GSWA and the
Cape and Bechuanaland Protectorate were zones of interaction between
the colonial powers and African groups. The constant puncturing of the
colonial borders meant that violence and rebellion in one colony affected
stability and everyday lives in the other. While colonial violence in GSWA
occurred in a local regional trans-colonial context, it also appeared on
broader, international and trans-imperial levels. Diplomatically, GSWA
was a central part of the colonial rivalry between Britain and Germany,
which was more intense in Southern Africa than anywhere else except
Europe. Furthermore, as has already been alluded to, German colonial
violence was central to British diplomatic interests in 1918. On an imperial
level, the stance towards Germany’s suppression of the Herero and Nama
rebellions was constantly negotiated by the British and Cape governments,
with consideration given to their respective interests and viewpoints.
Where the British government was driven by diplomatic considerations,
the Cape was concerned about its security. Politically, Britain’s insistence
on its moral superiority, as reiterated in the Blue Book in 1918, may well
have been significant in shaping the notion of Britain as a ‘soft colonial
power’, as lamented by Wagner and others. Indeed, at the time, colonial
violence had a notable metropolitan aspect in relation to how public and
international opinion reacted, as was apparent during the Congo crisis of
1903–8, when public demands for intervention against King Leopold II’s
atrocious Red Rubber regime in the Congo were imperative for the trans-
fer of administration to the Belgian state in 1908. Colonial violence and
the reactions of the British government to it were therefore profoundly
political.
The notion of German colonialism as exceptionally cruel and violent
was in part the result of Britain’s denunciation after World War I. Andreas
Eckl meticulously set out the correlation between the arguments of the
Blue Book and Horst Drechsler’s influential Let Us Die Fighting (1966).24
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

In other words, the origin of German colonialism as exceptionally brutal

was most likely the Blue Book of 1918, which, despite its relatively accu-
rate description of German colonial violence, represented propaganda
with outright imperial and diplomatic intentions.25 At the crux of the
notion of German colonial exceptionalism, therefore, lies a profound
British factor, which changed according to shifting contexts in Europe and
Africa and at different times—even when the violence in question
had ended.

Trans-colonialism in Anglo-German Southern Africa

Understanding the colonial world in context of nationally defined empires
resonates with the foundations of history as a modern discipline, intended
to delineate the nation states of nineteenth-century Europe. L.H Gann
and Peter Duignan described their series on ‘the rulers of Africa’ as ‘paral-
lel studies’ and had each volume neatly divided into, among others,
‘British’, ‘German’ and ‘Belgian’ colonial histories thus perpetuating
national borders in the colonial world.26 Such demarcation has obscured
transnational and trans-imperial patterns in history and led to compart-
mentalisation first between nations and then empires.27 In Southern Africa,
the local trans-colonial entanglements across the Cape and GSWA borders
have been difficult to examine because of the pervasive national historiog-
raphies of South Africa and Namibia.28 In the case of the British imperial
system, John Darwin has shown that this cannot be seen as a historical
polity in itself because of its fragmentation by local sub-imperial agents
acting in accordance with their own, locally based, interests and because of
the external influences that profoundly shaped British imperial power
overseas.29 The notion of trans-colonialism therefore reiterates an under-
standing of the colonial world as one linked across borders and spheres
and in which Europe was not some external or indeed exceptional history
promoting a dichotomy of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’.30
Recently, new scholarship has emerged dedicated to examining the
interactions and entanglements of colonial histories.31 This complicates
prevailing understandings of European colonial empires in Africa and else-
where as disconnected extensions of the nation-state—an idea often form-
ing the unintended perspective in several volumes, particularly those with
comparative approaches.32 Instead of seeing German colonial violence in
GSWA as part of German national history, where there is often a tendency
to consider it as a precursor to the Holocaust, this book emphasises the
8 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

trans-colonial and international context. At the same time, however, it

remains important not to inflate colonial connections and inter-imperial
histories. Indeed, while it is necessary to challenge rigid and nationally
defined compartmentalisations, we should not completely abandon the
notion of separate spheres of influence in the colonial world. Although
notions of cooperation and shared experiences are useful to determine the
interactions between colonial powers, these risk obscuring elements of
estrangement, rivalry and provocation.
With the advent of global history, it has been established that imperial
power and decision-making were not the prerogative of the imperial gov-
ernment in London, but a cumulative response spanning imperial and
trans-imperial networks.33 Global history’s focus on connections, as Simon
Potter and Jonathan Saha have asserted, ‘can assist us in overcoming the
long-standing but often misleading tendency to examine the British
Empire as a singular, hermetically-sealed world system’.34 The same is true
of the German colonial empire, in which the colonial Sonderweg has func-
tioned as a form of compartmentalisation because it rests on the premise
of the Holocaust as a profoundly German national history.35 Although
there is a tendency within global history to emphasise subalterns and his-
tory from below, this should not remove the necessity to understand polit-
ical history—mainly belonging to the imperial and colonial elites—from
such perspectives. Indeed, European international history—particularly
relating to Anglo-German relations—has been shaped and informed by
colonial affairs in the context of trans-imperial interactions. While the
global turn in the history of the British Empire has been successful in
breaking a London-centred view and acknowledging external influences,
much less attention has been paid to the connections between colonial
empires than those within.36
In the colonial world, Anglo-German entanglements were profound.
Even before Germany formally acquired colonial possessions, the British
Empire hosted German emigrants and groups espousing visions of a
German colonial community.37 Settlers, missionaries and indigenous
groups, while formally affiliated with a specified colony controlled by a
European nation, roamed relatively freely across the colonial landscape
with little regard for colonial borders. Thus, colonial borders were not
rigid demarcations of colonial or national sovereignty but should be con-
sidered sites of interactions and also sites of fragility where colonial rule
was at its weakest and contested by cross-border movements, in which
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

colonial powers in turn attempted to exert control by means of violence.38

As we shall see, the colonial borderlands were key to interactions between
German, Cape and British actors but also for Africans in resisting German
colonial rule because many escaped to British or Cape territory either as
refugees or to prevent their pursuit by German troops.
Several historians have characterised Anglo-German colonial relations
and interactions in Southern Africa as defined by a ‘racial solidarity.’
Cooperation between the colonial powers in holding down Africans
amounted to what Drechsler called a ‘sharing of the white man’s bur-
den’.39 More recently, and arguably more persuasively, Ulrike Lindner
claimed that, in Africa, Britain and Germany were involved in a ‘shared
colonial project’. Although this project also amounted to ‘the white man’s
burden [being] equally shared among the colonial powers’, Lindner cor-
rectly reiterates the centrality of estrangement and rivalry in inter-imperial
relations and indicates that these are not opposed to cooperation. Indeed,
as she correctly observes, a complicated Spannungsfeld (‘zone of tension’)
existed between cooperation and rivalry, meaning that the terms were not
mutually exclusive but rather co-existed.40 British and German colonialism
in Southern Africa was therefore intrinsically linked and common ground
existed in wishing to ensure the maintenance of colonial rule over Africans.
It is the intention that this book will complement (rather than disprove)
the work done by Lindner and others on the shared histories of British and
German colonialism. This book adds to understandings of the notion of
imperial cooperation, focusing on the complexities and difficulties placed
on a neighbouring colonial power in the context of a colonial ‘small war’.
In focusing on a Cape and British perspective, it becomes clear that impe-
rial cooperation, deriving from sharing of the white man’s burden, is
essentially an oversimplification of the deeply ambiguous and multi-­faceted
history of colonial and imperial entanglements in Europe and
Southern Africa.
Indeed, there are few indications in British and South African-based
sources of any detailed or sympathetic policy towards the German sup-
pression of the Herero and Nama rebellions deriving from racist convic-
tions. That is not to say that there were no underlying racial prejudices
informing British or South African actors—merely that racial solidarity
alone did not necessarily mean intensive cooperation. Instead, the notion
of sharing the white man’s burden arguably derives from German sources
as the Germans in GSWA continuously sought to win British and Cape
10 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

support in the borderlands and hand over refugees. The British and Cape
authorities were essentially forced into a difficult situation requiring care-
ful management in accordance with their own interests. These rarely
amounted to notions of racial solidarity and were by their nature sporadic
and haphazard as there was never any established policy or directive on
how to react to German colonial violence in GSWA. The only consistency
in their involvement was a desire to ‘walk on eggshells’ and not to provoke
Boers, Germans or Africans. Perhaps most importantly, in addition to
imperial cooperation, non-cooperation—the active decision not to sup-
port the Germans—definitively shaped British involvement in German
colonial violence in GSWA.
Understanding the interactions and entanglements between the colo-
nial powers in the colonies themselves rather than from a metropolitan
perspective in London or Berlin is useful to fully comprehend the com-
plexities inherent in such relations. Indeed, although the period before
1914 was characterised by increasing Anglo-German antagonism, rela-
tions in the colonial ‘periphery’ were different, as Britain and Germany
collaborated on a number of cases. Britain’s involvement in GSWA and
collaboration with the German Schutztruppe (protection force) may there-
fore be indicative of a shared colonial project that occurred separately to
the deteriorating diplomatic relations in Europe. However, this is too
absolute and inconsistent with the ambiguous way in which British actors
in London and South Africa acted during the rebellion and genocide in
GSWA. Tilman Dedering, for instance, has shown how different interests
and agendas of metropolitan and colonial actors shaped Britain’s involve-
ment in GSWA, forced upon them by African cross-border mobility in
particular.41 As such, while notions of racial solidarity were indeed influen-
tial in motivating cooperation between colonial powers, they tend to flat-
ten the imperial, diplomatic and political contexts and reduce colonial rule
to a predominantly if not exclusively racial endeavour. Any involvement or
expression of views on the part of Britain and the Cape did not therefore
emanate from a racially motivated shared project but from British and
Cape interests and security. This led to an ambiguous and multi-faceted
British involvement in German colonial violence, whereby cooperation
co-existed with non-cooperation and stringent handling of information in
accordance with shifting diplomatic contexts.
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

Notes
1. Hansard Millbank, cc155–164, ‘The Treaty of Peace’, Earl Curzon of
Kedleston, House of Lords, 3 July 1919.
2. For humanitarian intervention see Klose, Fabian (ed.), The Emergence of
Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practices from the Nineteenth
Century to the Present (Cambridge, 2016).
3. Herero—or OvaHerero—refers to a broader ethnic and cultural Bantu-­
speaking group splintered into different political and tribal affiliations. At
the turn of the twentieth century, they primarily resided around Windhoek
and were mainly pastoralists. The Nama mainly resides in the southern
parts of Namibia and in the Northern Cape and speak Khoekhoe. Like the
Herero, they were also divided into different tribal groups and affiliations
according to politics, location and culture among other factors.
4. Administrators Office, Windhuk, Report on the Natives of South-West
Africa and Their Treatment by Germany (London, 1918), p. 11.
5. Administrators Office, Report on the Natives, p. 5.
6. See Chap. 6.
7. K. A. Wagner, ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial
Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’, History Workshop Journal,
vol. 85 (2018), p. 231.
8. S. Potter and J. Saha, ‘Global History, Imperial History and Connected
Histories of Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 16,
1 (2015).
9. See for instance N. Ferguson, Empire. How Britain Made the Modern
World (London, 2004), pp. 295–96.
10. A. Lester and F. Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian
Governance – Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British
Empire (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 3–5. See also M. Mann, ‘“Torchbearer
Upon the Path of Progress”: Britain’s Ideology of Moral and Material
Progress in India. An Introductory Essay’ in H. Fischer-Tiné and M. Mann
(eds.), Colonialism as Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India
(London, 2004), pp. 2–4.
11. A. Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery and Humanitarianism’ in Porter
(ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century
(Oxford, 1999), pp. 216–17. See also Lester and Dussart, Colonization
and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance, p. 2. For a detailed account
of the APS and its influence upon British colonial policy as a whole, see
J. Heartfield, The Aborigines’ Protection Society, Humanitarian Imperialism
in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa, and the Congo,
1836–1909 (London, 2011).
12 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

12. Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery and Humanitarianism’, p. 198. See also

S. Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century – The Evolution of a Global
Problem (Walnut Creek CA, 2003) and E. Cleall, ‘“In Defiance of the
Highest Principle of Justice, Principles of Righteousness”: The Indenturing
of the Bechuana Rebels and the Ideals of Empire, 1897–1900’, The Journal
of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 40, 4 (2012), p. 605.
13. Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarian
Intervention (Ithaca NY, 2011), pp. 11–12.
14. M. Wiener, An Empire on Trial: Race, Murder, and Justice under British
Rule, 1870–1935 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 4–5. For the Congo crisis in
connection to GSWA, see Chap. 5.
15. A. Conklin, ‘Colonialism and Human Rights, A Contradiction in Terms?
The Case of France and West Africa, 1895–1914’, American Historical
Review, vol. 103 (1998), pp. 437–8. See also A. Conklin, A Mission to
Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa,
1895–1930 (Stanford, 1997) for a French case in which a consensus on the
civilising mission legitimised imperialism.
16. C. Kpao Saré, ‘Abuses of German Colonial History: The Character of Carl
Peters as Weapon for völkisch and National Socialist Discourses:
Anglophobia, Anti-Semitism and Aryanism’ in M. Perraudin and
J. Zimmerer (eds.) German Colonialism and National Identity (New
York, 2010).
17. A. Perras, Carl Peters and German Imperialism, 1856–1918: A Political
Biography (Oxford, 2004), p. 118.
18. For colonial violence in German East Africa, see especially S. Kuss, German
Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence (Cambridge MA,
2017), Chapter 3, here p. 72.
19. See among others B. Madley, ‘From Africa to Auschwitz: How German
South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed
by the Nazis in Eastern Europe’, European History Quarterly, vol. 35, 3
(2005); J. Zimmerer, Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beitrage zum
Verhältnis von Kolonialismus und Holocaust (Münster, 2011) and J. Sarkin,
Germany’s Genocide of the Herero. Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His
Settlers, His Soldiers (Cape Town, 2010).
20. H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951) and
A. Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, [org. 1955] Translated by Joan
Pinkham, (London, 1972). See also D. Stone, ‘Defending the Plural:
Hannah Arendt and Genocide Studies’, New Formations, vol. 71, 1 (2011).
21. M. Bomholt Nielsen, ‘Selective Memory: British Perceptions of the
Herero-Nama Genocide, 1904–1908 and 1918’, Journal of Southern
African Studies, vol. 43, 2 (2017).
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

22. U. Lindner, ‘German Colonialism and the British neighbour in Africa

before 1914’ in V. Langbehn and M. Salama (eds.), German Colonialism-­
Race, the Holocaust and Postwar Germany (New York, 2011), p. 255. See
also B. Kundrus, ‘From the Herero to the Holocaust? Some Remarks on
the Current Debate’, Africa Spectrum, vol. 40, 2 (2005).
23. R. Kössler, ‘Genocide in Namibia, the Holocaust and the Issue of
Colonialism’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 38, 2 (2012),
p. 237. See also Kuss, German Colonial Wars pp. 2–4 and M. Fitzpatrick,
‘The Pre-­History of the Holocaust? The Sonderweg and Historikerstreit
Debates and the Abject Colonial Past’, Central European History, vol. 41,
3 (2008).
24. A. Eckl, ‘The Herero Genocide of 1904: Source-critical and Methodological
Considerations’, Journal of Namibian Studies, vol. 3 (2014), pp. 38–41.
25. See Chap. 7.
26. L.G. Gann and P. Duignan, The Rulers of German Africa, 1884–1914
(Stanford, 1977) p. ix-x. See also The Rulers of British Africa, 1884–1914
and The Rulers of Belgian Africa, 1884–1914 (both Stanford, 1979).
27. See here R. Drayton, The Masks of Empire: The World History underneath
Modern Empires and Nations, c. 1500 to the Present (London 2017).
28. M. Legassick, Hidden Histories of Gordonia: Land Dispossession and
Resistance in the Northern Cape, 1800–1990 (Johannesburg, 2016), p. 160.
29. See J. Darwin, The Empire Project – The Rise and Fall of the British World-­
System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009).
30. Several major publications have stressed the global and transnational nature
and context of colonial empires. See for instance, Darwin, Empire Project
and C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (New York,
2004). Also V. Barth and R. Cvetkovski, ‘Encounters of Empire:
Methodological Approaches’ in V. Barth and R. Cvetkovski (eds.), Imperial
Co-operation and Transfer, 1870–1930 (London, 2015), pp. 21–3.
Specifically for the notion of trans-imperialism see, for instance,
J. Cromwell, ‘More than Slaves and Sugar: Recent Historiography of the
Trans-imperial Caribbean and its Sinew Populations’ History Compass, vol.
12, 10 (2014), p. 778.
31. See among others, S. Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial
Germany (Cambridge, 2010); U. Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen:
Deutschland und Grossbritanien als Imperiallmächte in Afrika 1880–1914
(Frankfurt-am-Main, 2011); J. Leonhard and U. von Hirschhausen,
Comparing Empires: Encounters and Transfers in the Nineteenth and Early
Twentieth Century (Göttingen, 2011) and B. Naranch and G. Eley (eds.),
German Colonialism in a Global Age (Durham NC, 2014).
14 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

32. See the otherwise excellent Prosser Gifford & Wm. Roger Louis Britain
and Germany in Africa. Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven
CT, 1967).
33. See notably J. Darwin, ‘Imperialism and the Victorians: The Dynamics of
Territorial Expansion’ The English Historical Review, 112 (1997) and
C.A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World,
1780–1830 (London, 1989).
34. Potter and Saha, ‘Global History, Imperial History and Connected
Histories’.
35. Bomholt Nielsen, ‘Selective memory’, pp. 317–9. See also P. Grosse,
‘What Does National Socialism have to do with Colonialism? A Conceptual
Framework’, in E. Ames, M. Klotz and L. Wildenthal (eds.), Germany’s
Colonial Pasts (Lincoln NE, 2005), p. 118. Of course, there also exist
transnational and even global histories of the Holocaust. See for instance
J. Burzlaff, ‘Towards a transnational history of the Holocaust: Social rela-
tions in Eastern Europe’, Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah, vol. 212, 2 (2020).
36. Potter and Saha, ‘Global History, Imperial History and Connected
Histories’. Also F. Cooper and A. Laura Stoler, ‘Between Metropole and
Colony: Rethinking a research agenda’, in Frederick Cooper and Ann
Laura Stoler (eds.) Tensions of Empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois
world, (Berkeley, 1997).
37. See S. Zantop, Colonial Fantasies. Conquest, Family, and Nation in
Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham NC, 1997).
38. T. Dedering, ‘War and mobility in the Borderlands of South Western Africa
in the Early Twentieth Century’, The International Journal of African
Historical Studies, vol. 39, 2 (2006), p. 276. More generally on colonial
borderlands as sites of weakness, see for instance, J. Adelman and S. Aron,
‘From Borderlands to Borders. Empires, Nation-States and the Peoples in
Between in North American History’, The American Historical Review,
vol. 104, 3 (1999).
39. H. Drechsler, Let us Die Fighting. The Struggle of the Herero and Nama
against German Imperialism, 1884–1915 (London, 1980), p. 204. Also
M. Fröhlich, Von Konfrontation zur Koexistenz. Die deutsch-englischen
Kolonialbeziehungen in Africa zwischen 1884 und 1914 (Bochum,
1990), p. 266.
40. U. Lindner, ‘Colonialism as a European Project in Africa before 1914?
British and German concepts of Colonial Rule in Sub-Saharan Africa’,
Comparativ, vol. 19, 1 (2009), p. 106.
41. See Dedering, ‘War and mobility in the Borderlands’.
 CHAPTER 2

Colonial Violence in Southern Africa

at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

As Frederick Cooper noted in 1994, violence was ‘the most obvious fea-
ture of colonial rule’ but was, at the time, inadequately studied.1 Since
then, colonial violence has become a significant field within colonial his-
tory. Especially in settler colonial studies, colonial violence has become
fundamental in how settler colonialism, and the gradual dispossession of
indigenous lands, caused conflicts, widespread racism and, at times, geno-
cide.2 The centrality of ‘everyday violence’ where settlers and colonial offi-
cers committed excessive violence—floggings, beatings and rape—on
colonised groups in Africa and elsewhere has provided a deeper under-
standing of the malignant nature of colonialism.3 It is crucial, as Philip
Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck have observed, to recognise colonial vio-
lence as a contingent that was ‘diffuse, multi-layered and enormously vari-
able’.4 The term colonial violence therefore remains an inclusive term that
encompasses a number of complexities: for instance, while violence was
sometimes committed by a colonial state, violence inflicted on local popu-
lations by white settlers could directly undermine the colonial state’s
authority. As Matthias Häussler has demonstrated, the everyday violence
committed by German settlers on the Herero and Nama in GSWA was
characterised by ‘boundless aggressiveness’, making it more difficult for
the colonial administration to secure stability.5 Thus, colonial violence in
itself cannot be reduced to a dichotomy between coloniser and colonised,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Bomholt Nielsen, Britain, Germany and Colonial Violence in
South-West Africa, 1884–1919, Cambridge Imperial and
Post-Colonial Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94561-9_2
16 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

because, within the former, there were opposing groups, motives and out-
looks. Furthermore, in the pursuit of colonial hegemony—or rather domi-
nance—there were in most cases also a central element of local indigenous
collaboration with the imperial states.6 Finally, the consequences of colo-
nial violence can be traced to a multitude of destinations beyond the per-
petrators and victims involved, affecting not merely on colonial
administration and stability, but, as we shall see, across the colonial border.
This chapter serves a basic but important purpose. By first examining
ostensibly mutual perceptions of British and German colonial rule before
World War I, it provides a basic context. At the time, several stereotypes
informed officials, the media and the public alike, prejudicing opinion of
what German colonialism entailed. Such stereotypes should not be disre-
garded because they functioned as demarcations that positioned British
colonial rule as a contrast. Second, this chapter explains the fundamental
progression and development of colonial violence in GSWA. After an ini-
tial account of the Herero and Nama rebellions, a discussion follows of the
methods and practices of colonial violence used by the Germans in a trans-­
colonial context. Indeed, methods such as concentration camps circulated
among the colonial powers and the Germans in particular drew inspiration
from British colonial experiences, including in the South African War
(1899–1902). This chapter should therefore be considered as the founda-
tion for the remainder of the book in that it explains the type, scale and
context of colonial violence in GSWA.
A central facet of colonial violence is the pervasive element of racism.
Franz Fanon observed that dehumanisation of the colonised was a key
premise of colonialism, giving the coloniser ‘the right to kill’.7 Not only in
the context of settler colonialism were racial attitudes crucial determi-
nants: military violence was also profoundly shaped by racial stereotypes.
For instance, strategies and weaponry reflected racial predispositions, per-
haps best exemplified in the use of the expanding Dum-Dum bullet,
which, because of its severity, was believed to make an impression on oth-
erwise inferior races that could not feel or process pain in the same way as
Europeans. More importantly, in military strategies, C.E. Callwell’s man-
ual Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (1896) reiterated the impor-
tance of seeking a large-scale battle with ‘savage peoples’ who only
understood the language of violence.8 Callwell’s manual quickly became a
standard guide to colonial ‘small wars’ both within and outside Britain and
it was translated into French and read and used in Germany. An underly-
ing premise of the manual and colonial military violence was that conflicts
 2 COLONIAL VIOLENCE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA AT THE TURN… 17

in the colonial world were inherently different from those in Europe.

Opponents were ‘savage’, ‘disorganised’ and would not refrain from using
‘dishonourable’ tactics.9 The very logic of colonial counter-insurgency was
therefore profoundly shaped by a racial logic, where indigenous groups
were reduced to stereotypes such as ‘fanatics’ or ‘barbarians’.10
Colonial violence, however, did not emerge solely from racial predispo-
sitions; it was also caused by a number of additional factors. Crucially,
colonial powers were constantly searching for authority and hegemony
and only rarely achieved it. As shown by Antoinette Burton, for example,
a key part of colonial history involves consistent ‘troubles’—insurgencies
and rebellions against colonial rule.11 The inherent weakness of colonial
states, emanating from a plurality of factors including geography, lack of
manpower and inadequate ‘tools of empire’, pushed violence and terror as
a modus operandi in order to maintain authority and stability.12 For
instance, the colonial state’s efforts to police GSWA were severely encum-
bered by the sheer size of the colony. GSWA was as large as 835,100
square kilometres—one and a half times the size of Germany, meaning
that enforcing state authority was difficult to say the least.13 Violence was
therefore inflicted upon Africans in order to create the impression of
European control, especially as the colonial administrators had relatively
few other effective means of enforcement available.14 But as observed by
Jeffrey Herbst, despite the use of force and coercion, the colonial power
were frequently unable to enforce colonial dominance ‘always and every-
where’.15 The weakness of colonial states was not unknown to colonisers
as fear also positioned violence at the centre of colonialism. Dominik
Schaller, for instance, has shown that German soldiers in GSWA and East
Africa were constantly afraid of ambushes and alarmed by rumours of
mutilations and slaughters, furthering the formation of a psyche where
they more readily committed atrocities and acts of violence.16 In addition
to racism, a simple dynamic such as fear alongside the inherent structural
weakness of the colonial state in its attempts to achieve hegemony were
therefore underlying causes and driving forces in the formation and escala-
tion of colonial violence. The rebellions and genocide in GSWA between
1903 and 1908 fit many of the identified causes and dynamics of colonial
violence. The gradual encroachment of settler colonialism, pervasive rac-
ism and inherent state weakness in terms of finance, manpower and
authority impeded by geography were some of the most important fac-
tors. As we shall see below, such weakness and fear was shared by colonial
18 M. BOMHOLT NIELSEN

neighbours, as rebellions and fragility in one colony could severely impact

the stability and hegemony of a colonial state in another.
Several immediate causes can be identified for the Herero and later
Nama rebellion. The dispossession of Herero lands, particularly after the
1896–7 Rinderpest (cattle plague) epizootic was a key reason for the
rebellion as the Herero were left in an increasingly desperate situation.
After selling off land and cattle, many sought employment with German
settlers in positions where they were subjected to everyday violence.17
Paired with the overtly racist legal system, the consequences of settler
colonialism can perhaps be described as the fundamental reason for the
rebellion. However, it was also a calculated strike on the part of the Herero
as the rebellion came when Governor Theodor Leutwein was away with
the German forces in the southern parts of GSWA to suppress the
Bondelswarts Nama rebellion that had broken out on 25 October 1903.18
The outbreak of the Herero rebellion forced Leutwein to conclude a hap-
hazard and unstable peace with the Bondelswarts, and many resistance
leaders, such as Jakob Marengo, refused the terms and continued the
rebellion. For the German settlers, the rebellion quickly assumed the char-
acteristics of a race war and many Africans who did not participate in the
rebellion were lynched, hanged or beaten to death. Indicatively, early on it
was deemed necessary that Germany should not only overcome the
Herero, but crush them altogether.19

The Brutal Germans? Mutual Perceptions

and Inspiration

From its very beginning, German colonialism was to a large degree

inspired by the British example. It was a general view in Germany that
Britain’s colonial possessions across the globe represented the source of its
status as a great world power.20 As Erik Grimmer-Solem recently observed,
German ‘world-policy’ (Weltpolitik) was exclusively not the result of a
Prussian-militarist nationalism, as is the conventional view, but had trans-
national origins.21 It was therefore only natural for Germany, as a new-
comer to the colonial stage, to look to Britain as an experienced colonial
power, in order to draw inspiration but also to develop a specific German
colonial style.22 However, the opposite was rarely the case: Britain’s osten-
sible self-identification as a morally superior and experienced colonial
power meant that German colonialism was viewed through a rather
 2 COLONIAL VIOLENCE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA AT THE TURN… 19

condescending lens that rarely avoided pervasive stereotypes. Indeed, the

common characteristics of German colonialism generally included its
emphasis on bureaucracy and Prussian militarism.
The notion of the brutal Germans is closely linked to the idea of
German colonialism as exceptionally brutal and a distinct German milita-
rist culture determining the actions and brutality of German colonial
forces.23 Nonetheless, Susanne Kuss has asserted that this notion of
German exceptionalism does not take account of the fact that German
colonial forces mainly comprised volunteers, sailors and African recruits
with widely different backgrounds and agendas. Instead of an overarching
culture of Teutonic efficiency and brutality, which the Nazis later adopted,
German colonial military operations were improvised, haphazard and
determined by local conditions.24 Nevertheless, in the age of imperialism,
such stereotypes were not unimportant, representing widespread views
that informed both public and official audiences of a prejudiced definition
of what German colonialism entailed. Crucially, stereotypes also served a
function: by presenting other colonial powers as stereotypical, they reiter-
ated alleged British superiority and highlighted the flaws of the other.
The 1904 special issue (Picture 2.1) of the German satirical magazine
Simplicissimuss encapsulates these stereotypes. At the top, German colo-
nialism was depicted as militarist, orderly and scientific in the marching
giraffes and the capture of the crocodile indicating the taming of the ‘wild’
colonial world. British colonialism, however, was satirised as preaching the
gospel through a civilising mission while pouring alcohol into their colo-
nised subjects in order to squeeze wealth from them.25 Although
Simplicissimuss was a left-wing paper that generally lamented colonialism,
its views on British colonialism in particular were shared by colonial societ-
ies in Germany, where, on one occasion, British colonialism in Southern
Africa was described as characterised by ‘the slavery of taxation and tariffs’
while Germany was merely ‘emphasising order’ in GSWA.26 Indeed,
German observers often deemed British colonialism too soft and lenient,
especially in relation to its ‘native policy’.
From a British perspective, the notion of ‘the brutal German’ was
intrinsic to the Blue Book in 1918 and echoed a widespread notion of
perceptions of Germany and German colonialism.27 In this sense, views of
German colonialism during and after World War I formed part of the
denunciation of the ‘Huns’ and were linked to lamentations over, for
instance, the ‘rape’ of Belgium.28 Before the war, however, British
­perceptions of German colonial rule were ostensibly divided into two
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
tomahawk accompanies him everywhere and always. He needs it to
defend himself against the wild boars and also against the spirit of
his dead wife, who might take a fancy to come and play him some
mischievous prank; for the souls of the dead come back often and
their visit is far from being desired, inasmuch as all the spirits without
exception are bad and have no pleasure but in harming the living.
Happily people can keep them at bay by a stick, fire, an arrow, or a
tomahawk. The condition of a widower, far from exciting pity or
compassion, only serves to render him the object of horror and fear.
Almost all widowers, in fact, have the reputation of being more or
less sorcerers, and their mode of life is not fitted to give the lie to
public opinion. They are forced to become idlers and thieves, since
they are forbidden to work: no work, no gardens; no gardens, no
food: steal then they must, and that is a trade which cannot be plied
without some audacity and knavery at a pinch.”148.1
It would be easy, but superfluous, to multiply
The widespread evidence of the terror which a belief in ghosts has
fear of ghosts
among mankind spread among mankind, and of the consequences,
has probably had sometimes tragical, sometimes ludicrous, which
the effect of making
men less ready to that belief has brought in its train.149.1 The
take each other’s preceding instances may suffice for my purpose,
lives. which is merely to indicate the probability that this
widespread superstition has served a useful
purpose by enhancing the sacredness of human life. For it is
reasonable to suppose that men are more loth to spill the blood of
their fellows when they believe that by so doing they expose
themselves to the vengeance of an angry and powerful spirit whom it
is difficult either to evade or to deceive. Fortunately in this matter we
are not left wholly to conjecture. In the vast empire
In China the faith in of China, as we are assured by the best living
the power of ghosts
is universal. authority on Chinese religion, the fear of ghosts
has actually produced this salutary result.
Amongst the Chinese the faith in the existence of the dead, in their
power to reward kindness and avenge injury, is universal and
inveterate; it has been handed down from an immemorial past, and it
is nourished in the experience, or rather in the mind, of everybody by
hundreds of ghost stories, all of which are accepted as authentic.
Nobody doubts that ghosts may interfere at any moment for good or
evil in the business of life, in the regulation of human destiny. To the
Chinese their dead are not what our dead are to most of us, a dim
sad memory, a shadowy congregation somewhere far away, to
whom we may go in time, but who cannot come to us or exercise
any influence on the land of the living. On the contrary, in the opinion
of the Chinese the dead not only exist but keep up a most lively
intercourse, an active interchange of good and evil, with the
survivors. There is, indeed, even in China, a line of demarcation
between men and spirits, between the living and the dead, but it is
said to be very faint, almost imperceptible. This perpetual commerce
between the two worlds, the material and the spiritual, is a source
both of bane and of blessing: the spirits of the departed rule human
destiny with a rod of iron or of gold. From them man has everything
to hope, but also much to fear. Hence as a natural consequence it is
to the ghosts, to the souls of the dead, that the Chinaman pays his
devotions; it is around their dear or dreadful figures as a centre that
his religion revolves. To ensure their goodwill and help, to avert their
wrath and fierce attacks, that is the first and the last object of his
religious ceremonies.150.1
This faith of the Chinese in the existence and
In China respect for power of the dead, we are informed, “indubitably
human life is
enforced by fear of exercises a mighty and salutary influence upon
ghosts. morals. It enforces respect for human life and a
charitable treatment of the infirm, the aged and the
sick, especially if they stand on the brink of the grave. Benevolence
and humanity, thus based on fears and selfishness, may have little
ethical value in our eye; but for all that, their existence in a country
where culture has not yet taught man to cultivate good for the sake
of good alone, may be greeted as a blessing. Those virtues are even
extended to animals, for, in fact, these too have souls which may
work vengeance or bring reward. But the firm belief in ghosts and
their retributive justice has still other effects. It deters from grievous
and provoking injustice, because the wronged party, thoroughly sure
of the avenging power of his own spirit when disembodied, will not
always shrink from converting himself into a wrathful ghost by
committing suicide,” in order to wreak in death that vengeance on his
oppressor which he could not exact in life. Cases of suicide
committed with this intention are said to be far from rare in
China.150.2 “This simple complex of tenets,” says Professor de Groot,
“lays disrespect for human lives under great restraint. Most salutarily
also they work upon female infanticide, a
In particular, the monstrous custom practised extensively among
fear of ghosts acts
as a check on the the poor in Amoy and the surrounding farming
practice of districts, as in many other parts of the Empire. The
infanticide. fear that the souls of the murdered little ones may
bring misfortune, induces many a father or mother
to lay the girls they are unwilling to bring up, in the street for adoption
into some family or into a foundling-hospital.” Humane and well-to-do
people take advantage of these superstitious fears to inculcate a
merciful treatment of female infants; for they print and circulate
gratuitously tracts which set forth many gruesome examples of
punishments inflicted upon unnatural fathers and mothers by the
ghosts of their murdered daughters. These highly-coloured
narratives, though they bear all the marks of a florid fancy, are said
to answer their benevolent purpose perfectly; for they sink deep into
the credulous minds to which they are addressed: they touch the
seared conscience and the callous heart which no appeal to mere
natural affection could move to pity.151.1
But while the fear of the ghost has thus
The fear of ghosts operated directly to enhance the sanctity of human
operates in a
twofold way to life by deterring the cruel, the passionate, and the
enforce respect for malignant from the shedding of blood, it has
human life: it operated also indirectly to bring about the same
furnishes the
individual with a salutary result. For not only does the hag-ridden
motive for murderer himself dread his victim’s ghost, but the
abstaining from
murder, and it
whole community, as we have seen, dreads it also
furnishes the and believes itself endangered by the murderer’s
community with a presence, since the wrathful spirit which pursues
motive for punishing
the murderer.
him may turn on other people and rend them.
Hence society has a strong motive for secluding,
banishing, or exterminating the culprit in order to free itself from what
it believes to be an imminent danger, a perilous pollution, a
contagion of death.151.2 To put it in another way, the community has
an interest in punishing homicide. Not that the treatment of
homicides by the tribe or state was originally conceived as a
punishment inflicted on them: rather it was viewed as a measure of
self-defence, a moral quarantine, a process of spiritual purification
and disinfection, an exorcism. It was a mode of cleansing the people
generally and sometimes the homicide himself from the ghostly
infection, which to the primitive mind appears to be something
material and tangible, something that can be literally washed or
scoured away by water, pig’s blood, sheep’s blood, or other
detergents. But when this purification took the form of laying the
manslayer under restraint, banishing him from the country, or putting
him to death in order to appease his victim’s ghost, it was for all
practical purposes indistinguishable from punishment, and the fear of
it would act as a deterrent just as surely as if it had been designed to
be a punishment and nothing else. When a man is about to be
hanged, it is little consolation to him to be told that hanging is not a
punishment but a purification. But the one conception slides easily
and almost imperceptibly into the other; so that what was at first a
religious rite, a solemn consecration or sacrifice, comes in course of
time to be a purely civil function, the penalty which society exacts
from those who have injured it: the sacrifice becomes an execution,
the priest steps back and the hangman comes forward. Thus
criminal justice was probably based in large measure on a crude
form of superstition long before the subtle brains of jurists and
philosophers deduced it logically, according to their various
predilections, from a rigid theory of righteous retribution, a far-
sighted policy of making the law a terror to evil-doers, or a
benevolent desire to reform the criminal’s character and save his
soul in another world by hanging or burning his body in this one. If
these deductions only profess to justify theoretically the practice of
punishment, they may be well or ill founded; but if they claim to
explain it historically, they are certainly false. You cannot thus
reconstruct the past by importing into one age the ideas of another,
by interpreting the earliest in terms of the latest products of mental
evolution. You may make revolutions in that way, but you cannot
write history.
 If these views are correct, the dread of the ghost has operated in a
twofold way to protect human life. On the one
When the fear of hand it has made every individual for his own sake
ghosts has more reluctant to slay his fellow, and on the other
diminished, the fear hand it has roused the whole community to punish
of the law remains
to protect the lives the slayer. It has placed every man’s life within a
of peaceful citizens. double ring-fence of morality and law. The hot-
headed and the cold-hearted have been furnished
with a double motive for abstaining from the last fatal step: they have
had to fear the spirit of their victim on the one side and the lash of
the law on the other: they are in a strait between the devil and the
deep sea, between the ghost and the gallows. And when with the
progress of thought the shadow of the ghost passes away, the grim
shadow of the gallows remains to protect society without the aid of
superstitious terrors. It is thus that custom often outlives the motive
which originated it. If only an institution is good in practice, it will
stand firm after its old theoretical basis has been shattered: a new
and more solid, because a truer, foundation will be discovered for it
to rest upon. More and more, as time goes on, morality shifts its
ground from the sands of superstition to the rock of reason, from the
imaginary to the real, from the supernatural to the natural. In the
present case the State has not ceased to protect the lives of its
peaceful citizens because the faith in ghosts is shaken. It has found
a better reason than old wives’ fables for guarding with the flaming
sword of Justice the approach to the Tree of Life.
 VI.
CONCLUSION

To sum up this brief review of the influence which

Summary of results. superstition has exercised on the growth of
institutions, I think I have shewn, or at least made
probable:—
I. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for government, especially monarchical
government, and has thereby contributed to the establishment and
maintenance of civil order:
II. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for private property and has thereby
contributed to the security of its enjoyment:
III. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for marriage and has thereby contributed to
a stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both among the
married and the unmarried:
IV. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby contributed
to the security of its enjoyment.
But government, private property, marriage, and
By strengthening respect for human life are the pillars on which
the respect for
government, private rests the whole fabric of civil society. Shake them
property, marriage, and you shake society to its foundations.
and human life Therefore if government, private property,
superstition has
rendered a great marriage, and respect for human life are all good
service to humanity. and essential to the very existence of civil society,
then it follows that by strengthening every one of
them superstition has rendered a great service to humanity. It has
supplied multitudes with a motive, a wrong motive it is true, for right
action; and surely it is better, far better for the world that men should
do right from wrong motives than that they should do wrong with the
best intentions. What concerns society is conduct, not opinion: if only
our actions are just and good, it matters not a straw to others
whether our opinions be mistaken. The danger of false opinion, and
it is a most serious one, is that it commonly leads to wrong action;
hence it is unquestionably a great evil and every effort should be
made to correct it. But of the two evils wrong action is in itself
infinitely worse than false opinion; and all systems of religion or
philosophy which lay more stress on right opinion than on right
action, which exalt orthodoxy above virtue, are so far immoral and
prejudicial to the best interests of mankind: they invert the true
relative importance, the real ethical value, of thought and action, for
it is by what we do, not by what we think, that we are useful or
useless, beneficent or maleficent to our fellows. As a body of false
opinions, therefore, superstition is indeed a most dangerous guide in
practice, and the evils which it has wrought are incalculable. But vast
as are these evils, they ought not to blind us to the benefit which
superstition has conferred on society by furnishing the ignorant, the
weak, and the foolish with a motive, bad though it be, for good
conduct. It is a reed, a broken reed, which has yet supported the
steps of many a poor erring brother, who but for it might have
stumbled and fallen. It is a light, a dim and wavering light, which, if it
has lured many a mariner on the breakers, has yet guided some
wanderers on life’s troubled sea into a haven of rest and peace.
Once the harbour lights are passed and the ship is in port, it matters
little whether the pilot steered by a Jack-o’-lantern or by the stars.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my plea for

Superstition at the Superstition. Perhaps it might be urged in
bar. Sentence of
death. mitigation of the sentence which will be passed on
the hoary-headed offender when he stands at the
judgment bar. Yet the sentence, do not doubt it, is death. But it will
not be executed in our time. There will be a long, long reprieve. It is
as his advocate, not as his executioner, that I have appeared before
you to-night. At Athens cases of murder were tried before the
Areopagus by night,156.1 and it is by night that I have spoken in
defence of this power of darkness. But it grows late, and with my
sinister client I must vanish before the cocks crow and the morning
breaks grey in the east.
 THE SCOPE OF
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
 THE SCOPE OF
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
[A lecture delivered before the University of Liverpool, May 14th,
1908.]

The subject of the chair which I have the honour to

Social hold is Social Anthropology. As the subject is still
Anthropology.
comparatively new and its limits are still somewhat
vague, I shall devote my inaugural lecture to defining its scope and
marking out roughly, if not the boundaries of the whole study, at least
the boundaries of that part of it which I propose to take for my
province.
Strange as it may seem, in the large and thriving
Anthropology a family of the sciences, Anthropology, or the
study of recent
date. Science of Man, is the latest born. So young
indeed is the study that three of its distinguished
founders in England, Professor E. B. Tylor, Lord Avebury, and Mr.
Francis Galton, are happily still with us. It is true that particular
departments of man’s complex nature have long been the theme of
special studies. Anatomy has investigated his body, psychology has
explored his mind, theology and metaphysics have sought to plumb
the depths of the great mysteries by which he is encompassed on
every hand. But it has been reserved for the present generation, or
rather for the generation which is passing away, to attempt the
comprehensive study of man as a whole, to enquire not merely into
the physical and mental structure of the individual, but to compare
the various races of men, to trace their affinities, and by means of a
wide collection of facts to follow as far as may be the evolution of
human thought and institutions from the earliest times. The aim of
this, as of every other science, is to discover the general laws to
which the particular facts may be supposed to conform. I say, may
be supposed to conform, because research in all departments has
rendered it antecedently probable that everywhere law and order will
be found to prevail if we search for them diligently, and that
accordingly the affairs of man, however complex and incalculable
they may seem to be, are no exception to the uniformity of nature.
Anthropology, therefore, in the widest sense of the word, aims at
discovering the general laws which have regulated human history in
the past, and which, if nature is really uniform, may be expected to
regulate it in the future.
Hence the science of man coincides to a certain
The scope of Social extent with what has long been known as the
Anthropology more
limited than that of philosophy of history as well as with the study to
Sociology; it which of late years the name of Sociology has
includes only the been given. Indeed it might with some reason be
rudimentary phases
of human society. held that Social Anthropology, or the study of man
in society, is only another expression for
Sociology. Yet I think that the two sciences may be conveniently
distinguished, and that while the name of Sociology should be
reserved for the study of human society in the most comprehensive
sense of the words, the name of Social Anthropology may with
advantage be restricted to one particular department of that
immense field of knowledge. At least I wish to make it perfectly clear
at the outset that I for one do not pretend to treat of the whole of
human society, past, present, and future. Whether any single man’s
compass of mind and range of learning suffice for such a vast
undertaking, I will not venture to say, but I do say without hesitation
or ambiguity that mine certainly do not. I can only speak of what I
have studied, and my studies have been mostly confined to a small,
a very small part of man’s social history. That part is the origin, or
rather the rudimentary phases, the infancy and childhood, of human
society, and to that part accordingly I propose to limit the scope of
Social Anthropology, or at all events my treatment of it. My
successors in the chair will be free to extend their purview beyond
the narrow boundaries which the limitation of my knowledge imposes
on me. They may survey the latest developments as well as the
earliest beginnings of custom and law, of science and art, of morality
and religion, and from that survey they may deduce the principles
which should guide mankind in the future, so that those who come
after us may avoid the snares and pitfalls into which we and our
fathers have slipped. For the best fruit of knowledge is wisdom, and
it may reasonably be hoped that a deeper and wider acquaintance
with the past history of mankind will in time enable our statesmen to
mould the destiny of the race in fairer forms than we of this
generation shall live to see.

“Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s desire!”

But if you wish to shatter the social fabric, you

At least the present must not expect your professor of Social
lecturer limits
himself to these Anthropology to aid and abet you. He is no seer to
phases. discern, no prophet to foretell a coming heaven on
earth, no mountebank with a sovran remedy for
every ill, no Red Cross Knight to head a crusade against misery and
want, against disease and death, against all the horrid spectres that
war on poor humanity. It is for others with higher notes and nobler
natures than his to sound the charge and lead it in this Holy War. He
is only a student, a student of the past, who may perhaps tell you a
little, a very little, of what has been, but who cannot, dare not tell you
what ought to be. Yet even the little that he can contribute to the
elucidation of the past may have its utility as well as its interest when
it finally takes its place in that great temple of science to which it is
the ambition of every student to add a stone. For we cherish a belief
that if we truly love and seek knowledge for its own sake, without any
ulterior aim, every addition we may make to it, however insignificant
and useless it may appear, will yet at last be found to work together
with the whole accumulated store for the general good of mankind.
Thus the sphere of Social Anthropology as I
Social Anthropology understand it, or at least as I propose to treat it, is
embraces the study,
first, of savagery, limited to the crude beginnings, the rudimentary
and, second, of development of human society: it does not include
folklore, that is, of the maturer phases of that complex growth, still
the traces of
savagery in less does it embrace the practical problems with
civilization. which our modern statesmen and lawgivers are
called upon to deal. The study might accordingly be described as the
embryology of human thought and institutions, or, to be more
precise, as that enquiry which seeks to ascertain, first, the beliefs
and customs of savages, and, second, the relics of these beliefs and
customs which have survived like fossils among peoples of higher
culture. In this description of the sphere of Social
All civilization Anthropology it is implied that the ancestors of the
evolved from
savagery. civilized nations were once savages, and that they
have transmitted, or may have transmitted, to their
more cultured descendants ideas and institutions which, however
incongruous with their later surroundings, were perfectly in keeping
with the modes of thought and action of the ruder society in which
they originated. In short, the definition assumes that civilization has
always and everywhere been evolved out of savagery. The mass of
evidence on which this assumption rests is in my opinion so great as
to render the induction incontrovertible. At least, if any one disputes
it I do not think it worth while to argue with him. There are still, I
believe, in civilized society people who hold that the earth is flat and
that the sun goes round it; but no sensible man will waste time in the
vain attempt to convince such persons of their error, even though
these flatteners of the earth and circulators of the sun appeal with
perfect justice to the evidence of their senses in support of their
hallucination, which is more than the opponents of man’s primitive
savagery are able to do.
Thus the study of savage life is a very important
Hence a study of part of Social Anthropology. For by comparison
savagery essential
to an understanding with civilized man the savage represents an
of the evolution of arrested or rather retarded stage of social
humanity. development, and an examination of his customs
and beliefs accordingly supplies the same sort of
evidence of the evolution of the human mind that an examination of
the embryo supplies of the evolution of the human body. To put it
otherwise, a savage is to a civilized man as a child is to an adult; and
just as the gradual growth of intelligence in a child corresponds to,
and in a sense recapitulates, the gradual growth of intelligence in the
species, so a study of savage society at various stages of evolution
enables us to follow approximately, though of course not exactly, the
road by which the ancestors of the higher races must have travelled
in their progress upward through barbarism to civilization. In short,
savagery is the primitive condition of mankind, and if we would
understand what primitive man was we must know what the savage
now is.
But here it is necessary to guard against a
Savages of the common misapprehension. The savages of to-day
present day are
primitive only in a are primitive only in a relative, not in an absolute
relative sense, sense. They are primitive by comparison with us;
namely by but they are not primitive by comparison with truly
comparison with
civilized peoples; primæval man, that is, with man as he was when
their customs and he first emerged from the purely bestial stage of
beliefs are in fact
the product of a
existence. Indeed, compared with man in his
long course of absolutely pristine state even the lowest savage of
evolution as to to-day is doubtless a highly developed and
which we can know
little or nothing.
cultured being, since all evidence and all
probability are in favour of the view that every
existing race of men, the rudest as well as the most civilized, has
reached its present level of culture, whether it be high or low, only
after a slow and painful progress upwards, which must have
extended over many thousands, perhaps millions, of years.
Therefore when we speak of any known savages as primitive, which
the usage of the English language permits us to do, it should always
be remembered that we apply the term primitive to them in a relative,
not in an absolute sense. What we mean is that their culture is
rudimentary compared with that of the civilized nations, but not by
any means that it is identical with that of primæval man. It is
necessary to emphasize this relative use of the term primitive in its
application to all known savages without exception, because the
ambiguity arising from the double meaning of the word has been the
source of much confusion and misunderstanding. Careless or
unscrupulous writers have made great play with it for purposes of
controversy, using the word now in the one sense and now in the
other as it suited their argument at the moment, without perceiving,
or at all events without indicating, the equivocation. In order to avoid
these verbal fallacies it is only necessary to bear steadily in mind
that while Social Anthropology has much to say of primitive man in
the relative sense, it has nothing whatever to say about primitive
man in the absolute sense, and that for the very simple reason that it
knows nothing whatever about him, and, so far as we can see at
present, is never likely to know anything. To construct a history of
human society by starting from absolutely primordial man and
working down through thousands or millions of years to the
institutions of existing savages might possibly have merits as a flight
of imagination, but it could have none as a work of science. To do
this would be exactly to reverse the proper mode of scientific
procedure. It would be to work a priori from the unknown to the
known instead of a posteriori from the known to the unknown. For we
do know a good deal about the social state of the savages of to-day
and yesterday, but we know nothing whatever, I repeat, about
absolutely primitive human society. Hence a sober enquirer who
seeks to elucidate the social evolution of mankind in ages before the
dawn of history must start, not from an unknown and purely
hypothetical primæval man, but from the lowest savages whom we
know or possess adequate records of; and from their customs,
beliefs, and traditions as a solid basis of fact he may work back a
little way hypothetically through the obscurity of the past; that is, he
may form a reasonable theory of the way in which these actual
customs, beliefs, and traditions have grown up and developed in a
period more or less remote, but probably not very remote, from the
one in which they have been observed and recorded. But if, as I
assume, he is a sober enquirer, he will never expect to carry back
this reconstruction of human history very far, still less will he dream
of linking it up with the very beginning, because he is aware that we
possess no evidence which would enable us to bridge even
hypothetically the gulf of thousands or millions of years which divides
the savage of to-day from primæval man.
It may be well to illustrate my meaning by an
For example, the example. The matrimonial customs and modes of
marriage customs
and systems of tracing relationships which prevail among some
relationship savage races, and even among peoples at a
prevalent among higher stage of culture, furnish very strong
many savage tribes
appear to have grounds for believing that the systems of marriage
been evolved from and consanguinity which are now in vogue among
a preceding, but not
necessarily civilized peoples must have been immediately
primitive, state of
sexual promiscuity.preceded at a more or less distant time by very
different modes of counting kin and regulating
marriage; in fact, that monogamy and the forbidden degrees of
kinship have replaced an older system of much wider and looser
sexual relations. But to say this is not to affirm that such looser and
wider relations were characteristic of the absolutely primitive
condition of mankind; it is only to say that actually existing customs
and traditions clearly indicate the extensive prevalence of such
relations at some former time in the history of our race. How remote
that time was, we cannot tell; but, estimated by the whole vast period
of man’s existence on earth, it seems probable that the era of sexual
communism to which the evidence points was comparatively recent;
in other words, that for the civilized races the interval which divides
that era from our own is to be reckoned by thousands rather than by
hundreds of thousands of years, while for the lowest of existing
savages, for example, the aborigines of Australia, it is possible or
probable that the interval may not be greater than a few centuries.
Be that as it may, even if on the strength of the evidence I have
referred to we could demonstrate the former prevalence of a system
of sexual communism among all the races of mankind, this would
only carry us back a single step in the long history of our species; it
would not justify us in concluding that such a system had been
practised by truly primæval man, still less that it had prevailed
among mankind from the beginning down to the comparatively
recent period at which its existence may be inferred from the
evidence at our disposal. About the social condition of primæval
man, I repeat, we know absolutely nothing, and it is vain to
speculate. Our first parents may have been as strict monogamists as
Whiston or Dr. Primrose, or they may have been just the reverse. We
have no information on the subject, and are never likely to get any. In
the countless ages which have elapsed since man and woman first
roamed the happy garden hand in hand or jabbered like apes among
the leafy boughs of the virgin forest, their relations to each other may
have undergone innumerable changes. For human affairs, like the
courses of the heaven, seem to run in cycles: the social pendulum
swings to and fro from one extremity of the scale to the other: in the
political sphere it has swung from democracy to despotism, and back
again from despotism to democracy; and so in the domestic sphere it
may have oscillated many a time between libertinism and
monogamy.
If I am right in my definition of Social
The second Anthropology, its province may be roughly divided
department of
Social Anthropology into two departments, one of which embraces the
is folklore, or the customs and beliefs of savages, while the other
study of savage includes such relics of these customs and beliefs
survivals in
civilization. as have survived in the thought and institutions of
more cultured peoples. The one department may
be called the study of savagery, the other the study of folklore. I have
said something of savagery: I now turn to folklore, that is, to the
survivals of more primitive ideas and practices among peoples who
in other respects have risen to a higher plane of culture. That such
survivals may be discovered in every civilized nation will hardly now
be disputed by anybody. When we read, for example, of an
Irishwoman roasted to death by her husband on a suspicion that she
was not his wife but a fairy changeling,166.1 or again, of an
Englishwoman dying of lockjaw because she had anointed the nail
that wounded her instead of the wound,166.2 we may be sure that the
beliefs to which these poor creatures fell victims were not learned by
them in school or at church, but had been transmitted from truly
savage ancestors through many generations of outwardly though not
really civilized descendants. Beliefs and practices of this sort are
therefore rightly called superstitions, which means literally survivals.
It is with superstitions in the strict sense of the word that the second
department of Social Anthropology is concerned.
If we ask how it happens that superstitions
Such survivals are linger among a people who in general have
due to the essential
inequality of men, reached a higher level of culture, the answer is to
many of whom be found in the natural, universal, and ineradicable
remain at heart inequality of men. Not only are different races
savages under a
civilized exterior. differently endowed in respect of intelligence,
courage, industry, and so forth, but within the
same nation men of the same generation differ enormously in inborn
capacity and worth. No abstract doctrine is more false and
mischievous than that of the natural equality of men. It is true that
the legislator must treat men as if they were equal, because laws of
necessity are general and cannot be made so as to fit the infinite
variety of individual cases. But we must not imagine that because
men are equal before the law they are therefore intrinsically equal to
each other. The experience of common life sufficiently contradicts
such a vain imagination. At school and at the universities, at work
and at play, in peace and in war, the mental and moral inequalities of
human beings stand out too conspicuously to be ignored or disputed.
On the whole the men of keenest intelligence and strongest
characters lead the rest and shape the moulds into which, outwardly
at least, society is cast. As such men are
Mankind dominated necessarily few by comparison with the multitude
by an enlightened
minority. whom they lead, it follows that the community is
really dominated by the will of an enlightened
minority167.1 even in countries where the ruling power is nominally
vested in the hands of the numerical majority. In fact, disguise it as
we may, the government of mankind is always and everywhere
essentially aristocratic. No juggling with political machinery can
evade this law of nature. However it may seem to lead, the dull-
witted majority in the end follows a keener-witted minority. That is its
salvation and the secret of progress. The higher human intelligence
sways the lower, just as the intelligence of man gives him the
mastery over the brutes. I do not mean that the ultimate direction of
society rests with its nominal governors, with its kings, its statesmen,
its legislators. The true rulers of men are the
The uncrowned thinkers who advance knowledge; for just as it is
kings.
through his superior knowledge, not through his
superior strength, that man bears rule over the rest of the animal
creation, so among men themselves it is knowledge which in the
long run directs and controls the forces of society. Thus the
discoverers of new truths are the real though uncrowned and
unsceptred kings of mankind; monarchs, statesmen, and law-givers
are but their ministers, who sooner or later do their bidding by
carrying out the ideas of these master minds. The more we study the
inward workings of society and the progress of civilization, the more
clearly shall we perceive how both are governed by the influence of
thoughts which, springing up at first we know not how or whence in a
few superior minds, gradually spread till they have leavened the
whole inert lump of a community or of mankind. The origin of such
mental variations, with all their far-reaching train of social
consequences, is just as obscure as is the origin of those physical
variations on which, if biologists are right, depends the evolution of
species, and with it the possibility of progress. Perhaps the same
unknown cause which determines the one set of variations gives rise
to the other also. We cannot tell. All we can say is that on the whole
in the conflict of competing forces, whether physical or mental, the
strongest at last prevails, the fittest survives. In the mental sphere
the struggle for existence is not less fierce and internecine than in
the physical, but in the end the better ideas, which we call the truth,
carry the day. The clamorous opposition with which at their first
appearance they are regularly greeted, whenever they conflict with
old prejudices, may retard but cannot prevent their final victory. It is
the practice of the mob first to stone and then to
The tombs of the erect useless memorials to their greatest
prophets.
benefactors. All who set themselves to replace
ancient error and superstition by truth and reason must lay their
account with brickbats in their life and a marble monument after
death.
I have been led into making these remarks by
Superstition the the wish to explain why it is that superstitions of all
creed of the
laggards in the sorts, political, moral, and religious, survive among
march of intellect. peoples who have the opportunity of knowing
better. The reason is that the better ideas, which
are constantly forming in the upper stratum, have not yet filtered
through from the highest to the lowest minds. Such a filtration is
generally slow, and by the time that the new notions have penetrated
to the bottom, if indeed they ever get there, they are often already
obsolete and superseded by others at the top. Hence it is that if we
could open the heads and read the thoughts of two men of the same
generation and country but at opposite ends of the intellectual scale,
we should probably find their minds as different as if the two
belonged to different species. Mankind, as it has been well said,
advances in échelons; that is, the columns march not abreast of
each other but in a straggling line, all lagging in various degrees
behind the leader. The image well describes the difference not only
between peoples, but between individuals of the same people and
the same generation. Just as one nation is continually outstripping
some of its contemporaries, so within the same nation some men are
constantly outpacing their fellows, and the foremost in the race are
those who have thrown off the load of superstition which still burdens
the backs and clogs the footsteps of the laggards. To drop metaphor,
superstitions survive because, while they shock the views of
enlightened members of the community, they are still in harmony
with the thoughts and feelings of others who, though they are drilled
by their betters into an appearance of civilization, remain barbarians
or savages at heart. That is why, for example, the barbarous
punishments for high treason and witchcraft and the enormities of
slavery were tolerated and defended in this country down to modern
times. Such survivals may be divided into two
Superstitions either sorts, according as they are public or private; in
public or private.
other words, according as they are embodied in
the law of the land or are practised with or without the connivance of
the law in holes and corners. The examples I have
Examples of public just cited belong to the former of these two
superstitions.
classes. Witches were publicly burned and traitors
were publicly disembowelled in England not so long ago, and slavery
survived as a legal institution still later. The true nature of such public
superstitions is apt, through their very publicity, to escape detection,
because until they are finally swept away by the rising tide of
progress, there are always plenty of people to defend them as
institutions essential to the public welfare and sanctioned by the laws
of God and man.
It is otherwise with those private superstitions to
The wide which the name of folklore is usually confined. In
prevalence of
private superstitions civilized society most educated people are not
constitutes a even aware of the extent to which these relics of
standing menace to savage ignorance survive at their doors. The
civilization.
discovery of their wide prevalence was indeed
only made last century, chiefly through the researches of the
brothers Grimm in Germany. Since their day systematic enquiries
carried on among the less educated classes, and especially among
the peasantry, of Europe have revealed the astonishing, nay,
alarming truth that a mass, if not the majority, of people in every
civilized country is still living in a state of intellectual savagery, that,
in fact, the smooth surface of cultured society is sapped and mined
by superstition. Only those whose studies have led them to
investigate the subject are aware of the depth to which the ground
beneath our feet is thus, as it were, honeycombed by unseen forces.
We appear to be standing on a volcano which may at any moment
break out in smoke and fire to spread ruin and devastation among
the gardens and palaces of ancient culture wrought so laboriously by
the hands of many generations. After looking on the ruined Greek
temples of Paestum and contrasting them with the squalor and
savagery of the Italian peasantry, Renan said, “I trembled for
civilization, seeing it so limited, built on so weak a foundation, resting
on so few individuals even in the country where it is dominant.”170.1
If we examine the superstitious beliefs which are
It is the earliest and tacitly but firmly held by many of our fellow-
crudest
superstitions that countrymen, we shall find, perhaps to our surprise,
survive longest, that it is precisely the oldest and crudest
because they superstitions which are most tenacious of life,
answer to the
calibre of the lowest while views which, though also erroneous, are
minds. Hence while more modern and refined, soon fade from the
the surface of
society is constantly
popular memory. For example, the high gods of
changing, its Egypt and Babylon, of Greece and Rome, have for
depths, like those of ages been totally forgotten by the people and
the ocean, remain
almost motionless.
survive only in the books of the learned; yet the
peasants, who never even heard of Isis and Osiris,
of Apollo and Artemis, of Jupiter and Juno, retain to this day a firm
belief in witches and fairies, in ghosts and hobgoblins, those lesser
creatures of the mythical fancy in which their fathers believed long
before the great deities of the ancient world were ever thought of,
and in which, to all appearance, their descendants will continue to
believe long after the great deities of the present day shall have
gone the way of all their predecessors. The reason why the higher
forms of superstition or religion (for the religion of one generation is
apt to become the superstition of the next) are less permanent than