ORIGIN OF THE FULANI
“The most interesting of all African tribes.... A distinct
race.”—DR. BARTH, “Travels in Central Africa” (5-volume
edition).
Of all the mysteries which lie hidden, or but half unveiled, within the
bosom of the still mysterious Continent of Africa, there is none that
presents a more absorbing or more fascinating interest than the origin of
the race which has infused its individuality throughout inland Western
Africa, and whose fertilising influence is visible from the banks of the
Senegal to the Chad.
In the previous chapter it has, I venture to believe, been fairly
established that the Fulani are indubitably associated with our earliest
available records of Western Africa, and that, with the exception of
Hanno’s narrative (touched upon presently), every important reference,
spread over many centuries, to the portion of Western Africa between the
tenth and twentieth parallels of North latitude, bears witness, directly
or indirectly, to the presence of the Fulani within that region at a
remote period.[123] Whence came this people, which differentiates so
radically in colour, form, habits, customs and manners from the Negroes
among whom they have settled, and which dominated in the valley of the
Senegal as far back as the fourth century?
Their own legends; their complexion and structure; their mental
development and physical characteristics, all point emphatically to the
East as the cradle of the Fulani race; a “distinct race,” as Dr. Barth
truly says, and not the bastard product which some would make out.
[Illustration: LOW-CASTE FULANI, WESTERN SUDAN]
Before attempting to piece together the various threads which in the
aggregate amount, in my humble opinion, to a virtual demonstration, it
may be well to state that the Eastern theory numbers opponents who,
from their position and attainments, compel our attention. There are
those who entertain the belief that the Fulani belong to the Berber
stock. There are others who think—and this I cannot but regard as wildly
improbable—that the Fulani are of Nigritic extraction. M. Marcel Dubois,
the brilliant author of “Timbuctoo the Mysterious,”[124] whose treatment
of the Fulani is anything but impartial, categorically denies the Eastern
theory. “It was from the West,” he says, “from the Senegalese Adrar
(Aderer of British maps), from the land of sand extending north of the
Senegal that they came.” “The Foulbes,” he continues, “had been driven
towards the Sudan, very probably when the Moors, expelled from Spain,
invaded Adrar.” M. Dubois finds corroboration of his views in a passage
of the _Tarik_ (which, being written by an Arab, is necessarily biased
against the Fulani) to the effect that the “Foulbes originated in the
country of Tischitt.” I venture, very respectfully, to differ from M.
Dubois. According to Leo, the Moors or Berbers conquered Ghanata in the
eighth century, the ruling caste at that time, as both the _Tarik_ and
also Barth’s records lead us to infer, being of Fulani blood, which in
itself casts doubt upon M. Dubois’ assertion. But the more one endeavours
to reconcile M. Dubois’ contention with existing records, the less sound
does it appear. The Moorish power in Spain was not finally extinguished
until towards the close of the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, it may be
said that the Moorish cause was lost in Europe, and that their expulsion
commenced with the defeat of Salado in 1340.[125] We can, therefore,
for the sake of argument, take the middle of the fourteenth century as
the period, approximately, when the Moors began to be “expelled from
Spain.” This would be about the time when, in M. Dubois’ view, the Moors
were driving the pastoral Fulani towards Aderer, “the land of sand.”
Now, apart from the self-evident contradiction of a people whose wealth
has ever been in their flocks and herds, originating in an arid district
(sand not usually being associated with pastures), the Fulani were in
point of fact already considerably farther south. Was not the market of
Jenne (on which M. Dubois has himself thrown such a glamour of interest)
attended as early as 1260 by Fulani?[126] Did not the King of Bornu
receive a Fulani deputation from Melle between 1288 and 1306?[127] Is it
conceivable that the Fulani, compelled to evacuate Aderer in the middle
of the fourteenth century, would have ruled over vast tracts of territory
as far south as Gurma, only one hundred years later? M. Dubois will have
to bring forward a great deal of evidence—certainly something more than
his own assertion, and an obscure passage in the _Tarik_—to upset the
Eastern theory of Fulani origin.
Of native traditions among the Fulani attributing an Eastern origin
to their race we have no end, and although too much significance need
not be attached to them, they must not on that account be overlooked.
There is generally a foundation of truth in native legends of this
kind. Anthropometrical studies, or rather craniological studies, are,
however, extremely valuable. Although carried out to a small extent
so far, they appreciably strengthen the Eastern theory. Dr. Verneau,
whose reputation as an anthropologist is well known, has recently
published[128] the results of an examination of five skulls of Fulani
chiefs from Futa-Jallon. The first three belonged to individuals known,
when alive, to the French authorities of that Colony. The other two were
brought home by Dr. Maclaud, who has travelled extensively among the
Fulani, and to whom I am indebted for several of the photographs here
reproduced. None of the originals were Fulani of the pure type. The one
approaching nearest to purity was Alfa-Alliu, who was condemned to death
for an unprovoked attack upon a French convoy. Of this individual’s
skull, Dr. Verneau reports: “Alfa-Alliu belongs by his cranial and
facial characteristics to the sur-based (vaulted) pentagonal type which
enters into the composition of the present population of Erythria and
the ancient population of Egypt.” Of two other skulls out of the five
examined, Dr. Verneau remarks: “Their owners, no doubt, had a certain
amount of negro blood in their veins, which resulted in a thickening of
the osseous frame and in a notable prognathous accentuation....[129]
Nevertheless, these two chiefs were not negroes; the width of the
forehead, the prominence of the bones of the nose, the proportions of the
nose itself, and the form of the chin, preclude any connection.” Of the
two remaining skulls, Dr. Verneau concludes thus: “I will not further
insist upon the cephalic character of these two deeply crossed Fulani.
I would merely observe that, notwithstanding the mixed breed, they
present two cranial forms which we find wherever the influence of the
Ethiopians has been felt.” It is necessary to add that by “Ethiopian,”
Dr. Verneau—as he is careful to explain in the opening lines of his
paper—designates the Abyssinian type, holding that the synonymy given to
the terms “Negro” and “Ethiopian” is a popular confusion. Élisée Reclus,
in his great geographical work, also states that the formation of the
Fulani cranium has affinities with the Egyptian type. To this testimony
may be added, that the most recent studies in Berber anthropometry
tend to divorce the Berbers from the ancient Egyptian and the Eastern
stock.[130]
Dr. Blyden, who visited Timbo (the capital of Futa-Jallon, one of the
most important Fulani centres in West Africa) in the seventies, and who,
like Dr. Bayol and others, was immensely impressed with what he saw,
remarks in a report to the Government of the time (to which I have been
able, through the doctor’s kindness, to have access): “On entering a
Fulah town the first thing which strikes a stranger is the Caucasian cast
of features, especially among the older people; yet every now and then,
in the children of parents having all the physical traits of the Semitic
family, there recurs the inextinguishable Negro physiognomy.”[131] “It
is evident,” the doctor goes on to say, “that while there is a large
infusion of foreign blood among the people, there is still the influence
of a powerful race-stock which has thoroughly assimilated the alien
elements, and this may be judged from the strong pride of ancestry which
they possess, their respect for the past and their care for posterity.”
D’Eichtal sought to trace in the Hovas of Madagascar a relationship with
the Fulani, which would, obviously, connect them with the Malays—the
object of d’Eichtal’s treatise. The sole basis of the theory was a chance
similarity in certain words; but were d’Eichtal right, we should have
to admit a complete reversal of the cycle of Fulani migration, which is
quite impossible. Fulfulde cannot as yet be definitely classed among
the languages, but, so far as our knowledge extends, it has Semitic
antecedents. When we endeavour to find some other links, connecting the
Fulani with the East, several circumstances arrest our attention. The
first is provided in a passage of Hanno’s “Periplus”; the second, in
the invasion of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos; the third, in the Hebraic
tendencies and peculiar familiarity with Hebrew legends observed among
the Fulani; the fourth, in an attachment to their cattle so remarkable
as to suggest a far-off bovine worship. These points may be severally
examined.
[Illustration: PURE-BRED FULANI GIRL—FUTA-JALLON]
When, towards the close of the sixteenth century B.C., the rulers of
Carthage conceived a scheme of over-sea colonisation which should
redound to the glory of the Empire and free it at the same time from a
portion at least of the undesirable elements of the population, they
despatched an armada of sixty ships containing some thirty thousand
souls, under the command of a worthy magistrate of the name of Hanno,
with instructions to pass through the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of
Gibraltar) and to lay the basis of a colony somewhere beyond them. The
fleet appears to have navigated the West Coast of Africa until it reached
the Senegal, the Carthaginians proceeding for some little distance up
that river, subsequently pushing southward to the Gambia and farther
still to the “Southern Horn,” which it has been sought to identify with
Sherbro Sound.[132] This meeting of Phœnician culture with aboriginal
primitiveness on the West Coast was, as Sir Harry Johnston has strikingly
put it, “The first sight that civilised man had of his wild brother since
the two had parted company in Neolithic times.” And yet in one respect
this general statement is open to doubt. It was not only Negroes with
whom the Carthaginian navigator came in contact.
On his return, Hanno wrote an account of his wanderings, in the Punic
tongue, termed a Periplus or circumnavigation, which he dedicated to
Moloch, the deity of the Carthaginians, in the Temple of Cronos. Through
the enterprise of Greek scientists, the relation of Hanno’s voyage
has been preserved to us. About three centuries after its completion,
Ptolemæus Claudius, a Greek geographer and historian, published eight
volumes of geographical research. The portion relating to Africa was
mainly founded upon Carthaginian material and included a translation of
Hanno’s “Periplus.” From Ptolemy’s description, we gather that in the
neighbourhood of the Gambia (Stachir) the Carthaginians came across a
people of a lighter hue than the Negroes. These people the author calls
“Leucæthiopes.” Pliny also speaks of the “Leucæthiopes,” placing them,
however, a couple of degrees farther north. Thus five hundred years B.C.,
Carthaginian navigators reported in West Africa the existence of a people
to whom the epithet of “black” did not apply, in the same region in which
eight hundred years later—that being the first reference to West Africa
which has come down to us—we hear of an Empire whose rulers were “white,”
founded by a monarch with a Fulfulde affix to his name.
Who could those light-complexioned “Africans” have been? Not, assuredly,
Arabs; still less Bantus. With the Berber tribes the Carthaginians were
in touch everywhere, in Mauritania, Numidia, Cyrenaica. From the Berbers,
Carthage drew her mercenaries, who often enough proved more dangerous
than useful. The colonists would have recognised the type had they met
with it in West Africa, and if the “Leucæthiopes” had been Berbers they
would have been differently described in the “Periplus.” Indeed, there
is some ground for believing that the colonists numbered Berbers among
their ranks. Moreover, the Berber occupation could not at that time have
extended as far south, by at least fifteen degrees, as the Senegal-Gambia
region. There is not, so far as I am aware, any record extant suggesting
the presence of the Berbers in the valley of the Senegal until the eighth
century A.D. To what race, then, could the “Leucæthiopes” have belonged?
To what race but the Fulani, to whom the description given by Hanno could
alone—bearing in mind the period of the expedition—by any possibility
apply? That is link one.[133]
[Illustration: FULANI HOUSE—FUTA-JALLON]
The invasion of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings from the
East is one of the obscurest stages of Egyptian history. Professor
Lepsius believed that the invasion of the Shepherds occurred during the
thirteenth dynasty (which, according to the same authority, began in 2136
B.C.), and ended about 1626 B.C. with the expulsion of the Shepherds.
About 2000 B.C. then—a little earlier or a little later, according to
other authorities—Egypt, being at that time under the Theban dynasty,
was invaded by vast hordes of Asiatics, who brought with them enormous
quantities of cattle and sheep.[134] It would seem as though some great
internal convulsion, the cause of which can only be conjectured, had
precipitated into the fertile valley of the Nile a number of nomadic
pastoral tribes, by nature herdsmen, shepherds and agriculturists, but
converted for the time being either through famine, scarcity of pastures,
pressure of other tribes behind them, or spontaneous race-expansion,
into a warlike and conquering people which swept onward in irresistible
strength until they reached a land suitable for their herds—their only
wealth. The distinctive character of their occupation is preserved in
their name—Hyksos or Shepherd Kings. After a sanguinary struggle, the
invaders succeeded in fairly establishing themselves in Lower Egypt, and
gradually extended their influence over Upper Egypt, where, however, they
were unable to gain complete mastery. Their supremacy lasted about five
hundred years. They were finally overthrown and driven out of the country
by the representatives of the old Theban dynasty under Misphragmuthosis
and Thoutmosis, somewhere about 1636 B.C., if we adopt the estimate of
the celebrated Egyptologist, Professor Lepsius. What became of them? The
Egyptian scribe, Manetho, contends that they crossed back into Asia,
but the statement is very doubtful, and his further assertion that they
occupied Judea and founded Jerusalem is scouted by the learned.
Is it not legitimate to suppose that a portion, at any rate, of
so enterprising and courageous a people, which must have been
extraordinarily numerous to have held sway over Egypt for so considerable
a period, should have preferred to plunge into the unknown West, in
search of fresh territories where their herds might find sustenance,
rather than ignominiously return in the direction from whence they came?
For five hundred years Africa had been their home. Africa offered them
extensive pastures for their cattle. They must have largely mingled and
intermarried with the Egyptians. Family and historical ties bound them
to the African soil. They had become adopted children of that Continent,
which in all ages has exerted a peculiar fascination over the various
immigrant peoples that have entered it. History, I believe, contains not
one single instance of a people which, having once settled in Africa,
has left it again. The Shepherds had risen in Africa to a position of
paramountcy. Out of the undisciplined host which spread itself like a
torrent over the Nile Delta, a race of statesmen had evolved capable
of ruling what was perhaps the mightiest Empire of the then civilised
world. It is incredible to imagine that a whole people could have been
driven in a fixed direction, as Manetho would have us believe. Tens of
thousands must have been employed, as their compatriots the Hebrews were
employed, by the victorious Thebans, in raising those mighty monuments of
stone whose ruins to-day provoke the wonder of all men. Many more must
have escaped westwards, and gained with their belongings the fertile
plains of inland Cyrenaica, and, through the ages, pushed on and on,
ever seeking pastures new, until in the course of a thousand years the
Carthaginians found their descendants in the rich valleys of the Senegal
and Gambia—with their national characteristics preserved, their “powerful
race stock” unimpaired, their “strong pride of ancestry” remaining, their
ways adapted to their new environment.
Others again may have migrated south and have largely influenced
the composite ethnic elements of Erythria, of which the nomadic
cattle-rearing Wahuma of Uganda would appear to be an offshoot—the
Asiatic origin of the latter being generally admitted. So much for link
number two.
The advent of the Hyksos in Lower Egypt was approximately contemporaneous
with Hebrew emigration from Mesopotamia to Palestine. Three hundred years
later, in 1700 B.C. according to Biblical records, when a grievous famine
lay upon the land, the famous Israelitish _trek_ into Africa began, upon
the direct invitation of Egypt’s ruler, in whose employ Joseph had risen
to a position of great influence. The new-comers established themselves
in the fertile province of Goshen,[135] east of the Nile, where the
river branches as the prongs of a fork. Who was the reigning Pharaoh
at the time? The gap in Egyptian history unfortunately prevents an
answer. But that, unless the most competent Egyptologists are hopelessly
wrong, he was one of the Shepherd Kings, cannot be doubted. And, apart
from the similarity of dates, there are inherent reasons which still
further fortify what may almost be said to be a certainty. The Hyksos
were a conglomeration of Asiatic herdsmen whom circumstances had forced
into the valley of the Nile. The _rôle_ of warriors and administrators
which they assumed was probably an accident, the result of finding a
powerful nation in occupation of the land they coveted, and whom they
had to subdue before being able to occupy. That they succeeded is proof,
not only of their courage but of their political genius and power of
organisation—qualities for which the Fulani are to-day conspicuous,
notwithstanding the demoralising tendency of contact with intellectually
inferior races. It was their political genius which led the Hyksos to
invite an influx of Israelites, Asiatics like themselves, of the same
Semitic origin and the same Monotheistic leaning. The wisdom of the
policy is apparent. The Hyksos knew well that their rule was unpopular,
that the Princes of the overthrown Theban dynasty were continually
intriguing against their domination in the southern provinces, and that
their hold upon the country depended upon the number of their adherents
in the north. They set themselves, therefore, to encourage Asiatic
immigration. Inversely, it was but natural that, when the representatives
of the old Theban dynasty once more came into their own, the Israelites
should have been specially marked out for resentment.
The administrative seat of the Hyksos was Memphis, the city sacred to
the worship of the bull Apis. At first the Hyksos replaced the worship
of Apis, incarnation of the divine Osiris, by their own divinity Set,
but they were compelled by the pressure of public opinion to allow the
revival of the national cult. After suffering a temporary eclipse,
bull-worship continued as before. It is, indeed, open to question whether
the Shepherds themselves, and their compatriots the Israelites, did not
end by adopting, partially at least, the divinities of the conquered. Can
we not trace, for instance, in the incident of the golden calf erected by
Aaron in the wilderness, and the employment of golden calves by Jeroboam,
in order to symbolise the deity, the strong hold which bull-worship had
taken upon the imagination of those pastoral Semites, the Israelites,
whom the Hyksos, pastoral Semites like themselves, had invited to reside
with them in the land of Goshen? What more natural that, being herdsmen,
and taught by long years of experience to look upon cattle-rearing as
their natural avocation, the Semitic invaders of Egypt and their allies
should have been predisposed, and insensibly drifted, towards the
adoption of the religion which they found existing in the country they
had conquered, and of which the chief symbolical deity was a bull?
[Illustration: FULANI CATTLE-PEN]
Now is it not a very singular fact that the Fulani should be the only
people in Western Africa whose former religious beliefs have been
associated, by those who have lived amongst them, with an ancient
bull-worship, the former cult of Egypt? The unusual regard they have for
their cattle, even after Islam has been established among the great bulk
of them for upwards of nine centuries, is singled out for special notice
on the part of numerous observers. Reclus deems the circumstance to be
worthy of notice: “The scrupulous care,” he says, “which they devote
to their cattle-pens has something in it of a religious nature.” Here
and there, in the Western Sudan, tribes of Fulani are met with, whose
members have remained pagan, and their paganism, in so far as it has been
observed, consists in a superstitious reverence for their cattle, almost
amounting to adoration. Among the Mohammedan Fulani the _bororo_[136]
is still pre-eminently the national representative of the race, and the
purest types are found among the _bororoji_, rather than amidst those
of their countrymen who have become over-lords, administrators and
land-owners on a large scale. “The Foola nation,” says Winterbottom, “is
the only one in this part of the coast to whom the title of _armentarius
afer_ can be justly applied.”[137] Many and various are the stories told
by French officers serving in the Western Sudan of the curious affinity
between the Fulani and their cattle, an affinity which is a perpetual
subject of comment among their Negro neighbours.[138] Clapperton tells us
how the cattle respond at long distances to the shrill cry of the Fulani
herdsman, who, by the way, is said never to employ a dog.[139] One of the
most remarkable French stories is that related by an officer operating in
the Baol district of the Western Sudan. In the course of a day’s work the
officer had commandeered some cattle from the natives; among the animals
was a fine black bull obtained from a group of wandering Fulani herdsmen.
When night fell, the cattle were duly penned and a _Spahis_[140] posted
as sentry over them. Towards midnight the officer was roused from sleep
by the _Spahis_ informing him with much solemnity that it would be
necessary to slaughter the black bull at once. “Are you mad?” cried
the astonished Frenchman. “Not at all, Lieutenant,” replied the soldier
imperturbably; “it is the cattle that are mad, for the Fulani are calling
the bull—listen.” Stepping out into the moonlight the officer listened.
Presently from a neighbouring hill came the sound of a plaintive chant.
At the same moment a violent disturbance took place among the cattle.
The officer hurried towards the pen followed by the sentry, the chant
meanwhile continuing in a cadence of inexpressible melancholy. The
commotion in the pen increased, and before the Frenchman could reach it,
one of the beasts was seen to clear the enclosure at a bound and crash
through the bush, following the direction of the sound and bellowing
loudly the while. It was the black bull. He had broken the halter which
bound him and leapt a palisade five feet high! With the disappearance of
the bull the chant abruptly ceased. Next morning the Fulani were nowhere
to be found.[141]
The Hebraic flavour—if one may put it so—which seems to permeate many of
the Fulani customs, especially among the less contaminated elements of
the race, has been recorded by careful observers. A friend, an officer
in the employ of the Northern Nigeria administration, who was intimately
acquainted with the Fulani, whose language he spoke, and who possessed
considerable erudition, had prepared a number of notes for me on the
subject, which, unfortunately, I never received, owing to his death while
serving in Africa. One custom which had specially impressed him among
the pure Fulani was the habit of setting aside the firstborn. He found
that the Fulani woman of unmixed blood in the Binue region never suckled
her firstborn, but consigned it to the care of friends, and completely
disinterested herself from its future career, while bestowing upon the
second child, and subsequent children, the usual motherly solicitude.
He connected this singular custom with a distorted rendering of the
punishment visited upon the Egyptians in the time of the Captivity.
[Illustration: A HALF-CASTE FULANI GIRL AND A SUSU]
The lecture delivered in 1886 by Captain de Guiraudon (who published a
Fulfulde manual, and who resided for several years in the Fulani country
in Senegambia) before the seventh Congress of Orientalists contains some
interesting references to the subject under discussion. In the course
of his relations with the Fulani, De Guiraudon was particularly struck
with their peculiar knowledge of Jewish history. So familiarly did they
speak of the chief Hebrew personalities of the Old Testament, and so well
posted were they with the principal events related in it, that they could
not, argued De Guiraudon, have acquired their knowledge merely through
Arabic sources. They referred to those times as though dealing with their
own national records. Moses and Abraham might have been individuals of
the same race as themselves. “In their oral legends Moses plays a very
important part, and although certain passages of the Scriptures are
transformed or rather assimilated, they have so intense a Biblical and
Hebraic tone as to exclude all Arabic influence.” De Guiraudon noted,
however, that their Israelitish chronicles ceased after Solomon. “What
they knew of the miracles of our Saviour was so distorted and erroneous
as to prove that the New Testament had reached them from afar, in a vague
and fragmentary condition.” De Guiraudon’s conclusions are best given in
his own words. “It would seem as if the Puls (Fulani), if they themselves
did not profess the Jewish faith, which I would rather be disposed to
affirm than deny, were at least in permanent contact with the Jewish
people in remote times, and that, influenced at one time or another by
the Israelites, they received Old Testament legends directly from them.”
Dr. Blyden also testifies in an indirect way to the close acquaintance
of the Fulani with the history of ancient Hebraic personalities. “They
hold the language of the Koran,” he remarks, “in the greatest veneration,
affirming that it is the language which was spoken by Adam, Seth, Noah,
Abraham, and Ishmael. The descendants of Ishmael, they contend, have
never been in bondage to any man; and that during the bondage of Isaac’s
descendants in Egypt the language lost its purity and copiousness.”
It is significant that the son and successor of Othman Dan Fodio, sultan
Bello of Hausa, second Fulani ruler over the Hausa States, in the history
of the Sudan written in Arabic characters which he gave to Clapperton,
describes the “Tow-rooths,” who may, I think, be identified with the
Torodos (a sect of Fulani greatly looked up to), as “having originated
from the Jews.”[142] Mungo Park, when writing of his experiences among
the Mandingoes—who appear to have been converted to Islam by the Fulani,
with whom they have been in close relationship, amiable and the reverse,
for many centuries—observed a similar widespread knowledge of incidents
in Old Testament history, such as the death of Abel, the lives of the
Patriarchs, Joseph’s dream, and so on. Winterbottom is equally emphatic.
“The customs of these people (the Fulani),” he says, “bear a striking
resemblance to those of the Jews described in the Pentateuch, and after
Mohammed, Moses is held by them in the highest estimation.” There is some
uniformity, too, between the following descriptive passages. The first is
from Kenrick (American edition), the second from Laing’s history of the
Sulima people and their relations with the Fulani:
“The Jews were commanded, on the day of the Atonement, to
provide a goat to carry the sins of the people, and the
high-priest was to lay his hand on the head of the goat and
confess the national sins. So among the Egyptians whenever a
victim was offered, a prayer was repeated over its head, if any
calamity was about to befall either the sacrifices or the land
of Egypt, ‘it might be averted on this head.’”
“Musah Bah (a Fulani chief), shortly after his installation,
ordered a great feast to be held, and, inviting to it all the
head-men of Jallon Kadoo, explained to them the nature of the
Mohammedan faith and told them that the Foulahs had come to
settle in their country with a desire only to do them good and
to show them the true road to happiness. He then ordered a
large wafer of country bread and a bleeding sheep to be placed
before him, and invited all those who wished to be instructed
by the priests of Futa-Jallon to place their hands upon the
bread and touch the sheep, which all the head-men did.”
The motives were different, but the Fulani ceremonial savours greatly of
the Old Testament. So much for the remaining links.
Enough has been said, I think, to show that there is a vast field open
to systematic inquiry and investigation, which may possibly lead to
discoveries of a most interesting and important kind. Having examined the
links one by one, let us see how they look when riveted together and what
conclusions they suggest. The straight-nosed, straight-haired, relatively
thin-lipped, wiry, copper or bronze complexioned (“pale-gold” as one
writer puts it) Fulani male, with his well-developed cranium, and refined
extremities; and the Fulani woman, with her clear skin, her rounded
breasts,[143] large eyes,[144] antimony-dyed eyebrows, gracefulness of
movement, beauty of form, coquettish ways and general attractiveness—are
Asiatics. They are the lineal descendants of the Hyksos, having migrated
westwards with the overthrow of the Shepherd conquerors. Their customs
bear record to their progenitors having been influenced both by the cult
of ancient Egypt and by the Israelites, whose presence in the Nile Delta
was contemporaneous with Hyksos rule. Their presence in West Africa
dates back at least 2500 years. To dogmatise on such a subject would be
foolish; to claim having evolved an original theory would be impertinent.
But I am not aware that the Eastern theory of Fulani origin has been
hitherto worked out with any attempt at consecutiveness, or an endeavour
made to amalgamate and give in connected form—however imperfectly—the
chief factors for further study which may be usefully followed up by
some one more competent than the author.
And what is to be the policy of Great Britain, of France and of Germany
towards this wonderful race? Surely it should be dictated in the first
place by a desire to preserve. With their faults—and what race is devoid
of faults?—the Fulani have admirable qualities which can fit them to be
worthy and reliable co-builders and assistants in the task which the
Powers have undertaken in Western Africa. Their virility has hitherto
been equal to all the calls upon it. They retain “the strong pride of
race.” They possess in the highest degree the attributes of rulers.
It would be a misfortune indeed if, with the advent of the European,
possessed of those swift engines of destruction he is at times so prompt
to use in the name of civilisation, the Fulani should disappear from the
regions they have leavened with their intelligence.
PART III
CHAPTER XVIII
SANITARY AFFAIRS IN WEST AFRICA
(By Major RONALD ROSS, F.R.C.S., F.R.S., C.B., Liverpool School of
Tropical Medicine.)
The first question which any one who has studied the history of West
Africa will ask, is this—Why has the country developed so slowly?
It is actually nearer to Europe and more accessible than several
tropical countries, which have certainly progressed far more towards
civilisation—such as the West and East Indies, Central America and the
seaboard of China; it is, generally speaking, a rich country; with a
fertile soil, sufficient rainfall, large rivers, good harbours, fine,
well-watered plains, a vast population, and a climate not excessively
hot. One would expect to find here flourishing settlements, large cities,
a prosperous agriculture and a great commerce; but what we really have is
a series of second-rate, if not third-rate, settlements which are just
able to hold their own in the midst of the forests and marshes which
surround them; and a native population which can scarcely be considered
other than barbarous beyond a short distance from the settlements
referred to. The discrepancy between the expectation and the fact is
remarkable. India, for example, with her vast tracts of well-cultivated
lands, her cities, her ports, her universities, her thousands of miles
of railway, her society, and her well-organised Government is far indeed
above West Africa. If the best West African province could be transferred
bodily to the East and placed alongside even such outlying parts of
India as Assam and Burma it would look very shabby in comparison. The
principal West African towns seen by me, Lagos, Accra, and Freetown,
cannot for a moment be compared with the great Indian capitals and
stations such as Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Rangoon, Secunderabad,
Allahabad, Delhi, Benares, Pindi, Lahore. In general appearance,
construction, and style of living they are on a level with such
“benighted” spots as Moulmein in Burma, Nowgong in Assam, or Masulipatam
in Southern India. West Africa possesses no Simla, Bangalore, Darjeeling
or Ootacamund.
The whole country reminds one chiefly of the derelict Coromandel Coast
minus its principal city. Yet it may perhaps be doubted whether in
extent, fertility and natural resources West Africa is really far below
India. Europe has been trading with West Africa for centuries; it has
long drawn from it many valuable commodities; it has explored it and
made settlements in it which have lasted for hundreds of years. Why has
not Europe done more for it, then? The question is really one of great
importance in the philosophical history of civilisation, especially in
these days when civilisation tends so strongly to overflow from the
temperate climates into the tropical ones. Here we have two countries
equally gifted with natural resources and equally exposed to the
civilising irradiance of Europe. Yet, while India is of itself already
one of the great Powers of the world, the other still remains in the
condition of a newly discovered continent, to be opened up in the future.
Of the three reasons usually assigned for this curious fact, the first
generally given is that in India Europe found a certain degree of
civilisation already existing before her advent; while in West Africa
she started to work upon a completely barbarous country. No doubt
this has much to do with the result; but we must remember that many
countries now far ahead of West Africa were little or no less barbarous
than West Africa a few centuries ago—such as many portions of tropical
America, Burma, and the Islands of the Pacific. It can scarcely be
said that the antecedent semi-civilisation of India and China has been
always favourable to progress, nor that a basis of complete barbarism
is always fatal to it. Another reason, perhaps more frequently given,
is that the natives of West Africa are incorrigibly indolent. Yet it
is by the labours of these very people, controlled by Europeans, that
the prosperity of the Southern States of America has been established.
In my humble opinion the West African should be very good material
for civilisation. Compared with the East Indian, he is perhaps not so
patient, laborious, or thrifty; but, on the other hand, he is much more
vivacious and virile; he is not hampered by the restrictions of caste;
he is physically strong and healthy; he is capable of producing men who
are intellectually not a whit inferior to the average European; and above
all, instead of adhering obstinately to his own customs as the Indian
so often does, he always shows a remarkable desire for the customs and
culture of Europe. In fact, I personally feel, though I may be wrong,
that these people are better material for civilisation than East Indians,
and I do not think that the backwardness of West Africa can be wholly or
even largely assigned to defects in their character.
To many of us the real reason for this backwardness appears to be
undoubtedly the so-called unhealthiness of the West African “climate” for
Europeans. It is impossible to deny the fact that the European cannot
live on the West African Coast in the same security against disease as he
enjoys in the East and West Indies; and in my opinion it is this fact,
and not the original barbarism of the natives, or their indolence, which
retards progress here. The agent of civilisation dies on the threshold of
the country which he comes to develop.
It would require a large volume to deal adequately with this important
subject, and I can only attempt an outline here. We shall first ask what
is the cause of this unhealthiness, and secondly, what is the remedy.
I shall not attempt to give any statistics of mortality among Europeans
or natives, because what statistics exist are not at all reliable.
But the fact that the country is extremely unhealthy for Europeans is
universally accepted; and is, moreover, demonstrated by the high rates
for life-insurance, by the large amount of leave which Government grants
to its employés, and by the difficulty which all employers experience in
obtaining European agents for West African work, even for high pay. In
fact, the country is so notorious in this respect that it is unnecessary
to labour the point farther.
What are the causes of the unhealthiness of West Africa for Europeans?
The first series of causes are undoubtedly a group of infectious
diseases, certainly or probably due to parasitic invasion of the body.
These are principally what is known as malarial or intermittent fever,
with its most dangerous variety, blackwater fever; various other fevers,
dysentery, and according to many physicians, yellow fever. The first
attacks the European with greater force than it attacks the habituated
native, but nevertheless produces great havoc among native children. It
is so prevalent that new-comers frequently succumb within a few weeks
after arrival, while old residents often suffer from relapses during
the whole of their stay in the country. In addition, epidemics either
of this fever, yellow fever, or some allied disease, sweep through the
settlements, causing great mortality among the Europeans; dysentery
and bowel complaints are scarcely less to be feared in some parts. The
records of West Africa are blackened by these terrible plagues, which
time after time have blotted out the names of the most daring travellers,
the most capable governors, and the most enterprising traders; which
mutilate the lives of those whom they do not kill; and which hamper every
political or commercial enterprise by striking down or intimidating the
agents who are sent out to execute it.
But we must not imagine that these are the only factors of the total
result. The heat and moisture of the climate are most enervating to
Europeans. The general absence of good food—good meat, bread, vegetables,
and milk—tends to produce dyspepsia and melancholy. The absence of most
of the comforts and amenities to which Europeans are accustomed in their
own home—good houses, good servants, society and exercise, not to mention
the absence of wives and children—depress the mind; and when this general
outline is filled in by such details as the ever-present dread of serious
sickness, the constant stings of insects, the unsavoury surroundings of
a squalid native population, it must be confessed that the colonist has
much to depress him. What wonder if, in such circumstances, alcoholism
and debauchery sometimes complete the sketch! The fact is, that what we
call the “unhealthiness” of West Africa is a complex due to many causes
which assist each other. People are apt to fall into a vicious circle
from which it is hard to escape. I may say, indeed, that the whole of
West Africa has fallen into this vicious circle and has not yet escaped
from it. Let us consider the point farther.
When we find much sickness in a given country we are too inclined to
think that the sickness is entirely due to certain natural conditions
which are present in that country and which render it unhealthy. We
forget that the sickness may be due, not to the country itself, but to
the fact that the inhabitants do not take proper precautions against the
diseases which persecute them. Now the whole trend of sanitary science
has been to show in a convincing manner that the great infectious
diseases are preventable, if only the proper precautions are taken.
Time after time we have witnessed the entire disappearance, or at least
the partial disappearance, of such diseases from whole countries. For
example, small-pox and typhus have almost vanished from the great States
of Europe—at least we may say so when we compare their prevalence in the
past with their prevalence at the present day. Typhoid and diphtheria
are diminishing daily. Malarial fever and dysentery, which were formerly
scourges of parts of Britain, have almost entirely gone from the country.
Even in the tropics we shall find numerous instances of the same kind.
Calcutta was once a hot-bed of fever and cholera, and was probably as
fatal to Europeans as West Africa is now said to be. Rangoon was deadly
when the British first went there. A century ago cholera often swept away
whole regiments in India. We now look in vain for this state of things.
As a whole, India is perhaps as healthy for Europeans as England is—at
least if we exclude the enervating effects of mere heat; and, indeed, I
think that in some respects, in the absence of colds and chest complaints
and in the benefits of open-air life and exercise, Europeans in India are
more fortunate than their brothers at home.
Such facts alone clearly demonstrate that many diseases are not dependent
upon natural factors beyond human control; but science has reinforced
the argument by showing that a number of infectious diseases are due to
microorganisms which spring from previously diseased persons and not
from the air, soil, or water of localities. When, therefore, we speak
of a given place being unhealthy, we merely mean that from some cause
or other infectious disease is readily propagated from the sick to the
healthy in that place. This may in part be due to the local conditions
as regards heat, moisture, and so on being especially favourable to the
transmission of the disease germs; but it may also be due to the fact
that no precautions are taken to check this transmission.
Thus in the case of West Africa we may ask, Is the local sickness really
due to the climate being specially favourable to the transmission of
disease; or is it due to the neglect of proper precautions? I would
not be prepared to say that as regards heat, moisture, and profuse
vegetation—conditions long known to be particularly favourable to
malaria—West Africa differs much from Calcutta or Rangoon. So far as
nature goes I can see little difference between West Africa and other
tropical regions which I have visited. On the other hand, I see the
greatest difference in the mode of life adopted by Europeans in West
Africa and in India; and I am convinced that the excessive mortality
amongst them is due largely, if not principally, to this cause, added to
the imperfect condition of public sanitation in the country.
My own visits to West Africa have been short and limited. I have thrice
lived in Freetown for brief periods, and have paid flying visits to
Bathurst, Accra, Lagos, and Ibadan. But though my experiences of the
country were thus brief enough, I was always in a position to see a good
deal in the time at my disposal, and my powers of sanitary observation,
so to speak, were previously exercised by eighteen years’ employment in
the Indian Medical Service. Moreover, for the last three years I have
been in constant communication with many old residents on the Coast,
and I have also learned much from the members of several expeditions
sent there by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and by reading
numerous reports on the sanitation of the country. I state these facts
simply in order to enable the reader to judge of the value of my
testimony on the points under consideration. I do not pretend that a
greater experience would not have increased that value; but at the same
time it should be remarked that a sanitarian of any experience, like a
trained physician, can often make a correct diagnosis in a comparatively
short time; and that it is not necessary to examine every town in a
country in order to arrive at a general conception of its sanitary
condition. Moreover, the towns which I have seen are the capitals of four
out of the six British Colonies on the Coast.
In my experience, such as it is, the mode of life of Europeans in West
Africa is not suited to the tropics.
Take the houses to begin with. They are not generally good. It is
absolutely essential in the tropics to have good roofs and large airy
rooms. Our wise forefathers recognised this early in India, and built the
great solid structures which are such a prominent feature of Calcutta
and Madras and many Indian stations. I have seen nothing of the kind in
West Africa. Even in Lagos and Accra the houses can be described only as
second-rate. In Freetown they are simply execrable; and it is monstrous
that Englishmen, much more ladies, should be compelled to live in them.
It should be remembered that many of these West African hovels are built
by Government. In Ibadan I saw a magnificent iron house which I was told
cost the Government £6000, but which is so ill-designed and ill-placed
that in the heat of the day the inmates are compelled to go outside and
sit under leaf shelters! Then again, in India the Europeans and some of
the better class natives live in a separate quarter; but in West Africa
this seems to be the case only to a limited extent; while in Freetown
the Europeans often live over native shops. Remembering that infectious
diseases are communicated from the sick, we shall easily understand
why the absence of a separate quarter is so dangerous to health. Those
absolute essentials to comfort in the tropics, punkahs and mosquito-nets,
which are invariably used in India, are often the exception in West
Africa, or were so until quite recently.
As regards food, we find little efforts made to help the African
colonists to obtain good provisions. Fresh milk and butter often cannot
be got at all, even where cattle exist in plenty. Government sometimes
maintains, at considerable cost, botanical gardens for various economical
purposes. I was told that these gardens used to grow vegetables for the
Europeans until stopped by a mandate from England, on the ground that a
Government botanist is not a vegetable gardener!—a type of the hopelessly
unpractical spirit which has crept into all British administration. As a
result the colonist has to fall back upon native vegetables, to which he
is not accustomed. The meat is generally poor and coarse, and no proper
effort is made to improve it. Ice—another essential in the tropics—cannot
generally be obtained. I was gravely informed that ice-machines will not
work in West Africa. It is difficult to see why this is the case, because
they will certainly work in the hottest and dampest parts of India.
Aerated waters have to be imported and cost about sixpence a bottle; I
suppose that they, too, “cannot be made” in West Africa. In India they
are made everywhere and cost about a penny a bottle. Singular effect of
the West African climate!
What are more necessary anywhere than exercise, recreation, and society?
In India the smallest station has its gymkana; its polo, tennis, cricket,
and even football; its dinners, its afternoon parties, its balls;
its shooting and riding. As for West Africa, though, owing to the
intelligent encouragement of the Governors, much attention is now being
given to this subject, things are very different. A resident of Sekondi
told me that their “only amusement is to drink.” So it seemed. In many
places horses do not exist, because it is said they do not live there. So
far as I know, Government has never attempted the slightest scientific
inquiry into this most important matter, although probably the disability
is due merely to some easily preventable parasitic disease. In Freetown
many people take no exercise at all and are carried about even for short
distances in hammocks. In up-country places, I hear, the dulness of life,
owing to the absence of recreation and exercise, is often intolerable and
heart-breaking.
Turning now to affairs of state sanitation, let us first ask, what
would have been the logical and business-like course for adoption by
Government from the earliest days of these Colonies? Seeing the obvious
fact that all development of the country was being retarded by the
sickness and mortality among the European Officials and traders, a
practical Government would from the first have strained every nerve
to remedy this state of things. It would have spent every available
penny in the sanitation of the coast towns, which are, in fact, the
portals of the continent. It would have kept these scrupulously clean,
swept and drained. It would have housed its employés thoroughly well
in quarters removed from the infectious vicinity of the poorer native
locations. It would have encouraged the traders to do the same for their
agents. It would have organised farms for the purpose of producing good
fresh food—meat, milk, butter and vegetables. It would have created
or endowed places of exercise and recreation. It would have attempted
to add in every possible way to the comfort of the Europeans, who are
the backbone of the Colonies, knowing that reasonable comfort is half
the way to health and happiness, and that senseless and unnecessary
discomfort is more than half the way in the other direction. It would
have taken scrupulous care of the water supply; of the conservancy; of
the drainage of swamps. It would have insisted on the adequate sanitation
of native locations near European locations, in the interests both of
natives and Europeans. It would have maintained an up-to-date medical and
sanitary department, provided with sufficient powers and funds for its
work. It would have kept accurate statistics of sickness and mortality,
especially among the Europeans. It would have ordered numerous scientific
investigations into the causes of the most disastrous West African
diseases, both among men and domestic animals. Above all, it would have
put the direction of sanitary affairs into the hands of the ablest
scientific men it could procure.
Now I do not wish to take the _rôle_ of the fault finder; but I must
say, so far as I know—and I hope I may be mistaken—the Colonial Office
and the West African Governments and municipalities can scarcely be
said to have given adequate attention to a single one of the items in
this programme—at least until quite recently. Consider the question of
surface drainage for instance. It has been well known, since the time of
the Romans, that surface-drainage removes malaria; and malaria is the
principal enemy of the West African Colonies. Surely, then, the most
obvious considerations should have induced Government to reclaim the
large marshes existing in the vicinity of the principal settlements. A
small annual expenditure, if persisted in, would have gradually done the
work; and, as Sir William MacGregor once observed, the local Governments
have had at their disposal for years large gangs of gaol prisoners who
could, with advantage, have been employed on such useful labours instead
of shot-drill. But no; the marshes have been allowed to exist as they
were. It is only quite recently that the swamps of Lagos and Bathurst
have been touched. In Freetown the swamps existed in almost every street
in the native quarters during the rains, and were, in fact, actually
made by incompetent engineering efforts and maintained by the grossest
sanitary neglect—the roadside drains being generally nothing but series
of deep pools full of stagnant water seething with insect life. Yet
this town was called the white-man’s grave; and Heaven was blamed for
causing a disease which man could easily have prevented if the most
elementary teaching of sanitary science had been attended to. Even after
the connection between stagnant water and malaria was fully verified
and explained by the discovery (completed in 1899) that the disease is
carried from the sick to the healthy by certain kinds of mosquitoes which
breed in stagnant puddles, no spontaneous effort was made by Government
to improve the surface-drainage in Freetown.
In 1899 the Liverpool School took the trouble to send out an expedition
which made a complete map of the mosquito-breeding puddles in the
town; and next year the Commission of the Royal Society extended our
observations. Two years later, however, another expedition of the
Liverpool School found that everything had been left in exactly the
same old state, except that the salary of the chief sanitary official
had been largely increased. Not a puddle, not a ditch had been drained;
not a single effort worth mention had been made, to act upon the new
discovery which was of such importance to these Colonies; and it was not
until the advent of the new Governor, Sir Charles King-Harman, assisted
by the Liverpool School, that any adequate attempt was made to clear and
drain Freetown. In the other Colonies progress was equally slow, until
Sir William MacGregor and Dr. Strachan commenced their anti-malarial
campaign in Lagos. The central authority, the Colonial Office, instead of
forcing on measures in a brisk, business-like way, contented itself with
publishing good advice which every one had heard a dozen times before.
The Governments of the Gold Coast (Sir Matthew Nathan), of the Gambia
(Sir George Denton), are now pushing on in this direction; and we can
only hope that the progress will be maintained in the future in all the
Colonies.
The other items of the programme mentioned above have also received
little attention. The medical and sanitary services have not been kept in
an up-to-date condition.
For instance, in 1880, Laveran discovered the parasite which causes
malarial fever; but even twenty years later there were few doctors who
used the discovery for the proper diagnosis and treatment of the fevers
prevalent on the Coast. In most cases they were not even provided with
microscopes for the work. In these respects the West African medical
services were only on a par with the other State medical services; which,
while they often contain exceedingly smart men, are generally wanting as
a whole in scientific ability and push, and in the influence which they
should exercise in the government of the countries to which they belong.
A high official once informed me that of all the men under his orders
the doctors had the least sense of duty. This is little to be wondered
at, since, in my experience, efficiency does not lead to advancement in
these services, and the most perfunctory men reach promotion as readily
as the most meritorious. I have noticed a dozen instances of the almost
complete indifference to science shown in these public medical services.
For example, when the first Liverpool expedition reached Sierra Leone
in 1899, the principal medical officer of the R.A.M.C. forbade us to
feed mosquitoes upon his cases of malarial fever for experiment, though
neither he nor his subordinates took the smallest trouble to prevent
their men from being bitten night and day by the insects in the barracks
and hospitals. We were convinced that this order was given simply out of
wilful desire to obstruct us. Similarly in India a military doctor once
forbade me even to prick the fingers of his patients in order to study
their blood. The manner in which the R.A.M.C. authorities interrupted
the researches of Colonel Bruce, F.R.S., on tsetse-fly disease and
horse sickness in South Africa, and in which the Madras Government
persecuted Dr. King for his small-pox work, is well known. It would be
folly to expect that services administered in this manner could ever
take a leading part in organising great campaigns against disease in the
colonies; and I fear that, until Sir William MacGregor led the way in
Lagos, the West African medical services, even though they have possessed
many able men, have done little to improve sanitation in that country.
The fault is entirely with the chief offices of Government, which too
often appoint and retain as heads of their medical departments men who
have no scientific status or even scientific knowledge, and at the
same time take no trouble to promote the deserving. I have known many
instances of this. It would be much better, in my opinion, to fill such
offices from the ranks of able civil practitioners or scientists at home,
rather than to select men who have no other claim to the post than long
official service.
One of the greatest defects in the sanitary administration of West Africa
has lain in the constant refusal of Government to investigate the causes
of sickness by making use of the services of experts. Government argues
that it is not its duty to investigate disease; but is it not? It admits
the duty of maintaining expensive medical services, but not that of
helping those services to increase their knowledge of their business!
A logical position truly! In my own humble opinion the Colonial Office
ought to have spent at least £5000 per annum during the last fifty years
for investigation of the causes of sickness in West Africa alone. Do
not talk to me of want of funds. There are plenty of funds, but they
are thrown away on military expeditions; on the salaries of useless
legal officials—chief justices and attorney-generals of little villages;
and on building houses such as the one I referred to at Ibadan, which
cost £6000, enough to pay for sanitary researches for years, and is
uninhabitable! It is a case illustrating that peculiar form of mind which
looks upon all research and investigation as idling and waste of time
and money, a frame of mind which seems to be specially a British one. We
have yet to learn the obvious fact that, if we wish to get a thing done,
we must first make suitable inquiry as to how it should be done. Disease
cannot be removed from a continent merely by establishing a medical
service; we must also help the service to perfect its knowledge. The hand
is not the same thing as the brain. In West Africa we have long possessed
the hand, but the brain has been wanting.
The truth is that the defects of the West African sanitation are really
due to the fact that the colonial councils are almost entirely in the
hands of certain castes which are not scientific castes, and which
care little for sanitary matters. I mean the politicians, soldiers,
tax-collectors and legal people. To these it is a matter of little
moment to cleanse streets, to purify towns, to banish disease from
thousands of homes. It is not given to them to stand powerless by the
side of death-beds and to hear the cries of the bereaved at the moment
of bereavement. If they have money to spend, do they spend it for the
purposes for which it was really chiefly taken from the tax-payer—for
conservancy and hygiene? The filthy condition of most native towns in the
British tropical possessions gives the answer. No, it is a finer thing
to build a grand new post-office or law-court, or to conduct a forward
military policy which will find its place in the home papers and delight
the heart of the British greengrocer (and voter) at his breakfast table.
Well, after all, it is human nature—each man for his own caste. As for
me, I have been too long an official myself not to understand these
little matters.
I have said that West Africa has fallen into a vicious circle, and the
nature of this vicious circle will now be apparent. The unhealthiness
of the Coast for Europeans tends to check their activities in all
directions; and in return this detrimental effect on their activities
tends to check their efforts towards ameliorating sanitary affairs. The
two conditions work hand in hand. It is impossible to remain blind to the
disastrous economical effect of the unhealthiness. It leads to a constant
change in the working staff of the country, not only in consequence of
death and sickness, but also in consequence of the frequent furlough
which is rendered necessary. From the highest to the lowest, few
Europeans remain in West Africa for more than two or three years at a
stretch; and many Government officials are entitled to leave after one
year. This has the effect of rendering all business discontinuous. As
soon as a man has started a piece of work he is called away from his
efforts, and is obliged to leave everything to a successor. In India
the period of residence in the country before furlough can be demanded
is five years at least, and even then the break in the business which
occurs during the furlough is often very mischievous. How much more so
must be the interruption which occurs in West Africa every year or two!
The same thing prevents people in West Africa from taking sufficient
interest in the homes of their exile. Many of them have told me that all
the time they are in the country they are indifferent to what happens,
that they simply live from hand to mouth, careless of their surroundings
and longing only for the day when, if fate spares them, they can escape
once more for a brief interval to Europe. It is this feeling which
makes them indifferent to the houses in which they live, to the food
they eat, to their surroundings—and sometimes, I fear, to their duties.
The danger, discomfort and _ennui_ of life are so great that a chronic
condition of callousness inimical to all serious effort is frequently
arrived at. We must remember these facts when we are inclined to blame
them. What wonder then that a matter like sanitation, which requires
such constant endeavours, is apt to be neglected. Thus the circle comes
“full round” again; and the neglect of sanitation leads to the paralysing
unhealthiness which leads to the neglect of sanitation. I have observed
the same thing elsewhere—notably in the unhealthy planting districts of
India.
What must we do to mend this state of affairs? Well, the vicious circle
must be broken at all costs.
But how? I think that there is really only one way in which it can be
done, and that is by the introduction of a new force into the vortex. I
mean public opinion and public effort at home in Europe. These must be
roused for the sake of our countrymen in West Africa. This country should
be made to understand that it has something more to do than to watch
processions of colonial troops and to brag of its Empire. It is its duty
to see that the Empire which it boasts of is properly administered, and
that our countrymen who are sent to carry on the affairs, both official
and commercial, of that Empire are not left to die there unnecessarily.
This duty has certainly been most grossly neglected in the past. It
should be the work of all of us, especially of those who govern the
country, of the wealthy merchants who trade with it, of the rich people
who do not know what to do with their money, and of men like myself, who
are hired to study and teach tropical sanitation—it should be the work of
all of us to see that it is not neglected in the future.
As every one knows, this new force has already come into being. Every day
sees some notice of West African affairs in the Press. The able Governors
of the Colonies are, I think, doing all for the cause which their limited
means allow. The merchants of Liverpool and London have come forward most
handsomely with their tropical schools, which I make bold to say are
doing well also. A single philanthropist has actually drained and cleaned
the houses in Freetown _pro tempore_, at his own expense, and last, but
by no means least, many young pathologists have given their time and
risked their health for the cause.
But what are the exact steps which should be taken? I have already
indicated these above. It is the duty of the Government to see that
the principal settlements are kept scrupulously clean and drained; to
construct and publish proper statistics of sickness and mortality among
the Europeans; to appoint whole-time health officers; to enforce sanitary
laws; and to encourage the building of good houses and the establishment
of dairies, settlement farms, gymkanas and other institutions or trades
which are likely to conduce to the comfort and health of the colonists.
Thus Government has a great deal to do. It has only begun as yet.
But it is not Government alone which must act. Sir William MacGregor
recently pointed out to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce that men who
carry on business on the Coast have much to do for their employés—to
give them good houses, to force them to take proper precautions against
malaria, and to add to their comfort in every possible way.
Then there is the philanthropist millionaire. I wish that we could
get hold of him in earnest. Sir Charles King-Harman once told me that
£100,000 would reform the West Coast if presented as a free gift, by
enabling Government to start gymkanas, dairies, and such like for the
Europeans. So it would; and the money ought to be obtained.
Lastly, the Colonial Office ought to do one thing—a thing which was
recommended by a deputation which waited upon the Colonial Secretary some
time ago. That is, it ought to appoint a Sanitary Commissioner on the
Indian model, to make constant inspections of sanitary matters in the
West African Colonies, and to report directly to the Colonial Office.
We were told, however, that the scheme was too costly, and otherwise
impossible. But shortly afterwards a gentleman with a large salary was
appointed in order to inspect the knapsacks, &c., of the black troops—a
much more important matter than any sanitary business!
I may mention here an opinion which I frequently heard expressed on the
Coast, namely, that the West African Colonies have now outgrown the
present system of control by small detached Governments placed under
an office in London. It is contended that the whole country should be
administered by a Governor-General on the Indian lines. I fancy that
sanitation would not lose by the change.
Such are my humble opinions on sanitary matters in West Africa. They are
given in response to an invitation from the author of this book; and, of
course, exigencies of space have prevented my dealing with many points
which should be dealt with in a complete survey of the subject—which
would require a book for itself. I have thought it best to say exactly
what I think without much reservation; but, of course, my views may,
perhaps, not be so sound as I imagine. It would be the grandest thing in
the world if sanitary science could give to civilisation such a glorious
gift as West Africa; and I believe that it will. But the thing will be
done only by straight speaking, hard hitting, and the most indomitable
action.
CHAPTER XIX
LAND TENURE AND LABOUR IN WEST AFRICA
“In dealing with the natives, one must never touch their rights
in land.”—SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR.
“The so-called labour problem is, in my opinion, created by
the people who complain of it, and not by the natives, who are
perfectly willing to work when fairly treated.”—Mr. J. A. DAW,
of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation.[145]
“I know the Gold Coast natives well, and I repeat, you can
get all you want out of them, if people will only realise
that the native is a human being, and not an animal or a
machine.”—Captain DONOVAN, late of the Gold Coast Police.[146]
“Nothing in all the history submitted on this subject is more
misleading, untrue, and unjust than the reiterated statement
that the chiefs and people of Western Africa are unfitted for
peaceable self-government. It is not pretended they will reach
for the present any Western European ideal, but they will not
lag behind some people who claim to be better. The people do
not want war; the very facility with which their disputes are
temporarily adjusted serves to show this disposition. The Coast
is far from having recovered from the dire effects of the slave
trade. The chiefs are weak, and much of their power is taken
from them by the very British Administration which scolds them
for their non-success.”—C. S. SALMON, “The Crown Colonies of
Great Britain.”
If there is one thing more than another upon which the most competent
students of West Africa are agreed, it is the tenaciousness of the West
African Negro to his landed rights. Land tenure in West Africa has been
properly described as a “cult.” The most experienced English, French and
German observers have noted this characteristic. Wherever it has been
adequately studied, the system of native land tenure, in its tribal,
family, individual and commercial aspects, is found to be at once simple
in its broad lines, elaborate in its details, and approaching in many
respects to the most advanced democratic conceptions of Western Europe.
Before the torchlight of scientific inquiry, the old idea of the Negro
being more or less of an animal, incapable of evolving any rational
or consistent policy; too backward to frame anything approaching an
unwritten code of law; his every act of life being merely the outcome
of natural instinct, can no longer be entertained. And to the knowledge
that these beings, who were thought irrational, and inconsequent to the
extent of being the half-devil, half-child of popular imagination, has
been added the conviction that the commercial and political success of
the Powers of Europe in their West African Possessions depends for its
attainment upon the recognition of native law in respect to property.
But although the testimony to this effect is shared by those who have the
largest experience of West Africa, and although evidence is accumulating
on all sides which corroborates in the most ample manner the statements
of Ellis, Sarbah and Mary Kingsley,[147] it is nevertheless unhappily
true that the tendency on the part of the European Powers, not only to
interfere with the native law of land tenure, but to frame legislation
without regard whatever for its importance in the relationship between
the European and the Negro, is increasingly manifest. It would seem as
though, having discovered that the West African Negro is not a brute
but a man, evidence which establishes the discovery is deliberately set
aside; because it is so much easier to go on treating the native as a
brute, that is to say, as a being deprived of the faculty of reasoning,
and who, on the principle of “a woman, a dog and a walnut-tree, the more
you beat ’em the better they’ll be,” will come fawning to our feet in
abject humility upon every fresh exhibition of our superiority.
It is very curious to observe this conflict of forces; painstaking
research, its published results, and the influence it wields, _versus_
impatience and disinclination to investigate on the one hand; and selfish
material interests on the other. The future of European political and
commercial enterprise in West Africa is largely bound up with the
struggle for the capture of Public Opinion which is going on in this
country and on the Continent. At present, the purely materialistic
notion, assisted by its twin-brother Indifference, is in the ascendant.
Apparent success having been secured in that part of tropical Western
Africa where, under the tuition of his white masters, the native has
become a mere machine for the production of dividends to European company
promoters, a great impetus has been given to the conception, popular
in so many quarters, that the _raison d’être_ of West Africa and the
West African is their exploitation by Western Europe, on such lines and
in such fashion as the peoples of Western Europe see fit. The European
Governments are alternately allowing themselves to be dragged along this
perilous path whose ultimate destination is the abyss called Failure, or
are hanging back from it, beset with doubts. But the danger is acutely
realised by many, and as it gathers in extent and consistency, is being
energetically opposed. The merchants, English, French and German, are,
as a body, unanimous in condemnation. The exceptions to the rule are
exceedingly few and far between. The best type of Colonial Administrator
in West Africa also is utterly antagonistic, and amongst the still
restricted but daily growing section of the Public which follows the
affairs of West Africa with intelligent interest a strong feeling of
protest gathers volume every day. These forces are numerically inferior,
but they carry great weight, and if they can succeed in combining they
must ultimately win the day. But the struggle will be long and bitter.
An attempt has been made in this volume to show (1) the unwisdom of
interfering too rapidly, and without sufficient care and thought, with
native customs generally, and (2), as regards the evil of slave-raiding,
the advisability of seriously considering whether force is the only
weapon which a great Empire can forge to suppress it. In the latter
case, the Powers are able to put forward a plea justifying interference,
insomuch as the evil is an active one. The only difference of opinion,
as already stated, is the form which such interference should take. In
the former case the evils, if some of them are evils—a matter which
admits of a good deal of qualification—are of a kind that patience,
tact, and time—time above all things—will prove the most efficient
means of combating. But in respect to native law of land tenure, we are
not confronted with any evil. On the contrary, the system of native
land tenure is essentially just, thoroughly adapted to the needs of
the country and its people, a striking refutation of the “arrested
development” theory as applied to the Negro, and _per se_ an eloquent
vindication of the Negro’s claim to consideration at the hands of
the European invaders of, and settlers in, his country. There can be
no justification whatever for the break-up of land tenure, or for
the alienation of native property, under any pretext. It is morally
indefensible, and what is morally indefensible is seldom politically wise.
In West Africa, the circumstances being what they are, interference with
native property is bound to affect, not in theory but in practice, the
interest of every single individual in the country. In the coastwise
regions of West Africa proper, as far south, that is to say, as the
Rio del Rey, where Bantu culture begins, it may be accepted as a rule
(whatever differentiation may exist in the system of land tenure in
widely removed districts), from which the departures are extremely
rare,[148] that every square yard of the country is _owned_. Sarbah for
the Gold Coast; Clozel and Delafosse for the Ivory Coast; Ellis for
Yoruba; Mary Kingsley for the Rivers; Bohn for French Guinea; Fabre for
Dahomey, have borne witness in their respective fields of observation to
this fact—that there is no land without an owner. There is also a vast
amount of untabulated corroborative information from almost every part
of the Coast. South of Rio del Rey the land customs of the natives have
not been the object of so much inquiry as north of it, and there the
population is not in the main so dense, but what gleanings are available
to us appear to be conclusive on the same point: in all inhabited
districts land is never without an owner, whose claims, whether tribal or
family, are as sacred in native unwritten law as they would be if duly
set forth in a legal document, in accordance with the full requirements
of European jurisprudence.
It is easy to understand why this should be so. The native lives on
the produce of his land. He not only lives upon it, it is also his
wealth, his currency, his medium of exchange for European goods. The
products which he gathers in his forests, the plantations he makes in
the clearings and the plains, these are at once his sustenance and his
cash. Is it astonishing, therefore, that he guards his land and all that
grows therein, or is built thereon, with passionate jealousy; and that,
whereas he can be induced without difficulty to lease his property rights
under certain conditions to Europeans for even a long term of years, he
can seldom be brought, save by physical compulsion, to alienate them for
ever? Ought it to be matter for surprise that legislation calculated to
hinder his free use of the products of his land, or action of which the
logical consequence is to reduce him from the position of land-owner to
tenant, either provokes him to pit his spears and flintlocks against the
repeating-rifles of the despoilers, or breeds in him such utter confusion
of mind, such bewilderment and terror, that,
Fleeing to the forest’s dim recess,
He broods in sullen unproductiveness,
Plunged in deeper savagery,
Witness to the high morality
Of Christian peoples?
Strange, indeed, does it seem, with the burden of historical proof to
the adaptability of the Negro; with the abundant and cumulative evidence
of his willingness to trade, to learn, to take on new industries, to
everywhere follow up his natural profession of agriculture; with the
actual and daily evidence of his enterprise and producing capacity in the
existing oil-palm, ground-nut, mahogany and rubber industries; strange,
indeed, that European statesmen worthy of the name should for a moment
entertain the idea, or lend ear to the suggestion, that in a country
like West Africa, where the white element compared with the black is as
a grain of sand on the sea-shore, and where the European can attain
nothing that is permanent or lasting without the willing co-operation
of the Negro, the spontaneous production of the Negro as a free man,
in the enjoyment of the fruits of his own land, can be replaced by the
forced production of a serf deprived of his lands, his freedom, and his
individuality!
If in one sense the question of native land tenure in West Africa is
distinct from that of native labour, it is in another way closely allied
to it, and to treat of one without referring to the other is difficult,
if not impossible. But it is equally difficult, when once the labour
problem is raised, to confine oneself to West Africa only; for the theory
of “assimilation” is very much to the fore just now, and although the
conditions prevailing in West Africa differentiate absolutely from those
in Central, East, and South Africa, the same general arguments are made
to apply more or less to all four. I must, therefore, crave the reader’s
indulgence if I wander somewhat afield.
There is not the least shadow of doubt that the tendency to go past the
law of native land tenure in West Africa owes its origin in large measure
to the oft-repeated statement that the Negro will not work. Numbers of
people have for some time past been assuring the Public that West Africa
can only be developed by compelling the native to work.[149] It is, of
course, assumed _à priori_ that the native of West Africa does not work.
How the contention can be justified in the face of demonstrable and
easily accessible facts to the contrary, we need not pause to inquire.
It suffices that the contention exists, and that there is not a paper
dealing with African affairs in Great Britain, or the Continent of
Europe, which does not contain in almost every issue some reference to
the matter. Nor is discussion limited to such papers. In the speeches of
public men whose interests are associated with Africa; in conferences, in
books, pamphlets, and not infrequently in the daily press, the subject
crops up again and again. The refrain is usually much after this style:
“The native will not work. We have to work and pay income-tax. Why should
not the native? What is the use of Africa to us if the native refuses to
work? It is intolerable. He must be made to work.”
It must be admitted that the spirit of the hour is admirably suited to
act the part of receiver to these laments. The signatory powers of the
Berlin Act have allowed the gradual establishment and consolidation in
Western Central Africa of an institution the existence of which is based
upon repudiation of the inherent right of the native to his land or the
fruits thereof; and upon forced labour on the part of the dispossessed
for their despoilers. What wonder that the public of France and Germany,
observing the enormous profits derived by people immediately connected
with this institution, and led astray by the apathy of their statesmen
to the evil, should put down to political ability what is merely
outrage; and impatient at the comparatively slow progress of their own
possessions, should begin to loudly call for the adoption of a similar
system therein? “The King of Belgium has succeeded in making the natives
work. He and his coadjutors are reaping a huge harvest. Belgian industry
is the gainer. Antwerp has become the first rubber market in the world.
Why not imitate the King of Belgium?”
[Illustration: THE IDLE NATIVE! MARKET SCENE IN WEST AFRICA]
It would be grossly unfair to describe this mental attitude on the part
of public opinion in France and Germany as having been due, or as being
due, to a natural callousness. At one time, indeed, the proceedings
of the Congo State were severely condemned in both countries, and not
farther back than 1895 Count Alvensleben, German Ambassador in Brussels,
was carrying on a correspondence with the then principal Secretary
of the Congo State anent the payment of rubber premiums by the Congo
State to its agents and the trading operations of that State, couched
in such language as would have brought about between two European
Powers an immediate rupture of diplomatic relations. But wealth commands
great power, and its rapid acquisition is a blunter of conscience.
The Belgian financiers who control the two great Trusts in the Congo
State—the _annexes_ of the Domaine Privé Trust and the Thys Trust—were
desirous for their own ends of still further extending their power.
They managed to obtain the co-operation of many highly placed persons
in France and Germany, and to secure the assistance of an important
section of the Colonial Press in the two countries. The result is seen
in the creation of what is known as the Concessionnaire _régime_ in the
Colony of French Congo; its partial adoption in the French Colony of
Dahomey; its attempted establishment in the auriferous French Colony
of the Ivory Coast; and its introduction into German Cameroons, where,
however, experience has led to a revulsion of feeling as healthy as it
is encouraging. In other words, the indifference of the Powers to the
violation of the Berlin Act by the Sovereign of the Congo State has
involved the application of the new slavery to another vast tract of
territory in Africa. Public opinion has been worked to such good purpose
that the lucubrations of a Carl Peters or Camille Janssens are not only
listened to with patience, but are regarded by many as the embodiment
of a rational colonial policy; while in France, open appeals have for
the past year and more been uttered every day in favour of a _régime_
of forced labour at the point of the bayonet. The theory that the Negro
will not work and must be compelled to do so has, therefore, made strides
rapid enough among the Western nations on the Continent of Europe to
satisfy the fondest hopes of its promoters.
In England the modern school of thought in African affairs shows a like
tendency. We hear in various forms how essential it is to inculcate
the African with the notion of the “dignity of labour.” As we are here
dealing with West Africa, it would be out of place to discuss at any
length the labour questions connected with South Africa. But it is only
too obvious that the financiers of the Rand and their friends at home
are the leading spirits through whom British public opinion is being
influenced towards coercion in the matter of native labour in Africa
as a whole, just as the Brussels and Antwerp financiers who run the
Congo State are the instruments whereby similar notions are propagated
on the Continent of Europe. As already stated, special conditions, as
well as the nature of the native population and, indeed, nearly all
attendant circumstances, differ profoundly in West Africa and South
Africa, but it is necessary to indicate the prevalence of a common
shade of thought which it is sought to apply in practice wherever the
European has secured a sufficiently strong hold upon the Dark Continent.
In a fascinating volume of African travel recently published by a
brilliant young explorer, Mr. H. S. Grogan, can be found embodied, in
a style distinguished for its honest vulgarity, frank brutality and
entire absence of those hypocritical sophistries so much in vogue, the
views of the “modern school” as to what is, or what ought to be, the
inter-relationship of European and Hamite in Africa.
Here are a few samples of his arguments:
“But few people at home,” he writes, “realise what an alarming
and ever-growing difficulty has to be faced in the African
native problem. It is a difficulty that is unique in the
progress of the world.... Under the beneficent rule of the
white man he thrives like weeds in a hot-house.... What is to
be done with this ever-increasing mass of inertia? We have
undertaken his education and advancement, as we have carefully
explained, by the mawkish euphemisms in which we wrap our
land-grabbing schemes. When we undertake the education of a
child or beast we make them work, realising that work is the
sole road to advancement. But when we undertake the education
of a nigger, who, as I have endeavoured to show, is a blend
of the two, we say; ‘Dear Nigger, thou elect of Exeter Hall,
chosen of the negrophil, bread-and-butter of the missionary,
darling of the unthinking philanthropist, wilt thou deign to
put thy hand to the plough, or dost prefer to smoke and tipple
in undisturbed content? We, the white men whom thy conscience
wrongly judges to be thy superiors, will arrange the affairs
of state. Sleep on, thou ebony idol of a jaded civilisation,
may be anon thou wilt sing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ ... A
good sound system,” proceeds Mr. Grogan, “of compulsory labour
would do more to raise the nigger in five years than all the
millions which have been sunk in missionary efforts for the
last fifty.... Why should not other peoples be called upon to
work for the cause of progress? Throughout Africa the cry is,
‘Give me labour.’ There is a sound maxim in the progress of
the world: ‘What cannot be utilised must be eliminated.’ And
drivel as we will for a while, the time will come when the
negro must bow to this as to the inevitable. Why, because he
is black and is supposed to possess a soul, we should consider
him, on account of that combination, exempt, it is difficult
to understand, when a little firmness would transform him from
a useless and dangerous brute into a source of benefit to the
country and of satisfaction to himself.”
What a typical passage is this! The Negro lazy and degraded, useless
and dangerous: the European doing all the work while the Negro smokes
and drinks—whether imported European liquor or liquor manufactured
locally is not stated: narrow-minded visionaries at home preventing the
salvation of Africa in the shape of compulsory labour on the Rand mines
which constitutes “education”: the perfection of morals that result from
such education, and so forth! The crowning folly is conveyed in the
words “what cannot be utilised must be eliminated,” which, I suppose,
means a “thinning-out process”—such as Professor Gregory tells us has
been accomplished only too successfully in Unyoro, where “it has been
estimated that in the four years following the establishment of British
rule the population was reduced to a fourth”—in order to prevent the too
rapid propagation of these “hot-house weeds!” And yet what Mr. Grogan
says is repeated by many and believed by more—the mass who swallow
this tainted diet as though ’twere nectar, and absorb these grotesque
distortions as if they were gospel truths.
Let us endeavour to examine this question in a practical, temperate, and
impartial spirit. According to ethnologists, the true, uncontaminated
Negro is only found in West Africa, roughly from Senegal to the Rio
del Rey. He inhabits the coastwise regions and the forest belt. The
innumerable creeks and forests of the Niger Delta shelter the purest
specimens, ethnologically, of his race. South of Rio del Rey the Bantu
stock begins, and predominates as you work southward. Behind the forest
belt the true Negro stock has become changed and modified by infusion
of Berber and Fulani, and also, but to a lesser degree, of Arab blood.
In the Niger bend, in the regions round about Lake Chad, in Northern
Nigeria this blending of races has created a bewildering variety of mixed
types, while here and there both the invaded and invading elements have
preserved their purity—for instance, among the Negroes, the Bambarra
of the Upper Niger; among the Berbers, the noble Imosagh; among the
Arabs, the Shuwa; among the Fulani, the Pullo herdsmen of Futa Jallon,
Adamawa, Bondu, and of many other parts of the Western Sudan. Leaving
west for east, you have the Shoa, Galla, Somali, and Jew in Abyssinia
and its confines; then the Bantu—product, as Dr. Voight thinks, of
Semitic and Negro mixture—spreading southwards, inwards and westwards;
universal everywhere, right down to the Cape—the Masai, Wahuma, Pigmies,
Hottentots; and, in the French Congo, the Fans, presenting small channels
of ethnic divergence in a vast sea of Bantu stock.
[Illustration: WEST AFRICAN “YOUNG HOPEFULS”]
Throughout all this huge expanse of territory the soil is in the main
so fertile that it produces with little trouble everything which the
native requires for his subsistence and his comfort, where his sense of
what constitutes comfort has not expanded as the result of intercourse
with a higher ethical development—a “higher civilisation,” to use the
hackneyed term. The climate being mostly hot, it militates against great
physical energy, which, moreover, is not, and has not been, economically
necessary for the African for countless generations. The degree of
development of the native depends upon the extent of his contact with,
or remoteness from, influences tending to create in his mind fresh
ideas; a higher conception of arts and crafts—influences which may
have filtered through to him either by the medium of trade, successive
migration, conquest by a more advanced race, or the infiltration of a
revealed religion. The more inaccessible the region, the further inland
the people, the wider removed from highways of commerce their situation,
the more primitive their state. That is logical, although there are, of
course, exceptions. But that in his primitive state the African is the
“useless and dangerous brute” which the shallow materialism, the frenzy
for expansion, the unthinking, rather blatant callousness of the hour
would make him out to be, is one of the many fictions which pass for
truths about Africa. The Wa-Kavirondo are the most primitive people in
the Uganda Protectorate. They go absolutely naked, are more moral than
their partly clothed neighbours, and are agriculturists. “Wherever they
settle, the jungle around them is soon converted into fruitful fields,
yielding sweet potatoes, or various forms of corn. Those who can afford
it keep goats and sheep, and the wealthy have herds of cattle,” says
Dr. Ansorge, adding that among them, “where the European villain with
his lies and frauds has not yet made his appearance, the white man’s
simple word is equal to a solemn and a binding oath.” In most parts of
Africa, south of the equator—in the huge central portion at any rate—in
the Upper Nile valley, the region traversed by Mr. Grogan, the native
has never had the motive, the spontaneous impetus to produce more than
his needs required or his fancy led him to. Yet he works in iron, moulds
pottery, has in many cases a highly developed artistic instinct,[150]
manufactures cloth and ingenious and elaborate weapons of offence, has
some notions of harmony, and often enough a vein of true poetic instinct.
When local conditions have been favourable to the evolving of important
social agglomerations, a native state form has grown up which was a cause
of abundant astonishment to the early European travellers in Central
Africa. Yet, as far back as we are able to plunge in the dim recesses
of the past, these millions of natives—this “mass of inertia”—were
entirely cut off from intercourse with the outside world, isolated from
all contact with the “superior” races. A few stray Egyptian traders
probably penetrated to the head waters of the Nile and the Great Lakes.
Later on, a handful of Arabs wandered inwards from Zanzibar, but until
Burton, Speke and Grant, Livingstone (working from the south), Baker,
Emin, and Stanley revealed the interior of Africa, its inhabitants had
been innocent of all communication with the higher culture. One need not
inquire whether the lot of these people has been much brighter since
the advent among them of the half-caste Arab slave-trader, the Belgian
ivory and rubber hunter, the over-zealous European missionary, and the
land-grabbing fever of the Powers. An estimate on that point must be
largely a matter of opinion. But to expect that these natives are going
to willingly emigrate _en masse_ to the Rhodesian mines, hire themselves
out for the performance of arduous labour, dig, delve, undertake
plantation work and the like with the zeal of a European workman anxious
to earn a living wage, is a piece of consummate folly. They can only
be induced to do so by the most tactful treatment; by the payment of a
decent wage; by the selection of European agents possessing some sense
of proportion, and at least a rudimentary knowledge of the teachings
of history. To attempt to revolutionise these peoples’ conceptions in
a few years is madness, and to try and drive them by coercive measures
constitutes a policy at once immoral, short-sighted, and disastrous.[151]
Until quite recently British West Africa remained unaffected in any
material sense by the gradual gravitation of European public opinion
towards the use of coercion in dealing with the African, together with
the non-recognition of native land tenure and the various concomitants of
the “exploitation” policy. The birth of a scientific gold-mining industry
in the Gold Coast, however, has let loose a flood of ignorant talk
about West Africa, and raised up a whole host of evil advisers who are
busily intent in introducing South African methods in the West African
goldfields. Constant complaints are being raised about the scarcity of
labour, the indolence and the slothfulness of the native. Experienced men
like Mr. Daw, of the Ashanti goldfields, have not hesitated to speak out
boldly against these views; and so far the Colonial Office,[152] to its
honour be it said, has refused to yield to the clamour, and has declined
to repeal the law on the acquisition, extent, and registration of mining
concessions whereby the rights of the native owners of the soil are amply
safeguarded. In that respect the Concessions Ordinance must rank as the
most equitable legislative measure for the protection and preservation of
native land tenure which exists in West Africa. It is true that of the
numerous complaints which the Ordinance has given rise to, those that
refer to the actual working of the measure are justified. The machinery
for registration is hardly complete enough, and in that and some other
respects matters might be improved. It is also true that cases have
occurred where native chiefs have, knowingly or unknowingly, sold their
properties twice over, and thus perpetrated a fraud which, no doubt, is
exceedingly reprehensible; but certainly not more so than the numerous
frauds deliberately consummated by sundry Gold Coast company promoters in
foisting upon the British public bogus concerns, causing pecuniary loss
to hundreds and thousands of English men and women. The African chief who
indulges in sharp practice can be punished in the Gold Coast, but his
European prototype generally manages to escape the clutches of the law.
It is to be hoped that the Colonial Office will maintain the Concessions
Ordinance in its integrity, while perfecting the machinery to administer
it, for the law, as a law, is a credit to British justice in West Africa.
On the other hand, it is much to be regretted that the Colonial Office
should have framed a code of laws and regulations in respect to the
development of forest products and the attribution of forest reserves,
in Southern Nigeria, which have given rise to grave objection, and must
continue to do so. The effect of these regulations in the aggregate is
to authorise the High Commissioner to issue any rules he chooses with
regard to all kinds of forest produce, not excepting the produce of the
palm. No proper distinction is drawn between so-called “waste”[153]
lands and forest lands at the disposal of the native and the Government
respectively. Natives are to be compelled to take out licences to enable
them to do what they have hitherto done without restriction. The licences
are to be granted by the Government officials. Half the money goes to the
local treasury, the other half to the native owner, but only if he can
show that he is entitled to it! The native is tried, under the penalties
provided by the proclamation, by the European officer and not by his own
local court. All this is bad and short-sighted policy. It must inevitably
tend to suggest to the native mind that the Government is taking entire
possession of his land. His rights of land tenure are being treated as
though they had ceased to exist, and had been vested in the Government.
We are officially assured that the native chiefs are satisfied that
this is not the case, and that they welcome these regulations. It is
impossible to regard these assurances otherwise than with scepticism. In
Southern Nigeria the Crown Colony Government is a despotism absolute and
entire. There is no legislative council; there are no native newspapers.
The native has no means of ventilating his grievances. The powers of
the High Commissioner are more sweeping than that of the Tsar of all
the Russias. There is no check upon him, no control of any kind. He
does exactly what he likes, and “force” in Southern Nigeria, in other
words, punitive expeditions are but of too frequent occurrence. For
upwards of three-quarters of a century the natives of Southern Nigeria
have been encouraged by successive British Governments in the belief
that they were free to utilise the products of their own forests. I
defy any jurist to say what amount of freedom they will enjoy if these
regulations are carried out to the letter. I have sought the opinion
of English lawyers not unversed in native law on this matter, and they
have been anything but impressed with the justice or legality of the
measure. The regulations have been compared to a retrogression “to the
days of William the Conqueror.” “The interpretation of the Commissioner’s
powers, under this Ordinance”—I am quoting from the letter of a lawyer
to whom I submitted the measures in question—“are far too arbitrary.
What privileges are left to the native who, you will remember, is the
owner of the soil? It seems that he is in the unfortunate position of
being the owner of his land without being able to obtain the slightest
advantage from that land, and if he attempts to deal with the products
thereof, even with the very best intentions, he is liable at the will
of the Commissioner to imprisonment or fine as provided by the Bill.
This is surely not the intention of the framer of the Bill; at least I
hope not.” The Chambers of Commerce on the one hand, and the Aborigines
Protection Society on the other, have protested against this reactionary
legislation, which shows that both in commercial and philanthropic
circles a similarity of feeling exists in regard to its tenour. It is one
thing “to protect the forests from destruction,” which is understood to
be the motive of these regulations, and no reasonable being would object
to the framing of common-sense rules for the preservation of rubber trees
and vines (although it is not rules but _instruction_ which is required)
and certain young hardwood trees of slow growth; but it is quite
another thing to introduce a series of cast-iron laws of this wholesale
character, of doubtful legality, of still more questionable expediency,
inevitably calculated to lead to friction and distinctly prejudicial
to the development of legitimate commerce. The Crown Colony system in
the Rivers has not been such a brilliant success that it can afford to
deliberately run such risks! These proclamations, it may be added, were
passed into law in Southern Nigeria without the merchants who supply the
whole revenue of the country being advised or even consulted. Such is the
business-like method with which we conduct our affairs in West Africa!
[Illustration: AN IBO FAMILY GROUP—SOUTHERN NIGERIA]
In Lagos, where a similar measure was introduced (it should be stated
that the law is of home manufacture), it met with considerable native
opposition, and passed through several stages of amendment before
becoming law. In Lagos there is a legislative council on which natives
sit—in a minority it is true—and there are local newspapers. Channels
exist, therefore, through which native opinion can make itself heard.
There is also, happily, a Governor of the widest sympathies, of great
and extensive knowledge and experience. Under his auspices we may feel
assured that nothing will be wittingly done to alienate native rights in
land. The Bill, as amended, provides that it shall be open to the duly
constituted Native Councils, or Governments, of the inland protected
States, to construe its clauses in accordance with native custom and
usage; and as the chiefs are just as interested in preserving their
forests as the legislators or the merchants, we may feel tolerably sure
that the objects aimed at will be secured. Moreover, it is further
provided that the Native Councils shall themselves issue licences
when required, the proceeds of which shall come to their own local
treasuries entirely; and shall themselves inflict fines under their own
law, and in their own courts; and the Governor is further recommending
that the Government reserves shall be conveyed under lease.[154]
There you observe the difference between the two procedures. The one
arbitrary, dogmatic, despotic—the other such as it is seen to be. If
any difficulties arise in Lagos in the course of the working of the
Bill,[155] it will not be for the want of doing everything possible
to avert them, of surrounding the rights of native land tenure with
safeguards which, so long as they are adhered to, will be sufficient
to protect them, of imbuing the native mind with the feeling that
the Administration intends to conform to the traditions of native
usage; but they will be due to the principle involved in the Bill, the
principle, that is, of a _primâ facie_ right of interference, directly
or indirectly, on the part of the Government, in the affairs of native
States, whose internal independence in contradistinction to their
external relations is guaranteed by treaty. On that point opinion will
differ, and some of us will continue to think that, in all matters
affecting native industries, instruction is better than restriction.[156]
CHAPTER XX
A COTTON INDUSTRY FOR WEST AFRICA
Within the past few months a subject of the greatest possible moment to
West Africa, and of vital importance to no inconsiderable section of the
inhabitants of Great Britain, has been discussed in concrete fashion, and
there is every reason to hope—nay more, to feel assured—that practical
results will follow. I refer to the movement for the promotion of
cotton-growing in West Africa.
What has already been done may be stated in a few words. On May 8 a
memorable meeting was held at the Albion Hotel, Manchester, under the
auspices of Mr. Arthur Hutton, the President of the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce. The Chambers of Commerce of London, Liverpool, and Oldham were
represented at the meeting, together with the managing director of the
British West African Steamship Lines, Sir Alfred Jones,[157] the Oldham
Cotton Spinners Association, the Manchester Cotton Spinners’ Association,
various other associations of a similar character from Blackburn and
other Lancashire towns, the West African merchants, cotton merchants,
brokers, weavers and manufacturers, &c. The object of the meeting was
to widen the area of cotton cultivation under the British flag, more
especially in West Africa, and before the close of the proceedings a
“British Cotton Growing Association” had been formed with a preliminary
capital of £10,000, to be exclusively devoted to experimenting in West
Africa and other over-sea possessions. This meeting was followed by
another held in Manchester in June, in the course of which the decision
arrived at previously was confirmed and enlarged, and it was decided to
raise a fund of £50,000. The resolutions passed at this second meeting
were as follows:
RESOLUTIONS.
“(1) That, in the opinion of this meeting, the continued
prosperity of the British cotton industry depends on an
increased supply of cotton, and it is desirable that our
sources of supply should be extended.
“(2) That in order to attain this end an association be formed,
to be called the British Cotton Growing Association.
“(3) That its principal object be the extension of the growth
and cultivation of cotton in British colonies, dependencies,
and protectorates.
“(4) That a guarantee fund of £50,000 be raised, to be spread
over five years, no guarantor being required to contribute more
than one-fifth of his total guarantee in any one year.
“(5) That this association shall have power to form a
subsidiary company, or companies, and to dispose of any of
its assets to any company thus formed, on conditions that
subscribers to this association have the first option of
taking up shares in any such company in proportion to their
subscriptions.
“(6) That a general committee should be appointed.
“(7) That this general committee should appoint from their
number members to form the executive committee.
“(8) That the executive committee shall immediately collect
all the available information on the subject and despatch
expert expeditions to report on the best methods of procedure,
and shall have power to (_a_) acquire land on which to make
experiments and to establish plantations; (_b_) distribute seed
among the natives to encourage them by advice and assistance to
grow cotton on their own land, and to engage experts for this
purpose if necessary; (_c_) establish stations to buy and sell
cotton, or any of its by-products, animals, implements, or any
other articles or goods necessary for the expeditions; (_d_) to
adopt any other means that may suggest themselves from time to
time to attain the object in view.
“(9) That the general committee issue a report once each
half-year of the work which has been done.”
A third meeting took place at the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce on July
14, in the presence of Sir William MacGregor, Governor of Lagos, and Sir
A. King Harman, Governor of Sierra Leone, when practical ways and means
of promoting the cultivation of cotton in their respective Colonies for
export to Europe were debated.[158]
Having thus briefly indicated the various measures adopted, we may
profitably inquire into the origin and causes of the movement. That
inquiry cannot fail to impress the thinking public with the importance
of the issues. With every year that passes Great Britain is becoming
more than ever dependent upon the United States for her cotton supply,
and with every year that passes the increase in the cotton production of
America accentuates itself by comparison with the production of other
countries. Thus in the decades 1870-80, 1880-90, and 1890-1900 America
has produced 4½, 6½, and 9½ millions of bales, while India has produced
2, 2½, and 2 millions; Egypt 384,000, 400,000, and 700,000; and Brazil
600,000, 300,000, and 380,000 in the same period. The gradual position
assumed by America as controller of the world’s cotton is, therefore,
clearly apparent, and although the production of Egypt and India is
increasing, the ratio of increase when compared with America is trifling,
while the production from countries outside India and Egypt is decreasing.
That is one consideration. Another consideration is this. Forty years ago
England took the bulk of American cotton. To-day the Continent, thanks to
the growth and to the marvellous success of Continental spinners, takes
one-third of the entire American crop.
Yet another factor is the increase in the American consumption of cotton.
A few years ago the American _consumption_ of cotton was almost _nil_.
America now consumes a third of her produce. In the opinion of some
experts—although in some quarters a contrary opinion is held—America
will consume by the end of next year at least one-half of her production.
Now these are very serious facts for industrial Lancashire. The terrible
distress which visited Lancashire in the days of the American Civil
War is still sufficiently recent to be remembered, and one shudders
to contemplate the consequences which would ensue if anything should
again prevent Lancashire from obtaining her share of the cotton crop of
America, with nothing but the existing inadequate supplies from other
parts of the world to fall back upon. The danger is a very real and
pressing one. As matters stand at present, Great Britain is practically
at the mercy of the United States, and in a position of almost entire
dependence upon the market manipulations of American speculators, in
whose power it is to regulate the price to suit their own convenience.
So unsatisfactory is the actual condition of affairs, that for the past
three years it has hardly paid importers to ship cotton to Liverpool. The
fear of an American syndicating of cotton is not, perhaps, altogether
groundless in these days of vast trusts and combinations, while the
competition from Continental spinners, and, above all, increased
American consumption, make the outlook as gloomy as it well can be. It
is therefore imperative that something be done to increase the area of
cotton production under the British flag. So much for the wider aspect of
the question.
Those to whom this matter specially appeals have naturally enough
turned their eyes towards West Africa, and it is in connection with the
possibilities of the development of an export cotton industry in that
part of the world that some remarks may fittingly be made in this volume.
I say an “export” industry, because, as we know, a native industry to
supply local wants has existed in West Africa for centuries past. We
have seen, for example, the paramount part which the cotton industry
plays in the prosperity of Kano and Northern Nigeria generally, where,
in addition to supplying local wants, manufactured cotton cloths are an
article of barter; in some regions indeed a veritable currency, sent
far and wide to countries of inland Western Africa where the excellence
of the Kano article is in perpetual demand. But what is true of Kano is
true of many other portions of West Africa. The cotton shrub (_Gossypium
herbaceum_)[159] is met with in a wild state all over West Africa, and
cultivated very extensively. Wherever Islam has spread, cultivation has
increased, but in pagan communities the manufacture of cotton cloths
is indulged in to no inconsiderable extent. The pagan tribes of Sierra
Leone, of the Gold Coast and Liberia, turn out the most beautiful cloths.
Their excellence and felicity of design are such that no one who has seen
them can fail to be impressed with the capacity of the races, with their
primitive appliances, which produce them. The endeavour to promote cotton
cultivation on a larger scale in West Africa will not be, therefore, a
new thing, and what might have been an initial difficulty is happily
non-existent.
Nor will West Africa be called upon for the first time in its history to
supply Europe with raw cotton. When the American Civil War broke out,
high prices were offered for West African cotton, which was universally
pronounced by experts to be of excellent quality. Cotton was exported
in its raw state from the Gold Coast, Fernando Po, Lagos, the Gambia,
and Angola. Indeed the export was continued long after that, and between
the years 1878 and 1885 raw cotton to the value of £56,501 was shipped
home to Europe from the Gold Coast and Lagos. Even before the American
War, as was recently recalled to memory by Mr. Elijah Helm,[160] himself
a Quaker, the constitutional objections of the Quakers to utilise the
products of slave labour led to the formation of a small association,
which imported cotton from West Africa of a quality so good, and in
quantities so considerable, as to provide for the not very extensive
wants of the Quaker fraternity.
But with the close of the war, and the considerable fall in price since
those days, the West African export cotton industry has become virtually
extinct. A very little, I believe, still finds it sway to Europe from
the banks of the Volta and from Angola, but that is all, with the
exception of the Togoland experiment of last year, of which I shall speak
later.
The four main requirements for the successful cultivation of cotton are:
(1) a suitable soil, (2) adequate irrigation or a regularly recurring
rainfall, (3) sufficient labour, (4) transport facilities. British West
Africa can, in the main, give the first three, in some places better than
in others. British West Africa’s capacity to furnish the fourth depends
upon whether the grassy upland plains of the interior may be considered
more fitting or less fitting than the swampy, better-watered regions of
the coast. If the former be thought the most likely, the country behind
Lagos alone affords the necessary qualifications at present. Lagos,
moreover, is particularly fitted in respect to the third requirement,
that of labour. A railway 125 miles long runs up from Lagos town to the
interior, passing through the naturally rich and productive belt of
forest, where it is hopeless to expect, and where it would be dangerous
to attempt to promote, cotton cultivation. But beyond the forest belt
a park-like country opens out of an area of some 10,000 square miles
in extent, the greater proportion of which would be suitable to the
cultivation of cotton, and would go far to justify and hasten, if
taken up in earnest, the extension of the existing railway line to the
Niger. If, therefore, it be a question of experimenting in a region of
grass-covered plains—similar to those of Texas—Lagos, by reason of its
railway, is the only British colony where such experiments can at present
be undertaken. The intelligence of the Yorubas, their agricultural and
industrial capacity, the dense agglomeration of population met with in
the country, the need of providing or strengthening the _economic_, as
opposed to the strategic, argument for a continuation of the line (let
us fervently trust under different conditions) to the Niger; all those
factors render it in the highest degree to be hoped that Lagos may be
chosen as a centre of activity for the new movement. Lagos, let it never
be forgotten, is one of the doors of Northern Nigeria.
If, on the other hand, the consensus of expert opinion favours the
low-lying coastwise regions, where fluvial transport to the actual port
of shipment is relatively easy, the Gambia and Southern Nigeria primarily
suggest themselves. Those possessions seem to me to offer advantages
over Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast. The present condition of Sierra
Leone is not encouraging. The railway, if it achieves anything at all,
which is doubtful, can only do so by increasing the yield of the fruit
of the palm, and by bringing the interior oil-palm districts into closer
touch with the coast markets. This may enable that unfortunate Colony
to bear the heavy burden under which it is now staggering. To cut down
the forests in the Eastern districts of Sierra Leone in order to plant
cotton would be suicidal. In the Gold Coast, again, there is an opposing
factor in the shape of the gold-mining industry. The mining companies are
perpetually grumbling about the scarcity of labour, for which in many
cases they have themselves to thank. Their demands upon the population
have already resulted in drawing away a number of people from their usual
avocations, with the result that the export of timber is decreasing; and
any further deviation of available labour, such as the cultivation of
cotton would necessitate, would seriously affect the producing capacity
of the country, not only as regards timber, but in respect to other
natural and cultivated products, such as palm oil and kernels in the
first category, and cocoa in the other.
For the Gambia, on the other hand, the advent of a new industry would be
a boon. The Gambia entirely relies for its existence upon the ground-nut.
It is always a bad thing to have all your eggs in one basket. When an
article like the ground-nut is in question, it is very bad, because
you are at the mercy, as it were, of the seasons. The ground-nut is
necessarily a fluctuating article on that account, and one year may
produce a fine crop, to be followed the next by an indifferent one. Sir
George Denton—the genial and popular Governor of the Gambia—intended, I
know, to try and start a better system of irrigation in certain parts of
that Colony, in order to widen the extent of ground-nut producing land,
and any such project would be all to the good, of course, for cotton
cultivation. The population of the Gambia being mostly Mohammedan and
largely composed of those most enterprising people the Mandingoes, and
Mandingoes crossed with Fulani blood—remnant of the old empire of Melle—a
cotton industry (to which they are long inured) could be started with so
much greater hope of success from this fact.
In Southern Nigeria[161] the field is vast. You can march for miles on
either bank of the main river through a cotton-growing country. The
density of the population varies, of course, in different districts.
Fluvial means of transport abound. The people, it is true, are not
blessed, or cursed, with many wants; but there is no valid reason
why, with a little painstaking care and sympathetic treatment; with
improvements in the production of kernels which, as already suggested,
would release a considerable amount of native labour for other pursuits;
with a greater display of combination between the official and mercantile
class; with a good deal less blood-letting, fewer punitive expeditions,
“clearing away of the refuse of the population,” “drastic measures,” and
so forth; the natives of Southern Nigeria should not be induced to take
up cotton cultivation for purposes of export.
Granted the necessity; given the soil, irrigation rainfall, labour and
transport, as specifically mentioned above; admitted an experience in
cotton growing, spinning and weaving among the natives; what remains to
be studied in this great enterprise destined, let us hope, to make of
British West Africa a great cotton-producing country on which England can
count in case of need; to assist in freeing us to a large extent from
a position of dependence upon America, and so prevent the accumulating
dangers of the hour, and of which the creation cannot fail to confer the
greatest benefit upon the British West African possessions?
Obviously the first consideration is one of price. Can a cotton industry
in West Africa be made to pay? Can sufficient inducement be offered
to the native to encourage him to produce cotton for export? Can West
African cotton compete with any degree of success against the American
product in the matter of price? On what lines can a cotton industry in
West Africa be promoted? Based upon the data available, which are not, of
course, by any means complete, the general consensus of opinion amongst
experts appears to be that, with the inculcation of scientific methods of
cultivation, the treatment of the cotton shrub as an annual instead of a
perennial, the introduction of the necessary implements and of ginning
and compressing machinery it will be possible to make cotton-growing
profitable. In this respect the experiments of the Germans in Togoland
are particularly interesting. To Germany belongs the credit of initiating
the new cotton movement. From the German Colony of Togo came last
year, for the first time in its history, fifteen thousand marks worth
of cotton. The conclusions of the German Agricultural Committee were
precise. The absence of adequate transport facilities alone prevented the
complete financial success of the first experiment. Further, it was shown
upon analysis that, of the various types of cotton raised from American,
Egyptian, Indian and native seed, the type raised from the native seed
produced, as a whole, the best staple, equal in quality to average
American. This absence of transport is likely to be remedied in time,
as a survey is now being made for a railway from the coast to Misahöhe.
Meanwhile the Germans are so far from being discouraged that a company
is, I understand, about to be brought out for the express purpose of
developing the cotton industry in Togo[162] with a capital of £37,500.
[Illustration: TRAVELLING ON THE NIGER IN THE DRY SEASON]
The French are also devoting a great deal of attention to the subject
just now. Some years ago the then military Governor of the French Sudan,
Général de Trentinian, took the matter up. Nothing came of his efforts,
but M. Roume, the new Governor-General of French West Africa, has
now adopted it as one of the planks of his platform, so to speak. He
is anxious to establish a cotton industry in Senegal, which, like the
Gambia, lives upon ground-nut production. More ambitious schemes are
vaguely mooted, and some enthusiasts already speak and write as though
the valley of the Upper Niger were about to be converted, as it were by a
flash of the magician’s wand, into a rival of the Southern States. That
with its magnificent soil and splendid natural irrigation the valley of
the Upper Niger may some day fulfil the aspirations of the French is,
perhaps, more than possible.[163] But we are a long way off that yet.
It seems difficult, then, to believe that this simultaneous impulse on
the part of competent men in England, Germany and France can be founded
upon a miscalculation in respect to working expenses, and I think we may
feel tolerably certain that, if cotton costs an average per lb. of 2⅛
_d._ to produce in Texas, such parts of West Africa as can be endowed
with similar facilities in respect to machinery, and where transport,
either by rail or water, is available, will be able to produce cotton at
a lower figure; and as the interest of the West African shipowners is to
fill their ships homeward bound from the West Coast, we may also presume
that they will make reasonable concessions to encourage the industry.[164]
There remains the question of how to set about establishing a cotton
industry in West Africa upon a sound basis. Shall it be attempted in
the form of plantations managed by white overseers and with paid native
labour; or shall it be left very largely to native initiative, and
develop itself on the lines of a native industry—as, I believe, is the
case in India? I think that all who have some knowledge of West African
matters will unhesitatingly pronounce in favour of the latter solution.
West Africa is essentially a country of native industries, and the best
economic results have been obtained in West Africa when the motive power
all through has been the native, with the European as teacher, instructor
and guide, but _not_ as manager or director of native labour.[165] In
the construction of public works the same phenomenon is observable in
a somewhat different form. Experience has demonstrated that where the
recruiting of labour for railways or road construction has been left in
the hands of the chiefs, requisite labour was forthcoming, and sufficient
left on the farms to allow usual production, and therefore the export
trade has remained unaffected; whereas when recruiting operations have
been directed by Europeans outside the authority of the chiefs, labour
was indeed obtainable, but at the cost of disorganising the general
labour supply of the country and consequently affecting adversely the
export trade.