182 HISTORY OF AMERICA 



in a righteous cause could do no harm and might do good. If we take 

 the confidential report of Juan and Ulloa to the King of Spain in 

 the eighteenth century as to conditions in Peru, 1 we find that, dark 

 as they were, they were almost bright as compared with what appear 

 to be to-day the conditions in the Congo State. 



It is no doubt hazardous in an historical paper to touch upon so 

 delicate a subject as the race question, but I will venture a few words 

 upon its broader aspects. 



The race question involves not only the relations between the 

 whites and the colored in our Southern states; it confronts us in 

 the Philippines and Porto Rico. In other aspects it is and will be 

 one of the perennial and absorbing problems in the development of 

 Africa. For the consideration, not to say settlement, of a question 

 so complicated and so involved in prejudice and passion and wrong, 

 no light or teaching that history affords should be neglected. These 

 questions were first faced by the Spaniards of all modern Europeans, 

 and in the four hundred years' history of Spanish America there is 

 a wealth of human experience in the contact of races that may be 

 drawn upon for warning or instruction or possibly for reassurance. 



If history has lessons for the present, the history of Spanish Amer- 

 ica assuredly deserves an immensely more careful study than jt has 

 yet received. If the study of that history is prosecuted with scien- 

 tific detachment, penetrating discrimination, and generous liberality 

 of mind, that freedom from the distorting influences of race pride 

 and religious prepossession, it will enrich the history of Spain and 

 broaden the study of our own colonial history, and contribute to the 

 intelligent appreciation of the race problems of the twentieth century. 



In this brief essay upon a subject so comprehensive as the rela- 

 tion of American history to other fields of historical study, I have 

 found it hardly practicable to do more than to remind the student 

 of European civilization that his territory extends across the Atlantic, 

 and is not bounded by it, and that the forces and tendencies, the 

 people and the institutions with whose development he is occupied, 

 have a life over-seas, distinct but not detached from the life in the 

 Old World, and one with whose powerful reactions on the parent 

 civilization he must reckon; and. lastly, I have ventured to advocate 

 a broader treatment of the history of European colonization in the 

 New World, which will accord to the work of Spain a more appreciative 

 recognition, and which may not be without interest and value to us, 

 now that we have undertaken to shape the history of millions of 

 people whose earlier acquisitions of European culture came through 

 Spain, or to those European nations which have the problem of 

 Africa on their hands. 



1 Noticias Secretas de America, etc. Sacadas a luz por Don David Barry. Lon- 

 don, 1826. 



