Lakhasly

The Anglo-Irishman Benjamin Kidd (1858-1916) was a civil servant and amateur naturalist who became a best-selling author with his controversial Social Evolution (1894).If we look to the native social systems of the tropical East, to the primitive savagery of Central Africa, to the West Indian Islands in the past in process of being assisted into the position of modern States by Great Britain, to the Black Republic of Hayti in the present, or to the Black Republic Hayti in the present or to modern Liberia in the future, the lesson seems everywhere the same; it is that there will be no development of the resources of the tropics under native government.However we may be inclined to hesitate before reaching this view, it is hard to see how assent to it can be withheld in the face of the consistent verdict of history in the past, and the unvarying support given to it by facts in the present.If we have to meet the fact that by force of circumstances the tropics must by force of circumstances the tropics must be developed, and if the evidence is equally be developed, and if the evidence is equally emphatic that such a development can only take place under the influence of the white man, we are confronted with a larger issue than any mere question of commercial policy or of national selfishness.The first step to the solution of the problem before us is simply to acquire the principle that in dealing with the natural inhabitants of the tropics we are dealing with peoples who represent the same stage in the history of the development of the race that the child does in the history of the development of the individual.The first principle of success in undertaking such a duty seems to the writer to be a clear recognition of the cardinal fact that in the tropics the white man lives and works only as a diver lives and works under water.Neither physically, morally, nor politically, can he be acclimatized in the tropics.....

The Anglo-Irishman Benjamin Kidd (1858–1916) was a civil servant and amateur
naturalist who became a best-selling author with his controversial Social Evolution
(1894).

.... The ultimate fact underlying all the relations of the white man to the tropics
is one which really goes to the root of the whole question of the evolution which the
race itself has undergone. The human race reached its earliest development where the
conditions of earliest development where the conditions of life were easiest; namely,
in the tropics. But throughout the whole period of human history the development of
the race has taken place outwards from the tropics. Slowly but surely we see the seat
of empire and authority moving like the advancing tide northward. The evolution in
character which the race has undergone has been northwards from the tropics. The
first step to the solution of the problem before us is simply to acquire the principle
that in dealing with the natural inhabitants of the tropics we are dealing with peoples
who represent the same stage in the history of the development of the race that the
child does in the history of the development of the individual. The tropics will not,
therefore, be developed by the natives themselves. However we may be inclined to
hesitate before reaching this view, it is hard to see how assent to it can be withheld in
the face of the consistent verdict of history in the past, and the unvarying support
given to it by facts in the present. If there is any one inclined to challenge it, let him
reflect for a moment on the evidence on the one side and the difficulty that will
present itself to him of producing any serious facts on the other side. If we look to the
native social systems of the tropical East, to the primitive savagery of Central Africa, to
the West Indian Islands in the past in process of being assisted into the position of
modern States by Great Britain, to the Black Republic of Hayti in the present, or to the
Black Republic Hayti in the present or to modern Liberia in the future, the lesson
seems everywhere the same; it is that there will be no development of the resources
of the tropics under native government.
We come, therefore, to a clearly defined position. If we have to meet the fact
that by force of circumstances the tropics must by force of circumstances the tropics
must be developed, and if the evidence is equally be developed, and if the evidence is equally emphatic that such a development can only take place under the influence of
the white man, we are confronted with a larger issue than any mere question of
commercial policy or of national selfishness. The tropics in such circumstances can only
be governed as a trust for civilization, and with a full sense of the responsibility which
such a trust involves. The first principle of success in undertaking such a duty seems to
the writer to be a clear recognition of the cardinal fact that in the tropics the white
man lives and works only as a diver lives and works under water. Alike in a moral, in an
ethical, and in a political sense, the atmosphere he breathes must be that of another
region, that which produced him, and to which he belongs. Neither physically, morally,
nor politically, can he be acclimatized in the tropics.
The people among whom he lives and works are often separated from him by
thousands of years of development; he cannot, therefore, be allowed to administer
government from any local and lower standard he may develop. If he has any right
there at all, he is there in the name of civilization; if our civilization has any right there
at all, it is because it represents higher ideals of humanity, a higher type of social
order. This is the lesson which, slowly and painfully, and with many a temporary
reversion to older ideas, the British peoples have been learning in India for the last fifty
years, and which has recently been applied in other circumstances to the government
of Egypt.