III. GEOGRAPHICAL AND ECONOMIC DIVISION OF COLONIES-EFFECT ON TARIFFS. The political division into "dependent" colonies and "self-governing" colonies corresponds in general to the geographical division into tropical colonies and nontropical colonies and to the economic classification into plantation and settlement colonies. The latter are those in which white men can live permanently; in them the tendency toward economic and industrial development similar to that of European states and toward self-government or independence is distinctly greater than in the tropical colonies. The British selfgoverning Dominions afford the chief examples.25 Tropical colonies, except for limited areas of high plateaus, are plantation colonies and with them may be associated various colonies at the border of the Tropics, or even in the Temperate Zone, in which nationals of the colonizing country can not settle in large numbers since a comparatively dense population was already in occupation of the territory when it became a colony. Malta, Egypt, and Korea are examples of nontropical and well-populated colonies. These nonsettlement colonies are sometimes subdivided into plantation and exploitation colonies. Since the practice of the enslavement of the natives and the seizure of the lands tilled by them has been abandoned, agricultural plantations can predominate only 26 in the less thickly populated territories-chiefly tropical Africa, Oceania, Guiana, but also in parts of India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, Indo-China, Java, and the Philippine Islands. Outside of Asia plantation colonies usually suffer from a shortage of labor, and their development has been attained by varying degrees of oppression of the natives, from slavery up.27 Nonsettlement colonies are, as a whole, characterized by commercial, agricultural, and industrial development, in succession and then simultaneously, by the capital and under the direction of nationals of the governing states. If the land is already well occupied, agriculture is left to the native population except for scientific experimentation and education,28 and the nationals of the colonizing power engage in a supervisory capacity in government, transportation, engineering, mining, and, to some extent, manufacturing. These nonsettlement colonies, especially those properly called plantation colonies in the stricter sense, frequently produce conspicuously only one or two products, and they all export principally raw materials, most of which do not compete with products of the temperate 25 Other regions previously of the same type have gained their independence the United States and the States of South America. Compare the development taking place more slowly in India, Indo-China, and northern Africa. 26 In the West Indies many plantations continue from slavery days and there is room for others. 27 See pp. 75 and 279 for the number of Asiatics who have migrated or been imported into Malaya, Oceania, and Africa. Compare recent discussions of forced labor in British East Africa and the well-known criticisms of the labor policies pursued in the Congo Free State, German Kamerun, and Portuguese Sao Thomé. Some colonies for instance, the Gold Coast and Nigeria--are now showing how rapid may be the development of a tropical colony if the natives be given proper encouragement as proprietors rather than as peons or day laborers. 28 Before the war it seemed likely that the natural indigo of India would be driven from the market by synthetic indigo. Recent experiments are said to have shown that the product per acre can be increased fivefold and that, aided by greater increase of costs in Europe, natural indigo need not fear the competition of the synthetic product. A criticism has been made that the colonizing powers neglect the products for native consumption and devote their experiments unduly to cotton, rubber, cocoa, and other articles of international commerce. zones. Even in the case of India, raw materials still constitute twothirds of the exports, after a considerable decrease in the proportion during the war. In these colonies the whites import practically everything that they consume, including foodstuffs. The natives, according to their numbers and the degree of their civilization, import quantities of sugar, liquors, kerosene, and a certain range of other goods, particularly cotton textiles. These colonies therefore offer markets of considerable value to the industrial nations. As they are almost without industries of their own,29 if they have protective tariffs, these are devised for the purpose of according a market for the industries of the mother country; but even then, as the rates imposed are practically never higher than those of the tariff of the mother country, and as the differential is not always equal to the full amount of the rate, and as foreign countries are usually at less disadvantage in making contact with the market of the colony than in invading the market of the mother country, the protective tariff is not in the colony so great a barrier to trade as it is in the mother country. For instance, an identical rate of duty in the Philippines and in the United States constitutes, as an obstacle to Japanese trade, a lower barrier in the former than in the latter. Where these colonies have tariffs for revenue only, or merely moderate rates of duty such as prevail in the Italian colonies, the characteristic tariff is one of ad valorem rates, say 10 per cent, on all imports not specially exempted as necessary to the development of the colony, with higher specific rates on alcohol, beverages, and tobacco and a limited number of other articles; it contains also usually export duties, occasioned by the need of revenue in comparatively poor and undeveloped countries and by the fact that the system of monoculture makes the collection of an export duty an easy and equitable substitute for taxes on land or on the natives direct. CHARACTERIstics of COLONIAL TRADE. The significance and danger of national control of the world's raw materials was revealed by the war. These raw materials predominate in the export trade of the colonies. Upon the colonies the world. is wholly dependent for certain materials, notably jute and copra, and largely dependent for many products, animal, vegetable, and mineral. Such are tea, cocoa, vanilla, spices, cinchona, camphor, and numerous oil-producing seeds and nuts; rubber, hemp, and kapok; wool, ivory, ostrich feathers, shellac, and goatskins; diamonds, graphite, tin, manganese, mica, asbestos, and phosphates. By enumerating special kinds and qualities of articles the lists might be extended almost indefinitely. Thus, though the United States produces two-thirds of the world's cotton, tire manufacturers and others imported 400,000 bales of Egyptian cotton in 1920. The colonies, especially the minor colonies, are not self-sufficient. They produce a few staple articles rather than a variety. Therefore what they produce they must export, and what they consume they 29 It is not possible to include in the text the exceptions to and the qualifications of the generalizations which it is necessary to make in speaking of great groups of colonies. The most important exception to the statement that the nonsettlement colonies are almost The without industries is that India possesses many large modern factories (see p. 327). ading points in regard to the agriculture, industries, and commerce of the various are given in the chapters on the Colonial Tariff Policies of the different powers. must import.30 In a few cases, however, the distinction between production and exportable surplus is important. India rivals Cuba as a sugar producer, yet she imports more than she exports. Though China produces most of the world's rice, three-fourths of the quantity which passes in international trade is provided by Burma and French Indo-China. Of wool exports over one-half comes from the British Dominions. In considering the possible monopolization by a certain power or powers of the world's supply of a given article, not only the present exportable surplus but the total production and the potential production must be considered. If a given country produces one-half of the wool which it consumes and none of the rubber, and if this country finds itself confronted by a monopoly of the exportable surplus of these two articles, its position in respect of the two is obviously different. The import trade of the colonies is characterized by the great predominance of manufactured articles. Foodstuffs, beverages, and tobacco play an important part in the trade, but perhaps on the whole not more important than in Europe; but while Great Britain, for example, imports raw materials to a value twice as great as that of the manufactured articles imported, in the colonies, even including the Dominions, the proportions are more than reversed. In the Dominions and to a lesser extent in India and some of the other colonies, manufactures are developing; but except for the Dominions and India the comparatively small size of the colonies, together with other factors, render it highly probable that their industrial development will be slow and restricted to a few lines. The colonies are therefore more dependable markets for the disposal of manufactures than are independent countries. The export trade of different colonies of the same power in the same part of the world is often quite different, as may be seen in the British West Indies or in British West Africa; 31 the import trade, on the other hand, in its larger features, is similar in all the colonies. Textiles (cheaper cottons, made-up clothing, sacks), machinery and tools, prepared and preserved foodstuffs (dry fish, canned meats, sugar, condensed milk), liquor and tobacco, salt, kerosene, coal (chiefly for bunker purposes), matches, soap, glassware, sheet iron, cement, leather goods, and chemical products are the principal classes of the trade. In detail the differences are naturally very great. In colonies where there are no whites except a few officers, merchants, and missionaries, the native demand determines the character of the trade and this demand may not at first extend beyond cotton piece goods, liquors, salt, and brass rods or other trinkets; but in the North African and Asiatic colonies the native demand may include almost as wide a range of articles as in the colonies settled by whites. The design and quality of textiles and the variety of machinery and implements used may vary completely from one colony to the next 50" Consume" is, of course, used in the general sense and not as applied to foodstuffs alone. The statement in the text is true in its most unqualified form of the smaller plantation colonies, but even in the Gold Coast, for instance, where there are no European plantations, the natives are coming to depend upon imported foodstuffs. Various colonial governments, e. g., of the Philippines, Straits Settlements, and British Guiana, have taken special measures to insure a food supply. For the predominance of one or several products in the export trade of the colonies, see p. 317 on the British West Indies and the various tables which give the chief products exported from the Philippines, Porto Rico, Egypt, Ceylon, Java, British West Africa, and the Congo. 31 See pp. 317 and 308. for instance, sugar mills, Kaffir hoes, automobile trucks, gold dredges, barbed wire, and sheep shears are all in demand in colonial markets, but not necessarily in the same colony. Pottery making, tanning, and wood working are practiced universally, but different parts of the colonial market import quantities of earthenware, leather, and worked wood. In Tunis, however, raw hides are an important article of import, and from some colonies there is an export trade in leather, pottery, textiles, and other articles which are generally more characteristic of the import trade. IV. IMPORTANCE OF COLONIAL TRADE, WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE UNITED STATES. 34 From the point of view of trade, the colonies may be divided roughly into three groups. The British self-governing Dominions located in the temperate regions, 32 with energetic and highly intelligent populations and already comparatively well advanced in industries, may be put into the first group. They have a high per capita trade 33 and their total trade constitutes more than one-third of the total trade of all colonies combined. A second group may be formed of the major colonies of Asia and of North Africa, of which by far the most important are India, Java, and Egypt. These lie for the most part in or near the Tropical Zone, and their populations, large in number and dense in distribution, consist mainly of hard-working natives, a fair proportion of whom are skilled craftsmen. Perhaps on the whole less richly endowed in natural resources, lacking machinery, and not having developed large scale organization, these colonies, thanks to the mass and the industry of their populations, maintain a trade which is in some cases as great as that of the selfgoverning British Dominions. The total trade of these major North African and Asiatic colonies, extending from Morocco to Korea 35 likewise exceeded in 1913 a third of the total colonial trade. In a third class may be grouped all minor colonies. Of these only a few, comparatively small in area, lie outside the tropics.36 Their populations are not large and are as a rule inferior in productive capacity. Except for some whose unimportance is due to their insignificant area, they are in the primitive stages of agricultural development and have achieved little in the way of mining or manufacturing. They have not developed adequate systems of communication. Embracing most of Africa, and scattered in various seas, particularly the western Pacific, their total trade, though they number four score and include comparatively advanced regions such as Nigeria, is less than that of the four Dominions. However, the undoubted possibilities of the vast areas included, when adequate communication #2 Northern Australia extends into the Tropics. 33 Canada's trade in 1919-20 was $273 per capita. South Africa's per capita trade is much smaller than that of the others, due partly to the presence of the large black population. Per capita trade is not necessarily an index of prosperity: an increase in population may be accompanied by greater diversification of industries, a closer approach to self-sufficiency, and a decline in the per capita foreign trade. 34 The others are Morocco, Algeria, Ceylon, Indo-China, the Philippines, Formosa, and Korea. The total trade of these colonies in 1913 ran from Algeria's $250,000,000 to Morocco's $43,000,000. If the classification be made merely on the basis of trade (1913) Porto Rico and Dairen must be classed with these major colonies. 35 I. e., those named in the text and note above, but not including Porto Rico, Dairen, Hongkong. the Malay States, and the Straits Settlements. 30 British: Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Bahrein Islands, Weihaiwei, Bermuda, and Falkland Islands. French Tunis, and St. Pierre and Miquelon. Italian: Libia and Rhodes. Canary Islands, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Formosa lie partly in the Tem ་ shall have been provided and the labor problems have been solved, give these colonies a high potential value. Table 2 gives an indication of the relative commercial importance 37 of the mother countries, colonies, and other regions of the world in a normal prewar year. TABLE 2.-Trade of the world,' 1903 and 1913. The trade statistics relating to the different countries and colonies can be compared only in a general way. They differ in accuracy, in methods of valuation, and in the exclusion or inclusion of Government supplies, bullion and specie, and transit trade. The percentages of increase are more directly comparable. |