FRENCH DISCOVERY OF WEST AFRICA
Concerning the controversy that is between the French and the
Portuguese as to which of them first visited West Africa, with
special reference to the fort at Elmina.
We will now turn our attention to the other pioneers of our present West
African trade, and commence with the French, for we cannot disassociate
our own endeavours in this region from those of France, Portugal,
Holland, and the Brandenburgers; nor are we the earliest discoverers
here. When we English heard the West African Coast was a region worth
trading with, those great brick-makers for the architects of England's
majesty, the traders, went for it and traded, and have made that trading
pay as no other nation has been able to do. However, from the first we
got called hard names--pirates, ruffians, interlopers, and such like--in
fact, every bad name the other nations could spare from the war of abuse
they chronically waged against each other.
The French claim to have traded with West Africa prior to the
discoveries made there by the emissaries of Prince Henry the
Navigator.[39] When on my last voyage out I was in French territory, I
own the discovery of this claim of my French friends came down on me as
a shock, because on my previous voyage out I had been in Portuguese
possessions, and had spent many a pleasant hour listening to the recital
of the deeds of Diego Cao and Lopez do Gonsalves, and others of that
noble brand of man, the fifteenth-century Portugee. I heard then nothing
of French discoverers, and also had it well knocked out of my mind that
the English had discovered anything of importance in West Africa save
the Niger outfalls, and I had a furious war to keep this honour for my
fellow countrymen. Then when I got into French territory not one word
did I hear of Diego Cao or Lopez; and so as a distraction from the
consideration of the private characters of people still living, I
started discoursing on what I considered a safer and more interesting
subject, and began to recount how I had had the honour of being
personally mixed up in the monument to Diego Cao at the mouth of the
Congo, and what fine fellows--I got no farther than that, when, to my
horror, I heard my heroes called microbes, followed by torrents of
navigators' names, all French, and all unknown to me. Being out for
information I never grumble when I get it, let it be what it may. So I
asked my French friends to write down clearly on paper the names of
those navigators, and promised as soon as I left the forests of the
Equator, and reached the book forests of Europe, I would try and find
out more about them. I have; and I own that I owe profound apologies to
those truly great Frenchmen for not having made their acquaintance
sooner; nevertheless I still fail to see why my honoured Portuguese,
Diego and Lopez, should have been called microbes, and I have no regrets
about my fights for the honour of the Niger for my own countrymen, nor
for my constant attempts to take the conceit out of my French and
Portuguese friends, as a set-off for "the conceit about England" they
were always trying to take out of me, by holding forth on what those
Carthaginians had done on the West Coast before France or Portugal were
so much as dreamt of.
The Portuguese discoveries you can easily read of in Major's great book
on Prince Henry; and as this book is fully accepted as correct by the
highest Portuguese authorities, it is safer to do so than to attempt to
hunt your Portuguese hero for yourself, because of the quantity of names
each of them possesses, and the airy indifference as to what part of
that name their national chroniclers use in speaking of them. I have
tried it, and have several times been in danger of going to my grave
with the idea that I was investigating the exploits of two separate
gentlemen, whereas I was only dealing with two parts of one gentleman's
name; nevertheless, it is a thing worth learning Portuguese for. And, in
addition to Major's book, we have now, thanks to the Hakluyt Society,
that superb thing, the Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of
Guinea, by Gomez Eanes de Zurara--a work completed in 1453. This work is
one on which we are largely dependent for the details of the early
Portuguese discoveries, because Gomez Eanes spent the later part of his
life in tidying up the Torre do Tombo--namely, the national archives, of
which he was keeper--and his idea of tidying up included the lady-like
method of destroying old papers. It makes one cold now to think of the
things De Zurara may have destroyed; but he evidently regarded himself,
as does the nineteenth century spring-cleaner, as a human benefactor;
and, strange to say, his contemporaries quite took his view; indeed,
this job was done at the request of the Cortes, and with the Royal
sanction. There is also an outstanding accusation of forgery against
Zurara, but that is a minor offence, and is one we need only take into
consideration when contemplating the question as to whether a man
capable of destroying early manuscripts and forgery might not be also
capable of leaving out of his Chronicle, in honour of the Navigator, any
mention of there being Frenchmen on the Coast, when he sent out his
emissaries to discover what might lay hidden from the eye of man down in
the Southern Seas. I do not, however, think De Zurara left out this
thing intentionally, but that he had no knowledge of it if it did exist,
for no man could have written as he wrote, unless he had a heart too
great for such a meanness. Certain it is Prince Henry never knew, for
these are the five reasons given by Zurara, in the grave, noble
splendour of his manner, why the Prince undertook the discoveries with
which his name will be for ever associated. I give the passage almost in
full because of its beauty. "And you should note well that the noble
spirit of this Prince (Henry the Navigator) by a sort of natural
constraint was ever urging him both to begin and carry out very great
deeds; for which reason after the taking of Ceuta, he always kept ships
well armed against the Infidel, both for war and because he also had a
wish to know the land that lay beyond the Isles of Canary and that Cape
called Bojador, for that up to his time neither by writings nor by the
memory of man was known with any certainty the nature of the land beyond
that Cape. Some said indeed Saint Brandan had passed that way, and
there was another tale of two galleys rounding the Cape which never
returned ... and because the said Lord Infant wished to know the truth
of this--since it seemed to him if he, or some other Lord, did not
endeavour to gain that knowledge, no mariners or merchants would ever
dare to attempt it, (for the reason that none of them ever trouble
themselves to sail to a place where there is not a sure and certain hope
of profit,) and seeing also that no other prince took any pains in this
matter, he sent out his own ships against those parts, to have manifest
certainty of them all, and to this he was stirred up by his zeal for the
service of God, and of King Dom Duarto, his Lord and brother, who then
reigned; and this was the first reason of his action."
"The second reason was that if there chanced to be in those lands a
population of Christians or some havens into which it would be possible
to sail without peril, many kinds of merchandise might be brought to
this nation which would find a ready market, and reasonably so because
no other people of these parts traded with them, nor yet people of any
other that were known; and also the products of this nation might be
taken there, which traffic would bring great profit to our countrymen."
"The third reason was that as it was said that the power of the Moors in
that land of Africa was very much greater than was commonly supposed,
and that there were no Christians among them nor any other race of men,
and because every wise man is obliged by natural prudence to wish for a
knowledge of the power of his enemy; therefore the said Lord Infant
exerted himself to cause them to be fully discovered to make it known
determinedly how far the power of those Infidels extended."
"The fourth reason was because during the one and thirty years he had
warred against the Moors he had never found a Christian King nor a Lord
outside this land, who for the love of Jesus Christ would aid him in the
said war; therefore he sought to know if there were in those parts any
Christian Princes in whom the charity and the love of Christ was so
ingrained that they would aid him against those enemies of the Faith."
"The fifth reason was the great desire to make increase of the Faith of
our Lord Jesus Christ, and to bring to Him all the souls that should be
saved."
According to the Portuguese, Gil Eannes was the first emissary of Prince
Henry who succeeded in passing Cape Bojador. This feat he accomplished
in 1434; but on this his first voyage out he contented himself with
passing the Cape: a thing which previous expeditions of Prince Henry had
failed to do, and which, so far apparently as Prince Henry knew, had not
been done before, for it was regarded as a tremendous achievement.
The next year Prince Henry's cupbearer, Affonso Gonsalves Baladaya, set
out accompanied by Gil Eannes in a caravel; and the coast to the South
of Bojador was visited; their furthest expedition was to a shallow bay
called by them Angra des Ruives.[40] They then returned to Portugal, and
the next year again went down the coast as far as a galley-shaped rock.
This place they called Pedro de Galli, from its appearance; its present
name is Pedra de Galla. Their chief achievement was the discovery of the
Rio do Oura. It is not an important river in itself, but only one of
those deceptive estuaries common on the West coast. But it was the first
West African place the Portuguese got gold dust at, hence its name. The
amount of gold was apparently not considerable, and the chief cargo that
expedition took home was sea wolves' skins; they reported quantities of
seals or sea wolves as they called them here, and this report was the
cause of the next Portuguese expedition; for the Portuguese in those
days seem to have always been anxious for sea wolves' oil and skins; and
whether this be a survival or no, it seems to me curious that the ladies
of Lisbon are to this day very keen on sealskin jackets, which their
climate can hardly call for imperatively. But, however this may be, it
is certain that we have no account of the Portuguese having passed south
of the next important cape South of Bojador, namely, Blanco, before
1443. The terrible tragedy of Tangiers and political troubles hindered
their explorations from 1436 to 1441,[41] and the French claim to have
been down the West Coast trading not only before this date, but before
Prince Henry sent a single expedition out at all, namely, as early as
1346.
The French story is that there was a deed of association of the
merchants of Dieppe and Rouen of the date 1364. This deed was to arrange
for the carrying on to greater proportions of their already existing
trade with West Africa. The original of this deed was burnt, according
to Labat, at Dieppe, in the conflagration of 1694.[42] How long before
this Association was formed that trade had been carried on, it is a
little difficult to make out, I find, from the usual hindrance to the
historical study of West Africa, namely, lack of documentary evidence
and a profusion of recriminatory lying. This association was under the
patronage of the Dukes of Normandy, then Kings of England; and its
ultimate decay is partly attributed to the political difficulties these
patrons became involved in. The French authorities say the Association
was an exceedingly flourishing affair; and it is stated that under its
auspices factories were established at Sierra Leone, and that a fort was
built at La Mina del Ore, or Del Mina, the place now known as Elmina, as
early as 1382. Now it is round the subject of this fort that most
controversy wages, for this French statement does not at all agree with
the Portuguese account of the fort. The latter claim to have discovered
the coast--called by them La Mina, by us the Gold--in 1470, with an
expedition commanded by Joao de Santarim and Pedro de Escobara. The
Portuguese, finding this part of the coast rich in gold, and knowing the
grabbing habits of other nations where this was concerned, determined to
secure this trade for themselves in a sound practical way, although they
were already guarded by a Papal Bull. The expedition that discovered La
Mina was the last one made during the reign of Affonso V.; but his son,
who succeeded him as Joao II., rapidly set about acting on the
information it brought home. This king indeed took an intelligent
interest in the Guinea trade, and was well versed in it; for a part of
his revenues before he came to the throne had been derived from it and
its fisheries. Joao II. energetically pushed on the enterprise founded
by his father Affonso V., who had in 1469 rented the trade of the Guinea
Coast to Fernam Gomez for five years at 500 equizodas a year,[43] on the
condition that 100 leagues of new coast should be discovered annually,
starting from Sierra Leone, the then furthest known part, and reserving
the ivory trade to the Crown. The expedition sent out by King Joao,
commanded by the celebrated Diego de Azambuja, took with it, in ten
caravels and two smaller craft, ready fashioned stones and bricks, and
materials for building, with the intention of building a fort as near as
might be to a place called Sama, where the previous expedition had
reported gold dust to be had from the natives. This fort was to be a
means of keeping up a constant trade with the natives, instead of
depending only on the visits of ships to the coast. Azambuja selected
the place we know now as Elmina as a suitable site for this fort. Having
obtained a concession of the land from the King Casamanca, on
representing to him what an advantage it would be to him to have such a
strong place wherein he and his people could seek security against their
enemies, and which would act as a constant market place for his trade,
and a storehouse for the Portuguese goods, Azambuja lost no time in
building the fort with his ready-fashioned materials, and not only the
fort, but a church as well. Both were dedicated to San Gorge da Mina,
and a daily mass was instituted to be said therein for the repose of the
soul of the great Prince Henry the Navigator, whose body had been laid
to rest in November, 1460. Indeed, one cannot but be struck with the
wealth of Portuguese information that we possess, regarding the
building of the castle at Elmina and by the good taste shown by the
Portuguese throughout; for, besides establishing this mass--a mass that
should be said in all Catholic churches on the West African Coast to
this day in memory of the great man whose enterprise first opened up
that great, though terrible region, to the civilised world--King Joao
granted many franchises and privileges to people who would go and live
at San Gorge da Mina, and aid in expanding the trade and civilisation of
the surrounding region, which is as it should be; for people who go and
live in West Africa for the benefit of their country deserve all these
things, and money down as well. Having done these, the king evidently
thought he deserved some honour himself, which he certainly did, so he
called himself Lord of Guinea, and commanded that all subsequent
discoverers should take possession of the places they discovered in a
more substantial way than heretofore; for it had been their custom
merely to erect wooden crosses or to carve on trees the motto of Prince
Henry, _Talent de bien faire_. The monuments King Joao commanded should
be erected in place of these transient emblems he designed himself; they
were to be square pillars of stone six feet high, with his arms upon
them, and two inscriptions on opposite sides, in Latin and Portuguese
respectively, containing the exact date when the discovery of the place
was made; by his order the cross that was to be on each was to be of
iron and cramped into the pedestal. Major says the cross was to surmount
the structure; but my Portuguese friends tell me it was to be in the
pedestal, and also that the remains of these old monuments are still to
be seen in their possessions; so we must presume that the outfit for an
exploring expedition in King Joao's days included a considerable cargo
of ready-dressed stones and materials for monuments, and that from the
quantity of discoveries these expeditions made, the sixteenth century
Portuguese homeward bound must have been flying as light as the Cardiff
bound collier of to-day.
Still it is remarkable that with all the wealth of detail that we have
of these Portuguese discoveries in the fifteenth century there is no
mention of the French being on the coast before Pedro do Cintra reaches
Sierra Leone and calls it by this name because of the thunder on the
mountains roaring like a lion, and so on; but he says nothing of French
factories ashore. Azambuja gives quantities of detail regarding the
building of San Gorge da Mina, but never says a word about there being
already at this place a French fort; yet Sieur Villault, Escuyer, Sieur
de Bellfond,[44] speaks of it with detail and certainty. Also M. Robbe
says that one of the ships sent out by the association of merchants in
1382 was called the _Virgin_, that she got as far as Kommenda, and
thence to the place where Mina stands, and that next year they built at
this place a strong house, in which they kept ten or twelve of their men
to secure it; and they were so fortunate in this settlement that in 1387
the colony was considerably enlarged, and did a good trade until 1413,
when, owing to the wars in France, the store of these adventurers being
exhausted, they were obliged to quit not only Mina, but their other
settlements, as Sestro Paris, Cape Mount, Sierra Leone, and Cape Verde.
Villault, who went to West Africa to stir up the French to renew the
Guinea trade, openly laments the folly of the French in ever having
abandoned it owing to certain prejudices they had taken against the
climate. His account of it is that about the year 1346 some adventurers
of Dieppe, a port in Normandy, who as descendants of the Normans, were
well used to long voyages, sailed along the coast of the negroes,
Guinea, and settled several colonies in those parts, particularly about
Cape Verde, in the Bay of Rio Fesco, and along the Melequeta coast. To
the Bay, which extends from Cape Ledo to Cape Mount they gave the name
of the Bay of France; that of Petit Dieppe to the village of Rio Corso
(between Rio France and Rio Sestro); that of Sestro Paris to Grand
Sestro, not far from Cape Palmas; while they carried to France great
quantities of Guinea pepper and elephants' tusks, whence the inhabitants
of Dieppe set up the trade of turning ivory and making several useful
works, as combs, for which they grew famous, and still continue so.
Villault also speaks of "a fair church still in being" at Elmina,
adorned with the arms of France, and also says that the chief battery to
the sea is called by the natives La Battarie de France; and he speaks of
the affection the natives have for France, and says they beat their
drums in the French manner. Barbot also speaks of the affection of the
natives for the French, and says that on his last voyage in 1682 the
king sent him his second son as hostage, if he would come up to Great
Kommondo, and treat about settling in his country, although he had
refused the English and the Dutch. Barbot, however, does not agree with
Villault about the prior rights of France to the discovery of Guinea; he
thinks that if these facts be true it is strange that there is no
mention of so important an enterprise in French historians, and
concludes that it would be unjust to the Portuguese to attribute the
first discovery of this part of the world to the French. He also thinks
it evidence against it that the Portuguese historians are silent on the
point, and that Azambuja, when he began to build his castle at Elmina in
1484, never mentions there being a castle there that had been built by
Frenchmen in 1385. This, however, I think is not real evidence against
the prior right of France. Take, for instance, the examples you get
constantly when reading the books of Portuguese and Dutch writers on
Guinea. You cannot fail to be struck how they ignore each other's
existence as much as possible when credit is to be given; indeed were it
not for the necessity they feel themselves under of abusing each other,
I am sure they would do so altogether, but this they cannot resist. Here
is a sample of what the Portuguese say of the Dutch: "That the rebels
(meaning the Dutch) gained more from the blacks by drunkenness, giving
them wine and strong liquors, than by force of arms, and instructing
them as ministers of the Devil in their wickedness. But that their
dissolute lives and manners, joined to the advantage which the
Portuguese at Mina, though inferior in numbers, had gained over them in
some rencontres, had rendered them as contemptible among the blacks for
their cowardice as want of virtue. That however the blacks, being a
barbarous people, susceptible of first impressions, readily enough
swallowed Calvin's poison (Protestantism), as well as took off the
merchandise which the Dutch, taking advantage of the Portuguese
indolence sold along the coast, where they were become absolute
pirates." Then, again, the same author says, "The quantity of
merchandises brought by the Dutch and their cheapness, has made the
barbarians greedy of them, although persons of quality and honour
assured them that they would willingly pay double for Portuguese goods,
as suspecting the Dutch to be of less value, buying them only for want
of better."[45] I could give you also some beautiful examples of what
the Dutch say of the Portuguese and the English, and of what the French
say of both, but I have not space; moreover, it is all very like what
you can read to-day in things about rival nations and traders out in
West Africa. I myself was commonly called by the Portuguese there a
pirate because I was English, and that was the proper thing to call the
English,--there was no personal incivility meant; and I quote the above
passage just to impress on you that when you are reading about West
African affairs, either ancient or modern, you must make allowance for
this habit of speaking of rival nations--it is the climate. And although
the Portuguese and the Dutch may choose to ignore the French early
discoveries, yet they both showed a keen dread of the French from their
being so popular with the natives, and did their utmost to oust them
from the West Coast, which they succeeded in doing for a long period.
And then again to this day, when a trader in West Africa finds a place
where trade is good, he does not cable home to the newspapers about it.
If it is necessary that any lying should be done about that place he
does it himself; but what he strives most to do is to keep its existence
totally unknown to other people; sooner or later some other trader comes
along and discovers it, and then that place becomes unhealthy for one or
the other of its discoverers,--and that is the climate again. Thus by
the light of my own dispassionate observations in West Africa, I am
quite ready to believe in that early French discovery; and I quite
agree with Villault about the quantity of words derived from the French
that you will find to this day among the native tongues, and even in the
trade English of the Coast, and in districts that have not been under
French sway in the historical memory of man. One of these words is the
word "ju ju," always regarded by the natives as a foreign word. Their
own word for religion, or more properly speaking for sacred beings, is
"bosum," or "woka." They only say "ju ju" so that you white man may
understand. The percentage, however, of Portuguese words in trade
English is higher than that of French.
After the fifteenth century it is not needful now to discuss in detail
the subject of the French presence in West Africa; for both Dutch and
Portuguese freely own to the presence there of the Frenchmen, and openly
state that they were a source of worry and expense to them, owing to the
way the natives preferred the French to either of themselves.
The whole subject of the French conquests in Africa is an exceedingly
interesting one, and one I would gladly linger over, for there is in it
that fascination that always lies in a subject which contains an element
of mystery. The element of mystery in this affair is, why France should
have persisted so in the matter--why she should have spent blood and
money on it to the extent she has, does, and I am sure will continue to
do, without its ever having paid her in the past, or paying her now, or
being likely to pay her in the future, as far as one can see. There are
moments when it seems to me clear enough why she has done it all; but
these moments only come when I am in an atmosphere reeking of La Gloire
or La France--a thing I own I much enjoy; but when I am back in the cold
intellectual greyness of commercial England, France's conduct in Africa
certainly seems a little strange and curious, and far more inexplicable
than it was when one was oneself personally risking one's life and
ruining one's clothes, after a beetle in the African bush. I really
think it is this sporting instinct in me that enables me to understand
France in Africa at all; and which gives me a thrill of pleasure when I
read in the newspapers of her iniquitous conduct in turning up, flag and
baggage, in places where she had no legal right to be, or, worse still,
being found in possession of bits of other nations' hinterland when a
representative of the other arrives there with the intention of
discovering it, and to his disgust and alarm finds the most prominent
object in the landscape is the blue to the mast, blood to the last,
flag of France, with a fire-and-flames Frenchman under it, possessed
of a pretty gift of writing communications to the real owner of
that hinterland--a respectable representative of England or
Germany--communications threatening him with immediate extinction, and
calling him a filibuster and an assassin, and things like that. For the
life of me I cannot help a "Go it, Sall, and I'll hold your bonnit"
feeling towards the Frenchman. It is not my fault entirely. Gladly would
I hold my own countryman's bonnet, only he won't go it if I do; so I
have to content myself with the knowledge that England has made the West
Coast pay, and that she certainly did beat the Dutch and Portuguese off
the Coast in a commercial war. Still she will never beat France off in
that way, because the French interest in Africa is not a commercial one.
France can and will injure our commerce in West Africa, in all
probability she will ultimately extinguish it, if things go on as they
are going, while we cannot hit back and injure her commercial prosperity
there because she has none to injure. There is also another point of
great interest, and that is the different effect produced by the
governmental interference of the two nations in expansion of territory.
That the expansion of trade, and spheres of influence are concurrent in
this region is now recognised by our own Government;[46] although the
Government somewhat flippantly remarks "possibly too late." It is, in my
opinion, certainly too late as regards both Sierra Leone and the Gold
Coast; but yet we see small evidence of our Government taking themselves
seriously in the matter, or of their feeling a regret for having failed
to avail themselves of the work done for England on the West Coast by
some of the noblest men of our blood. I have often heard it said it was
a sad thing for an Englishman to contemplate our West African
possessions, save one, the Royal Niger; but I am sure it is a far sadder
thing for an Englishwoman who is full of the pride of her race, and who
well knows that that pride can only be justified by its men, to see on
the one hand the splendid achievements of Mungo Park, the two Landers,
the men who held the Gold Coast for England when the Government
abandoned it after the battle of Katamansu, of Winwood Reade who, in the
employ of Messrs. Swanzy, won the right to the Niger behind Sierra
Leone, and many others; and on the other hand to see the map of West
Africa to-day, which shows only too clearly that the English
Government's last chance of saving the honour of England lies in their
supporting the Royal Niger Company.
It seems that as soon as a West Coast region falls under direct
governmental control with us a process of petrification sets in, and a
policy of international amiability and Reubenism, for which we have
Scriptural authority to expect nothing but failure. It was of course
necessary for our Government to take charge in West Africa when the
partitioning of that continent took place; but I fail to admire those
men who at the Council Board of Europe lost for England what had been
won for her by better, braver men. Still it is no use, in these weird
un-Shakespearian times, for any one to use strong language, so I'll turn
to the consideration of the advance made in West Africa by France; for
any one can understand how a woman must admire the deeds of brave men
and the backing up of those deeds by a brave Government.
The earlier history of the French occupation of Africa is that of a
series of commercial companies, who all came to a bad end. Of the
Association of the Merchants of Dieppe and Rouen in the fourteenth
century I have already spoken; and whatever may be the difficulty of
proving its existence in 1364, there is, I believe, no one who doubts
that it had an existence that terminated in 1664. The French authorities
ascribe its fall to the wars in France that succeeded the death of
Charles VI, 1392, and to the death of some of the principal merchants
belonging to it; but "the greatest cause of all was that many who had
gotten vast riches began to be ashamed of the name of traders, although
to that they owed their fortunes, and allying with the nobility set up
as quality," and neglected business in the usual way, when this happens.
The most flourishing settlements went into decay, and were abandoned all
save one, on the Isle of Sanaga, or what Labat calls the Niger, the
river we now call the Senegal.[47]
This French settlement is to this day one of the main French ports in
Africa, and it has remained in their possession, with the brief interval
of falling into the hands of the English for a few months.
The company that took over the enterprise of this Rouen and Dieppe
Association in 1664 was called the Compagnie des Indes Occidentals; it
paid for the stock and rights of the previous association the sum of
150,000 livres, and it had tremendous ambitions, for not only did it buy
up the West African enterprise, but also the rights of the lords
proprietors in the isles of Martinique, Guadaloupe, St. Christopher,
Santa Cruz, and Maria Galanta in the West Indies. This company came to a
sad end when it had still thirty years of its charter to run; in 1673 it
sold its remaining term of West African rights to a new company called
d'Afrique for 7500 livres. Its West Indian possessions the king seized
in 1674, and united them with the Crown.
Its successor, the Compagnie d'Afrique, started with its thirty years'
charter, and all the great ambitions of its predecessor. The king gave
it every assistance in the way of ships and troops to carry out its
designs; and it availed itself of these, for finding its trade
incommoded by the Dutch, who were then settled at Anguin and Goree in
1677, it got the king to remove the Dutch nuisance from Goree by an
expedition under Count d'Estras, and in 1678, by an expedition of its
own, under M. de Casse, it cleared the Dutch out of Anguin.
This company also made many treaties with the native chiefs. In 1679, by
means of treaty with the chiefs of Rio Fresco, nowadays barbarously
spelt Rufisque, and Portadali, now Portindal, and Joal, whose name is
still uninjured, it acquired rights over all the territory between Cape
Verde and the Gambia;[48] an exclusion from there of all other traders,
and an exemption from all customs; and in addition to these enterprises
it entered into a contract with the King of France to provide him with
2,000 negroes per annum for his West Indian Islands, and as many more as
he might require for use in the galleys. Shortly after this the
Compagnie d'Afrique expired in bankruptcy, compounding with its
creditors at the rate of 5_s._ in the L, which I presume was paid mainly
out of the 1,010,000 livres for which it sold its claim to its
successors. The successors were a little difficult to find at first, for
there seems to have been what one might call distaste for West African
commercial enterprise among the French public just then. However, a
company was got together to buy up its rights, accept its
responsibilities and carry on business in 1681.
In the matter of the company that succeeded the d'Afrique, confusion is
added to catastrophe, owing to the then Minister of State, M. Seignelay,
for some private end, having divided up the funds and created two
separate companies,--one to have the trade from Cape Blanco and the
Gambia--the Compagnie du Senegal; the other to hold the rest of the
Guinea trade to the Cape of Good Hope, the Compagnie du Guinea. This
arrangement, of course, left the Senegal Company with all the
responsibility of the compagnie d'Afrique, and without sufficient funds
to deal with them; and the Compagnie du Senegal complained, when, in
1694, it found its affairs in much confusion, throwing the blame on the
Government; but, says Astley, "the great are seldom without excuses for
what they do," and the division of the concession was persisted in, on
the grounds that when the company that succeeded d'Afrique was intact it
failed to fulfil the Government contract of sending 2,000 negroes
annually to the West Indies; and also that it had not imported as much
gold from Africa as it might have done. Against this the Directors
remonstrated loudly, saying that, during the two years and a half during
which they had been responsible for exporting negroes to the West
Indies, they had supplied 4,560 negroes, that the register of the Mint
proved they had sent home in three years 400 marks of gold, and that it
had cost them 400,000 livres to re-establish the trade of the Compagnie
d'Afrique, for which they had already paid more than it was worth. All
they got by these complaints was an extension of their trade rights from
Gambia to Sierra Leone and a confirmation of their monopoly in exporting
negroes to the French West Indies, and of their rights to Anguin and
Goree, that is to say, a promise of Government assistance if those Dutch
should come and attempt to reinstate themselves to the incommodation of
French commerce.
All this however did not avail to make the Compagnie du Senegal
flourish, so in 1694 it sold its remaining seventeen years of rights for
300,000 livres, to Sieur d'Apougny, one of the old Directors; and this
enterprising man secured the assistance of eighteen new shareholders,
and obtained from the Crown a new charter, and started afresh under the
name of the "Compagnie du Senegal, Cap Nord et Cote d'Afrique." It did
not prosper; nevertheless it may be regarded as having produced the
founder of modern Senegal, for it sent out to attend to its affairs,
when things were in a grievous mess, one of the greatest men who have
ever gone from Europe to Africa--namely, Sieur Bruee.
The name of this company of Sieur d'Apougny was d'Afrique; and the usual
thing happened to it in 1709, when, for 250,000 livres, it made over its
rights to a set of Rouen merchants, reserving, however, to itself the
right of carrying on certain branches of the trade for which it held
Government contracts; failing to carry these out they were taken from it
and handed over to the company of Rouen merchants, who succumbed to
their liabilities in 1717. Their rights were then bought up, for
1,600,000 livres, by the already established Mississippi Company of
Paris--a company which survived until 1758.
In 1758 the English again captured St. Louis, the French main post in
Senegal. In 1779 the French recaptured it, and it was ceded to them by
England officially in the treaty of 1783. This was merely the usual kind
of international amenity prevalent on the West Coast in those days.
Dutch, French, English, Danes, Portuguese, and Courlanders would
gallantly seize each other's property out there, while their respective
Governments at home, if the matter were brought before their notice, and
it was apparently worth their while, disowned all knowledge of their
representatives' villainies and returned the booty to the prior owner on
paper. The aggrieved Power then engaged in the difficult undertaking of
regaining possession; the said original villain knowing little and
caring less about the arrangements made on the point by his home
Government. But just at this period England dealt French trade a
frightful blow. The whole of her iniquity took the form of one John Law,
a native of Edinburgh,[49] who raised himself to the dignity of
comptroller-general of the finance of France by a specious scheme for a
bank, an East India Company and a Mississippi Company, by the profits of
which the French national debt was to be paid off, a thing then in
urgent need of doing, and every one connected with the affair was to
make their fortunes, an undertaking always in need of doing in any
country. The French Government gave him every encouragement, and in 1716
he opened the bank; in 1719 the shares of that bank were worth more than
eighty times the current specie in France; in 1720 that bank burst,
spreading commercial ruin. To this may be ascribed the period of
paralysis in the Senegal trade from 1719. The Compagnie de Senegal had
handed over their interest to the Mississippi Company involved in John
Law's bank scheme. After this, up to 1817, France like F. M. the Duke of
Wellington anent playing upon the harp, "had other things to do" than
attend to West Africa. During the Napoleonic Wars England took all the
French possessions in West Africa, but by the treaty of Paris of 1814
she handed back those in Senegal, save the Gambia. The French vessel
sent out to take over the territory was the ill-starred and
ill-navigated _Meduse_. Owing to her wreck it was not until 1817 that
France replaced officially her standard on this Coast. On the 25th of
January of that year, and represented by Colonel Smaltz, she again
entered into possession of Goree and St. Louis in the mouth of the
Senegal, which was practically all she had, and that was in a very
unsatisfactory state. Colonel Smaltz, in 1819, had to come to an
agreement with the Oulof chief of the St Louis district to pay him a
subsidy, but a mere catalogue of the wars between the French and the
Oulofs is not necessary here; they were mutually unsatisfactory until
there enters on the scene that second great founder of the French power
in Africa, General Faidherbe, in 1854. Faidherbe is indeed the founder;
but had it not been for Sieur Bruee and his travels far into the
interior, and the evidence he collected regarding the riches therein,
and of the general value of the country, it is not likely that, as
things were in 1854, France would have troubled herself so much about
extending her power in Senegal.
Faidherbe was also one of those men who get possessed by a belief in the
future of West Africa, regardless of any state of dilapidation they may
find it in, and who have the power of infusing their enthusiasm into the
minds of others; and he roused France to the importance of Senegal,
saying prophetically, "Our possession on the West Coast of Africa is
possibly the one of all our colonies that has before it the greatest
future, and it deserves the whole sympathy and attention of the Empire."
These were words more likely to inspire France or any other reasonable
Power with a desire to give Senegal attention, than those used by the
previous French visitor there, M. Sanguin, in 1785, who, speaking of
the island of St. Louis, says it consists entirely of burning sands on
whose barren surface you sometimes meet with scattered flints thrown out
among their ballast by ships, and the ruins of buildings formerly
erected by Europeans; but he remarks it is not surprising the sands are
barren, for the air is so strongly impregnated with salt, which pervades
everything and consumes even iron in a very short space of time. The
heat he reports unpleasant, and rendered thus more so by the reflection
from the sand. If the island were not all it might be, one might still
hope for better things ashore on the mainland, but not according to M.
Sanguin. The mainland is covered with sand and overrun with mangles, not
the sort, you understand, that vulgar little English boys used to state
their mothers had sold and invested the money in a barrel organ, but
what we now call mangroves; then, mentioning that the St. Louis water
supply was the cause of most of those maladies which carry off the
Europeans so rapidly, that at the end of every three years the colony
has a fresh set of inhabitants, M. Sanguin discourses on the charms of
West African night entertainments in a most feeling and convincing way,
stating that there was an infinity of gnats called mosquitoes, which
exist in incredible quantities. He does not mind them himself, oh dear
no! being a sort of savage, he says, totally indifferent to the
impression he may create in the fair sex, so that, if you please, he
smears himself over with butter, which preserves him from the
mosquitoes' impertinent stings. How he came by a sufficiency of butter
for this purpose I won't pretend to know; but he knew mosquitoes, for
impertinent is a perfect word for them. M. Sanguin, however, was not the
sort of man, with all his ability and enterprise, to advertise Senegal
successfully to France. Whatever Frenchman would care to go to a land
where he needs must be sufficiently indifferent to the fair sex to smear
himself with butter! Dire and awful dangers and miscellaneous horrors,
even to being carried off by maladies among mangles in an atmosphere
stiff with mosquitoes, but not that!
Now Faidherbe was different. Remember to the honour of the man he
started with the above-described environment, but he took the grand tone
and did not dwell on local imperfections; the burning sands of Senegal
he mentioned, as all who know them are, by a natural constraint, forced,
as Azurara would say, to do, but he said our intentions are pure and
noble, our cause is just, the future cannot fail us;[50] and with such
words, to his credit and to the credit of La France, he spoke to her
heart; and he spoke truly, for with all its failures, with all the
fearful loss of the lives of Frenchmen, Senegal is a grand thing, and it
is a great thing for France, for from it has risen her masterdom over
the Western Soudan--a work also inaugurated by Faidherbe, through his
support of Lieutenant Maze, who reached the Niger. Practical in his
work, Faidherbe was also--by rebuilding the fort at Medina--the
annexation of the Oulof country (1856); the institution of a battalion
of native Tirailleurs (1857); the telegraph line between St. Louis and
Goree (1862); the construction of the harbour at Darkar and the erection
of a first-class lighthouse at Cape Verd (1864); and the annexation of
the kingdom of Cayore (1865). A grand record! and one that would be
grander for France were it not for the mismanagement that followed
Faidherbe's rule in commercial and financial matters.
The want of financial success in her enterprise in West Africa is a
matter that has constantly irritated France. She is continually saying:
"English possessions on that Coast pay, why should not mine?" It is not
my business to obtrude on her an answer, I merely dwell on the subject
because I clearly see there are creeping nowadays into our own methods
of managing Africa, those very same causes of financial failure that
have afflicted her, namely, too high tariffs, too exaggerated views of
the immediate profits to be got from those regions, and certain unfair
methods of dealing with natives.
In attempting, however, to account for the trade from the French
possessions in West Africa being proportionately so small to the immense
area of country, the make of the country and its native inhabitants must
be taken into consideration. Enormous districts of the French
possessions are, to put it mildly, not fertile, and capable of producing
in the way of a marketable commodity only gum, which is gathered from
the stems of the acacia horrida. It is an excellent gum, and there is
plenty of this acacia, and other gum-yielding acacias, but pickers are
not so plentiful, particularly now French authorities object to native
enterprise taking the form of raiding districts for slaves to employ in
the industry. Other enormous districts, however, are as fertile as need
be, and densely forested with forests rich in magnificent timber and
rubber wealth. The inhabitants, a most important factor in the
prosperity or otherwise, of West African regions, are varied, but
roughly speaking, we may say France possesses the whole of the tawny
Moors, and tawny Moors have their good points and their bad. Their good
point, from our present point of view, is their commercial enterprise.
From the earliest historical account we have of them to the present day,
it has been their habit to suck the trade out of the rich and fertile
districts, carry it across the desert, and trade it with the white
Moors, who, in their turn, carried it to the Mediterranean and Red Sea
ports. The opening of the West Coast seaboard trade, inaugurated by the
Portuguese, has acted as a commercial loss to the tawny Moors during the
past 400 years, and must be held, in a measure, accountable for the
decay of the great towns of Timbuctoo, Jenne, Mele, and so on, though
only in a measure, for herein comes the bad point of the inhabitants of
the Western Soudan, from our point of view, namely, their devotion to
religious differences and politics, which prevents their attending to
business. As this state of internecine war came on about the same period
as the opening to the black Moors and negroes of a market direct with
European traders in the Bight of Benin, it hurried the tawny Moors to
commercial decay. Timbuctoo never recovered the blow dealt her by the
Moorish conquest in 1591. At the breaking up of the Empire of Askia the
Great, revolt and war raged through the region, Jenne revolted in the
west, an example followed by the Touaregs Fulah and Malinkase tribes.
Both north and south were thrown into confusion, and Timbuctoo, their
intermediary, finding her commerce injured, rebelled in her turn. She
was conquered and brutally repressed by the Moorish conquerors in 1594.
A terrible dearth provoked by a lack of rain visited the town, and her
inhabitants were reduced to eating the corpses of animals, and even of
men. This was followed by the pestilence of 1618,[51] but through this
arose any quantity of wars and upheavals of political authority among
the tawny Moors in the early days of European intercourse with the West
African Coast. They assumed a more acute, religious form in our own
century, or to be more accurate just at the end of the eighteenth, when
Shazkh Utham Danfodio arose among the Fulahs as a religious reformer,
and a warrior missionary. He was a great man at both, but as a disturber
of traffic still greater, a thing that cannot be urged to so great an
extent against the other great Muslam missionary Umaru l'Haji. Still his
gathering together an army of 20,000 men in 1854-55, and going about
with them on a series of proselytizing expeditions against any tribe in
the Upper Niger and Senegal region he found to be in an unconverted
state, was little better than a nuisance to the French authorities at
that time. Danfodio's affairs have fallen into the hands of England to
arrange, and very efficiently her great representative in West Africa,
the Royal Niger Company, has arranged them. But for our Danfodio and his
consequences, France has had twenty, and she has dealt with them both
gallantly and patiently. But there will always be, as far as one can
see, trouble for France with her tawny Moors, now that the sources of
their support are cut off from them by many of the districts they once
drew their trade from--the sea-board districts of the Benin Bight, like
Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Lagos, in the English Niger--being in
the hands of a nation whose commercial instincts enable it to see the
benefits of lower tariffs than France affects. Even were our tariffs to
be raised to-morrow, the trade would again begin to drain back into the
hands of its old owners, the tawny Moors, for the Western Soudan is
being pacified by France. If some way is not devised of providing the
tawny Moors with trade sufficient to keep them, things must go badly
there, owing to the unfertility of the greater part of their country and
the increase of the population arising from the pacification of the
Western Soudan, which France is effecting. I will dwell no longer on
this sketch of the history of the advance of France in Western Africa.
We in England cannot judge it fairly. Nationally, her honour there is
our disgrace; commercially, her presence is our ruin.
Two things only stand out from these generalisations. The Royal Niger
Company shows how great England can be when she is incarnate in a great
man, for the Royal Niger Company is so far Sir George Taubman-Goldie.
The other thing that stands out unstained by comatose indifference to
the worth of West Africa to England is her Commerce as represented by
her West Coast traders, who have held on to the Coast since the
sixteenth century with a bulldog grip, facing death and danger, fair
weather and foul. Fine things both these two things are, but they do not
understand each other; they would certainly not understand me regarding
their affairs were I to talk from June to January, so I won't attempt
to, but speak to the general public, who so far have understood neither
Sir George Goldie, nor the West Coast trader, nor for the matter of that
their mutual foe France, and I beg to say that France has not been so
destructive an enemy to England there as England's own folly has been as
incarnate in the parliamentary resolution of 1865; that the achievements
of France in exploration in the Western Soudan make one of the grandest
pages of all European efforts in Africa; that the influence of France
over the natives has been, is, and, I believe, will remain good. "Our
intentions are pure and noble, our cause is just, the future cannot fail
us," said Faidherbe. So far as the natives are concerned, this has been
the policy of France in Western Africa. So far as diplomatic relations
with ourselves, humanly speaking, it has not; but diplomacy is
diplomacy, and the amount of probity--justice--in diplomacy is a thing
that would not at any period cover a threepenny-bit. It is a form of war
that shows no blood, but which has not in it those things which sanctify
red war, honour and chivalry. Nevertheless, diplomacy is an essential
thing in this world; it does good work, it saves life, it increases
prosperity, it advances the cause of religion and knowledge, and
therefore the World must not be hard on it for its being--what it is.
Personally, I prefer contemplating other things, and so I turn to
Commerce.
Illustration: ST. PAUL DO LOANDA. [_To face page 281._]
FOOTNOTES:
[39] See the first edition of _Henry the Navigator_, by R. H. Major,
who, with the enormous wealth of his knowledge, vigorously defends the
claim to Portuguese priority; although I do not quite agree with him on
the value of the absence of evidence in disproving the French claim I am
deeply indebted to him for the mention of references on the point.
[40] This is an interesting case of the alteration that has taken place
in Portuguese place names in West Africa. Angra des Ruives in English is
Gurnard Bay, and this name was given to it by the Portuguese because of
the quantity of this fish found there. In the _West African Pilot_ you
find the place called Garnet Bay, and the _Pilot_ says "fish are
abundant"; but as it does not say that garnets abound there, nor that it
was discovered by Lord Wolseley, I think there is reason to believe that
its name is Gurnard Bay, in translation of Angra des Ruives.
[41] _Prince Henry the Navigator_; Major.
[42] Labat, _Afrique occidentale_, vol. iv. p. 8. 1724.
[43] Equal to nearly L30 English per annum.
[44] _A Relation of the Coasts of Africa called Guinea collected by
Sieur Villault, Escuyer, Sieur de Bellfond, in the years 1666-1667._
London: John Starkey, 1670.
[45] Vas Conselo's _Life of King Joao_.
[46] Duke of Devonshire's speech at Liverpool, June, 1897.
[47] Labat. At present the Isle of St. Louis, and what is called the
Niger, is the river Sanaga--or Senega and Senegal, as the French corrupt
it.--Astley, 1745.
[48] An extent of thirty leagues and six leagues within the
land.--Labat, p. 19.
[49] John Law was the eldest son of an Edinburgh goldsmith, born about
1681. "Bred to no business, but possessed of great abilities, and a
fertile invention," he, when very young, recommended himself to the
King's ministers in Scotland to arrange fiscal matters, then in some
confusion from the union of the Kingdoms. His scheme, however, was not
adopted. Great at giving other people good advice on money matters, he
failed to manage his own. After a gay career in Edinburgh, and gaining
himself the title of "Beau Law," he got mixed up in a duel, and fled to
the Continent. He was banished from Venice and Genoa for draining the
youth of those cities of their money, and wandered about Italy, living
on gaming and singular bets and wagers. He proposed his scheme to the
Duke of Savoy, who saw by this scheme he could soon, by deceiving his
subjects in this manner, get the whole of the money of the kingdom into
his possession; but as Law could not explain what would happen then, he
was repulsed, and proceeded to Paris, where, under the patronage of the
Duc d'Orleans, they found favour with Louis XIV. When his crash came he
was exiled, and died in Venice in 1729.
[50] _Notice de Senegal_, Paris, 1859, p. 99.
[51] For an interesting account of Timbuctoo and its history, see
_Timbuctoo the Mysterious_, by M. Felix Dubois. 1897.