even among men and women travellers of good repute, incapable of
being bribed or cajoled. But the explanation of this seeming
anomaly, in contrast to the withering denunciations of Morel, of
British, American, Swedish, and Belgian missionaries and publicists,
lies in the fact that these apologists or eulogists of the King or
of his Belgian officers never entered the vast _Domaine de la
Couronne_ (a territory larger in area than the United Kingdom) or
penetrated far into the jealously-closed concessions of the Belgian
companies; and also from the strange ignorance many of such
travellers showed in the elementary ethics of native rights. They
saw—as the present writer did—order taking the place of disorder,
improved cultivation, handsome buildings, Arab slavery at an end,
education spreading among and through the native soldiery, and many
other beneficent signs of civilization, and they never examined into
what was going on away from the stereotyped travel routes. Or if
they were of the Emil Torday class of scientific explorer, they
penetrated at great risk into remote parts of south-west, north, and
north-east Congoland wherein the native tribes were too powerful to
be enslaved and constrained to gather rubber or to confine their
trade to the King’s agents and concessionaires. Fortunately such
districts escaped the Leopoldian ravages and are now ripe for a
well-ordered civilization to be imparted to their peoples through
Belgian agency.
Any historian who omitted to dwell on the devoted and usually poorly
paid work of many a Belgian officer and civilian in Congoland
amongst quarrelsome or cruel native tribes, the achievements for the
good of the natives of many a Belgian engineer, doctor, planter,
road-maker, stockman, and schoolmaster, would indeed be unjust. The
destruction of Arab tyranny will always remain a feat of
extraordinary courage and of lasting good to Central Africa; and
fortunately it was not in the regions rescued from Arab sway that
the wrong-doing of the King and his concessionaires took place. The
Arab-conquered portions of the Congo basin have never gone back in
prosperity and well-being of the natives since they became Belgian
provinces; and much the same might be said about Katanga, which
under its usurping Wa-nyamwezi chiefs had been soaked in blood. But
the Congo basin is still governed by Belgium under a régime which
fails to conform precisely to the conditions laid down by the Act of
Berlin or to satisfy those who desire justice of treatment for
native races leading a settled agricultural life.
The present King of the Belgians (Albert I) visited the Congo
territories in 1907, traversed Congoland from Katanga to the mouth
of the Congo, and resolved that his policy as King-Sovereign should
be on lines radically different from those of his predecessor.
Already a current of free trade is permeating the dominion and
bringing with it freedom in other directions. The greater native
chiefs are now encouraged to work with the Belgian Government and to
look after the immediate interests of their own subjects. Railways
have been rapidly pushed forward in eastern Congoland, which will
some day link up Northern Rhodesia with Uganda, with the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the French Sudan.
There should be a great future, commercially at any rate, before the
Belgian Congo, which in wealth of vegetable and mineral products and
length of navigable waterways resembles Brazil and Guiana; and,
theoretically, there should be no reason why Flemings and Walloons
as guardians of this rich Central African state should not play as
great a _rôle_ in the Dark Continent as they have done in the
industrial and artistic history of Europe. Yet little Belgium has a
tremendous task before her in raising this immense territory to the
condition of Brazil or Java; and the regret naturally felt by
English, German, and French writers that this wealthy territory was
more or less disdained by their Governments in the days of Cameron’s
and Stanley’s earlier journeys and advertisements of its
capabilities, no doubt stimulates on their part a destructive
criticism of Belgian efforts and capabilities. It is sometimes
hinted that this unwieldy state will not long outlive as a political
entity the monarch who founded it, and that its southern provinces
will fall to England, its northern to France, and its western to
Germany. But predictions in regard to the evolution of African
history are very uncertain of fulfilment, and the Congo State may
yet become and remain a Belgian India.
-----
Footnote 186:
It was never officially styled the Congo “Free” State. The meaning
of the French words was “the Independent State of the Congo”; and
unhappily it was no more “free” in its subsequent history than in
name. _Bula Matadi_ was its local title in Congoland, such being
Stanley’s nickname (Rock-breaker).
Footnote 187:
Hamed bin Muhammad bin Juma, nicknamed Tipu Tipu or “Tippootib.”
Footnote 188:
_The Fall of the Congo Arabs_, Methuen, 1897. This campaign is
also described in my book _George Grenfell and the Congo_.
Footnote 189:
_Civilization in Congoland._
Footnote 190:
The direct trading agents of King Leopold and his concessionaire
companies, and the ofttimes worthy and gallant servants of the
Congo State, were miserably underpaid.
Footnote 191:
Sir Henry Morton Stanley (John Rowlands) was born in 1842 at
Denbigh in North Wales, the son of a farmer’s daughter who was
very poor. He became eventually a work-house boy, but managed to
acquire a passable education and to find his way twice to the
United States, where he pursued many careers till at length he
became a press reporter and a special correspondent. In this
capacity he “found” and relieved Livingstone and prolonged
Livingstone’s life by two years. In 1899 Stanley, who had been in
Parliament since 1895, was made G.C.B. by the British Government.
CHAPTER XIV
THE BRITISH IN AFRICA, III
(_Egypt and Eastern Africa._)
Ever since the first year of the 19th century, when Britain expelled
the French from Egypt, she herself had longings to assume the
control of that country. One reason for this desire was very clear:
across Egypt lay the shortest sea route to India. Even without the
Suez Canal, a day’s journey on a railway or three days’ journey by
canal and carriage would transfer one from Alexandria on the
Mediterranean to Suez on the Red Sea. Two hundred and thirty-four
years ago, in the reign of Louis XIV, and one hundred and fourteen
years ago, in the dawning empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, when steam
was unknown as a motive power, the idea was conceived and born that
Egypt controlled the back door, the garden gate of India. But when
steam came into vogue on the sea, and later on the land, and people
contrasted the saving of time the Egyptian route offered, compared
with the weary three months’ voyage round the Cape, it became
apparent to British statesmen, that British influence must have full
play if not exclusive control in Egypt.
Subsequent on the withdrawal of the French, a simple major of
artillery from European Turkey—Muhammad Ali—had suddenly risen to
power by procedure which was faithfully copied 80 years afterwards
by Arābi Pasha. He had inspired such energy and bravery into the
military forces of Egypt that in 1806-7 his soldiers defeated a
British force which landed at Alexandria and Rosetta, and attempted
to take possession of the country. Thus was staved off for 76 years
the British occupation of Egypt, an occupation which in 1806 would
have been far more rapidly converted into annexation than it could
possibly be at the present day[192].
Britain respected Muhammad Ali’s sturdy resistance, and although she
opposed his attempt to conquer the Turkish Empire, and—in opposition
to the foolish encouragement he received from France—seemed at one
time his enemy, she nevertheless saved him from downfall, and
assisted him to establish a dynasty in Egypt which has ruled,
directly or indirectly, for a century. Still, knowing British
hankerings, the Tsar Nicholas I offered Egypt and Crete to Britain a
short time prior to the Crimean War in return for a free hand at
Constantinople. Great Britain declined, dreading to see Russia, with
a new base at Constantinople and the locked Black Sea behind her,
becoming the strongest Power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Then came
the making of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the influence
of which, however, was somewhat counteracted by the fact that all
the Egyptian railways were British. Nevertheless, British influence
never stood so low in Egypt as at the opening of the Canal, when the
heir to the British Crown was lost amid a galaxy of reigning
sovereigns headed by the effulgence of the Empress of the French.
But although French influence had grown so strong in Egypt, the
French Government did not—overtly at any rate—strive for more than
an equal voice with England in the affairs of Egypt, partly owing to
a feeling of loyalty to the British alliance, which Napoleon III
displayed whenever he could, and, later, to the enfeeblement of
France after the German War. In 1871 something like a thousand
British steamers passed through the Suez Canal, the enormous
importance of which became so apparent that in 1875 the British
Government purchased the Canal Shares held by the Khedive of Egypt,
and thus became a controlling factor in the Canal Company.
For between 1862 and 1877, Egypt had been ruined and reduced to
bankruptcy by a reckless borrowing of money on the part of her
native ruler, the Khedive Ismail. This prince at great cost
purchased his country’s practical freedom from Turkish control;
indeed, by 1873, he was virtually an independent sovereign. He
extended Egyptian rule into Equatorial Africa, reorganized his
customs’ service, carried through important public works; but he
also built palaces in profusion, and was guilty of needless
extravagance and waste. As the result of Egyptian bankruptcy, there
came into existence in 1877 the Dual Control of Britain and France
over Egyptian finances. Ismail instigated a rebellion against this
interference with his government and was deposed in 1879 by the
Sultan of Turkey. The Dual Control was re-established (Lord Cromer,
then Major Evelyn Baring, being one of the controllers) under the
new Khedive Taufik; but in 1881 occurred the revolt of the army
headed by Colonel Ahmed Arābi. France under the influence of
Gambetta pursued the same policy as Britain, namely, the delivering
of verbal warnings at intervals without the display of force. At
last, in June 1882, there was a riot and a massacre of Christians at
Alexandria. When the British fleet prepared to take action the
French withdrew, a hostile vote of the Chamber having dissolved the
Dual Control. Britain then intervened in Egypt against Arābi’s
revolt, bombarded the port of Alexandria (July 11, 1882), and seized
the Suez Canal. Lord Wolseley, of Ashanti fame, fought the battle of
Tel-el-Kebir, occupied Cairo (September 15), and reconquered the
country for the Khedive. When this had been done, the British
Government was in a dilemma. Had it, say some, on the capture of
Cairo, declared Egypt to be a British protectorate outright, it
would have only done what all the Powers of Europe expected. On the
other hand, this bold step would have meant the tearing up of
treaties and the partitioning of the Turkish Empire. Perhaps this
might have been got over by direct negotiation with the Sultan and
assurances of the continuance or composition of the tribute.
From about 1853 an interest was taken in the development of the
Sudan by the British Government. A Glamorganshire mining engineer,
John Petherick, after his contract of service with the Egyptian
Government was over, established himself at Khartum as an ivory
trader and was made British Consular Agent. In the sixties the
journeys and explorations of Speke and Grant, and of Sir Samuel and
Lady Baker, brought the Egyptian Sudan prominently into notice. In
1869 Sir Samuel Baker was made Egyptian Governor of the Equatorial
Province (Gondokoro to the Albert Nyanza). In 1874 he was succeeded
by Colonel Charles George Gordon, who became Governor-General over
the entire Egyptian Sudan in 1877. Between 1877 and 1879 Gordon
devoted himself, with the Italian Romolo Gessi as lieutenant, to the
defeat and suppression of the “Nubian” or “Bazinger” slave-traders
and raiders on the Bahr-al-Ghazal and Darfur. Unsuccessful wars of
conquest against Abyssinia took place during the seventies, and
equally unsuccessful attempts to secure the Mombasa coast and the
kingdom of Uganda—attempts opposed by the British Government. Gordon
was replaced by a Turk as Governor-General in 1880; and civilized
rule over the Egyptian Sudan began to decline, though Emin Pasha
(Eduard Schnitzer, a German of Silesia) ruled well and wisely over
the Equatorial Provinces till about 1886.
In the autumn of 1882, the British Government was probably sincere
in declaring its intention presently to evacuate Egypt; but it
seemed as though fate had ordained that the British garrison should
remain in that country. In 1881 the Mahdi’s revolt had broken out in
the Sudan[193]. In November 1883 Hicks Pasha’s force was cut to
pieces in the wilds of Kordofan. General C. G. Gordon was sent to
relieve and remove the garrisons, instead of doing which he remained
at Khartum in the vain hope of restoring before he left it some kind
of order to the country that he loved. An army under Viscount
Wolseley was sent to rescue him. It arrived a few days too late, yet
might even then have retaken Khartum and put down the revolt; but
Russia was threatening to impinge on the borders of India, and Great
Britain could not afford to lock up many soldiers in Central Africa.
Not being able, therefore, to settle the Sudan question, the British
were forced to remain in Egypt to prevent that country from being
overrun by the Mahdists. An attempt was made in 1885-6 to negotiate
terms of withdrawal with the Sultan, but the proposed convention was
not ratified, owing to the opposition of France and Russia.
Gradually, owing to the ability and truly British calm of the
British Agent and Consul-General, Sir Evelyn Baring (who became Lord
Cromer in 1892), the situation grew into a possible one. A moderate
British garrison was retained. The Exchequer was placed under
British control, as were public works, the administration of
justice, the organization of the army, posts and telegraphs, and
other departments where an infusion of order, honesty, and economy
was necessary. The Khedive of Egypt continued to reign with British
support and under British advice. In 1890 the conclusion of the
Anglo-German agreement for delimiting the British and German spheres
of influence in East, West, and Central Africa had secured from one
European Power, at least, recognition of an eventual British control
over the former Equatorial provinces of Egypt. From this event and
from the contemplation of maps arose the idea of “the Cape to
Cairo[194]”; and British ministries began slowly to contemplate the
reconquest of the Sudan. The Mahdists aided the growth of this
resolve by their fatuous hostility and constant attacks on Suakin
and on the Wadi Halfa boundary to the south of Egypt proper, behind
which the Egyptian forces withdrew in 1885. In 1886 the Mahdists
attempted to invade Egypt by following the Nile, but sustained a
crushing defeat at the battle of Sarras. Three years later, again
led by Wad-an-Nejumi the conqueror of Hicks Pasha and of Khartum,
they were completely routed at Toski by Lord Grenfell, and
Wad-an-Nejumi was killed. In 1894-5 the vicinity of Suakin was freed
from these marauders and the eastern Sudan reconquered, Italy
greatly aiding by her gallant capture of Kasalá[195]. The terrible
disaster which befell the Italian arms in Abyssinia in 1896 caused
the British Government to press forward the conquest of the Sudan in
order to distract the Dervishes from attacking the Italians. The
Egyptian commander-in-chief—Sir Herbert Kitchener, now Lord
Kitchener of Khartum—had thoroughly reorganized the native Egyptian
army under British officers; and with this material and a small
contingent of British troops he reconquered the province of Dongola
during the summer of 1896. In 1897 (Battle of the Atbara) and the
early part of 1898 the advance up the Nile valley was continued; and
on the 2nd of September, 1898, occurred the decisive battle of
Omdurman, in which a mixed army of British and Egyptian regiments,
under Sir Herbert Kitchener, finally shattered the Khalifa’s power
and avenged Gordon’s death. Anglo-Egyptian control was rapidly
extended eastward to the Abyssinian frontier and southward to the
Sobat river, but a half-expected obstacle came to light which
imposed a temporary check on the southward advance towards Uganda.
Major Marchand had reached Fashoda, near the confluence of the White
Nile and the Bahr-al-Ghazal, and had hoisted the French flag over
that abandoned Egyptian post. Before the determined attitude of
Great Britain, France, after two months’ delay, withdrew Major
Marchand, and later on in 1899 concluded with Great Britain a
supplement to the Niger Convention (p. 222), by which, broadly
speaking, the whole western Nile basin and Darfur were admitted to
be an exclusively British “sphere of influence.” Although France had
not yet specifically recognized the peculiar position of Great
Britain in Egypt, she had prepared the way for the Convention of
1904, in which this recognition was given in return for a similar
acknowledgement of French interest in Morocco. This 1904 Convention
definitely closed the long era of Anglo-French rivalry and
diplomatic conflict in Egypt; and thenceforth the British met with
no obstacle from any outside nation but Turkey in their task of
reforming and rehabilitating the country of the Pharaohs. Turkey in
1906 attempted to withdraw the greater part of the Sinai peninsula
from Egyptian rule, to bring Turkish posts down to the vicinity of
the east bank of the Suez Canal, and to hold both shores of the Gulf
of Akaba. It required a virtual ultimatum from Great Britain before
Turkey would give way; and this crisis (which ended by the definite
inclusion of all the Sinai Peninsula within the Egyptian dominions,
while the Turks as definitely regained those former Egyptian posts
in the land of Midian held by Egypt since 1832) gave occasion to the
British Government to assign to the British occupation of Egypt a
more definite and permanent character than it had hitherto been
accorded in diplomatic documents.
But from this period (1906) onwards there was much “national” unrest
in the towns of the Nile Delta, chiefly Cairo and Alexandria. The
prosperity which Egypt was enjoying, the spread of a modern,
European type of education, the downfall of Sultan Abd-al-Hamid in
1908, and the promise of a constitutionally governed, modernized
Turkey, were conditions which caused the Muhammadan Egyptian
townsfolk—mostly the professional classes—to think the time had come
for the establishment of a completely constitutional régime in
Egypt, coupled with a removal of British control and military
occupancy. This movement had begun in 1892 with the accession of the
young Khedive, Abbas Hilmi; but of late years the Khedive has
dissociated himself from attacks on, or even coldness towards, the
British occupation. His approximation to the British point of view
was more apparent after the Earl of Cromer’s retirement in 1907. Sir
John Gorst, Lord Cromer’s successor, sympathized to some extent with
“nationalist” ideals, but he regarded the Christian Copt as being
just as much an Egyptian as the Muhammadan Arab, Egyptian or Turk.
Copts were enabled to rise high in the public service of Egypt. In
1908 a Copt—Boutros Pasha—became Prime Minister of the Khedive’s
Government. Christian ministers of state—Armenians, Copts,
Levantines—were no novelty in Egypt; but the idea was most repellent
to the aggressive “Pan-Islamism” of the Muhammadan “nationalists,”
and the excitations of the Nationalist Press excited a student, Al
Wardani, to murder Boutros Pasha in February 1910—an event which so
deeply affected Sir John Gorst (a sincere friend towards real
“nationalism” in Egypt) that he contracted an illness which caused
his death a year later. Viscount Kitchener of Khartum succeeded him
as British representative in Egypt. In 1911-12 the “nationalist”
agitation was resumed, and a plot was arranged for the nearly
simultaneous assassination of the Khedive, Lord Kitchener, and the
Egyptian Premier. It must be remembered by all who are disposed to
sympathize with the growth and achievement of nationalism that Egypt
contains, in addition to some 10,500,000 Muhammadans (only about 5
per cent. of whom are literates), a million Christians of Egyptian
and of European race, who represent—for the most part—the brains and
wealth of the country. Until this important minority is regarded by
the Nationalist party as equally entitled to full Egyptian
citizenship, until the Muhammadanism of Egypt sheds its intense
fanaticism and its contempt for science, sanitation, for ancient
history and modern learning, the British Government in its capacity
of guardian over the land of the Pharaohs, the land of deathless
history which the Arab, Turk, and Circassian have done so much to
destroy and deface, is right in withstanding a movement which is not
strictly national, in the Egyptian sense, but a revival of Islamic
intolerance and civic dishonesty.
The Anglo-French Convention of 1904 having accorded a limited but
distinct recognition on the part of France to the British control
over the Egyptian Khediviate, various important reforms in finance
and administration followed, and the way was paved for the abolition
of the capitulations, of the last vestiges of mistrust felt by
Europe for the tribunals of a Muhammadan nation. Since 1876, the
separate consular courts in Egypt had been done away with in favour
of the mixed tribunals on which were conferred the powers formerly
attributed to the consular courts and which now try all civil and
criminal cases in which foreigners are concerned. These foreign
tribunals may be succeeded in time by national Egyptian courts. At
any rate, the Anglo-French agreement of 1904 tends in that
direction. Owing to this agreement Egypt is now allowed to apply her
surplus, after the service of the Funded Debt has been provided for,
to any purposes she may deem advisable in the interests of the
country, either for the extension of public works or the diminution
of taxation. Prior to the facilities accorded by this agreement,
however, the Earl of Cromer (the creator of modern Egypt) had, with
the financial assistance of Sir Ernest Cassel and the engineering
skill of Sir William Willcocks and others, commenced those great
irrigation works above Assuan which will triple the productive
capabilities of Lower Egypt and proportionately increase the
prosperity of the Khedive’s country. Under the British control
(since 1882) the Funded Debt has been diminished by 12 millions
sterling; taxation has been greatly reduced, yet the revenue has
increased by 4 millions of pounds; the total trade of Egypt has more
than doubled; and the population has risen from 6,832,000 in 1882 to
nearly 12,000,000 in 1912. Forced labour has been abolished; the
position of the peasantry has been enormously improved; twice the
former area of land is cultivated and under cultivation; and the
boundaries of the country have been definitely extended to the
frontier of Syria and to the Cyrenaica.
In the Sudan great changes followed the victories of Lord Kitchener
in 1898. A convention with Egypt in January 1899 determined the
constitution of the, henceforth, Anglo-Egyptian-Sudan south of Wadi
Halfa. This was to be a joint dominion of Britain and Egypt. The
Governor-General was to be selected by the British Government and
appointed by the Khedive. By a stroke of the pen the cumbersome
system of Consular or Mixed Tribunal Courts which had formerly
existed in the Egyptian Sudan was abolished and the direct
jurisdiction of the Anglo-Egyptian Government substituted. By 1900,
the reconquest of the Egyptian Sudan, begun in 1896, had been
effectually completed. In November 1899, after Lord Kitchener had
been despatched to South Africa, his successor in the Sudan, Sir
Reginald Wingate, pursued the fugitive Khalifa into the recesses of
Kordofan; and this successor of the Mahdi lost his life on the field
of battle of Om Dubreikat, on November 25, 1899. Osman Digna, the
other great Dervish leader, was taken prisoner in the Tokar hills
near Suakin on January 19, 1900. Gradually in the succeeding years
the boundaries of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan were adjusted with
Abyssinia. Darfur remains a semi-independent kingdom, accepting
somewhat grudgingly an Anglo-Egyptian suzerainty. The region of the
Bahr-al-Ghazal was occupied by the Sudan Government in pursuance of
the claims of Egypt over this region and in opposition to the
aspirations of the King-Sovereign of the Congo State, who at one
period (1894) had received permission from the British, without
prejudice to the dormant claims of Egypt, to exercise control over
this region. The King did not take immediate advantage of this
opportunity; and in the interval Egypt had revived her claims to the
original dominions of the Egyptian Sudan after the shattering of the
Khalifa’s forces at Omdurman. But, although the Congo State was not
allowed to exercise authority over the Bahr-al-Ghazal, it maintained
its sway in the smaller Lado enclave between the Congo frontier and
the western bank of the White or Mountain Nile by a lease which
terminated at the death of Leopold II in 1909, when the Lado enclave
passed under the control of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Government in
1910.
Apart from the Arabs, the British have had but little trouble in
imposing their supervising rule over the natives of the Sudan, the
government of which is directed from Khartum. The only tribe that
adopted a hostile attitude towards the British, prior to 1904, was a
section of the Dinka people between the Mountain or White Nile on
the west and the affluents of the Sobat on the east. But in the
autumn of 1904 a strong expedition had to be directed against the
powerful Nyamnyam tribes of the Western Bahr-al-Ghazal. This people,
armed with about 20,000 modern rifles obtained by purchase or
pillage from the Belgian stations, was disposed to question the “Pax
Sudanica” and to resume its former slave raids. In 1903, another
Mahdi—a Tunisian Arab—arose in Kordofan, but he was promptly
captured and executed. In 1908, yet another fanatic, an Arab of the
Halawi tribe in Sennar, declared himself to be Jesus Christ,
returning to earth to expel the European from the Sudan. He murdered
a British official but was caught soon afterwards and hanged for his
crimes. In 1911-12 two expeditions were rendered necessary against
the Annaks, a Nilotic negro tribe on the Sobat river. The Annaks had
armed themselves with thousands of French rifles sold by French
merchants on the frontiers of Abyssinia and passed on to the Annaks
in trade by the Abyssinians. From this direction much more trouble
may occur eventually.
A good deal of commercial development has taken place in the
northern regions of the Egyptian Sudan and in Southern Egypt owing
to the resumption of gold-mining operations which had been dormant
since ancient Egyptian days, or at any rate since the Muhammadan
conquest, and the great increase in cotton planting. The advance of
the Sudan towards prosperity is only hampered by the present dearth
of indigenous population. It has been computed that the Mahdi’s
revolt and the Khalifa’s massacres must have cost the Sudan
something like three millions of lives, this loss being entailed by
direct massacre (at some places on the Nile 70,000 people—men,
women, and children—were killed in the course of two or three days),
by the unchecked spread of disease, by starvation owing to the
destruction of crops and the neglect of agriculture, and by loss in
battle against the Anglo-Egyptian forces. Efforts are being made by
the enlightened administration which rules from Khartum to encourage
agriculture and to educate the people. The Gordon College was
founded at Khartum in 1899 with the special purpose of giving a
practical and secular education to the Arabs and negroes of that
dominion. One splendid feat, among others, due to British courage
and tenacity of purpose was the cutting through the _Sadd_ (as it is
pronounced, or Sudd as it is ordinarily written), the dense growth
of floating water vegetation which from time immemorial has blocked
the courses of the Mountain Nile and its tributaries between Boz and
the 6th degree of latitude, and the confluence of the Sobat. At
intervals between 1871 and 1882 this _sadd_ had completely barred
the way to steamer or boat journeys between Khartum and the
Equatorial provinces. The great work of cutting through the _sadd_
was finally achieved under the direction of Sir William Garstin
between 1899 and 1904 by Major Malcom Peake, Lieut. Drury, R.N., and
Major G. E. Matthews. Since that time the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan has
been completely linked up by a steamer mail service with the British
Protectorate of Uganda.
The area of this vast dominion, between Wadi Halfa on the north,
Gondokoro and the 5th degree of latitude and the Nile-Congo-Shari
waterparting on the south, is 984,520 square miles; yet the
population is still only estimated at 2,600,000, though it is
capable of supporting 50,000,000 black or brown men and is healthy
in a few parts for Europeans.
Aden, at the south-west extremity of Arabia, was occupied by the
Indian Government in 1839 in view of the opening up to steam-ships
of the Egyptian route to India. To Aden were added in 1840, by
treaties of purchase or exclusive influence, Zeila and Musha Island
on the Somali coast, the island of Perim in 1858, and the island of
Sokotra in 1876[196]. Egypt in 1875 had annexed the coast of
Somaliland opposite Aden, with the exception of the French post of
Obok. When the Egyptian dominion of the Sudan collapsed, it was
necessary to our interests that the Somali coast opposite Aden
should not come under the influence of another European power; so a
British protectorate was established there (1884-89) by accord with
France and Italy, France extending her Obok territory to meet the
British Somali Protectorate, while the town of Harrar in the
interior, which was likely to be a bone of contention, was
transferred to Abyssinia together with a small adjoining piece of
territory in 1897.
In 1898, a considerable slice off the south-west portion of British
Somaliland was surrendered to the Empire of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) by
the Rennell Rodd agreement made in 1897. The Italians between 1889
and 1892 had acquired rights over all the sea-board east and south
of British Somaliland, but, as time went on, the interior—never well
disposed towards Europeans—became disturbed. The eastern and
southern parts of this Protectorate were ravaged between 1899 and
1904, and again between 1908 and 1910, by a Somali leader, Muhammad
bin Abdallah, called most inappropriately the Mad Mullah. This man—a
native of southern Ogadein Somaliland—appears at first to have been
the exponent of legitimate grievances on the part of some of the
coast Somalis. The British administration of Somaliland during the
close of the 19th century was not fortunate in its dealings with a
turbulent and fickle people. Some of the earlier officials seemed to
be more interested in the hunting of big game than in acquiring
knowledge as to the predilections, traditions, and general affairs
of the Somali tribes under their government. Gradually Somali
opinion grew restless under restrictions which were seemingly not
backed by adequate force, and leant towards the side of their
national leader, the Mullah. The latter attacked successfully those
tribes on the coast which remained faithful to the British rule. A
succession of expeditions against the Mullah culminated in an
elaborate and expensive campaign conducted by the British War Office
in 1903-4. The Mullah was repeatedly driven into Italian territory,
and the permission of Italy was obtained to use the coast of Italian
Somaliland as a fresh base of operations against the Somalis.
Somewhat dubious and half-hearted assistance was also supposed to be
rendered by Abyssinia. As the result of these operations, the Mullah
and his forces were repeatedly defeated (after more than one
disaster had happened to the British troops), and he was driven out
of British territory into the no-man’s-land in dispute between Italy
and Ethiopia. Between 1905 and 1908, there was peace, the Mullah
being content to settle down under Italian supervision. Then he
broke out again and finally attacked the tribes under British
protection. Previous Somali wars (1900-4) having cost the British
government the lives of many British officers and negro and Indian
soldiers, besides over two million sterling expended in maintaining
armies of 7000 men, it was decided to leave the interior of British
Somaliland—a barren and sparsely inhabited region—alone, and confine
the British occupation to the coast towns. This decision was carried
into effect in 1910. The Mullah Muhammad bin Abdallah is still at
large, but the interior tribes are gradually asserting themselves
against him. The area of the Protectorate is about 68,000 square
miles. Prior to 1902, this territory, alone amongst the British
Protectorates in Africa (excepting Zanzibar), paid its own way
without a subsidy, the revenue being derived from the considerable
receipts at the Customs Houses. Unfortunately, the war destroyed so
much in the way of live-stock as to make it difficult for years to
come for Somaliland to recover the partial prosperity it enjoyed in
earlier days. But nevertheless considerable towns are springing up
on the coast-line, where they can be easily defended by garrisons of
Indian troops and Somali police.
After the Portuguese had been expelled by the Arabs from Zanzibar
and Mombasa, all the East coast of Africa from Somaliland to the
Ruvuma river came under the control of the Imam of Maskat, who
usually deputed a brother or some other relation to be his viceroy
at Zanzibar. Owing to internecine quarrels which arose in the
princely family of Maskat, the British Government intervened in
1861, and definitely separated the Sultanate of Zanzibar from the
Imamate of ’Oman or Maskat. As the French were beginning to take a
keen interest in the affairs of Zanzibar and Maskat, the British
Government at that time (1863) concluded a treaty with the French
Empire by which both powers bound themselves to respect the
independence of Zanzibar and Maskat. Many years previously, in 1824,
a Lieutenant Reitz, by the orders of Captain W. F. W. Owen, had
hoisted the British flag at Mombasa, and had endeavoured to occupy
that town for the East India Company, but his action was disallowed.
Nevertheless, British influence at Zanzibar grew very strong through
the Political Agent whom we established at the court of the Sayyid
or representative of the Imam of Maskat (known later as the Sultan
of Zanzibar)[197], and the powerful squadron of cruisers which were
maintained in Zanzibar waters to put down the slave trade. In 1866
Dr, afterwards Sir John, Kirk, who had been Livingstone’s second in
command on the Zambezi, was appointed Vice-Consul and gradually rose
to be Consul and then Political Agent and Consul-General. He threw
himself zealously into the task of suppressing the Zanzibar slave
trade, which had become an outrage on humanity. The British
Government supported him; and in 1873 Sir Bartle Frere was sent to
Zanzibar to negotiate a treaty with the Sultan.
The Sultan (Barghash) was recalcitrant, and even went to the length
of offering his territory to France. Finally, however, before a
threatened British bombardment could take place or the French
squadron arrive, Sir John Kirk had persuaded the Sultan to sign the
treaty, after which Sayyid Barghash bin Said resolved to visit
England, which he did in 1874. It is said that even at that date he
had some idea of invoking German protection, provided he were
allowed to tear up the slave-trade treaty. However, the wisdom and
tact of Sir John Kirk did wonders for British influence at Zanzibar;
and in 1876 the Sultan offered the lease of nearly all his
continental territories to Mr, afterwards Sir William, Mackinnon,
the chairman of the British India Steam Navigation Company. But Mr
Mackinnon was an over-cautious man. Instead of accepting, and then
forcing the hand of the British Government, he refused to take the
Sultan’s concession unless he could first obtain a British
guarantee, an action to which the Government was naturally unwilling
to commit itself. In 1881 Sir John Kirk thought of another plan,
that of inducing the Sultan to employ capable Britons, who would
develop his territories as governors or commissioners. He secured
the services of Mr Joseph Thomson to develop the resources of the
Ruvuma Province, an appointment which might have effectually
prevented any future German intervention; but Mr Joseph Thomson was
too pessimistic and perhaps shortsighted. The country seemed to him
poor in resources, though it has long since been shown to be more
productive than he thought. He bluntly told the Sultan so and
therefore was relieved of his appointment. In 1883 Sir John Kirk
returned from England, having induced the Government to appoint a
number of salaried vice-consuls at various points in the Sultan’s
territories. It must be noted that at this period a very large
proportion of the Zanzibar trade was in the hands of British
subjects, natives of British India.
In 1882-4 took place the remarkable exploring journey of Mr Joseph
Thomson under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society.
Thomson travelled from Mombasa to the verge of Busoga, on the north
coast of the Victoria Nyanza, and revealed all the most striking
features of British East Africa. Sir John Kirk had also about the
same time entered into friendly relations with Mandara, a chief on
Mt Kilima-njaro, and had urged the sending out of a scientific
expedition, to the leadership of which Mr H. H. Johnston was
appointed in 1884, in order to explore that mountain. After some
months’ stay on Kilima-njaro Mr Johnston reported the great
advantages this region possessed as a sanatorium, and, while waiting
for instructions from Sir John Kirk, concluded treaties with several
chiefs. The response of the British government was favourable to the
establishment of British interests in this direction; but various
obstacles arose which required consideration, amongst others the
remembrance of the 1862 agreement with France. Another European
power, however, was bound by no such agreement, and had no such
scruples, as will be related in Chapter XIV. Although Mr Johnston’s
treaties with Chaga (South Kilima-njaro) and Taveita (the eastern
slopes) proved the basis on which the British East Africa Company
was eventually founded, the actual mountain district of Kilima-njaro
finally fell to Germany. By 1885, the British Government had more or
less indicated to Germany that portion of the Zanzibar dominions
which must come under British influence if there was to be a
division of those territories; and after several years of diplomatic
conflict, the whole question was settled with fairness to both
parties by the 1890 Convention between Great Britain and Germany,
and by a secondary agreement with France, which definitely allotted
to Great Britain the northern half of the Sultan of Zanzibar’s
dominions, the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, and a sphere of
influence in the interior which included Uganda and Lake Albert
Nyanza.
The British East Africa Company, organized in 1886, was chartered in
1888, and undertook the government of the vast territories lying
between the Mombasa coast and the Victoria Nyanza. For the first two
years things went smoothly. The company possessed a capable
administrator, Mr (afterwards Sir) George Mackenzie, who solved the
slavery difficulty by redeeming the slaves of the Arab gentry and
then setting them free. This no doubt prevented the coast Arabs from
attacking the British régime at a time when they had nearly
destroyed that of Germany in the regions farther south.
But the Imperial British East Africa company had undertaken a task
far too great for its resources in capital. It was expected by the
people and government of Great Britain to maintain and defend
British interests over a vast hinterland. The country of
Uganda[198], on the north-west of this greatest of African lakes,
had been allotted to the British sphere by the German Convention;
but unfortunately for British interests the country had been entered
by French Roman Catholic missionaries of Cardinal Lavigerie’s White
Fathers’ mission (cf. pp. 245-6), who were such ardent Frenchmen
that they rather forgot the religious purpose for which they had
come, and fomented serious quarrels between the king and the
Protestant missionaries who had preceded them. The great King Mtesa
died in 1884, peevish and disgusted with the missionary disputes and
religious recriminations that buzzed in his ears, and longing for
the old, easy, pagan life he had led before pressing Stanley (p.
326) to send him Christian teachers. After his death, the Arab party
prejudiced his son Mwanga against the Christian foreigners and
native converts. Bishop Hannington, of the Church Missionary
Society, newly appointed to East Equatorial Africa, persisted in
entering Uganda along Mr Thomson’s route by what the king called the
“back way.” Frightened lest the bishop might be coming to take the
country by the methods which the Germans had employed farther south,
the king ordered him to be murdered in Busoga, not far from the
Victoria Nile. Soon after this, the missionaries, Protestants and
Catholics, were expelled from Uganda. Then later on there was a
Muhammadan revolt, which drove Mwanga flying. He took refuge with
the Catholic missionaries at the south end of the lake, and became a
Christian. He was restored to his throne by the aid of Mr Stokes,
who was afterwards hanged by Major Lothaire (p. 347). Then the
French missionaries got control over the king, and attempted to
prevent the country from becoming a British protectorate—if it could
not be French, at any rate let it be German; and Dr Peters arriving
on the scene strove to make it German; but his efforts were annulled
by the 1890 Convention. After this, to prevent the country from
falling under the sway of the Muhammadans, who might have joined the
Mahdists or become French, the British East Africa Company was
obliged by public opinion to intervene, although it did not possess
sufficient funds to administer such an expensive empire. Captain,
now General Sir Frederick, Lugard not long returned from the Arab
war in Nyasaland, was sent there as their agent in 1890-1, and in an
exceedingly able and courageous manner restored order, obtaining
from the king a treaty with the Company, and putting down revolts of
the Roman Catholic Christians and of the Muhammadans. But the East
Africa Company was obliged to appeal to the British Government to
come to its assistance lest Uganda should swallow up all its
resources. The late Sir Gerald Portal, Agent and Consul-General at
Zanzibar, was sent to Uganda to report on the advisability and the
means of retaining this country under British influence. Unhappily,
he died soon after his return to England in 1894, but his report led
to the establishment of a British protectorate. Through the
intervention of the Pope, some appeasement of bitterness was
obtained in regard to the White Fathers’ mission, whose field of
work was bounded on the east by the Victoria Nile. A new Roman
Catholic mission under Bishop Hanlon, an Irishman, supported by
English, Irish and Dutch priests, has since carried on the
conversion and teaching of the natives in the eastern half of the
protectorate on harmonious terms with the British administration;
though indeed since 1900 all bitterness of feeling between the White
Fathers’ mission and the British officials or the native chiefs is
completely at an end. The French missionaries were compensated in
1895 for the destruction of some of their stations in the civil war
by a payment of £10,000.
After the withdrawal of Emin Pasha from his Equatorial province a
number of his former Sudanese soldiers volunteered for employment in
Uganda, and were eagerly recruited as a capable fighting force. But
they were Muhammadans, and always inclined to intrigue against a
Christian power. Added to this, Mwanga, the Kabaka or King of
Buganda, was the most unstable of men, and an exceedingly bad
character to boot. His vices and his cruelty had made him so hateful
in the eyes of his subjects, that without British support he would
probably have been deposed or killed. As it was, the presence of the
British prevented this, but did not arrest his intrigues with that
section of the populace which disliked European intervention. After
an undecided behaviour which lasted several years he finally
attempted to massacre a few of the British officers and
missionaries, but was defeated, and fled across the German border.
Then the Sudanese troops revolted, seized a fortress and some guns,
and for nearly a year set the British and the loyal Baganda at
defiance. Finally, a detachment of 450 Sikhs reached the country (a
handful of these splendid soldiers had already enabled the European
officers to face the Muhammadan mutineers), order was to some extent
restored, and a determined effort was made to capture the truant
king Mwanga and that aged scoundrel Kabarega, the King of Bunyoro,
who has been justly hated by Europeans since Speke and Baker’s
time[199]. This capture was achieved by Colonel John Evatt in June,
1899. The British Government having decided that the military and
civil organization of Uganda should now be settled definitely,
decided in the same year to dispatch Sir Harry Johnston as a Special
Commissioner to frame and inaugurate a suitable scheme of
administration in these countries round the Nyanzas and the Upper
Nile[200].
Prior to these troubles, continual warfare was carried on for some
years with the Bunyoro kingdom to the north, which was finally
conquered and eventually annexed to the Protectorate. In these wars
with Bunyoro (commencing with unprovoked hostilities on the part of
Kabarega) Major A. B. Thurston greatly distinguished himself. This
gallant officer and able linguist was afterwards killed by the
mutineer Sudanese soldiers (1897). Major ‘Roddy’ Owen had hoisted
the British flag at Wadelai, on the White Nile (in 1894), but this
action was not confirmed by the British Government. Nevertheless,
with the movement towards Khartum in prospect, and the eventual
reconquest of the Sudan, it was decided to send out a well-equipped
surveying expedition under Colonel (Sir) J. R. L. Macdonald which
should explore thoroughly the lands between the Victoria Nyanza and
the Mountain Nile. It was partly the demand that this expedition
should be escorted by a Sudanese battalion which precipitated the
mutiny of these discontented soldiers. Sir James Macdonald
cooperated in breaking the chief resistance of these mutineers and
then proceeded on an epoch-making survey which revealed new
mountains, new lakes, new peoples and new languages, and laid the
foundations of British influence on the northern part of the Uganda
Protectorate.
The Special Commission of Sir Harry Johnston arrived in Uganda at
the close of 1899, when the Sudanese mutiny and other troubles were
nearly over. As the results of this Special Commission the
boundaries of the Uganda Protectorate were carried northward to
Gondokoro on the Mountain Nile, to the 5th degree of N. latitude and
to Lake Rudolf; the state of Ankole on the south-west was also
included up to the German frontier. A definite constitution was
given to the kingdom of Buganda. The native ruler of Buganda
received the title of His Highness the Kabaka[201]; the native
Parliament or Lukiko was recognized; and the kingdom was divided
into a number of administrative counties. A land settlement was
arrived at, by which at least half of the land of the kingdom of
Buganda was secured to native owners. Settlements somewhat similar
to that effected in the province or kingdom of Buganda have been
carried out in the adjoining provinces of Ankole, Toro, and Bunyoro.
In 1903, the Eastern (Masai) province was transferred to the
administration of the adjoining East African Protectorate, thus
reducing the total area of the Uganda Protectorate at the present
day to 117,681 square miles, with a population—almost entirely
negroes—of about 2,900,000 (650 Europeans).
In the summer of 1901 a new portent appeared in Uganda—the terrible
disease known as sleeping sickness. This is a malady caused by the
injection into the human system through the proboscis of a Tsetse
fly of trypanosome animalcules which after swarming in the blood
reach the spinal marrow and then kill the patient—negro or European.
This terrible disease, which has existed for centuries in West
Africa, penetrated from the Congo forest into Uganda in 1901-2 and
killed many thousands of the natives year after year along the
shores and islands of the Victoria Nyanza. It is being carefully
studied with a view to its extirpation.
After the Zanzibar Sultanate had been placed under British
protection it was necessary to reorganize its administration. The
islands of Zanzibar and Pemba remained under the more or less direct
rule of the Sultan, who, however, appointed English ministers to
control the various departments of state, and was at the same time
subject to the advice and financial control of the British Agent and
Consul-General. Several Sultans succeeded one another and died in a
few years; and on the occasion of the death of Sultan Hamid bin
Thwain (1896) a palace revolt occurred, occasioned by a disappointed
claimant to the throne. This revolt, however, was really a premature
outbreak on the part of the Arab party, who frankly disliked British
interference which entailed the abolition of the slave trade and
even the disappearance of slavery, and were sufficiently foolish to
imagine that they were strong enough to resist a European nation. A
few hours’ bombardment of the Sultan’s head-quarters quelled this
rebellion. Since that time, by degrees, and with a wise system of
gradation, slavery is being abolished, and will soon cease to exist
as a recognized status. In 1911 the young Sultan of Zanzibar (Ali
bin Hamūd) abdicated for reasons of health; and his son, Sū’id bin
Ali, was proclaimed under a regency, the Regent-and-First Minister
being a British official. Between 1903-5 there was considerable
local dissatisfaction with the methods of government employed in
Zanzibar, and a deputation of Zanzibaris came to London to make
representations on the subject; but since reforms were instituted in
1906 the people of Zanzibar and Pemba have been quiet and
prosperous. The total area of these two islands is 1020 square miles
and the population (200,000) mainly negro, with about 10,000 Arabs,
10,000 Indians, and 300 Europeans. Zanzibar Island is a great
rendezvous for shipping and is the head-quarters of a great ocean
cable company; apart from this, it produces cloves and other
tropical vegetable products, and Pemba is rich in cattle.
On the mainland between the Umba river and Mombasa on the south and
the Juba river and Somaliland on the north, the Imperial British
East Africa Company continued to rule until 1894. But as soon as the
British Government had undertaken to govern Uganda as a Protectorate
(1894) it was evident that the company’s rule over the intervening
district from Kikuyu to the coast could not continue. Accordingly in
1894 the company’s charter was annulled and they were compensated
with £450,000. On July 1, 1895, Sir Arthur Hardinge took over the
administration of the British East Africa Protectorate.
The new administration had scarcely been installed on the Mombasa
coast than it found itself obliged to deal with the question of the
Mazrui Arabs. It has been mentioned elsewhere in this work that
early in the 18th century the Arab power on the coast between the
Rufu River on the south and Malindi on the north was exercised
nominally on behalf of the Imam of Maskat by an Arab family known as
the Mazrui. Various explanations are given of this name and of the
origin of this clan, some deriving them from an old colony of
Egyptian Arabs (_Masr_ is the Arab name for Egypt); but more
probably they came from Southern Arabia, or even from Oman, prior to
the arrival of the Portuguese, who dispossessed them for a time. In
the 17th century they had made common cause with the Arabs of Oman
in attacking and expelling the Portuguese, but, when it came to
their accepting the Imam of Maskat as their sovereign lord, they
usually evaded the direct issue by partial compliance. In the early
part of the 19th century they had defied the representative of the
Imam at Zanzibar and had attempted to place Mombasa under British
protection. During the latter part of the 19th century the Sultan of
Zanzibar, backed by Sir John Kirk, had asserted Zanzibar rule over
the coast strip as far north as Somaliland. He held, indeed, all the
principal ports of what is now Italian Somaliland, as well as Lamu,
Malindi, and Mombasa. In the hinterland of Lamu was another
semi-independent Arab Sultanate, that of Vitu, on the Ozi River;
while the Mazrui clan between Mombasa and the German frontier was
represented by a line of Sultans usually called Sidi Mubarak or
Mbaruk (_Sidi_ means lord, the rest of the name is a varying form of
the Arab word for blessing). The Germans in their dealings with East
Africa had early appreciated the dissidence between the Sultan of
Zanzibar and the independent Arab powers on the mainland; and, when
Germany and Britain were striving in the eighties for an East
African dominion, Germany had recognized the independence of the
Sultanate of Vitu. By the 1890 agreement Vitu was transferred to the
protectorate of Great Britain, much against its will. It was a
country rendered inaccessible by an extravagant growth of forest
nourished by the delta of the Rivers Ozi and Tana, but was
nevertheless captured in the late autumn of 1890 by a naval
expedition under Admiral Sir E. Fremantle, to punish the Sultan for
resuming the trade in slaves and ordering a party of German
timber-cutters to be massacred. A little further action on behalf of
British officials resulted in the tranquillity of this small state
being re-established with a reasonable degree of self-government.
Sir Arthur Hardinge, on assuming the control of British East Africa,
found that he had first of all to fight a long war of skirmishes,
ambushes, and repelled raids, against the Sultan Mubarak, whose
strongholds were a series of small Arab towns in the hinterland
regions, south-west of Mombasa. This difficulty was not finally
disposed of till the following year, 1896, when Mubarak after
several defeats inflicted on him by the negro and Indian troops of
the British, took refuge on German territory. Since that time there
has been no further difficulty with the Arabs in this part of East
Africa.
The Masai of the East African hinterland, who, it was thought, would
give the most serious trouble to any overruling power, very soon
acquiesced in the idea of a British protectorate and have really
been the allies of the British in many of their difficulties with
recalcitrant tribes. In the Kikuyu forest country, which was once
the western borderland of the East African Protectorate, a few
police operations had to be carried out, as the industrious Kikuyu
people, suspicious after many years of raiding by the Masai, at
first looked upon the white man as another enemy, and attacked
British settlers or big-game hunters in the neighbourhood of their
country.
In 1902-3, as already mentioned, the Protectorate of East Africa was
extended over the eastern province of Uganda up to the shores of the
Victoria Nyanza, the slopes of Mount Elgon, and the south-west coast
of Lake Rudolf. On the south it was of course bounded by the
Anglo-German frontier, which last was accurately defined between
1903-5. On the north, after long negotiations with Abyssinia, its
boundaries were so drawn as to admit the Abyssinian Empire to the
north-east corner of Lake Rudolf. From this point the East African
boundary is drawn along the Goro escarpment to the Juba River, which
it then follows down to the sea. The total area of the Protectorate
is about 200,000 square miles, and the total population at the
present day is guessed at 4,040,000[202]. It consists mainly of
negroes and negroids, the negroids being the result of ancient or
modern intermixture between the Hamitic tribes of Ethiopia and
Somaliland and the negroes of Equatorial Africa. The Gala, a
handsome and interesting Hamitic people, displaying their kinship
with the white man by their use of the plough, by their possession
of a sex-denoting language, and by many other features, inhabit a
portion of the northern parts of the Protectorate, coming as far
south as the Tana River. In the north-east, on either side of the
Jub or Juba River, are the Somali clans chiefly belonging to the
group known as Ogadein. These southern Somalis are much mixed with
negro blood, and are not such a handsome or Caucasian people as
those of Northern Somaliland. Alike to the Italians and to the
British—and perhaps even more markedly towards the British—they have
shown themselves inimical from the very first. It will be remembered
how cruelly they treated in older times the Portuguese Catholic
missionaries who attempted to travel through their country into
Abyssinia. Since 1896 they have murdered several British officials
stationed at Kismayu, or other places in their territory; and
punitory expeditions have been directed against them in 1898 and in
1901. This last expedition ended somewhat disastrously for the
British arms, but was wisely not followed up by an expensive
avenging campaign, as the country is not at present worth
conquering, and is only inhabited by semi-nomad, warlike Somalis,
who are, however, by the lure of commerce gradually settling down
into a peaceable condition. In the Borān Gala country in the
northernmost parts of the Protectorate, raids of Abyssinian soldiers
take place from time to time and are particularly exasperating by
the reckless damage which is done to the big game of the country. In
this portion of East Africa the big game is being rapidly
exterminated by the Abyssinians.
Big game, indeed, has been found to be one of the assets of this
East African Protectorate. The writings of Joseph Thomson, H. H.
Johnston, F. G. Jackson, Count Teleki, and Lieutenant
Höhnel—explorers of this region between 1882 and 1888—revealed to
the world the amazing wealth of mammalian life in this region,
formerly so abundant as to rival in this respect the South Africa of
the early 19th century. Not long after the definite establishment of
a British administration, measures were taken to preserve this
wonderful fauna from a too rapid extinction at the hands both of
European and of native hunters; and game reserves were established.
But perhaps the most important feat performed by the British
Government, and one which has irradiated good as an exemplar and as
a transport agency over all East and Central Africa, was the
building of the Uganda railway between 1897 and 1903. The railway
commences at Mombasa, with another station at the great harbour of
Kilindini on the south side of Mombasa Island, and pursues a course
of 585 miles till it reaches the head of Kavirondo Gulf on the
north-east of the Victoria Nyanza. Before long it will no doubt be
extended through Kavirondo and Busoga till it attains the Victoria
Nile and links up with railways which are being made from the
birthplace of that river to the Albert Nyanza and Gondokoro. The
Uganda railway, so early as the commencement of the 20th century,
enabled European tourists and settlers to penetrate far into Eastern
Africa, and thus brought to public notice what had for some time
past been realised by a few individuals—the fact that a good deal of
the interior of British East Africa is a high and healthy plateau,
possessing a very good climate, a kind of mild, perpetual summer,
but invigorating, genial, and sufficiently rainy to support an
abundant vegetation, In British East Africa there are, in fact,
scattered areas of relatively-uninhabited, healthy upland amounting
in all to about 30,000 square miles, uninhabited at the beginning of
the 20th century because the native population had either been
dispersed or exterminated by intertribal wars and famines, or found
the climate too cold and preferred the lower-lying lands. At one
time there was a project of offering a region about the size of
Wales, carved out of these plateaus, to the distressed Russian,
Rumanian, and Galician Jews through the Jewish Territorial
Organization Committee. But the offer was foolishly declined by that
body, and it is most unlikely it will ever be renewed, for, no
sooner was the South African War over, than Boer settlers to the
number of 600 or 700 with their wives and families proceeded to this
interior part of East Africa and began to take up land from the
British Government. Before and subsequent to their arrival there
came not a few British for the same purpose, and at the present day
there is a settled white population in British East Africa numbering
at least 2000. Without injustice to the indigenous peoples, there is
no reason why some 30,000 square miles of East Africa should not be
set aside for white settlement and nourish in course of time a
sturdy population of three or four millions, which might prove to be
a very potent factor in the politics of Equatorial Africa. It is not
to be supposed that this region is without disease, but the disease
arises not from the climate, but from the co-existence of black men
with germs in their blood, and mosquitoes, ticks, and tsetse flies,
whose odious purpose in life is to transfer these germs from the
blood of one man to that of another. But the mosquito is often
absent from both the high and the dry parts of East Africa, and in
that case germ-diseases cannot be spread, or it is possible by
cultivating the land to get rid of this and other pests. No doubt
also in the plans which will be adopted for the eventual settlement
of the whole country, some policy of segregation will be adopted,
separating to a certain extent the colonies of the white man and of
the British Indian. For, amongst other things which are happening as
the result of the British development of East Africa, is the
in-pouring of a number of British Indian colonists, and even of
Persians; and this Asiatic population shows every sign of
prospering. It would be more reasonable, however, to reserve for
Asiatic colonization the vacant lands near the coast and in the more
northern parts of the Protectorate, which are hot and low-lying, and
therefore unsuited to European settlement, but which would be well
adapted for the cultivation of cotton and grain crops and the
rearing of cattle by agricultural colonies of Asiatics.
----------------------------------------------------------------
BRITISH AFRICA
Plate V.
[Illustration]
EXPLANATORY NOTE
Colonies, Protectorates, Spheres of Influence or Control
[red] _In 1815_ (_This darker colour in Cape Colony represents the
extreme extent of Dutch South Africa when taken over by
the British_)
[pink] _In 1912_ (_Pink bars imply uncertainty of possession_)
----------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Footnote 192:
The dynasty of Muhammad Ali may be said to have begun in 1841, in
which year it was recognised and made hereditary by Turkey; but
Muhammad Ali was the ruler of Egypt (as Pasha) from 1811, after
the slaughter of the Mamluk Beys. His sons and son-in-law
conquered for him Syria and Western Arabia and the northern part
of the Sudan. The conquests west of Sinai were given up in 1841
but in that year he became the Vali or Viceroy over Egypt and the
Sudan, the succession to that post to fall to his male
descendants. His immediate successor was his grandson Abbas bin
Tusūn; then followed the rule of his favourite son, Said bin
Muhammad. Said was succeeded in 1863 by his nephew Ismail, son of
Ibrahim, the reputed eldest son of Muhammad Ali. But according to
some accounts Ibrahim, the great conqueror, was only the adopted
son of Muhammad Ali. The present Khedive of Egypt is the
great-grandson of Ibrahim, but he is also descended from Muhammad
Ali through his mother, Princess Amina, who was the
great-great-granddaughter of Muhammad Ali through Tusūn. The title
of Khedive (a Persian word meaning prince) was conferred on the
Pasha or Viceroy of Egypt in 1867.
Footnote 193:
This was a revolt against Egyptian rule, taxation, and
interference with the slave trade, started by an Arab fanatic born
in the Dongola district who was named Muhammad Ahmad, but called
himself the Mahdi or Messiah. His first successes were amongst the
ignorant Muhammadans of Kordofan who had grown to loathe the
exactions of Turkish (i.e. Egyptian) rule. Muhammad Ahmad died in
1885 and was succeeded by his Lieutenant, the Khalifa
Abdallah-al-Taaisha. His fanatical followers were usually called
the “Dervishes.” Muhammad Ahmad’s forces captured Al-Obeid the
capital of Kordofan in January 1883, and overwhelmed nine months
later a force of 10,000 men under Hicks Pasha sent by the Egyptian
Government to recover the Western Sudan from anarchy. Hicks Pasha
(Colonel William Hicks) was an officer of the Indian Army who had
served with distinction in the Mutiny and had fought in the
Abyssinian campaign of 1867-8. In 1882 he entered the Khedive’s
service as Chief of the Staff in the Sudan, recaptured the Sennar
country from the Mahdists, and might have suppressed the whole
rebellion and obviated Gordon’s mission and all subsequent
disasters if he had been allowed a free hand by the Egyptian
ministry at Khartum. Out of his force of 8000 fighting men and
2000 camp followers, all but 300 were slain at Kashgil on the
fatal day of November 5, 1883.
Footnote 194:
This phrase first made its appearance in a pamphlet issued by the
late Sir Edwin Arnold in 1876 and was revived by the author of
this book in an article in the _Times_ of August 10, 1888.
Footnote 195:
Taken by the Italians from the Dervishes in 1894 and restored to
Anglo-Egyptian control in 1897.
Footnote 196:
Placed under British protection in 1884.
Footnote 197:
The first British Agent (for the East India Company) and Consul
General at Zanzibar was appointed in 1841.
Footnote 198:
Uganda will probably continue to be the general name for this
protectorate; but the correct form of the word is _Buganda_. This
rendering is now reserved for the native kingdom or province of
Buganda, while the Swahili version of the term—Uganda—is applied
to the whole protectorate of five provinces.
Footnote 199:
Kabarega was the son and successor of the Kamasi who had so
persecuted the Bakers, Emin, Casati and other travellers.
Footnote 200:
The work of this Special Commission was additional to and
confirmatory of the efforts of Sir Henry Colvile, Mr Ernest
Berkeley, Mr F. G. Jackson (since Governor of Uganda), Mr George
Wilson and Colonel Trevor Ternan (Commissioners or Acting
Commissioners) to found a stable confederation of warlike and
peaceful negro peoples, to combat famine and disease caused by
intertribal wars, and to extend the boundaries of this
protectorate northwards to the navigable Nile.
Footnote 201:
The Kabaka of Buganda has been, down to 1912, a minor under a
native regency. He is descended from a dynasty which has
apparently ruled in Buganda since a period contemporary with the
reign of Henry IV in England. This dynasty, like most others in
Equatorial East Africa, appears to have been founded by a man of
Gala descent.
Footnote 202:
The Protectorate now contains seven provinces and a northern tract
of territory not yet organized. The narrow coast-belt from Lamu to
the Umba River is leased from the Sultan of Zanzibar for a payment
of £17,000 per annum.
CHAPTER XV
THE ITALIANS IN AFRICA
The part played by Italy in the colonization of Africa after the
submergence of Roman civilization in that continent under the Arab
invasion was remarkable; it was not, however, a part attributable to
Italy as a whole, but to some of her component states. The little
principality of Amalfi had early dealings with the Saracens, and
imported from them some knowledge of the new navigation, and of that
newly-introduced group of fruit trees—the orange family—which was to
find a second home in Italy. Pisa, Genoa, and Venice alternately
warred and traded with the north of Africa. Naples obtained from
Egypt the domestic Indian buffalo so early as the 13th century.
Sicily was finally conquered by the Saracens in 832 A.C.; and
Sardinia from 712 became intermittently a Saracen possession for
more than three centuries until it was definitely rescued by the
Pisans after 1015 A.C. Consequently Sicilian and Sardinian renegades
figure in the early Muhammadan history of Tunis, Tripoli, and
Algeria. But the two states which before the Portuguese era shared
most prominently in the commerce of North Africa were Genoa and
Venice. Genoa had most to do with the Tunis littoral; she had
intermittent establishments at Tabarka and Bona, besides
occasionally holding Mehdia on the coast of Tunis. Genoa sent
several noteworthy seamen to explore the Atlantic, the north-west
coast of Africa, the Azores and Canary Islands; and it is believed
that Genoese ships may even have found their way along the west
coast of Africa to the Gulf of Guinea as early as the 14th century;
for in a volume of eight maps—the famous Laurentian Portulano,
executed by a Genoese about 1351 (and subsequently acquired for the
Laurentian Library at Florence), Africa for the first time in
history is delineated as a continent with a great western
projection, a tapering southern extremity and its bold eastern horn
of Somaliland. (This information, however, may have been derived
from Arabs during the Crusades.) Venice cultivated a friendship with
Egypt during and after the Crusades, and in this way obtained
control over the Indian trade, until the Portuguese discovered and
utilized the Cape route. Even then the interest of Italy in Africa
did not slacken. It was displayed chiefly in Rome during the 16th
and 17th centuries, when the Roman pontiffs took up geographical
research into the problems and possibilities of Africa with some
eagerness, especially with regard to the Congo, Abyssinia, and the
northern Sudan. Noteworthy amongst the Popes who promoted African
studies were Leo X, who encouraged the Italianized Moor, Johannes
Leo (“Leo Africanus”), to write in Italian a description of his
travels through the Nigeria and Northern Sudan[203]; Sixtus V, who
caused his chamberlain Filippo Pigafetta to publish much valuable
information from Portuguese travellers and missionaries concerning
the Congo and Abyssinia; Paul V, who sent a mission to the King of
Kongo in 1621 to report on that West African kingdom; and Urban
VIII, who in 1640 erected the Kongo Kingdom into an Apostolic
prefecture dependent on the Roman See and despatched many Italian
missionaries thither. His efforts were revived in 1652 by his
successor, Innocent X.
During the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Abyssinian Christian
students frequently journeyed to Rome and lived in Italy more or
less as pensioners of the Popes. Similarly, during the 17th and 18th
centuries so many Italian craftsmen, surgeons, physicians,
naturalists, and botanists, travelled in and through Tunisia and
Egypt, and stayed there permanently, that (besides the innumerable
Italian slaves captured by the pirates and absorbed into the
Muhammadan community) there grew up the great Levantine communities
in the principal towns of Egypt and Barbary. In 1600, an Italian
surgeon named Federigo Zeringhi killed two hippopotamuses at
Damietta, at the eastern mouth of the Nile; and in 1658 other
Italian travellers noted the extinction of the hippopotamus in the
Nile Delta. Italian influence sank to its lowest ebb in the late
18th century, but after Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt many Italians
were employed in the service of that country, under Muhammad Ali.
Thousands of Italians (many of them Jews) also emigrated to Eastern
Algeria and Tunis in the first half of the 19th century and financed
the sponge fisheries off Tripoli. United Italy, in 1862, began to
assert herself at first in Tunis. During the sixties of the 19th
century the affairs of Tunis, instead of being debated only between
France and Britain, were submitted to the consideration of a third
power, the Kingdom of Italy; and in 1869 a triple control of these
three powers had been established over its finances. Then Britain
ceased to claim a consultative voice in the control of this
tottering Turkish regency, and France and Italy were left face to
face. Italy had to give way in 1881. She had, however, for some time
been cultivating an interest in Tripoli, where she had established,
as in Tunis and Egypt, “Royal schools” for the gratuitous teaching
of Italian; but a too vivid display of her interest in the affairs
of Tripoli after the French occupation of Tunis caused the Sultan of
Turkey to reinforce his garrison there by 10,000 soldiers, and Italy
decided that the time was not then. Italian influence of a more or
less Levantine, denationalized stamp had become well established in
Egypt before the British occupation, and had to a great extent
replaced that of France, the Italian language being employed as a
kind of Lingua Franca. The present writer can remember, when first
visiting Egypt in 1884, that most of the letter-boxes at the
post-offices had on them “Buca per le lettere,” while Italian was
much better understood in the towns than French, English of course
not being understood at all at that time. So that, if it be true
that Mr Gladstone in 1882 invited Italy to take the place of France
in a dual control with England over Egypt, the proposal was not, at
the time when it was made, such a preposterous one as it might now
appear.
So far back as 1873 Italy had cast an eye over Abyssinia; and one of
her great steamship companies had purchased a small site on Assab
Bay as a coaling station. Assab Bay, in the Red Sea, was on the
inhospitable, ownerless Danákil coast, not far from the Straits of
Bab-al-Mandib. In 1875 the suspicious movements of Italian ships
about Sokotra obliged England to take that island under her
protection. From 1870 onwards Italian missionaries and Italian
travellers had begun to move about this coast, and to explore the
south of Abyssinia. In 1880 the Italian Government revived the
Italian claim to Assab Bay, but did not take actual possession of it
until July 1882, when the bombardment of Alexandria had awakened
Europe to the apprehension of a great change in Egyptian affairs. An
acrimonious correspondence took place between Italy, Egypt, and
Turkey regarding this claim to Assab Bay; but Italy received the
tacit support of England, and when the Egyptian hold over the Sudan
crumbled, the Italians rapidly extended their occupation north and
south, until Italian influence was conterminous on the south with
the French Somaliland territory of Obok (and consequently opposite
the Straits of Bab-al-Mandib), and on the north reached to Ras
Kasar, 110 miles south-east of Suakin. In this manner Italy acquired
about 670 miles of Red Sea coast, including the ancient and
important port of Masawa. This coast in its partial condition of
sterility and its terribly hot climate would be of little value did
it not possess a cool, mountainous hinterland, considerable areas of
gum forest, and fertile river-valleys, besides having much grazing
ground for camels and other livestock, and commanding the easiest
and nearest approaches to Abyssinia. In one part of the coast the
natives are practically of Abyssinian stock, and Abyssinia has
constantly striven through centuries to maintain her hold on the
seaboard, but has always been driven back to her mountains by
maritime races, such as the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks. Seeing
Italy step in, after the downfall of Egypt, to replace that power in
Masawa and elsewhere, King John of Abyssinia soon fell out with the
Italians. The Italians had occupied an inland town called Sahati,
formerly an Egyptian stronghold. Ras Alula, an Abyssinian general,
with 10,000 men attacked 450 Italian troops on their way to Sahati,
and, as may be imagined, massacred nearly all of them. Italy felt
her honour at stake, and in spite of the expense, would have been
obliged to commence an Abyssinian war but for the good offices of
the British Government. Lord Salisbury sent Mr, afterwards Sir
Gerald, Portal on a mission to Abyssinia, which had the effect of
arranging a temporary peace between the Italians and King John.
Shortly afterwards King John of Abyssinia advanced against the
Mahdists, and was killed in battle. Italy then occupied the posts of
Keren and Asmara, which gave her control over the mountain passes
leading, on the north-east, into Abyssinia. She had previously
maintained a great friendliness with Menelik, the vassal king of
Shoa in the south. (Abyssinia proper may be said to be divided into
three principal districts, which sometimes become semi-independent
satrapies or kingdoms—Tigre on the north, Amhara in the centre, and
Shoa to the south.) When King John of Abyssinia died, Menelik, as
the strongest of his vassals, seized somewhat illegally the
Abyssinian Empire. Although now viewing the Italians in a more
suspicious manner, he nevertheless concluded a treaty with them,
which enabled him to negotiate a loan and to obtain a large quantity
of war material, but contained a clause dealing vaguely with the
“mutual protection” of the contracting parties. The Italian
protectorate over Abyssinia was recognized by England and by
Germany, but not by France or Russia. In order to annoy Italy as a
member of the Triple Alliance, France and Russia commenced
encouraging Menelik to a repudiation of the Italian protectorate,
and supplied him with quantities of arms and ammunition. Russia,
indeed, for years past had shown a disposition to concern herself
about Abyssinia on the pretext that the Greek Christianity of that
country linked it specially to Russia. She sent numerous
“scientific” expeditions thither, and also a party of Cossack-monks
to stimulate Abyssinian Christianity. On one occasion these
Cossack-monks even went to the length of seizing a port on the
French coast, near Obok. This was too much, even for the French; and
force was used to expel these truculent missionaries.
In March 1891, with a view to regulating future action on the part
of Italy, England had entered into an agreement delimiting the
respective spheres of British and Italian interests in East Africa;
and by this agreement Italy was permitted, if she found it necessary
for military purposes, to occupy the abandoned post of Kasala (then
in the hands of the Dervishes), on the frontiers of the Egyptian
Sudan. Accordingly this post was occupied by Italy in 1894. In the
beginning of 1895, the Italian forces being again attacked by the
Abyssinians, the war was carried into the enemy’s country, and after
several sanguinary defeats had been inflicted on the Abyssinians,
the greater part of the Tigre Province was occupied. Menelik, whose
administrative capital still remained at Adis Ababa in Shoa,
organized a vast army, and prepared to defend his kingdom. In the
early spring of 1896 General Baratieri (in fear lest he might be
superseded, and without waiting for sufficient reinforcements)
assumed the offensive against the Abyssinians in the vicinity of
Adua, with the result that he sustained a terrible reverse. Nearly
half the Italian army (13,000 men—7,000 only Italians, the rest
natives of the coast—against 90,000 Abyssinians), was killed, and of
the remainder many prisoners were taken. This was a terrible blow to
Italy, and its effects on European politics were far-reaching.
General Baldissera somewhat retrieved the position; but all thought
of an Italian protectorate over Abyssinia was at an end, a position
frankly recognized by Italy in her subsequent treaty of peace with
Menelik. She lost but little of her original colony of “Eritrea,”
but Eritrea seemed then of small value except as the stepping-stone
to Abyssinia. The French and Russians were triumphant; and French
adulation of the Emperor Menelik was scarcely worthy of a nation in
the high position of France.
A British mission was sent in 1897 to open up friendly relations
with Abyssinia, and to establish a political agency at the king’s
court. The treaty concluded seemed at first sight not wholly
satisfactory to British interests, as it yielded a portion of
Somaliland to Abyssinia, and did not provide for any delimitation of
Abyssinian boundaries on the west; but apparently there were other
clauses not made public which subsequently ensured the friendly
neutrality of Menelik during the Khartum campaign.
Since 1897, or rather since the institution of civil government in
1900, the colony of Eritrea has made a quiet progress towards
well-being and commercial prosperity insufficiently appreciated by
historians of Africa. “Colony” remains an inaccurate designation,
since the excessive heat of the lowlands makes Italian settlement in
large numbers impossible (there are only 3000 settlers in the whole
colony), while the uplands are either barren or sufficiently well
populated by a sturdy race of negroids—a mixture of Hamites,
Semites, and Nilotic negroes. But this native population (275,000)
has prospered and increased under Italian rule. A considerable trade
is being developed in the nuts of the hyphæne palms, exported to the
approximate annual value of £50,000. Hides and cattle, wax, gum,
coffee, ivory, and salt are also exported; and the annual
trade—imports and exports—now (1912) averages £1,000,000 in value.
The area of Eritrea, which extends southward to Cape Dameirah on the
Straits of Bab-al-Mandib, is 45,800 square miles.
Finding that Germany did not intend to push claims, half-developed,
to the Somali coast, Italy in 1889 began to make treaties in that
direction, and by the end of that year had established a
protectorate over the whole Somali coast from the west side of Cape
Guardafui to the mouth of the river Jub, a claim subsequently
confirmed by agreements with Britain and with the Sultan of
Zanzibar. Italian enterprise has led to a great deal of geographical
discovery near the Jub River and the Webi Shebeili, an eccentric
stream, which after arriving within a few miles of the sea and
meandering along parallel with the coast, loses itself in a sandy
desert near the mouth of the Jub River. Several Italian expeditions
came to grief in these Somali and Gala countries, but Italy held on,
and deserves to succeed in the long run. An Italian commercial
company was founded to deal with the exploitation of the Benadir
coast—once in the hands of the Sultan of Zanzibar—where there was
still some lucrative trade to be done in products of the interior.
But complaints were made as to mistreatment of the natives by the
Chartered Company; and in 1900 the Italian Government bought from
the Sultan of Zanzibar, for £144,000, the ports (_Benadir_: plural
of _Bandar_, a sea port) of Magdishu, Brawa, Marka, and Warsheikh
which had long been appanages of the Sultan of Zanzibar. The name of
the “colony” is now “Somalía Italiana,” Italian Somaliland, and the
capital is at Magdishu—the “Mogadoxo” of the 16th century
Portuguese. Inland, Italian rule stretches along the Jub or Juba
river as far as the Gala towns of Bardera and Lugh. Farther north,
along the coast, there is the native Somali sultanate of Obbia and
then the Somali tribal territory of Nogal. The total area of Italian
Somaliland is about 140,000 square miles, and the population (Gala,
Somali, Swahili negroes, Arabs, and helot tribes) is 400,000.
About the year 1904 a _rapprochement_ took place between France and
Italy relative to a settlement of colonial “aspirations,”
coincidently with agreements, secret or avowed, entered into between
France and Britain. It was then laid down that, should Italy at any
time establish herself in place of Turkey in the Tripolitaine, the
boundaries of her sphere of influence there should practically be
conterminous with those then recognized by France as being the
Turkish limits, comprising Tripoli (as far west as Ghadamés and
Ghat), Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. It is probable also that a similar
understanding was come to with Great Britain in the early part of
the 20th century. In fact it was openly stated in the literature of
the period that Italy had “ear-marked” the Tripolitaine as her share
of the Turkish Empire should any further curtailment of the Turkish
dominions take place. No official repudiation of such an idea
emanated from Germany or Austria. Nevertheless, when Italy did move
in this direction in 1911, it was from Germany and Austria that she
received the bitterest reproaches. The explanation of this changed
attitude was no doubt that between 1909 and 1911 an idea had grown
up both in Germany and Austria that Tripoli was now considered by
Italy as practically worthless from the point of view of a future
field for Italian colonization; and that it might be possible,
through some scheme of concessions and chartered companies, for the
Teutonic allies to effect a settlement and control over the
Tripolitaine (under the Turkish flag, possibly). Thence they might
build a trans-Saharan railway which would connect this German
foothold on the south Mediterranean coast with the future Congolese
Empire which Germany was resolving to shape in course of time out of
French, Belgian, and Portuguese possessions, by purchase, exchange,
and it may be some pressure. This idea bore fruit in an attenuated
form in the concessions made to Germany by France in north-west
Congoland in 1911 (see p. 234).
Italy had nearly gone to war with Turkey in 1910 over a dispute
regarding the Italian Post Offices in the Turkish Empire, and, as
her principal means of punishing Turkey, was preparing an expedition
to land in Tripoli. But the Turks gave way before a practical
ultimatum, and Italy was left without an excuse. Then followed the
announcement that a well-equipped Austrian “scientific” mission
would start for the thorough exploration of the Tripolitaine in the
winter of 1910-1911. Italy appealed to Turkey to grant similar
facilities for an Italian expedition, but received an evasive reply.
In July 1911 came the startling incident of Agadir, with all that it
implied, both as to North African and as to Central African aims on
the part of Germany. It was felt soon afterwards that Germany, being
baulked of a foothold in Morocco, would be more than ever anxious to
establish herself on the Tripoli coast. A quarrel was therefore
picked with Turkey on somewhat vague grievances; and a declaration
of war was followed by the immediate landing of an Italian army at
the town of Tripoli on September 20, 1911. Soon afterwards, in the
autumn and winter of 1911, all the other towns on the coast of
Tripoli and Cyrenaica were occupied by the Italians, whose Senate,
on February 23, 1912, ratified a decree annexing these provinces to
Italy, as far to the west, south, and east as the spheres of France,
Britain, and Egypt. The whole of the port of Solum and its vicinity
was given over to Egypt—a _solatium_ accepted without hesitation by
the Anglo-Egyptian government.
The European conscience of course was outraged, and much sympathy
was expressed with Turkey, but no assistance furnished. No doubt the
action of Italy in theory was a political crime. In a time of
perfect peace, she delivered an ultimatum to a neighbouring European
power based on ostensible grievances of a trifling kind; and before
that power could discuss any rectification of the said grievance,
two large provinces of its territory were forcibly annexed. In
theory the action of Italy was indefensible; in practice it was
probably a matter of stern necessity. The coast of Tripoli is
immediately opposite Italy, and it is far away from Turkey. A little
hesitancy, and this littoral might have first been assigned
commercially to German and Austrian subjects and subsequently have
passed for ever beyond the scope of Italian sea-power. Italy would
then have had the ironical punishment which Fate so often allots to
those who let “I dare not wait upon I would.” As to any regret being
felt for Turkey, let us consider for a moment what were her moral
claims to these two provinces. Their coast ports were seized by
Turkish pirates in the middle of the 16th century. Eventually there
grew up a Turco-Arab dynasty of the Karamanli Pashas to whom was
delegated by Turkey in the early 18th century the government of
Tripoli and Barka (Cyrenaica). The Karamanli Pashas, though they
sent out piratical fleets into the Mediterranean to attack the ships
of powers not in treaty relations with them, nevertheless did much
to open up Fezzan and the northern Sudan to European commerce; and
their friendship with Britain made it possible for the British
expeditions to Lake Chad and Bornu to take place in 1821-3. In 1835
the Turkish Government at Constantinople, alarmed by the spreading
power of Muhammad Ali and the French seizure of Algiers, intervened
in the affairs of Tripoli and annexed it; a guerilla warfare
continued for ten years afterwards. From 1850 onwards, a great
revival of the Sudan slave-trade took place through the Tripolitan
ports; and this was still more marked after Egypt, governed by the
Khedive Ismail, ceased to export slaves. Under direct Turkish rule,
the Tripolitaine became almost impenetrable by European travellers,
several of whom were assassinated within its limits. Nothing was
done for the improvement of Fezzan, of the oases, or even of the
Tripolitan coast towns. Locusts ravaged the crops unchecked; and the
desert sands steadily advanced on the cultivable regions. No public
works worth mentioning exist to testify to any benefits derived from
Turkish rule. Turkey has been tried in the balances of Tripolitan
history and found to be utterly wanting.
By the summer of 1912, the Italians had fought many battles and
skirmishes with the Turks and Arabs of the Tripolitaine. They had
been accused of the usual inhumanities of war by the usual
Anglo-Saxon journalist, but they were in possession of all the coast
towns, and in several of their lavish public works began to
reconcile the much-tried Moorish population to the dominance of the
“Rumi”—in this case a singularly truthful term, for it really was
the “Roman” come back to rule a land which fourteen hundred years
before (prior to the Vandal descent) he had raised to a position of
considerable fertility and prosperity. In July, 1912 the chief of
the great Senussi brotherhood (see page 236) made terms of peace and
amity with the Italians; and, as this edition goes to press, peace
has been concluded (Oct. 15, 1912) between Italy and Turkey on the
basis of the retrocession to the eldest daughter of Rome of two
among the North African provinces torn from her Mother State, first
by the Vandals and next by the Arab invasion of the 7th century A.C.
When Italy is enabled to take complete possession of this area of
400,000 square miles, she will find that barely one-third is
cultivable, and that the remainder consists of naked plateaus,
mountains of sun-baked rock, and vast “seas” of drifting sand. The
sand is a less hopeless proposition than the rock, for under it
often lie layers of imprisoned water, releasable by artesian wells.
But when the claims and requirements of the natives of “Libya” (as
the Italians call their scarcely-won possession) are duly provided
for, there will not remain much agricultural land for Italian
settlement. Yet there may arise many promising industries which will
provide employment for Italians in the towns on the coast. Moreover,
with time, patience, sympathy and understanding, the Italians will
find the million of Arabs, Jews, Berbers, Tibus, negroids and
negroes who make up the Tripolitan and Cyrenaic population a people
possessing many fine qualities of physique and endurance, who under
a wise and fraternal government may cooperate with the European in
making the desert blossom as the rose.
Whether Italy will be required to halt on the verge of the Sahara
and Libyan Deserts, or whether France and Britain, declining to play
the dog-in-the-manger, will withdraw on either side the skirts of
their spheres of influence so as to admit the Italian to direct
access to the Northern Sudan, on the borders of Darfur and Kanem, is
an eventuality on the knees of the gods, and likely to remain for
long among unborn events until the sands of the Libyan Desert prove
to be valuable enough to be worth claiming and crossing.
-----
Footnote 203:
Leo Africanus, who wrote the most important work on Africa in the
16th century, was born at Granada in southern Spain in 1494, just
after the capture of that place by the Spaniards. His family
migrated to Morocco, and “Hassan ibn Muhammad al Wizaz,” surnamed
“Al-Fasi,” was educated mainly at Fas or Fez: whence his nickname.
He travelled throughout North Africa and crossed the Desert to the
Niger; visited Guinea, Mandingoland, the Niger Bend, Agades,
Hausaland and Lake Chad, Egypt, and the Nile. Captured by Italian
pirates he was sold as a slave and presented to Pope Leo X, who
converted him, christened him, pensioned him, and encouraged him
to give to the world his valuable geographical and historical
information.
CHAPTER XVI
GERMAN AFRICA
German settlement in Africa is not altogether the outcome of the
scramble for Africa in 1884; German settlements on the West coast of
Africa date back to 1683, and Prussian or German protectorates in
Africa were discussed during the sixties of the 19th century. Ships
from Emden[204] and Gretsyl, belonging to the Friesland possessions
of the Electorate of Brandenburg (the mother of the Prussian
monarchy), stole out of the North Sea and took a part in the West
African trade in slaves and gold. These ships were much harassed by
the French, Portuguese, and Dutch, but the Brandenburgers, together
with the Prussian Company of Emden, managed to establish a foothold
at the close of the 17th century on the Gold Coast, where they held
for a time Grossfriedrichsburg and Takrana. The little island of
Arguin near Cape Blanco, off the Senegal coast, was bought by
Frederic William (the Great Elector of Brandenburg) from the Dutch,
and was held for some years. The Brandenburg Africa Company was
definitely founded in 1681, but by 1720 these North Germans,
distracted by quarrels at home, had abandoned their West African
enterprise.
During the forties of the 19th century some consideration was given
in Germany to the question of colonization, but attention was
directed to unoccupied territories in America, and nothing was said
about Africa. About 1850 German steamships (under the Hamburg flag)
began to trade along the West Coast of Africa; and in that year the
celebrated House of Woermann opened its first agencies at Monrovia
(Liberia) and elsewhere on the West Coast.
Many German missionaries and colonists between 1845 and 1865 went
out to South Africa to settle chiefly in Cape Colony, Namakwaland
and Natal. Between 1860 and 1865, a Hanoverian Baron, von der
Decken, was exploring Kilima-njaro and the East coast of Africa. It
began to dawn on him that Zanzibar and the Zanzibar coast would form
a legitimate field for German enterprise, settlement, and
colonization, “especially after the opening of the Suez Canal.”
Although von der Decken was killed on the Jub River in 1865, he
transmitted his opinions to Otto Kersten, who wrote an article in
1867, stating that von der Decken had had ideas of buying Mombasa
from the Sultan of Zanzibar in order to found a German settlement.
By this time Hamburg merchants had established a flourishing trade
at Zanzibar, and until 1885 the German representative at that place
was almost invariably a Hamburg man; indeed before the unification
of the German Empire there was a Hamburg (Hanseatic) consul at
Zanzibar, rather than a German representative. Until the deliberate
intervention of Germany on the East coast of Africa, these Hanseatic
merchants practically placed themselves under British protection.
In 1878 the German African Society of Berlin was founded as a branch
of the International African Association. It absorbed two similar
societies dealing with Africa, more from a geographical than
political point of view. German “international” stations were
founded between Zanzibar and Tanganyika, and German explorers made a
careful examination of the country round Lake Mweru and of the river
Lualaba. Other German explorers (Wissmann amongst their number)
traversed and mapped the southern half of the Congo basin; and, when
the present writer visited the Congo in 1882-3, the German
explorers, nominally in the service of the King of the Belgians,
made no secret of the desire of Germany to acquire control over the
Western Congo. This, no doubt, was one reason why Bismarck opposed
the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1883-4 (pp. 89-343). But, when the
conference he had negotiated was brought about, he felt that French
and Belgian opposition, united, and the absence of German treaty
claims, made a German Congo State impossible. The energies of
Germany were then directed towards the Niger, but here they were
thwarted by the National African, afterwards the Royal Niger
Company.
Several emissaries were, however, sent out to Nigeria by the
German Colonial Society. This institution was founded at
Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1882, and at once met with enthusiastic
support.
In the fifties, sixties, and seventies, German Protestant
missionaries had established themselves in Damaraland and
Namakwaland, in South-West Africa. In 1864 some of these
missionaries bought the estates of the Walfish Bay Copper Company,
to the north-east of Walfish Bay, and here they hoisted the German
flag. So early as 1877 Sir Bartle Frere began to regard the
proceedings of the German missionaries with suspicion, and, to
combat their action, proposed adding Damaraland to the South African
Empire. But the British Government would only permit the annexation
of Walfish Bay. About 1880 the German missionaries renewed their
complaints as to the treatment they suffered at the hands of the
natives and the lack of protection they received from the British
authorities. Prince Bismarck took up these claims, and asked the
British Government whether it was prepared to protect Europeans in
Damaraland and the Namakwa country. Lord Granville repudiated any
responsibility outside Walfish Bay, and informed the Governor of the
Cape that the Orange River was the north-western boundary of Cape
Colony. In 1881 the German missionaries asked for a gunboat to
protect their interests on the Namakwa coast. The Foreign Office was
consulted, and again repudiated any British claims to this territory
outside Walfish Bay. At the beginning of 1883 Herr Lüderitz of
Bremen, acting possibly under the inspiration of the German Colonial
Society, asked the German Government whether he would receive German
protection if he acquired territories in South-West Africa. He
received a guarded consent (after the German Foreign Office had
again consulted the British Government and received a vague reply).
In April 1883 the agents of Herr Lüderitz went with a German ship to
the Bay of Angra Pequena, 150 miles north of the Orange River. The
Germans landed there, and marched inland 100 miles to the German
mission station of Bethany. The Hottentot chief of that district
sold to these agents of Herr Lüderitz a piece of land 24 miles long
and 10 miles broad, with that breadth of frontage on the Bay of
Angra Pequena, including all sovereign rights. On the 2nd of May,
1883, the German flag was hoisted on the shore of Angra Pequena Bay
over the first German colony. When the news reached the Cape, an
English gunboat, the Boadicea, went to Angra Pequena, and was met at
that place by a German gunboat, whose commander informed the captain
of the Boadicea that he was in German waters, and could exercise no
authority there. Nearly five months had apparently elapsed between
the hoisting of the German flag at Angra Pequena and this visit of
the British warship, and during that period no action had been taken
in England. Nor, indeed, could any action have been taken after the
explicit manner in which both Lord Beaconsfield’s and Mr Gladstone’s
Administrations had disavowed any British claims to the coast of
South-West Africa. Too late, Lord Granville informed Prince Bismarck
that “any claim of sovereignty or jurisdiction on the part of a
foreign power over any part of the coast between the Portuguese
boundary and the Orange River would be regarded as an encroachment
on the legitimate rights of Cape Colony.” Even then Germany did not
proceed to immediate action, but repeatedly pressed the question
whether England did or did not intend to take upon herself the
administration of this Damara coast. The British Government sought
to evade a direct reply by consulting the Cape Government. No answer
was returned by the latter till May 1884, when the Cape offered to
take over the control of the whole coast up to Walfish Bay. But in
April Germany had made a statement that she would not recognize
British protection over this coast, and on the 21st of June she
secured from England a recognition of a German protectorate. If the
action of the British authorities was blameworthy (from a national
point of view) in refusing to take Germany seriously, and in
puzzling her by declining to proclaim a British protectorate between
the Orange River and the Portuguese possessions, the blame falls
equally upon the Cape Parliament. It was the parsimony of Cape
Colony which feared to be led into expense, coupled with the
shortsightedness of the English Ministry of the day which refused to
believe in the possibility of Germany desiring colonies, that
permitted Germany to establish herself as a South African power. As
to the German Government, it behaved throughout with perfect
“correctness.” It gave the British Government ample time and
opportunity to make good any preceding rights.
Germany did not act here as she did in the Cameroons, where she
merely informed the British Government that Dr Nachtigal had been
commissioned by the German Government to visit the West coast of
Africa in order to report on the state of German commerce, and asked
that he might be furnished with recommendations to the British
authorities in West Africa. Her ambassador did, it is true, mention
that Dr Nachtigal would conduct negotiations connected with certain
questions, but the context implied that these questions were
commercial matters. Therefore the British Government, which had
already made arrangements for establishing a protectorate over the
whole coast between Lagos and the Cameroons, did not cause Consul E.
H. Hewett to return to his post with any undue hurry. Dr Nachtigal
arrived at the Isles de Los, on the Sierra Leone coast of Africa, on
the 1st of June, 1884, with the intention of taking under German
protection the River Dubreka, situated in the district which the
French call Rivières du Sud; but, as there was some doubt as to
French claims, nothing further was done at the time; and, when
afterwards the German flag was hoisted, it was at once removed on
the receipt of a French protest. On the 5th of July Nachtigal
reached a district on the east of the English Gold Coast colony, now
known as Togoland. Here arrangements were made with the native
chiefs and the country was declared a German protectorate. Then Dr
Nachtigal steamed right across to the Cameroons. Here he was just in
time. The principal chief, King Bell, had been won over by the gift
of £1000 to sign a treaty with Germany. The other chiefs refused to
do so, and Bell himself waited for a week to see if Consul Hewett
would arrive. However, when the Consul did come on the 19th of July,
King Bell had signed the treaty, and the German flag had been
hoisted over the Cameroons River. Consul Hewett was in time to carry
out the rest of his programme, and, so far as actual treaty-signing
went, the British had only lost a small piece of the coast-line they
had determined to secure; but, in order that a grudging spirit might
not be shown to Germany, she was finally allowed to take over all
the Cameroons district[205].
In East Africa Germany’s procedure may be summarized thus. Count
Pfeil, Dr Carl Peters, and Dr Jühlke arrived at Zanzibar on the 4th
of November, 1884, as deck passengers, dressed like mechanics.
Officially discountenanced by the German Consul, they nevertheless
left at once for the interior; and on the 19th of November the first
treaty was signed with a native chief, and the German flag was
hoisted in Uzeguha. Eventually other treaties were concluded in
Nguru, Usagara, Ukami, and other adjoining countries, which resulted
in a solid block of 60,000 square miles being ostensibly secured on
paper. Dr Peters hastened back to Berlin, and on the 12th of
February, 1885, he had already founded a German East African
Company, to whom he transferred his treaty rights. On the 27th of
February following, the German Emperor issued an official notice of
the extension of his protection to the territories acquired, or
which might be further acquired. In vain the Sultan of Zanzibar
protested. The British representative was instructed to support
German claims, and eventually it was decided that the Sultan of
Zanzibar’s authority was to be limited to a strip ten miles broad
along the coast between Cape Delgado and Somaliland.
In May 1885 the Foreign Office informed Germany that a British
company desired to develop the country between the Mombasa coast and
the Victoria Nyanza. The foundation for this scheme was the treaties
which the present writer had concluded on or near Kilima-njaro in
the preceding year, and which at the suggestion of the Foreign
Office had been transferred to the late Mr James Hutton of
Manchester. The Sultan of Zanzibar, however, refused to give in,
even to British representations, and made strenuous efforts to
support his claims to the hinterland of the East African coast. On
the 7th of August, 1885, a German squadron hove to in front of
Zanzibar and delivered an ultimatum. The Sultan bowed to the
inevitable, and recognized the German territorial claims, including
a protectorate over Vitu[206], a little patch of territory near the
Tana River. Gradually, however, matters settled down. An agreement
was come to in 1885 between the British and German Governments for a
recognition with France of the independence of the Sultan of
Zanzibar, and the definition of his exact dominions by a joint
commission. Eventually, in 1886, the respective British and German
spheres in East Africa were defined. In the same forceful manner the
Germans had taken Kilima-njaro. Except for the bulge of
Kilima-njaro, a line drawn from Wanga on the coast (near the river
Umba) straight to the north-east shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza is
the Anglo-German frontier in East Africa. The limit of the British
sphere on the north was the Tana River, Germany maintaining her hold
on Vitu. The German Government then came to terms with Portugal, and
agreed that the territories of the two powers in East Africa should
march together as far as the east coast of Lake Nyasa. Germany also
concluded treaties along the Somali coast.
The German Colonization Society and the German Colonial Society
subsequently united under the latter title, while the German East
African Association had been incorporated by Imperial charter.
Further subsidiary companies were organized; and by 1888 numerous
plantations had been established in the north of German East Africa,
near the coast. In 1888 the German East Africa Company obtained from
the Sultan of Zanzibar the lease for 50 years of the whole of the
Sultan’s coast territory from the Ruvuma River to the Umba. A great
development then took place in the Company’s operations, which were
more and more identified with the German Government. A staff of over
60 officials was sent out to carry on the new administration. Sir
Charles Euan Smith, who had succeeded Sir John Kirk as British Agent
at Zanzibar, warned the German administration in a friendly manner
that, unless greater care for Arab susceptibilities was shown in
replacing the Sultan of Zanzibar’s government on the coast, troubles
with the Arabs might ensue. His warning was only too well founded.
Five days after taking over the administration of the country—on the
21st of August, 1888—disturbances fomented by the Arab and Swahili
population broke out, and in another month the Germans held very few
posts on the coast or in the interior. An animosity also began to be
directed not only against the Germans, but against all Europeans,
and the situation became very serious. In 1889, the resources of the
Company having broken down, Captain Hermann Wissmann (afterwards
Major von Wissmann) was appointed Imperial Commissioner for East
Africa. With 1000 native troops, mainly Sudanese recruited with the
help of the British Government, 200 German sailors, and 60 German
officers and non-commissioned officers, von Wissmann carried on a
vigorous campaign against the Arabs and Swahili, and by the end of
1889 he had put down the revolt and captured and executed the leader
of it, Bushiri. It took six months longer, however, to quiet some of
the interior districts and those near the River Ruvuma.
In the middle of 1890 Germany concluded a very wise arrangement with
England, by which, as has already been described in another chapter,
all German possessions to the north of the British boundary at the
Umba River were given up, and a British protectorate over Zanzibar
was recognized, while the German boundaries were carried inland to
the frontier of the Congo State. On the south, Great Britain was
admitted to the south end of Tanganyika, and secured all the west
coast of Lake Nyasa. From 1890 to the present time German settlement
and the development of German East Africa have gone on without any
disagreeable check so far as the Arabs or the European powers are
concerned. In 1893 a large and well-appointed steamer, the Hermann
von Wissmann, was placed on Lake Nyasa; and the British authorities
round that lake were amply rewarded for any help they might have
contributed towards its conveyance thither by the services which the
German steamer afterwards rendered in acting as a transport for a
portion of the British forces in the last war against the Lake Nyasa
Arabs. At the beginning of the 20th century the Germans had placed a
fine war-steamer on Lake Tanganyika.
On the Zanzibar coast new quarters in the old Arab towns sprang up
like magic, the streets being widened, kept clean, and well lit.
Flourishing plantations covered many acres of what was formerly
waste land. There was fair security for life and property, even in
the distant interior. The Arabs became reconciled to German rule,
while on the other hand the German officials slowly learnt the art
of dealing tactfully with subject races. Since 1890, when the coast
strip leased from the Sultan of Zanzibar was finally purchased from
him, the whole of German East Africa has been under direct Imperial
administration. This German possession has now an area of about
384,000 square miles, with a population—mainly Bantu
negroes—estimated at 10,000,000. The Asiatic settlers are stated at
only 7000, and the Europeans (mainly Germans) at 3800. It is likely
to turn out in course of time a flourishing tropical settlement; not
a country which Germans could colonize in the sense that Australia
or Canada are colonizable, but a Ceylon, a Java, a Southern India,
where the German planter may make a competence, where the goods of
Germany may find unrestricted markets, and where the Teuton may
educate and raise into a higher state of civilization a vigorous
negro people—some tribes of which, like the Wanyamwezi and the
Waswahili, possess fine qualities. The plateau region to the north
and north-east of Tanganyika may support here and there small but
flourishing colonies of white men. British Indians are already
settling somewhat thickly in the coast towns and are exchanging
their nationality for that of German subjects.
In 1891, scarcely two years after Wissmann had broken the power of
the Arabs, the Germans found themselves fighting a more difficult,
brave and unaccountable enemy, the Wa-hehe of the plateau region
south of the Rufiji river. These people seem to have some distant
affinity with the Zulu in appearance, character, and mode of
warfare. This may be due to their having been influenced by the
Wa-ngoni further south (partly in Portuguese, partly in German East
Africa), the Wa-ngoni (under various tribal names) being derived
from Zulu clans which left South-east Africa early in the 19th
century and crossed the Zambezi, reaching northwards nearly to the
Victoria Nyanza. The German war with the Wa-hehe lasted till about
1893. Then ensued a period of comparative peace till the year 1905,
when a most serious native rising took place in the southern
districts of the colony, between North Nyasa and the Kilwa coast.
Nearly all the tribes, Muhammadan and Pagan, joined in attempting to
oust the Germans. Officials, Catholic missionaries (male and
female), planters, and traders were murdered. It took nearly a year
and a half to subdue this rebellion completely, and something like
120,000 natives (adults and children) died during this struggle, or
from its immediate results; they were killed in battle, by famine
resulting from the destruction of crops or neglect of agriculture,
or by disease. The effects of this depopulation are still to be seen
in the coast belt of Kilwa and in the Ruvuma watershed. The Wa-ngoni
(or Magwangwara as they are sometimes called) were almost
exterminated—an achievement by no means to be greatly mourned, since
they had kept East Africa (Lake Nyasa to the Indian Ocean) unsettled
by their raids, sparsely populated, and scarcely cultivated for some
fifty years previously. The Germans subdued this native rising with
a small army of German officers and non-commissioned officers, and
Masai and Sudanese soldiers, and even brought the Oceanic negro of
New Guinea face to face with his African brother for the first time
for something like three hundred thousand years! But these Papuan
and Melanesian soldiers were not altogether a success.
It was alleged that this great rising was caused by misgovernment,
and by imposing on the people labour taxes which were most
unpopular, especially when this forced labour was leased out to
conscienceless European planters. Herr Dernburg—then German Colonial
minister—came out to investigate the cause of this revolt in 1907.
Since his recommendations were adopted the whole of German East
Africa has been peaceful.
In 1890 railway construction began, firstly in a line from Tanga (a
northern port) to Usambara and eventually Kilimanjaro. This at
present (1912) has a length of 108 miles. In the early years of the
20th century a Dar-es-Salaam[207]-Tanganyika line was begun which
already reaches Kilimatinde, 240 miles inland. Another line,
starting from Kilwa on the southern coast, aims at the northern end
of Lake Nyasa.
The later history of the Cameroons has been much like that of German
East Africa—revolts, “sharp lessons,” then attacks by hostile tribes
inland, which are quelled by expeditions and the building of forts,
followed by other revolts still further in the interior, to be
succeeded by still further victories and advances; but on the whole
increasing peace and order throughout the country, and a great
development of trade. Unfortunately, as amongst some officials of
the East Africa Company and Administration, so among a few of the
Government servants in the Cameroons, there were instances of great
cruelties committed between 1887 and 1896, cruelties which led to a
serious revolt among the negro soldiery (1895). Germany wisely did
not hush up these affairs, but investigated them in an open court
and punished the guilty. It will be seen, I fancy, when history
takes a review of the foundation of these African states, that the
unmixed Teuton—Dutchman or German—is on first contact with subject
races apt to be harsh and even brutal, but that he is no fool and
wins the respect of the negro or the Asiatic, who admire rude
strength; while his own good nature in time induces a softening of
manners when the native has ceased to rebel and begun to submit.
There is this that is hopeful and wholesome about the Germans. They
are quick to realise their own defects, and equally quick to amend
them. As in commerce so in government, they observe, learn and
master the best principles. The politician would be very
shortsighted who underrated the greatness of the German character,
or reckoned on the evanescence of German dominion in strange lands.
In 1904-5 there were risings of the Bantu negroes against German
authority in the western part of the Cameroons[208] colony. These
were suppressed after much bush fighting, but the cause of them
being oppressive legislation, the Governor of the Cameroons was
changed in 1906, since which time the whole country has been
peaceful. In the far interior German influence was established over
the banks of the Shari and of Lake Chad by 1902; and about the same
time Germans began to open up relations with the “Fang” country in
the western part of the Congo watershed. Railways were begun in the
first decade of the 20th century. One from Victoria (Ambas Bay—the
original settlement of the Baptist mission—see p. 244) runs round
the southern flanks of Cameroons Mountain to Buëa, the German
capital (3000 ft. above sea-level); another from the Cameroons river
(Duala) to the Manenguba mountains and Bayoñ (this will eventually
link up with the Victoria-Buëa line and be built northwards towards
the Shari river); and a third from Duala south-eastward to the
Nyanza river.
In 1911-12, Germany obtained from France additional territory on the
south and west of the Cameroons Colony to the extent of 100,000
square miles, bringing this African dominion eastwards into the
Central Sudan, to the Mubangi river, main Congo, and north coast of
the Gaboon. Germany thus secures the whole basin of the Sanga river
(a valuable waterway into the Fang country) and now possesses in the
Cameroons—or as it is spelt in the German fashion, Kamerun—an Empire
in Western Equatorial Africa of some 292,000 square miles, with a
population of negroes and negroids numbering about 4,000,000. The
country is rich in valuable products, and already the annual trade
amounts to about £2,200,000 in value.
In South-west Africa Germany, by arrangement with Portugal and
eventually with England, secured a protectorate or sphere of
influence over a very large stretch of country—322,450 square
miles—bounded on the north by Portuguese West Africa, on the south
by the Orange River, and on the east by British Bechuanaland, with,
in addition, a long, narrow strip, which reached the Zambezi at its
confluence with the Chobe. This country along the coast-line is very
barren; it is, in fact, a hopeless desert, most hopeless of all
between the Orange River and Walfish Bay. But the interior is
mountainous, and in these mountains there are stretches of
well-watered country where cattle are kept in enormous herds.
Moreover, this mountainous country is very healthy. With the Bantu
Herero, who inhabit the northern part of German South-west Africa,
the Germans at first got on very well, thanks to the influence
exerted by the German missionaries; but with the pure-blood and
half-caste Hottentots, who inhabit the southern section of the
colony and almost all the coast-belt, the Germans have been
constantly at war. These Hottentots, many of whom have some slight
infusion of Dutch blood which renders them more warlike than their
relations in Cape Colony, are Christians of a kind, wear clothes,
and bear Dutch names. They at first found a leader in a certain
Hendrik Witbooi, who again and again inflicted defeats on small
parties of German soldiers, made treaties and broke them, and from
first to last gave the Germans a great deal of trouble. Although he
could boast of but a paltry number of followers, he fought in a
waterless, mountainous country, where concealment was easy and
pursuit difficult. In 1894 he made peace with the Germans and
remained more or less their ally till 1904. As he spoke Cape Dutch
fluently he soon mastered German, and for a time seemed really
reconciled to the Germanization of his people—already Calvinist or
Lutheran Christians.
But in 1903, the Hottentots living on the north of the Orange River
and largely mixed with Boer blood—the Bondelzwarts—rose against the
Germans; and, although they only numbered some five thousand
fighting men at most, they occupied the German forces for four years
before they were conquered, mainly by extermination. The deserts in
which they lived (yet from which they were being dispossessed) were
remote and inaccessible except from the British possessions. Whilst
the German forces were attacking the Bondelzwarts, the Bantu Damara
or Ova-herero in the far north broke out into rebellion, attacked
the German settlers and traders without warning, and murdered some
of them, destroying all the homesteads they could find. The excuse
they gave for this furious outburst was that, when they signed the
original treaties of friendship and acceptance of protection, they
had no idea they were signing away their native land; and that
subsequently much vacant land in the Damara country had been given
or sold by the German Chartered Company[209] or government to white
settlers, some of whom also on unfair pretexts had taken away native
cattle. Reinforcements came out from Germany under General von
Trotha, and the mass of the Herero army was attacked in its
stronghold, the Waterberg range of mountains in about Lat. S. 21°.
The Herero warriors were slaughtered in numbers; nevertheless, the
larger proportion of the fighting men succeeded in evading the
encircling movement of the Germans and escaped under the leadership
of a chief, Samuel Maherero, and fought against the Germans for
months after their great defeat in the Waterberg mountains in August
1904[210].
In the early autumn of that year the Hottentots broke out again with
renewed vigour, first under the leadership of a Herero half-caste,
Morenga, and a few days later under the renowned Hendrik Witbooi.
The Nama Hottentots, as a signal of their defiance of the German
power, assassinated about sixty German settlers in the south-east
part of the Colony, scrupulously distinguishing between them and the
Boers or British residing in or travelling through the country.
These (as the Herero had done, far to the north) they left uninjured
in any way. General von Trotha was baffled by the double
enemy—Hottentots and Bastards in the south, Herero in the north. He
issued proclamations of a somewhat savage tone in his exasperation,
and these being annulled by the Imperial Government he resigned and
returned to Germany in 1905. In the autumn of that year a new
governor—von Lindequist—arrived, and by reasonable measures of
conciliation and by the allotment of definite native reserves made
peace with the Ovaherero. Samuel Maherero however preferred to
remain on British territory, where he had taken refuge. Since the
close of 1906, however, there has been no more trouble between the
Germans and the Herero, who are slowly recovering from the awful
loss of life and diminution of their notable nation during this
terrible war of fierce hatred on either side[210]. The Ovambo
farther north have given signs of unrest, but are believed now to
have become reconciled to German rule.
Hendrik Witbooi died in 1905; and Morenga was finally killed by a
British police patrol, in August 1907, in the Kalahari desert. He
had fled to British territory in 1906, but had not been surrendered
to the Germans. On the contrary, he was treated as a political
refugee and given every chance of settling down peacefully. He only
abused this kindness, however, in order to organize attacks on the
Germans from the secure basis of the British frontier. Therefore his
death in a skirmish with British mounted police was entirely his own
fault.
By 1908 all these troubles were at an end, and German South-west
Africa was free from native foes. But the long war in these deserts
and bare, rocky mountains had cost the Germans the lives of over
five thousand soldiers and settlers, and an expenditure of 15
millions sterling! So that it would have been cheaper at the
commencement of this colony’s history to have carried out a fair
land-settlement which would have contented the natives and still
have left more than half the area of South-west Africa at the
disposal of the white man.
In 1908 diamonds were discovered in the sandy desert country at the
back of Luderitz Bay. Their quality was that of the Brazilian or
Liberian diamond, rather than of the type of Cape Colony or
Transvaal stone. Though as yet not large in size they were of good
“water,” and in 1909 the total value of the diamonds exported was
£771,776 in value. In succeeding years the supply fell off somewhat.
In the northern part of the Colony, at Otavi and Tsumeb, copper
mining is carried on; and the output of copper is sufficient to
warrant the construction of railways of considerable length. Cotton
cultivation has been begun, and the keeping of cattle, sheep, and
Angora goats has revived once more with the cessation of warfare.
The amount of sheep indeed is beginning to approach a total of half
a million. Cattle thrive well in the interior, especially in the
northern half. So also do horses, camels, asses and pigs. Camels
have proved most useful for the desert regions of the coast-belt and
the south.
The guano islands along the coast all belong to British subjects and
are part of Cape Colony. So also is the only really good harbour on
the coast—Walfish Bay. This little enclave of 430 square miles
belongs to Cape Colony and is British territory. It would be an act
of not wasted generosity some day to transfer this little patch to
Germany for the benefit of German South-west Africa. Its retention
by the British Empire is of the dog-in-the-manger type of policy. It
is no longer of any use to us, nor does the want of it cripple
German South-west Africa; yet its possession by Germany would
relieve her of the continued heavy expenditure needed to maintain
the adjoining Swakopmund as a landing-place for passengers and
goods.
A railway of over two hundred miles now connects the southern port,
Luderitzhafen (Angra Pequena) with the inland settlement of
Keetmanshoop, and will be extended some day to the Orange River and
the Cape railway system. Another and longer railway (359 miles) goes
from Swakopmund to the Tsumeb copper mines. A third railway (237
miles) of small gauge—the first constructed—connects Swakopmund with
the administrative capital, Windhoek. There is also a short line
between the Otavi copper mines and Groot Fontein. So that, between
1900 and 1912, Germany has constructed over 1000 miles of railway in
her colony of South-west Africa.
This indeed comes nearer to being a real colony than any other
possession of Germany in Africa. Out of a total population of not
quite 100,000, nearly 11,000 are Germans, the rest of the twelve to
thirteen thousand whites being Boers and British. (The negro
population—Bantu, Hottentot, Bushman, and half-castes—only numbers
about 85,000 since the wars of 1903-7.) The climate is nearly
everywhere healthy for the white man, and the tsetse fly is almost
completely absent from the entire colony of 322,450 square miles.
Only in the extreme north, near the Kunene River, the Kubango, and
Kwando is there malarial fever. In the interior, more or less
parallel with the coast, are mountain ranges rising to considerable
altitudes—8972 feet is the highest point. They enclose fertile
valleys, and their mists and rains nourish perennial streams, which
however do not send their waters to the sea except in flood time.
Indeed over much of this central and northern mountain region the
average yearly rainfall, between October and April, is only 20
inches.
Germany has made far from a bad bargain with Fate in investing in
what was thought at the time by ignorant statesmen in England and
Cape Colony to be a derelict portion of South Africa. Like parts of
the French Sahara, German South-west Africa may turn out to be a
singularly healthy and wealthy tract of land. But can it remain long
a German Colony? Will not the attraction of the South African Union
be more powerful than the fiat of governments five thousand miles
away in London and Berlin? The parallel instances of Texas, Florida,
and the United States may be quoted some day, very appositely. But
such a movement, if it ever does come about, will be a peaceful one
because it will be irresistible; and it may be coeval with a very
close alliance in Europe, Asia, and Tropical Africa between Germany
and her oldest Colony—Britain.
Togoland, between the Gold Coast and Dahomé, became a German
protectorate in 1884. It has an area of 33,700 square miles and a
negro population of about 1,000,000. Its boundaries were finally
settled with France and Britain in 1899, and the neutral sphere,
which contained the towns of Yendi and Salagá, was divided between
Germany and Britain. Togoland stretches northward to the 11th degree
of N. Lat. (its boundary with France) and includes the important
Muhammadan towns of Yendi and Sansanne Mangu, in which the trading
population is mainly Hausa. The administrative capital is Lome on
the very narrow coast-belt. High and less unhealthy land for
European settlement has been discovered in the interior; there have
been no disturbances with the natives, and German trade has
prospered. The annual total of imports and exports is now (1912)
about £900,000. There is a railway, in all of about 130 miles, which
links up Lome with other coast stations and with the hill stations
in the interior. Togoland is the only German colonial possession
which is self-supporting and does not require an annual subsidy
towards its upkeep. The land has not been taken from the natives,
and the native “Kings” and chiefs not only remain in power but are
much consulted by the German government. Consequently there has
never been any native rising or discontent with the white man’s
over-rule.
Germany now possesses an African Empire of 1,032,000 square miles
with a population of about 14,500,000 negroes and 30,700
whites—mainly Germans.
----------------------------------------------------------------
GERMAN AFRICA
Plate VI.
[Illustration]
EXPLANATORY NOTE
[red] _Area of German Possessions in 1885_
[yellow] ” ” ” _1912_
----------------------------------------------------------------
-----
Footnote 204:
East Friesland.
Footnote 205:
Perfunctory regret for such concessions may be spared when it is
borne in mind that the United States of Europe (as they would have
become in an Anti-British League) would hardly have allowed even
Free-trade England to acquire _all_ the coast-line of the Dark
Continent.
Footnote 206:
The concession of Witu, or Vitu, had been obtained by the Denhardt
brothers on the 8th of April, 1885, and a German protectorate was
declared on the 27th of May. For subsequent history see page 384.
Footnote 207:
Dar-es-Salaam is the capital of German East Africa.
Footnote 208:
Kamerun is the official spelling of the old Portuguese name for
this region (Camarões) which we render “Cameroons.”
Footnote 209:
In the early days of the colony, when Germany rather despaired
about the unprofitable region she had annexed on the map, she
brought into existence the German South-west Africa Company in
order to introduce capital into the country. To this company were
given extensive land and mineral concessions without any regard
whatever for native rights or sentiment. Hence, when these rights
were exercised, arose much trouble with the settled negro
population.
Footnote 210:
There are said to be only about 20,000 Herero people now living in
Damaraland. It would be a great pity if this intelligent, strong
race of Bantu negroes disappeared. They must have an interesting
history behind them, which is being slowly pieced out by tradition
and by the etymology of their remarkable language, by some
regarded as the “Sanskrit of the Bantu.” They seem to have
emigrated almost direct to South-West Africa from East Equatorial
Africa some fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago, bringing their
long-horned cattle with them.
CHAPTER XVII
THE FRENCH IN MADAGASCAR
The Island of Madagascar is possibly alluded to by the Alexandrian
Greek geographer, Ptolemy, who wrote during the 2nd century after
the birth of Christ, as “Menouthias[211],” and by other classical
geographers as Monouthis or Menoutheseas; though it is more probable
that at most Pemba, Zanzibar or one of the Komoros was meant both by
Ptolemy’s informants and the unknown authors of the Periplus of the
Erythræan Sea who first used the term “Menouthias” a century earlier
(about 50 A.C.). Then comes a break, and when the study of geography
is resumed in Europe the allusions to this island are more obvious,
and evidently come through post-Islamic Arabs; a large island in the
Indian Ocean is alluded to as “Albargoa,” and “Manutia-Alphil.”
Older Arab names were rendered in medieval European geography as
Serandab, Phenbalon, Quambalon. Later an allusion is made to it in
Arab writings as “Jazirat-al-Komr”—“Island of the Full Moon”; but
this name more probably applies to what are still called the Komoro
Islands, an adjoining archipelago. On the maps of the Venetian
geographers Fra Mauro and Andrea Bianco, between 1457 and 1459,
wherein use has been made of Arab information, the Cape of Good Hope
is indicated (forty years before the discovery of Diaz) as Cavo di
Diab(olo), and Madagascar is given as a triangular island to the
north-east, and has on it the names of Sofala and Xengibar. From
Arab sources we learn that an Indian dau in 1420 rounded the
southernmost point of Africa—“Cape Diab”—and, turning again
eastward, sailed back past Madagascar, on the shore of which island
they discovered a rukh’s egg[212]. Madagascar was mentioned and
described in much fuller detail and with allusions to the gigantic
bird (whose fossil remains were discovered in the 19th century) by
Marco Polo the Venetian explorer at the beginning of the 14th
century. Polo obtained his information from Arab sea-captains of the
Persian Gulf. More authentic news of Madagascar was sent to Portugal
near the end of the 15th century by Pedro de Covilham, whose
journeys overland to India have been alluded to in Chapter IV. On
the 1st of February, 1506, a Portuguese fleet sent out by King
Manoel, under Francisco de Almeida, discovered the east coast of
Madagascar; but the island had already been sighted by a Portuguese
sea-captain on the 10th August, 1500, and named “São Lourenço,”
because the discovery was made on St Laurence’s Day. In 1507 its
west coast was visited and its shape more clearly defined by Gomez
d’Abreu. The name “Madagascar,” like the adjective “Malagasy,” is
probably of native origin, the former having been introduced in its
present form by Marco Polo and the Portuguese, and the latter by the
French.
It was not until 1540 that any Portuguese actually settled on the
island, and those who made this venture at its south-east extremity
were nearly all massacred in 1548. At the end of the 16th century
the Dutch visited Madagascar, and about the same time Dominican,
Ignatian, and Lazarist monk-missionaries made an unsuccessful
attempt to obtain a hearing for Christianity. Between 1618 and 1640
English and Dutch adventurers nibbled at Madagascar, but the hostile
and treacherous attitude of the natives and the unhealthy climate of
the island coasts caused these attempts to end invariably in
disaster. In 1642, however, the French “Company of the East” was
formed under the patronage of Cardinal Richelieu with the main
object of colonizing Madagascar. Pronis, a French Protestant of
dissolute habits, was sent out as Governor. Two years later a rival
project for the same purpose was started in England under the
presidency of Prince Rupert, and a small station was founded at St
Augustine’s Bay; but this was soon after abandoned, and the Company
broken up on account of the Civil War in England.
The name of the first French settlement at the south-east extremity
of Madagascar was “Fort Dauphin.” Pronis, whose immoral life shocked
the French settlers, was replaced as Governor by Flacourt, but the
fortunes of the settlement were chequered. The parent Company got
into trouble, and its charter was abolished. The royal concession of
Madagascar was then bandied about from nobleman to nobleman, and was
finally sold to Louis XIV, who, having reassumed these rights on
behalf of the crown, sent out the Duc de la Meilleraye. One of the
officers of the staff of the Duc de la Meilleraye was Vacher de
Rochelle, who explored the country, and acquired the rare advantage
of winning the friendship of the Malagasy. Vacher de Rochelle, for
some unknown reason nicknamed and ordinarily known as La Case[213],
was admired by the natives for his courage, and was invited to marry
the heiress of a powerful native chief. He did so, and becoming
dissatisfied with the mismanagement of the French settlement retired
into the interior, and became King-Consort of the state of Ambole at
the death of his father-in-law. Nevertheless, when the French got
into difficulties with the natives and were hard pressed, Vacher de
la Rochelle came to their assistance with great bravery. This
remarkable person, whose life should be written by some framer of
romances, died about 1671, assassinated by a native.
In 1664 the French East India Company was founded, and took over
Madagascar amongst other concessions under the pretentious title of
Gallia Orientalis. As if to punish them for this overweening
assumption, a great massacre occurred eight years afterwards,
leading to the almost entire extinction of the French settlers round
Fort Dauphin. The few survivors fled to the Island of Bourbon, which
the French had taken in 1638-43. Nevertheless, in spite of this
disaster, the French Government calmly annexed Madagascar by an
Order in Council of 1686, which was confirmed in 1719, 1720, and
1725.
At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century,
European pirates—English, French, and Dutch—who had begun to infest
the eastern seas, and to trade in defiance of the commercial
monopolies given to various Chartered East Indian companies,
gradually made Madagascar their headquarters, and formed several
strongly fortified settlements hidden away up creeks or inlets or
the mouths of rivers. Some of these pirates founded a cosmopolitan
city of freedom which they called “Libertatia,” on the island of St
Marie, off the east coast of Madagascar. They were swept away by
British and French war vessels in 1722-23. Numerous half-caste
offspring—known as _Malata_ by the Malagasies—arose from these
unions with the native women; and men of this hybrid type sometimes
became powerful chiefs.
In 1750 the French East India Company created a settlement on the
island of St Marie de Madagascar, which underwent violent
vicissitudes of fortune for the first few years of its life. In 1768
Fort Dauphin was for a short time reoccupied. In that year a man of
superior scientific attainments, M. Poivre, was appointed Governor
of Mauritius and initiated a scientific investigation of Madagascar
by sending thither a French naturalist, Philibert Commerson, who, as
the result of his brief examination of the flora and fauna, pointed
out the isolated character of Madagascar. In 1774 the French
naturalist Sonnerat[214] visited Madagascar, and discovered the
Ravenala or “Traveller’s Tree,” and that extraordinary aberrant
lemur, the Ayeaye (_Chiromys_).
In 1772 Madagascar was visited by a type of adventurer then very
uncommon, an Austrian Pole, called Benyowski, who alternately
offered his allegiance to France and England, and ultimately tried
to carve out for himself a native Malagasy principality, as the
result of which he was killed by the French in 1786.
Allusions were made in the first two chapters of this book to the
Malay invasion of Madagascar. This great island seems to have at
first been peopled by negro or negroid races from East Africa, while
Arabs had from very early days settled for trading purposes in the
adjoining Komoro Islands[215] and in the north of Madagascar. But at
a period of time probably antecedent to the Christian era Madagascar
was invaded by a people of Malay stock, coming thither from the
Malay Archipelago. Despite the vast distance which separates Java
and Madagascar, there is a current always streaming from the Sunda
Islands towards the east coast of Madagascar and the Komoro Islands;
another flows more towards Ceylon, the Maldivs, and the Seychelles.
Aided by the east Trade Winds, Malay outrigger canoes with sails
might conceivably be driven across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar in
a few weeks. Even of recent years cases have been known of Javanese
junks being stranded on the Komoro Islands, in one case with a
Javanese crew on board. However, numbers of Malays or rather
Polynesians must have invaded Madagascar simultaneously in order to
be able to overcome and absorb the previous negro inhabitants. It
would almost seem as though we had here an instance of deliberate
over-sea colonization on the part of this interesting race, which at
the same time was pushing eastward, almost further from its base, to
the Hawaii Islands. When the term “Malay” is used to describe these
Asiatic invaders of Madagascar it does not necessarily imply the
direct descendants of the Malays of the Malay Archipelago, but those
of an older race, from which Malays, Polynesians, and other
non-Papuan peoples of the Pacific are descended—a divergent branch
of the Mongol stock intermixed with an Indonesian (Caucasian)
element, perhaps also tinged with the Melanesian[216].
About the middle of the 18th century there was a tribe dwelling on
the high plateau of East-central Madagascar, known as the Hovas but
really bearing the name of Merina (Imerina) or even calling
themselves “Malagasy.” They were more recent colonizers of
Madagascar from across the sea, who, having landed on the coast of
the great island, some hundreds or even a thousand years ago, left
as quickly as possible the malarial coast region and forced their
way through the forests to the cool and open plateaus of Imerina.
Here they were much harried by the more mixed races around them, who
were of stronger physique. At last, driven into a corner, they
turned at bay, and from being the persecuted became the persecutors;
by means of much better military organization they pursued and
conquered the tribes which had harassed them; and their conquests,
spreading to the east coast and the south, brought them into contact
with European traders and settlers.
In 1792 the National Assembly of France sent M. Lescallier to visit
Madagascar. In 1801 Bory de St Vincent went thither and announced
that the colonization of Madagascar would atone to France for the
loss of San Domingo. In the following year Mr Inverarity, of the
Honourable East India Company’s service, made a survey of Bembatoka
Bay, a harbour on the west coast, since better known by the name of
its principal town, Mojanga. Lord Keith, a British admiral cruising
in these waters, visited the place in 1791, and directed the
attention of the Indian Government to the worth of Madagascar. In
1807 the French, in spite of British hostilities, made a determined
attempt to settle at Foule Point[217]. In the following year,
Impoina, the most powerful Hova chief on the Imerina plateau, died,
leaving the supreme Hova chieftainship to his second son, Radama.