As the Government policy at the Cape was for the first half of the

century greatly influenced by the missionary societies, the Dutch

with some justice regarded these attacks and recriminations as

directly emanating from the British Government, and hence withdrew

from or rebelled against our rule. The dissentient, dissatisfied

Boers began to trek away from the settled portion of Cape Colony

into the wilderness behind, where they might still lead the

pleasant, unfettered, patriarchal life they had grown to love. They

travelled beyond the Orange River, which had come to be the northern

limit of British influence, and, avoiding the deserts of

Bechuanaland, passed north-eastwards into the better-watered

territories now known as the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

They also sought a way out towards the sea in what is now the colony

of Natal. Here they came into conflict first with the Kafirs and

Basuto on the west, and then with the Zulus on the east. The former

were to some extent under British protection; therefore the British

Government was ready to espouse their cause if they were unjustly

dealt with. The Zulus, on the other hand, were strong enough and

numerous enough to prevent a Boer settlement on their land.

Nevertheless, the Boer invasion of Natal from the north was at that

time a transgression into territory recently conquered and

depopulated by one of the most abominable shedders of blood that

ever arose amongst Negro tyrants—Chaka, the second[93] king of the

Zulus. This latter saw the danger, and lured the pioneers of the

Boers into a position where he was able to massacre them at his

ease. With splendid gallantry—one’s blood tingles with admiration as

one reads the record of it—the few remaining Boers mustered their

forces and avenged this dastardly murder by a drastic defeat of the

Zulus. But this was in the early forties, when British adventurers,

more or less discouraged or unencouraged by the Home Government, had

founded a coast settlement in Natal, on the site of what is now the

town of Durban. The usual shilly-shally on the part of the British

Government misled the Boers into thinking that they could maintain

themselves in Natal against our wishes. As they had further broken

an agreement with us by attacking the Basuto and the Kafirs, a

British force was despatched against them in 1842, which, after a

brief struggle, induced them to capitulate. Natal was then secured

as a British colony, and the Boers with bitter disappointment had to

seek their independent state to the north of the Orange River. But

here also they were followed up; and, had the Governor of the

Cape—Sir George Grey—been supported from Downing Street, the Orange

River sovereignty would never have become the Orange Free State, and

it is probable that even the territory beyond the Vaal River might

in like manner have been subjected to British control.

But Downing Street for eighty years after the cession of the Cape of

Good Hope persistently mismanaged South African affairs, now blowing

hot with undue heat, now blowing cold, and nipping wise enterprise

in the bud. The action of the Governor was repudiated, and the Sand

River Convention unratified. In the most formal manner the Boers

north of the Orange River were accorded absolute independence,

subject to certain provisions about slavery; and the like privilege

had been previously accorded to those who had further trekked across

the Vaal River at a time when the Orange River State was likely to

become a British Colony. So, from 1852 and 1854 respectively[94],

the South African Dutch formed two states entirely independent of

British rule in their internal affairs, and very slightly in their

external relations. The Orange Free State, which contained a

considerable British element dating from the period of British

sovereignty, had latterly an uneventful career of steady

prosperity[95], due in large measure to the wisdom of its chief

magistrates. When the diamond fields were discovered on its borders

towards the end of the “sixties” it had some cause for complaint

against the British Government, since, taking advantage of the

undefined rights of a Grikwa (Bastard Hottentot) chief, the British

extended their rule over this arid territory north of the Orange

River, which was suddenly found to be worth untold millions of

pounds. But the amount of territory under dispute was relatively

small; and, if the British had transgressed their rightful

borderland to some slight degree, they atoned for it by paying the

Orange State an indemnity of £90,000. Great Britain also intervened

several times to prevent the warlike Basuto (who dwell in that

little African Switzerland between the Orange Free State and Natal)

either from raiding the Orange Free State, or from being themselves

raided and conquered by Boer reprisals. Eventually (1882)

Basutoland, whose affairs had been somewhat mismanaged by the Cape

Parliament, was taken under direct imperial control; and ever since

there has been a complete cessation of trouble in that quarter with

the Orange Free State.

The career of the Transvaal Republic was much less successful in its

early days. The territory was vaster, in many places not so healthy;

and the native population, especially in the eastern districts[96],

was turbulent, and strongly averse to accepting Boer rule. The

existence of gold, though occasionally hinted at by unheeded

pioneers, was unknown to the world at large, and absolutely ignored

by the Boers; there was little or no trade, and the European

population was scanty. By 1877 the condition of this state had

become so hopeless, with a bankrupt treasury and the menace of a

Zulu invasion, that it was annexed, somewhat abruptly, by the

Imperial representative, Sir Theophilus Shepstone. No doubt this

step was consonant with the enlightened policy then favoured by the

Imperial Government and subsequently by Sir Bartle Frere, who was to

become Governor of the Cape during the latter part of the late Earl

Carnarvon’s tenancy of the Colonial Office. Lord Carnarvon himself

was resolutely intent on carrying out in Africa south of the Zambezi

a scheme of federation similar to that which had in 1866

consolidated the Dominion of Canada. But the actual method by which

the Transvaal was taken over was not a well considered one; and

unhappily it was followed by the appointment of an officer to rule

over that country whose demeanour was wholly unsympathetic to the

Boer nature. At the end of 1880 the Boers revolted. After a short

military campaign, conspicuous for its utter lack of generalship on

the part of the English, and for the disastrous defeats inflicted on

our forces by the Boers at Lang’s Nek and Majuba Hill, the British

Government of the day (which a few months before had absolutely

refused the Boers’ appeal for the reversal of the annexation)

concluded a hurried armistice, and gave back (1881) its independence

to the Transvaal, subject to a vague suzerainty on the part of the

British Crown, and later on to a British veto which might be

exercised on treaties with foreign powers. The best plea that can be

urged on behalf of this surrender, which subsequent British

Governments have had such cause to regret, was the belief that a

stern prosecution of the war, and the eventual Boer defeat, would

lead to the uprising of the Dutch settlers in Cape Colony and the

intervention of the Orange Free State. It is doubtful whether there

was much foundation for this fear, or whether it would not have been

much easier at that time to settle British supremacy once and for

all over all Africa south of the Zambezi, even if it led to some

degree of internecine fighting; the more so as there would have been

no danger of European intervention at that date. But the chance was

let slip, and the Boers acquired an independence the more justly won

and the less easily disturbed since it was the result of their

sturdy valour.

The restraining conditions of the 1881 Convention were still further

attenuated by the London Convention of February 27, 1884, in which

with further fatuity the Government of the day accorded

unnecessarily to the Transvaal state the extravagant title of “The

South African Republic.” Perhaps this is the most remarkable act of

abnegation which has ever occurred in the history of the British

Empire; and it must have seemed to the inhabitants of British South

Africa like the admission of a rival ruling power into the British

sphere south of the Zambezi. By this 1884 Convention (worthless for

that purpose, as are all treaties and conventions when the force to

maintain them is not apparent) the geographical limits of the

Transvaal state were clearly defined, and the Boers engaged to keep

within them.

Encouraged by this diplomatic success, and the feeble manner in

which the Imperial Government had permitted them to carve out a

fresh state in the heart of Zululand, the Boers of the Transvaal now

determined to add Bechuanaland to their dominions; thus possibly to

cut off British expansion towards the Zambezi, and to make their

western frontier coincident with the natural limits of that

Protectorate which Germany had just established, north of the Orange

River. But public opinion in Great Britain was becoming intolerant

of any further sacrifices of British aspirations in South Africa or

of breaches of faith on the part of the Boers, and forced the

Government of the day to assert itself. A strong expedition was sent

out under Sir Charles Warren at the end of 1884, which finally

secured for Great Britain the Protectorate of Bechuanaland, and the

restraining of the Transvaal within its proper limits. Nevertheless,

in 1894 a fresh concession was made to that state by the withdrawal

of British opposition to its absorption of a little enclave of Zulu

country known as Swaziland. In excuse for the British Government it

must be pointed out that the Swazi chiefs had previously made over

to Transvaal subjects so many rights and concessions that any other

solution than the further cession of the administration was rendered

difficult under the existing conditions. [The detachment of

Swaziland as a small native state, administered by Imperial

officials, was effected in 1902.]

Soon after the conclusion of the London Convention of 1884, the vast

wealth in gold, which for more than ten years back had been asserted

by uneducated pioneers, and denied by mining experts, began to be

made known. The development of the marvellous Witwatersrand brought

about the foundation of Johannesburg, and directed to the Transvaal

an enormous influx of outsiders, mainly English, at any rate mainly

British subjects, though many of them were Jews from England, or

from France and Germany, who had become naturalized British

subjects[97]. Mines were also opened in the east and in the north of

the Transvaal. On the other hand, to counteract the influence of

this British element, the Transvaal Government had almost ever since

its establishment in 1881 been strengthening the Dutch element by

inviting the settlement of Hollanders from the Netherlands, who were

employed in its Government offices, in its schools, its churches,

and on the construction of its railways. These natives of Holland

showed themselves very hostile to British influence; and through

their efforts a great deal of sympathy with the South African Dutch

was aroused in Holland and Germany. On the other hand, the

Outlanders, who settled round Johannesburg and other mining centres

and who soon came to outnumber the Boer element in the Transvaal

population to the extent of five to one, became dissatisfied with

their position under the Boer Government, who ruled them

autocratically, without giving them any voice in the administration

or in the spending of the heavy taxes levied on their industries. It

should be noted that the Boer Government had attempted to wall

itself in from contact with the surrounding British and Portuguese

states by an exceedingly high tariff of import duties, which

rendered many articles of necessity or luxury extremely expensive,

and made civilized life five times dearer than in the adjoining Cape

Colony. It was again the contrast between the very end of the 19th

century and the manners, customs, language, and puritanical religion

of the 17th century.

To some extent this recalcitrant attitude of the Boers was condemned

and deprecated by their much more enlightened brethren, the Cape

Dutch. In time, probably, these latter might have encouraged and

supported the intervention of the Imperial Government in securing

fair terms to the Outlanders; and as these fair terms must have

given the Outlanders a preponderating voice in the Government, the

Transvaal might have been brought within the South African

Federation under the British ægis. But the Right Hon. Cecil John

Rhodes, then Prime Minister of the Cape and Managing Director of the

British South Africa Chartered Company, saw in this discontent at

Johannesburg the means and excuse for his personal intervention in

the Transvaal. He hurried on the movement, and even carried it

beyond the limits indicated by the more disinterested Reformers. The

administrator of the Chartered Company’s territories, Dr Jameson,

invaded the Transvaal (Dec. 29, 1895) with a small force of between

500 and 600 mounted police, and endeavoured to reach Johannesburg,

the centre of unrest, with a half-avowed intention of subsequently

marching on Pretoria, and upsetting the Boer Government. But the

Boer forces intercepted Dr Jameson at Doornkop before he could reach

Johannesburg; and after an engagement in which a few of his men were

killed, and when further progress would have meant annihilation, he

surrendered. The High Commissioner of South Africa hurried to

Johannesburg; Dr Jameson and his officers were handed over to the

British Government to be dealt with, and afterwards underwent a

short term of imprisonment. On the other hand, the reformers of

Johannesburg were treated by the Pretoria Courts with inexcusable

harshness, seeing that they had not taken an active part in Dr

Jameson’s inroad, and had surrendered their city to the Boer

Government. Enormous fines, amounting eventually to nearly half a

million sterling, were inflicted on them, after a somewhat burlesque

trial in which they were condemned to death, only to be subsequently

imprisoned or expelled. For the time being this wanton aggression on

the part of Mr Rhodes alienated all sympathy with the grievances of

the Outlanders, and provoked strong expressions of opinion in

certain European states, who, until they were assured that the

British Government was dissociated with Mr Rhodes’ scheme, were not

unnaturally prone to imagine that their own territories in Africa

might some day be exposed to a British raid. The immediate outcome,

therefore, of this ill-advised action on the part of the Cape

Premier (though that official was admittedly actuated by the same

desire which has inspired some British statesmen, to bring about the

Britannicizing of all Africa south of the Zambezi) was the

strengthening and intensifying of the separatist character of the

two Dutch republics still existing in South Africa. The Orange Free

State concluded (1896) an offensive and defensive alliance with the

South African Republic (Transvaal); and enormous quantities of arms,

ammunition, and modern artillery were imported into Dutch South

Africa _via_ Lourenço Marquez (Delagoa Bay) and the new railway[98].

It was believed that eventually war must break out with Great

Britain, but that probably one or more European powers would

intervene and attack Great Britain, thus paralysing her striking

force in South Africa; that the Cape Dutch would rise and contribute

a quota of 30,000 men to the 80,000 to 90,000 of the Boer States; in

short that the future of South Africa lay with the Dutch element.

War was declared on Great Britain on October 11, 1899. Amazing

victories at first fell to the Boer generals, but Europe did not

intervene, nor did more than 8000 Cape Dutch join their Boer

brothers. The tide of victory having turned in favour of the

British, Bloemfontein, Pretoria and Komatipoort (the frontier

station of the Delagoa Bay railway) were occupied between May and

September 1900. President Kruger fled to Holland, and the two

republics were annexed to British South Africa. Though the war did

not end till the peace of Vereeniging in May, 1902, the last year of

the nineteenth century saw the extinction of any independent Dutch

State in Africa. Yet soon after the conclusion of this peace

responsible government was once more granted to the reconstituted

states of the Orange River and the Transvaal in 1906-7. The

last-named, however, was deprived of Swaziland and of its province

of northern Zululand, which last was added to Natal. The Union of

South Africa (Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal and Natal)

followed in 1910; and the first Prime Minister of Dutch and

English-speaking South Africa was General Louis Botha, a leading

general of the disbanded Boer army. These brave, sturdy Boers have

played a great part in Africa, a part of which, Holland—the country

which first colonized South Africa—may well be proud. The South

African Dutch are so near to our own blood and tongue, and history,

that we may, without any more sting of bitterness than that with

which we recall the revolt of the American Colonies, take pride in

their achievements and smile grimly at the stout blows they have

dealt us in their own defence.

-----

Footnote 86:

Their “capital” was at Elmina; they held—when in full vigour—Fort

Nassau (built before they took Elmina from the Portuguese),

Kormantin, Secondee, Takorari, Accra, Cape Coast Castle,

Vredenburg, Chama, Batenstein, Dikjeschop (Insuma), Fort Elise

Carthage (Ankobra), Apollonia, Dixcove, Axim, Prince’s Fort near

Cape Three-points, Fort Wibsen, and Pokquesoe. Before the

abolition of the slave trade, Dutch Guinea was very prosperous. It

was governed by a subsidized Chartered Company—the Dutch West

India Co.—under the control of the States General; and the local

government consisted of a Governor-General at Elmina, a chief

Factor (or trader), a chief Fiscal (or accountant-general), an

under-fiscal (or auditor) and a large staff of factors,

accountants, secretaries, clerks and assistant clerks. There was a

chaplain; there were Dutch soldiers under Dutch officers who

garrisoned the forts. After the wars of the French Revolution the

Dutch Government took over the management of these establishments

on the Gold Coast.

Footnote 87:

As Sir Charles Lucas points out in his _Historical Geography of

the British Colonies_, “164 years after Bartolomeu Diaz had

sighted the Cape of Good Hope.”

Footnote 88:

The “Cape Malays.”

Footnote 89:

It will be no doubt remembered that this word is derived from the

Arab word “unbeliever.” The Arabs of south-east Africa applied

this term to the Negroes around their settlements. The Portuguese

took it up from the Arabs, and the Dutch and English from the

Portuguese.

Footnote 90:

Tulbagh deserves special remembrance not only from his

geographical explorations, but from the fact that he was the first

person to send specimens of the giraffe to Europe.

Footnote 91:

Named after Van de Graaf, who was Governor at the time. “Reinet”

means in Dutch “a goat’s beard,” but I have not been able to

discover why this term should have been added to the name of the

Governor.

Footnote 92:

Nevertheless, by their final and more complete contact with the

Hottentots and Bushmen the Zulu-Kafirs adopted three of the

Hottentot clicks; whereas earlier invaders—Karanga, Bechuana, and

Herero—though adopting a few Hottentot terms, kept clear of

Hottentot phonetics, and use no clicks to this day. The Zulu-Kafir

language, divided into four dialects—X̓osa-Kafir, Zulu and Swazi

(all three closely related), and Tonga or Ronga of the Delagoa Bay

district, is on the whole most nearly related to the East African

Bantu groups, with some affinities with Central African Bantu. But

it has no near relations and has developed a very peculiar

vocabulary, as though it had been isolated for centuries.

Footnote 93:

If Dingiswayo, his master, can be regarded as the first.

Dingiswayo was rather the paramount chief of a Kafir

confederation, of which the Zulu tribe was a member. Chaka was the

younger son of a Zulu chief, but was eventually elected chief in

his father’s place and then succeeded to the paramount sway of

Dingiswayo. Racially and linguistically there is very little

difference between Zulus and Kafirs.

Footnote 94:

The Sand River Convention, recognizing the independence of the

Transvaal, was signed in January, 1852; the Bloemfontein

Convention, which loosed the Orange Free State from British

control, was signed in February, 1854. In 1858, Sir George Grey

laid before the Cape Parliament proposals from the Orange Free

State for reunion in a South African Federation, and was recalled

by the Home Government for advocating this policy.

Footnote 95:

For the first few years of its existence it had much fighting with

the Basuto.

Footnote 96:

Zulus under Msilikazi and Swazis in the east; Bechuana tribes in

the west and north.

Footnote 97:

The part played by the Jews in the development of South Africa has

been as remarkable as their share in the settlement and civilizing

of North Africa, of the West Indies and the Guianas, of Australia

and New Zealand. Between 1840 and 1850 a number of Jewish business

houses were founded or became prominent in Cape Colony and Natal.

They started the guano collecting off the S.W. coast, the mohair,

wool, hides, sealskin and whale oil industries, and

sugar-planting. Notable among such were the De Pass and Mosenthal

firms. The De Passes came (I believe) from Gibraltar, and followed

to the Cape of Good Hope the first consignments of British troops.

The protection given by the British Government to Spanish-speaking

Jews at Gibraltar from the early part of the 18th century onwards

was well rewarded by a great increase of British commerce and

political power in the Mediterranean. The Mosenthals were

attracted to South Africa by the importation of German troops and

German colonists. Already in the early sixties members of the firm

of Lilienfeld were established in the Orange Free State and

hastened to develop the diamond mining industry of the future

Kimberley district. The part played by Alfred Beit (of a Hamburg

Christian-Jewish family), by the Lipperts, the Honourable Simeon

Jacobs, Sir Sigismund Neumann, Sir Lionel Phillips, Sir George

Albu, Sir David Harris, Senator Samuel Marks, Professor Alfred

Mosely, by the Mendelssohns, Rabinowitzes, and Rapaports, in South

African finance, politics, industry, education, law, and

philanthropic work has been a considerable one; and recent South

African history, either in the Boer states or in the British

colonies and protectorates, cannot be written in detail without an

allusion to their names, their achievements, their intentions,

influence, mistakes, and dogged, persevering belief in the

resources and splendid future of Cis- or Trans-Zambezian Africa.

This was a region in earlier days so unpromising to the eye and on

the surface that it needed the Semitic _flair_ for gold and

precious stones—the same mysterious divination which led the

Sabaeans (I am sure) to Zimbabwe, the Phoenicians to Spain, and

the Arabs to the Ashanti hinterland—to induce that persistent

opening-up of Grikwaland, Orangia, inner Cape Colony, the

Transvaal and Rhodesia, which has by the first decade of the 20th

century laid the foundations of another United States in the

southern quarter of Africa.

Footnote 98:

This Delagoa Bay railway was made by a group of British and

American concessionaires, headed by Colonel Edward M^cMurdo, an

American, between 1887 and 1889. In the following year it was

arbitrarily seized by the Portuguese Government on an unfair

quibble. The Portuguese then completed the line farther inland

until it joined the Netherlands Railway Co.’s line to Pretoria,

thus giving the South African Republic a means of access to the

sea independent of British control. The wrong inflicted on the

Delagoa Bay Railway Company went to arbitration in Switzerland,

1889; and the case was decided after 11 years’ deliberations in

favour of the Company, to whom the Portuguese paid £978,000 in

compensation.

CHAPTER VII

THE SLAVE TRADE

Man had not long attained full humanity before he conceived the idea

of enslaving instead of, or as well as, eating his enemies or his

inferiors. Slavery and the slave trade, however—mere servitude—need

not excite great horror or pity when it occurs among people of the

same race or the same religion, or in countries which are not far

from the home of the enslaved. It is where the state of servitude

exists between widely divergent races that it gives rise to abuses,

which are obvious even to those who are not sensitive

philanthropists.

The Negro, more than any other human type, has been marked out by

his mental and physical characteristics as the servant of other

races. There are, of course, exceptions to the general rule. There

are tribes like the Kruboys of the West African coast, the

Mandingo, the Wolof, and the Zulu, who have always shown

themselves so recalcitrant to slavery that they have generally

been let alone; while the least divergence from the negro stock in

an upward direction—such as in the case of the Fula, Gala and

Somali—appears to produce an unconquerable love of freedom. But

the Negro in a primitive state is a born slave. He is possessed of

great physical strength, docility, cheerfulness of disposition, a

short memory for sorrows and cruelties, and an easily aroused

gratitude for kindness and just dealing. He does not suffer from

home-sickness to the over-bearing extent that afflicts other

peoples torn from their homes, and, provided he is well fed, he is

easily made happy. Above all, he can toil hard under the hot sun

and in the unhealthy climates of the torrid zone. He has little or

no race-fellowships—that is to say, he has no sympathy for other

negroes; he recognizes, follows and imitates his master

independently of any race affinities, and, as he is usually a

strong man and a good fighter, he has come into request not only

as a labourer but as a soldier.

Negro slaves were imported into Lower Egypt as servants in the

earliest dynastic times. A few reached Carthage from time to time

and many were brought to Imperial Rome; but the determined

exploitation of the black races did not begin on a large scale till

the Muhammadan conquest of Africa. The Arabs had swept across

Northern Africa, and become directly acquainted with the Sudan[99].

Before the promulgation of Islam they traded with the East coast of

Africa, and after the Islamic outburst they ruled there as sultans.

The secluding of women in harims guarded by eunuchs had come into

vogue during the Byzantine Empire; but it was probably a custom of

Syrian, Mesopotamian, or Egyptian origin. It was adopted with

emphasis among the civilized Mussulmans, and the negro eunuch proved

the most efficient and faithful guardian of the gynæceum. So the

slave trade developed mightily in the Muhammadan world. Household

slaves and eunuchs were imported into North Africa, Arabia, Turkey,

and Persia from the Sudan; while in a later century the Emperors of

Morocco established their power firmly by importing fighting negroes

from Nigeria. Arabia, Persia, and India obtained negroes from the

Egyptian Sudan, Abyssinia, and the Zanzibar coast. Into the West

coast of India negro slaves were imported from East Africa to become

the guards of palaces and the fighting seamen of navies. In the

Bombay Presidency these negroes became so useful or powerful that

they carved out states for themselves, one or more of which, still

ruled by negro princes, are in existence at the present day as

dependencies of the Government of India[100].

The final impetus was given to this traffic by the European. When

the Spanish, Portuguese and English discovered and settled America

they found the native races too few in numbers, too fierce, or too

weakly to be suited for compulsory agricultural work; and so early

as 1503 African slaves were working in the mines of Hispaniola,

brought thither by the Spaniards[101]. A few years later they were

being imported into Mexico, Panama and Peru. In 1517 the slave trade

between Africa and America was regularly established, Charles V of

Spain having granted to a Flemish merchant the exclusive privilege

of importing into America 4000 slaves a year. This monopoly was

subsequently sold by the concessionaire to a company of Genoese

merchants, who struck a bargain with the Portuguese government to

supply the slaves from Guinea.

English adventurers, who had first found their way out in Portuguese

ships to investigate the spice trade, soon determined to take up the

traffic in negro labourers for the plantations in America as being

more profitable. John Hawkins, one of the famous seamen of the

Elizabethan era, in 1562 took over to the West Indies the first

cargo of slaves transported under the British flag. Afterwards made

Sir John Hawkins (and adopting a “demi-Moor in his proper colour,

bound with a cord” as his crest) he made two other voyages (1564,

1567) to the West coast of Africa, conveying some eight hundred

kidnapped or purchased negroes to the West Indies. England did not

engage largely in the slave trade on her own account until in the

17th century she commenced to possess Jamaica and other West Indian

islands, and to develop the tobacco plantations of Virginia. Then

she almost outdid rival nations. The late Dr Robert Brown, in his

interesting work, “The Story of Africa,” computed that in a little

more than a century, from 1680 to 1786, 2,130,000 negro slaves were

imported into the British-American colonies, Jamaica in the course

of 80 years absorbing 610,000. Towards the latter end of the 18th

century the various European powers interested in America imported

on an average over 70,000 slaves a year, the British bringing more

than one half, and sometimes a still greater proportion. At first

the slaves came chiefly from the Gambia and the other rivers

southward to Sierra Leone, and from the Gold Coast, where they were

supplied to the Dutch through the incessant wars of the Ashanti

people. Later they were brought from Dahomé and Benin, and from the

Portuguese possessions of Angola and the Zambezi. Then, as the

demand grew, a rich field was tapped in the 18th century in that

network of swampy rivers, which we now know as the delta of the

Niger river. But slowly there grew up in England, in Denmark, and in

the United States a feeling that there was something wrong in this

system which imposed so much misery on beings, who, though in some

degree inferior to white men, were yet of the same species, since

they could interbreed with us and learn to talk our language. That

such feelings must have existed at all times was evident from the

desire of good men when dying to grant freedom to their slaves. But

the feeling as a national one remained dormant, and was not general

in England until the close of the 18th century. Here and there cases

of a negro prince being sold into slavery attracted attention and

sympathy and caused a searching of consciences among enlightened

men.

In 1768-72 a great-minded Englishman, Granville Sharp, succeeded by

pushing a test case in getting a judicial decision that slavery

could not exist in England, and that therefore any slave landing in

England became free, and could not be taken back into slavery. In

1787 Wilberforce, Clarkson, and other philanthropists formed

themselves into an association to secure the abolition of slavery,

and by their exertions in Great Britain a bill was passed in 1807

which did not go to the lengths they desired, but which subjected

the slave trade under the British flag to severe disabilities. In

1811 this measure was completed and enforced by another bill

declaring the Slave Trade to be a felony punishable by penal

servitude. Yet it is doubtful whether, before these acts were

passed, the hardships of the slaves transported by sea were so

terrible as they became after the restrictions placed on the trade

rendered it necessary to carry large numbers of human beings on a

single voyage more or less concealed from sight in the hold of the

vessel with an utter disregard for sanitary conditions[102]. In

these later days, when it was necessary to evade tiresome

regulations or to carry on the trade in the face of direct

prohibition, the sufferings of the slaves were so appalling that

they almost transcend belief. It would seem as though the inhuman

traffic had created in Arabs, Negroes and white men a deliberate

love of cruelty, amounting often to a neglect of commercial

interest; for it would obviously have been more to the interest of

the slave raider and the slave trader and transporter that the

slaves should be landed at their ultimate destination in good

condition—certainly with the least possible loss of life. Yet, as

the present writer can testify from what he has himself seen in the

eighties and nineties of the last century, a slave gang on its march

to the coast was loaded with unnecessarily heavy collars or

slave-sticks, with chains and irons that chafed and cut into the

flesh, and caused virulent ulcers. The slaves were half starved,

over-driven, insufficiently provided with drinking water, and

recklessly exposed to death from sunstroke. If they threw themselves

down for a brief rest or collapsed from exhaustion they were shot or

speared or had their throats cut with fiendish brutality. I have

seen at Taveita (now a civilized settlement in British East Africa)

boys and youths left in the bush to die by degrees from

mortification and protrusion of the intestines owing to the

unskilful way in which they had been castrated by the Arabs, who had

attempted to make eunuchs of them for sale to Turkish and Arab

harims. Children whom their mothers could not carry, and who could

not keep up with the caravan, had their brains dashed out. Many

slaves (I again write from personal knowledge) committed suicide

because they could not bear to be separated from their homes and

children. They were branded and flogged, and, needless to say,

received not the slightest medical treatment for the injuries

resulting from this usage.

So much for the overland journey which brought them to the depôt or

factory of the European slave trader on the coast; then began the

horrors of the sea passage, the description of which, it must be

admitted, refers almost entirely to the ships of civilized nations,

like the English, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Americans, and not

to the Arabs and Indians, who carried slaves across from the East

coast of Africa to Arabia or India. In the latter case the sailing

vessels were not often overcrowded, and the slaves were allowed a

fair degree of liberty. In the slave trade with America, especially

when it was placed under restrictions and finally penalized, it was

the aim of the masters to pack as many slaves as possible on board

the vessel, the peril of making one run being only half of what was

entailed in making two. Very often the slaves were sent on board

stark naked. They were packed like herrings in the hold or on the

middle deck, and in times of bad weather, or for reasons of

security, were kept under hatches. The stench they produced then was

appalling, and many died asphyxiated. On some ships, and where the

captain was a humane man, the slaves were occasionally allowed to go

on deck, and were watered with a hose; and where the skipper’s

commission made it profitable to him to land the slaves in good

condition, they received better food, and occasional luxuries like

tobacco; but if the slaver were chased by a British cruiser, no

scruple was shown in throwing the slaves overboard to drown.

Denmark has the credit of being the first European power to forbid

the slave trade to her subjects (1792). Two years later the United

States of America forbade their subjects to “participate in the

exportation of negroes to foreign countries”; and in 1804 an act

(first promulgated in 1794) was revived, which prohibited the

introduction of any more slaves into the United States. A long

struggle had taken place in Great Britain (many of the Liverpool and

Bristol merchants being deeply interested in the slave trade)

before, in 1807, an act of Parliament was passed (intensified in

1811) abolishing the slave trade so far as British subjects were

concerned. At the Congress of Vienna (1814) France agreed in

principle that the slave trade should be done away with, and even

signed a treaty providing that whilst the slave trade continued with

French colonies it should only be carried on by French subjects.

During Napoleon’s hundred days of rule in 1815 a decree was issued

ending the slave trade for good and all. In the same year Portugal

subjected the slave trade to certain restrictions, but did not

finally abolish it till 1830. In 1836 Britain paid Portugal the sum

of £300,000 in order to get the export of slaves from any Portuguese

possession prohibited. Great Britain had also in 1820 paid £400,000

to Spain to purchase a promise from the Spaniards that they would

cease to buy negroes in Africa. Both contracts, though ostensibly

agreed to by the Governments concerned, were frequently violated by

individuals. In 1814 and 1815 the Dutch and Swedes respectively

prohibited the slave trade to their subjects, and a few years later

most of the Spanish South American states abolished the slave trade

on attaining their independence. Slavery was abolished as a legal

condition in all parts of the British dominions by 1840; in Jamaica

and the West Indies in 1833, in South Africa 1834-1840, and in India

about the same time[103]. Besides the sums mentioned which Britain

paid to Spain and Portugal to induce them to give up the traffic in

slaves, she distributed twenty millions of pounds amongst slave

owners of the West Indies as compensation for the abolition of

slavery, and £1,250,000 to those who possessed slaves in Cape Colony

when they were emancipated. Add to these sums the millions of money

she has spent in founding Sierra Leone as a slave settlement, in

helping Liberia[104] (from the same motive), in patrolling the East

and West coasts of Africa and the Persian Gulf, and it will be

admitted that we have here a rare case of a nation doing penance for

its sins, and making that real reparation which is evidenced by a

monetary sacrifice.

By 1848 the French had abolished slavery in all their possessions.

The Dutch did not do so till 1863; in which year also the status of

slavery ceased in the United States. Slavery lingered in some of the

South American states until 1840-5. In the Portuguese African

possessions slavery was abolished in 1878 and in Spanish Cuba and

Porto Rico in 1886; while Brazil remained a slave-holding country

until 1888, the final and somewhat abrupt abolition of slavery being

one of the causes which led to the downfall of the Emperor. However,

long after British or French possessions had ceased to offer

inducements to the slave trader to run illegal cargoes, there were

sufficient countries in the Western Hemisphere to provide an

excellent market for negroes, while the Muhammadan world in the East

continued to make greater demands than ever on the Central African

slave preserves[105].

To counteract the attempts to evade the law a powerful British

squadron swept the West coast of Africa; but in spite of British

efforts to intercept slave-trading vessels, these latter continued

to run cargoes across to the United States, Cuba and Brazil, and it

was not possible for this traffic to be wholly vanquished until the

abolition of slavery in those countries closed the last markets to

the slave trader. A most interesting light is thrown on the vastness

of the area covered by these slave-trading operations in a work by

the Rev. S. W. Koelle (a missionary of the Church Missionary

Society) published in 1854, entitled “Polyglotta Africana.” Mr

Koelle established himself at Sierra Leone for some years and busied

himself in collecting from the slaves who were landed there from

British cruisers vocabularies of the languages they spoke in their

own homes. In this way he took down over 200 languages, which

represented most of the tongues of the West coast of Africa, of the

upper Niger, of Senegal, of Lake Chad, the South-west African coast

as far as Benguela, Nyasaland, the Zambezi delta and the South-east

coast of Africa, and even Wadai.

When, at the close of the 18th century, British philanthropists were

desirous of repatriating loyalist negroes in North America who

wished to return to Africa, the Sierra Leone Company was started,

which purchased from native chiefs the nucleus of the present colony

of Sierra Leone. Here, for three-quarters of a century, British

cruisers landed and set free the slaves that were captured off the

West coast of Africa. Zanzibar, on the other side of the continent,

became about twenty years ago the eastern analogue of Sierra Leone.

Since the British occupation of Egypt, slavery has practically

ceased to exist in that country; and owing to the French occupation

of Algeria and Tunis, and the influence brought to bear by Britain

on Turkey in regard to Tripoli, there is not much traffic in slaves

across the Sahara Desert to those countries; though anybody visiting

the south of Tunis will be surprised at the large number of negroes

in all the villages, showing that quite recently constant supplies

must have been received from Bornu and the Hausa states. The

devastating slave raids of the Matebele Zulus have been abolished by

the British South Africa Company; and similar raids of the Angoni

have been put an end to by the British and German Governments in

East and Central Africa.

The Arabs of Zanzibar had acquired an evil fame for their gigantic

slave raids in East-central Africa. Great Britain, who had assisted

to separate Zanzibar from Maskat as an independent state in 1862,

began to concern herself a few years later with the slave trade

which flourished in those dominions. By 1873 the Sultan of Zanzibar

had, after considerable pressure, been induced to make the slave

trade illegal in his Sultanate, though it continued to flourish in

an illegal manner until the administration of his territories by the

British and Germans.

Arabs from ’Oman in South-west Arabia and from Zanzibar pushed ever

farther and farther into Central Africa from the East coast until

they reached the Upper Congo, where they established themselves as

sultans amongst the negroes, and enslaved millions. Here and there

they Muhammadanized a tribe like the Wa-yao, Manyema, or

Wa-nyamwezi, whom they provided with muskets and made worse slave

raiders than themselves. These slave raids in the districts of Lakes

Nyasa and Tanganyika, revealed to the world by Livingstone, greatly

concentrated the attention of Great Britain on these regions; and

one of the intentions of the British Government in establishing a

protectorate in South-central Africa was the abolition of the slave

trade, which was brought about in 1896, after six years’ campaigns

with a small force of Indian soldiers[106], and the placing of two

gunboats on Lake Nyasa. At the same time the Belgian officers of the

Congo State had attacked and broken up the Arabs, the principal

slave-hunters amongst whom were slain or expelled from the Congo.

The Germans under the brilliant Major von Wissmann hanged several

Arab slave-raiders in East-central Africa, and had completely

abolished the traffic of the others. The slave-raiding states of

Dahomé and Ashanti, of the Mandingo conqueror Samori, and of the

Fula and Nupe Sultans and Vicegerents in Eastern Nigeria had been

conquered by France or Britain between 1893 and 1903. Finally

between 1904 and 1911, France conquered and occupied Wadai, the most

powerful Muhammadan state of the Central Sudan and thus put an end

to the slave-raiding of the Maba power which was fast depopulating

the heart of Africa; while this action was fortified by the Italian

occupation of Tripoli and Cyrenaica (1911). So long as any

Muhammadan power held under its direct and uncontrolled sway any

part of the African coast, there was bound to be slave-raiding and

slave-trading in the interior.

In short, though slavery still exists, avowed or disguised, in many

parts of Africa, the slave trade is almost at an end, and slave

raids are confined to such parts of Nigeria, S.W. Congoland and

Abyssinian Galaland as are not under complete European control.

Abominable as the slave trade has been in filling Tropical Africa

with incessant warfare and rapine, it has added much to our

knowledge of that continent, and has furnished the excuse or cause

of European intervention in many cases, resulting sometimes in a

vastly improved condition of the natives when European rule has

taken the place of that of Negro or Arab sultans. Its ravages will

soon be repaired by a few decades of peace and security during which

this prolific, unextinguishable negro race will rapidly increase its

numbers. Yet about the African slave trade, as with most other

instinctive human procedure, and the movements of one race against

another, there is an underlying sense of justice. The White and

Yellow peoples have been the unconscious agents of the Power behind

Nature in punishing the negro for his lazy backwardness. In this

world Natural Law ordains that all mankind must work to a reasonable

extent, must wrest from its environment sustenance for body and

mind, and a bit over to start the children from a higher level than

the parents. The races that will not work persistently and doggedly

are trampled on, and in time displaced, by those who do. Let the

Negro take this to heart; let him devote his fine muscular

development in the first place to the setting of his own rank,

untidy continent in order. If he will _not_ work of his own free

will, now that freedom of action is temporarily restored to him; if

he will not till and manure and drain and irrigate the soil of his

country in a steady, laborious way as do the Oriental and the

European; if he will not apply himself zealously under European

tuition to the development of the vast resources of Tropical Africa,

where hitherto he has in many of his tribes led a wasteful

unproductive life; then force of circumstances, the pressure of

eager, hungry, impatient, outside humanity, the converging energies

of Europe and Asia will once more relegate the Negro to a servitude

which will be the alternative—in the continued struggle for

existence—to extinction. The Negro in some parts of Africa has been

given back his freedom that he may use it with a man’s sense of

responsibility for the waste of time and opportunities. In not a few

European “colonies” or protectorates in Africa the over-ruling white

man, or more often the irresponsible trader, planter, prospector and

labour recruiter, stills looks upon the Negro race as a people

doomed to perpetual serfage. But this mental outlook is fast being

modified—under British influence, mainly—into an honest appreciation

of native rights to land and produce.

An episode in the history of African colonization which may be most

fitly mentioned here, in relation to the effects of the slave trade

on West Africa, is the foundation of the negro Republic of Liberia

by private agencies in the United States.

When the Napoleonic wars were over and the great western expansion

of the United States was beginning, the question—not yet wholly

solved—arose: what was to be done with the Negro or Mulatto as

citizen, as a free man with every right to a vote? There were

already many manumitted negroes in North America and in the West

Indies, and their position in the first half of the 19th century was

an indeterminate one. As it commenced to be irksome, from the social

and ethical problems it involved, an attempt was made (1816-20) by

certain benevolent and political societies to solve it by deporting

all discontented free negroes and negroids back to Africa, where

they might make a new home for themselves and even enjoy the

privileged position that the one-eyed man occupies amongst the

blind. Great Britain, as we have already seen, had much the same

problem to face at an earlier date and answered it by the foundation

of Sierra Leone. At first it seemed simplest for the various

missionary and philanthropic societies to dump their free negroes on

the coast of Sierra Leone (in 1820); but the Governor of that colony

seems to have received the proposal rather coldly. The fact was that

at Sierra Leone (almost a failure from the “repatriation” point of

view) we were beginning to find that it is scarcely easier to plant

a Black colony in any part of inhabited Africa than to found a White

one; you have to displace some other people, and such indigenes, if

asked to choose, would rather make way for an intrusive white

element than a band of foreign negroes. And when such negroes or

negroids come from America or Asia they resist the African climate,

or rather its germ diseases, not much better than Europeans.

Probably the Sierra Leone Government had begun by 1820 to think more

of the interests of the really indigenous, native tribes of that

“colony,” than of the woes and welfare of American ex-slaves.

Being thus rebuffed, the promoters of the expatriation of American

free negroes made a hasty compact with the chiefs of the Dē tribe at

Cape Mesurado, on the Grain Coast, just beyond the Sierra Leone

influence; and in 1821 sent out a large batch of negro and mulatto

colonists under the tutelage of American white men. The white men

all died of fever or abandoned the enterprise in severe ill-health;

but amongst the future colonists was a courageous negro, Elijah

Johnson, who by his indomitable courage and resourcefulness kept the

infant colony from perishing at the hands of the natives, who had

not really understood the transaction by which they were supposed to

have sold for a few pounds’ worth of trade goods a considerable

tract of coast land. In 1823 however there came out a white man of

high character and great abilities, the Rev. Jehudi Ashmun; and he

it was who practically founded “Liberia” (as the new settlements

were called by the Rev. Robert Gurley of the American Colonization

Society, in 1824).

The town which American negroes built on Cape Mesurado was named

“Monrovia,” after the President of the United States who formulated

the “Monroe” doctrine. Other settlements were made on Cape Mount

(Robertsport), at Cape Palmas (Maryland), at Sinô (Greenville), and

at Grand Basa. In course of time these grew into two separate

republics, “Liberia” and “Maryland.” The existence of the former as

a sovereign and independent State was first recognized by Great

Britain in 1847; indeed the British Government had not only been

very benevolent all through to the struggling Liberian communities,

and several times come to their assistance when they were attacked

by native forces, but had urged on the American negroes the

advisability of their forming a State that European Powers could

recognize as a valid government on the Grain Coast. Britain was the

first Power to recognize Liberia as a sovereign State. The first

President of Liberia, an octoroon American named Joseph Jenkins

Roberts, went to England in 1847, was very kindly received by Queen

Victoria, and made a treaty with Lord Palmerston and the Colonial

Office. He afterwards visited the principal countries of western

Europe. In 1857 Maryland was united with Liberia; and this negro

republic then (in the eyes of Europe) ruled the West African coast

from near Sherbro on the west to the river San Pedro on the

east—about 400 miles, an extent of littoral since reduced by about

90 miles.

Yet this State has not so far been a success. American immigration

on any large scale ceased with the outbreak of the American Civil

War and the emancipation of American slaves. The natives of the Kru

coast and of the Muhammadan interior spurned any idea of being

governed or taxed by foreign Europeanized negroes; and the

Americo-Liberians lacked either the courage or the monetary means to

effect a conquest of the regions outside the portions of the coast

belt on which they had built their towns and established their

plantations. As the more vigorous among the American negroes and

mulattoes, who had started the settlement, died out, the younger

generation failed to bring a similar degree of energy into the

development of their native country. All had their faces far too

much turned towards either America or England. English, of course,

was and remained the official language of Liberia, its adoption

being facilitated by the close connection between the Kru population

and British West Coast trade (many Krumen also served, and serve

still, in the British Navy); the constitution of the Republic was

closely, too closely, modelled on that of the United States; very

little interest was taken in the languages, history, manners and

customs of the million and a half of Liberian aborigines, or in the

wonderful native flora and fauna[107]. With the exception of the

journeys of Benjamin Anderson in the sixties of the last century,

there arose no Liberian explorer of any note who revealed anything

about the geography or natural history of the hinterland. This

indeed remained (geographically) a closed book down to 1903, when a

series of explorations by British, French, Swiss, German and Dutch

explorers at last brought to light by 1910 the main features of

Liberian geography and ethnology. British and German traders and

pioneers (not Americo-Liberians) alone discovered and worked the

gold and diamonds of western Liberia and the rubber forests of the

centre and east.

Meantime, from the beginning of the seventies onwards Liberia got

into financial difficulties. Attempts to open up the interior were

costly in a country of dense forests and unnavigable rivers. A loan

was contracted in England in 1871, the proceeds of which were

vaguely squandered without results. Another loan in 1906 enabled the

Liberian Government to pay off some of its German, Dutch and British

creditors; but, although this loan brought about the installation of

a British official as head of the Liberian customs, and consequently

a vast improvement in the revenue, the disorder in the country’s

finances continued. France took occasion to press for a settlement

of the inland frontier on terms not favourable to Liberia, though as

favourable perhaps as the circumstances warranted. Great Britain had

greater vested interests in the country than any other foreign

nation, but forbore to press them out of regard for American

feelings and a wish not to seem to impinge too much on the French

sphere. Germany had trading interests in the country scarcely

inferior to those of Great Britain, and but for the American factor

would probably have pressed for a German protectorate, an

intervention which might have been displeasing to Britain and

France, the two _limitrophe_ Powers. In these circumstances the

Liberians were encouraged to appeal to their mother-country, the

United States; and, after considerable deliberation, an American

proposal was made for taking over the control of Liberian finances

and a general supervision of Liberian affairs on somewhat the same

lines as have been followed by American intervention in Santo

Domingo. This was accomplished in the year 1912. What the results

will be it is difficult to say.

But for international jealousies, the preferable solution of the

Liberian problem would have been fusion with the adjoining colony of

Sierra Leone, the coast settlements of which had an origin very

similar to that of Liberia, while the use of the English language,

laws, forms of Christianity, were common to both. Not a few among

the Sierra Leone citizens have attained local eminence in

administrative capacities; one or two even have become

“world-citizens”; and several have received marks of distinction

from British sovereigns. Liberia has produced her noteworthy

personalities, men like Dr Edward Wilmot Blyden (a great writer on

Africa), and Arthur Barclay, President of Liberia from 1904 to 1911;

but they have been men of a European culture and class of mind, and

have contributed little to the solution of African problems.

-----

Footnote 99:

Sudan means in Arabic “Black men” or the “Land of the Blacks.”

Footnote 100:

As for example, Janjira in Konkan, which has an area of 325 sq.

m., and Jafarabad in Kathiawar, 42 sq. m. in extent.

Footnote 101:

Three hundred negro porters and soldiers accompanied Cortes on his

march to Mexico in 1519; negroes carried the loads of Balboa when

he discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513, and accompanied Hernandez

to Peru in 1530. Negro workmen assisted the Spaniards to found the

city of St Augustine in Florida in 1565; and negroes, rising high

in the Spanish service, in the first half of the 16th century

explored for Spain the lands of New Mexico and Arizona.

Footnote 102:

For particulars on this subject consult my book on the _Negro in

the New World_ (1910).

Footnote 103:

Natives of British India, however, continued to hold slaves on the

East coast of Africa until it was made a criminal offence in 1873.

Footnote 104:

Liberia commenced with an attempt made by philanthropic Americans

(the American Colonization Society) in 1820 to repatriate free

negroes from the United States. It was formally recognized as an

independent state by the British Government in 1847 and

occasionally assisted to maintain its authority by British war

vessels. Liberia did not enter into diplomatic relations with the

United States till 1862.

Footnote 105:

Slavery was abolished in the Turkish dominions after the Crimean

War, but the slave trade exists still to some degree on account of

the harims, which demand a supply of eunuchs. Slavery of a mild

kind also continues in force in the states of Arabia, in Persia,

and in Morocco.

Footnote 106:

Sikhs from the Indian Army. These campaigns have been described in

the present writer’s work on _British Central Africa_; and by Mr

Alfred Swann in _Fighting the Slave-Hunters in Central Africa_.

Footnote 107:

Though Liberia is quite a small country—some 40,000 square

miles—and is not clearly demarcated by natural features from the

surrounding lands of the West African coast, it is found to

possess a peculiar mammalia of great interest and a rich flora

which also has its regional peculiarities. Amongst singular

Liberian mammals may be noted the pigmy Hippopotamus, the Zebra

antelope and Jentinck’s duiker.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BRITISH IN AFRICA, I

(_West Coast, Morocco, North-Central_.)

From very early days in the history of the Portuguese monarchy close

and friendly relations had been established between England and

Portugal. A large body of English (together with German and Flemish)

troops on their way out to the Crusades had assisted the first king

of Portugal to capture Lisbon from the Moors in the 12th century. A

later king of Portugal married a daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of

Lancaster; and his sons, among them the great Prince Henry the

Navigator, were half English in blood. These friendly relations were

no doubt partly to be accounted for by the French origin of both

ruling houses.

Therefore, when the effect of Portuguese discoveries in West Africa

began to be felt in England by the extension of the spice trade

(hitherto a monopoly of Venice), and the dawning idea that negro

slaves from Africa would be an excellent commodity for American

plantations, British seamen-adventurers were prompt to follow in the

path of the Portuguese. The trade in spices seems to have been the

first inducement, more powerful than gold or slaves. Englishmen had

previously shipped on board Portuguese vessels before they ventured

to sail to West Africa in craft of their own. Quite early in the

16th century several Englishmen thus found their way to Benin in

company with the Portuguese. But their proceedings were looked upon

with suspicion, and friendly relations between the two nationalities

soon cooled under the influence of rivalry in what the Portuguese

would have liked to make their monopoly of West African trade. At

the end of the reign of Edward VI (1553), and during that of Mary

(1554-5), English ships ventured to cruise to the Gambia, the Grain

Coast, and even the Gold Coast and Benin river, bringing back gold,

ivory, Guinea pepper[108] and “grains of Paradise[109]” for spice

making. In 1562-4-7 Captain (Sir) John Hawkins visited the West

African coast with a ship of his own, and later one or more ships of

Queen Elizabeth. He piratically attacked the Portuguese ships and

robbed them of their negro slaves; he bought and kidnapped slaves on

his own account and conveyed them to the West Indies. But actual

trading ventures of a peaceful or honest nature were rendered very

hazardous by the hostility of the Portuguese. When, however, in the

latter part of the 16th century, Portugal was absorbed by Spain and

Spain went to war with England, Queen Elizabeth had no hesitation in

granting charters to two companies of merchant adventurers to trade

with the West coast of Africa. In 1585 the first charter was granted

to a body of London adventurers for the carrying on of commerce with

Morocco and the Barbary States; in 1588 another charter was given to

Devonshire merchants, who had been for some time previously

endeavouring to trade on the Senegambia coast. Thus in 1588 were

laid the foundations of the British settlement of the Gambia. This

river, which was at first, and probably more accurately, known as

the “Gambra,” is remarkable among African rivers in that it has a

mouth with a deep bar, which can be crossed by big ships at any time

of the tide. Next to the Congo, it is probably the safest river to

enter on all the West African coast; and as its navigability extends

for over 200 miles into the interior of Senegambia, it is a very

valuable means of access to the heart of the fertile regions of

North-west Africa. When the British arrived on the Gambia, and for

two centuries afterwards, the banks of the river were thickly

studded with Portuguese trading settlements. The Portuguese,

however, never seem to have raised any difficulties about its

passing under British control. It was the French from Senegal who

made the most determined attempts to oust the British from the

Gambia.

In 1592 Queen Elizabeth chartered a further association for trading

on the coast between the Gambia and Sierra Leone. As regards the

subsequent history of the Gambia, it may be mentioned that the first

consolidated company formed to work the trade and administer the

British settlements was incorporated in 1618, but it was not

successful and the association following it also failed[110]. In

1664 a fort, subsequently called Fort James, was built on the island

of St Mary, off the south bank of the mouth of the Gambia. This was

the nucleus of the present capital of Bathurst, named a century and

a half afterwards from the same Colonial Secretary whose name was

given to the Australian town. In the 17th century the French made

determined attacks on the Gambia, and in 1696 succeeded in

destroying the British settlement, which however was reoccupied and

restored four or five years later. In spite of the dissipation of

the rumours of gold in the country of the Upper Gambia (the result

of the mission of enquiry conducted in 1723 by Captain Bartholomew

Stibbs), the Gambia settlement became rich and prosperous in the

18th century owing to the slave trade. The Gambia River became the

starting place of the first serious British explorations in Western

Africa and Nigeria. In 1783 the intermittent struggle with France

was concluded by the French recognition of exclusive British trading

rights on the Gambia, with the exception of the French factory at

Albreda, in return for a similar concession to themselves of the

commercial monopoly of the river Senegal; but as a set-off against

the French factory on the Gambia the British retained the exclusive

right to trade with the Moors of Portendik (near Cape Blanco) for

gum. In 1857 these two rights were exchanged. During the Napoleonic

wars England seized the French settlements at the mouth of the river

Senegal, and British merchants went thither to trade. Upon the

surrender of Senegal to France in 1817 these British merchants left

the Senegal and founded the town of Bathurst, now the capital of the

Gambia colony. In 1807, the tiny Gambia colony, now much

impoverished by the abolition of the slave trade, had been subjected

to the newly-founded government of Sierra Leone. In 1843, its

prosperity having somewhat revived owing to the growing trade in

ground-nuts, and its area having been increased by various additions

of territory along the banks of the river, it was rendered

independent of Sierra Leone; but again in 1866 was attached to that

colony until once more it was given a separate administration in

1888. In the early seventies attempts had been made to assert

British claims to the coast separating the Gambia and Sierra Leone,

where Portuguese rule had lapsed; but Portugal having succeeded in

asserting her claims (p. 98), the project was dropped, and during

the period of discouragement which followed France was allowed to

extend her sway over all the country on either side of the lower

Gambia. Several times during the 19th century the project was mooted

of exchanging the Gambia with France, first for her possessions on

the Gaboon coast, and later on for Porto Novo, and Grand Bassam. The

first project, which would have ultimately given us French Congo,

was opposed and defeated by the British merchants on the Gambia; and

the second, which would have eventually led to a continuous British

coast line from Sierra Leone to the Niger, was upset by the

opposition of Marseilles trading houses at Porto Novo. In 1891 the

best was made of a bad position, and a delimitation agreement was

come to with France, which at any rate secured to Great Britain both

banks of the river Gambia to the limits of its seaward navigability.

After this settlement with the French there was a certain amount of

friction amongst the Muhammadan (Mandingo and Fula) natives due to

interference with their slave-raiding. A chief named Fodi Kabba had

to be expelled for this reason from British territory. Two years

afterwards another slave-raider, Fodi Silah, inflicted severe losses

on a punitive expedition sent against him, but eventually was driven

into French territory where he died. Meantime Fodi Kabba, having

fixed his residence in French Senegambia at Medina, the celebrated

town in Wuli associated with Mungo Park, directed thence an

insurgent movement against the British which resulted in the death

of two British officials. But the French forces cooperated in 1901

with those of Great Britain; Medina was captured and occupied; and

Fodi Kabba was killed. Since then the Gambia region—once a great

recruiting ground for slaves—has been peaceful and prosperous. A hut

tax has increased its revenues since 1894. In 1906 domestic slavery

was extinguished by an ordinance, the slave trade having been

extirpated by joint British and French occupation of the trade

routes a few years previously.

The words “Sierra Leone” are a kind of compromise between Spanish

and Portuguese due to the dull hearing and careless spelling of

foreign names so characteristic of the English until the present

generation. Projecting into the sea on this part of the coast (a

coast otherwise flat and swampy) is a mountainous peninsula with

bold hills facing the sea front. If these mountains are not

sufficiently high[111] to be the “Theion Oχema” of the Greek

translators of Hanno’s journal, they were at any rate sufficiently

striking to make an impression on the early Portuguese explorers,

who dubbed them “Serra Leoa” or the “Lion-like Mountain Range”

because the reverberating thunder from the frequent storms booms and

echoes between these forested peaks and valleys exactly like the

roar of many lions. (The Spanish form would be Sierra Leona, and it

was apparently the Spanish name that the English navigators

adopted.) The British first frequented this coast in 1562 when (Sir)

John Hawkins came to the Sierra Leone (Rokel) river to get slaves.

From that time onwards British ships called at Sierra Leone whenever

they could elude the warships of the angry Portuguese. A British

trading station was established here in the latter part of the 17th

century and did not wholly disappear (though usually tenanted as the

slave depôt of some English-speaking mulatto) till it was merged in

the definite occupation of 1787. Towards the end of the 18th century

the fine harbour—the best harbour on the West coast of

Africa—attracted the attention of Dr Henry Smeathman; and inspired

by his writings the British Government obtained the cession of the

Sierra Leone peninsula in 1788. Four years later a charter was

granted and the territory was transferred to a philanthropic

association known as the “St George’s Bay Company,” which decided to

establish in that part of West Africa a settlement for freed negro

slaves from the West Indies and Canada.

Upon the granting of the charter the name was changed to the “Sierra

Leone Company.” To Sierra Leone had been brought in 1787 loyal free

negroes, who had fought on the British side during the American War

of Independence, and were therefore given their liberty, but whom it

was thought better to deport to a climate more suitable to Africans

than that of Nova Scotia, where they were at first disbanded. Then

were sent out about 400 masterless negroes picked up in England

after the judicial decision obtained by Granville Sharp as to the

illegality of slavery in England. These were known as the

“Granvilles.” To them were added later the “Maroons[112]”—Jamaica

negroes mixed in a slight degree with the blood of the extinct West

Indian natives, who had taken to the bush in Jamaica, and were

making themselves troublesome. Further, as soon as Sierra Leone was

adopted as the dumping ground of the slaves set free from the

captured slave-trading ships, there were added to these ex-slaves of

America and England the heterogeneous sweepings of West, Central,

and South-east Africa, generally known as “Willyfoss Niggers,”

because their freedom was originally due to the exertions of Mr

Wilberforce. Then of course there were the original Timne, Bullom,

Mendi, and Susu inhabitants; so that altogether the negro population

of modern Sierra Leone is an extraordinarily mixed stock, to which a

large colony of Kruboys from the Liberian coast has since been

added.

The philanthropic company which started this settlement in 1787 had

some quaint notions in its inception. Sixty London prostitutes were

sent out to Sierra Leone to marry with the negroes and become honest

women, while numbers of English, Dutch, and Swedes were invited to

go there as free settlers, under the belief that West Africa was as

suited for European colonization as Cape Colony. The result was of

course that nearly all these European immigrants died a few years

after their arrival, though not before they had left their

impression upon the strangely mixed population of Sierra Leone. The

whole settlement had to be begun over again in 1791.

In 1807 the rule of the colony was transferred to the Crown; and in

1821 Sierra Leone was for the first time joined with the Gold Coast

and the Gambia into the “Colony of the West African Settlements.” In

1843 the Gambia was detached, in 1866 joined again; and in 1874 the

Gold Coast and Lagos were separated from the supreme control of

Sierra Leone. Finally in 1888, the Gambia having been made a

separate administration, Sierra Leone became an isolated colony.

Between 1862 and 1864 its territory was considerably extended along

the coast; and a treaty of delimitation with France in 1894, though

it cut off the access of Sierra Leone to the Niger, still extended

the influence of the colony a considerable distance inland. During

the eighties of the 19th century there were considerable

difficulties with turbulent tribes, especially the ‘Yonnis,’ who

were subdued by an expedition under Sir Francis de Winton. In 1898

an uprising of the natives of the interior in opposition to the

suppression of the slave trade and the levying of a hut tax

seriously disturbed the colony, and led to some months’ obstinate

bush fighting mainly against the Timne, Kisi, and Mendi peoples, and

a massacre of American missionaries. But this little war produced

excellent results. The turbulent, slave-trading, and—in the

south-east—fetish-governed, cannibalistic natives were for the first

time effectively conquered by the white man. A resettlement of the

territory of 30,000 square miles took place. The old colonial

nucleus of Sierra Leone was limited to the peninsula of that name

and the coast strip. All the interior was declared a protectorate

and divided into districts wherein the rule of the native chiefs was

maintained or revived, under the control of British resident

commissioners. The hut tax was firmly instituted, but the natives’

exclusive rights to the land were carefully respected. Finally a

railway was built for some 230 miles across the south-east half of

the Protectorate to the Liberian frontier. Other railways or

tramways are being constructed to the French frontier on the north.

A short but very important mountain railway now carries passengers

to the healthy summit of the beautiful mountain range above the hot

and unhealthy capital (Freetown). Here the European residents can

reside, can pass the night in a comparatively cool climate. Sierra

Leone has ceased to be the white man’s grave. From many points of

view it has become the model West African colony.

Although British traders in gold and in slaves came to the Gold

Coast in the wake of the Portuguese in the 16th century, they

established no form of administration there until 1672, when Charles

II gave a charter to the Royal African Company and the monopoly of

trade between Morocco and Cape Colony. The Royal African Company

built forts at various places on the Gold Coast, and at Whyda[113]

on the coast of Dahomé. It was succeeded in 1750 by the African

Company of merchants, a company subsidized by the Government, which

continued to exist until 1821, at which date the British forts on

the Gold Coast were placed under the Sierra Leone government of the

West African settlements, and the fort at Whyda was abandoned. In

1807, the powerful Ashanti tribe thrust itself anew on the attention

of European nations (already acquainted with it as a great provider

of slaves and a diligent worker of the alluvial gold deposits) by

forcing its way to the coast, and attacking and destroying the

British fort of Anamabu and the Dutch fort of Kormantyn. They even

besieged Cape Coast Castle. In 1817 a mission, eventually under the

charge of Thomas Edward Bowdich, was sent to Ashanti to bring about

more friendly relations with the King of Kumasi. It succeeded, but

the terms of the treaty then made were not carried into effect by

the British Government, out of pity for the harassed Fanti coast

tribe; consequently the relations between Cape Coast Castle (then

the head-quarters of British administration in the Gold Coast) and

Ashanti once more became strained[114]. In 1824, while on a tour of

inspection, the Governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Charles Macarthy,

landed at Cape Coast Castle, and unfortunately embarked on a war

with the Ashanti without properly organized forces. He was defeated

and killed. The Imperial Government carried on the war for three

years, finally inflicting a defeat on the Ashanti near Accra, which

led three years later to a peace. But this lengthy campaign had

disgusted the Imperial Government with rule on the Gold Coast, and

as soon as peace was concluded with the Ashanti they handed over

these settlements to a committee of London merchants. This committee

selected and sent out an excellent man as Governor—Mr Charles

Maclean. This administrator contrived with a yearly subsidy of £4000

and a force of 100 police to extend British influence over an area

nearly coincident with the present Gold Coast Colony. But in 1843

the rule of the merchants was replaced once more by that of the

Crown, though Maclean was taken into the service of the new Imperial

administration.

The Danes and Swedes on account of the slave trade had established

forts on the Gold Coast in the 17th and 18th centuries,

respectively, to supply the West Indian islands with slaves. The

Swedes soon abandoned their trading forts, but Denmark still

retained four down to the middle of the 19th century, all of which

she then sold to England in 1850 for £10,000. For the same modest

payment Denmark transferred to England the protectorate over a

considerable area to the east of the Gold Coast Colony, along the

river Volta. The Dutch during the 17th and 18th centuries had

planted forts on the Gold Coast in rivalry with the English, and in

most cases alongside of them. After the abolition of the slave trade

Holland lost interest in her West African possessions. Their

existence was very awkward to the English, as it prevented the

collection of customs duties. In 1868 a partition of the coast was

negotiated between England and Holland, the Dutch taking over all

the forts west of a certain line, and the English those which lay to

the east of this boundary. In this manner the English acquired at

last the whole of the town of Accra, which is now the capital of the

Gold Coast. In 1871-2 the Dutch agreed to abandon to the English all

their remaining possessions on the Gold Coast in return for the

cession of certain British claims over Sumatra. Unfortunately, the

transfer of territory from the Dutch entailed a quarrel with the

powerful negro kingdom of Ashanti, situated behind the coast tribes

of this region but striving always to reach the sea. The Ashanti

kingdom was rather a confederacy of small negro states, with the

King of Kumasi at its head, than a homogeneous monarchy. In 1872

this paramount King of Kumasi despatched an army of 40,000 men to

invade the British Protectorate and assert his claim to domination

over the Fanti tribes of the colony. A large force of Fantis was to

some extent armed and organized by the British Government, but the

Ashantis defeated them twice with great slaughter, and then attacked

the British fort of Elmina, where the Ashanti army sustained such a

serious repulse that it avoided any further attacks on British

fortified settlements. A year afterwards, Sir John Glover (as he

subsequently became) marched with Hausa levies to attack the Ashanti

from the east, while Sir Garnet Wolseley[115], arriving in the

winter of 1873 with a strong expedition composed of British

soldiers, contingents of the West Indian regiments, British seamen,

and marines, drove the enemy back into their country, reached the

capital, Kumasi, and captured and burned that place. A somewhat

dubious peace was arrived at, the king never afterwards fulfilling

the terms of the treaty, which he was supposed to have signed with a

pencil cross; and for the following twenty-one years British

relations with Ashanti (which was also devastated by civil war) were

unsatisfactory. At last, in 1895, another strong expedition marched

on the capital without firing a shot, and took the king prisoner.

But the Ashanti people bided their time; and when, in 1900, the

British forces seemed fully occupied with the South African trouble,

three tribes of the Ashanti confederation (40,000 fighting men) rose

in rebellion just at the time when the Governor of the Gold Coast

and his wife were visiting Kumasi Fort. The rebellion broke out on

April 1, and the Governor and his wife remained shut up till June

23, only a slender relief of negro soldiers and British officers

arriving. On June 23 the Governor and his wife (Sir F. Hodgson and

Lady Hodgson) left Kumasi with an escort of 600 Hausa soldiers, cut

their way through the Ashanti besiegers (with the loss of two

British officers killed), and safely reached the Gold Coast Colony.

A slender garrison of 100 Hausa soldiers and three white officers

was left to defend Kumasi. Colonel (Sir) James Willcocks arriving

from Nigeria with a few hundred Yoruba and Hausa troops marched

through incredible difficulties of flooded lands, impenetrable

forest and lack of transport to the relief of Kumasi. In the course

of a few weeks he was reinforced by negro and Indian troops from

British Central Africa and a number of British officers and

non-commissioned officers, till at length he had a force of 3500

officers and men, besides the allied friendly tribes of Ashanti.

Kumasi was effectually relieved on July 15 (the garrison was too

weak to stand); and by the end of the year the whole of Ashanti had

been effectually conquered and annexed. A railway from Kumasi to

Sekondi on the coast, completed in 1903, sealed the pacification of

the country. Ashanti now forms a large province (some 23,000 square

miles) of the government of the Gold Coast. Beyond the forests of

Ashanti, to the north, is the considerable area (33,000 square

miles) known as the Northern Territories. This is separated from

Ashanti mainly by the course of the Volta and of its great tributary

the Black Volta. Unlike Ashanti, it contains no great area of dense

forest, but is a grassy park-like country, dry and even treeless in

the south-east. The negro population belongs mainly to the

Dagomba-Moshi group, and is largely Muhammadan in religion. These

northern territories were practically part of unknown Africa until

the eighties of the last century. They were revealed to us by the

journey of English, French, and educated negro explorers, and became

a British protectorate between 1892 and 1899. The principal products

are cattle and shea-butter (a vegetable oil).

The oldest possession in this region and the southernmost of the

three great provinces of this important British territory is the

Gold Coast Colony proper, which lies between Ashanti and the sea and

covers an area of 24,200 square miles. Celebrated for its alluvial

gold from prehistoric times onwards, it has of late become more

remarkable for its rock gold from reefs of quartz and auriferous

conglomerates. To work these more efficiently a railway was

constructed from Sekondi to the interior by 1908, with a branch

line. The average value of the gold exported annually since 1907 is

about one million sterling. Since the beginning of the 20th century

there has been a great development of cacao planting amongst the

natives, on their own land; and the importance of this movement and

its profitable results has quite changed the European conception of

African colonization. It is now realized that the native proprietor

works far harder on his own land if there is a market for his

produce than he does as a paid servant on a European-owned estate.

Although the Gold Coast is perhaps the most unhealthy of the British

West African possessions, it is prosperous in its finances, and has

made great progress in trade. In the last ten years the total value

of its trade has quadrupled, and stands now at £6,000,000 in

approximate yearly value.

The colony of Lagos came into existence in 1863[116]. It was

afterwards added to the government of the West African Settlements,

then attached to the Gold Coast; and finally in 1886 made an

independent colony. Lagos, as its name shows, was originally a

discovery of the Portuguese, who so named it from the large lagoon,

which until recently was a harbour of very doubtful value, even on

this harbourless coast, but is now by a vast expenditure of money

rendered safe for the exit and entrance of steamers at high tide. In

the days of the early Portuguese adventurers the modern territory of

Lagos was partly under the influence of Dahomé, partly under the

rule of Benin; and the Portuguese and subsequently the British came

there to buy slaves which native warfare rendered so abundant. In

prosecuting the crusade against the slave trade in the middle of the

last century the British Government came into contact with the king

of Lagos, who had become one of the most truculent slave traders on

the coast. This king, Kosoko, was expelled by a British naval

expedition in 1851, and his cousin was placed on the throne, after

having made a treaty with the British binding himself to put down

the slave trade. A British consul was appointed to superintend the

execution of this treaty, but neither the king who signed it nor the

son who succeeded him kept faithfully to its provisions. At length,

in 1861, the king of Lagos ceded his state to the British Government

in return for a pension of £1000 a year, which he drew until his

death twenty-four years later. Under British rule Lagos attained

remarkable prosperity, though unhappily its extremely unhealthy

climate caused great loss of life amongst the officials appointed to

administer the colony. Owing to the great commercial movement in its

port (the adaptation of which to ocean-going steamers proved very

difficult and very expensive) it was called, with some justice, the

“Liverpool of West Africa.”

At any time between the annexation of Lagos and, say, 1880, the

small strip of coast which separates Lagos from the Gold Coast might

easily have been taken under British protection, the only power with

any intervening rights being Portugal with one fort on the coast of

Dahomé; but the Home Government would never agree to this procedure

until it was too late and France and Germany had intervened.

Subsequently, until about 1898, there was growing trouble with

France owing to her extending her protection or colonization over

the little kingdom of Porto Novo, the large negro state of Dahomé,

and the adjoining country of Borgu. These disputes as to

delimitation of the frontier were settled in 1889 as far north as

the 9th parallel. Then ensued in 1897 and 1898 a strenuous attempt

on the part of the French to cut across the Lagos hinterland up to

the Niger, but this difference was again happily solved by the

Convention signed between the two countries in the summer of 1898.

Beyond Lagos, and indeed connected with it by half choked-up creeks,

begins the great delta of the Niger, which extends along an elbow of

the coast about 200 miles to the eastward, and ends—so far as direct

connection with the Niger is concerned—at the mouth of the river

Kwo-ibo, though there are probably creeks inside the coast-line

which would carry on the connection of the delta to the Old Calabar

estuary. These innumerable branches of the Niger stream were taken

to be independent rivers (which indeed they are to some extent,

receiving as they do many streams rising independently of the main

Niger) until well into the present century, when it was at last made

clear that they constituted the outlets of the third greatest river

of Africa. Together with the adjoining rivers of Old Calabar and the

Cameroons, they became known as the “Oil Rivers,” because they

produced the greater part and the best quality of the palm oil sent

to the European market. The Portuguese first came here in the 17th

and 18th centuries (after falling out with the king of Benin) to

trade in slaves; and the English followed them at the end of the

18th century and displaced them altogether. Evidence of former

Portuguese interest in the Niger Delta is sufficiently shown by the

fact that some of these rivers have Portuguese names, or Portuguese

corruptions of native names. The remaining names are chiefly those

of naval officers or ships that surveyed them, or occasionally a

native designation more or less corrupted.

By the time the slave trade was rendered illegal, the wonderful

virtues of palm oil had been discovered, chiefly in connection with

its value as a lubricant for machinery (especially locomotives) and

as a material for making candles and soap. Therefore the development

of railways in Britain and other European countries, the new

cleanliness, which coincidently was preached as a British gospel,

and the spread of education and love of reading made the fortune of

the Oil Rivers and those merchants who settled there at imminent

risk of death from fever. Already in the forties of the last century

British trading interests had become so important in the Niger Delta

that a consul was appointed. The first consul, Captain John

Beecroft, was a most notable personality, as an explorer and

peacemaker. To him Great Britain owes the definite establishment of

her influence on the Cross River and at Old Calabar. The British

Government, for the purpose of putting down the slave trade, had,

with the consent of Spain, occupied during the first half of the

19th century the Spanish island of Fernando Pô; and the

administration of this island was for some time connected with the

consular post for the Bights of Biafra and Benin[117]. Afterwards,

when Spain resumed the possession of Fernando Pô, the British consul

for the Bights was also consul for the Spanish island; but little by

little his duties obliged him to reside more on the “Oil Rivers”

than on the adjoining island. With the exception of the brilliant

Richard Burton, who for four years was consul for the Bights of

Biafra and Benin, the post was usually held by a gentleman who had

been to some extent previously connected with African trade, and

whose purview was not much extended politically; but in 1880 Mr E.

H. Hewett, formerly Vice-Consul in Angola, and a man of some

distinction, was appointed to the post. He took up his residence at

Old Calabar, and his reports aroused great interest in the

Government of that period, which was disposed to accede to the

petitions of the chiefs and to take all the coast under British

protection from Lagos to the Gaboon. But the plans of the Ministry

were not fully settled until the end of 1883; and when Mr Hewett

returned to the coast with full powers he was delayed by ill-health

and still more so by the beginning of the Niger Question, and the

importance of securing a hold over the lower Niger. Consequently he

left the Cameroons region to a later visit; and the German

representative at Duala, the celebrated traveller, Dr Nachtigal,

taking advantage of this omission, suddenly concluded a treaty with

a chief at the mouth of the Cameroons estuary. The British flag was

erected over all the remaining territories in South Nigeria, the

Cross River district and the north-west Cameroons. But Germany was

determined to have a fair slice of West Africa, and the British

Government thought it wiser to deal with German aspirations

liberally. The British flag was therefore withdrawn from the

vicinity of the Cameroons river and mountain. The last patch of

Cameroons territory which was given up to Germany was the

interesting little settlement of Ambas Bay, on the flanks of the

mighty Cameroons mountain, founded in 1858 by the English Baptist

Mission when expelled from Fernando Pô. Mr Hewett annexed this

territory in 1884, and (Sir) H. H. Johnston administered it from

1885 until the time of its surrender to Germany in 1887.

The limits of the “Oil Rivers Protectorate” were then drawn at the

Rio del Rey on the east, and the boundary of Lagos Colony on the

west. The eastern boundary was subsequently extended by agreement

with Germany to the upper waters of the river Benue. This

acquisition—now known as the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and

merged into the one great government, almost an Empire, of British

Nigeria—was at first administered by consular authority, amongst

others by the author of this book; and these consular administrators

were obliged to face a serious difficulty in the determined

opposition of certain coast chiefs to the carrying on of direct

trade with the interior. These were the “middle men,” who had for

several centuries prevented the penetration of Africa from the West

coast by Europeans, in the dread that they would lose their

lucrative commission on the products of the interior which they

retailed on the coast. Some of these chiefs were of long established

ruling families; others again had commenced life as slaves and had

risen to be wealthy merchant-kings with incomes of £10,000 to

£20,000 a year, derived from their profits on the goods from the

interior which passed through their hands. Foremost among these

obstructive individuals was Jaja, a slave from the Ibo country, who

as servant, trader and counsellor to chiefs of Bonny had risen to

such a position of wealth and influence that he had armed a large

force of fighting men and a flotilla of war canoes, and made himself

the most powerful chief in the Niger Delta. He resided on the river

Opobo, and was very jealous of his independence, only signing a

qualified treaty of protection with the British Government, from the

well-grounded fear that, if he did not do so, the French would take

his country as an access to the Niger. As Jaja at last went to the

length of forcibly opposing trade between the British merchants and

the natives of the interior, Mr H. H. Johnston, then acting consul

for the Oil Rivers, removed him to the Gold Coast to be tried before

a commissioner. As a result of the trial he was deposed and

sentenced to five years’ banishment in the West Indies. With the

exile of Jaja the principal resistance of the middle-men was broken,

though at Benin and behind Old Calabar similar action had to be

taken to secure free trade.

In 1893, under Sir Claude Macdonald, a regular administration was

established over Southern Nigeria (the Niger Coast Protectorate, as

it was called until 1906). In 1896-7 a peaceful mission to the King

of Benin in the western part of the Protectorate was attacked by the

soldiers of that chieftain and the leader (J. R. Phillips) and seven

other British officials were slain, together with many of the native

porters.

Benin had been in relations with British traders since 1553. The

Dutch traded there in the 17th and 18th centuries for slaves, but

were ousted by the French, and the French (in 1792) by the British.

In 1823, Giovanni Belzoni, the Italian Egyptologist, died near Benin

city when starting from this part of the Niger Delta to reach

Timbuktu. In 1863 (Sir) Richard Burton came to Benin as British

consul to try (in vain) to persuade the king to renounce his

devastating human sacrifices, performed once a year for the king’s

“customs” of ancestor worship. (Sir) H. H. Johnston, after making an

agreement with the king’s viceroy, Nana, on the coast, explored the

Benin river in a gun-boat, but was refused permission to proceed to

the capital. This was accorded to (Sir) H. L. Gallwey in 1892; and a

treaty was then made.

After the massacre of Mr J. R. Phillips and his companions on

January 1, 1897 (only two Englishmen escaped) a British punitive

expedition was rapidly organized by Admiral Sir Harry Rawson; and a

month afterwards the city of Benin was taken, its king was exiled,

and the worst offenders among his chiefs were executed. A second

punitive expedition ranged through the Benin country in 1899, since

when this ancient kingdom has been peaceful. The Benin expedition

revealed to us, in a far more extensive degree than had hitherto

been realized, the marvellous art which had sprung up in that

blood-guilty city, an art chiefly manifested by bronze castings in

the _cire perdue_ process. A splendid series of examples of this

work has since been exhibited at the British Museum. In all

probability this art of working brass and bronze reached the Lower

Niger and parts of the Niger Delta, such as Benin on the one hand

and Old Calabar on the other, from the central Sudan, where it was

introduced by Arab craftsmen, teachers and traders from Egypt and

Tripoli; though some writers of late have argued an even earlier

introduction of copper, bronze, and brass work emanating from Egypt

prior to the Arab conquest, and extending from east to west across

the central Sudan to the Upper Niger. In any case, this art had

taken root in Benin, where it had acquired a special and national

development. Concurrently with this had arisen an exquisite taste in

the carving of ivory, almost oriental in its grace and finish.

In 1906 the Niger Coast Protectorate which had come under the

Colonial Office in 1900, was fused with the contiguous colony of

Lagos under the name of Southern Nigeria. It had previously (1900)

united its east and west halves by acquiring the whole deltaic

course of the Niger from Idda to the sea, after the Royal Niger

Companies’ territories had been taken over by the British

Government. Several small native wars were necessary between 1900

and 1910 for the subdual of the Arõ tribe (whose cruel fetish

rites—the “long juju”—demanded constant victims) in the

north-eastern part of the delta, and the Ibo people in the north;

but the prosperity of Southern Nigeria has been notable. Its total

trade averages in the year a value of £11,000,000. A railway now

proceeds inland from Lagos to the Niger and from the Niger to Kano,

about 850 miles. In 1912, the government of Southern and Northern

Nigeria were united under a joint Governor-General.

Lagos, the delta of the Niger and the lands of the Cross river (Old

Calabar), have thus been united at last in peaceful and prosperous

development under the British flag. But strong as were the British

claims to control the lands along the main stream of the Niger, they

were vigorously contested by France in the second half of the 19th

century. The Niger had been discovered from its source to the last

rapid at the head of its seaward navigability by Mungo Park, one of

the greatest of British explorers, and by later travellers from

Sierra Leone. The rest of the exploration from Busa to the sea had

been completed by other British adventurers and officials; from the

point of view of discovery the whole Niger was British from source

to mouth. The navigation of the river from the sea to above its

confluence with the Benue was first organized in 1832 by a

Scotchman, MacGregor Laird, who has been rightly called “the father

of British trade on the Niger.” Laird between 1832 and 1859 spent

about £60,000 vainly in developing Nigerian commerce. In 1841, 1854

and 1857 the British Government despatched or supported various

expeditions to explore and make treaties; they also established a

consulate at Lokoja, where the Benue meets the Niger, but the loss

of life from the effects of the climate was so great in those days

that the British Government became discouraged. The most

distinguished of their consuls at Lokoja was Dr W. B. Baikie, who

between 1854 and 1864 established the beginnings of British

Nigeria[118]. But the consulate at Lokoja was abolished in 1868; and

in another direction no attempt whatever was made to attach to the

interior of Sierra Leone the rich countries lying beyond the sources

of the Niger. But for independent action on the part of British

traders the Niger would have become either entirely French, or in

the main a French river with a German estuary. During the eighties

the French Government of Senegal pushed forward to the Upper Niger.

Earlier still, by the influence of Gambetta, two powerful French

politico-commercial companies were formed to establish trading

houses all along the Lower Niger. In spite of much discouragement,

however, the numerous British firms that traded with the Niger had

stuck to the river; but although they were, doing a great deal of

trade their profits were reduced by excessive competition. From the

British point of view, the hour had come to strike for the Niger;

but where was the man? Captain George Goldie-Taubman[119] (a Royal

Engineers’ officer) had been left several thousand pounds’ worth of

shares in one of these small Niger Companies. Having spent some time

in Egypt, he resolved to go to the Niger (1877) and see whether his

shares were worth retaining. Like an analogous great man in South

Africa, he decided on working for amalgamation. With untiring energy

and great tact he brought about the consolidation of all the British

companies trading on the Niger. Then he bought out the French

company, discouraged as they were by Gambetta’s death, and boldly

applied to the Imperial Government for a charter, being able to show

them that no other trading firm but his own existed on the Niger.

Britain was just about to take part at that time in the Conference

of Berlin. She lost the Congo but won the eastern Niger. When the

British claim to a protectorate was acceded to in principle at the

Berlin Conference, a charter was granted to the National African

Company founded by Captain Goldie-Taubman, who changed the name of

his association to that of the Royal Niger Company. The main course

of the river Niger down to the sea was placed under the

administration of this chartered company, but the Benin district to

the west, and the Brass, Bonny, Opobo, and Old Calabar districts to

the east were, as already related, eventually organized as the Niger

Coast Protectorate under direct Imperial administration, because in

these countries the Niger Company had no predominating interests.

When Sir George Goldie’s Company had expended nearly all its

available capital in buying out the French and purchasing governing

rights from the native chiefs, a fresh obstacle had to be overcome:

German rivalry came into play. The Germans had just taken the

Cameroons but had failed to secure the Oil Rivers, on which in

1884-5 they made several attempts. Herr Flegel was sent to obtain

concessions beyond the limits of the Royal Niger Company’s immediate

jurisdiction in the Nigerian Sudan. But Flegel was forestalled in

his principal object by the explorer Joseph Thomson, who most ably

conducted a mission to the court of Fula Sultan or the Emperor of

Sokoto, and secured a treaty with that important potentate which

brought his territories under British influence. In 1890 the British

claims to a vast Niger empire were recognized by France and Germany.

But the French recognition was allowed to remain too vague in regard

to the northern, western, and eastern boundaries of British Nigeria;

thus rendering it possible for France in the ensuing eight years to

strive to cut into the British sphere from two directions, if not

three. On the north it was sought to push back the boundary of the

empire of Sokoto, so as to bring the French sphere as far as

possible to the south, though this assertion went little beyond

map-making. On the south, the Benue basin, Lieutenant Mizon made the

most persistent, and, as it would seem, unpractical attempts to

secure for France a large sphere of influence on the river Benue,

which could hardly be approached from French territory because the

German sphere would stand in the way. Finally as the delimitation in

the Anglo-French agreement of 1890 merely carried the British

boundary from Lake Chad to Say on the middle Niger, and did not

provide a western boundary, the French (though unofficially

according the British in 1890 a straight line drawn from Say due

south to the boundary between Lagos and Dahomé) gradually pushed

their acquisitions eastward from Senegambia until they had secured

all the right bank of the Middle and Lower Niger as far as Busa,

which is at the end of the Niger cataracts and at the commencement

of its navigability seawards. A British protectorate over Busa

having been announced to France in 1894, this act on the part of the

French was considered a distinct trespass on British rights and

caused considerable excitement at the time; but, as may be seen by

the 1898 convention, the French finally yielded to British claims.

They had some time before tacitly disowned the enterprise of

Lieutenant Mizon, which had been rendered the more hopeless, firstly

by the agreement between England and Germany in 1893 (which provided

for a continuous Anglo-German boundary from the Rio del Rey on the

coast to the southern shores of Lake Chad), and secondly by the

subsequent Franco-German agreement of 1894 by which a wedge of

German territory was interposed between the French claims in

Congoland and on the river Shari, and the British sphere on the

Benue; though nevertheless the Germans admitted the French to a

point on the extreme upper waters of the Benue in return for German

access to the Sanga, one of the Congo tributaries.

Besides being hampered by the conflicting ambitions of other

European powers, the Niger Company had to conduct a difficult

campaign against the Amir of Nupe. Like most great Muhammadan

empires, Sokoto consisted of a bundle of vassal states owing a

varying degree of allegiance to the dominant power. British Nigeria

then contained four important civilized negro peoples, and an

indefinite number of savage tribes who were politically of no

account whatever. These four great peoples are the _Songhai_ on the

north-west, the _Hausa_ occupying all the centre, the _Bornu_ or

Kanuri on the north-east, and the _Nupe_ on the south-west. Over

three of these (excepting the Kanuri) the Fula conquests of a

century ago had established Fula rule with its head-quarters in the

Hausa States. But the kingdom of Nupe, though ruled by a Fula

dynasty, held its allegiance to the court of Sokoto but cheaply, and

requested at the hands of the Niger Company a recognition of its

complete independence, which for political reasons the Company could

not give. This powerful kingdom, however, stood in the way of all

access to Sokoto, and in its defiance of the Niger Company raided

for slaves far down on the Lower Niger. Unless a way was to be

opened for successful foreign intrigue by allowing Nupe to assert

its independence of Sokoto and the Royal Niger Company, it was

necessary to subdue its pretensions. Therefore Sir George Goldie,

with the aid of a staff of British officers, of Hausa troops and

machine guns, inflicted a crushing defeat on the forces of Nupe

(mainly Fula), captured their capital, and successfully asserted the

sovereign rights of the Company as conferred on them by the Sultan

of Sokoto. Subsequently other turbulent and slave-raiding tribes

were dealt with, and the Company gradually rendered itself master of

a great riverain dominion in west-central Africa.

But the whole position was a false one so far as Great Britain was

concerned. The British Government at the Berlin Conference on the

affairs of Africa had pleaded everywhere the cause of Free Trade;

yet here, in the British Nigerian sphere, a chartered company had

secured the virtual monopoly of trade. Above Abo on the deltaic

Niger it was practically impossible for anyone to carry on commerce

except the natives and the Royal Niger Company. Yet the British

Government was already called upon to protest against King Leopold’s

monopoly of trade in the interior of the Congo State and the French

exclusion of British merchants from French Congo. So the step was

taken in 1899 of buying out the administrative rights of the Royal

Niger Company; and on January 1, 1900, the British Government

commenced the direct rule of “Northern Nigeria,” a territory of

approximately 256,400 square miles (as delimited by the

1890-1898-1902 conventions with France and Germany—338,000 square

miles with Southern Nigeria) which stretched from the confines of

the Sahara Desert and Lake Chad to the Upper Benue, the Central

Niger, Borgu, and the Cameroons frontier. In three and a half years’

time (1900-04) practically the whole of this enormous area had been

brought under effective British control—thanks to the courage and

indomitable energy of its first Governor, Sir Frederick Lugard (who

had won Borgu and Illórin for the Niger Company in 1897-99). Colonel

T. L. N. Morland commanded a force of 800 negro soldiers with

British officers and non-commissioned officers, which with its light

pieces of artillery and maxim guns defeated the large forces of

cavalry brought against it by the Fula princes. In a campaign which

lasted from the autumn of 1902 to the early summer of 1903 Colonel

Thomas Morland marched from Nupe to Bornu, and Bornu to Sokoto,

capturing the great Hausa city of Kano by the way. The inimical Fula

Sultan of Sokoto was deposed, and a relative raised to the throne,

who could be more depended on to work loyally with the British in

suppressing the slave-trade and in discouraging those slave raids

which were fast depopulating Northern Nigeria. It is pleasant to

record that in the course of these operations the dynasty of the

Kanemi Sheikhs of Bornu (the founder of which had been so good to

the trans-Saharan expeditions sent out from England in the first

half of the 19th century) was restored to the headship of that

country. They had been driven out of Bornu in an extraordinary

invasion of the Central Sudan by Rabah, a former slave of Zobeir

Pasha in the Egyptian Sudan. Rabah, deserting the crumbling Dervish

power of Omdurman, had marched to the west and entered Bornu in 1895

at the head of a large army. Rapidly he made himself master of the

regions between Hausaland and the Congo basin. Ultimately he and his

son, Fadl-Allah, fell in battle with the French; and the British,

when they took over Bornu as the result of Colonel Morland’s

victories, replaced as Sheikh or native ruler of that ancient

kingdom the great-grandson of Muhammad-al-Amin-al-Kanemi, the man

who so befriended Denham and Clapperton in 1822-4.

The Fula power[120] is not extinct in Nigeria. Far from it. The more

intelligent Fula princes and aristocracy now assist the British as

great chiefs, and in minor administrative posts. The trade of

Hausaland is reviving, and a considerable mining development (mainly

tin) is going on in the hilly country of Bauchi. A railway now links

up Kano with Lagos on the Gulf of Guinea, and a branch of this great

trunk line turns southward into Bauchi and may some day reach the

upper Benue; just as the Kano line will in the future, far or near,

join the French Trans-Saharan line and carry passengers from the

Central Sudan and the eastern Niger to the Mediterranean ports of

French North Africa.

An interest in the trading possibilities of the Central Sudan was

evinced by the British Government early in the 19th century, quite

apart from the Niger problem; and it was at the expense of Great

Britain that expeditions set out from Tripoli across the Sahara

Desert in 1818 and 1822 to discover Lake Chad. This move was

partly occasioned by the successes of a remarkable man,

Muhammad-al-Amin-al-Kanemi[121], who had become the virtual ruler

of Bornu and had opened up relations with Tripoli. Clapperton, a

member of the 1822-25 expedition, traversed Hausaland and reached

the court of the Fula Emperor at Sokoto. Denham nearly lost his

life in joining a Bornu army which went to attack the Fulas of

Mandara. Another expedition sent out from Tripoli in 1849 under

Consul Richardson was mainly carried through to its ultimate

purposes by one of its members, a German, Dr Heinrich Barth, who

reached Timbuktu on the west and the Upper Benue on the

south-east. So that Great Britain laid the foundations of her

future Nigerian Empire both from the direction of the

Mediterranean and by ascending the Niger and Benue from the Gulf

of Guinea.

At one time British influence was so strong with the

semi-independent Basha of Tripoli, that it seemed possible British

protection might be accorded to this Barbary state, seeing that

France in a similar manner had ignored equally valid Turkish claims

to the suzerainty of Algiers. But the uprising of Muhammad Ali in

Egypt awakened the Turks to the necessity of reinforcing their

claims to Tripoli, and British projects in that direction were

abandoned.

As regards Morocco, the Portuguese fortress of Tangier had been

ceded to England in 1662, the British having desired it as giving

them a port of call close to the Straits of Gibraltar. It was found

difficult however to maintain it against the continual attacks of

the Moors, and it was therefore surrendered to the Emperor of

Morocco in 1684. It is not impossible that it may return one day to

British keeping.

-----

Footnote 108:

Made from various aromatic seeds, such as those of true pepper

vines (_Piper subpeltatum_, _Piper guineense_), and of the fruits

of (_Xylopia æthiopica_).

Footnote 109:

The seeds of the _Aframomum_, a zingiberaceous plant, of the same

order as cannas, bananas, etc. These early English voyages are

described in detail in my book on _Liberia_ (2 vols, 1906).

Footnote 110:

It was this company that sent out in 1618 George Thompson in

charge of a trading expedition. Thompson was killed in some

quarrel with his men at Tenda on the Upper Gambia. In 1620-21, his

companions were rescued, and his explorations continued by Captain

Richard Jobson, who ascended the Gambia as far as it was navigable

from the sea, came into contact with the Fula and Mandingo

peoples, and on his return wrote an account of his experiences in

a book called _The Golden Trade_. This work—recently republished

in the unabridged form of the MS.—is one of the most vivid

pen-pictures of Negro Africa ever penned.

Footnote 111:

They rise at the highest to 2000 feet.

Footnote 112:

‘Maroon’ was a corruption of the Spanish “Cimarron,” an outlaw

frequenting the summits (Cimas) of the mountains.

Footnote 113:

Properly ‘Hwida.’

Footnote 114:

All this period in the history of the Gold Coast, including

Bowdich’s mission, is described in detail in my book, _Pioneers in

West Africa_ (Blackie, 1911).

Footnote 115:

Afterwards Viscount Wolseley.

Footnote 116:

The territory was ceded by its king to Great Britain in 1861.

Footnote 117:

The powerful kingdom of Benin—remarkable for its development

of the arts of sculpture, ivory carving, and of

bronze-casting—extended its power seaward to the mouth of the

Benin branch of the Niger Delta, and gave its name to this

great bay or bight of the low-lying coast. Biafra was a native

name given by the Portuguese to the opposite (eastern) bight

between the Niger Delta and the Cameroons.

Footnote 118:

British Nigeria and the exploration of Africa generally—its

botany, anthropology, and languages—owe much to the work of

William Balfour Baikie, a native of the Orkney Islands, who

between 1854 and 1864 served the British Government on the Niger

and succeeded the equally remarkable John Beecroft as Consul.

Baikie founded Lokoja in 1860. Lander, Laird, Beecroft, Baikie,

and the black Bishop Samuel Crowther were the principal creators

of British Nigeria.

Footnote 119:

Afterwards the Right Hon. Sir George Taubman Goldie, P.C.

Footnote 120:

The Fulas, as already stated, are a semi-white race, who

originally came from the Western Sahara, and colonised much of

Senegambia and the Upper Niger basin, penetrating as far south as

Borgu, and south-east to Adamawa, Mandara, Bagirmi, and Darfur. In

the early 19th century, under a great leader, Othman Dan Fodio,

they conquered Sokoto and much of Eastern Nigeria, stopping short

of Bornu, where they were arrested by the power of the Kanemi

Sheikh of Bornu. A succinct account of the different Fula kingdoms

and conquests is given in a footnote on p. 201.

Footnote 121:

This man was no doubt a negroid Arab religious teacher from the

country of Kanem, north-east of Lake Chad. He settled in Bornu

early in the 19th century and became the adviser of the king of

that country, a phlegmatic descendant of a great and ancient

dynasty of Berber or Hamitic origin. Muhammad-al-Amin-al-Kanemi

assisted the Bornu sovereign and people to beat off the Fula

invasion and became the virtual ruler of Bornu. He bore the title

of Sheikh of Bornu.

CHAPTER IX

THE FRENCH IN WEST AND NORTH AFRICA

It has been asserted with some degree of probability that certain

seamen-adventurers of Dieppe found their way along the West coast of

Africa as far as the Gold Coast in the 14th century, a hundred years

before the Portuguese; and that they established themselves on the

Senegal river, built two or more settlements (Little Paris, and

Little Dieppe) on the Liberian coast, and established trading

stations at “La Mine d’Or” (Elmina), at Accra, and at Kormantin, on

the Gold Coast. The Dieppois station at Elmina was said to have been

founded in 1382; and the legend runs that forty years later, owing

to the wars in France having distracted Norman commerce from

over-sea enterprise, these settlements were abandoned. There may

have been some truth in these accounts of Norman discoveries on the

West coast of Africa set forth in the second half of the 17th

century. A Norman adventurer undoubtedly rediscovered the Canary

Islands in the 14th century; and it is probable that the Rio d’Ouro

and even the whole coast of West Africa as far as the Gulf of Guinea

were known to Italian seamen before these features were placed on

the map by the Portuguese. When, three centuries later, the French

founded a settlement at the mouth of the Senegal, they are said to

have discovered the remains of a Norman fort (built by adventurers

from Dieppe) and to have made it the nucleus of the modern town of

St Louis.

At any rate, soon after the Portuguese had laid bare the coast of

Guinea, ships began to sail from the Norman ports to resume or to

commence the West African trade, though no attempt was made to

establish any political settlements; for in the matter of founding

colonies in Africa, France was considerably behind Portugal,

Holland, and England. However, in 1637, a young Frenchman named

Claude Jannequin de Rochefort was pacing the quays at Dieppe with

vague aspirations to be “another Cortes.” Happening to ask where a

certain ship was going, and being told in reply that she was bound

for the “Senaga” river in Africa, near Cape de Verde, he instantly

resolved to go, and before many hours were over was entered on the

ship’s book as a soldier; he afterwards performed the duties of

clerk to the captain. It would seem that this vessel, which had not

only soldiers but monks on board, must have been despatched by some

far-seeing authority, since before the Sieur de Rochefort joined its

company it had been determined to stop on the West African coast

north of the Senegal river, cut down trees, build a small boat, and

use it to explore the Senegal. This plan had been formulated in

complete ignorance of the fact that the coast north of the Senegal

and south of Morocco contains no timber for boat-building. Finding

this to be the case, the Dieppe expedition, under the command of

Captain Lambert, with the Sieur de Rochefort among its soldiers,

went on to the Senegal and put together a small boat out of timber

which had been brought from France. Into this small vessel was

transferred a portion of the crew, including De Rochefort; and the

Senegal river was explored for 110 miles from its mouth. Although

the Dieppe adventurers were said to have built a fort on the site of

St Louis in 1360, and the Portuguese had a few trading posts on its

lower reaches in the 15th century, there were no Europeans on the

river when it was visited by De Rochefort, though the Dutch had

established stations on the coast not far off. After obtaining

concessions from the natives, Captain Lambert’s expedition returned

to France, experiencing many delays and adventures on the way; and

six years after he had started from Dieppe De Rochefort published an

interesting account of their adventures.

But this pioneer expedition was not soon followed up, owing to the

hostility of the Dutch. The Norman Company sold its rights to the

French West India Company, and the latter again transferred them to

a subsidiary association afterwards called the “Royal Senegal

Company.” In 1677, the French navy (France being at war with

Holland) captured the Dutch ports on the Senegal coast—Rufisque,

Portudal, Joal, and Goree Island—this last, famous in the history of

West Africa, being named after a little island on the Dutch coast,

and commanding the now important harbour and capital of Senegal,

Dakar. In 1717, Portendik, south of Cape Blanco, and in 1724,

Arguin, an islet north of Cape Blanco, were also taken from the

Dutch, who had earlier still acquired them from the Portuguese.

The Royal Senegal Company sent out in 1697 a very able man to attend

to its affairs—André de Brüe—who made his head-quarters at Fort St

Louis, which had been founded by De Rochefort’s party. This

remarkable person, Brüe, combined the qualities of a man of science

and a far-sighted trader, and may be said to have really laid the

foundations of the French empire in West Africa. Brüe made two

important journeys up the Senegal and into the interior. He remained

eighteen years on the coast of Senegal, and visited the Gambia in

1700, finding English, Portuguese, and Spanish there, the

first-named trading at the mouth of the river, and the two last

settled some distance up its course as flourishing slave-traders.

According to Brüe, the Portuguese slave-trading settlements

exhibited some degree of civilization, but also of rowdiness among

the European element, not unlike the proceedings of the “Mohocks” in

the streets of London. In his writings Brüe expresses his amazement

at the enormous number of bees inhabiting the mangrove swamps and

coast-lands of Guinea. In 1716 Brüe sent out agents to extend French

influence up the Senegal and towards the “Gold” country of Bambuk,

the mountainous region on the upper Senegal. Brüe finally returned

to France in 1715 and lived quietly for a long time afterwards on

the large fortune he had accumulated. His is a name to be well

remembered in the annals of the French Empire. He was a far-sighted,

cultivated man, who had also the gift of choosing and employing good

associates. Among these may be mentioned the Sieur Campagnon, the

_beau-idéal_ of a good-tempered, good-looking, supple, kind-hearted,

valorous Frenchman. Only the charm of Campagnon’s winning ways

enabled him to penetrate the recesses of Bambuk, whose secrets as a

gold-bearing country were jealously guarded by the natives. One

little incident of Campagnon’s life on the Senegal depicts his

disposition. Walking round the outskirts of St Louis he came across

an unfortunate lioness that had belonged to an inhabitant of the

town, but had been thrown out on the rubbish heaps to die. The

unfortunate beast had been suffering from some malady of the jaw

which would not permit mastication, and was therefore nearly dead

from hunger. When Campagnon saw the lioness, her eyes were glazing

and her mouth was full of ants and dirt. He took pity on the

unfortunate creature, washed her mouth and throat clean, and fed her

with milk. This saved her life, and the grateful animal conceived a

warm affection for him, and would afterwards follow him about like a

dog and take food from no one else. Dr Robert Brown, who unearthed

this charming anecdote, further informs us that after his romantic

career in Africa Campagnon returned to France, and died, after a

long and prosperous life, a master-mason and undertaker in Paris.

The French continued to develop their Senegal settlements with some

prosperity until 1758, when they were captured by the British, who

held them until 1778, and acquired them again for a time by the

peace of 1783; after this they were in British hands a few years

longer, but were French again by 1790. In 1800 the British took the

island of Goree, which the French had acquired from the Dutch in

1677. By the peace of 1783 the English had secured from the French

the exclusive right to trade with the Arabs or Moors of Portendik

for gum. Portendik was a place on the Sahara coast about 120 miles

north of St Louis. All the French possessions in Senegal which were

held by the British from time to time during the Napoleonic wars

were given back to France two years after the peace of 1815, though

at that time the British hold over the Gambia was more clearly

defined, the French only retaining one post on that river, given up

in 1857 in return for the British trade monopoly with Portendik. The

French had already resumed their explorations of Senegambia at the

end of the 18th century; and after the final recovery of the Senegal

river in 1817 these researches were pushed with some degree of

ardour. In 1818 Mollien discovered the sources of the Gambia, and De

Beaufort explored the country of Kaarta. In 1827 René Caillié

started from the river Nunez with help derived from the colony of

Sierra Leone (for which he was subsequently ungrateful) and

descended the Niger to Timbuktu, thence making his way across the

desert to Morocco. His journey, however, did not do much to lure the

French Nigerwards at that time, especially as a great Fula conqueror

had arisen, Al Hajji ’Omaru, whose conquests not only blocked the

way to the Niger, but later on threatened the very existence of the

French settlements on the Senegal. But after a long period of

inaction and lack of interest, the French colony of the Senegal was

to receive great extension. General Faidherbe, who for political

reasons was rather distrusted by the newly-formed Second Empire, was

exiled to Senegal in 1854 in the guise of an appointment as

Governor-General. He was a man of great enterprise and intelligence,

and immediately began to study the resources and extension of the

Senegal colony. He first punished severely the Moorish tribes to the

north of the river Senegal, who had again and again raided the

settled country. Before he had been a year in Senegambia, Faidherbe

had annexed the Wuli country, and had built the fort of Medina to

oppose the progress of Al Hajji ’Omaru. ’Omaru sent an army of

20,000 men against Medina, but they were repulsed by the officer in

command, and finally had to retreat before Faidherbe’s advance.

Following on the repulse of the Fulas came the annexation of many

countries along the Upper Senegal, and in the direction of the

Gambia. A year later the country between St Louis and the mouth of

the Gambia, past Cape Verde, had been annexed. Then the Casamanse

river, between the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea, was taken; then, in

the sixties, the coast between Portuguese Guinea and Sierra Leone

was added to the French possessions, under the name of “Rivières du

Sud.” In 1864, a French expedition under the gifted Lieutenant E.

Mage (who was drowned off Brest in 1869) reached Segu on the Upper

Niger and was detained there for two years by the suspicious Fula

Sultan—Tidiani, nephew of the Emperor Al Hajji ’Omaru[122].

A suspension of French activity occurred after the disastrous

Franco-German war, but it was resumed again in 1880. Captain

Galliéni surveyed the route for a railway to connect the navigable

Senegal with the Upper Niger, which he reached in that year at

Bamaku. By 1883 the post of Bamaku on the Upper Niger had been

definitely founded and fortified. But General Borgnis-Desbordes,

Galliéni, and other French officers had to contend with the imposing

forces of king Ahmadu bin Tidiani, the grand-nephew and successor of

Al Hajji ’Omaru, who ruled over the country between the upper

Senegal and Jenné on the Niger. However Ahmadu was constrained by

General Borgnis-Desbordes to make a treaty in 1887 which placed his

territory under French protection. Nevertheless war with the

Toucouleur (Takrur) Fulas followed in 1890 (and also with a vestige

of the Masina Fulas under Ahmadu Abdulei); and the French occupied

the great country of Kaarta (where Mungo Park suffered so greatly)

in 1891, Segu on the Niger (also associated with Mungo Park) in

1892, Jenné and Timbuktu in 1893. The French as early as 1881 had

taken under their protection the ancient Fula kingdom of Timbo or

Futa Jallon. Their activities in this direction brought them into

conflict with the forces of Samori, a negro (probably Mandingo) king

who had risen from a very humble position to that of conqueror and

ruler of the countries about the source of the Niger. Samori, like

Al Hajji ’Omaru, commanded hordes of Mandingo negroes, whose

conquests were often undertaken from propagandist motives, and who

were to some extent in sympathy with the Muhammadan tribes of the

Upper Niger. Samori’s forces were mainly recruited from among the

Mandingo tribes between the Upper Niger and the hinterland of Sierra

Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast. In 1885-6 a campaign had been

undertaken by Colonel Frey against Samori, which did something to

check the power of that raiding chief; but after the destruction of

the Fula power in 1892 the attacks of Samori on the French outposts

redoubled and nearly embroiled France with Britain over the affair

of Waima. By 1888, a railway had been constructed which facilitated

access to the Niger; and a small armed steamer having been put on

that river at Bamaku, the Niger was for the first time since the

last voyage of Mungo Park navigated beyond Segu. In 1887 this

gunboat (named _Le Niger_) actually reached Kabara, the port of

Timbuktu, but the hostility of the natives prevented its commander,

Lieutenant Caron, from visiting the city. The gunboat returned

without effecting more than an ominous reconnaissance.

In 1888 Captain Louis G. Binger commenced an exploring journey for

France which had the most remarkable results. He was the first to

enter the unknown country included within the great northern bend of

the Niger. He secured by treaty for French influence Tieba, Kong,

and other countries lying between the Niger and the Ivory Coast.

Colonel Archinard, by his brilliantly conducted campaigns against

Ahmadu bin Tidiani, added to the French West African dominions

Kaarta, Bakhunu, Segu and Jenné, and thus freed from obstruction the

road to Timbuktu. Later on Colonel Archinard defeated the

raider-king Samori and occupied his capital, Bisandugu, near the

frontiers of Liberia. An attempt was made in 1894-5 to attack him in

the new kingdom which he soon conquered in the lands between the

main Upper Niger and the Black Volta; and Colonel P. L. Monteil (who

had previously, 1891-2, journeyed from Senegal to the Niger, and

from the Niger to Bornu, and thence overland to Tripoli) led a

military expedition against him from the Ivory Coast. Colonel

Monteil was very unsuccessful, and was recalled by the French

Government. Samori then attempted to advance northwards to the

central Niger, as the last hope of breaking through the ring of

French power with which he was being surrounded. Colonel Bonnier cut

him off from that direction, however, in 1895; and Captain Marchand

(of Fashoda fame) wrested from him the important town of Kong. In

1897 Samori had pushed eastwards, so that he was hovering about the

northern boundary of the British Protectorate of Ashanti; and here

his force attacked a small British surveying party, killed the

native escort, and carried off the officer, Lieutenant Henderson.

After a compulsory visit to Samori, Lieutenant Henderson was

released; and the chief relieved himself from all responsibility for

the wanton attack on the British party by saying, “It was the will

of God.”

At length, in October 1898, the French military authorities on the

Upper Niger made a determined attempt to abolish the power of this

bandit king, who had begun his career as a religious mystic and who

ended by organizing his disciples—“Sofas” or Sufis—into a tremendous

slave-raiding army. They also determined to break the fighting

strength of the Mandingos, as they had previously crushed that of

the Fula and the Tawareq. By a brilliant feat of arms Samori was

brought to bay and his forces routed by Lieutenant Woelfel. The

Mandingo king was taken prisoner by Lieutenant Jacquin and Sergeant

Bratières, and was exiled to the Gaboon.

During the reign of Louis Philippe a somewhat feeble revival of

colonial enterprise had taken place, in which France made

half-hearted attempts to establish herself in New Zealand, and

secured New Caledonia and Tahiti in the Pacific. At this time also

she thought of extending her possessions in unoccupied districts

along the West Coast of Africa, and had acquired rights over Grand

Bassam and Assini to the west of the British Gold Coast. During the

sixties some efforts were made by Napoleon III to develop French

trading and political influence in the Bight of Benin in Africa; and

Porto Novo, near Lagos, was accorded French protection in 1868.

These claims, however, had been allowed to lapse to some degree; and

the places acquired would at one time have been willingly handed

over to England for a small compensation. But in the scramble for

Africa that commenced in 1884 they suddenly acquired immense value

in the eyes of the French as footholds upon which to commence an

expansion northwards from the Gulf of Guinea to the Niger empire of

which France had begun to dream. In 1884 therefore Grand Bassam and

Assini, on the Gold Coast, and Porto Novo, a tiny vassal kingdom of

Dahomé, were effectively occupied. The journeys of Colonel Binger

between the Niger and the Gold Coast in 1888-91 gave Grand Bassam a

hinterland; and the consequence was that the Ivory Coast between

Grand Bassam and Liberia (including the Rio Pedro district of

Liberia) was annexed by France in 1891. Hitherto this coast, the

interior of which was then and till the close of the 19th century

one of the least known parts of Africa, had been of great importance

to British trade, which was carried on chiefly by Bristol sailing

ships. Moreover, from the Ivory Coast came the bulk of the

celebrated Kruboys, who are the best labour-force obtainable along

the West Coast of Africa from the Gambia to the Orange River.

Nevertheless, although the petty chiefs of the Ivory Coast had often

offered their friendship and vassalage to Great Britain, no steps

were taken on the part of the British Government, and therefore no

protest was offered when France annexed the Ivory Coast and became

next neighbour to Liberia. In 1892 a somewhat stringent treaty was

concluded between France and Liberia, by which, in the event of the

latter coming under the influence or protection of any other power,

France would have the reversion of much of her hinterland. The

occupation of Porto Novo soon led to a quarrel with Dahomé, a

kingdom of singular bloodthirstiness, which had defied both England

and Portugal at different times, and had laughed at our futile

blockades of its coast. After a preliminary occupation of the

Dahomean coast towns and the imposition of a somewhat doubtful

French suzerainty, the king, Behanzin, compelled the French to make

their action more effective. A well-equipped expedition was sent out

in 1893 under General Dodds, who had conducted the first operations

in 1891. For the first time Dahomé was invaded by a well-organized

European force; and after a fierce struggle the entire kingdom was

overrun and conquered, and the king was captured and sent to the

West Indies.

In the meantime, the French forces marching step by step along the

upper Niger had captured the important town of Jenné in 1893—Jenné,

the focus of Nigerian civilization, and the mother of Timbuktu. From

Jenné at the close of 1893 Colonel Archinard directed a march to be

made to Timbuktu—it is said, without or contrary to orders from the

Governor of Senegal. Two squadrons marched overland, and a river

flotilla of gunboats under Commandant Boiteux steamed to the port of

Timbuktu, Kabara. The flotilla of gunboats and lighters arrived at

Kabara in advance of the military forces, and caused considerable

perturbation in Timbuktu. The civilized inhabitants of the town were

willing to surrender it to the French, only fearing their hated

masters—the Tawareq. The Tawareq, hearing of the coming of the land

expedition, left the town to meet it; but the Niger being remarkably

high, Lieutenant Boiteux was actually able to take two lighters

armed with machine guns up the back-water, which in seasons of flood

reaches the walls of Timbuktu. After a little deliberation the town

surrendered to the French. Shortly afterwards the Tawareq attacked

the naval station formed at Kabara on the Niger, killing a

midshipman. Lieutenant Boiteux, hearing that firing was going on,

rode out of Timbuktu with one other European, accompanied by his

little garrison on foot, arrived at Kabara and routed the Tawareq.

This was a truly gallant action, worthy to be recorded. After

standing a short siege in Timbuktu and making a successful sortie,

the little naval expedition was relieved from the anxiety of its

position by the arrival of the first column under Colonel Bonnier on

the 14th of January, 1894. Timbuktu was thus captured by the French

with nineteen men, seven of whom were French, and the remainder

Senegalese negroes. But a slight reverse was to follow. Over-rash,

Colonel Bonnier started with a small force to reconnoitre the

country round Timbuktu and rid the neighbourhood of the Tawareq. Too

confident, they marched into a trap. Their camp was surprised by the

Tawareq at early dawn, and almost all the French troops were

massacred, only three French officers and a handful of men escaping

to tell the tale. Twenty-five days afterwards, a second column under

Colonel Jouffre arrived on the scene, and collected the remains of

the unfortunate Frenchmen for interment at Timbuktu. It then set out

to follow up the Tawareq, whom the French surprised in turn at night

in their encampment, and of whom Colonel Jouffre believed his

soldiers to have slain many. From that time the French have had no

serious fighting near Timbuktu. French merchants are established

there already and French missionaries—the White Fathers—from

Algeria. A curious episode in the French conquest was an appeal,

when hearing of the French approach, by the notables of Timbuktu to

the Emperor of Morocco to intervene. After a year’s delay the

Moroccan Sultan replied that upon receiving proofs of the vassalage

of Timbuktu he would march upon the French and drive them away.

Subsequently the French patrolled the Niger far to the south of

Timbuktu, and found it much more navigable than was at first

believed. They established a post at Say, and Lieutenant Hourst

explored that small portion of the river between Say and Gomba which

till then had remained marked by dotted lines on the map. Numerous

expeditions came across the bend of the Niger from its upper waters

to its middle course, incessantly making treaties and extending the

rule of France. Again, following on the conquest of Dahomé, the

French marched northwards across the 9th parallel, which had

hitherto marked the limitation between the French and British

possessions, and occupied the country of Nikki, which had previously

been acquired for the Royal Niger Company by Major, now Colonel Sir

Frederick, Lugard. A bolder step still was taken by the occupation

of Busa (already declared to be in the British protectorate), at a

time when Sir George Goldie and his little army were winning

victories over the forces of Nupe in the vicinity. This step however

roused such a strong expression of popular feeling in England that a

conference was formed in Paris to negotiate a settlement between

England and France; and eventually France gave way on the point of

Busa, though she kept Nikki, and was able to extend her control of

the west bank of the Niger to Ilo, a considerable distance below

Say. She thus united her Dahomean conquest to the rest of her

Nigerian dominions. There is now no great native monarch or

independent people existing in the vast area of French West Africa,

though there are many kings and chiefs ruling their people peaceably

and humanely under the eyes of French resident officers. There has

been no serious breach of the peace in the Senegambian and Nigerian

territories since 1900, with the exception of the fighting in the

region to the north of the Senegal which is rather ineptly styled

“Mauretania.” Here France had concluded treaties of protection with

the chiefs of the Moorish and Arab tribes in 1903-5; but in 1905 the

French Commissioner, Coppolani, was murdered in the far interior.

Between 1908 and 1909 a force under Colonel Gouraud conquered all

Mauretania and especially the hilly country of Adrar Temmur. The

oasis of Air and Asben (which contains the old Songhai town of

Agades) came under French control in 1905-6, and Bilma—farther east,

in the Tibu country—at the same time.

In 1902-4 an administrative reorganisation of French West Africa

took place, in which (and in the additional acts of 1909) the

following divisions were recognised: _Mauretania_ (344,967 sq.

miles), bounded on the north by the Spanish protectorate of Rio de

Oro and the 22° N. latitude and on the south by the river Senegal;

_Senegal_ colony and protectorate (74,000 sq. miles), bounded by the

Senegal and Faleme rivers and Portuguese Guinea; _French Guinea_

(95,000 sq. miles), bounded by Portuguese Guinea, Sierra Leone, and

Liberia; the _Ivory Coast_ (130,000 sq. miles), between Liberia and

the British Gold Coast; _Dahomé_ (about 40,000 sq. miles), a narrow

strip between Borgu, the Niger, and the Gulf of Guinea; and lastly

the enormous “_Colony of Upper Senegal and Niger_,” which, with its

military territories, has an area of something like 1,268,400 sq.

miles. It is bounded on the west and south by the other divisions

and by foreign possessions, and on the north by the Algerian and

Moroccan protectorates. This last division of French West Africa

stretches eastwards from the Faleme branch of the Senegal River to

Lake Chad.

In Senegal and French Guinea, the ports of Dakar and Konakri have

received a remarkable development, and are admitted to be the most

splendid and civilized towns on the West Coast of Africa, far

superior in sanitary arrangements and outward aspect to anything

which as yet exists in the somewhat sluggish British West African

possessions. From Konakri a railway has been constructed on to the

healthy uplands of Futa Jallon and to the Upper Niger at Kankan.

Nearly in front of Konakri is the little archipelago of the Isles de

Los[123]. These islands until the beginning of 1904 belonged to

Great Britain, but under the Anglo-French Convention of 1904 they

were very properly ceded to France, as they no longer commanded a

coast which could become British.

The development of Senegal since the commencement of the 20th

century has not been limited to the making of Dakar (now the

residence of the Governor-General and the metropolis of French West

Africa) a first-class port, but a great advance has also been made

in railway construction. Landing at Dakar, which is only eight days’

steam from Bordeaux or Marseilles, the traveller journeys 165 miles

by rail to St Louis (the old capital), there embarks in a river

steamer on the Senegal and journeys to Kayès, enters the train again

at Kayès and travels on 344 miles to Kulikoro on the Niger, whence

he can proceed by river steamer to Timbuktu, the whole journey from

Timbuktu to Paris being reduced to a possible nineteen days.

Timbuktu the inaccessible, twenty to thirty years ago, is now only a

ten days’ journey from an Atlantic seaport. Timbuktu is connected

with Algeria (as well as with Dakar) by overland telegraph.

Dahomé and the Ivory Coast Colony have both shared in the

development of French Africa. Dahomé is contented, peaceful, and

prosperous under French rule. A railway due north from Kotonu to the

Niger, beyond Borgu, is under construction, about half the line (200

miles) having been finished in 1910. On the Ivory Coast there has

been a certain amount of financial depression owing to the failure

to discover gold or other minerals in profitable quantities. A

number of companies, mostly British, had been formed for developing

the mineral resources of the Ivory Coast; but, in spite of the

vigorous work of the French in opening up communications with the

interior, no great degree of commercial prosperity has as yet come

to that portion of French Africa. A serious native rising had to be

suppressed in 1910. In 1910-11 the contiguous frontiers of Liberia

and the French possessions in Guinea and on the Ivory Coast were

settled, greatly to the advantage of the French possessions.

The total area of French West Africa to-day (1912) is approximately

1,952,000 square miles, with a negro and negroid population of about

12,000,000, and some 8000 whites. It does an annual trade of about

£16,000,000, mainly with France; for France in her colonial policy

still pursues the selfish policy of protection. But unlike what has

happened in French Congo, the territories of Senegal, Guinea,

Nigeria, the Sahara and Dahomé have enormously benefited from the

imposition of French rule at the close of the 19th century. For the

first time in their long, blood-stained history the industrious

negro and Fula agriculturists and herdsmen of these tropical

regions, and the semi-nomads of the Great Desert, know what it is to

experience continual tranquillity, safety and commercial prosperity.

During the three centuries following the Turkish conquest of

Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, France, like most other Christian

nations in the Mediterranean, suffered greatly at the hands of

Moorish corsairs—suffered so much that, not being able to defend her

own coasts sufficiently, it probably never entered into her head to

conquer and possess the corsairs’ country; though under Francis I

she tried, in rivalry with the Genoese, to obtain a trading and

fishing station off the east Algerian coast, “Bastion de France,”

near La Calle (about 1544). So far as political aspirations went,

her eyes were turned fitfully towards Egypt. At the end of the 17th

century Louis XIV not only attempted to enter into political

relations with Abyssinia (his envoy was murdered in Sennar, 1704),

but was advised by Leibnitz to make a descent on Egypt, and to hold

it as a station on the way to India. The idea was not adopted, yet

it lay dormant in the French archives, and was probably discovered

there by the ministers of the Directory after the French Revolution.

Either it was communicated to Napoleon Bonaparte with the idea of

sending him off on a fool’s errand, or the notion had occurred to

him independently as a means of striking a blow at the English. At

any rate, with a suddenness that startled incredulous Europe, the

Corsican General, fresh from the triumphs of his first Italian

campaign, eluded the British fleet, and landed in Alexandria in 1798

with a force of 40,000 men. He met and defeated the Mamluk Beys, who

ruled Egypt under Turkish suzerainty, and eventually chased them

into Upper Egypt. He then established himself at Cairo, and sought

to win over the Muhammadan population by professing more or less

Muhammadan views of religion. But Nelson destroyed his fleet at

Abukir Bay. A Turkish army landed in Egypt, but was cut to pieces

and driven into the sea by the infuriated Napoleon, who then

endeavoured to conquer Syria, with the stupendous idea that he might

carry his arms to Constantinople, and possibly proclaim a revival in

his own person of the Eastern Empire. He was foiled again by the

British, who assisted the Turks to hold Acre. Napoleon, though

victorious elsewhere in Syria, eventually drew back shattered by the

unsuccessful siege of this fortress. He then abandoned his eastern

conquests with disgust, and sailed for France. His able lieutenant,

Kleber, was assassinated. A British and Turkish army settled the

fate of the remaining French forces in Egypt, which after a

capitulation were sent back to France. But this daring inroad on the

East by Napoleon had far-reaching effects. It brought Egypt

violently into contact with European civilization, and prepared the

way for its detachment from the Turkish Empire. Moreover, it caused

France to take henceforth an acute interest in the valley of the

Nile, an interest which on several occasions brought her dangerously

near rupture with a Power even more earnestly concerned with the

Egyptian Question.