HORRORS OF THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE
[Sidenote: Slavery Defined.]
Slavery: the absolute, irresponsible ownership of one class of
human beings by another class; a contract in which the only factors
are might on the one side and helplessness on the other; servitude
exacted by force.
Slavery has existed in all countries from the earliest recorded
periods. The most enlightened philosophers of ancient Greece and
Rome were unable to conceive a community of which a section was not
enslaved by the rest.
As a system, slavery, by its long-continued, universal practice,
and the simple solution it affords of what in our modern world is
referred to as the labour difficulty, appeals to two powerful human
instincts: conservatism and cupidity. The ethical unfairness of one
man’s being made wholly subservient to the will of another; forced to
labour for him without reward; his chattel to retain, sell, or slay,
as though he were a horse or a dog, was perceived from the earliest
times. But those most interested in the overthrow of the system,
the slaves themselves, being ignorant, and purposely kept in that
condition by their taskmasters, suffered on, century after century,
finding no champion for their cause until the advent of the Redeemer
of Mankind, preaching universal brotherhood and equal rights for all
men.
But the greater the wrong the longer it takes to right it, and
Christ’s words were but the seed from which has sprung our great
harvest of freedom. It has been a harvest of slow growth. For ages
after the divine words were spoken on behalf of the slave by the
first and greatest of his advocates, slavery was still regarded by
many nations as indispensable to their existence. Indeed, eighteen
centuries elapsed before there was any appreciable awakening to the
deep infamy of slavery. It occurred in England, and was the result of
the unwearied efforts of a small band of enthusiasts, whose labours,
like those of all reformers, were at first derided.
England, though free from the curse of slavery within her own proper
borders, had in the course of history done as much as, nay, more
than, any other nation to enslave the Negro. She had acquired him
in Africa by thousands in exchange for guns, knives, alcohol, and
dry goods; had transported him across the Atlantic to her American
cotton plantations in a manner compared with which a modern steerage
emigrant’s experience may be regarded as a luxurious cruise; and had
then extracted the utmost amount of work from him by the aid of the
lash.
[Illustration: Types of Bearers (North Bank of Cataracts).]
[Illustration: Group of Yie-Yie Women (Uelle).]
[Sidenote: England’s Retribution.]
All the vested interests created by this traffic, long persevered
in, as well as the callousness engendered by its brutality, had to
be fought against and overthrown by a small band of Liberationists,
aided by nothing but their enthusiasm and a just cause.
Nevertheless they daily gathered strength, and finally succeeded in
inducing the British Parliament to vote a hundred million dollars for
the purchase and liberation of every slave in every country where the
British flag flies. This grand event took place in the year·1830.
[Sidenote: The Fight for Right and Union.]
Three decades later came that tremendous convulsion in the United
States, the like of which the world has not seen. It was resolved
by the United States Government to free the slaves, slavery being
a system never deliberately adopted by the United States, but
inherited, as it were, from the English Colonial _régime_, of which
they had by revolution become the successors. The slaveholding
Southern States, resisting the new law, sought to withdraw from the
Union, and civil war ensued, in which the Abolitionists were entirely
successful, but at an appalling cost in men and money.
[Sidenote: A Common Error.]
It has been necessary to refer thus briefly to the history of slavery
because of the strangely prevalent opinion that when peace was
restored within the United States, and slavery finally abolished
there, slavery no longer existed in the world. True, it was known
that there was a sort of domestic service, chiefly of women, akin
to slavery, practised in China, Persia, and some minor Oriental
countries; but that was thought to be all. It came, therefore, as a
rude shock to civilised humanity when travellers of unquestionable
veracity, such as Dr. Livingstone, Sir Samuel Baker, and Henry M.
Stanley, demonstrated that the slave trade not only still existed
throughout vast regions in Africa, but was rampant there in its
most atrocious aspect. At first it was hardly realised that the
labours of Granville Sharpe, Clarkson, and Wilberforce, the monetary
sacrifices of England, and the devastating war in America had, taken
together, fallen so far short of complete triumph. But the evidence
was overwhelming that such was indeed the case, the Soudan, the Upper
Nile, and the basins of the Congo and the great lakes—more than a
third of all Africa, exceeding in area the whole of Europe—being
still the field of the iniquity. The Sultans of petty states in the
Soudan were shown to be, for the most part, chiefs of ferocious Arab
tribes who thrived by raiding Central African villages and carrying
off their inhabitants, whom they sold for slaves. The cruelties
attending their marauding operations were too great to admit of
exaggeration. “All over Africa,” wrote Schweinfurth, a German
traveller, “dried human skeletons show where the slave-trader has
passed.”
[Sidenote: A Picture in Words.]
Acting under heavy pressure brought to bear upon it by the
anti-slavery humanitarians in England the British Government coerced
the Khedive of Egypt into signing a convention having for its object
the suppression of slavery within his dominions. In order to carry
out the engagement into which he had entered, the Khedive appointed
General Gordon Governor of the Soudan, and that remarkable man,
during the six years that he held that office, displayed so much
energy and skill that he succeeded in utterly eradicating the evil
throughout the entire region placed under his control. Nevertheless,
the general result was not so good as had been hoped for; the
slave-traders, despoiled of their hunting-grounds in the Egyptian
Soudan, pursuing their nefarious occupation with redoubled vigour on
Lake Tanganyika and the Upper Congo. With what extremity of horror
they conducted their operations has been so graphically described by
a Belgian merchant, M. Hodister, that we make no apology for quoting
his account in full.
It is four o’clock in the morning [says M. Hodister]. A great calm
prevails, only the soft and melancholy cry of the African owl is to
be heard. The village sentinels are either withdrawn, or squatting
low, asleep; the houses are closed; every one sleeps; all is
repose; the sense of security is absolute. Suddenly the sound of a
gun, then cries of terror are raised, breaking the great silence,
followed by a fusillade, which seems to come from all sides,
piercing the straw walls. The boatmen have fired, leaving their
canoes to their women; they have rushed forward, attacking the
village in front, while the others are assailing it from the rear.
The inhabitants, suddenly roused from their sleep, rush terrified
from their houses. They are panic-stricken, and forget wives,
children, everything. Their one thought is of flight—to conceal
themselves in the wood. The panic is at its height; rifle shots,
horrible cries, resound, mixing with the shrieks of fear from the
women and children. Then follow the stifled noise of a struggle at
close quarters, of falling bodies, a suppressed groan, sharp cries
of agony. The ground shakes under the tread of the combatants and
fugitives. Soon afterwards appears a star in the blackness of the
night, and a dry, crackling sound is heard. It is a detached hut
fired by the enemy to light them in their work without the risk
of burning the whole village. Before doing that, they wish to
pillage it. Meanwhile, a few of the inhabitants have seized their
weapons and attempt some resistance; but in a little time this is
overcome by superior numbers. To the noise of the fight succeed the
cries of the prisoners, of the wounded and the dying. The horizon
lightens; the sun has risen suddenly and illumined this field of
carnage and desolation. Then the Arabs kill the wounded, bind their
prisoners, and begin to plunder the village. Every house is visited
and despoiled of its contents. Where in the evening there had been
a pretty village, surrounded by a plantation like a covering of
verdure, a gay and happy population, there is now a great black,
empty spot; for on the completion of the sack the village had been
set on fire and burned to the ground. Men, women, and children,
tied together promiscuously, corpses strewing the ground, blood
puddles emitting an acrid smell, and the assassins, horrible in
their war paint, which during the struggle has run with their sweat
and blood, complete the picture.
Bound together in groups by stout cords around their waists and
necks, the wretched procession of captives, often two or three
thousand in number, was, after an incident such as this, marched to
the coast. Generally, at least a third of them died by the way. The
sick and the lamed, unable to maintain the desired pace, were weeded
out at each halting-place and ruthlessly butchered by their captors.
[Sidenote: A Herculean Task.]
It will require no very inventive imagination to appreciate the
magnitude of the difficulties confronting the Belgian pioneers in
their effort to suppress slavery, carried on with such ferocious
brutality over an area so vast as Central Africa. Yet that was but
one of several tasks enjoined upon them by their King; but it was
first in order and importance, and until it was accomplished
little or no progress in other respects could be hoped for. “Crime
is not punished as an offence against God, but as prejudicial to
society,” says the historian Froude. King Leopold saw in the crime
of slavery both the offence to God and the prejudice to man, and
was prepared to exert his utmost energy and, if necessary, expend
the last franc of his private fortune, to stamp out the evil. In
this heroic endeavour his Majesty was ably seconded by his minister,
the distinguished Baron Lambermont, who has recorded his opinion of
slavery in these words: “The slave trade is the very denial of every
law, of all social order. Man-hunting constitutes a crime of high
treason against humanity. It ought to be repressed wherever it can be
reached, on land as well as by sea.”
[Illustration: Native Potters at Work (Aruwimi).]
It is not claimed that there is anything original in the sentiment
that animates this well-expressed sentence. Similar views to those
of Baron Lambermont have been held by all great thinkers since the
establishment of the Christian religion; but it is referred to in
this place as an additional proof, if any were needed, of the high
moral purpose underlying the enterprise of the King of the Belgians,
and to show how that moral purpose was sympathised with and shared by
his Majesty’s ministers and the Belgian people.
That every religious sect without exception has denounced slavery as
the blackest spot sullying the fair fame of the nineteenth century
need not be reiterated. In logical sequence, every religious sect
was prepared to assist, morally and materially, in the removal of a
disgrace which was felt to reflect upon every civilised community. In
an encyclical, dated 5th of May, 1888, addressed by Pope Leo XIII.
to the bishops of Brazil, congratulating them upon the abolition of
slavery in their country, his Holiness referred to the deplorable
condition of the Negro in Central Africa, and called upon “all who
wield power, those who sway empires, those who desire that the
rights of nature and humanity be respected, and those who desire the
progress of religion, to unite everywhere to secure the abolition of
this most shameful and criminal traffic.”
[Sidenote: Pope Leo XIII. on Slavery.]
This noble appeal touched the hearts of thousands in every nation of
Europe and in America. For Cardinal Lavigerie, the Belgian prelate,
who had so long laboured on behalf of the oppressed Congolese, it
had a special significance, inspiring him with renewed courage and
energy in his glorious work. When, for the first time in history, a
small band of Christian Negroes from Central Africa was received in
audience by the Pope, a few days after the issue of this encyclical,
Leo XIII., replying to the address of Cardinal Lavigerie, who had
presented them, said:
Since We have been Pope, Our regards have turned towards that
disinherited land, Central Africa. Our heart has been touched at
the thought of the enormous amount of physical and moral misery
that exists there. We have repeatedly urged all those who have
power in their hands to put a stop to the hideous traffic called
the slave trade, and to use all and every means to secure that end.
And, inasmuch as the African continent is the principal scene of
this traffic and, as it were, the house of slavery, We recommend
all missionaries who there preach the Holy Gospel to devote
their whole efforts, their whole life, to this sublime work of
redemption. But it is upon you, Cardinal, that We count especially
for success.
Cardinal Lavigerie’s practical reply to this direct personal appeal
from the head of his Church was the formation in Belgium of the
Anti-Slavery Society. The agitation on behalf of the Negro was not
confined to Catholics. Among the friends of the movement were to be
found the best of every creed as of every nation. Great conventions
were held in Germany and England having for their object the
suppression of slavery in Central Africa, and societies formed in
those countries; and France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain,
and Portugal quickly followed suit. Though “man’s inhumanity to man
makes countless thousands mourn,” it was now shown to be also potent
to arouse some of the best instincts of human nature to assure its
suppression. At last the horrors of the African slave trade were
adequately realised, and the world applauded Leopold, King of the
Belgians, for his arduous labours for its extinction, and was anxious
to strengthen his hands for grappling with the still formidable work
that remained to do.