Yet it was an experience for which I shall ever be grateful, for it turned me from a rash boy into a serious man. I knew then the meaning of the white man's duty. He has to take all risks, recking nothing of his life or his fortunes, and well content to find his reward in the fulfilment of his task. That is the difference between white and black, the gift of responsibility, the power of being in a little way a king; and so long as we know this and practise it, we will rule not in Africa alone but wherever there are dark men who live only for the day and their own bellies. Moreover, the work made me pitiful and kindly. I learned much of the untold grievances of the natives, and saw something of their strange, twisted reasoning. Before we had got Laputa's army back to their kraals, with food enough to tide them over the spring sowing, Aitken and I had got sounder policy in our heads than you will find in the towns, where men sit in offices and see the world through a mist of papers.Prester John, Chapter XXII Natives, he told me, were not good scouts so far as white man's work was concerned, for they did not understand the meaning of what we did.Prester John, Chapter VIII At the turn of the century, responses by Blacks to White domination were mixed: primary resistance on the battlefield was undergoing its dying spasms. Resistance and accommodation began to take other forms and we can see all these strategies as well as those of the hegemonic power through the eyes of an imperial agent. John Buchan (1875-1940) was one of the most popular writers of his time and Prester John was one of his most popular books. First published in August 1910 by Thomas Nelson, it went into a cheap edition in 1915, was reprinted in 1917, twice reprinted in each of the years 1918, 1919 and 1920, and three times ~
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