Synopsis
European Colonies, In Various Parts Of The World: Viewed In Their Social, Moral And Physical Condition by John Howison. This volume surveys European colonial possessions through the eyes of a discerning observer, avoiding statistical detail and concentrating on landscape, daily life, and the character of peoples. Howison structures each division around four aims: the oceanic approach to the colony, the physical and natural features, the aboriginal inhabitants, and the progress of European settlement and foreign communities. He travels West Africa, the West African Ocean, and the Indian Ocean region, with a later focus on India, and offers vivid portraits of coastlines, climates, flora and fauna, and the societies of Moors, Negroes, Hottentots, and Caffres, as well as the European forts, trade, and colonial administration. While he critiques civilization’s reach and cautions about the costs of colonization, he also documents the attractions and perils of tropical life, and records the impressionistic balance between admiration for nature and concern for indigenous cultures. The work stands as a 19th-century ethnographic travelogue of colonial worlds.
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