1915. Here our author is in his own field, describing as he does the events in which he himself has participated so ably. We are treated to a clear-cut exposition and description of the present government of the Philippines, the religious, insular, provincial and municipal organizations and their interrelations; questions of finance, trade, agriculture, labor, are discussed; and we are given some conception of the extensive work of our government in the direction of public works, harbor improvements, commerce, education, sanitation, and the reclamation of the wild tribes. This work was in full progress in 1914, when some political changes were effected on the basis of national issues. Judge Elliott feels that these changes have been entirely inconsistent with our original purposes in the Philippines, which presuppose a sufficient length of time for the education and uplift of the Filipino people. These changes have interrupted and stayed the work, which in reality is only initiated and will require time for full fruition. What we need is a settled policy with regard to the Philippines. They should be put beyond the reach of politics. The Filipino people are not yet ready for independence, political, moral or economic; and the measures enacted during the past few years have not been the result of proper reflection, knowledge, understanding or sympathy with our great aim in the archipelago. Notwithstanding the sharply critical spirit of this volume, as a piece of informative literature, palpitating with earnestness and abounding in data, it is the best thing yet written on our colonial activities in the Far East. It is more than that; it is a book with a mission. It is unfortunate that the author has carelessly or unwittingly permitted so many errors and inconsistencies in the use of Spanish names and words to creep into the text. It would almost seem that he deliberately tried to waive all correct usage in Spanish. It would be wearisome to mention all of the 62 mistakes of this kind counted in the first volume, but a few of the most glaring follow in the order of their occurrence: encomendadors (37) for encomenderos, which word is correctly used subsequently; politicos for políticos (60) indicating that our author makes no use of accents in words requiring them; Cotabato is spelled Cotabatu (66) and Cottabatu (468) in volume I and Cotabato in volume II (443); Mariveles is spelled Maravales (71) and Marivales (162); Santo Tomás is Santa Tomás (72), thereby making St. Thomas a female saint; Agusan is Aguson (91); Martin de Rada, properly spelled on page 102 becomes Martin de Roda two pages farther on. El Cano, the successor of Magellan, is designated as El Caño (145); while Emelio Aguinaldo is given the Christian name of his female cousin Emelia (203). These errors are typical in an added sense of showing how studiously Americans avoid a correct knowledge of the language of the colony or foreign country in which they reside. Herein is one of our great weaknesses. CHARLES H. CUNNINGHAM. University of Texas. The Danish West Indies. By WALDEMAR WESTERGAARD. (New If the importance of the Danish West Indies were measured by their few square miles and some thirty thousand inhabitants, to give an entire volume, or as the author proposes, three volumes, to their history would be to exaggerate their importance. Mr. Westergaard feels that his study is justified because it gives a picture in miniature which portrays influences determining colonial development of importance throughout the Caribbean and beyond. Except for one chapter, Mr. Westergaard devotes his attention to the history of the eighty-four years during which the islands were managed by the Danish West India Company. The sources used are found chiefly in the Bancroft collection and in the Danish royal archives which have been almost entirely neglected by scholars. The author has made careful and effective use of his material. Since the community examined was so minute he has been able to picture its development in great detail. The life of the islands has centered about three lines of activity: trade and plantation enterprises, which the author points out have too often been treated as if they were synonymous, and the slave trade. The story presents many elements familiar to the student of the history of colonization and particularly of colonization in the American tropics. The Danish experience with ex-criminal colonists, indentured servants, absentee landlords, African slaves, pirates and contraband trade, all claim attention. The trials of the company and its stockholders, due to corrupt officials, hurricanes, droughts, and negro insurrections; the disputes of the planters with the authorities over direct taxes and customs; unfortunate experiments at coöperation with a company of Brandenburgers; the mutterings of the disgruntled settlers because of their desire for a share in their own government: all are interestingly discussed. Among the most valuable chapters are those dealing with the economic life of the colony. The experiments with indigo and cotton, the export of valuable woods, the rise of the sugar-cane industry which, especially when war conditions made the prices for the staple rise, gave the islands their boom periods, all furnish interesting contrasts and parallels for students of the history of other West Indian colonies. Taken as a whole, the story is a sorry one of hardships, disappointments and defeats, especially before the purchase of St. Croix in 1733, at which time the population of white adults numbered only 482, little more than twice as many as were in the colony a generation before. With the acquisition of the agriculturally richer St. Croix and the expansion of the sugar trade the picture brightens; but with greater prosperity the usual abuses of company rule became even less tolerable, and that system of control came to an end in 1754. The supplemental chapter gives a bird's-eye view of the subsequent history of the islands which is the most interesting part of the book for the general reader. An excellent series of appendices, chiefly statistical, shows the economic and social conditions existing in the colony at various periods. University of Wisconsin. CHESTER LLOYD JONES. Chatham's Colonial Policy. A Study in the Fiscal and Economic Implications of the Colonial Policy of the Elder Pitt. By KATE HOTBLACK, J. E. Cairnes Scholar of Girton College. (London and New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. 1917. Pp. xv, 219.) That Chatham directed his foreign and colonial policy with an eye to trade, is a commonplace; but Miss Hotblack has ventured a documenting of the subject which was well worth undertaking. Her book is built up from Chatham's correspondence, his speeches, and his departmental letters in the Record Office; and it makes out a clear case for regarding his conduct in the light of a supreme concern for mercantile interests. An obvious comment upon the work is, that being confined for the most part to material of an official character, it tends to reflect too exclusively an official view. Chatham's judgments become detached from their origin and place in contemporary political controversy, and stand out unduly magnified and exalted above the popular trade argu ments of the day. It is really not sufficient, and it serves only the most limited purpose, to contrive, as Miss Hotblack does, to make Chatham explain his conduct in his own words. It would be better, in addition, to attempt to value his views by resetting them in the arena of public debate from which they have been isolated. Had Miss Hotblack only cared to go further afield and to master, for example, the collections of pamphlets upon the Seven Years War alone, her study of Pitt's trading policy would have appeared less contracted. A few, even, of the eighty-odd pamphlets on the Canada-Guadaloupe controversy would have shown that in such a dispute the routine information of a government department does not compare for interest with the lively solicitude given the question in unofficial discussion. Also, more specifically, the same pamphlets would have explained the actual issue in the choice between Guadaloupe and Canada-an alternative which Miss Hotblack, relying too closely perhaps upon departmental letters, seems strangely to misinterpret; partly, it is to be feared, from a rather insecure understanding of the geography and economic exploitation of Canada before the cession. However, within the self-imposed limitations of this brief piece of research Miss Hotblack has sought out some very telling illustrative material, which elucidates Chatham's mercantilism, and throws the subject into clear outline. McGill University, Montreal. C. E. FRYER. The Origins of the Triple Alliance. By ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1917. Pp. vi, 236.) Although in Russia the Bolsheviki appear ready to open to all mankind the diplomatic arcana of the old régime, it will probably be many a day before Prussia, Austria, and Italy will allow historians free access to the secret records of their diplomatic history between 1866 and 1882. Until that day comes the historian must be content to catch at the clues in inspired newspaper articles, in hints, discreet and indiscreet, which statesmen drop in their reminiscences for the enlightenment or befogging of posterity, and in stories current in the legations and chancelleries of Europe. Professor Coolidge has caught with unusual success at all these clues available and has weighed their value with great acumen and common sense. He has wisely forborne to burden the reader with long notes on controversial points, but he has given the clearest, simplest, and most convincing narrative in English, of the way in which Bismarck sought to make secure from without the new German Empire which he had founded. Bismarck's chief source of anxiety immediately after the FrancoPrussian War was the possibility of French schemes of revanche. To protect Germany from this he skillfully pursued a tortuous policy which had as its successful purpose the diplomatic isolation of the new French Republic. In this he was aided by the so-called League of the Three Emperors a combination of the same three great powers which had brought about the First Partition of Poland just one hundred years earlier. Later, in 1879, owing to justifiable Russian resentment over the outcome of the Congress of Berlin, Bismarck felt it necessary to insure the German Empire on her Eastern frontier also-hence the Dual Alliance with Austria. It is worth noting that when he went to Vienna in September, 1879, to negotiate with Andrássy, he pretended to wish that the treaty of alliance between the two Germanic empires should be a general treaty and should be made a part of the constitution of both states. Andrássy, however, refused both points: a general treaty might antagonize France, with whom Austria had no quarrel; and the inclusion of the treaty as a constitutional document would recall in a measure the German Confederation which had been ruptured by the War of 1866. So Bismarck yielded, and the Dual Alliance, as signed, looked primarily eastward: "Should one of the two Empires be attacked by Russia, the High Contracting Parties are bound to come to the assistance one of the other with the whole war strength of their Empires" (Art. I). If one were attacked by another powerby which Bismarck of course meant France-the other contracting party bound itself "to observe at least a benevolent neutral attitude" (Art. II). In the Triple Alliance three years later there appears this same ominous phrase, "benevolent neutrality"-itself a contradiction in terms-the full significance of which was not apparent until August 2, 1914, when Germany demanded that Belgium maintain an attitude of "friendly neutrality" toward herself. Aside from its clearness and interest, the book is noteworthy for its considerable attention to Russian and Balkan influences, for its evaluation of the personal influence of rulers and statesmen, and for its just estimate of Bismarck. Smith College. SIDNEY B. FAY. |