THE CROWN COLONY SYSTEM IN WEST AFRICA
Wherein is set down briefly in what manner of ways the Crown Colony
system works evil in Western Africa.
I have attempted to state that the Crown Colony system is unsuited for
governing Western Africa, and have attributed its malign influence to
its being a system which primarily expresses the opinions of
well-intentioned but ill-informed officials at home, instead of being,
according to the usual English type of institution, representative of
the interests of the people who are governed, and of those who have the
largest stake in the countries controlled by it--the merchants and
manufacturing classes of England. It remains to point out how it acts
adversely to the prosperity of all concerned; for be it clearly
understood there is no corruption in it whatsoever: there is waste of
men's lives, moneys, and careers, but nothing more at present. By-and-by
it will add to its other charms and functions that of being, in the
early future, a sort of patent and successful incubator for hatching a
fine lively brood of little Englanders, who will cry out, "What is the
good of West Africa?" and so forth; and they will seem sweetly
reasonable, because by then West Africa will be down on the English
rates, a pauper.
It may seem inconceivable, however, that the present governing body of
West Africa, the home officials, and the English public as represented
in Parliament, can be ill-informed. West Africa has not been just shot
up out of the ocean by a submarine volcanic explosion; nor are we
landing on it out of Noah's ark, for the thing has been in touch with
Europe since the fifteenth century; yet, inconceivable as it may seem
that there is not by now formulated and in working order a method of
governing it suitable for its nature, the fact that this is so remains,
and providentially for us it is quite easy of explanation without
abusing any one; though no humane person, like myself for example, can
avoid sincerely hoping that Mr. Kipling is wrong when he sings
"Deep in all dishonour have we stained our garments' hem.
Yet be ye not dismayed, we have stumbled and have strayed.
Our leaders went from righteousness, the Lord will deal with them."
For although it is true that we have made a mess of this great feeding
ground for England's manufacturing millions; yet there are no leaders on
whom blame alone can fall, whom we can make scapegoats out of, who can
be driven away into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people. The
blame lies among all those classes of people who have had personally to
deal with West Africa and the present system; and the Crown Colony
system and the resolution of '65 are merely the necessary fungi of
rotten stuff, for they have arisen from the information that has been,
and has not been, placed at the disposal of our Government in England by
the Government officials of West Africa, the Missionaries, and the
Traders.
We will take the traders' blame first--their contribution to the evil
dates from about 1827 and consists in omission--frankly, I think that
they, in their generation, were justified in not telling all they could
tell about the Coast. They found they could get on with it, keep it
quiet and manage the natives fairly well under the system of Courts of
Equity in the Rivers, and the Committee of merchants with a Governor
approved of by the Home Government, which was working on the Gold Coast
up to 1843. In 1841 there arose the affair of Governor Maclean, and the
inauguration of the line of policy which resulted in the resolution of
1865. The governmental officials having cut themselves off from the
traders and taken over West Africa, failed to manage West Africa, and so
resolved that West Africa was not worth managing,--a thing they are
bound to do again.
The abuse showered on the merchants, and the terrific snubs with which
the Government peppered them, did not make the traders blossom and
expand, and shower information on those who criticised them--there are
some natures that are not sweetened by Adversity. Moreover, the
Government, when affairs had been taken over by the Offices in London,
took the abhorrent form of Customs, and displayed a lively love of the
missionary-made African, as he was then,--you can read about him in
Burton[59]--and for the rest got up rows with the traders' best
customers, the untutored African; rows, as the traders held, unnecessary
in their beginning and feeble-handed in their termination. The whole of
this sort of thing made the trader section keep all the valuable
information to itself, and spend its energies in eluding the Customs,
and talking what Burton terms "Commercial English."
Then we come to the contribution made by the Government officials to the
formation of an erroneous opinion concerning the state of affairs in
West Africa. This arose from the conditions that surrounded them there,
and the way in which they were unable, even if they desired, to expand
their influence, distrusted naturally enough by the trading community
since 1865, held in continuously by their home instructions, and
unprovided with a sufficient supply of men or money on shore to go in
for empire making, and also villainously badly quartered,--as you can
see by reading Ellis's _West African Sketches_. It is small wonder and
small blame to them that their account of West Africa has been a gloomy
one, and such it must remain until these men are under a different
system: for all the reasons that during the past have caused them to
paint the Coast as a place of no value to England, remain still in full
force,--as you can see by studying the disadvantages that service in a
West African Crown Colony presents to-day to a civilian official.
Firstly, the climate is unhealthy, so that the usual make of Englishman
does not like to take his wife out to the Coast with him. This means
keeping two homes, which is expensive, and it gives a man no chance of
saving money on an income say of L600 a year, for the official's life in
West Africa is necessarily, let him be as economical as he may, an
expensive one; and, moreover, things are not made more cheerful for him
by his knowing that if he dies there will be no pension for his wife.
Secondly, there being no regular West African Service, there is no
security for promotion; owing to the unhealthiness of the climate it is
very properly ordained that each officer shall serve a year on the
Coast, and then go home on a six months' furlough. It is a fairly common
thing for a man to die before his twelve months' term is up, and a
still more common one for him to have to go on sick leave. Of course,
the moment he is off, some junior official has to take his place and do
his work. But in the event of the man whose work he does dying, gaining
a position in another region, or promotion, the man who has been doing
the work has no reason to hope he will step into the full emoluments and
honours of the appointment, although experience will thus have given him
an insight into the work. On the contrary, it too often happens that
some new man, either fresh from London or who has already held a
Government appointment in some totally different region to the West
African, is placed in the appointment. If this new man is fresh to such
work as he has to do, the displaced man has to teach him; if he is from
a different region, he usually won't be taught, and he does not help to
develop a spirit of general brotherly love and affection in the local
governmental circles by the frank statement that he considers West
African officials "jugginses" or "muffs," although he fairly offers to
"alter this and show them how things ought to be done."
Then again the civilian official frequently complains that he has no
such recognition given him for his services as is given to the military
men in West Africa. I have so often heard the complaint, "Oh, if a man
comes here and burns half a dozen villages he gets honours; while I, who
keep the villages from wanting burning, get nothing;" and mind you, this
is true. Like the rest of my sex I suffer from a chronic form of scarlet
fever, and, from a knowledge of the country there, I hold it rubbish to
talk of the brutality of mowing down savages with a Maxim gun when it
comes to talking of West African bush fighting; for your West African is
not an unarmed savage, he does not assemble in the manner of Dr.
Watts's ants, but wisely ensconces himself in the pleached arbours of
his native land, and lets fly at you with a horrid scatter gun. This is
bound to hit, and when it hits makes wounds worse than those made by a
Maxim; in fact he quite turns bush fighting into a legitimate sport, let
alone the service done him by his great ally, the climate. Still, it is
hard on the civilian, and bad for English interests in West Africa, that
the man who by his judgment, sympathy, and care, keeps a district at
peace, should have less recognition than one who, acting under orders,
doing his duty gallantly, and all that, goes and breaks up all native
prosperity and white trade.
All these things acting together produce on the local Government
official a fervid desire to get home to England, and obtain an
appointment in some other region than the West Coast. I feel sure I am
well within the mark when I say that two-thirds of the present
Government officials in the West African English Crown Colonies have
their names down on the transfer list, or are trying to get them there;
and this sort of thing simply cannot give them an enthusiasm for their
work sufficient to ensure its success, and of course leads to their
painting a dismal picture of West Africa itself.
I am perfectly well aware that the conditions of life of officials in
West Africa are better than those described by Ellis. Nevertheless, they
are not yet what they should be: a corrugated iron house may cost a heap
of money and yet not be a Paradise. I am also aware that the houses and
general supplies given to our officials are immensely more luxurious
than those given to German or French officials; but this does not
compensate for the horrors of boredom suffused with irritation to which
the English official is subjected. More than half the quarrelling and
discontent for which English officials are celebrated, and which are
attributed to drink and the climate, simply arise from the domestic
arrangements enforced on them in Coast towns, whereby they see far too
much of each other. If you take any set of men and make them live
together, day out and day in, without sufficient exercise, without
interest in outside affairs, without dividing them up into regular
grades of rank, as men are on board ship or in barracks, you are simply
bound to have them dividing up into cliques that quarrel; the things
they quarrel over may seem to an outsider miserably petty, but these
quarrels are the characteristic eruption of the fever discontent. And
may I ask you if the opinion of men in such a state is an opinion on
which a sound policy wherewith to deal with so complex a region can be
formed? I think not, yet these men and the next class alone are the
makers of our present policy--the instructors of home official opinion.
The next class is the philanthropic party. It is commonly confused with
the missionary, but there is this fundamental difference between them.
The missionary, pure and simple, is a man who loves God more than he
loves himself, or any man. His service (I am speaking on fundamental
lines, as far as I can see) is to place in God's charge, for the glory
of God, souls, that according to his belief, would otherwise go
elsewhere. The philanthropist is a person who loves man; but he or she
is frequently no better than people who kill lapdogs by over-feeding, or
who shut up skylarks in cages, while it is quite conceivable to me, for
example, that a missionary could kill a man to save his soul, a
philanthropist kill his soul to save his life, and there is in this a
difference. I have never been able to get up any respectful enthusiasm
for the so-called philanthropist, so that I have to speak of him with
calm care; not as I have spoken of the missionary, feeling he was a
person I could not really harm by criticising his methods.
It is, however, nowadays hopeless to attempt to separate these two
species, distinct as I believe them to be; and they together undoubtedly
constitute what is called the Mission party not only in England but in
Germany. I believe this alliance has done immense harm to the true
missionary, for to it I trace that tendency to harp upon horrors and
general sensationalism which so sharply differentiates the modern from
the classic missionary reports. Take up that noble story of Dennis de
Carli and Michael Angelo of Gattina, and read it through, and then turn
on to wise, clear-headed Merolla da Sorrento, and read him; you find
there no sensationalism. Now and again, when deeply tried, they will
say, "These people live after a beastly manner, and converse freely with
the Devil," but you soon find them saying, "Among these people there are
some excellent customs," and they give you full details of them, with
evident satisfaction. You see it did not fundamentally matter to these
early missionaries whether their prospective converts "had excellent
customs" or "lived after a beastly manner," from a religious standpoint.
Not one atom--they were the sort of men who would have gone for Plato,
Socrates, and all the Classics gaily, holding that they were not
Christians as they ought to be; but this never caused them to paint a
distorted portrait of the African. This thing, I believe, the modern
philanthropist has induced the modern missionary only too frequently to
do, and the other regrettable element which has induced him to do it
has been the apathy of the English public, a public which unless it were
stirred up by horrors would not subscribe. Again the blame is with
England at home, but the harm done is paid for in West Africa. The
portrait painted of the African by the majority, not all, but the
majority of West African mission reports, has been that of a child,
naturally innocent, led away and cheated by white traders and grievously
oppressed by his own rulers. I grant you, the African taken as a whole
is the gentlest kind of real human being that is made. I do not however
class him with races who carry gentleness to a morbid extent, and for
governmental purposes you must not with any race rely on their main
characteristic alone; for example, Englishmen are honest, yet still we
require the police force.
The evil worked by what we must call the missionary party is almost
incalculable; from it has arisen the estrangement of English interests,
as represented by our reason for adding West Africa to our Empire at
all--the trader--and the English Government as represented by the Crown
Colony system; and it has also led to our present policy of destroying
powerful native States and the power of the African ruling classes at
large. Secondarily it is the cause of our wars in West Africa. That this
has not been and is not the desire of the mission party it is needless
to say; that the blame is directly due to the Crown Colony system it is
as needless to remark; for any reasonable system of its age would long
ere now have known the African at first hand, not as it knows him, and
knows him only, at its head-quarters, London, from second-hand vitiated
reports. It has, nowadays, at its service the common sense and humane
opinions of the English trade lords as represented by the Chambers of
Commerce of Liverpool and Manchester; but though just at present it
listens to what they say--thanks to Mr. Chamberlain--yet it cannot act
on their statements, but only querulously says, "Your information does
not agree with our information." Allah forbid that the information of
the party with whom I have had the honour to be classed should agree
with that sort of information from other sources; and I would naturally
desire the rulers of West Africa to recognise the benefit they now enjoy
of having information of a brand that has not led to such a thing as the
Sierre Leone outbreak for example, and to remember in this instance that
six months before the hut tax there was put on, the Chambers had
strongly advised the Government against it, and had received in reply
the answer that "The Secretary of State sees no reason to suppose that
the hut tax will be oppressive, or that it will be less easy to collect
in Sierra Leone than in Gambia." Why, you could not get a prophetic
almanac into a second issue if it were not based on truer knowledge than
that which made it possible for such a thing to be said. Nevertheless,
no doubt this remarkable sentence was written believing the same to be
true, and confiding in the information in the hands of the Colonial
Office from the official and philanthropic sources in which the Office
believes.
FOOTNOTES:
[59] _Wanderings in West Africa_, vol. i., 1863.