Henri Russier, The Partition of Oceania, Paris, 1905. (Thesis.)
A very detailed summary of a mass of material. Unfortunately, there are no exact statistical totals (à la Supan). Well compiled. Many source references, maps, photographs.
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Author divides the history of the “political parti- tion” into periods: |
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| 1) discovery (16th-18th centuries) | ||||
| 2) missions (1797-1840 | ||||
| 3) “first conflicts” (1840-70) | ||||
| N.B. | 4) “international competition”, 1870-1904. | |||
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⎧ ⎨ ⎩ |
Author quotes, inter alia, the summary table (of the partition) from Sievers and Küken- thal, Australia, Oceania and the Polar Countries, Leipzig, 1902. Pp. 67-68. To be looked at. |
⎫ ⎬ ⎭ |
This is followed by detailed economic, commercial and geographical information about each of the colonies.
To the economic causes of colonial policy the author adds (N.B.)—social causes:
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“To these [enumerated above and well-known] economic causes must be added social causes.— Owing to the growing complexities of life, which weigh heavily not only on the masses of the work- ers, but also on the middle classes, one sees accumulating in all countries of old civilisation ‘impatience, rancour and hatred that are a menace to public order, declassed energies and turbulent forces, which must be taken in hand and given employment abroad in order to avert an explosion at home’”[1] (Wahl, France in Her Colonies, Paris, p. 92)—(pp. 165-66). |
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| gem!! | |||
| N.B. |
References to British imperialism (p. 171);—to American (p. 175), after the Spanish-American war of 1898;—to German (p. 180). |
| N.B. |
He quotes, among others, Driault, Political and Social Problems at the End of the Nineteenth Century, etc. (Paris, 1900), Chapter XIV, “The Great Powers and the Division of the World”. |
[1] See present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 262-63.—Ed.
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