Assessing the Goals of European Imperialism 853Queen Victoria giving a Bible to a man wearing Central African garb.
carried out against local populations. Missionary societies may have been
the “conscience” of European colonization, and a small conscience was
better than none at all. For British reformers, the primary goal of the “civi
lizing mission” in the early part of the century had been to abolish slavery
in the British Empire, which was achieved in 1833. In the 1880s, pressure
from the British Liberal Party helped end the transport of Chinese laborers
to work as indentured workers in South African mines. The British govern
ment was embarrassed by the treatment of Indian workers in Natal, a
province of South Africa, which was brought to light by, among others, the
young and future Indian leader Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869
1948). French religious leaders launched a campaign against the remain
ing Arab slave trade in Africa. British officials protested the brutal labor
practices of Portuguese and Belgian entrepreneurs. Yet the British govern
ment declined to press a campaign to reduce or eliminate the sale of arms
and liquor to Africans, because both commodities were extremely lucrative
to British merchants. Similarly, it had refused to stop the sale of Indian
opium by British traders in China.
Lord Frederick Lugard (1858-1945), a British colonial official, came up
with the term “Dual Mandate” to describe what he considered the “moral”
and “material” imperatives of colonial powers. The European powers, he
believed, had an obligation to “civilize” native populations and also to
“open the door” to the material improvements brought by Western technol
ogy. They were establishing “trusteeships.” In exchange, the Europeans