The lords of human kind;: Black man, yellow man, and white man in an age of empire

THE LORDS OF HUMAN KIND: Black Man, Yellow Man and White Man in an Age of Empire by V. G. Kiernan - Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto, 1969 : Stated First American Edition. With black & white illustrations. 336 Pages. CHAPTER CONTENTS: Introduction; India, Other Colonies in Asia, The Islamic World, The Far East, Africa, The South Seas, Latin America, Conclusion, Index. In the days of Mr. Stanley and Dr. Livingstone, the world was divided into two parts. First there were the Europeans. And then there were "the others." This book is an informal survey of the attitudes towards "the others" engendered by nineteenth century European imperialism. It is a sobering chronicle - and a truly fascinating one. The men who pushed back the frontiers of European culture and who insisted on trying to raise the standards of inferior peoples were a motley collection - civil servants and explorers, archaeologists and educators, merchants and missionaries, seers and shameless profiteers. They had no hesitation about giving such names to their subjects as niggers and Kaffirs, Chinks and wogs. Their assessment of former countrymen who had settled permanently in the colonies could be just as harsh. Paternalistic. Condescending. Consorious. Self-righteous. Yet - sometimes - deeply compassionate. The Europeans were all these things, often all together. They reacted with moral outrage at the sight of mixed bathing in Japan; with bewilderment to the Chinese, who used gunpowder only for fireworks; with horrified pleasure to the sexual freedom of Tahitian women. And all too often, of course, the Europeans reacted to "the others" with pious savagery as well. To the extent that Europeans considered themselves "the lords of human kind" in the nineteenth century, this book is their story. In the larger sense, however, "The Lords of Human Kind" is a brilliantly ironic account of the folly of imperial behavior wherever it appears.