The Development of Africa

British geographer ARTHUR SILVA WHITE (1859-1932) wrote a handful of books about the "applied geography" of foreign lands, including the continent of Africa. Applied geography, according to White, takes into account the particular geographical features of an area and uses this as a basis for determining political structures, such as country borders. In The Development of Africa, published in 1890, White addresses what Europe had come to consider "the African question": How could the European powers best colonize the continent, and what could they do with the people already living there? What resources were available on the continent, and which were worth spending time and effort to extract? Historians will find this an interesting source for its emphasis on imperialistic colonization, and geographers will be enlightened by its many links to today's field of environmental geography.