can be promoted with the greatest chance of success by interesting the
rulers of the country and their councils in the movement; by giving the
chiefs the benefit of expert advice; by enlisting their sympathies and
good-will; by supplying them with cotton seed, implements, and possibly
hand-gins, gratis; and so on. Here at least the necessity of proceeding
on lines of instruction entirely is manifest. The object is to improve
an existing industry, to greatly enlarge and systematise it, _to get the
people of the land interested in it_. If the native can see a profit in
the business, he will take it up. That is morally certain. It has been
so in every branch of West African commerce. So keenly has the native
embraced new trade outlets offered to him that upon occasion he has, when
uninstructed in the art of production, compromised the future. Absolute
and entire co-operation of officialdom and commerce is essential if the
cotton movement in West Africa is to be attended with success. The
Germans may here serve us as a model to imitate. The home Government,
the local Government; the forces of industry and commerce in Germany,
and in the particular Colony where the experiments are being made, have
vied with one another in the effort to achieve an aim of common interest
to all. Centres of instruction have been established in the Colony;
model farms have been created; Negro farmers from the States have been
brought over through the instrumentality of Mr. Booker T. Washington, the
distinguished Negro scholar and manager of the Tuskegee Institute.[166]
In all these matters the official world has worked hand in glove with the
commercial world.
It is equally important that the cotton associations and merchants should
be in earnest. No mere pecking will suffice. Disappointments and delays
must be discounted in advance. There are sure to be plenty of both.
Ginning and compressing machinery must be set up either on the coast,
or, if it be decided to try Lagos, at large centres such as Ibadan and
Abbeokuta; and preferably what is known as the “American round lap,”
which ensures simultaneous ginning and compressing in 250 lb. round
bales, instead of the more cumbrous and more expensive separate ginning
and compressing machines, which produce the 500 lb. square bale. In
short, the movement must be engineered, from the beginning, on a real
scientific basis. If Togoland with its transport difficulties has been
able in the first year’s experience to export 70,000 decimal pounds of
cotton, what may not be achieved by those of our West African Colonies
where transport facilities exist; where the population is at least as
dense if not denser; and where British subjects have been in contact with
the natives for periods ranging from fifty to one hundred years?
I cannot leave this subject without referring to the indirect relation
it bears to the Negro problem in the States. At present all is vague
and uncertain. We cannot tell what may be the outcome of the movement;
but if it be a success, what vistas does it not open up for the future!
We have seen how the Germans have invited the co-operation of American
Negro cotton farmers. The few who have gone out—the German reports assure
us—have elected to remain. More, it is announced, are to follow. What
would the attitude of the American Government be in the face of a steady
flow of emigration on the part of the coloured population of the Southern
States, to help to build up in its country of origin what it has built up
in America? In what light would the Americans regard the up-springing of
a great cotton industry in West Africa? If, as events seem to indicate,
America is likely to become on an ever-increasing scale the principal
consumer of her own raw cotton, would such an occurrence be viewed with
equanimity by the American public? Or if not with actual equanimity,
with at least the feeling that the danger, presuming it to be one, might
be cheerfully faced if a deeper peril could thereby be diminished, and
in time perhaps altogether removed? Could white labour in the American
cotton plantations, with the exception of the more swampy and malarial
regions, be substituted for Negro labour, in the event of appreciable
emigration? These are questions for American statesmen and thinkers
to answer. If American intelligence can perceive in these tentative
suggestions a clue, be it ever so faint now, of future potentialities,
a clue worth following up and investigating, let America remember that
a million square miles of African territory, which was declared in 1884
internationally free commercial land, and in the consolidation of which
under its present _régime_ America is to a large degree responsible, is
in the grip to-day of a band of greedy monopolists in whose bowels reside
no scruples, no pity, no humanity; who are sowing red ruin wherever their
influence can be asserted. If America ever seriously turns her attention
to West Africa as a solution of the greatest problem of her internal
politics, let her cast her eyes upon the Congo State, misnamed Free—the
abode of cruelty and persecution, of slavery and reaction.
CHAPTER XXI
THE MAHOGANY TRADE
“The traveller who wanders through the dim recesses of the
tropical forest of Western Africa soon feels the sense of
its beauty lost in that of its mournful grandeur, and there
steals over him a profound feeling of solitude and a deep
consciousness of the solemnity, majesty, and utter loneliness
of this great, gloomy wilderness.”—Dr. AUSTIN FREEMAN.
The great forest region of Africa is one of the wonders of the world.
It is a moot point whether Africa should be described as possessing two
forest belts or only one. Roughly speaking, the forest region takes the
form of an inverted hatchet or axe, with French Congo, the Congo Free
State, and a portion of the Great Lakes districts as the blade; while
the West Coast, from Sierra Leone downwards, provides the handle. There
are gaps here and there; in the Cameroon hinterland; among the mangrove
swamps of the Niger Delta, and behind Lagos on the Niger side. The
forest is densest in the Upper Congo, where Stanley, we know, struggled
in it for many weary weeks, as though held in the grip of some hideous
nightmare from which there was no escape.
In this natural hot-house, always bathed in an atmosphere of humidity and
steam, vegetation flourishes in the wildest profusion and exuberance, and
with the widest diversity of size and species, from the mighty _bombax_
to the creeping lichen. So abundant is this luxurious growth, so thick
the canopy formed by the spreading branches and creepers overhead,
that, save here and there, where some giant has fallen and broken down
the surrounding undergrowth, leaving a gap overhead through which the
sunlight penetrates flickeringly, the forest is plunged in eternal
gloom. This gloom and the silence which accompanies it are the two
great characteristics of the African forest. Except for the occasional
chattering of monkeys, the crash of a falling tree, or the far-off
chirrup of birds, who seek the sunlight in the topmost branches, the
silence broods everlastingly. The effect of living amongst this gloom
and silence is most depressing to the European, and it is no matter for
surprise that the terrific solemnity of their environment should have
exercised a profound influence upon the naturally superstitious minds
of the native Africans who dwell therein. It is amongst the dwellers in
the forest region that we find the lowest type of African humanity[167]
and the most sombre developments of African religious conceptions. All
European travellers who have spent some time in this great forest region
have been alike impressed by its grandeur and its melancholy, and their
descriptions bear witness to the way in which their feelings have been
wrought upon by the natural phenomena with which they were surrounded.
It is only within quite recent years that European enterprise has
concerned itself with the potential riches of this vast forest region, or
rather of that portion of it which it is as yet possible to commercially
develop, viz. the belt on the West Coast—or, to refer to the illustration
given above, the handle of the axe. The results already achieved in a
short period of effort, which can hardly be called more than tentative
and unsystematic, are such as to warrant the most sanguine expectations
for the future, when facilities of transport shall have brought the main
portion of the forest region within reach of the European markets. It is
curious to observe how, in its main lines, the trade of Western Africa
has arisen in a succession of well-defined stages. The earliest trade was
in gold-dust, and, so far as we know, confined to gold-dust, unless the
gorilla (or more probably the chimpanzee) skins brought home by Hanno
be counted as trade—which would be a somewhat humorous classification.
Then ensued a long period of absolute neglect of West Africa by civilised
man. When once more the latter turned his attention to that part of the
world, gold was again the principal item of trade, accompanied by ivory,
and later on by slaves—the later a monstrous evil, whose Nemesis is
to-day making itself felt in the United States. The gold trade died out,
the ivory trade languished, and the gum, palm oil and kernel trades came
into existence, to be followed by the rubber trade, and lastly by the
timber trade—principally confined to mahogany. On the principle of _plus
ça change, plus c’est la même chose_, the gold industry is now again
reviving, although on very different lines from the old barter system.
That is, of course, a general statement. There have been, now and then,
exceptions to prove the rule, and so far as timber is concerned, a not
inconsiderable business was carried on in the Gambia and Sierra Leone
some fifty years ago.
[Illustration: FELLING A MAHOGANY-TREE]
[Illustration: SQUARING THE TREE]
Sir Alfred Moloney, however, was able to write in 1887 that, after having
made many inquiries, such timber trade as had previously existed “may
be said to have altogether ceased or to have sunk into the export done
in dye-woods and ebony.” The following tabulated statement shows how
insignificant was the timber trade in West Africa between the years 1878
and 1885:
WOOD AND TIMBER EXPORTS FROM WESTERN AFRICA, 1878 TO 1885.
Year. Articles. Countries whence imported. Quantity. Value.
Tons. £
1878 Wood and timber From the West of Africa, Nil. Nil.
unenumerated not particularly designated
1879 ” ” ” ”
1880 ” ” 1733 14,892
1881 ” ” No mention.
1882 ” ” 1458 10,750
1883 ” ” 1441 11,100
1884 ” ” 1395 9,980
1885 ” ” 1181 9,565
In 1889 the total import of African mahogany was only 68,000 feet, and
in 1890—or a little over ten years ago—it did not amount to more than
259,000 feet. To-day the mahogany trade has grown to be one of the most
important branches of commerce in West Africa. Enormous quantities of
logs are shipped home from the Gold Coast, Lagos and the Ivory Coast, and
the mahogany exports from the Niger Coast Protectorate,[168] which were
started in August, 1899, produced 23,983 superficial feet in the year
1899-1900.
The industry is carried on by two categories of shippers, viz. the
European merchant established on the coast, who either employs native
labour to cut down his own trees, or who buys timber direct from the
native; and the native merchant who ships home on commission. The chief
centres of the mahogany trade on the coast are: for the Gold Coast—Axim,
Twin Rivers, Sekondi and Chama; for the Ivory Coast—Assinie, Half
Assinie, Lahou and Grand Bassam; for Southern Nigeria—Benin and Sapelli.
Lagos timber is carried round to Forcados in branch boats, and there
shipped on the homeward-bound steamers. The South Coast mahogany trade
is chiefly confined to Botica Point, Gaboon, Eloby and Mayumba, although
a few logs have been sent home in the steamers of the Cie Belge Maritime
du Congo, from near Boma in the Congo Free State. The South Coast timber
trade appears to be dying out, owing chiefly to the pale colour of the
wood, which does not now commend itself to buyers.[169] The vast forests
of the Upper Congo cannot, with advantage or profit, be tapped until
the Congo Railway Company lowers its preposterous rates, and until the
administration of the country is in other hands than the monopolist
clique which controls it.
[Illustration: DRAGGING THE SQUARED LOG THROUGH THE BUSH]
[Illustration: SAPELLI, SOUTHERN NIGERIA’S PRINCIPAL TIMBER PORT]
It may be interesting to give the actual exports of timber from the Gold
Coast and Lagos from 1895 to 1899, showing the wonderful strides which
have taken place. The Gold Coast, it may be stated, has a total forest
area of 12,000 square miles.
EXPORTS FROM THE GOLD COAST.
Year. Value.
1895 £28,245
1896 52,234
1897 90,509
1898 110,331
1899 87,076
EXPORTS FROM LAGOS.
Year. Value.
1895 Nil.
1896 £275
1897 8,271
1898 12,944
1899 34,737
Liverpool, Havre, Hamburg, Marseilles and Bordeaux absorb nine-tenths of
the exports of mahogany from Africa, but a certain proportion finds its
way from those ports to the United States.[170] Of the ports mentioned,
Liverpool holds far and away the first place. The statistics of Liverpool
imports from 1889 to 1900 inclusive will be found in the Appendix.
In view of the evidence given of the phenomenal increase of the mahogany
trade, it seems almost incongruous to say that the existing condition
and the future prospects of the trade have, for some months past, been
causing much apprehension in West African commercial circles. The truth
is that the growth of the trade has been checked, and for the last twelve
months has even been showing signs of decay. There was a decreased
export in 1901 of over 11,000 tons, and the figures for the first six
months of the present year show a further decline, although prices have
considerably advanced and the demand for good logs exceeds the supply.
It is a fact recognised by all the interested parties that the export
of mahogany from West Africa has received a serious check. What are the
reasons? They differentiate with the localities. In the Gold Coast the
falling off which has occurred is due, in the first place, to labour
being attracted from the timber to the gold-mining industry, and to the
needs of railway construction. Many thousands of natives have thus been
drawn away from timber-felling to work on the railway; for the mines, or
as carriers for the various prospecting expeditions into the interior.
A second contributory cause has been the necessarily trade-disturbing
element of warfare, otherwise stated, the Ashanti War, in the shape of
the general unrest and disorganisation brought about by the excessive
demands for carriers, &c. In the Ivory Coast, prospecting expeditions
have also affected the output. As far as Lagos is concerned, the remarks
of the Governor in the last report of that Colony for last year afford
the requisite explanation.[171]
The freight question is undoubtedly held to militate against the
development of the timber industry, and it had been freely prophesied
that the effect would begin to make itself felt last year. How much the
decline was due on the whole to high freights, and how much to other
causes mentioned, it would be difficult to say. With the technicalities
of the subject I will not bore my readers. Suffice it to say that the
principal objection which is advanced against the steamship owners,
is the way in which the system known as the “sliding scale” is worked
out. At present logs over two tons pay increased freight, and a further
increase is made upon logs of three tons and upwards. It is urged
that, if the principle of the bigger the log the better the timber
were sound, this would be all right enough; but it so happens that the
average sale price of a one-ton log is much the same as that of a two-,
three- or four-ton log, except when the heavier log is what is termed
a good “figured”[172] log. Figured logs fetch any price, according to
the fancy of the purchaser, and in such cases the question of freight
is a bagatelle. But the vast majority of the logs do not possess these
qualifications, and the increased freight on the heavier logs tells
very heavily against the merchant, and may even go so far, when low
prices prevail on the home market, as to render any profit on the sale
impossible. Of course, the steamship owner has his reply ready; and, so
far, he considers it good enough to justify the existing rates.
When all is said and done, the fact remains that the timber trade is
languishing. It would be a thousand pities to allow this to continue,
if it can be avoided. A trade once abandoned or paralysed is not easily
restarted. It is in the interest of all the parties concerned to arrive
at a _modus vivendi_ which shall allow the native who cuts and squares
the wood, the merchant who ships it, and the steamship owner who carries
it, to make a profit. In this as in other respects one would like to see
some systematic measures of instruction adopted, under joint official
and commercial auspices, to show the natives how the best logs can be
selected for felling, which would avoid the sending home of a mass of
worthless and immature timber calculated at times to flood the market and
depreciate prices, while damaging the forests in Africa.
CHAPTER XXII
ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA
The steady and continuous spread of Islam in the western portion of the
Dark Continent is a fact which no one acquainted with the subject will
attempt to deny. It is, indeed, so well established that to specialise
particular instances where it has been observed would be a needless
undertaking. It is everywhere palpable, striking, impressive. It can no
more be disguised or ignored than the concurrent circumstance of relative
failure on the part of Christian missions. While Mohammedanism continues
to gain converts far and wide; to absorb whole tribes; to filter down the
rivers to the ocean; to pierce the forest belt, with hardly a check—save
here and there, as, for example, among the Ibos on the Niger—Christianity
makes no headway in the interior; and even in its confinement to the
coastwise region, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, some of
the Europeanised towns on the coast, its progress is slow, so slow,
indeed, that well-informed observers are not wanting who believe that it
is losing rather than gaining ground. At any rate, it is not, I venture
to think, an exaggeration to say, Christianity is maintaining itself with
difficulty among heathen communities in West Africa, and beats in vain
against the strong tide of Mohammedanism.[173]
It cannot be without interest to Englishmen whose West African Empire
covers so large an area, and numbers between thirty and forty millions,
to devote careful attention to a subject which is fraught with such
far-reaching importance, and which it is imperially necessary for Great
Britain to take into serious consideration as constituting a factor which
has to be reckoned with and appreciated at its proper value. On that
account it may not be out of place to discuss in a general way the whole
subject of Mohammedanism in West Africa. The problem is a great one, and
although there is no pretence here to more than touch the fringe of it,
even a tentative effort is, perhaps, of interest to the daily increasing
section of the public, which begins, although still but dimly, to realise
the nature and the extent of the responsibilities Great Britain has
undertaken in West Africa.
Rejecting, as, in my opinion, we can do with safety, the legend that
attributes the existence of Mohammedanism in Walata (Biru), the seat
of the Ghanata Empire as early as the sixtieth year of the Hejira, or
about 682 A.D., there is yet good reason to believe that Islam crossed
the Sahara, and became powerful in the Western Sudan, earlier than the
eleventh century A.D., which is the period assigned to that event by the
majority of authorities. We know positively that the fifteenth prince of
the first and Za dynasty of the Songhay, Za Kasai, was converted to Islam
in the year 1000 A.D.[174] From El Bekri we glean that Mohammedanism
had taken such firm root in the Songhay Empire about sixty years after
the conversion of Za Kasai (1067 A.D.) that none but a Muslim could be
king. In the reign of Yusif Ibn Tashfin, the founder of Morocco, 1062
A.D., many Negroes, according to Leo Africanus, became followers of
the Prophet. Barth’s invaluable “Chronological Table of the History of
Bornu” shows us that Islam was introduced into Kanem (and Bornu)[175]
in the reign of Hume, the first of the Muslim rulers of that extensive
Empire (1086-89), and the circumstance that this potentate died in Masr
(Misr)—_i.e._ Egypt, infers that he was either on his way to or from
Mecca.[176] Now it seems inconceivable that Gao or Gogo, the capital
of the Songhay Empire, which was situate on the Niger about 500 miles
in the heart of the country of the Negroes, should have yielded to the
influence of Islamic preachers who came from the north, before the
introduction of that religion in the intervening region comprised between
the southern limits of the Sahara and the Western Sudan. That it should
have struck the Niger, and followed it as providing the swiftest vehicle
of penetration inland before permeating the countries that lay on either
side of the river, is natural enough, and we find indirect confirmation
that it did so in the circumstance that the other great Negro kingdom
contemporary with Songhay, that of Melle or Mali, which had succeeded
Ghanata, only embraced Islam in the person of its king, Baramidana,
in 1213, or about two centuries after the conversion of Za Kasai. It
may therefore, I think, be assumed, without departing from the limits
of inherent probability, that if the existence of mosques in Walata
were relegated to 900 A.D. instead of 682 A.D., the former date would
approximately represent the truth; and that Mohammedan proselytisers
must have been busily at work in the Senegal about that time or a little
later, pushing southwards and eastwards from thence, until they reached
the Niger, and pursuing their course onwards to the most important city
on its banks, Gao; reaching it, as already stated, in the opening years
of the eleventh century,[177] and having met with success, continuing
their triumphal progress to the third great Negro kingdom of West Africa,
Kanem.[178]
The introduction of Islam revolutionised Western Africa. His first
contact with a revealed religion powerfully affected the naturally
intense spiritual nature of the Negro. What was the precise nature of
the religious beliefs entertained by the Songhays, Mandingoes, Fulani,
Hausas and other tribes inhabiting the Upper Senegal and Upper Niger at
the time of the advent of Mohammedanism it is difficult to say. It may
have been the animism which, under its modern appellation, Fetishism,
is met with to-day in its purest form among the true Negroes of the
coastwise swamp and forest regions. Or, as is much more probable, it
may have been a form of pantheism allied with animal worship inherited
from contact, at a remote period, with Egyptian culture; as witness the
_Tarik’s_ description of the original fish-god of the Songhays, believed
by some authorities—and not without reason—to have been the manatee;[179]
the alleged regard of the Mandingoes for the hippopotamus;[180] and the
strong presumptions of an ancient bovine worship among those Fulani who
have remained faithful to their original calling of _bororoji_ (herdsmen)
as distinguished from their more ambitious countrymen of the towns, whom
destiny has fashioned into statesmen, diplomatists and warriors. Whatever
those beliefs may severally have been they were flung aside, and Islam
struck so deep that the Negro became in time not only as zealous, but
upon occasion more zealous than his Semitic teachers. Under the fostering
impulse and care of the new religion, these backward regions, says
Thomson,[181] commenced an upward progress. A new and powerful bond drew
the scattered congeries of tribes together and welded them into powerful
communities. Their moral and spiritual well-being increased by leaps and
bounds, and their political and social life took an altogether higher
level.
“Islamism is in itself stationary, and was framed thus to
remain; sterile like its God, lifeless like its first principle
in all that constitutes life—for life is love, participation
and progress, and of these the Coranic deity has none. It
justly repudiates all change, all development, to borrow
the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the written book is
there the dead man’s hand, stiff and motionless; whatever
savours of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and
defection.”[182]
The underlying thought in the above passage is evidently comparative.
The writer is unconsciously drawing a comparison between the two great
revealed religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, as such.
But as we are here concerned merely to treat of the performances of
Islam in West Africa, and of the effect upon the _Negro_, primarily
of Islam, indirectly of Christianity, it can without hesitancy be
asserted that what may be partly true in the description given of
Islam in its relation to mankind as a whole is wholly false as regards
its influence in West Africa. To the _Negro_ the God of Islam is not
sterile: Islam is not lifeless. It is a living force, giving to its
Negro converts, as Mr. Bosworth-Smith says, “an energy, a dignity, and
a self-respect which is all too rarely found in their pagan or their
Christian fellow-countrymen.” Individually and collectively the Negro
has progressed since Islam crossed the desert, and just as to the Negro
fetishist of the forest and the swamp religious conceptions permeate
every act, preside over every undertaking and insinuate themselves in
every incident of his daily existence, so Islam, where it has laid
permanent hold upon the Negro, claims from him an allegiance entire and
complete.
We need not seek for proof of this. It is writ large over West
Africa. Negroes, not by dozens or by scores, but by tens of hundreds,
traverse thousands of miles on foot from the innermost parts of the
Mohammedanised Continent; from Senegal, from the Niger Bend, from Bornu,
from Hausa, from our Coast Colonies of Sierra Leone and Lagos, to perform
the Haj, the sacred journey to Mecca, which every true believer should
accomplish at least once in his life. A clergyman belonging to the
Church Missionary Society, writing from Tripoli,[183] recently spoke
of “a ceaseless stream of Hausa pilgrims continually passing through
Tripoli on the way to Mecca after a wearisome tramp across the desert,”
a significant admission from such a source. This “ceaseless stream” is
not confined to Hausa. It flows from all parts of Western Africa. It has
flowed thus for many centuries, and the volume, far from diminishing,
increases. That is not the sign of sterility. Burton, during his stay in
Mecca, was witness of the extraordinary influence wielded by Islam on the
Negro mind. The case, as he remarks, was not an exceptional one.
“Late in the evening,” he says, “I saw a negro in the
state called Malbus—religious frenzy. To all appearance a
Takruri,[184] he was a fine and powerful man, as the numbers
required to hold him testified. He threw his arms wildly about
him, uttering shrill cries, which sounded like _le le le le_,
and, when held, he swayed his body and waved his head from side
to side like a chained and furious elephant, straining out the
deepest groans. The Africans appear unusually subject to this
nervous state, which, seen by the ignorant and the imaginative,
would at once suggest ‘demoniacal possession.’ Either their
organisation is more impressionable or, more probably, the
hardships, privations, and fatigues endured whilst wearily
traversing inhospitable wilds and perilous seas have exalted
their imaginations to a pitch bordering upon frenzy. Often they
are seen prostrate on the pavement, or clinging to the curtain,
or rubbing their foreheads upon the stones, weeping bitterly,
and pouring forth the wildest ejaculations.”
Dr. Blyden, speaking of the native Moslems of Sierra Leone, has said,
“Wherever they go, they take the Koran with them. In a wreck or a fire,
if nothing else is saved, that book is generally rescued. They prize and
honour it with extreme reverence and devotion.... I have known them to
pay as high as five pounds sterling for a Manuscript Koran and think it
cheap.” One might fill a volume in giving concrete instances, as well as
general statements founded upon the personal observations of travellers
in all parts of Western Africa, to prove the inapplicability as concerns
West Africa of Palgrave’s passage quoted above, a passage which I have
specially chosen because it represents, unfortunately, what may be called
“home opinion” on the subject.
It can, no doubt, be said with truth, that the majority of West African
Mohammedans cannot read Arabic, and that a large proportion of them
only know the ordinances of the Koran by hearsay; but this, far from
being an argument against the influence of Islam in West Africa, is but
an added proof of the grip which Islamic thought has attained over the
African mind, and of its having supplied the Negro—not through specific
rules, regulations and ordinances, but in its main conception—with
something which he required both in a spiritual and material sense. It
is, moreover, advisable to accept with caution the general statements
attributing wholesale ignorance of letters to Muslims in West Africa.
Blyden gives a long list of works which he observed in a Mallam’s house
in the Sierra Leone hinterland. The _Tarik_ tells us that, not long
after the introduction of Islam in West Africa, many Negroes rivalled
their Semitic or Berber teachers in knowledge and erudition. Barth met
in the wildest parts of Adamawa a Fulani from far-off Massina carrying
a considerable number of Arabic books as _trade_. Many other instances
could be given.
Islam in West Africa is, indeed, a living force and a most powerful
agency “everywhere knitting the conquerors and the conquered into an
harmonious whole,”[185] and Englishmen must regard it as such. It
confronts them more particularly in its political aspect in Northern
Nigeria; and in Sierra Leone, the Gambia, the Gold Coast, Lagos, and to
a much lesser degree, in Southern Nigeria, in its social aspect. People
in England appear strangely unacquainted with these facts. West African
Mohammedanism is presented to them in distorted shape by those who
have interest in so doing, and to whom the public ear is more readily
accessible. But the local authorities in the West African Colonies
realise the state of affairs; and what is more, are rapidly coming to
the conclusion that the Mohammedan section of the community is not only
the most orderly and the most progressive, but necessitates, both as a
matter of duty and of policy, recognition on the part of the Government.
Within the last few years Mohammedan schools have been established with
official sanction and support in all our Colonies; a mosque built by the
late Shitta Bey has been opened at Lagos[186] by the (then) Governor in
person, and in Sierra Leone a Director of Mohammedan Education has been
especially appointed at a fixed salary per annum.
As with Great Britain, so with France, but to a very much greater
degree. France’s African Empire is almost wholly an Islamic one, and
confining ourselves to that part of it which is properly West African,
the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants are Muslims. With the
exception of a small section of Bobos, Diakankes and Bambarras, a larger
but declining section of the Malinkes and a few wandering Fulani in
the more remote districts of Barani, Fuladugu, Bobo-Dialassu, &c., the
whole of the Western Sudan is more or less Muslimised. In the north
of her colony of Guinea, France has the large Muslim Fulani State of
Futa-Jallon; in Senegal, Mohammedanism has spread right down to the
ocean; in the Chad region, in Baghirmi and a considerable distance up
the Shari, Islam has flourished for at least four centuries, and through
Fulani cattle-rearers and Hausa traders, the tenets of the Prophet are
being propagated as far south as the Shari, Sangha and Ubanghi. The
French have established numerous schools at which the sons of Mohammedan
chiefs receive instruction on Western lines. Among such schools may be
mentioned those of Kayes and Medina. Special instructors appointed by
the French Government teach Arabic side by side with French, and every
effort is made by France to secure Muslim co-operation on lines of
Western thought in the great work which she has taken in hand. The French
African Committee go so far as to print a special bulletin in Arabic,
which, together with the Arabic newspaper _al Mobacher_, published in
Algeria, is distributed gratuitously to a large number of influential
Mohammedans throughout the Western Sudan, especially in such centres as
Jenne, Timbuctoo, Nioro and Sokolo. Needless to say these publications
are largely composed of laudatory articles calculated to inspire their
readers with the justice, generosity, and liberty of French political
conceptions. The French seem to be adopting in this, as in many other
respects in West Africa, a very enlightened attitude. At the Kayes
school, for instance, they have appointed a special teacher from Algeria
to superintend instruction in the Arabic tongue.[187] Moreover, in
order to make clear to the Muslim population that their sons can attend
the Government schools without fear of having to listen to teaching
conceived in a spirit of hostility or criticism towards Islam, the
French authorities not only permit but encourage the presence during
class time of the Muslim schoolmasters themselves, thus removing the
natural suspicion of Muslim parents, and at the same time making allies
of the “marabouts.” This line of conduct, it may be added, is especially
embodied in the instructions given to all District Commissioners.
How comes it that Islam has succeeded with the West African Negro when
Christianity has fared so badly? Islam has marched from triumph to
triumph among the Negroes, but of the greatest effort ever put forward
by the Christian Church in West Africa, that by the Portuguese in the
Congo in the sixteenth century, there remains little or no trace, and the
results of more widespread but less consistent (because rent by internal
differences) efforts of to-day cannot be termed otherwise than profoundly
discouraging, when one considers the lives expended in a fruitless task;
pitifully sterile, when one is aware of the large sums that have been,
and continue to be, spent in the attempt. It would seem as though the
failure of the Christian Church in North Africa, and the failure of Roman
Catholicism in South West Africa, in the sixteenth century, were to be
repeated in these later days by the multifarious sects and denominations
the monotony of whose painful struggles to gain a foothold on the western
shores of the unfathomable continent is only varied by the jealousies and
recriminations which they indulge in towards one another.
The Protestant churchman is wont to ascribe the failure of Christian
propaganda in South-Western Africa in the sixteenth century to Roman
Catholicism, which to him is the embodiment of an evil little if at all
removed from the evil of Islamic doctrine.[188] I have heard English
and French Roman Catholics attribute it to the inherent incapacity, or
weakness, or corruptibility—according to the particular views of the
individual—of the would-be converters, the Portuguese. Persons devoid of
special religious prejudices are sometimes inclined to argue that the
mere fact of the slave trade being in existence contemporaneously was in
itself sufficient to account for it. Upon examination none of these views
appear very conclusive. Protestantism has not fared better in West Africa
than Roman Catholicism. Indeed, it may be doubted whether it has fared,
on the whole, quite as well. No argument worthy of serious attention has
been adduced to prove the exceptional unfitness of Portuguese prelates to
successfully accomplish the task they had begun, nor does the decline
of the political influence of Portugal in West Africa provide a fitting
explanation, because the flimsy nature of the first apparent successes
of the Roman Catholic Church had become evident before that decline took
place. As for the alleged slave-trade deterrent, it was, contradictory as
the statement may appear, probably no deterrent at all, but rather the
reverse; for the policy of the Portuguese consisted in promoting friendly
relations with the more powerful potentates of the littoral, and in
supplying them with guns and gunpowder to make war on the inland tribes.
The latter, and not the coastwise natives, were, in the main, the chief
sufferers by the slave trade; and the coast people, being guaranteed from
molestation, would have no occasion to invoke the miseries inflicted upon
them by the Portuguese traffickers in human flesh, when approached by the
Portuguese inculcators of Christianity. In fact, if the political acts
of professing Christian nations in West Africa are to be considered as a
factor in the measure of success, or failure of Christian propagandism
in West Africa—a debatable proposition upon which I propose to refer
later on—it may without hesitation be affirmed that recent developments
of European policy have done more to prejudice the natives against the
doctrines of Christianity, as propounded by European teachers, than the
slave trade with all its savagery and horrors.
[Illustration: A SUSU MALLAM]
We must go deeper than this, and in doing so try and clear our minds
of preconceived opinions, no easy matter when certain errors have
been so persistently dinned into our ears that they have come to be
regarded as cardinal articles of faith; and those who in this respect
occasionally venture to disturb the serenity of our convictions are
looked upon as outside the pale of respectable society. One of such
preconceived opinions is embodied in the quotation from Palgrave’s
“Arabia” already commented upon. Another bears on the nature of Islamic
proselytism in West Africa. It is an ingrained belief with most people
that Mohammedanism in West Africa has ever been propagated by brute
force; is ever and always associated with “slave-raiding.” The mere
epithet of “slave-raiders” applied in Reuter’s telegrams to a tribe
with whom trouble has occurred, is sufficient to justify in the eyes
of the public any expeditions of a punitive kind which the authorities
in their wisdom think fit to organise, against those who have incurred
the displeasure of a District Commissioner or Military Commandant. Far
be it from me to assert that occasions do not arise when the adoption
of punitive undertakings is not only an unavoidable necessity, but a
positive duty owed by the Suzerain Power to its protected subjects. But
I would venture respectfully to suggest that the term “slave-raiding” is
much abused, not a little distorted, and sometimes most unfairly applied.
It is used almost exclusively in connection with Mohammedan tribes. When
a difference comes about with pagans, we are told that it is caused by a
predilection to human sacrifices. A reference to the frequent collisions
which have taken place between Great Britain and the natives of Western
Africa during the last six years will show that, either as a primary or
an accessory cause of the difficulty, human sacrifices are invariably
given in the case of a pagan community and slave-raiding in the case of a
Mohammedan community.
There could be no greater error than the prevalent idea that in West
Africa, Islam has attained its remarkable successes _manu militari_. Most
of Islam’s triumphs in West Africa have been won by the peaceful sect
of the Quadriyah, founded by Sidi-Abd-el-Kader-el-Jieari in 1077 A.D.,
first introduced into West Africa in the fifteenth century; and the work
accomplished by this sect has been more enduring and more widespread
than that of the other great order in West Africa, the Tijaniyah, which
believes primarily in the sword as a means of conversion.
“In the beginning[189] of the present century[190] the great
revival which was so profoundly influencing the Mohammedan
world stirred up the Quadriyah of the Sahara and Western
Sudan to renewed life and energy, and before long learned
theologians or small colonies of persons affiliated to the
order were to be found, scattered throughout the Sudan,
on the mountain chain that runs along the coast of Guinea,
and even to the west of it, in the Free State of Liberia.
These initiates formed centres of Islamic influence in the
midst of the pagan population, among whom they received a
welcome as public scribes, legists, writers of amulets, and
schoolmasters; gradually they would acquire influence over
their new surroundings, and isolated cases of conversion would
soon grow into a little band of converts, the most promising
of whom would often be sent to complete their studies at the
chief centre of the order; here they might remain for several
years, until they had perfected their theological studies, and
would then return to their native place, fully equipped for the
work of spreading the faith among their fellow-countrymen. In
this way a leaven has been introduced into the midst of fetish
worshippers and idolaters which has gradually spread the faith
of Islam surely and steadily, though by almost imperceptible
degrees. Up to the middle of the present century[191] in the
Sudan, schools were founded and conducted by teachers trained
under the auspices of the Quadriyah, and their organisation
provided for a regular and continued system of propaganda among
the heathen tribes. The missionary work of this order has been
entirely of a peaceful character, and has relied wholly upon
personal example and precept, on the influence of a teacher
over his pupils, and the spread of education.”
The Quadriyah order, moreover, is not animated by hostility towards
Christians, in which it differs materially from that of the Tijaniyah.
The French find it advisable to co-operate politically with the former
sect. “It is,” writes Captain Morrison in the interesting report already
alluded to, “our business to see that the Negroes, Moors, Tuaregs and
other inhabitants of the Western Sudan should become more affiliated to
the Quadriyah (Kadria). It is, thanks to the spirit with which the Imam
of Lanfiera inspires his adepts, that friendship and protection have been
granted to all our explorers in that region.” M. le Commandant Binger
thus describes the work of Quadriyah Muslims in the important city and
country of Kong, in the hinterland of the Ivory Coast, which he was the
first to discover and bring to the notice of Europe:
“A hundred years ago, the influence of the Muslim community of
Kong did not extend beyond a few miles of the city. Surrounded
on all sides by pagan tribes who existed by rapine and
brigandage, the people of Kong could not carry on trade and
dispose of their cotton goods without great loss, consequent
upon the exorbitant taxes imposed by the pagan kinglets,
non-payment of which involved the pillage of caravans. What did
the Muslims do? They established Mohammedan families from Kong
in all the villages situated between Kong and Bobo-Dialassu
first, and between Kong and Jenne afterwards. It took them
fifty years to settle one or two families in each village.
Each of these immigrants organised a school, asked some of
the inhabitants to send their children there, then little by
little, through their relations with Kong and other commercial
centres, they were able to render service to the pagan king of
the country, to gain his confidence, and gradually to take part
in his affairs. If a difficulty arises it is always a Muslim
who is appealed to. Even if he be quite alone in the country,
the king will empower him to negotiate, because he is usually
able to read and write and has the reputation of being a good
and holy man. If the Muslim ambassador fails in his mission, he
proposes to the pagan king that the mediation of the people of
Kong shall be invoked. Thus the country becomes placed under
the protection of the Mohammedan States of Kong. Gradually
Islam makes progress. More Muslim families settle among the
pagans, who do not fail to become converts. The latter quickly
recognise that the one means of finding aid and protection
wherever their travels may lead them lies in the adoption of
Islam.[192] Moreover, have not the pagans a significant example
before them? Do not the Muslims live in comparative ease and
comfort? The pagan, while acknowledging that it is commerce and
industry that render Mohammedans prosperous, attributes much
of that prosperity to the Supreme Being, and the Muslim takes
care to point the moral, ‘God wills it thus.’ It is clearly
apparent from the above that the Islamic propaganda of Kong is
carried on by persuasion. Force is but rarely employed, and
only against pagan peoples composed of thieves and brigands,
and when the Kong Mussulmans are driven to make use of it.”[193]
The practices of the Kong people in this respect are not at all peculiar
to themselves. We find the same procedure mentioned by Thomson, Barth,
and numerous other explorers; and the influence of Islam among the Hausas
could never have been maintained if to the early conquests of Othman
Fodio had not succeeded the peaceful efforts of the Muslim teacher,
schoolmaster and priest. Dr. Blyden once described to the writer the
incidents relating to the conversion of one of the largest pagan towns in
the Sierra Leone hinterland, the knowledge of which he gleaned from the
inhabitants themselves in the course of his travels in the Protectorate.
On a certain day the inhabitants of the town observed a man, black like
themselves, but clad in a white garment, advancing down the main street.
Suddenly the stranger prostrated himself and prayed to Allah. The natives
stoned him and he departed. In a little while he returned, and prostrated
himself as before. This time he was not stoned, but the people gathered
about him with mockery and reviling. The men spat upon him and the women
hurled insults and abuse. His prayer ended, the stranger went away in
silence, grave and austere, seemingly oblivious to his unsympathetic
surroundings. For a space he did not renew his visit, and in the interval
the people began to regret their rudeness. The demeanour of the stranger
under trying circumstances had gained their respect. A third time he
came, and with him two boys also clothed in white garments. Together they
knelt and offered prayer. The natives watched, and forbore to jeer. At
the conclusion of the prayer a woman came timidly forward and pushed her
young son towards the holy man, then as rapidly retreated. The Muslim
rose, took the boy by the hand and, followed by his acolytes, left the
village in silence as before. When he came again he was accompanied by
three boys, two of them those who had been with him before, and the third
the woman’s son, clad like the rest. All four fell upon their knees,
the holy man reciting the prayer in a voice that spoke of triumph and
success. He never left the town again, for the people crowded round
him beseeching him to teach their children. In a short time the entire
population of that town, which for three centuries had beaten back the
assaults of would-be Muslim converters by the sword, had voluntarily
embraced Islam!
It is in incidents such as these, which are by no means rare in West
Africa, that the moral force of Islam lies, and which is largely
accountable for its astonishing successes. The fanatical zeal of an
Ahmadu, a Samory and an El-Haji-Omar are but drops in the ocean compared
with the systematic moral suasion exercised by Islamic teachers, who,
carrying no staff or scrip, relying solely upon the inward strength
derived from contact with a higher creed, brave the perils and
discomforts incidental to their calling with a sublime indifference only
met with in Biblical narrative. There is a passage in Arnold’s “The
Preaching of Islam” which accurately interprets the misconceptions which
exist on the subject of Islamic propaganda in West Africa:
“Unfortunately,” says that author, “for a true estimate of the
missionary work of Islam in Western Africa, the fame of the
_jihads_, or religious wars, has thrown into the shade the
successes of the peaceful propagandist, though the labours of
the latter have been more effectual to the spread of Islam
than the creation of petty short-lived dynasties. The records
of campaigns, especially when they have interfered with the
commercial projects or schemes of conquest of the white man,
have naturally attracted the attention of Europeans more
than the unobtrusive labours of the Mohammedan preacher and
schoolmaster.... These _jihads_, rightly looked upon, are but
incidents in the modern Islamic revival, and are by no means
characteristic of the forces and activities that have been
really operative in the promulgation of Islam in West Africa;
indeed, unless followed up by distinctly missionary efforts,
they would have proved almost wholly ineffectual in the
creation of a true Muslim community.”
CHAPTER XXIII
ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA
Being now perhaps in a somewhat more open frame of mind with regard to
the work of Islam in West Africa, we may attempt to investigate the
methods of Islam and the methods of Christianity in their relationship to
the Negro. In this manner we may hope to come to still closer quarters
with the subject, and by so doing arrive at a tolerably clear impression
of its various phases. Why does Africa, which was, as has been truly
said, “the nursing mother of Christianity,” remain impervious to the
teachings of the highest religion? Why does Christianity, which has
laboured for so many centuries in Western Africa, make no appreciable
advance in that country? The failure may, I think, be ascribed to four
main causes: first, the refusal to admit that the circumstances which
regulate certain natural laws vary with climatic considerations and
racial idiosyncrasies; secondly, the tendency which Christianity, as
taught in West Africa, has to denationalise; thirdly, the incompatibility
between the ideals of Christ and modern conceptions of Christianity;
fourthly, the political action of Christian Powers.
For obvious reasons the question of polygamy is a very difficult one
to publicly discuss, but the subject of Christianity and Mohammedanism
in Western Africa cannot adequately be treated without referring to
it. It is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that the refusal of the
Christian Church to admit polygamists into its fold is one of the great
obstacles with which the Church in West Africa has to contend. That is
not seriously disputed, and yet, so far as can be observed, the chief
dignitaries of the Church with whom all decisions affecting missionary
enterprise in West Africa must ultimately lie, give no sign that they
realise the paramount importance of the problem. Now and again individual
utterances are made, which tend to show that some Churchmen, at least,
are possessed of a spirit sufficiently broad to approach the subject in
more practical fashion. A well-known Canon of the Church once remarked
that, “owing to polygamy, Mohammedan countries are free from professional
outcasts, a greater reproach to Christianity than polygamy to Islam.”
Although the first part of that statement may not be accepted _ad
literatim_, there are, unfortunately, sufficient data to show that the
morals of Mohammedan communities in West Africa are higher than those of
the Europeanised West Coast towns, where alone Christianity has gained a
sort of foothold, and where a monogamous Christianity has been preached
off and on for centuries past. And it is, at any rate, true that in West
Africa the Mohammedan is, as a rule, distinctly averse to relationship
with public women; and also, as a rule, jealously guards the honour of
his wives and daughters.
Let us consider for a moment how this refusal on the part of the Church
to receive polygamists appeals to the Negro in relation to Christianity.
If there is one social feature of the Negro which all observers are
agreed in recognising, it is the sincerity and depth of the link between
mother and son.[194] With what sort of feelings, then, must the Negro
look upon a religion which, according to its expounders, brands his
parents with immorality? In very truth, whether we approach this great
subject from a standpoint of common sense and severe practicability,
or whether we claim to study it on moral grounds alone, only one
conclusion can be arrived at. To offer Christianity to the Negro at
the price of repudiating the members of his household is unreasonable,
preposterous, unjust, and even cruel. It is unreasonable, insomuch as
it ignores the most fundamental laws of human affection which exist in
more or less developed form in every community and under every clime.
It is preposterous, because it displays an extraordinary ignorance
of the customs of the Negro and the strength of the family tie, and
all that appertains to it among the Negroes. It is unjust, because it
would deprive the rejected women (and children) of all they possess,
cover them with shame and obloquy, thus deliberately inciting them to
lead immoral lives. It is cruel, because, with an entire inconsequence
and heedlessness of after effects, it would break up a social system
consecrated by immemorial usage. There is a noble passage in Faidherbe’s
great work which I cannot refrain from quoting in this connection:
“Certain people,” said that distinguished Frenchman, “would
seem to desire that the natives should be induced to repudiate
their wives and to retain but one. This method appears to me
to be thoroughly immoral. What! Our object is to strengthen
family ties, and we would begin by disorganising the family! We
should commit a great injustice, and we should be displaying
a singular callousness towards the women and children, if we
professed to grant to the native the title and privileges of a
citizen on the condition that he kept one wife and expelled the
others. We should place venerable fathers of families in the
position of sending away, with their children, wives with whom
they had lived for fifteen, twenty, or thirty years. And how
would they distinguish between their wives?... Disorganisation
would be complete.”[195]
There is another aspect of the question which cannot fail to arrest the
attention of all enlightened and truly Christian men. Is polygamy a
necessary institution on physical grounds for the Negro _in Africa_? The
evidence in a corroborative sense is not to be lightly dismissed. Without
stopping to discuss the generally admitted theory that the sexual side of
man’s nature becomes more pronounced as the tropical zone is approached,
it is incontestable that a well-grounded belief exists in West African
educated native circles that the effects of monogamy upon the Negro _are
racially destructive_. Dr. Blyden’s testimony in this respect may not,
perhaps, command universal acknowledgment, but the following passage
from his writings is well worthy of note:
“Owing,” he says, “to the exhausting climatic conditions, the
life and perpetuity of the population depend upon polygamy.
The difference is marked between children born under monogamic
restrictions and those whose parents are polygamists. In the
one there is the evidence of physical deterioration and mental
weakness; in the other are manifest physical vigour and mental
activity and alertness. In the one there is the sad evidence
of arrested growth, suppressed physical development, and
intellectual sluggishness; in the other there is astonishing
muscular strength and fully developed chest—a reproduction of
their fathers’—not weaker, but wiser than their fathers’, when
not diverted from aboriginal simplicity by alien influence.”
The exhausting climatic conditions of which Doctor Blyden speaks is
accountable for a custom, almost universal throughout West Africa, among
both Mohammedans and pagans; which, although it may have some drawbacks
attaching to it, must nevertheless be assumed to entail preponderating
advantages for the racial welfare of the people, or it would hardly have
been so widely adopted. I refer, of course, to the extensive period of
lactation—three years as a rule—during which time husband and wife have
no connection; connection, indeed, generally ceasing when conception has
taken place. The custom is attributive to the belief that too frequent
child-bearing is injurious to the health of the mother and the offspring,
in view of the climate.[196] This is a point which also deserves the
most attentive consideration. The instinct of primitive peoples in such
matters is generally found to be based upon knowledge born of experience.
The only portion of the Dark Continent where orthodox Christianity has
made any appreciable inroad is Uganda. Now what does Sir Harry Johnston
tell us in his last report? He says there is a serious decrease in the
birth-rate of the Bantu Waganda. He quotes Monseigneur Strachir’s opinion
that one of the causes of this state of affairs is the introduction of
monogamy, consequent upon the spread of the Christian faith.
“In many parts of West Africa,” continues Sir Harry Johnston,
“where Christianity prevails, but where there is very little
result other than pious utterances from the mouth, ostensible
monogamy is corrected by the possession of recognised or
unrecognised concubines, and by a general promiscuousness in
sexual matters. But in Uganda, Christianity seems to have taken
such a real hold upon the people that, though by no means free
from immorality—as no nation or community is free from the same
tendency—they really seem to be striving at genuine monogamy
and the exclusive possession of one wife for a partner. As the
Baganda women are certainly very poor breeders, this means that
the majority of couples only have one child. In fact, the birth
of a second child on the part of the wife is such an unusual
occurrence that the wife, in consequence thereof, is given a
new and honorific title.”
A Liberian Bishop—one of the kindliest of men—to whom I showed the
above passage, replied sententiously that the ways of the Almighty were
unfathomable, but that the disappearance of the few could not be held to
weigh in the balance as compared with the salvation of the many; which
seemed to me to bear a curious analogy to that passage in “Azurara”
in which the old Portuguese historian, apostrophising Prince Henry
the Navigator on the occasion of the first appearance at his court of
West African slaves, torn with every accompaniment of barbarity from
their homes by those gallant knights Antam Gonçalvez and Nuno Tristram,
exclaims:
“O holy Prince, peradventure thy pleasure and delight might
have some semblance of covetousness at receiving the knowledge
of such a sum of riches, even as great as those thou didst
expend to arrive at that result?... But thy joy was solely
from that one holy purpose of thine to seek salvation for the
lost souls of the heathen. And in the light of this it seemed
to thee, when thou sawest those captives brought into thy
presence, that the expense and trouble thou hadst undergone
was nothing: such was thy pleasure at beholding them. And yet
the greater benefit was theirs, for though their bodies were
now brought into some subjection, that was a small matter in
comparison with their souls, which would now possess true
freedom for evermore.”
I hope it will not be thought that these references are made with any
idea of depreciating the efforts, and in some respects surprisingly
successful efforts, of Christian propaganda among the Bantu races of the
Uganda Protectorate. The point under discussion is not the evangelising
success of the Church in Uganda, but the physical effects of a monogamous
Christianity upon the races of Africa.
[Illustration: FULANI MALLAM]
I have been at great pains to obtain all the evidence available bearing
directly or indirectly on this subject, and in the aggregate it bears out
what precedes. The highest type of the Christian educated Negro urges
that an entire latitude should be left to the aboriginal element in the
matter, and although professing monogamists themselves, they strictly
maintain—whether rightly or wrongly is not for the layman to decide—that
in so doing the Church would not be acting contrary to the principles of
divine revelation.[197]
I have given as the second contributory cause of the non-success of
Christian missions in West Africa the tendency to denationalisation.
It is unhappily true that the Christianised Negro becomes to a large
extent denationalised, and the reason of it lies in the methods employed
to convert him. Islam, on the other hand, not only encourages the
spirit of nationality in the African, but intensifies it. The Muslim
Negro is elevated among his pagan neighbours; he gains their respect
and increases his own. Islam takes the Negro by the hand and gives him
equality with all men. From the day the pagan adopts Islam, no Semite
Muslim can claim racial superiority over him. Islam to the Negro is the
stepping-stone to a higher conception of existence, inspiring in his
breast confidence in his own destiny, imbuing his spirit with a robust
faith in himself and in his race. Christianity does not do this for the
Negro. Its effect, indeed, is quite contrary. Instead of encouraging, it
discourages. Instead of inculcating a greater self-reliance, it seems
to lessen that which exists. The Christian Negro for the most part is
a sort of hybrid. He is neither one thing nor another. His adoption of
European clothes causes him to be looked upon partly with suspicion,
partly with ridicule, by his pagan fellow-countrymen; although they make
use of his services as clerk or secretary when occasion requires it.
Mohammedans treat him with undisguised contempt. More bitter perhaps
than anything else is the scorn which Europeans themselves bestow upon
him. Question any white official, military man, trader or traveller, as
to his impressions of the West African native. He will tell you that the
pagan native of the interior is more often than not a fine fellow, one
of nature’s gentlemen, hospitable, kindly, simple, courteous; that the
Mohammedan native is a splendid man, with a carriage full of pride and
self-reliance, arrogant may be, haughty, but singularly dignified, with
a conscious superiority and quiet confidence stamped all over him. But
the Christian Negro is seldom spoken of without opprobrium. His vanity,
his conceit, his “veneer of civilisation,” the vices he has acquired and
so forth, are the inevitable theme. His unfortunate habit of adopting
the latest vagaries of European fashions, both in his own person and in
the person of his women folk, is the butt of constant sarcasm, as are
the accounts of the solemnisation of the Christian form of marriage in
a native West Coast town. Even the missionaries are compelled, although
with natural unwillingness, to admit an unpalatable fact. “There are a
great many natives on the coast and in Lower Nigeria,” writes Canon
Robinson, “who call themselves Christian; there are distressingly
few converts.... My advice to travellers on the coast in search of
trustworthy servants would be to prefer the heathen or Mohammedan to the
professing Christian, because a bad religion sincerely accepted, or even
no religion at all, is to be preferred to a religious profession which
is only a sham.” A humiliating confession, humiliating to the Christian
Church, humiliating to European civilisation. What between one thing
and another, the Christianised Negro is a _déclassé_, a _culotté sans
culottes_.[198] Of course there are exceptions, but they are relatively
scarce, and consist in the main of natives who have acquired wealth by
commerce (wealth being a safeguard to open obloquy all the world over, no
matter what the colour of the possessor’s skin), and who either through
the enjoyment of special educational advantages, or because they are men
of unusually high character and intelligence naturally, have succeeded
in grasping the true Christian ideal and have gained moral and spiritual
ennoblement thereby. It is my privilege to number such a man among my
friends. But I greatly doubt whether he would feel at ease in travelling
or sojourning alone in the interior, even among the tribe to which he
belongs, in his own country of origin. There seems to be a barrier
between the Christianised Negro and his non-Christian countrymen; a
barrier which excludes sympathy, and which European policy tends to still
further accentuate.
To what are these things due? To no one particular circumstance, but to
a whole set of circumstances, which together produce the effect. To the
general, omnipresent suggestion—possibly quite unintentioned in many
cases—of the Negro’s inherent racial inferiority, inculcated by European
missionaries. To the never absent, one might say inevitable insistence,
whether outspoken or only understood, upon a great intellectual, social,
moral gulf which yawns between the Negro and his Caucasian instructor; a
gulf that can never be bridged by Christianity, as taught in West Africa
by Europeans.
The third and fourth contributory causes, viz. incompatibility between
the ideals of Christ and the modern conceptions of Christianity, and
the political action of Christian Powers, may be treated together, for
they are closely allied one to the other; as, indeed, they also are to
the third cause, upon which I have briefly touched. There is a striking
passage in the last literary contribution on West African affairs,
penned by Miss Kingsley on that fatal voyage to the Cape, which puts in
more pregnant language than I could hope to do the underlying thought
expressed above:
“I know,” wrote Miss Kingsley, “that there is a general opinion
among the leading men of both races that Christianity will
give the one possible solution to the whole problem. I fail to
be able to believe this. I fail to believe Christianity will
bring peace between the two races, for the simple reason that,
though it may be possible to convert Africans _en masse_ into
practical Christians, it is quite impossible to convert the
Europeans _en masse_ to it. You have only got to look at the
history of any European nation—the Dutch, the Spanish, the
Italian, the German—every one calling themselves Christian, but
none the more for that tolerant and peaceable. Each one of them
is ready to take out a patent for a road to heaven, and make
that road out of men’s blood and bones and the ashes of burnt
homesteads. Of course, by doing this they are not following the
true teachings of Jesus Christ, but that has not, and will not,
become a factor in politics.”
The bewildering contradictions between the ideals laid down by Christ,
as taught by the expounders of his word, and the practical effect of
that teaching as exemplified in the conduct of Europeans and European
Governments, confronts the Negro at every turn. The more intelligent he
is, the more advanced in the social scale, the more puzzling does it
become. Is it a question of charity? The Muslim propagandist speaks of
Christ with deep respect amounting to reverence. He is _Kalima_—the Word;
_Masih_—the Messiah; _Qual-ul-Haqq_—the Word of Truth; _Ruh_—the Spirit
(of God). He is “One illustrious in this world and in the next”: “One who
has near access to God.” The Christian missionary speaks of Mohammed “as
an impostor;” “an arch impostor;” “a man full of evil and wickedness.”
Islam is a “bad religion”: “its ways are the ways of darkness”: “it is
Satan’s work,” and so on. Is it a question of self-abnegation? The Bible
and the Koran utter the same precepts in almost identical terms. But what
a difference in the spiritual practice of their respective expounders
in West Africa! The Muslim preacher follows out the letter of his book.
He goes on his way alone and unattended, carrying neither purse nor
scrip. He lives the life of the Negro, enters into his pursuits, shares
his hardships and his pleasures, assimilates himself in every possible
way with those whom he hopes to convert. The European missionary is
compelled, by the exigencies of the climate very greatly, to attend
primarily to his own comforts. He travels with a long file of carriers
bearing his baggage; preserved foods, linen, camp impedimenta and what
not. Some of the most earnest missionaries keenly realise the drawbacks
which such procedure must entail in the prosecution of their work, both
physically and morally. They are deeply sensible of the adverse influence
which it cannot fail to exercise over their labours. We have seen an
English prelate, high up in the hierarchy of his Church, suggest a
decrease in his salary, in order that the balance might be devoted to the
appointment of another helper in the great cause.[199] On the other hand,
we find in the works and letters of prominent missionaries engaged in the
West African field, egotistical essays of the following description:
“Care must be taken that the waterproof cloak is _stitched_. Sponges,
bath-towels, &c., will suggest themselves. Do not forget the table-linen;
a neatly arranged table helps to tempt the appetite, which is often
fastidious. Antibilious compounds are worth in my judgment _two guineas_
a box.” The above passage is derived from a book recently published,
written by a missionary with nine years’ experience in West Africa. The
articles mentioned by the writer are recommended by him as indispensable
to the welfare of a teacher of the Gospel in West Africa. The following
is a typical passage culled from the epistolary effusions published from
time to time in the organ of the Church Missionary Society from the pen
of a most energetic Bishop, who has been endeavouring with singular
ill-success, and not without some danger of arousing disturbances, to
evangelise the Hausas. “We are all well.... Our appetites are enormous.
We have plenty of food. We receive presents of food from the people every
day—rice, onions, corn, maize, fowls, bananas, &c. B—— shoots a good many
partridges and guinea-fowl, and we have a good reserve of European and
English stores.” That these little peculiarities do not in the slightest
degree detract from the sincerity of the writers may be accepted without
reserve. All we are here concerned with, is to consider the general
effect which these conceptions of the methods of propagating Christianity
in West Africa are likely to have upon the African. Are men who profess
so tender a regard for their well-being calculated to make much headway
in an evangelical sense? It may reasonably be doubted.
Is it a question of vice? The Mohammedan preacher does not leave a
stone unturned to combat drunkenness in every form, and to a very
large extent he succeeds. The sobriety of the great mass of Muslimised
Negroes no longer requires to be demonstrated. Laxity in this respect
is the exception which proves the rule. The European missionary also
denounces drunkenness, and with a fervour at times which is not always
discriminating. But he is terribly handicapped (1) by the European
trader, about one-fifth of whose total trade consists in the importation
of freshly distilled liquor, often but not invariably containing various
impurities, and in quality not exceeding that which is sold in low
public-houses in this country, and which freely mixed with water may
not be very injurious, but drunk neat, as for the most part it is, in
the _coastal_ regions of West Africa, is—we have overwhelming testimony
to that effect—harmful;[200] (2) by the European Governments who,
although they do now and again raise the duty on spirits in deference to
public opinion, tacitly encourage a traffic without which their whole
administrative machinery would become temporarily paralysed, seeing
that from 45 per cent. to 75 per cent. of the revenue of their Colonies
is derived from this traffic. These circumstances may, or may not, be
preventable. They exist, and cannot be ignored. As for another kind of
vice; the life lived by many white men in West Africa is not, perhaps,
calculated to give the Negro a high idea of the morality of Christian
Europe. His occasional visits to Europeanised coast towns—presuming him
to be living some distance in the interior—do not probably imbue him
with the notion that his trousered countrymen are the gainers in moral
ethics, through contact with European civilisation; nor, unhappily, can
it be said that the tales and personal experiences related by those of
his educated brothers who visit our great cities are of a kind to lessen
the impression he may already have formed as to the results of twenty
centuries of Christianity in Europe.[201]
Is it a question of gauging the true inwardness of the doctrine of peace
and love? It is to be feared that the political aims of European Powers
in West Africa are too often associated with Maxims and Martinis to
admit of much doubt on that score. The Negro is a shrewd man, and he
distinguishes professions from actions. The readiness with which the
white interlopers in his country appeal to the sword as the shortest cut
to the solution of a misunderstanding is instructive. The hastiness with
which his habits and customs are trampled upon by his would-be elevators;
the cheerful alacrity he is expected to show in swallowing innovations
thrust upon him at what, to his conservative prejudices, appear to him a
moment’s notice; and, finally, the increasing desire on the part of his
European friends to appropriate his most precious heritage, his ancestral
lands, and the fruits thereof, for their own use—all these things,
whether in fashionable parlance they be the “inevitable” accompaniments
of opening up West Africa by Western Europe or not, constitute those
contradictions of which I have already spoken, and whatever else they
may do, militate against the spread of Christianity in the land of the
Negroes.
Is there a remedy, and if so, on what lines is it to be sought for?
There is only one _native_ Christian State in Africa—Abyssinia—and its
Christianity is declared by eminent divines to be tainted with all
sorts of heresies and objections. But it has endowed Abyssinia with
sufficient vitality to enable her to repel Mohammedan invasion for a
long term of centuries, and the strong religious zeal of Abyssinia’s
warriors was not a negligible factor in beating back the unjustifiable
aggression made upon the independence of that country by Italy. To-day
the Emperor of this African Christian State is, with one exception,
probably the most powerful native ruler in the world. No doubt, it does
not enter the heads of European statesmen to encourage the growth of a
similar State in West Africa; which, indeed, is an obvious impossibility
for many reasons. Yet Abyssinia provides a moral for the Christian
Church. The Christianity of Abyssinia is an _African_ Christianity,
originally taught by an _African_, perpetuated by _Africans_. Orthodox
or unorthodox, it has shown itself suitable to the necessities and the
requirements of Africans; and if Christianity in West Africa, is ever
destined to make appreciable progress, it will be when it is provided
with its only feasible agent, a West African Church: a Church designed
to respond to the needs of West Africa, which are not the needs of
Europe; a Church whose servants shall be neither Europeans nor repatriate
“Afro-Liberians,” but West African Negroes, imbued with the instincts and
patriotism of race; a Church founded upon an enlightened acquaintance
with nature’s immovable laws; upon principles of true science, which is
true religion; upon a wise recognition that what is good and proper and
right for one great branch of the human family may be bad, improper, and
wrong for another.
PART IV
CHAPTER XXIV
ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS IN WEST AFRICA
The subject of the relationship between England and France in West Africa
is one to which every year that passes adds importance. The French
have during the last few years left us far behind in Western Africa,
so far as territorial expansion is concerned. They have now a great
Empire there. They have acquired it by dint of persistent, far-sighted,
courageous effort; qualities which it is regrettable to state have been
conspicuously lacking on the part of the British official world. If
a tithe of the energy which has distinguished Liverpool, Manchester,
Glasgow, and Bristol merchants in Western Africa had been displayed by
successive British Governments, the possessions of Great Britain in West
Africa to-day would be infinitely more extensive than they are.
In addition to getting the better of us, in a territorial sense,
France—whose possessions touch our own at almost every point—is steadily
becoming a serious commercial competitor. It is with that commercial
competition that we shall have to reckon in the future to an increasing
degree. It is of two kinds. There is legitimate competition and unfair
competition. In either case it behoves us to carefully study its nature
and consequences; to draw the necessary lessons therefrom; to candidly
acknowledge in a spirit of tolerant common sense that in many respects
the cause of its pressing hardly upon us is due to superior management
on the part of the French; to appeal to the spirit of equity and fair
play in our neighbours, when, as is the case in some parts of their West
African possessions at present, British merchants, who have powerfully
contributed in creating the trade of those very possessions, are getting
neither fair play nor just treatment; and generally to brace ourselves
together, realising that in West Africa, as everywhere else, the old
position of undisputed commercial supremacy which Great Britain was
able to maintain at one time with very little trouble, can no longer be
retained unless we shake off our facile opportunism and tackle the new
conditions in a scientific manner.
Of early French enterprise in Western Africa very little seems to be
known by the average Englishman; and yet the French were among the very
first pioneers of Western Africa—probably the very first—before the
Portuguese, at any rate, by at least 100 years. After the remarkable
studies recently published in the French African Committee’s journal by
Commandant Binger, the distinguished chief of the African department of
the French Colonial Office, there is not, I think, any alternative but
to accept as conclusive the French claim of being the first Europeans to
visit the West African coast. Spanish and Genoese navigators; the former
hailing from Catalonia, the Lancashire of Spain, may possibly have been
contemporaneous with the French. But, apart from French testimony, it is
affirmed by eminent Spanish authorities themselves, such as Navarette
and Viera, that the French preceded their own countrymen. The Canaries
were discovered by a Genoese of French descent, and with a French name,
Maloisel to wit, about 1275 A.D. They were also conquered by a Frenchman
named De Béthancourt in the first years of the fifteenth century. In
the beginning of the fourteenth the West African coast as far south as
the Senegal certainly, and Sierra Leone probably, was regularly visited
by French ships. So much has now been established. Whether French ships
then pushed south to the Gold Coast is not quite so clear. Personally I
incline to the belief that this has also been satisfactorily made out,
and the confirmatory testimony of Villaut-de-Bellefonds no longer stands
alone.
The paucity of historical and documentary evidence has hitherto been
the principal objection to the French claim of priority. It has, of
course, been made the most of by Portuguese historians. But, apart from
the circumstance that Commandant Binger has now been able to partly
fill up the gap, and apart from the eminently reasonable explanation
of Labat that the old records of the port of Dieppe, from whence many
of the French ships bound to the West Coast started, were destroyed by
the bombardment of that port in 1694, there is very good reason, to my
mind, why the Portuguese on the one hand should possess such splendid
and unique accounts of their early exploits in West Africa from the
middle of the fifteenth century onwards; and why, on the other hand, the
French, who arrived on the scene at least a century before them, should
be so poorly represented in their own national archives. The reason is
this. The enterprise of Portugal in West Africa—which has so incomparably
enriched the domain of geographical knowledge—was, from the first, an
official undertaking. It was conceived by Prince Henry the Navigator,
one of the most remarkable figures in history, and all the resources
of the science and literature of the age were invoked by him to give
to the new epoch of discovery a national and historical permanency,
which should be the means of reflecting glory for ever on Portuguese
annals. Very different was the enterprise of the French. It was in no
sense official, but private. It was undertaken not by renowned knights
and important personages in kingly service, but by hardy, illiterate,
independent mariners and merchants of Normandy. The object was not, as in
the case of the Portuguese, fame, geographical discovery, and religious
zeal, but trade. The men who fitted out the French ships and sent them
on their perilous course were Dieppe, Rouen, and Honfleur merchants; and
the French vessels returned, not with captives forcibly torn from their
homes with every accompaniment of cruelty in order to convert them to
a faith of peace, charity, and good-will, but with ivory, spices, and
gold dust. That was the earliest form of trade in West Africa by the
people of Western Europe. The slave trade came afterwards. To this day a
local industry in ivory carving exists at Dieppe, and every one who has
visited that quaint old seaport has noticed the numerous ivory ornaments
displayed in the shop windows. If, therefore, the British merchants can
claim to be the latter-day pioneers of commercial enterprise in West
Africa; if during the century that has just closed their commercial
aptitude and initiative gained for them the foremost commercial position
on the West African littoral, it was French merchants who originally
led the way. We have too often led the way ourselves in most parts of
the world to begrudge the French this honour, so far as Western Africa
is concerned. Rather should it be a bond of respect, the twin sister of
sympathy between us and our neighbours.
The first recorded instance upon which Englishmen and Frenchmen met off
the West African coast resulted, curiously enough, in an alliance. It
happened in this way. One William Towerson, in the course of a voyage to
Guinea in 1555, being pursued by some Portuguese brigantines, opportunely
came across a fleet of French ships, with whom he joined company for
safety. The alliance does not seem to have been a very satisfactory one,
as it turned out; still, it was an alliance, of sorts. This first meeting
took place some thirty-five years subsequent to the earliest known
appearance of an Englishman in West Africa, in the person of one Andrew
Battel, of Leigh—whether an ancestor of the three old maids of that ilk,
history sayeth not—who put to sea in a Portuguese slaver, and after
many extraordinary adventures amongst the natives of Angola, succeeded
in getting back to his native country. The beginning of the sixteenth
century marked the awakening of Englishmen to the potentialities of the
West African trade. It had been preceded by a notable slackening in the
energies of Normandy merchants. The Hundred Years’ War with England had
crippled enterprise of any kind in France. The House of Valois was in a
parlous state. The great war which began in 1337 and continued, with
occasional breaks of short duration, until the marvellous successes of
the Maid of Orleans compelled the English to give way, was marked by
the crushing defeats the French sustained at Crecy and Poitiers at the
hands of Edward III., and at Agincourt at the hands of Henry V.; and,
to make use of some quoted words, “The State was reduced to bankruptcy,
the nobility excited to rebellion, and the mass of the people sunk in
barbarism.”
No sooner, however, had the victories of Joan of Arc infused new vitality
into the French, than we find renewed evidence of the enterprise of
Dieppe and Rouen merchants in West Africa. The revival of that enterprise
coincides with the entry upon the scene of English merchants: Windham,
Hawkins of evil memory, Rutter, Baker, and others, and the records bear
witness to the contemporary presence of French trading vessels on the
West Coast from Senegal to the Gold Coast. Recent discoveries of old
manuscripts, dating back to 1574, at Honfleur prove that from that year
to 1583—a space of nine years—thirty-two French vessels left that port
alone for West Africa. For some time English and French got on well
enough on the West Coast. The power of Portugal was fast decaying, and
adventurers of all nationalities, notably the Dutch, were hurrying to the
spot. Then came more wars between English and French, with their natural
effect upon commercial transactions in West Africa. In 1696 the French
destroyed the British settlement at the mouth of the Gambia. For the
next hundred years or so relations between the Europeans established or
trading on the West Coast appear as a tangle of animosities. Every one
seemed to be fighting his neighbour, and pirates of all nationalities
attacked every vessel they came across, including those owned or manned
by men of their own race, even Gambia Castle, garrisoned by a British
force, being on one occasion captured and sacked by a notorious British
pirate named Davies, presumably a Welshman! Notwithstanding all this
dire confusion, the English were gradually getting the upper hand all
down the coast. In 1794 Sierra Leone was bombarded by a French squadron
without the authority apparently of the Revolutionary Government then in
power. Twenty years later, the power of Napoleon having collapsed, all
that was left to France by the Treaty of Vienna was her settlement on the
coast of Senegal.
England remained in a preponderating position politically and
commercially on the West African coast. Such, too, was her position in
the main until the revival of a French Colonial policy, under the impulse
of those far-seeing statesmen Gambetta and Jules Ferry in 1883. At any
period between 1815 and 1883 England had the opportunity of creating an
extensive Empire in West Africa and annexing practically the whole coast.
And here the curtain rings down on the old _régime_, and a new chapter in
the history of Anglo-French relationship in West Africa begins.
To whom should be properly attributed the initiation of the scramble for
Africa? It has been a cause of considerable inconvenience to the Cabinets
of Europe, and of still greater inconvenience, we may feel tolerably
certain, to the natives of Africa. Each Power that participated in it
throws the onus on its neighbour. So far as West Africa is concerned,
whatever claim or credit may be taken, the French must, I think, be
held guilty or meritorious, according as individual opinion may differ.
The scramble in West Africa arose from what, for want of a better
description, may be termed the discovery by the French of the West
African hinterlands. When Gambetta and Jules Ferry awoke the slumbering
colonial instincts of their countrymen, inland West Africa was to all
intents and purposes a blank. Englishmen and Frenchmen sat on the coast,
the former doing a large trade and the latter little or none. In two
places only were organised attempts at interior penetration being made.
On the Lower Niger, Englishmen were pushing their trade inland. On the
Senegal, the era of political conquest begun by Faidherbe was being
slowly developed, despite many difficulties and set-backs. The political
energies of Great Britain were paralysed by the resolution arrived at in
1865 to abandon all Government action in West Africa, with the possible
exception of Sierra Leone. France was still feeling the effects of the
disasters of 1870.
With the propaganda of Jules Ferry and Gambetta in favour of a policy
of Colonial expansion, a change came o’er the spirit of the dream as
regards West Africa. Backed by a strong body of opinion; supported by
men of note, such as M. Waldeck Rousseau, as he has himself recently
reminded us, French activity in Western Africa became very pronounced,
and the work once begun was not abandoned on account of the temporary
reverses suffered by French arms in Tonquin, which drove Ferry from power
and broke his heart. French missions, generally of a peaceful character,
started eastwards and southwards from the Senegal, and northwards from
the coast, to explore the unknown interior. They reported it to be a
fairly salubrious, fertile, cereal-producing and cattle-rearing country,
unobstructed by dense forests such as are met with inland from the West
Coast proper to a depth varying from sixty to two hundred miles. This
country was inhabited by intelligent races relatively advanced in the
scale of civilisation, possessing flourishing industries and commercial
aptitude. The French found regularly constituted States, more or less
Muslimised, and in some of which social law and order had reached a high
stage of development; large towns of 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants with
regular market-days, where iron smelting was highly advanced, where the
natives dressed in handsome clothes of their own manufacture, and used
leather sandals, sword-belts, and scabbards, despatch-bags, and saddles
fabricated by themselves. It was a revelation. The chief drawback about
this vast inland region, which seemed to offer such brilliant prospects
under able administrative supervision, was its liability to be swept by
fire and sword at any moment by some over-zealous adherent of a certain
militant sect of Mohammedans, which enjoyed great influence in the
Western Sudan. These French agents were generally well received, and by
their means vast stretches of hitherto unknown country were opened up and
brought to the knowledge of the world.
Out of these discoveries was born the desire—the very natural and
legitimate desire—on the part of the French to build up a mighty empire
in West Africa, a black Indies, which should rival the Indies of the
East in extent, in wealth, and in the prestige which its acquisition
would confer. Exploring and semi-political missions were followed by
expeditions of a definite political character, and district after
district, State after State, tribe after tribe, came under French
influence; by peaceful means in the majority of cases. All this time the
English were doing nothing, in an official sense. Liverpool men were
calling upon the Government to wake up to what was going on, but their
efforts were entirely unsuccessful. Wider and wider grew the sweep of the
French net, closer and closer to our own Colonies, which it threatened to
throttle in its meshes. Sierra Leone became encircled on three sides by
French territory; the magnificent country of Futa-Jallon, the Switzerland
of Western Africa as it has been called, which had been visited at
various times by agents of the Government of Sierra Leone (notably Dr.
Blyden), of which it formed the natural hinterland, was acquired by
France without firing a shot. The Gold Coast, and Lagos, and what is
now known as Northern Nigeria—whose safety the Convention of 1890 was
supposed to guarantee—were in imminent danger of sharing a similar fate.
I have often seen it stated, even by authorities of no mean order,
that the French were permitted or allowed to carry out the great task
of securing the hinterlands of Western Africa. In point of fact, the
statement is very misleading and has had a somewhat mischievous effect.
England was not in a position to allow or disallow. The French conceived
a plan and carried it out in the face of tremendous obstacles; they were
prepared to undergo sacrifices which we were not prepared to accept, and
such being the case, they were answerable to none but themselves. Their
success and our failure was the due measure of their enterprise and our
apathy.
When the future of our Colonies appeared thoroughly compromised by the
cutting off of the interior markets, the British Government suddenly
realised that Liverpool and Manchester merchants had been clearer-sighted
than British officialdom, and at the last moment efforts were made to
secure for the British Colonies such of the hinterlands which remained
unabsorbed. Then arose a very delicate position, which taxed the
diplomatic resources of both Powers to the uttermost. British and French
officers with excitable native troops under their command, remained
facing one another in the far interior a few hundred yards distance for
weeks at a time, awaiting instructions from the irrespective Governments.
To the good sense, tact, and mutual esteem of these officers is due that
peace was preserved between England and France. We owe a deep debt of
gratitude to these men, who, suffering from the debilitating effects of
the West African climate and the hardships attendant upon West African
travel—neither of which are conducive to sweetness of temper, managed to
keep their heads. Mainly thanks to them the quarrel was adjusted without
bloodshed, and the Anglo-French Convention of 1898 was signed. It left
our Colonies of the Gold Coast and Lagos greatly circumscribed, but
assured us in “Nigeria” a magnificent territory some 504,000 square miles
in extent.
The era of territorial rivalry between Great Britain and France in
Western Africa has, it may be legitimately assumed, quite passed away.
We continue to be rivals in commercial matters, but that is a peaceful
rivalry—or should be—which ought not to exclude friendship. Nevertheless,
as trade questions are often converted into fertile causes of dispute, it
is essential that Englishmen and Frenchmen, in order to work harmoniously
together in the future, should thoroughly understand one another’s
points of view in this connection. We, as a nation, are free traders.
The French, as a nation, are protectionists. It would be absurd and
undignified for us to complain of the different economic standpoint
taken up by our neighbours. Moreover, there are various degrees of
protectionism in France. There is the extreme school of M. Méline,
which, if its doctrines were strictly applied to the French West African
Colonies, would ruin them in five years. There is the school which
upholds partial protectionism in France, but favours freedom of trade in
the French Colonies. The latter is happily gaining in strength. We should
endeavour as far as in us lies to work with the representatives of this
school. One of the clauses of the 1898 Convention, which caused a great
outcry in France when it became known, stipulated that no differential
treatment was to be meted out to British trade throughout a considerable
part of the French West African possessions for a term of thirty years.
The following extract, bearing on this subject, from an address read by
M. Bohn, the head of the largest firm of French West African merchants,
before the Marseilles Geographical Society, in September 1898, three
months after the Convention was signed, is interesting:
“A certain colonial school,” said M. Bohn, “starting from the
premise that the only object of colonies is to favour the
outlet of goods manufactured in the mother country, demands the
application of prohibitive tariffs upon foreign goods imported
into our colonies. This system, which contributed so powerfully
to lose Spain her finest colonies, flourishes in Gaboon,
which is the least prosperous of our colonies, and which only
subsists at all by constant grants in aid from the metropolis.
These examples are hardly encouraging. On the other hand, we
are able to see that those of our colonies which are developing
themselves in the most rapid and satisfactory manner are those
where no differential tariffs exist.... From that point of view
it is certain the Franco-English Convention of June 1898, by
abolishing for a period of thirty years all differential duties
in the Ivory Coast and Dahomey, has assured for that period the
commercial prosperity of these colonies.”
That notable statement and others like it (the truth of which has been
amply borne out since) show that experienced Frenchmen engaged in the
West African trade realise, as we do, that a policy of free trade is one
which in West Africa spells commercial success by the nation which adopts
it. The existence of such views in France is a very encouraging sign for
those who firmly believe that trade is the greatest progressive agency
which can be brought to bear upon the relations between Western Europe
and Western Africa.
Recent events are proving that a natural community of interests exists
between British and French merchants in Western Africa; that they will
have to fight a common foe, the Concessionnaire, and that every action
calculated to bring them into closer relationship is a step in the right
direction.
CHAPTER XXV
TEN YEARS OF FRENCH ACTION IN WEST AFRICA
The history of France’s action in West Africa during the last ten
years has been so remarkable that it deserves to be recorded in some
detail, and where possible her policy may be usefully compared with
our own. On January 23, 1892, the Paris _Figaro_ published a literary
supplement entitled “Our African Domain,” in which was set forth by
various competent authorities—amongst whom was Captain Binger;[202]
Emile Masqueray, the well-known student of Algerian problems; Georges
Rolland, one of the foremost advocates of the Trans-Saharan Railway; and
“Harry Alis,” the redoubtable Colonial propagandist, Lord Cromer’s _bête
noire_, whose tragic end will be in the recollection of many—the past
achievements, actual position and future aspirations of France in Western
and Central Africa. The supplement was divided into five parts, entitled
respectively “Algeria”; “Penetration towards the Chad”; “Senegal and
Dependencies”; “Our Position on the Gulf of Guinea”; “Congo and Chad.”
At the time this supplement appeared, the revival of Colonial ambition
in France, which owed its inception largely to the foresight and courage
of Jules Ferry, had taken firm root among the _élite_ of French public
opinion. But although the seed where it fell gave forth lusty fruit, the
sowers were relatively few, and the area under cultivation was still but
small in 1892. The Chamber of Deputies was slow to grant fresh credits.
Politicians as a whole viewed the eloquence of Eugène Etienne and other
exponents of the Ferry school with ill-disguised nervousness, if not with
positive apprehension, fearing that the country was being turned from its
true business of guarding against possible aggression from Germany, and
was playing into Bismarck’s hands by rushing into Colonial adventures
which it was known that Bismarck, for his own reasons, was desirous of
encouraging. No one party or rather group cared to identify itself too
closely with the expansionists, remembering the whirlwind of popular
passion which assailed and overwhelmed _le Tonkinois_. On the other hand,
it was not wise to entirely dissociate one’s self from a movement which
was steadily gaining a hold over the masses. So Parliament vacillated,
and, swayed by contrary winds, voted funds one minute and sought to
withdraw them the next.
The _Figaro’s_ supplement was widely criticised. The schemes it
elaborated were not merely ambitious, they were gigantic. “Our policy,”
it argued, “is to make one homogeneous entity of Algeria, Senegal, and
Congo _viâ_ the Tuareg-Sahara and the Central and Western Sudan.” The
timid Deputy shuddered at the prospect. What must have been, even to the
master-minds who initiated the policy, not much more than a fond hope
strengthened by an unshaken faith in the destiny of the country; what,
in the eyes of those who opposed it, appeared as a monstrous figment of
the imagination, is to-day in its main lines a reality! How has it been
accomplished?
“Our intentions are pure and noble, our cause is just, the future
cannot fail us,” wrote Faidherbe in 1859, and, on the whole, despite
errors, despite the effects of temporary reaction coming after acute
disappointment, despite some individual instances of cruelty and
oppression, events have justified Faidherbe’s confident declaration.
The work of France in Africa during the last ten years and more has, in
the main, been a work of progress tending to benefit the populations
with whom she has come in contact. Notable exceptions there have been,
of course, especially during the years 1897 and 1898, when the scramble
for West Africa was at its height, and under the spell of an insensate
rivalry deeds were committed by all the parties in the struggle which
cannot be too strongly condemned. To France’s debit account must be
placed the ruthless proceedings of Bretonnet in Borgu; the needless
bloodshed of which Mossi, Kipprisi, and Gurunsi were the scenes; the
inevitable barbarity which characterised Marchand’s hunt for carriers
in the Upper Ubanghi and Bahr-el-Ghazal. These incidents in themselves
are odious and reprehensible; but it is only fair to recognise that they
were the outcome of international jealousies the responsibility for which
was collective rather than single, shared in by other Powers as well
as by France herself. In what may be regarded as France’s own sphere
of influence, acts have also been perpetrated from time to time which
call for censure. The punishment meted out to certain towns hostile to
the French in the Western Sudan have been altogether disproportionate
to the offence. In the case of the French officers Voulet and Chanoine,
an incalculable amount of suffering was inflicted upon the unfortunate
people on the western banks of the Niger. But from these isolated
transgressions against the principles of humanity, culpable as they have
been, the records of no European Power in Africa are free; and they
cannot, in the circumstances of France, be held to negative or even
weaken the advantages she has undoubtedly conferred upon the population
of the Western and Central Sudan, nor yet tarnish the great reputation
France has achieved in the emancipation of millions from centuries of
tyranny and invasion. If she has had her Voulets and Chanoines, France
can show in the persons of her De Brazzas, her Bingers, her Monteils,
her Crozats, her Foureaus, Noirots, Gentils, Hoursts, and Lenfants,
performances which the subjects of other Powers may have equalled but
have not surpassed; always excepting Barth, whose moral grandeur towers
high above that of all his competitors on West African soil.
From the time when the Sieur de Brüe—one of the clearest-headed Frenchmen
who ever served his country in Africa—paid ceremonious visits to the
King of Kayor and the “grand Seratik” of the Fulas at the close of the
seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century; from the
time when raiding bands of Trarza Moors, extending their depredations to
the very confines of St. Louis (1840-60) compelled Faidherbe to take the
offensive against them, to the present day, it has been the lot of France
to find herself confronted in West Africa with races differentiating in
every respect from the true Negro of the coast regions—the people whom
England had, up to 1900, been chiefly concerned with. Eight years before,
a certain Select Committee of the House of Commons, frightened at the
responsibilities England was assuming in West Africa, pusillanimously
recommended the abandonment of all our settlements except Sierra Leone,
thus enunciating a policy the evil effects of which continued until
1895 and greatly limited our footing in West and Central Africa; France
had just emerged successfully from a death grapple with one of the most
powerful individuals that ever sprung from African loins, el Haj-Omar,
the great Tukulor Mallam and warrior. Looking backward at that long
vista of years, when France was slowly but irresistibly thrusting her
influence into West Africa, _viâ_ the Senegal and Upper Niger, by pouring
out her treasure and the blood of her sons like water; while England
remained supine on the coast heedless of the representations of her
merchant-pioneers, it was not surprising that, awakening almost too late
from our lethargy, we should have found the French, having triumphed over
their obstacles in the north, forging southwards and cutting off our
rich hinterlands in the interior. Writing to the Marquis of Dufferin in
1892, Lord Salisbury contrasted the policy of Great Britain and France in
Western Africa. “France,” wrote Lord Salisbury, “from her basis on the
Senegal Coast, has pursued steadily the aim of establishing herself on
the Upper Niger and its affluents.... Great Britain, on the other hand,
has adopted the policy of advance by commercial enterprise.” There was,
indeed, on the part of Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol merchants,
plenty of “commercial enterprise,” but it would have been difficult for
Lord Salisbury to have quoted a single instance where that “commercial
enterprise” had constituted “a policy of advance.”
It is due to the type of native inhabiting the chief radius of France’s
operations in Western Africa, that her task has been rendered so
dangerous and so difficult, and its fulfilment so remarkable. Criticise
as we may, and often enough unjustly, because ignorantly, the colonising
capacities of our Gallic neighbours, and the fluctuations of their
colonial policy, it is beyond question that no nation on earth could
have achieved what she has achieved in Western Africa, without the
possession of a doggedness and determination for which we do not—to
our own injury, be it said—even now, give her the credit which she
deserves. For centuries upon centuries the enormous tract which lies
between the edge of the Sahara Desert and the fringe of the tropical
forest belt—consisting for the most part of grassy uplands varied by
wide plains of amazing fertility, by reason of the yearly overflow of
the waters of the Niger—had been the cockpit of Africa. Empire after
empire rose and fell; invasion and counter-invasion swept devastatingly
over the country. The splendours of Jenne and Timbuctoo vanished with
the sway of the Songhay, beneath the bullets of Morocco’s musketeers.
Fulani domination arose and gave way before Tukulor cruelties. Semi-negro
kingdoms came into being, declared their independence of this or that
conqueror, only to be subdued, while their victors had, in turn, to bite
the dust before some stronger foe. The mingling of races in that vast
region has no parallel in Africa. Ages ago the pastoral Fula—veritable
Asiatic—had settled therein with his flocks and herds, destined in
time by the sheer force of superior intellect to become the master
where he had been either the guest or the despised tenant. Later came
infiltrations of the Moorish element proper; pastorals also these,
emigrating from the plateaux of Adrar to the well-watered valley of the
Niger. Tuaregs, the redskins of the Sahara, descendants, as some affect
to believe, of those tall, fair-haired, long-limbed warriors of Northern
Europe who, about 1500 B.C., advanced slowly through Gaul and Spain,
and crossing the Mediterranean in ships, landed on the North African
Coast, ever pushing southwards, overcoming the terrors of the desert and
reaching the green pastures beyond, but repairing the greater part of the
year to the desolate Saharan solitudes of which they remain the virtual
masters, though Foureau and his _tirailleurs_ have for the first time
in history passed through without paying the toll. Arabs too, but again
later, and generally speaking farther south and east in Kanem, Wadai and
Baghirmi, where Lamy met his death and Gentil was fighting two years and
more; Arabs from the north with caravans of merchandise, and other Arabs
from the east; Shuwas, of whom no man knows the history or the origin.
They intermarried, these tawny, straight-haired nomadic strangers, with
the aboriginal blacks, or raped their women, as the case might be; and
from these unions, legitimate or otherwise, through long centuries,
there sprang into existence fierce cross-races and wild, reared in war,
nurtured in an atmosphere of turmoil and brigandage; negro Fula, negro
Moor, negro Arab, exaggerating the savage instincts of the parent stock,
whom they turned and rent when strong enough. One such hybrid product
became in time the scourge of the Western Sudan—the Tukulor, offspring
of Negro (Joloff) and Fula, unsparing, ruthless, dreaded alike by Fula
and Negro, and whose atrocities are written in letters of blood from Toro
(Senegal) to the frontiers of Hausa.
In this medley of races there came in the tenth century of our era
the first whisperings of a revealed religion. The whispering quickly
changed to the deep hum of many voices proclaiming aloud the word of the
Prophet. Islam spread with inconceivable rapidity. The Fulani became
speedy converts, but the arts they employed to win over their pagan
neighbours were usually peaceful. Not so with the Tukulors and the other
cross-races. They saw in it naught but a fresh incentive to warlike
deeds, and soon professed Mohammedans were not merely massacring the
infidels, but waging battle against their more peaceable co-religionists.
As though this were not enough, another fruitful cause of bloodshed
and disturbance was fated to arise, and still further plunge in woe
this distracted country. The Portuguese adventurers on the coast, in
the course of their professed desire to save the soul of the Negro,
made a discovery, to wit, that the muscular development of the Negro
eminently fitted him for manual labour. From that discovery dates the
most atrocious traffic the world has ever witnessed. In their greed
for slaves, the Christians of Western Europe and of America—without
distinction of nationality, though perhaps the Portuguese and English
were the worst offenders—set tribe against tribe; and the better to
stimulate the industry, imported wholesale guns and gunpowder, objects
which they ascertained the Negroes greatly coveted. The blacks waged war
right merrily upon one another, and their so-called prisoners of war
filled the slavers’ hulks. Presently the tawny races beyond the forest
belt joined in the game, desiring above all things the acquisition of
guns and the wherewithal to use them, which meant power and increased
facilities for plunder. Slave-raiding then assumed almost incredible
proportions. Internecine warfare received a new and terrible impetus. No
excuse, whether valid or imaginary, was henceforth needed to attack one’s
neighbour; and where in former days contentment might have been secured
by a rich booty of cattle and sheep, the requirements of the case now
necessitated the capture of the human animal himself. In such a country,
desolated by centuries of strife; among such a people, upon whose vices
Europe had grafted her own; under such circumstances, has lain the
destiny of France in Western Africa.
A favourite argument used by those who favour a militarist policy in
Northern Nigeria consists in pointing to the action of the French in
the Western Sudan. It is held by some to be inconsistent to express
approval of the military trend of French policy in regions adjacent to
Northern Nigeria, and to disapprove of it in Northern Nigeria itself.
I do not think that the charge of inconsistency will bear examination.
In the first place, we should be careful not to generalise. In West
Africa proper—that is, in the coastwise regions, the home of the true
Negroes—the military policy has, on the whole, been rarely resorted to
by the French. In the Western Sudan, although, no doubt, a good deal
of bloodshed might have been avoided at different times, I fail to see
myself, bearing in mind the object of French policy, how that object
could have been obtained without military conquest. As far as the purely
moral aspect of the matter is concerned, the right of any European Power
to interfere in the internal affairs of West Africa may be queried; but
if a given region can, in West Africa, be pointed to where the results of
such interference are of a beneficent nature, that region is the Western
Sudan. France is restoring to the enormous expanse of territory between
the Niger and the tropical forest belt the prosperity which it possessed
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under the Songhay, when Jenne
was the granary and the store-house of the Niger countries. She is laying
the basis of a prosperity far greater than in those days, because she
is able to bring peace where the Songhays could not. Having conquered
the cross-races, she wisely refrains from either interfering with their
customs, such as domestic slavery, upon which the social fabric of West
Africa depends, or from allowing, save in strictly circumscribed limits,
Christian propaganda among them, being well aware that such propaganda
in Mohammedan communities but newly subjugated is the certain precursor
of trouble, bloodshed, and fanaticism. She has hunted down and destroyed
the four tyrants who successively barred her way to the interior, and
who had perpetrated untold miseries upon hundreds of thousands of human
beings—El-Haji-Omar, Amadu, Samory and Rabah. Had she been able to
acquire the services of these men, it would perhaps have been better, but
the body of evidence is against the possibility of her power to have done
so. But there is a limit to approval of French military action, and if,
now that France’s political influence is internationally secure in the
regions east and north of the Chad, she chooses to embark open-eyed in a
struggle with the Senussi, she will be making a grave mistake. Unless
deliberately incited by unprovoked aggression, her game there is to
sheath the sword and give diplomacy the innings, and those Frenchmen who
see the danger of precipitate, immature action in Wadai and Kanem, and
are strenuously agitating against it, are wise in their generation.[203]
But, taken all in all, the circumstances in which England finds herself
in Northern Nigeria, and the circumstances in which France found herself
in relation to the Western Sudan before the conquest, are widely
different. The aims pursued by France in the Western Sudan, and by the
English in Nigeria, were not in their inception the same. The regions
coveted by France were for the most part widely removed—at immense
distances indeed—from her basis on the coast and her basis on the Senegal
River. To make her claims to those regions _internationally_ valid, it
was requisite that France should wield some tangible influence over them,
and in many cases that was impossible without conquest.
But the British in Northern Nigeria were very differently placed.
Northern Nigeria was the prolongation, so to speak, of the British base
in “the Rivers.” It lay immediately at the back of them. The possession
of the Niger’s mouth facilitated the extension of British influence up
the River and its affluent the Binue. Moreover, British merchants and
explorers had ascended both the Niger and the Binue many years before;
they had paved the way for what was to follow; and for fifteen years
before the advent of direct Imperial control in Northern Nigeria, its
native potentates had been united in close ties of political relationship
with a British Chartered Company. The Government stepped into the shoes
of the Chartered Company, not to play the _rôle_ of _conquisitador_ and
initiator, but to reap crops sown for it; to consolidate work already
half accomplished. It should, in parenthesis, be stated that France
manages the Western Sudan, a territory very much larger than Northern
Nigeria, and where a state of continuous internecine warfare had existed
for centuries, with an army not more than 3000 strong. Again, if warfare
has attended the establishment of French influence in the Shari region,
it has been due to special circumstances. Thus Gentil acquired a
Protectorate over Baghirmi without firing a shot. It was only when the
country which France had placed under her protection was invaded and laid
waste by Rabah that military action became a duty.
No comparison is really possible between the respective parts of Great
Britain and France. Both are distinct, and must be judged according to
their antecedents and special features.
In Northern Nigeria[204] we have to do with native rulers with whom we
have been in treaty relationship for fifteen years, and in commercial
relationship for longer still. They are our wards, we are in a fiduciary
capacity towards them; they are our _protégés_. We undertook by treaty to
subsidise them; we pledged ourselves by treaty “not to interfere with the
customs” of their people. It should be our object, following the precepts
of Sir Andrew Clarke, to make those rulers “far bigger” men than they
are, not to break them. They come of a proud race, a capable race, of
superior mental calibre, possessed of statesmanship and skill. They have
played a great part in the history of Western Africa. Barth, who knew
them well, has said of them that “they are the most intelligent people in
Africa.” To reduce them to impotence; to scatter their power; to break
the organisation they have created into small pieces would be politically
foolish, practically unwise, morally unjust, Imperially disastrous.
To strengthen their rule where weak; to perfect it where oppressive;
to assist them, work with them, and through them along their natural
lines; to interfere as little as possible with the customs and habits
of themselves and their people; to respect their religious beliefs; to
work gradually, peacefully, tactfully, for the attainment of the only
conceivable objects which have taken us to their country—commercial
development, advancement, prosperity—those should be the political
principles guiding us in Northern Nigeria.
The accomplishment of the colossal plan sketched out by the _Figaro_
in 1892, viz. the unification (if the word be permissible) of the
French possessions in Africa by expeditions from north, west, and
south, designed to meet on the shores of Lake Chad, may now be briefly
given. It is a stirring tale. The first attempt—if we exclude that of
Flatters from the north, of which the purpose was limited—was made from
the south, by the blue-eyed, fair-haired enthusiast, Paul Crampbel. He
fell assassinated by Rabah’s emissaries at El Kuti on April 15, 1891.
Dybowski and Maistre, sent out by the French African Committee in
Crampbel’s footsteps, had to retire without doing much more than useful
exploring work. Then came Gentil’s turn, a modest naval lieutenant who,
profiting by Rabah’s complications in Bornu, succeeded after incredible
difficulties in reaching the mouth of the Shari (after signing a treaty
of Protectorate with Baghirmi) and floating a small steamer upon the
waters of the mysterious lake. But the success was short-lived. Rabah
recrossed the Shari, forced the French to retire, and once again swept
Baghirmi with fire and sword. France hurried fresh reinforcements to the
spot, and these under Bretonnet were attacked by Rabah and decimated. A
further and more vigorous effort was required.
And here the scene shifts to the north. In October 1898 that intrepid
explorer, Foureau, left the oasis of Sadrata, near Wargla, in Algeria,
at the head of a force of picked men, 310 strong, consisting of troopers
from the Senegalese and Saharan _tirailleurs_, than whom there are
probably no more splendid fighters in the world, unless it be our own
Sikhs. Foureau was accompanied by three civilian friends. Commandant
Lamy led the military portion of the expedition, which comprised four
other officers besides himself. The object of the expedition was to
cross the Algerian Sahara and reach the Chad, while Gentil and Bretonnet
gained a firm foothold on its shores by working upwards from the Congo
and Ubanghi. Foureau and his companions plunged into the unknown desert,
and for ten months entirely disappeared from view. Frequent rumours of a
wholesale massacre reached Europe, and remembering the fate of Douls, De
Palot, Dournaux-Dupérré, and Joubert, Flatters and Bonnier, at the hands
of the fierce nomads who roam the desolate wastes through which Foureau
had to pass, France held her breath. If Foureau fell, it would not only
be a frightful disaster, fraught with peril to French policy throughout
her vast Mohammedan zone in Africa; it might also mean a revulsion of
popular feeling, a hanging up of cherished schemes for a generation or
more. But Foureau did not fall or fail. He reached the Asben oases in
safety, and demonstrated to timid minds that the Tuaregs, when confronted
by a well-armed and disciplined force, skilfully led and sufficiently
numerous to inspire respect, prefer, in the main, to hold themselves at a
distance.[205]
Again the scene changes. The plan was half-performed. The third advance
came from the west by the way of the Niger Bend. It was at first attended
by the direst results. The gallant Cazemajou met a cruel and treacherous
death at Zinder. Voulet and Chanoine, who succeeded him, showed what evil
unlimited authority and the disordering effects of the African climate
can work upon ill-regulated minds. Denounced by one of their subordinates
for barbarous conduct towards the natives, they, having already forgotten
the ordinary dictates of humanity, forgot alike honour and patriotism,
foully murdered the superior officer who had been instructed to replace
them, tore off their uniforms, declared themselves renegades, and
perpetrated the wildest excesses. But their shrift was short, and they
soon met their fate from the rifles of the native soldiers they had
temporarily led astray.
The French Government, however, did not relinquish its determination. The
fragments of the Voulet-Chanoine mission were got together, and under
the joint leadership of Captain Joalland and Lieutenant Meynier reached
the Chad, subsequently joining Gentil’s forces in the Lower Shari. By
this time Foureau had also gained the Chad. The three missions, which
after so many vicissitudes thus met together in their common goal, were
immediately called upon to face a new and most formidable danger. Against
the town of Kusri or Kusseri, where the French had established their
headquarters, Rabah was marching at the head of 5000 men, of whom 2000
were armed with guns of various patterns. He had also three fieldpieces,
captured from Bretonnet. The French disposed of a total strength of
774 officers and men—the latter natives without exception—with four
fieldpieces. They were assisted by 1500 Baghirmi auxiliaries, who do not
appear to have been of much use, contenting themselves with looting after
the battle was over. Rabah pitched his war camp three miles from Kusri,
and awaited the onslaught of the French. It proved to be irresistible.
Rabah himself perished. His losses amounted to 1000 killed and wounded,
and his camp, with the whole of its contents, fell into the hands of
the French. The French losses were severe. They included the brave
Lamy, Captain Cointet, a white non-commissioned officer and seventeen
men killed. Their wounded amounted to sixty, among them Captain Lamothe
and Lieutenants Meynier and Galland. But the victory was complete,
and Rabah, the noise of whose conquests had filled Central Africa for
close upon a quarter of a century; whose destructive strides had left
a bloody track from the Bahr-el-Ghazal to the Chad; Rabah, the last of
the great _conquisitadores_, had gone the way of El-Haji-Omar, and of
Samory. The plan elaborated by the _Figaro_ eight years previously was an
accomplished fact.