AFFAIRS OF WEST AFRICA
[Illustration: ON FISHING BENT—SOUTHERN NIGERIA]
AFFAIRS OF
WEST AFRICA
BY
EDMUND D. MOREL
(E. D. M.)
MEMBER OF THE WEST AFRICAN SECTION OF THE
LIVERPOOL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
[Illustration]
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1902
(_All rights reserved_)
TO MY WIFE
PREFACE
Whatever its defects—and, no doubt, they are many and various—the Author
claims for this volume that it is, at least, an honest attempt to deal
with the problems, racial, political and commercial, yearly increasing in
magnitude, connected with the administration of Western Africa by Great
Britain and by the other Powers of Western Europe which participated in
the scramble for African territory. As such it is respectfully submitted
to the thinking Public. The Author considers it advisable to state
that he has no commercial interests in West Africa, and is, therefore,
uninfluenced by considerations of a personal nature, in emphasising
the importance of the part played by the merchant on the West African
stage. He also deems it right to say that the West African Section of
the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce is neither responsible nor answerable
for the opinions expressed herein. The Author hereby acknowledges the
courtesy of the Editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the Editor-Proprietor
of _West Africa_, the Editor of the _Contemporary Review_, and the
Editorial Committee of the _Journal of the African Society_, in
permitting the incorporation of certain matter contributed by himself,
from time to time, to those publications. His sincere thanks are due to
Major Ronald Ross, F.R.C.S., F.R.S., C.B., for the chapter which that
distinguished scientist has specially written at the Author’s request. To
other kind friends and acquaintances who have good-humouredly submitted
to cross-examination, and have allowed themselves to be victimised by the
Author’s importunities generally, grateful appreciation is due, and is
thankfully acknowledged.
HAWARDEN, 1902.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
FOREWORD—MARY KINGSLEY xiii
PART I
I. FIVE YEARS OF BRITISH TRADE WITH WESTERN AFRICA 1
II. THE OLD AND THE NEW 7
III. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL 11
IV. SOME NECESSARY REFORMS 20
PART II.—NIGERIA
V. THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA 35
VI. THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA—(_cont._) 43
VII. THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM 52
VIII. THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM—(_cont._) 59
IX. THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA 74
X. THE ADMINISTRATION OF NORTHERN NIGERIA 83
XI. THE FINANCES OF NIGERIA 89
XII. MOHAMMEDANS, SLAVE-RAIDING AND DOMESTIC SERVITUDE 94
XIII. THE PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS OF NIGERIA 110
XIV. RUBBER-COLLECTING IN NIGERIA 119
XV. THE FULANI IN NIGERIA 125
XVI. THE FULANI IN WEST AFRICAN HISTORY 130
XVII. ORIGIN OF THE FULANI 136
PART III
XVIII. SANITARY AFFAIRS IN WEST AFRICA. BY MAJOR RONALD ROSS, C.B. 153
XIX. LAND TENURE AND LABOUR IN WEST AFRICA 170
XX. A COTTON INDUSTRY FOR WEST AFRICA 188
XXI. THE MAHOGANY TRADE 201
XXII. ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA 208
XXIII. ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA—(_cont._) 224
PART IV.—THE FRENCH IN WEST AFRICA
XXIV. ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS IN WEST AFRICA 238
XXV. TEN YEARS OF FRENCH ACTION IN WEST AFRICA 249
XXVI. THE COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE FRENCH
POSSESSIONS 265
XXVII. FRENCH AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT IN WEST AFRICA 276
PART V.—MONOPOLY IN WEST AFRICA
XXVIII. THE CONCESSIONS RÉGIME IN FRENCH CONGO 285
XXIX. INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS AND MONOPOLY 297
XXX. THE HISTORY OF THE CONGO STATE 312
XXXI. THE DOMAINE PRIVÉ 327
XXXII. THE “TRADE” OF THE CONGO STATE 343
APPENDIX
SIERRA LEONE (EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORTS, &C.) 355
GOLD COAST (EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORTS, &C.) 356
LAGOS (EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORTS, &C.) 359
DAHOMEY (COMPARATIVE TABLE OF DUTIES) 360
THE DAHOMEY RAILWAY 362
FRENCH GUINEA RAILWAY 364
WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY TRADE 365
THE GOLD COAST MINING INDUSTRY 367
BRITISH POSSESSIONS IN WEST AFRICA (POPULATION AND AREA) 370
THE RABINEK CASE 371
INDEX 373
ILLUSTRATIONS
_On Fishing Bent, Southern Nigeria_ _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
*_A Pure-bred Kano Man (Hausa)_ 54
*_A Hausa from Yola_ 56
_Hausa Loom and Spool_ 62
_Hausas Drilling_ 68
_Making Palm-oil_ 74
_Duke-Town, Old Calabar, Southern Nigeria_ 76
_Filling Palm-oil Barrels, Southern Nigeria_ 78
_A Palm-kernel Market in Southern Nigeria_ 80
_A Mohammedan Chief and his Standard-Bearer_ 100
_Mandingo Muslims_ 106
_A Baobab—The Giant of West African Flora_ 116
_Washing Rubber_ 122
_Fulani Sword_ 126
*_Pure-bred Fulani Girl, Adamawa_ 128
_Fulani Chief, Futa-Jallon_ 130
_Half-caste Fulani Girl, Futa-Jallon_ 134
_Low-caste Fulani, Western Sudan_ 136
_Pure-bred Fulani Girl, Futa-Jallon_ 140
_Fulani House, Futa-Jallon_ 142
_Fulani Cattle-pen_ 146
_A Half-caste Fulani Girl and a Susu_ 148
_The Idle Native! Market Scene in West Africa_ 176
_West African “Young Hopefuls”_ 180
_An Ibo Family Group, Southern Nigeria_ 186
_Travelling on the Niger in the Dry Season_ 196
_Felling a Mahogany-tree_ 202
_Squaring the Tree_ 202
_Dragging the Squared Log through the Bush_ 204
_Sapelli, Southern Nigeria’s principal Timber Port_ 204
_A Susu Mallam_ 218
_Fulani Mallam_ 228
_Susu Chief and Staff_ 278
_Ashanti Field Force at Cape Coast ~en route~ for Kumasi_ 280
_Return of Ashanti Field Force_ 282
_The Victim of a Rubber Raid_ 334
MAPS
_Northern Part of Africa_ 38
_Northern Nigeria_ 84
_Sketch Map showing Harbour Improvement Scheme, Ivory Coast_ _page_ 273
_Photographs marked thus * are reproduced from “Adamawa” by kind
permission of Mr. Ernst Vohsen (Dietrich Reimer). The author is indebted
(through the kindness of a friend) to Dr. Maclaud, of the French Guinea
Administration, for several of the photographs here reproduced._
FOREWORD
MARY KINGSLEY
“Mary Kingsley—the heir and sustainer of a great name, one of
the ablest of that remarkable band of wandering writers, men
and women, who are the eyes and ears of our nascent Empire,
who are bringing home to England, that weary Titan, her tasks,
her faults, her problems—Mary Kingsley has gone from us.”—Mrs.
HUMPHRY WARD.
Those who had the honour of knowing Mary Kingsley, and corresponding
with her on West African affairs, who have studied her writings and
her speeches, who realise all that this “good woman with a gigantic
intellect” might have done for the Empire in West Africa had she lived,
can with difficulty reconcile themselves to the inscrutable decree of
Providence which robbed us of her presence. One of her greatest admirers
to whom I was expressing the other day much the same feeling, expressed
a different view. “Miss Kingsley’s work was done”—he said in effect—“she
was the pioneer, she showed the way. That was her allotted task: the
fruit of her labours will come in due season.” It may be so. Indeed,
when we think of what Mary Kingsley accomplished in the few short years
which she devoted to West Africa, the thought arises whether there is
not an element of unconscious selfishness in the desire that she might
have been spared. The nature of the work she had undertaken, the intense
fervour with which she devoted herself body and soul to preaching the
morals it was given her to inculcate, the utter brain weariness which at
times she was fain to admit—no mortal being could have endured for very
long so perpetual a mental and physical strain. It was a passing heavy
load for a weak woman of indifferent health to bear, and in death Mary
Kingsley has perhaps achieved a greater triumph, a success more striking
and profound, than living on she would have attained. Death has had the
effect of rapidly fertilising the seeds she sowed, and from her ashes
have sprung forces gathering daily in power which, united in a common
aim, are taking up her burden and carrying it along the path she pointed
out, assured that every year will bring fresh helpers, be the obstacles
ever so great. _La verité est en marche_, and although the spirit of
the hour is not precisely favourable to that patient investigation of
West African problems which affords the only guarantee of political and
administrative success, the phase is but a fleeting one, and when the
present fashionable policy of force and hurry is found by practical tests
to be even more sterile in useful results than the apathy which preceded
it, the main truths Mary Kingsley taught will appeal to thinking men with
an eloquence all the greater for having been temporarily obscured.
On the personal aspect of Mary Kingsley’s character one would fain dwell
at length. Few women, I believe, have inspired all sorts and conditions
of men with so intense a respect, so wondering an admiration. Few women
are able, as Mary Kingsley was able, to draw forth, by the magic of
her earnest personality, the best in a man. She was so unassuming, so
unaffected, such a womanly woman in every sense of the word, that it
appeared almost incredible she should have grasped the essentialities
of West African politics with such comprehensiveness and scientific
perception; mastered, as no one had done before—in the sense, at any
rate, of being able to impart the knowledge to the world—the intricacies
of native custom and native law, or have affronted the physical
perils she made so light of. Eminent politicians and administrators,
distinguished men of letters, world-renowned scientists, commercial
magnates, were regular visitors at her modest residence, and one and
all drew from her inexhaustible store. The least of those to whom she
extended the privilege of her friendship were always welcome, and
never failed to leave her presence without feeling that her words of
sympathy and encouragement were a fresh incentive to push onward, never
losing hope and fortified against disappointment. The truest, kindest,
staunchest friend that ever breathed—such was Mary Kingsley; and we who
knew her, and have lost her, know also that something has gone out of our
lives which can never be replaced. In a passage of singular beauty, Mrs.
Alice Stopford Green thus closes a tribute[1] to the dead friend whose
work she herself is doing so much to carry on: “She laid her armour down
when she asked to be carried out to the unfathomable Ocean, alone in
death as she had been alone in life, going out with her last wish from
the bitter strife of men to the immensities where she sought the will of
God.”
PART I
CHAPTER I
FIVE YEARS OF BRITISH TRADE WITH WESTERN AFRICA
“West Africa, that great feeding-ground for British
manufactures.”—MARY KINGSLEY.
One still—but too often, alas!—meets with people who wonder why England
should bother about West Africa at all, and pooh-pooh the idea that we
have interests there at the present time worth looking after, while as
for the future possibilities of that huge country as a field for British
enterprise, they simply will not trouble themselves to give the matter a
moment’s consideration.
Now figures are very uninteresting things, no doubt, to the average
reader; but they possess a practical significance superior to any number
of the most glowing dissertations, and I trust my readers will forgive me
if I make, as a basis of justification for inflicting this volume upon
them, a few sets of figures which I would respectfully suggest as worthy
of their attentive consideration. The statistics are compiled from the
Custom House returns, and they show the extent, nature and distribution
of British trade in Western Africa during the last few years. In perusing
them, three facts should be borne in mind: first, that, although
Europeans have been engaged in commercial transactions on the West
Coast for upwards of five hundred and fifty years, those transactions
were, prior to the abolition of the over-sea slave trade, confined,
with very few exceptions[2]—so far as the exports from West Africa were
concerned—to the human cargo, and to gold dust and ivory: that the trade
in palm oil and kernels, which are now the staple articles of export
from West Africa, is therefore of comparatively recent growth, and that
the mahogany trade and the rubber trade have only come into existence—to
any appreciable extent—within the last few years, a fair indication
of the fertility and producing power and almost boundless resources
of West Africa. Secondly, that the extensive business relationship
which has been built up between Great Britain and West Africa, in the
shape of a legitimate commerce, has grown to its present proportions
under circumstances absolutely disadvantageous to development, without
railways, with but few roads, with intertribal wars often preventing
the circulation of trade for months at a time, by merely scratching the
surface of the most prolific region in the world. Thirdly, that the
figures given below do but show the actual volume of Britain’s trade with
West Africa and the wages earned by thousands of English men and women
who directly and indirectly benefit by that trade; the British capital
invested in West Africa in factories, machinery, craft for navigating the
rivers, coaling depôts, surf-boats and lighters, stores and the like, to
which must now be added railway material, dredging apparatus, batteries
and soon, we may hope, cotton gins, not to mention a fleet of some sixty
steamers employed in the carrying trade and passenger traffic—all these
things have to be taken into account in estimating West Africa’s worth to
Great Britain.
The total values of British produce and manufactures[3] shipped to the
_British possessions in West Africa_ in the five years 1896-1900 were
respectively as follows:
1896 £1,828,395
1897 1,763,461
1898 1,999,505
1899 2,116,080
1900 2,148,149
----------
Gross total £9,855,590
Percentage of increase in five years, 17½ per cent.
The total values of British produce and manufactures shipped to the
_possessions of Foreign Powers_ in West Africa in the five years
1896-1900 were respectively as follows:
1896 £970,080
1897 1,002,318
1898 1,247,994
1899 1,490,603
1900 2,145,349
----------
Gross total £6,856,344
Percentage of increase in five years, 121 per cent.
If we add these two totals together, we find that the value of British
produce and manufactures shipped to _West Africa_ in the period mentioned
was £16,711,934, which is a percentage of increase of 138 per cent.
From the British export trade we turn to the British import trade with
West Africa.
The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain _from British
West Africa_ in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:
1896 £2,223,925
1897 2,153,412
1898 2,352,285
1899 2,427,946
1900 2,137,023
-----------
Gross total £11,294,591
The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain from the
_possessions of Foreign Powers_ in West Africa in the five years
1896-1900 were respectively as follows:
1896 £333,803
1897 553,130
1898 622,287
1899 651,043
1900 806,077
----------
Gross total £2,966,340
These two totals added together show that Great Britain imported West
African produce in the period under review to the amount of £14,260,931.
The value of Great Britain’s direct commerce with West Africa in the five
years 1896-1900 was, therefore, £30,972,865. To this might be added a
further sum of £1,750,888, representing foreign and colonial merchandise
shipped to West Africa from British ports in the years mentioned.[4]
It is interesting, and valuable, to see which, among the possessions of
Foreign Powers in West Africa, were the chief absorbers of British goods
and the chief exporters of raw produce to Great Britain. Examination
yields the following knowledge:
Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which absorbed in five years
£6,856,344 of British goods:[5]
French. Portuguese. German. Others.
£ £ £ £
1896 348,258 402,445 68,355 151,022
1897 401,224 360,121 91,320 149,653
1898 531,848 438,320 109,580 178,246
1899 693,255 503,788 126,047 167,513
1900 709,900 1,084,072[6] 120,910 212,175
Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which exported to Great Britain
in five years £2,966,340 of raw produce:
French. Portuguese. German. Others.
£ £ £ £
1896 203,442 33,937 42,001 54,423
1897 312,430 116,554 68,194 55,952
1898 431,192 85,544 35,165 70,186
1899 461,267 68,021 48,736 73,019
1900 534,727 75,037 94,681 101,632
The French possessions are, it will be observed, far and away our
principal markets and our principal suppliers among the possessions of
Foreign Powers. Our exports to and imports from the French possessions
amounted together to £4,627,543, or just under 50 per cent. of our total
export and import trade with the possessions of Foreign Powers together.
The increasing importance of the French possessions in West Africa as a
market for the sale of British goods and as suppliers of British home
markets is a fact which it is of the utmost consequence for British
statesmen to lay to heart. The subject is one which I shall refer to
later on. It is already one of the dominant factors of West African
politics affecting Great Britain, and is destined to become so more
and more as the years go on, for France is in a territorial sense the
mistress of West Africa, and may become so in a commercial sense as well.
The general conclusions to be drawn from a study of these figures are
various. First and foremost there is the clearly established fact
that British trade with West Africa is expanding enormously and has
almost unlimited prospects before it, now that serious and concentrated
efforts are being made on all sides to open up the untapped wealth of
the interior by the means of roads and railways and by the improvement
of navigable waterways, while the cessation of intertribal warfare in
many districts must entail a large increase in the population, and
therefore, in the native capacity for production and purchase. It is
also demonstrated that every year West Africa absorbs a larger quantity
of British manufactured goods: that the exports of British manufactured
goods are steadily increasing to British West Africa and increasing to an
extraordinary degree to the possessions of Foreign Powers in West Africa,
especially to the French possessions: that Great Britain is consolidating
her hold upon the carrying trade of West Africa as testified by the
increased quantity of foreign and colonial manufactures shipped to West
Africa from British ports: that the Continent—Germany[7] chiefly—is
receiving a greater amount of raw produce from the British possessions in
West Africa, a deduction which can be fairly drawn from the stationary
aspect of the importation by Great Britain of such produce from her own
West African possessions. And the final conclusion is this, that, in
view of the restricted extent of the British possessions in West Africa,
compared with the possessions of Foreign Powers in that part of the
world, the latter offer a very much vaster field for the sale of British
goods. Consequently, it is the bounden duty of the British Government
and the British Chambers of Commerce, while in no way neglecting the
brilliant possibilities which the British West African possessions offer
under wise administration for the enterprise of Englishmen, to be ever
on the alert to look to the future and to protect British trade with the
possessions of the Foreign Powers in West Africa against legislation
tending to close the door of those possessions against it; and to insist
that, whenever international treaties guaranteeing freedom of trade to
the subjects of all nations exist in West Africa, they shall be rigidly
adhered to by the signatories. In this respect British diplomacy has
shown itself singularly lax. But the mischief already committed may
even yet be remedied, and further dangers which loom ahead averted, if
the British public will only realise before it is too late the enormous
issues at stake.
CHAPTER II
THE OLD AND THE NEW
“The past has gone with its follies and its waste.... Let us
then face the present and contemplate the future.”
In the previous chapter we discussed in practical fashion the grounds
upon which the British public is called upon to devote more attention
to the affairs of West Africa than it does at present, and an attempt—I
hope a successful attempt—was made to show how very short-sighted and
singularly misinformed is the opinion which would disinterest itself from
a part of the world where the possibilities of commercial development
are so strikingly manifest. There has never been such urgent need for
an intelligent appreciation, on the part of the British public, of the
problems which confront this country in West Africa. In a few short years
the policy of Great Britain in West Africa has undergone a complete
change. Events have followed one another with bewildering rapidity.
Official indifference has been galvanised into life by French activity,
and after a brief but dangerous period of international rivalry, British
political rights have been established over a considerable extent of
territory, not, however, nearly so considerable as a pacific, consistent,
well-thought-out programme adopted some years previously would have
brought, had our merchant-pioneers been listened to, and had successive
Governments been able to throw off the paralysing influence of the
resolution of 1865. There is a story told of a certain Minister in charge
of the Foreign Office—it was related to me by one of those present at the
interview—which illustrates very forcibly the feeling which prevailed in
Government circles in those days. A deputation of merchants waited upon
his Excellency with the request that he would permit the hoisting of the
Union Jack on certain parts of the West African littoral where British
merchants had long been trading, and where the rulers of the country
were genuinely desirous of receiving a British protectorate. _Pro-formâ_
treaties were produced by the deputation between these rulers and the
resident merchants. The merchants asked for no reward. There was no
question of expenditure involved. All that the Government was required
to do was to meet the wishes of the chiefs. The deputation pointed out
that, so far as the relations between the natives and the commercial
representatives of Great Britain were concerned, the acceptance of the
Government would in no wise alter them, but would simply have the effect
of cementing a friendly understanding which already existed. But, urged
the deputation, the treaties, if agreed to by the Government, would prove
an invaluable diplomatic instrument if the time came, as it seemed likely
to do, when England might find herself faced in West Africa by foreign
competition. The Minister flung the treaties across the table.
It was a time of wasted opportunities, when a little political foresight
would have conferred upon this country great future benefit, and it seems
extraordinary, but is unhappily true, that the same failure to look ahead
as regards West Africa appears to afflict our Foreign Office to-day
despite the lessons of the past. Of this, more anon.
But if successive Governments showed unpardonable negligence in
safeguarding British interests in West Africa, for decade after decade,
down to the very time when the French had worked their way so far
southward into the natural _hinterlands_ of our old Colonies that action
became imperative if anything was to be saved from the wreck, the British
press and public were greatly to blame also. I well remember that at the
very height of the recent Anglo-French controversy which culminated in
the Convention of 1898, when rival English and French expeditions were
rushing hither and thither through the territories west of the Niger,
and when British and French efforts were concentrated upon wringing
out of the unfortunate Borgu Chiefs all sorts, kinds, and conditions
of agreements, sowing Union Jacks and Tricolors by the wayside, the
well-known editor of an equally well-known newspaper to which I then
contributed, asked me to show him Nikki[8] on the map, as he had not the
least idea where it was.
Mr. Chamberlain came into power just at the moment when French enterprise
in the West African uplands had reached its maximum of threatening
intensity, and he set himself to vigorously counteract it as far as he
could. The invertebrate policy had, however, compromised the situation
almost beyond remedy, and had it not been for Mr. Joseph Thomson’s
success in obtaining treaty rights with the Emirs of Sokoto and Bornu in
1884 on behalf of the National African Company of Merchants—subsequently
the Royal Niger Company—and, it may be added, for the loyal adherence
of those native States to the treaties passed with the Company, the
magnificent possession of Northern Nigeria would have gone the way of
Futa Jallon, of Mossi, and of so many other countries lying at the back
of our Colonies; that is to say, would have fallen into French hands.
The man who deserves the most credit for saving Northern Nigeria to the
Empire is Sir George Taubman Goldie, and however one may deplore some
of the uses to which he put his Charter—things we are paying for now
in the French Congo and elsewhere—it is but common fairness to assert
that, if it had not been for Sir George Goldie, the possessions of Great
Britain in West Africa would have been reduced by about one half. It is
a matter for some surprise that the Government should not have succeeded
in securing the continuation of Sir George Goldie’s co-operation in West
Africa after the Royal Niger Company’s Charter was cancelled. An old
opponent has lately said of him that “there is no one more competent
to guide our West African Administration on practical, humanitarian,
economical, prudent, and statesmanlike lines, no one more fitted to take
a high position in West African affairs political and commercial,” a
statement which will meet with wide acceptance.
But this, after all, is ancient history, and what we are chiefly
concerned with now, is the present. What we are called upon to seriously
consider is the general trend of England’s policy in West Africa,
administrative, financial, political and commercial. Internationally,
we are secure in the possession of our territories. The only rivalry we
have to fear is the peaceful rivalry of commerce, but commerce is the
explanation of our presence in West Africa: it constitutes the sinews of
our administration, and its requirements demand the constant vigilance,
the most careful attention of the official world.
It is the bounden duty of those who, believing in the immense importance
of West Africa to Great Britain, and similarly believing that the present
policy which is being pursued by Great Britain in West Africa is open on
several grounds to grave objection, to say so, and to give their reasons
for saying so, with the assured conviction that, however unpopular their
arguments may be, the general interest demands that they should be put
forward.
CHAPTER III
THE REAL AND THE IDEAL
“The nature of the natives, the climate, everything is against
precipitate and hasty action. To advance slowly, leaving no
bad or unfinished work behind, to gain the respect and liking
of the natives, and only to use force when compelled as a last
resource to do so, are the means which in my humble opinion
lead to success in West Africa. To quote from the words of a
celebrated French traveller: ‘Do not let us dream of a hasty
transformation of Africa. Let us employ a method, slow but
sure. Let us try and teach the natives what knowledge we have
acquired, and not try and make them learn in a few years
what it has taken us twenty centuries to learn.’”—SIR CLAUDE
MACDONALD in Liverpool, 1892.
“These figures are surprising. One would naturally have
expected that as the trade increased the proportion of
expenditure would have decreased.... From that date, however,
the expenditure has advanced by leaps and bounds, and in 1900
amounted to 28 per cent. of the exports. In other words, the
expenditure has increased more rapidly than the trade....
If, however, the expenditure had been on the basis of former
years ... we could have given over £1,000,000 worth additional
European goods in exchange for the same amount of produce. In
other words, the heavier the expenditure the higher price must
the merchant ask for his European goods, or the less he is able
to give for native produce. This must have the double effect
of reducing the demand for manufactures and diminishing the
energy of the natives in gathering produce. There is another
possibility which should not be lost sight of: our colonies
are hemmed in by our French and German neighbours. If in
consequence of increased expenditure and the resulting heavier
taxes we are unable to offer the natives as large a quantity of
manufactures and as good a price as our competitors are enabled
to do, produce which is grown on the borders of our Colonies
may be diverted to foreign territory with a consequent loss of
trade to this country.”—Mr. ARTHUR HUTTON, President African
Section, Manchester Chamber of Commerce.[9]
A wise man has said that there is no way of conveying a rebuke so
efficiently as upon the back of a compliment, and as a preliminary
to criticism of certain phases of British administration in West
Africa, a measure of praise is both just and needful. To avoid
personalities—whether in the sense of praise or otherwise—should be
the constant endeavour of any critic in approaching the subject under
discussion, because it is primarily the system, and not the agents of
the system, which is in question. Unfortunately the Crown Colony system
being what it is, a despotism—though by no means necessarily a tyrannical
despotism—there is great difficulty, if not actual impossibility, in
altogether avoiding the personal equation.
The revolution in British West African policy is indelibly associated
with the advent to power of the present Colonial Secretary, the
Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain. His entry upon the scene was
contemporaneous with the culmination of certain events which must
infallibly have modified our previous attitude in relation to West Africa
whoever the statesmen responsible at the time might have been. The point
need not be laboured, but it is often overlooked. Be that as it may,
it is an undoubted fact—a fact redounding greatly to Mr. Chamberlain’s
credit—that no Colonial Secretary before him has displayed so lively and
personal an interest, both publicly and privately, in the affairs of
British West Africa, an interest which has continued unabated during the
entire period of his administration. In specific directions the result
has been all to the good. Railways, the preliminary surveys of which had
been made by direction of Mr. Chamberlain’s predecessor, the Marquis
of Ripon, before he quitted office, have been constructed; others are
commenced; the routes of more have been surveyed. The study of malaria
has received the right honourable gentleman’s warmest support. A general
publicity has been given to British West Africa by its identification
with so powerful a politician as Mr. Chamberlain, which has materially
contributed to remove it from the rut of oblivion and popular ignorance.
It may also be added that the Colonial Secretary’s confident public
declarations in respect to the future of the gold-mining industry in the
Gold Coast has done much to attract capital to that Colony, and that
the damper which he recently felt it wise to apply to the introduction
of the more undesirable elements connected with the revival, under
modern conditions, of gold-mining enterprise in a part of the coast
celebrated for its former export of the precious metal, was entirely
to his honour, although it would perhaps have been more useful had it
come somewhat earlier in the day; while the memorandum he caused to be
drawn up in September 1901 embodying the principle of treating native
labourers on the Gold Coast, is perhaps the most admirable document
ever issued from the Colonial Office.[10] In like manner, it can be
taken for granted that all officials in West Africa are animated by
the best of intentions, and however profoundly one may differ, from
time to time, from certain of their actions, it is always essential to
bear in mind that the system under which they work—the inconvenience of
which not a few of them in private conversation readily admit—leaves
the door wide open to the commitment of errors for which the system is
in the first place responsible, while the climate is most trying to
the constitutions and temper of Europeans. But it is unreasonable, and
subversive of the true interests of the Empire, that the tendency should
be encouraged to denounce honest criticism of a specific act of policy
in West Africa with which this or that official must in the nature of
things be associated, although he need not be, and often is not, the
originator of it, as a personal attack upon an absent man, to be resented
as an outrage and stigmatised almost as a crime, as an offence at any
rate against common decency and fairness. The contention is absurd, and
mischievous and unfair. The autocratic power which the Crown Colony
system confers upon West African Governors, District Commissioners, and
military commandants makes it absolutely essential that independent
criticism, so long as it is legitimate, should be exercised by the public
at home, whether or no full sanction has been obtained by a particular
official from the Colonial Office for the application of measures
giving rise to criticism, or whether the measures have been initiated
by the Colonial Office itself. By public criticism alone can we hope
to avoid the repetition of such deplorable mistakes as led to the Hut
Tax war in Sierra Leone and the last Ashanti outbreak; the framing of
legislation far in advance of the needs of the country and antagonistic
to native feeling, which interest and duty alike imperatively demand,
should be taken into consideration; the constant recurrence of punitive
expeditions, which in another portion of our Tropical African Empire have
worked such incalculable injury; and financial embarrassments, outcome of
mismanagement, extravagance, and errors of policy.
There is always danger in reaction, as in the body physical, so in the
body politic; and it is not altogether astonishing, perhaps, that the
long spell of official apathy in West Africa, being suddenly changed
to precipitate action, should have given rise to some objectionable
features. But it cannot be admitted that the latter, instead of being
a passing phenomenon, should take permanent root, and become part
and parcel of the new order of things. If this be the case, we shall
presently be witnessing yet another reaction in West Africa, and with
embarrassed finances, a yearly expenditure far in excess of any visible
increase in producing power, increased taxation, a native population
alienated and disorganised, and energetic rivals forging ahead while
we continue to struggle painfully in a quagmire of self-imposed
difficulties, the public will lapse once more into its old attitude of
indifference tinged with dislike, until some brilliant gentleman at the
Foreign Office, deeming the moment opportune, hands over a further slice
of British West Africa to a Foreign Power, in exchange for cod-fisheries,
or something equally vital to the Empire’s prosperity.[11] The forward
policy in West Africa has had its uses; it has served its purpose. We
are secure in the possession of a large territory some 700,000 square
miles in extent, unsurpassed in natural wealth by any other region in
the globe, containing a population of probably 30,000,000 to 35,000,000
souls, of whose habits and customs we possess but the haziest knowledge,
whose very languages we are in the main ignorant of; a population
composed of the most diverse elements, the resources of whose widely
scattered habitat are barely tapped, whose willing co-operation, which is
essential to the success of our rule, can only be gained by scientific,
painstaking study and the most tactful, sympathetic treatment. Now should
be a close time for British West Africa. The country needs political
rest. It has been turned topsy-turvy by European rivalry; old landmarks
have been swept away; the boundaries of Native States altered to suit the
exigencies of European diplomacy; immemorial trade roads interfered with.
The native requires breathing space. Official activity should in the main
be limited to the construction, with due regard to method and economy,
of certain indispensable public works, collecting data concerning the
native peoples and respective regions in which they dwell, strengthening
native authority so rudely disturbed by recent events; in protecting
commerce, encouraging capital, fostering native industries—perfecting
those in existence and preparing the ground for others; in short, a work
of gradual, sure, systematic consolidation. It should be our object to
intermeddle as little as possible with native institutions, abide with
scrupulous exactitude to both the spirit and the letter of our treaties
with the Chiefs; develop the native peoples along the lines of their own
civilisation both in the case of Mohammedans and Pagans; use conciliation
in preference to dictation, gold rather than the sword. Administrative
extravagance should be rigidly held in check for fear of burdening new
Colonies with a load of debt; the soldier and the policeman should be
kept in the background, only to be used as a last extremity. Commerce,
good roads, _and statesmanship_ should be our preferable choice of
weapons for mitigating evils, some at least of which the example of
Europe in the past has intensified, others lying in deep-rooted religious
beliefs, requiring careful preliminary investigation and thorough
understanding before being made the object of official action, and then
only of a repressive nature after every pacific inducement had been tried
in vain. Patience, more patience, and again patience. That should be,
ought to be, the corner-stone of British policy in West Africa. It was
the tortoise that won the race; not the hare.
Unfortunately the hare is the more popular beast just now, and the
forward policy is as much in evidence in British West Africa to-day as it
was five years ago, with the result that what may have been justifiable
then bids fair, if it be not stopped in time, to be disastrous now that
the necessity for it has passed away with the close of international
competition. Energy is being misapplied and misdirected. Let it be
conceded that the existing basis of rule in West Africa, the Crown Colony
system, is the worst in the world to stand the strain of a naturally
active directing influence at headquarters; let it be admitted that it
is a clumsy, inelastic instrument which allows the governed no voice
in the government, which places the suppliers of revenue, both direct
and indirect, in the position of having no effective control over the
expenditure of that revenue, which permits of the jeopardising of years
of commercial effort by some ill-considered legislative act—let these
and many other counts against the Crown Colony system be admitted. The
fact nevertheless remains that that system is capable of reform, of
modification, of being moulded in accordance with the requirements of
the case. The task should not be beyond the capacity of statecraft. Is
it to be seriously maintained that British statesmanship has sunk so low
that machinery suitable to a bygone age cannot be improved and brought
more into line with our altered situation: that we must needs cling to
every ancient wheel and rivet though they be clogged with superfluous
matter, and eaten through with rust? If the machine which it was sought
to preserve intact had done yeoman service in past days, there might
be some excuse for hesitating to supply it with new works. But that is
emphatically not so with the West African machine.
And it is positively heart-breaking to see that the last few years, far
from bringing any reforms, far from holding out the hope of reform in
the future, have but accentuated the evil. We cannot, it is true, lose
any more territory, unless we care to give away that which is assured
to us by international agreement. But in almost every other respect the
Crown Colony system, as it prevails in West Africa, and under the new
circumstances in which it is performing its functions, is building up
a legacy of trouble which can only be contemplated with equanimity, or
viewed with indifference, by the thoughtless; by those good people who
refuse to walk save in pleasant places, who constitutionally dislike
criticism as much as a cat objects to a wetting.
Haste and hurry are the order of the day in British West Africa.
Expenditure is going up by leaps and bounds,[12] altogether apart from
expenditure on public works. In the case of public works, large and
costly undertakings are arranged for on the most unpractical lines,
with no effort to benefit by competition, no putting out to tender,
no safeguards without which a business man of ordinary intelligence
will surround himself in order that he may be sure of getting the best
value for his money. An extraordinary theory in economics has become
fashionable. It is that the higher the revenue of a given West African
Colony the more prosperous that Colony must be, quite oblivious of the
effect which every increase of taxation has upon the volume of trade in
the way of reduction, and driving it away to the neighbouring territory
of a foreign rival. If a West African Colony shows in a given year
an increase of £10,000 in revenue, obtained from increased taxation,
jubilation in official quarters is excessive: but either nothing is
heard of the falling off in trade accompanying the increase in revenue,
or it is explained in some other way. The fact that there is a gain
in revenue is held to be proof positive of an abounding prosperity
and wise management. Every fresh increase in revenue is followed by a
corresponding increase in expenditure. The one is made to keep pace with
the other. It does not always succeed, because the expenditure is not
infrequently in excess of the revenue _quand même_. It is also becoming
the usual thing to financially assist these Colonies by “loans” or
“grants-in-aid” or “advances” quite on the West Indian model, while the
official reports invariably lead off with the reassuring statement that
“this Colony has no public debt”: a little farther on, casual reference
to the “grant-in-aid” may be discovered by the aid of a microscope,
tucked away in some obscure corner, a footnote for choice. Lagos, Sierra
Leone, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, are all at the present moment in the
enjoyment of Imperial loans: Sierra Leone for the Railway and the late
Hut-Tax war, Lagos for the Railway, the Gold Coast for the Railway and
Ashanti war, Nigeria for the purchase of the Niger Co.’s treaties with
the natives (the terms of which we have not adhered to), and for raising
an army. Meantime, our neighbours the French are—in their West Coast
Colonies proper, where comparison alone is possible—making their own
Colonies pay a considerable part in the expenses of Railway construction;
taxing their trade less, spending less on administration, governing more
cheaply and quite as well—better by a long way in some cases.
The producing power of our Colonies, that is to say, the export trade,
the only true test of prosperity in West Africa, is either increasing
slowly by comparison with the expenditure, or it is stagnant, or it is
retrogressing. When it is increasing, the increase is much below the
corresponding ratio of increased expenditure. “Large doses”—veritable
purgatives—of European conceived legislation are being thrust down the
throats of the bewildered natives. The number of Ordinances passed in the
British West African Colonies during the last few years, especially in
Southern Nigeria,[13] is simply amazing. Most of them are far in advance
of the times and cannot but remain a dead letter because, thank goodness,
the existing machinery is not yet sufficiently extensive to carry them
out. To make as few Ordinances as possible, and to ensure that such as
are made shall be permanently useful, does not appear to enter into
the official conception; and in the face of the growing objections to
this rapidity and fertility of the official brain in forming premature
legislation, not only on the part of the natives who are getting more
and more confused, and—as the French put it—_déséquilibrés_, but by all
people in affairs on the Coast who would desire that officialdom should
move more slowly, carrying at each step real and understanding consent:
the work of drafting portentous decrees, the exact meaning of which
the very lawyers at home cannot comprehend, or reconcile with avowed
intentions, goes merrily on.
Punitive expedition follows punitive expedition. We have had a war in
Sierra Leone, a war in Ashanti, two expeditions in the Gambia, a big
expedition up the Cross River in Southern Nigeria, together with minor
affrays, while in Northern Nigeria, which so far is producing no revenue
and has not attracted a single merchant (and but one exploring expedition
for possible mining purposes), one punitive expedition succeeds another
at an interval of a few weeks at most. I will not now labour the case of
Northern Nigeria, as that most interesting portion of our West African
dominions is discussed at some length farther on, but it is quite evident
that the attention of Parliament to the expenditure of Northern Nigeria
is becoming increasingly urgent. Lagos alone, under the able guidance
of Sir William MacGregor, has known the blessings of peace. Long may it
continue to do so.
Specific instances and examples of these general statements will be found
scattered throughout this volume. It was, however, necessary to place
them in collective form. In the next chapter, endeavour will be made to
briefly indicate the lines upon which certain reforms might be attempted
and the reasons for those reforms. Official optimism notwithstanding,
it is an undoubted fact that, if something is not very shortly done to
improve the prevailing system, the majority of the British West African
Colonies will drift into a morass of financial confusion paralysing
to their development and progress, while the native population within
them will be comparatively poorer than in the neighbouring Colonies of
commercial rivals.
CHAPTER IV
SOME NECESSARY REFORMS
“It is well known also that this personal system, at its
best, is full of abuses of the worst kind politically; the
Administrators and those who influence them, get to have
favourites, and even chiefs have their legitimate power,
influence and dignity interfered with because they refuse to
pay homage to their views. In consequence of all this, an
apparently successful Administrator is usually and sharply
followed by even worse confusion and more protracted wars than
were known before his advent. It is the history of all weak
despotic systems, having no basis in the country or among
the people sought to be governed or influenced.”—“The Crown
Colonies of Great Britain” (chapter vi. West Africa), by C. S.
Salmon, formerly Colonial Secretary and Administrator of the
Gold Coast, &c.
“The inhabitants of the country and the mercantile community
who provide the whole of the revenues, have no voice at all in
the governing of their Colonies and the expenditure of these
revenues, and I sincerely hope that the day is not far distant
when the African community will rise up and protest against
this Crown Colony system of government”—Mr. ARTHUR HUTTON,
President of the African Section of the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce. (Extract from speech delivered.)
It will, I think, be conceded that, notwithstanding the extraordinarily
important and revolutionising discoveries of Major Ross, to whom the
entire credit of recent demonstrations belongs, the admirable work
performed by the Liverpool[14] and London schools in the study of
tropical disease and sanitary improvements on the West Coast, the chances
of British West Africa ever becoming a possession where English men
and women can flourish and multiply, is excessively remote; so remote,
indeed, as to be outside the sphere of useful discussion. In fact,
with the one possible exception of the Futa-Jallon uplands, when the
Konakry-Kurussa railway line has connected them with the coast, West
Africa as a whole is unsuitable, and will, according to all reasonable
supposition, always remain unsuitable for European _colonisation_. The
dominion of British West Africa must, therefore, be regarded not in the
light of a colony properly so called, but as a vast tropical estate.
From that postulate arises a query, or rather, series of queries. What
are we in West Africa for? What do we hope to do there? What object took
us there? What main purpose keeps us there? The answer is not for a
moment in doubt. Commerce took us to West Africa; commerce keeps and will
keep us in West Africa. It is the _fons et origo_ of our presence in West
Africa. The day that it ceases to be so, West Africa ceases to be of use
to the Empire. It will become a costly plaything, and the British people
is too essentially practical a people to care long for toys of that kind.
As in every other part of the world, commerce in West Africa is the
outcome of supply and demand. There is a demand for the products of West
Africa on the markets of the world, and there is a demand in West Africa
for the products of European industrialism. The increased circulation of
a portable currency in West Africa in the shape of silver coinage will
facilitate the operations of commerce, but will not dislodge or alter the
fundamental nature of that commerce. The development of a mining industry
in this or that portion of West Africa will, while it lasts, modify the
conditions of trade in the portion affected, but commerce will remain the
backbone, as it ever has been, of European intercourse with West Africa.
There is nothing that need occasion regret at the contemplation of the
truth. Commerce is the greatest civilising agent. The steps upward in
the ethical development of the human race have been synonymous with
the spread of commercial relations, and the creation of the means and
measures whereby their promotion has been successively extended. The
most backward peoples to-day are, generally speaking, those whose
secluded habitat renders their commercial transactions with the outside
world scanty and precarious. In these days, when the noble meaning
which attaches to “philanthropy” and “civilisation” is made the cloak
to cover in West Africa so much that is vile, the excuse both sincerely
and hypocritically given to explain away so much that is in painful
contradiction, one needs, perhaps, to be reminded that such commonplace
things as commerce and improved means of communication will do more
to benefit the native than any number of attempts to impose laws and
institutions unfamiliar to him, by violent even if well-meaning measures
of so-called reform.[15] As a nation we should gain much and lose nothing
in frankly admitting to ourselves that it is due neither to a desire
to mend the ways of priestly theocracies, nor to alter the tyranny of
the strong over the weak, which has led to the incorporation within
the Empire of some thirty-five millions of West African natives, but
the belief that West Africa constitutes a vast outlet for the free and
unfettered development of British trade, and an equally vast field for
the cultivation of products of economic necessity to ourselves. Thorough
realisation of the fact would lead to more accurate appreciation and a
truer sense of the direction which our policy should take in West Africa,
if ultimate success and not failure is to attend it.
Commercial development is then in an especial and peculiar degree the
_raison d’être_ of our presence in West Africa.
Now what are the principal factors in British West African commerce, and
how are their claims to consideration in the administration of British
West Africa treated under the Crown Colony system? Obviously the two
principal factors are the European merchant and his customer, the native.
The merchant directly supplies, the native indirectly supplies, the
revenue which pays for the salaries of the officials and the general
up-keep of the government, and if it be true, as it undoubtedly is,
that the burden of taxation ultimately falls upon the native producer,
it is equally true that, without the enterprise of the merchant, there
would be no revenue and consequently no local funds for the support
of administrative machinery. It follows, therefore, as a matter of
simple justice, that the merchant should have a voice in the framing of
legislation calculated to affect the internal politics, and consequently
the commerce of our West African possessions. Apart from its justice,
the claim of the merchant to representation in the affairs of our West
African Empire has many features in its favour. He enjoys an expert’s
knowledge, gained by long years of actual contact with the peoples of
Western Africa. Experience has given him an insight into their customs
and laws; an acquaintance with their peculiarities, with the working
of their minds, with their inbred conservatism, which officials whose
residence in West Africa—broken, as it is, by long intervals of leave—is
usually of a very temporary or flitting nature, cannot hope to attain at
any rate with the same completeness; and a mastery, even if it be only an
instinctive mastery, of certain special characteristics which underlie
native conceptions, and which have to be reckoned with in dealing with
them. The merchant is consequently well fitted to be a most valuable
assistant in the administration of British Western Africa.
The fact is recognised by the French and Germans who share with us the
vast proportion of influence in West Africa properly so called. Ever
practical, the Germans have created an Advisory Board (_Kolonial-rath_)
to their Colonial Office, composed for the most part of the leading
men in the West African trade. The present Colonial Advisory Board has
twelve merchants sitting on its Council.[16] In French West Africa,
but on somewhat different lines, the merchant is similarly treated, and
just recently the representations of the French merchants to M. Décrais,
the then Colonial Minister of France, averted a great evil threatening
the Ivory Coast in the contemplated cession to King Leopold’s nominee,
M. Empain, of a practical monopoly over the whole of the gold-bearing
districts of that dependency, although M. Empain[17] had the most
influential support at his back.
The French system, though far from perfect, is incomparably superior
to anything we have in this country. It differs somewhat in the
various Colonies, but is substantially composed of two Organisms, the
Metropolitan Organism and the Colonial Organism. Under these dual
Organisms, every Colony which is not directly represented in the French
Parliament is represented at the Colonial Office by a delegate elected
by vote of the white inhabitants of such Colony. In French Guinea, where
the administration in force is in advance of that of any other French (or
English for that matter) West African possession, a commercial delegate
is regularly elected, and at the present moment a merchant, M. Gaboriau,
representing the interests of that Colony, is attached to the Colonial
Office. The weak point in the arrangement is, that the officials in the
respective Colonies as well as the merchants have the right to vote in
the election of a representative, with the result that very often the
officials are in a majority. When that happens, a French politician, who
can use his influence in promoting the officials who vote for him, is
appointed. Each colony possesses a “Superior Council” or “Administrative
Council” composed of the Governor, the heads of departments, and two or
more merchants. In Senegal the merchant councillors have always enjoyed
considerable power, and no step affecting the interests of the Colony is
ever taken without the concurrence of the great Bordeaux merchant firms,
which between them centralise the ground-nut trade (they themselves
built it up), the staple industry of Senegal. Moreover, Senegal is
particularly favoured in that it boasts a Deputy in the Chamber and a
local General Council which enjoys large financial responsibility, the
merchants—provided they do not fall out among themselves—being always in
a majority in the said General Council.
With us matters are altogether different. England, which passes for
a country where common-sense is the cardinal virtue, refuses to her
merchants any recognised _status_ in the administrative machinery of
West Africa. It has been accurately asserted that the merchant is the
_uitlander_ of British West Africa. He is seldom, if ever, consulted in
the affairs of the country, and although Mr. Chamberlain has on more
than one occasion given verbal assurances that no legislative acts
affecting the natives (and _de facto_ calculated to influence native
production—or, in other words, trade) would be promulgated without
previously being submitted to the merchants for their opinion, decrees of
the highest importance embodying a kind of revolution in our historical
native policy in regard to the laws of native land tenure have just
become law in Southern Nigeria, not only without the merchants being
consulted, but without their being advised in any other way than by a
perusal of the published Ordinances in the local Government Gazette. From
time to time—and during the last two years with increasing frequency,
consistency, and earnestness—the Liverpool and Manchester Chambers of
Commerce, which between them represent the majority of the commercial
interests of Great Britain in West Africa,[18] have approached the
Foreign and Colonial Offices on their own initiative, sometimes
supported by as many as ten or twelve other leading chambers in the
Kingdom voicing industrial interests more or less directly affected by
specific occurrences. When—I am speaking now of recent times—the Foreign
Office has been either memorialised or waited upon by deputations from
the Chambers, the question at issue has been one of international import,
such for instance as the differential tariff against British goods in the
French West African Colonies (1898), and the violation of the Berlin Act
in the Congo Basin (1901 and 1902). In the first case, the action of the
Chambers was surprisingly successful; in the second case, success has not
yet attended their efforts.
When, as in the majority of instances, the Colonial Office has been
waited upon or written to, the object has referred to some legislation
either contemplated or assented to, or to some measure of internal policy
towards a native tribe or ruler. I cannot find that the Colonial Office
has on any single occasion, in a matter of importance, consented to adopt
the views of the men who, as subsequent events have manifestly proved,
saw clearer than the permanent officials, and whose advice, if taken,
would have avoided the perpetration of serious mistakes. In 1895 the
Manchester Chamber and the local Chamber at Cape Coast strongly advised
“that the King of Ashanti (Prempreh) be allowed to reserve all the rights
that he now exercises over his people,” but that a British resident
should be established at his Court, as the best means of ensuring a
lasting peace with the Ashanti people, who, if they had erred, also
had—as is historically admitted—grounds of legitimate complaint against
the British authorities on various occasions. Prempreh, however, was
arrested and deported, and from that moment the Ashantis never ceased to
intrigue against the British until their discontent, fanned into flame by
the injudicious proceedings of Governor Hodgson, broke forth once more
and led to the last sanguinary expedition, which involved an expenditure
of a quarter of a million of money.
But the most notable instance at once, of the value of the merchants’
expert knowledge and of the fatuity of lightly rejecting their counsel,
is provided in the lamentable chapter in the history of Sierra Leone
which began with the enforcement of the Hut Tax Ordinance in 1898, and
which is not yet closed, whatever officialdom may say to the contrary.
As I propose discussing this subject in some detail later on, it is
sufficient to state here that the merchants almost went on their bended
knees, figuratively speaking, in seeking to turn the Colonial Office
from its purpose; that they entirely failed; that they were met by
official assurances which were afterwards shown to be entirely erroneous;
that their predictions and warnings were fulfilled to the letter; that
their views were subsequently substantiated in every respect by the
Special Commissioner despatched later by the Colonial Office to make
investigations as to the origin of the rising, and that the persistent
refusal of the Colonial Office to abide by the Special Commissioner’s
report has reduced our oldest West African possession to such a
condition that, if the railway now in course of construction through
the eastern district does not—and there appears little or no hope that
it will—entirely alter the present state of affairs, Sierra Leone under
the present _régime_, and with the pressure of French competition in the
neighbouring territories, is irretrievably ruined.
Is it not time that in this respect at least something was done to
bring the management of British West Africa more into line with modern
requirements, and at a period when the commercial position of Great
Britain in West Africa is everywhere threatened by foreign competition,
to establish some working arrangement—call it a West African Council or
Advisory Board or anything you please—whereby the accumulated experience
of the men who are supplying the Government with the wherewithal to
govern, should be used as an auxiliary force for the promotion of the
general interests of Great Britain in West Africa? The nucleus of such a
council or Advisory Board could be at once supplied.
It is said that the merchants cannot agree amongst themselves. The plea
lacks in truthfulness, and it is permissible to doubt whether it is
sincerely put forward. Unquestionably there are rivalries in the West
African trade. What trade is without them? But to argue that competition
in trade is a bar to co-operation in matters affecting the general
welfare of the country is a very narrow-minded position to take up.
It is converting a legitimate, natural, and healthy phenomenon into a
disqualification which nothing justifies. Where should we be in West
Africa to-day but for our merchant pioneers? Suppose they had endorsed
the official resolution of 1865 by withdrawing from the Coast, would the
Union Jack be floating in West Africa except in Sierra Leone to-day? If
the merchant had been devoid of political conception, and content to
let his horizon be confined to those petty but inevitable aspects of
commercialism which consist in under-selling a competitor, would not the
abandonment of the Gold Coast have followed the battle of Katamansu, and
would the richest portion of the Niger Valley be a British Protectorate
to-day? Let those who suggest that the British merchant in West Africa
is incapable of rising above sordid motives of self-interest remember
MacGregor Laird. The merchant has everywhere preceded the administrator
in West Africa. In his case the old adage must be reversed. It has been
the flag which has followed trade, not trade the flag.[19]
It is also said that the merchants are not unanimous with regard to
certain features of West African policy. But can any one single out a
body of men among whom variations of opinion on specific points do not
occur? Do all the members of a Cabinet invariably see eye to eye on a
particular measure to be introduced? Are not the very modifications which
any given Bill must go through before being finally drafted and approved
by the Cabinet as a whole a guarantee that legislation evolved from
the interchange of ideas among the sundry persons concerned—and who,
unless they be devoid of individuality, cannot all think alike on every
point—will be the better for the destructive and constructive criticism
to which it has been subjected? The merchants are in substantial
agreement in what they consider the vital principles of British policy
in West Africa, principles which informed public opinion is at last
beginning to realise the urgency of upholding. No material divergency
of views will be found among merchants as to the absolute necessity of
respecting native land tenure, the need of careful finance, the danger
of constant military operations, the indispensableness of preserving
native institutions. If there be a charge against the merchants, it
is that they have not hitherto sufficiently exercised their power of
influencing successive Governments. They have not risen as they should
have done to the height of their duties and responsibilities. They have
allowed outsiders to perform a difficult and generally ungrateful work,
which they themselves should have taken in hand—that of calling public
attention to the urgency of reforms in West African administration. At
critical moments they have been weak-kneed, and fearful of giving offence
when they should have been resolute in standing by convictions which
they knew to be sound. Their attitude is now happily undergoing a change
which, if maintained, is bound to have lasting results for good.
At no previous period in the history of British West Africa has
the co-operation of the great merchant community in the task of
administration been so pressing a necessity as it is to-day. Never could
better use be made of such co-operation by the department responsible
for West Africa as at present. In the increasing notice which is
being given on all sides to West African affairs consequent upon the
remarkable growth of European relations with that country and with the
birth in West Africa of a modern mining industry, a host of dangerous
advisers is arising. We see old errors creeping back in the guise of
new verities, old misconceptions gaining fresh lease of life, exploded
theories crowding forward to mislead and confuse. Appeals to force as
the solution of all difficulties arising out of contact with a primitive
people, contemptuous disregard of native laws and customs—the “damned
nigger” theory in all its perennial beauty, insistent requests for lavish
expenditure, heedless of plain economic facts, and so forth—these are the
order of the day. Upon elementary errors of geography are grafted the
crudest notions of the political and social condition of the Negro, the
most amazing ignorance of history and past experience in every branch of
West African lore. By a plausible inversion of facts, opponents of the
wild and whirling talk indulged in regarding West Africa are denounced
as sentimentalists, although it so happens that the denouncers draw the
material which serves them as a basis for their contentions from that
very discredited sentimentalism responsible for so many errors in West
Africa, which portrays the native as an abject being, brutish, lazy,
and degraded, greatly honoured by the bestowal of a bible, a suit of
clothes; and a shilling, with a possible extra threepence thrown in as
subsistence-money, for a hard day’s work. No doubt it is possible to
exaggerate the importance of these _ad captandum_ effusions, but their
volume is, perhaps, calculated to momentarily drown the voice of reason.
Parrot-like reiteration, if sufficiently sustained, is apt sometimes to
impress.
At such a time the assistance of a trained body of men thoroughly
conversant with the affairs of Western Africa, in a position to point to
past experiences, to vested interests, to technical knowledge as their
claim to competency, and to the feeding of the administrative machine
as their claim to consideration, ought surely to commend itself to the
Authorities. To persist much longer in the rejection of that assistance
would be equally short-sighted and unjust.
Another and an equally important question connected with the management
of our West African Possessions, is the question of the Crown Agents. If
any one attempted to define the duties of that body, he would be hard
put to it to do so. They are here, there and everywhere, and their
interference puts a premium upon extravagance and waste. The Crown Agents
are an anomaly which ought to disappear. At present they constitute a
sort of half-way house between the Colonial Office and the West African
Governors, and are a positive obstacle to sound finance and good business
methods. Enough examples of the extraordinary ways of the Crown Agents
could be given to fill a volume. The West African Colonies are hampered
right and left by the powers conferred upon this body. The Colonies
are not allowed to purchase what they require in the shape of stores,
equipment, material and so forth on the open market. Everything has to
go through the Crown Agents, with the natural result that the Colonies
have to pay 40 per cent. and 50 per cent. more than they would have to if
allowed to invite tenders on their own account. Look at the way in which
these railways have been and are being built.
The construction is, apparently, the monopoly of one particular firm
(under the direction of the Crown Agents); a firm which, as far as can be
gathered, had had but little experience in railway construction before,
metaphorically speaking, falling upon its feet in West Africa.
The same firm holds the position of “consulting engineers” to the
Colonial Office. Surely it is anomalous, from the purely business
point of view, that a firm retained as “consulting engineers” to a
Government Department in charge of West Africa should also be the actual
constructors of the West African railways! The two parts strike one as
incompatible. Consulting engineers, one would imagine, would be advisers
and arbiters. All contracts should be publicly and openly tendered for.
A very widespread impression prevails that the time and cost expended in
the construction of these railways have been very great. The Gold Coast
Railway was begun in February 1898; it is officially estimated to reach
Kumasi early in 1904. Assuming that it does, it will have taken six years
to build, which works out at about twenty-eight miles per annum—the
distance from Sekondi to Kumasi being 169¼ miles.
It is as yet too early to say definitely what the cost of the line will
average per mile. Official estimates, we know, are not always reliable.
In this case, even the official estimate is very high, viz. £8000
per mile for the Sekondi-Tarkwa section, and £6300 per mile for the
Tarkwa-Kumasi section.
That dissatisfaction with the policy pursued up to the present (that is
to say, the policy of constructing these railways under the “Department
System,” or, otherwise stated, leaving their construction to the
Crown Agents), is not confined to merchants, mine-managers and other
revenue-payers of the West African Colonies, but is held by competent and
highly placed officials, I reproduce the following remarks of Sir William
MacGregor, made on the occasion of a visit to the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce in 1900, and in reply to the following question of Mr. Arthur
Hutton’s[20]:
“Do you think, from what you have seen, it (_i.e._ railway
construction) would be better done by contract?”
SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR: “I believe at the present moment—and I
have said so to the Secretary of State—_I believe there would
be men living who are now rotting in their graves, if it had
been taken out of the control of the Crown Agents_....”[21]
It is competently estimated that the Lagos railway, begun in 1896, will
have cost £10,000[22] per mile by the time its 125 miles are in full
working order—an enormous rate. The Crown Agents, through whom the
moneys have been advanced to the Colony, exact 5 per cent. interest,
whereas with the security they have to offer, they should easily be able
to get them—and probably have got them—from the Treasury at 3 per cent.
Why should the Colony be saddled with an extra 2[23] per cent. interest
and find its liability for the current year on the railway loan increased
to the enormous total of £54,000, or, say, 22 per cent. of the entire
revenue?[24] Why should all indents be sent through the Crown Agents? The
delays which this ridiculous system entail are only second in point of
importance to the squandering of the public funds which goes on under it.
The Crown Agents appear to think that they know more about the material
needs of the Colonies than the officials in charge of the Colonies
themselves. Two instances have been recently brought to my notice
which would be laughable were they not so deplorably unbusiness-like.
A certain West African Colony required a two-ton engine for a short,
light railway. The request was duly put forward. After months of delay
an eight-ton engine was sent out, too heavy, of course, for the rails to
support it. It was entirely useless. Again, a scheme was drawn up for the
construction of a bridge by the local official responsible. An estimate
was made, and the plans and so forth were forwarded home. The bridge
was urgently required. Months elapsed; then the Crown Agents, who knew
nothing of the local conditions, instead of despatching the materials,
sent out an entirely different counter-scheme, far more elaborate, far
more costly, and totally unsuited to local requirements. The Colony is
still waiting for its bridge.[25] I can only repeat that, whether avowed
or not—in many cases, of course, it manifestly cannot be avowed—the Crown
Agents are looked upon in official and commercial circles in West Africa
as an unmitigated nuisance and a stumbling-block to progress.
The needs of British West Africa at the present time may be resumed thus:
(1) A Council or Advisory Board in which the merchant element shall be
widely represented; (2) Tight control over the military element—fewer
punitive expeditions, and more tact and patience in dealing with native
races, the officials whose administration is virgin of wars to be looked
upon as deserving of prior promotion; (3) Economy in Administration;
(4) Thorough financial overhaul; (5) Elimination of the Crown Agents;
(6) Open tenders for all public works; (7) Sanitation; (8) Scientific
study of native peoples, laws and languages; (9) Scientific study of
native products and improvement of native industries; (10) Maintenance
and not murder of native institutions, upholding and strengthening of
the power of the Chiefs; non-interference with domestic slavery in
the Protectorates; preservation of native land-tenure; (11) A Civil
Service on the lines of the Indian Civil Service; (12) A Civilian
Governor-General.
PART II