COMMERCE IN WEST AFRICA
Concerning the reasons that deter this writer from entering here on
a general history of the English, Dutch and Portuguese in Western
Africa; to which is added some attempt to survey the present state
of affairs there.
Lack of space, not lack of interest, prevents me from sketching the
careers of other nations in West Africa even so poorly as I have that of
France; but the truth is, the material for the history of the other
nations is so enormous that in order to present it with anything
approaching clearness or fairness, folio volumes are required. I have a
theory of the proper way to write the history of all European West
African enterprises--a theory I shall endeavour to put into practice if
I am ever cast ashore on an uninhabited island, with a suitable library,
a hogshead of ink, a few tons of writing paper, accompanied by pens, and
at least a quarter of a century of uninterrupted calm at my disposal.
The theory itself is short, so I can state it here. Pay no attention to
the nasty things they say about each other--it's the climate.
The history of the Portuguese occupation of West Africa is the great
one. The material for its early geographico-historical side is in our
hands, owing to the ability of Mr. Major and his devotion to the memory
of Prince Henry the Navigator. But the history of Portugal in West
Africa from the days of the Navigator onwards wants writing. Sir A. B.
Ellis fortunately gives us, in his history of the Gold Coast, an account
of the part that Portugal played there, but, except for this region, you
must hunt it up second-hand in the references made to it by prejudiced
rivals, or in scattered Portuguese books and manuscripts. While as for
the commercial history of Portugal in West Africa, although it has been
an unbroken one from the fifteenth century to our own time, it has so
far not been written at all. This seems to me all the more deplorable,
because it is full of important lessons for those nations who are now
attempting to exploit the regions she first brought them into contact
with.
It must be noted, for one thing, that Portugal was the first European
nation to tackle Africa in what is now by many people considered the
legitimate way, namely, by direct governmental control. Other nations
left West African affairs in the hands of companies of merchant
adventurers and private individuals for centuries. Nevertheless,
Portugal is nowadays unpopular among the other nations engaged in
exploiting Africa. I shrink from embroiling myself in controversy, but I
am bound to say I think she has become unpopular on account of
prejudice, coupled with that strange moral phenomenon that makes men
desirous of persuading themselves that a person they have treated badly
deserves such treatment.
The more powerful European nations have dealt scandalously, from a moral
standpoint, with Portugal in Africa. This one could regard calmly, it
being in the nature of powerful nations to do this sort of thing, were
it not for the airs they give themselves; and to hear them talking
nowadays about Portugal's part in African history is enough to make the
uninitiated imagine that the sweet innocent things have no past of their
own, and never knew the price of black ivory.
"Oh, but that is all forgiven and forgotten, and Portugal is just what
she always was at heart," you say. Well, Portugal at heart was never
bad, as nations go. Her slaving record is, in the point of humanity to
the cargo, the best that any European nation can show who has a slaving
West African past at all.
The thing she is taxed with nowadays mainly is that she does not
develope her possessions. Developing African possessions is the fashion,
so naturally Portugal, who persists on going about in crinoline and poke
bonnet style, gets jeered at. This is right in a way, so long as we
don't call it the high moral view and add to it libel. I own that my own
knowledge of Portuguese possessions forces me to regard those
possessions as in an unsatisfactory state from an imperialistic
standpoint; a grant made by the home government for improvements, say
roads, has a tendency to--well, not appear as a road. Some one--several
people possibly--is all the better and happier for that grant; and after
all if you do not pay your officials regularly, and they are not
Englishmen, you must take the consequences. Even when an honest
endeavour is made to tidy things up, a certain malign influence seems to
dodge its footsteps in a Portuguese possession. For example, when I was
out in '93, Portugal had been severely reminded by other nations that
this was the Nineteenth Century. Bom Dios--Bother it, I suppose it
is--says Portugal--must do something to smarten up dear Angola. She is
over 400 now, and hasn't had any new frocks since the slave trade days;
perhaps they are right, and it's time this dear child came out. So
Loanda, Angola, was ordered street lamps--stylish things street
lamps!--a telephone, and a water supply. Now, say what you please,
Loanda is not only the finest, but the only, city in West Africa.
"Lagos! you ejaculate--you don't know Lagos." I know I have not been
ashore there; nevertheless I have contemplated that spot from the point
of view of Lagos bar for more than thirty solid hours, to say nothing of
seeing photographs of its details galore, and I repeat the above
statement. Yet for all that, Loanda had no laid-on water supply nor
public street lamps until she was well on in her 400th year, which was
just before I first met her. During the past she had had her water
brought daily in boats from the Bengo River, and for street lighting she
relied on the private enterprise of her citizens.[52] The reports given
me on these endeavours to develope were as follows. As for the water in
its laid-on state, it was held by the more aristocratic citizens to be
unduly expensive (500 reis per cubic metre), and they grumbled. The
general public, though holding the same opinion, did not confine their
attention to grumbling. Stand-pipes had been put up in suitable places
and an official told off to each stand-pipe to make a charge for water
drawn. Water in West Africa is woman's palaver, and you may say what you
please about the down-troddenness of African ladies elsewhere, but I
maintain that the West African lady in the matter of getting what she
wants is no discredit to the rest of the sex, black, white, or yellow.
In this case the ladies wanted that water, but did not go so far as
wanting to pay for it. In the history given to me it was evident to
an unprejudiced observer that they first tried kindness to the guardian
officials of the stand-pipes, but these men were of the St. Anthony
breed, and it was no good. Checked, but not foiled, in their admirable
purpose of domestic economy, those dear ladies laid about in their minds
for other methods, and finally arranged that one of a party visiting a
stand-pipe every morning should devote her time to scratching the
official while the rest filled their water pots and hers. This ingenious
plan was in working order when I was in Loanda, but since leaving it I
do not know what modification it may have undergone, only I am sure that
ultimately those ladies will win, for the African lady--at any rate the
West coast variety--is irresistible; as Livingstone truly remarked,
"they are worse than the men." In the street lamp matter I grieve to say
that the story as given to me does not leave my own country blameless.
Portugal ordered for Loanda a set of street lamps from England. She sent
out a set of old gas lamp standards. There being no gas in Loanda there
was a pause until oil lamps to put on them came out. They ultimately
arrived, but the P.W.D. failed to provide a ladder for the lamplighter.
Hence that worthy had to swarm each individual lamp-post, a time-taking
performance which normally landed him in the arms of Aurora before
Loanda was lit for the night; but however this may be, I must own that
Loanda's lights at night are a truly lovely sight, and its P.W.D.'s
chimney a credit to the whole West Coast of Africa, to say nothing of
its Observatory and the weather reports it so faithfully issues, so
faithfully and so scientifically that it makes one deeply regret that
Loanda has not got a climate that deserves them, but only one she might
write down as dry and have done with it.
[Illustration: CLIFFS AT LOANDA. [_To face page 285._]
The present position of the Angola trade is interesting, instructive,
and typical. I only venture to speak on it in so far as I can appeal to
the statements of Mr. Nightingale, who is an excellent authority, having
been long resident in Angola, and heir to the traditions of English
enterprise there, so ably represented by the firm of Newton, Carnegie
and Co. The trade of Ka Kongo, the dependent province on Angola, I need
not mention, because its trade is conditioned by that of its neighbours
Congo Francais and the Congo Belge.
[Illustration: DONDO ANGOLA. [_To face page 287._]
The interesting point--painfully interesting--is the supplanting of
English manufactures, and the way in which the English shipping
interest[53] at present suffers from the differential duties favouring
the Portuguese line, the Empreza Nacional de Navigacao a Vapor. This
line, on which I have had the honour of travelling, and consuming in
lieu of other foods enough oil and olives for the rest of my natural
life, is an admirable line. It shows a calm acquiescence in the
ordinances of Fate, a general courteous gentleness, combined with strong
smells and the strain of stringed instruments, not to be found on other
West Coast boats. It runs two steamers a month (6th and 23rd) from
Lisbon, and they call at Madeira, St. Vincent, Santiago, Principe and
San Thome Islands, Kabinda, San Antonio (Kongo), Ambriz, Loanda,
Ambrizzette, Novo Redondo, Benguella, Mossamedes and Port Alexander,
every alternate steamer calling at Liverpool. The other steamboat
lines that visit Loanda are the African and British-African of
Liverpool, which run monthly, in connection with the other South-west
African ports; and the Woermann line from Hamburg. The French
Chargeurs-Reunis started a line of steamers from Havre _via_ Lisbon to
Loanda, Madagascar, Delagoa Bay, touching at Capetown, when so disposed,
but this line has discontinued calling in on Loanda. The other
navigation for Angola is done by the Rio Quanza Company, which runs two
steamers up that river as far as Dondo; but this industry, Dondo
included, Mr. Nightingale states to be in a parlous state since the
extension of the Royal Trans-African Railway Company[54] to Cazengo, "as
all the coffee which previously came _via_ Dondo by means of carriers,
now comes by rail, the town of Dondo is almost deserted; the house
property which a few years ago was valued at L200,000 sterling, to-day
would not realise L10,000." I may remark in this connection, however,
not to raise the British railway-material makers' feelings unduly, that
all this railway's rolling stock and material is Belgian in origin. This
seems to be the fate of African railways. I am told it is on account,
for one thing, of the way in which the boilers of the English
locomotives are set in, namely, too stiffly, whereby they suffer more
over rough roads than the more loosely hung together foreign-made
locomotives; and, for another, that English-made rolling stock is too
heavy for rough roads, and that roads under the conditions in Africa
cannot be otherwise than rough, &c. It is not, however, Belgian stuff
alone that is competing and ousting our own from the markets of Angola.
American machinery, owing to the personal enterprise of several American
engineering firms, is supplying steam-engines and centrifugal pumps for
working salt at Cucuaco, and machinery for dealing with sugar-cane. Mr.
Nightingale says the cultivation of the sugar-cane is rapidly extending,
for the sole purpose of making rum. The ambition of every small trader,
after he has put a few hundreds of milreis together, is to become a
fazendeiro (planter) and make rum, for which there is ever a ready sale.
But regarding the machinery, Mr. Nightingale says: "Up to the present
time no British firm has sent out a representative to this province.
There is a fair demand for cane-crushing mills, steam engines and
turbines. A representative of an American firm is out here for the third
time within four years, and has done good business; and there is no
reason why the British manufacturers should not do as well. The American
machinery is inferior to British makes, and cheaper; but it sells well,
which is the principal thing."
[Illustration: TRADING STORES. _To face page 289._]
It is the same story throughout the Angola trade. No English matches
come into its market. The Companhia de Mossemedes, which is only
nominally Portuguese, and is worked by German capital, has obtained from
the Government an enormous tract of country stretching to the Zambesi,
with rights to cure fish and explore mines. Cartridges made in Holland,
and an iron pier made in Belgium, an extinct trade in soap and a failing
one in Manchester goods,[55] and gunpowder, are all sad items in Mr.
Nightingale's lament. Small matters in themselves, you may think, but
straws show which way the wind blows, and it blows against England's
trade in every part of Africa not under England's flag. It would not,
however, be fair to put down to differential tariffs alone our
failing trade in Angola, because our successful competitors in
hardware and gunpowder are other nations who have to face the same
disadvantages--Germany, Holland, and Belgium. Portugal herself is now
competing with the Manchester goods. She does so with well-made stuffs,
but she is undoubtedly aided by her tariff. The consular report (1949)
says: "The falling off in Manchester cotton since 1891 shows a
diminution of 1,665,710 kilos. Cotton, if coming from Manchester via
Lisbon, 1,665,710, duties 80 per cent, or 250 reis per kilo, equal
333,144 milreis (about L51,250); cotton coming from Portugal, 1,665,710
kilos, duties 25 reis per kilo, equal to 41,642 dollars, 750 reis (about
L6,400), showing a difference in the receipts for one year of L44,850."
There is in this statement, I own, a certain obscurity, which has
probably got into it from the editing of the home officials. I do not
know if the 1,665,710 kilos, representing the difference between what
England shipped to Angola in 1891 and what she shipped in 1896, was
supplied in the latter years from Portugal of Portuguese manufacture;
but assuming such to have been the case, the position from a tariff
point of view would work out as follows: 1,665,710 kilos of cottons from
Manchester would pay duty, at 250 reis per kilo, 416,427-1/2 milreis.
Taking the exchange at 3_s._ sterling per milreis, this amounts to
L62,464. If this quantity of Manchester-made cottons had gone to Lisbon,
and there become nationalised, and sent forward to Angola in Portuguese
steamers, the duty would have been 80 per cent. of 250 reis per kilo,
or say 333,142 milreis, equal to L49,971; but if this quantity were
manufactured in Portugal, and shipped by Portuguese steamers, the duty
would be 25 reis per kilo, equal to L6,246. The premium in favour of
Portuguese production on this quantity is therefore L56,218, a terrific
tax on the Portuguese subjects of Angola, for one year, in one class of
manufactures only.
The deductions, however, that Mr. Nightingale draws from his figures in
regard to Portugal and her province are quite clear. He says, "There is
no doubt that the province of Angola is a very rich one. No advantages
are held out for merchants to establish here, and thus bring capital
into the place, which means more business, the opening up of roads, and
the development of industries and agriculture. Generally the colony
exists for the benefit of a few manufacturers in Portugal, who reap all
the profit." Again, he says, "The merchants are much too highly taxed, a
good fourth part of their capital is paid out in duties, with no
certainty when it will be realised again. Angola, with plenty of
capital, moderate taxes and low duties, might in a few years become a
most flourishing colony."
Now here we come to the general problem of the fiscal arrangements
suitable for an African colony; and as this is a subject of great
importance to England in the administration of her colonies, and errors
committed in it are serious errors, as demonstrated by the late war in
Sierra Leone,--the most serious even we have had for many years to deal
with in West Africa,--I must beg to be allowed to become diffuse, humbly
stating that I do not wish to dogmatise on the matter, but merely to
attract the attention of busy practical men to the question of the
proper system to employ in the administration of tropical possessions.
This seems to me a most important affair to England, now that she has
taken up great territories and the responsibilities appertaining to them
in that great tropical continent, Africa. There are other parts of the
world where the suitability of the system of government to the
conditions of the governed country is not so important.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL DO LOANDA. [_To face page 291._]
It seems to me that the deeper down from the surface we can go the
greater is our chance of understanding any matter; and I humbly ask you
to make a dive and consider what reason European nations have for
interfering with Africa at all. There are two distinct classes of
reasons that justify one race of human beings interfering with another
race. These classes are pretty nearly inextricably mixed; but if, like
Mark Twain's horse and myself, you will lean against a wall and think, I
fancy you will see that primarily two classes of reasons exist--(_a_),
the religious reason, the rescue of souls--a reason that is a duty to
the religious man as keen as the rescue of a drowning man is to a brave
one; (_b_), pressure reasons. These pressure reasons are divisible into
two sub-classes--(1) external; (2) internal. Now of external pressure
reasons primarily we have none in Africa. The African hive has so far
only swarmed on its own continent; it has not sent off swarms to settle
down in the middle of Civilisation, and terrify, inconvenience, and
sting it in a way that would justify Civilisation not only in destroying
the invading swarm, but in hunting up the original hive and smoking it
out to prevent a recurrence of the nuisance, as the Roman Empire was
bound to try and do with its Barbarians. Such being the case,[56] we
can leave this first pressure reason--the war justification--for
interfering with the African--on one side, and turn to the other
reason,--the internal pressure reasons acting from within on the
European nations. These are roughly divisible into three
sub-classes:--(1) the necessity of supplying restless and ambitious
spirits with a field for enterprise during such times as they are not
wanted for the defence of their nation in Europe--France's reason for
acquiring Africa; (2) population pressure; (3) commercial pressure. The
two latter have been the chief reason for the Teutonic nations, England
and Germany, overrunning the lands of other men. This Teutonic race is a
strong one, with the habit, when in the least encouraged by Peace and
Prosperity, of producing more men to the acre than the acre can keep.
Being among themselves a kindly, common-sense race, it seems to them
more reasonable to go and get more acres elsewhere than to kill
themselves off down to a level which their own acres could support. The
essential point about the "elsewhere" is that it should have a climate
suited to the family. These migrations to other countries made under the
pressure of population usually take place along the line of least
resistance, namely, into countries where the resident population is
least able to resist the invasion, as in America and Australia; but
occasionally, as in the case of Canada and the Cape, they follow the
conquest of an European rival who was the pioneer in rescuing the
country from savagery.
I am aware that this hardly bears out my statement that the Teutonic
races are kindly, but as I have said "among themselves," we will leave
it; and to other people, the original inhabitants of the countries they
overflow, they are on the whole as kindly as you can expect family men
to be. A distinguished Frenchman has stated that the father of a family
is capable of anything; and it certainly looks as if he thought no more
of stamping out the native than of stamping out any other kind of vermin
that the country possessed to the detriment of his wife and children. I
do not feel called upon to judge him and condemn, for no doubt the
father of a family has his feelings; and as it must have been irritating
to an ancestor of modern America to come home from an afternoon's
fishing and find merely the remains of his homestead and bits of his
family, it was more natural for him to go for the murderers than strive
to start an Aborigines' Protection Society. Though why, caring for wife
and child so much as he does, the Teuton should have gone and planted
them, for example, in places reeking with Red Indians is a mystery to
me. I am inclined to accept my French friend's explanation on this
point, namely, that it arose from the Teuton being a little thick in the
head and incapable of considering other factors beyond climate. But this
may be merely thickness in my own head--a hopelessly Teutonic one.
However, the occupation of territory from population pressure in Europe
we need not consider here; for it is not this reason that has led Europe
to take an active interest in tropical Africa. It is a reason that comes
into African affairs only--if really at all--in the extreme north and
extreme south of the continent--Algeria and the Cape. The vast regions
of Africa from 30 deg. N. to 20 deg. S., have long been known not to possess a
climate suitable for colonising in. "Men's blood rapidly putrifies under
the tropic zone." "Tropical conditions favour the growth of pathogenic
bacteria"--a rose called by another name. Anyhow, not the sort of
country attractive to the father of a family to found a home in. Yet, as
in spite of this, European nations are possessing themselves of this
country with as much ardour as if it were a health resort and a gold
mine in one, it is plain they must have another reason, and this reason
is in the case of Germany and England primarily commercial pressure.
These two Teutonic nations have the same habit in their commercial
production that they have in their human production,--the habit of
overdoing it for their own country; and just as Lancashire, for example,
turns out more human beings than can comfortably exist there, so does
she turn out more manufactured articles than can be consumed there; and
just as the surplus population created by a strong race must find other
lands to live in, so must the surplus manufactures of a strong race find
other markets; both forms of surplus are to a strong race wealth.
The main difference between these things is that the surplus
manufactured article is in no need of considering climate in the matter
of its expansion. It stands in a relation to the man who goes out into
the world with it akin to that of the wife and family to the colonist;
the trader will no more meekly stand having his trade damaged than the
colonist will stand having his family damaged; but at the same time, the
mere fact that the climate destroys trade-stuff is, well, all the better
for trade, and trade, moreover, leads the trader to view the native
population from a different standpoint to that of the colonist. To that
family man the native is a nuisance, sometimes a dangerous one, at the
best an indifferent servant, who does not do his work half so well as in
a decent climate he can do it himself. To the trader the native is quite
a different thing, a customer. A dense native population is what the
trader wants; and on their wealth, prosperity, peace and industry, the
success of his endeavours depends.
Now it seems to me that there are in this world two classes of regions
attractive to the great European manufacturing nations, England and
Germany, wherein they can foster and expand their surplus production of
manufactured articles. (1) Such regions as India and China. (2) Such
regions as Africa. The necessity of making this division comes from the
difference between the native populations. In the first case you are
dealing with a people who are manufacturers themselves, and you are
selling your goods mainly against gold. In the second the people are not
manufacturers themselves except in a very small degree, and you are
selling your goods against raw material. In a bustling age like this
there seems to be a tendency here and in Germany to value the first form
of market above the second. I fail to see that this is a sound
valuation. The education our commerce gives will in a comparatively
short time transform the people of the first class of markets into rival
producers of manufactured articles wherewith to supply the world's
markets. We by our pacification of India have already made India a
greater exporter than she was before our rule there. If China is opened
up, things will be even worse for England and Germany; for the Chinese,
with their great power of production, will produce manufactured
articles which will fairly swamp the world's markets; for, sad to say,
there is little doubt but they can take out of our hands all textile
trade, and probably several other lines of trade that England, Germany,
and America now hold. India and China being populated, the one by a set
of people at sixes and sevens with each other, and the other by a set of
people who, to put it mildly, are not born warriors, cannot, except
under the dominion and protection of a powerful European nation,
commercially prosper. But England and Germany are not everybody. There
is France. I could quite imagine France, for example, in possession of
China, managing it on similar lines to those on which she is now
managing West Africa, but with enormously different results to herself
and the rest of the world. Her system of differential tariffs, be it
granted, keeps her African possessions poor, and involves her in heavy
imperial expenditure; but the Chinaman's industry would support the
French system, and thrive under her jealous championship. This being the
case, it is of value to England and Germany to hold as close a grip as
possible over such regions as India and China, even though by so doing
they are nourishing vipers in their commercial bosoms.
The case of the second class of markets--the tropical African--is
different. Such markets are of enormous value to us; they are,
especially the West African ones, regions of great natural riches in
rubber, oil, timber, ivory, and minerals from gold to coal. They are in
most places densely populated with customers for England's manufactured
goods. The advantages of such a region to a manufacturing nation like
ourselves are enormous; for not only do we get rid there of our
manufactured goods, but we get, what is of equal value to our
manufacturing classes, raw material at a cheap enough rate to enable the
English manufacturers to turn out into the markets of the civilised
world articles sufficiently cheap themselves to compete with those of
other manufacturing nations.
[Illustration: IN AN ANGOLA MARKET.]
[Illustration: A MAN OF SOUTH ANGOLA. [_To face page 297._]
The importance to us of such markets as Africa affords us seems to me to
give us one sufficient reason for taking over these tropical African
regions. I do not use the word justification in the matter, it is a word
one has no right to use until we have demonstrated that our interference
with the native population and our endeavours for our own population
have ended in unmixed good; but it is a sound reason, as good a reason
as we had in overrunning Australia and America. Indeed, I venture to
think it is a better one, for the possession of a great market enables
thousands of men, women and children to live in comfort and safety in
England, instead of going away from home and all that home means; and
this commercial reason,--for all its not having a high falutin sound in
it,--is the one and only expansion reason we have that in itself desires
the national peace and prosperity of the native races with whom it
deals.
It seems to me no disgrace to England that her traders are the expanding
force for her in Africa. There are three classes of men who are powers
to a State--the soldier, the trader, and the scientist. Their efforts,
when co-ordinated and directed by the true statesman--the religious man
in the guise of philosopher and poet--make a great State. Being English,
of course modesty prevents my saying that England is a great State. I
content myself by saying that she is a truly great people, and will
become a great State when she is led by a line of great
statesmen--statesmen who are not only capable, as indeed most of our
statesmen have been, of seeing the importance of India and the colonies,
but also capable of seeing the equal importance to us of markets.
England's democracy must learn the true value of the markets that our
fellow-countrymen have so long been striving to give her, and must
appreciate the heroism those men have displayed, only too often
unrequited, never half appreciated by the sea-wife, who "breeds a breed
of rovin' men and casts them over sea." Those who go to make new homes
for the old country in Australia and America do not feel her want of
interest keenly; but those heroes of commerce who go to fight and die in
fever-stricken lands for the sake of the old homes at home, do feel her
want of interest.
I am not speaking hastily, nor have I only West Africa in my mind in
this matter; there are other regions where we could have succeeded
better, with advantage to all concerned--Malaya, British Guiana, New
Guinea, the West Indies, as well as West Africa. If you examine the
matter I think you will see that all these regions we have failed in are
possessed of unhealthy climates, while the regions we have succeeded
with are those possessed of healthy climates. The reason for this
difference in our success seems to me to lie mainly in our deficiency of
statesmanship at home. We really want the humid tropic zone more than
other nations do; a climate that eats up steel and hardware as a rabbit
eats lettuces is an excellent customer to a hardware manufacturing town,
&c. A region densely populated by native populations willing to give raw
trade stuffs in exchange for cotton goods, which they bury or bang out
on stones in the course of washing or otherwise actively help their
local climate to consume, is invaluable to a textile manufacturing town.
Yet it would be idle to pretend that our Government has realised these
things. Our superior ability as manufacturers, and the great enterprise
of our men who have gone out to conquer the markets of the tropics, have
given us all the advantages we now enjoy from those markets, but they
could do no more; and now, when we are confronted by the expansion of
other European nations, those men and their work are being lost to
England. Our fellow-countrymen will go anywhere and win anywhere to-day
just as well as yesterday, where the climate of the region allows
England to throw enough of them in at a time to hold it independent of
the home government; but in places where we cannot do this, in the
unhealthy tropical regions where those men want backing up against the
aggression on their interests of foreign governments, well, up to the
present they have not had that backing up, and hence we have lost to
England in England the advantages we so easily might have secured.
An American magazine the other day announced in a shocked way that I
could evidently "swear like a trooper!" I cannot think where it got the
idea from; but really!--well, of course I don't naturally wish to, but I
cannot help feeling that if I could it would be a comfort to me; for
when I am up in the great manufacturing towns, England properly so
called, their looms and forges seem to me to sing the same song to the
great maker of Fate--we must prosper or England dies. And there is but
one thing they can prosper on--for there is but one feeding ground for
them and all the thousands of English men, women and children dependent
on them--the open market of the World. To me the life blood of England
is her trade. Her soul, her brain is made of other things, but they
should not neglect or spurn the thing that feeds them--Commerce--any
more than they should undervalue the thing that guards them--the
warrior.
But, you will say, we will not be tied down to this commercial reason as
England's reason for taking over the administration of tropical Africa.
My friend, I really think on the whole you had better--it's reasonable.
I grant that it has not been the reason why English missionaries and
travellers have risked their lives for the good of Africa, or of human
knowledge, but as a ground from which to develop a policy of
administering the country this commercial one is good, because it
requires as aforesaid the prosperity of the African population; and your
laudable vanities in the matter I cannot respect, when I observe right
in the middle of the map of Africa an enormous region called the Congo
Free State. I have reason to believe that that region was opened up by
Englishmen--Livingstone, Stanley, Speke, Grant and Burton. If you had
been so truly keen on suppressing Arab slavery and native cannibalism,
there was a paradise for you! Yet, you hand it over to some one else.
Was it because you thought some one else could do it better? or--but we
will leave that affair and turn to the consideration of the possibility
of administering tropical Africa, governmentally, to the benefit of all
concerned.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] Loanda has now a gas company, and the installation is well under
way, under Belgian supervision.
[53] Referring to cotton goods, the Foreign Office report on the trade
of Angola for 1896 (1949) says the same cottons coming from Manchester
would pay 250 reis per kilo in foreign bottoms, and 80 per cent of 250
reis if coming in Portuguese bottoms and nationalised in Lisbon.
[54] Angola also has a small railway from Catumbella to Benguella, a
distance of 15 kiloms. and is contemplating constructing an important
line from either Benguella or Mossamedes up to Caconda.
[55] The imports in 1896 from England being 978,745 kilos, against
2,644,455 in 1891--a difference of 1,665,710 kilos against
Manchester.--_Foreign Office Annual Series, Consular Report, No. 1949_.
[56] In saying this I am aware of the conduct of Carthage and of the
Barbary Moors. But neither of these were primarily African. The one was
instigated by Greece, the other by the Vandals and the Arabs.