STANLEY, AND KING LEOPOLD II.’S CONCEPTION OF THE CONGO FREE STATE
[Sidenote: Belgian Enterprise.]
In every case the National Committees of the International
Association for the Exploration and Civilisation of Central Africa
displayed extraordinary activity; but, as was to be expected, their
rate of progress was measured by the Belgian Committee, which met,
for the first time, on the 6th of November, 1876, in Brussels, just
six weeks after the close of the Brussels Geographical Conference
which had decreed its existence. As was fitting in the circumstances,
King Leopold was present at the meeting, and delivered upon that
occasion a speech which may be regarded as an amplification of his
Majesty’s previous pronouncements on the situation, now in some
measure become political, in Central Africa.
“Gentlemen,” said King Leopold, “the slave trade, which still exists
over a large part of the African Continent, is a plague-spot that
every friend of civilisation would desire to see disappear.”
[Illustration: House of Governor-General, Boma.]
“The horrors of that traffic, the thousands of victims massacred each
year through the slave trade, the still greater number of perfectly
innocent beings who, brutally reduced to captivity, are condemned
_en masse_ to forced labour in perpetuity, have deeply moved all
those who have even partially studied this deplorable situation,
and concerting, in a word, for the founding of an International
Association to put an end to an odious traffic which makes our epoch
blush, and to tear aside the veil of darkness which still enshrouds
Central Africa. The discoveries due to daring explorers permit us
to say from this day that it is one of the most beautiful and the
richest countries created by God.
“The Conference of Brussels has nominated an Executive Committee to
carry into execution its declaration and resolutions.
“The Conference has wished, in order to place itself in closer
relationship with the public, whose sympathy will constitute
our force, to found, in each State, National Committees. These
Committees, after delegating two members from each of them to form
part of the International Committee, will popularise in their
respective countries the adopted programme.
“The work has already obtained in France and Belgium important
subscriptions, which make us indebted to the donors. These acts of
charity, so honourable to those who have rendered them, stimulate our
zeal in the mission we have undertaken. Our first task should be to
touch the hearts of the masses, and, while increasing our numbers,
to gather in a fraternal union, little onerous for each member but
powerful and fruitful by the accumulation of individual efforts and
their results.
“The International Association does not pretend to reserve for
itself all the good that could or ought to be done in Africa. It
ought, especially at the commencement, to forbid itself a too
extensive programme. Sustained by public sympathy, we hold the
conviction that, if we accomplish the opening of the routes, if we
succeed in establishing stations along the routes followed by the
slave merchants, this odious traffic will be wiped out, and that
these routes and these stations, while serving as fulcrums for
travellers, will powerfully contribute towards the evangelisation of
the blacks, and towards the introduction among them of commerce and
modern industry.
“We boldly affirm that all those who desire the enfranchisement of
the black races are interested in our success.
“The Belgian Committee, emanating from the International Committee,
and its representative in Belgium, will exert every means to procure
for the work the greatest number of adherents. It will assist my
countrymen to prove once more that Belgium is not only a hospitable
soil, but that she is also a generous nation, among whom the cause of
humanity finds as many champions as she has citizens.
“I discharge a very agreeable duty in thanking this assembly, and
in warmly congratulating it for having imposed on itself a task the
accomplishment of which will gain for our country another brilliant
page in the annals of charity and progress.”
We have here, in his Majesty’s own words, a very lucid and reiterated
exposition of King Leopold’s main object in concerning himself with
Central African affairs—the suppression of the slave trade, with
consequent moral and material advancement of its peoples. But let it
not be lost sight of that, subsidiary to this lofty mission, King
Leopold has never disavowed—nay, his Majesty had more than once
expressly declared it—his desire to find in Africa new markets for
Belgian manufactures, and a wide field for the surplus population
of overcrowded little Belgium, where his people might live and
where their peculiar genius in the arts and sciences might flourish
unfettered by alien laws.
[Sidenote: Old Beliefs Disproved.]
The experience of recent travellers, and particularly of Livingstone
and Stanley, had demonstrated the truth of what had hitherto always
been disbelieved, viz., that it was possible for the white man to
live and maintain his health in Central Africa. This fact alone was
of vast importance; but when was added to it proof that the country
was fertile, with immense natural sources of wealth, needing only
the brain and hand of civilised man to tap them, a prosperous future
for the country was assured. England, France, and Portugal, but
notably England, had already claimed large sections of Africa for
their own, and Italy and Germany—especially Germany—were feverishly
anxious to follow suit. But it is doubtful if among all the students
of the African problem—and they numbered among them the ablest of
every nation—there was at this period another man with prescience
to foresee, as we now know King Leopold must have foreseen, the
illimitable possibilities of Central Africa. Indeed it is tolerably
certain that had the great nations realised the potential value
of this region, their cupidity would never have permitted them to
allow its sovereignty to become vested in any single individual
with claim to it based upon anything except irresistible material
force. King Leopold’s claim, as we have already partly seen, and
as will presently be fully demonstrated, had for its foundation a
long-cherished and active philanthropic interest in the welfare of
its natives, chiefly in the form of the suppression of slavery;
the expenditure, out of his Majesty’s private purse, of large sums
of money for exploration, establishment of route stations, etc.;
and generally for calling the attention of the civilised world to
a little-known and less-cared-for region commonly thought to be
worthless.
[Illustration: The Congo at Lokandu.]
Bacon asserts, in his _Advancement of Learning_, that “States are
great engines moving slowly,” and from the beginning of the world
until long past the English philosopher’s time, the axiom was true;
but we of the twentieth century inhabit a world as unlike the world
that Bacon lived in as modern New York is unlike the city that
Washington Irving described under that name. The teeming millions
of Europe are ever more and more perplexed by the problem of how to
live, and not a day passes but the cruel competition of life waxes
fiercer and hotter. New lands, new markets, _must_ be found—the
social pressure in the older nations demands it as a prime necessity.
Therefore comes it that States are no longer “engines moving slowly.”
On the contrary, they move very rapidly; and as all the fat lands of
the earth have already been appropriated, future trouble seems not
improbable. John Bull, early in the field, worked hard painting the
map red, and now it is not possible to get far away from one or other
of his frontiers. The British colossus has many imitators; but these
started in the game late, when most of the prizes had been won.
[Sidenote: Universal Land Hunger.]
No sooner was it perceived that the Congo region of Central Africa
is a valuable possession, than France set up her flag on the Congo,
at Brazzaville. The Portuguese, rummaging in their musty archives
for traces of their past glory, set up a claim to the Congo River
because one of her navigators had discovered the mouth of it five
hundred years ago. Germany, too, now exhibited her desire for
huge territories in East Africa, and did not betray any marked
scrupulousness as to whose rights were invaded in obtaining them.
With such neighbours pressing closely upon him, it was no more than
natural that King Leopold should cast about him how best he might
preserve inviolate the great country to which he had so lavishly
devoted his time and money; and he finally conceived the idea of a
Congo Free State, with himself as its Sovereign ruler. Without some
such clear recognition of Congo territory, and of his own personal
rights in respect of it, it was abundantly clear that the first would
be filched and the second ignored. For King Leopold to proclaim
himself Sovereign ruler of the Congo region was, of course, not
sufficient. It would be necessary to secure the assent to that course
of all the great Powers interested.
It was a momentous time. While the French were establishing
themselves on Stanley Pool, Stanley the man was working in the
interests of King Leopold, travelling through the Congo country,
buying land here and there, establishing stations, and making
treaties in the King’s name with native chiefs.
The French regarded Stanley’s proceedings with jealous distrust,
and in France the question was raised whether the International
Association for the Exploration and Civilisation of Central Africa
ought to be permitted to exercise sovereign rights. That history
furnished examples of corporate bodies exercising sovereign
authority was acknowledged, but there was a large party in France
which insistently asserted that no such right pertained to the
International Association.
The situation was very complicated. If King Leopold recognised the
preposterous claim of Portugal over the mouth of the Congo River, the
entire region in which he was interested would be without a free way
to the sea, a fatal bar to its proper development.
To deal with Portugal in this matter, even supposing her alleged
right to be well founded, would have presented no insuperable
difficulty; poor nations like poor individuals being ever open to
sell their commodities at something more than their market value. But
just at this juncture an unexpected act on the part of Great Britain
added enormously to the difficulty. Lord Granville, at that time
British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, after having refused
to recognise any right by Portugal over the mouth of the Congo, in
return for concessions granted by Portugal to Britain elsewhere, now
recognised those claims in an extended form.
This Anglo-Portuguese Convention, made on the 26th of February,
1884, had it been carried out, would have killed at one blow the
International Association for the Exploration and Civilisation of
Central Africa, and all King Leopold’s cherished dreams would have
evaporated like mists before the sun.
[Sidenote: John Bull Complaisant.]
But the good work done by King Leopold was not fated to be so
ignominiously extinguished. France and Germany combined to denounce
the Convention; and even with the British public it was very
unpopular, as hard things being said of it in the British Parliament
and press as any uttered in Belgium. King Leopold appealed to the
British Government to suspend the ratification of the Convention,
urging the despatch of a British mission to the West Coast to
examine the validity of the treaties made between his Majesty’s
representatives and native chiefs in that part of the Congo country
which the Convention proposed to acknowledge as Portuguese territory.
The British Government granted the King’s request, and despatched
General Sir Frederic Goldsmid to the Congo. The result was a
complete triumph for King Leopold, General Goldsmid reporting to
his Government that the treaties were in perfect order and that the
allegations of the Portuguese were baseless. That was the end of the
Anglo-Portuguese Convention.
Though the Anglo-Portuguese Convention was dead, and nothing remained
to fear from it, the incident served to emphasise the great and
growing necessity for endowing the Congo region with a clearer and
more definite political status than it yet possessed. There were
not wanting other, and happier, incidents pointing the same moral.
On April 22, 1884, the United States officially recognised the flag
of the International Association as that of a friendly Government,
in which course it was soon after followed by France, though the
latter country made it a condition of its acknowledgment that the
Association would never alienate any of its territory without France
having the right of pre-emption. Germany, entering upon joint action
with France for the first time since the war of 1870, concurred in
recognising the International Association as an independent and
friendly State; and on the very day that she gave her adherence to
it, she invited, through Prince Bismarck, all the Powers interested
in the future of Africa to confer in Berlin with the object of
regulating African affairs. The invitation was accepted by fourteen
nations, whose representatives met under circumstances to be
presently described, and gave reality to the grand idea, conceived
long before by Henry Morton Stanley and Leopold II., King of the
Belgians, of a Congo Free State.