consolidating their hold upon the Central Sudan and the lower Shari. M.
Terrier, the able Secrétaire-Général of the French African Committee,
explains in the Committee’s Bulletin for April 1901 the procedure which
is being adopted. One cannot but be impressed with the grasp, the
sagacity, and the statesmanship displayed. The Shari region has been
divided into two districts, the most northerly of which abuts on Lake
Chad, and includes Baghirmi and the Shari mouths. It is administered
on military lines. The southern district, comprising the upper reaches
of the river and its affluents, is administered on civil lines. The
population of the southern district is composed of Negroes, whose
religion is fetishism, or what it pleases us to call fetishism. The
northern district is inhabited by various branches of the Negroid
Baghirmis; by the Kotokos; by the Shuwa Arabs, and by a few pastoral
Fulani. The pagans of the southern district have for centuries been
subjected to the raids of the Arabised-Negroes of Bornu and Baghirmi. It
was from among them that the principal supplies of slaves which used to
find their way across the desert route to Tripoli before the Firman of
1865 were drawn. France, by ridding them of their external foes, claims
the right to make them share in her administrative expenses. She is all
the more justified in doing so, as for many years to come, and until
the Shari is connected with the Ubanghi by a railway, there will be no
trade upon which to levy duties in order to obtain revenue. One-half of
the population is expected to furnish carriers, and the other half pays
an annual tax of four pounds of rubber per hut, of which two pounds is
returned to the chiefs as commission. We are assured—on the authority
of M. Terrier—that the chiefs are bringing in the tax voluntarily from
long distances. In the northern district, which was directly under
Rabah’s influence, the French found an existing organisation which they
have in the main retained, but the tax levied by the Emir of Baghirmi
upon his subjects being considered too heavy, the French have reduced
it by two-thirds, thus relieving the population from an undue burden
of taxation. The Emir and his chiefs—through whom French influence is
exercised—benefit by this reduced tax; that is to say, they keep it for
themselves. Contributions of slaves to the Emir and chiefs in the form of
tribute by the sub-chiefs are, of course, suppressed. The revenue of the
Emir being thus limited, but nevertheless assured to him, together with
the continuation of his prestige, the Emir himself, who owes his throne
to the French, and has, moreover, been relieved by them of the necessity
of paying an annual tribute to Wadai, is expected to furnish annually
to the Administration 240 pounds of millet, 500 cloths, and 100 oxen,
amounting roughly to £1680.
Here, then, as in the Western Sudan, the words of Faidherbe ring sound;
and M. Etienne, speaking at a Conference held the other day at the Paris
Colonial School, was only saying what has hitherto been true when he
asserted that:
“France can in all sincerity maintain that she has delivered the peoples
of inland Africa from an intolerable yoke. She has liberated millions of
human beings from sanguinary tyrants who had reduced them to slavery. She
has accomplished a work of emancipation, of liberty, and of generosity.”
It would be sad indeed if, led astray by evil counsels, France should be
induced in another portion of her West African domain, viz. French Congo,
to tarnish the great reputation she has undoubtedly built up.
It may be doubted whether the problems with which France has had to
contend in West Africa have ever been rightly understood among us, for
Englishmen are usually generous-minded enough to appreciate good work
carried out by others, even though the others are sometimes rivals.
Certain is it that of the nature of French exploits in West and Central
Africa the average Englishman is hopelessly ignorant, and even English
writers of repute persist in shutting their eyes to the great, the almost
revolutionary changes which experience, dearly bought, has wrought in
French Colonial conceptions. We have failed as a nation in doing justice
to the actions of the French in Africa. We have underrated their capacity
and refused to admit the existence at their council boards of a central
plan carefully matured which the frequent shuffling of Ministerial
portfolios merely retarded but did not alter. At the present moment we
apparently will not realise that France is applying to the economic
development of her vast territories the same strenuousness of purpose
with which she steadily pursued her work of conquest and absorption.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE FRENCH POSSESSIONS
The logic of facts is gradually bringing home to Englishmen that the
French have within recent years revolutionised the commercial position of
their West African possessions; of those possessions, that is, which are
at present commercially exploitable. But a singular amount of ignorance
continues to prevail on the subject, and in non-specialist circles the
French possessions are still in a sorry condition both commercially
and financially. So far is that deep-rooted idea from the truth, that
not only are the French doing exceedingly well commercially in West
Africa; but they are doing comparatively better than we are. Moreover,
their possessions are actually costing less to manage, and economy
in administration is not secured at the expense of requisite public
works; quite the contrary. The days when Englishmen could represent the
ideals of French Colonial management in West Africa in the light of a
custom-house official and a soldier; an expenditure overlapping revenue;
constant grants from the mother country; an embryonic trade and a growing
budgetary deficit, have passed and gone. In some respects the French
are turning the tables upon us. Even so distinguished an authority as
Sir Harry Johnston falls into the popular error when he says that “with
the exception of Tunis, there is not a single French possession in
Africa which is self-supporting or other than a drain upon the French
exchequer.” It is a complete fallacy, and it can be proved so up to
the hilt. Here and there, it is true, the old, bad, paralytic red-tape
conception remains, but on the whole the French possessions north of the
Bights are progressing with an astonishing rapidity; able to construct
important public works out of their own surplus revenues, and to enter
into railway contracts on guaranteed loans of their own raising. Miss
Kingsley, in her “West African Studies,” suggested that, granting the
possibility of France becoming “commercially intelligent,” she might
“pocket the West African trade down to Lagos from Senegal,” and there can
be no doubt that if British policy in West Africa continues to be carried
out on the present lines, and if French policy in West Africa can escape
the contamination of the concessionnaire _régime_ applied with such
deplorable results in French Congo, France can and will do an enormous
amount of commercial damage to our possessions in West Africa, and on a
fair field, in legitimate competition. Senegal, French Guinea, the Ivory
Coast and Dahomey are all self-supporting, and the growth of trade in
these possessions is in all conscience eloquent enough, as the following
figures show:
SENEGAL GUINEA IVORY COAST DAHOMEY
1889 £1,520,000 £320,000 £160,000 £360,000
1899 2,920,000 1,000,000 520,000 1,000,000
1900 3,189,400 973,000[206] 686,300 1,101,084
None of our Colonies can show such a rate of progress as their young
(Senegal excepted) Gallic competitors. The increase is really phenomenal.
In the French Colonies mentioned the expenditure is well within the
revenue. In French Guinea conspicuously so. Would that we could say the
same of our possessions! In all these Colonies the French are spending
less than we are in the work of administration. In some of them they
are nevertheless spending more in public works, and before long their
expenditure in that respect will in the aggregate far exceed ours. It
will suffice to give one or two instances in support of these general
statements.
The position of Dahomey is particularly interesting, because it adjoins
Lagos, because Lagos is one of the transit ports for Dahomey, because
both Colonies are building a railway in the same direction, and because
both Colonies aim at capturing the bulk of the interior trade. Compared
with Lagos, Dahomey is, of course, only an infant in years, but an infant
of sturdy growth. Its trade has jumped from nineteen million francs in
1893 to twenty-seven million francs in 1900. The growth in its export
trade is very noticeable. In 1893 it amounted to £347,258 (8,681,463
francs), and in 1900 had grown to £502,350. In 1893 the export trade
of Lagos was £836,295; in 1900 it was £885,111. True, Lagos saw better
days in 1896 and 1899 (£975,203 and £915,934 respectively),[207] but the
ratio of increase has not been equal to that of Dahomey. In 1894, on an
export trade of £821,682, the expenditure of Lagos amounted to £124,819;
in 1900, on an export trade of £885,111 the expenditure was £187,124,
including £37,214 for public works and £18,169 on account of public debt.
In 1900, on an export trade of £502,350 Dahomey spent £119,664, of which
£29,000 in public works, and in 1901 contributed £60,000 from its own
local revenue for the railway.[208] In 1900 Dahomey spent £8000[209]
in military and police; Lagos spent £39,095.[210] For some unexplained
reason Dahomey does not export timber, but her exports of palm-oil and
palm-kernels are increasing yearly. Dahomey is now actually exporting
very nearly as much palm-oil as Lagos.[211] In palm-kernels Dahomey has
not yet reached the level of Lagos, but is forging ahead, having exported
24,211,614 kilos, or roughly 24,000 tons, in 1901, against 21,986,043
kilos in 1900, and 21,850,982 kilos in 1899. Lagos shipped in 1900-1901
over 47,000 tons of kernels. Some years ago the French, annoyed at being
dependent upon Lagos as the only port of transit for the trade of their
Colony (Lagos is connected with Porto Novo, the capital of Dahomey, by a
lagoon, and the facilities of the Lagos route were, and still are, for
certain classes of goods very much greater owing to the bar service),
constructed at Kotonu one of the few wharves which exist on the West
African coast-line. This wharf, aided by the duty imposed on the Dahomey
transit trade _viâ_ Lagos by the Lagos authorities, has succeeded in its
object, and the bulk of Dahomey’s trade now passes through Kotonu instead
of _viâ_ Lagos. In this way has Lagos, for temporary revenue purposes,
played into the hands of her competitors. The Colony is also building a
railway[212] which is likely to prove a most important undertaking. The
fiscal policy adopted by France in Dahomey since the 1898 agreement,
abolishing the differential tariff for thirty years, has been well
calculated to bring about the conspicuous advancement observable, and
unless the railway concessionnaire, under his agreement with the local
government,[213] is allowed to interfere in the territories ceded to
him with the freedom of trade, and with native rights of land tenure,
the wisdom of Dahomey’s fiscal policy will continue to bear fruit. Most
people will be astonished to learn that Dahomey taxes her trade, in the
main, at a lower rate than Lagos, and it is unquestionable that the
circumstance acts in the former’s favour and to the latter’s detriment.
There is so much misconception about on subjects of this kind, which
nevertheless have so direct a bearing upon the prosperity and commercial
position of our West African possessions and of their rivals, that it has
been thought advisable to give in the Appendix as complete a comparative
table as possible of the duties in both Colonies.[214] To that list the
reader may be referred. On all articles but cottons Dahomey charges lower
duty than Lagos. If Dahomey can manage her affairs, and get a surplus
revenue to boot by charging 2_d._ a pound on tobacco and gunpowder, and
11_s._ 4_d._ and 4_s._ 10_d._ respectively on rock salt and sea salt,
why in the world cannot Lagos do the same, instead of charging 8_d._
and 4_d._ a pound on tobacco, 6_d._ a pound on gunpowder, and 20_s._ on
both classes of salt? The answer is, because the Crown Colony system is
infinitely more costly than the French system of administration.
France’s oldest Colony in West Africa, Senegal, despite the periodic
ravages of yellow fever, against which it is to be hoped science will now
be in a better position to struggle with success, is in a very healthy
condition commercially and financially, although rather too dependent
upon a single industry, viz. ground-nut production.[215] Its export
trade has increased from £517,934 in 1891 to £1,000,000 in 1900; but its
expenditure, instead of increasing in similar or greater proportion, as
is generally the case with British Possessions; has remained practically
stationary, at about £150,000; while surplus revenues have enabled her
to agree to pay a yearly subsidy of £36,000 for a period of twenty-two
years to the Western Sudan (Kayes-Niger) railway, from the completion of
which she is sure to largely benefit. In the construction of public works
Senegal is easily ahead of any European possession of West Africa. A
railway 250 kilometres long connects St. Louis, the capital, with Dakar,
the principal seaport, and the best on the coast. St. Louis, Dakar and
Rufisque have all been provided with fresh water. The Faidherbe bridge is
a great engineering triumph, and the wharves at Rufisque and Dakar are
well organised. Surveys for another railway through the Salum district,
with prolongation to Kayes, are being undertaken, and there is a project
on foot for improving navigation on the Senegal River. Senegal seems
destined to have a brilliant future.
The Ivory Coast has come very much to the fore of late as a possible
goldfield, to rival if not to surpass the Gold Coast. _Le Transvaal
français_ is the title already given to it by enthusiasts. Prospecting
work is being undertaken, and hundreds of permits have been granted. A
good deal of secrecy is being observed in connection with the matter,
and a wise check appears to have been kept upon the flotation of bogus
companies. There seems to be good ground for believing that auriferous
deposits exist in considerable quantities, and recent explorations have
revealed the existence of many old native workings, and even of a mine
actually being exploited by the natives, that of Kokombo in the Baoule
district. Experts think that the Ivory Coast will prove particularly
rich in dredging propositions. The Baoule, Indenie, Attie and Jaman
countries are reported to be the four districts in the Colony which
will repay the gold-seekers. Commandant Binger, who has travelled all
over the country, is a great believer in its gold-bearing capacity, and
in Dr. Freeman’s opinion, South-West Jaman is the gold country _par
excellence_ of the entire region; richer than Ashanti and other portions
of the British Protectorate.[216] At the Paris Exhibition of 1900 many
samples of auriferous quartz from the Ivory Coast were exhibited, from
Kuadikofi, Nangu-Kru, Alepe and Adokoi, and also some specimens of native
gold workmanship from Baoule and Jaman which point to a high degree of
artistic talent on the part of the workmen. Gold dust has been exported
from the Ivory Coast for many years, of an average annual value between
1890 and 1897 of £25,000. At present the trade of the Ivory Coast, which
is steadily increasing, is chiefly remarkable for its timber export. The
ports of Grand Bassam, Lahou and Assinie are among the most important
timber-shipping centres on the coast. In 1892 the Ivory Coast exported
mahogany to the value of £23,000; in 1900, to the value of £44,000.
Nearly all the mahogany comes to Liverpool, which imported in 1899 from
the Ivory Coast 4714 logs measuring 2,727,349 cubic feet, and in 1900,
5748 logs measuring 3,697,416 cubic feet. In the old days the Ivory
Coast, the “Elfenbein Küste” of the Germans, was celebrated for the
article its name implies.
Writing in 1730, Barbot says that “the inland country affords yearly
a vast quantity of fine large elephants’ teeth, being the best ivory
in the world, most of which is constantly bought up along this coast
by the English, Dutch, and French, and sometimes by the Danes and
Portuguese.” In quaint language, he goes on to tell us how important the
ivory trade of the Ivory Coast was in those days, and how the natives
profited thereby. “This great concourse of European ships,” he writes,
“coming hither every year, and sometimes three or four lying together
at anchor in the road, has encouraged the blacks to set so dear a rate
on their teeth (_sic_), and particularly on the larger sort, some of
them weighing two hundred pounds French, that there is not much to be
got by them, considering the vast charges that commonly attend such a
remote trade.” Barbot describes his own trading operations on the Ivory
Coast, and speaks of having “six large canoes about the ship full of fine
elephants’ teeth, each canoe manned by five or six hands at least—and
all lusty, resolute men.” Quoting some Hollanders, the same author
writes that “it is scarce to be conceived what a multitude of elephants
there is about this country.” It is quite clear that in those days ivory
was practically the only product exchanged by the natives against the
iron bars and rings, beads, kettles, cotton, brandy, and other articles
brought by European traders in their sailing vessels. Now the ivory
trade has practically disappeared, owing, no doubt, to the extermination
of the elephants in the coastal regions. What small quantity does come
down for shipment appears to be brought by caravans from the Western
Sudan. This disappearance of a trade which was flourishing enough at one
time to become the synonym of an extensive portion of the West African
coast-line, is one of those curious facts of which West Africa affords us
so many examples. It seems to me that we have one of the most striking
proofs of the highly developed commercial instinct of the West African
native, in the circumstance that no sooner has one branch of trade fallen
off than he replaces it by another. No doubt the initiative is not his
own, but the motive power is, and the very adaptability which he displays
in meeting the new demands of commerce affords the clearest indication of
the progressiveness of his race. Thus in the Ivory Coast; the ivory trade
has gone, and has been replaced by the oil, kernel, and rubber trade;
and, of quite recent years, by the mahogany trade.
So far, the Ivory Coast is the most backward of the French West African
possessions in the shape of public works, although there is a wharf at
Grand Bassam; but a very big scheme is in contemplation including the
construction of a harbour and railway, the piercing of the sandbank at
little Bassam opposite to the well-known “bottomless pit” so dreaded by
mariners, and the dredging of the Bingerville lagoon. The future of the
Ivory Coast would appear to be in good hands, so far as a very efficient
staff of administrators is a guarantee; M. Clozel and M. Maurice
Delafosse in particular having distinguished themselves of late in
studying the aboriginal tribes, and in laying the basis of an intelligent
native policy which, if pursued, will make of that possession a second
French Guinea. Just now, however, the military element appears to have
the upper hand, and there has been a regrettable collision between the
French authorities and the powerful Baoules, which has undone the work
of years of pacific endeavour, and which might, in the opinion of those
Frenchmen who know the country best, have been avoided. Archæological
discoveries of profound interest have been made in the Baoule country,
pointing to former intercourse with a more advanced people, whom M.
Delafosse thinks must have been the Egyptians.[217]
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LOCALITY AND NATURE OF HARBOUR IMPROVEMENT
SCHEME IN THE IVORY COAST]
French Guinea can serve as a model of what a common-sense, commercial,
sympathetic administration is able to achieve in West Africa; and the
late Dr. Ballay, its founder and for more than a decade its governor,
will rank as the best type of Colonial Administrator, a worthy emulator
of his countryman, le Sieur de Brüe, and of our own Sir John Glover. The
strides which French Guinea has made since its birth in 1889 are really
phenomenal. In 1890, Konakry, the capital, was non-existent. To-day it
numbers 10,000 inhabitants, of whom some 300 are Europeans. The trade
of French Guinea, which in 1890 only amounted to £300,000, reached in
1899 and 1900 about £1,000,000. It is one of the most cheaply and yet
most effectively administered possessions on the coast. Its revenue
is buoyant, owing largely to the successful collection of a poll-tax,
and although a railway to Kurussa, on the Niger, is in course of
construction, the expenditure is well beneath the revenue. A magnificent
carriage-road 137 kilometres in length has been built from Konakry to
the foot of the Futa-Jallon plateau. Its import duties are, with the
exception of one or two articles, lower than in that of its moribund
neighbour, Sierra Leone. On the other hand, there is an export duty of 7
per cent. on rubber and gum copal. Its condition as compared with that of
Sierra Leone can best be set forth in tabular form:
FRENCH GUINEA IN 1900 SIERRA LEONE IN 1900
Total trade £962,209 Total trade £921,017
Export trade 391,191 Export trade 362,741
Expenditure 116,699 Expenditure 156,421
EXPENDITURE ANALYSED EXPENDITURE ANALYSED
Public works and railway £57,478 Public works and railway £36,084
Other expenditure 59,221 Other expenditure 120,337
It remains to be said that last year (1901) the export trade[218] of
Sierra Leone fell from £362,741 in 1900 to £304,010, reckoning specie,
and from £317,980 to £265,433, excluding specie, the latter figure
being the lowest for twenty-one years. At the same time the expenditure
increased from £156,421 to £173,457, only £91,976 less than the
purchasing power of the Colony.
CHAPTER XXVII
FRENCH AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT IN WEST AFRICA
Apart from the belief, which has been dealt with in the previous chapter,
that France cannot manage her West African possessions successfully,
another idea appears to be widely entertained. It is said that French
methods of rule in West Africa are excessively harsh. I cannot find
any evidence to support this view. The records of all the Powers who
have possessions in West Africa are tarnished by acts of oppression and
injustice to the native, but I have seen no proof that in this respect
France compares unfavourably with either England, Germany, or Portugal.
On the whole, France’s record is perhaps cleaner than that of most
other Powers. North of the Bights, the portion of West Africa which has
engaged our attention hitherto, I should say the balance of evidence is
decidedly to France’s credit. That is the opinion of Sir Charles Dilke;
it was the opinion of the late Miss Kingsley, and one or two other
competent authorities. Speaking in September of last year at a meeting
of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, an African of the Africans, and a
distinguished scholar, Dr. Blyden, who has had exceptional facilities for
judging, and who, withal, holds an official position under the Sierra
Leone Government, made a striking reference to the subject.
“France,” said Dr. Blyden, “has a peculiar work to do for Africa—a
work much needed and suited to the genius of the Celtic race.... The
contribution of the French to the civilisation of Africa evidently
springs not only from what they have in common with all mankind, but
from what is special to themselves. France is France. England is
England. France can do for Africa what England cannot do, and England
can do for Africa what France cannot do. This all thinking Africans
recognise, and all gladly co-operate with each nation according to the
measure in which their systems agree with native ideas and customs
and traditions. And there seems to be more of conformity in the
French methods than in the more rigid and unimaginative system of the
Anglo-Saxon. Whatever there is among the natives of original, racy, or
romantic interest is not perishing under French administration.”
That is a true saying, and it goes far towards explaining the political
success of the French in West Africa.
It is surely a circumstance which should impress us that the French have
been able to successfully apply direct taxation in their possessions
without bloodshed or disturbance, while in Sierra Leone we have failed so
disastrously. As direct taxation in West Africa is a problem fraught with
great danger, one needing the utmost care and discrimination, it seems
worth while to give more than passing notice to what has already been
done by the French and ourselves in the matter. A poll-tax was applied in
French Guinea in 1897. In 1900 it yielded £90,000, and I am informed on
good authority that the returns for 1901 will reach £140,000, and will
still further increase, as the taxable radius has not yet been reached.
It has been peacefully collected. Was this the result of overwhelming
military strength? Not at all, for although French Guinea is now about
three times the size of Sierra Leone, the military, or rather the police,
force of the French Protectorate is just a little over half what it
is in Sierra Leone. The “show of force” theory has, therefore, been
conspicuous by its absence. It has been replaced by a plentiful supply of
imagination, plus the appreciation of certain scientific facts. What, in
the first place, are the scientific facts? The tax in French Guinea is
a poll-tax, the tax in Sierra Leone is a property-tax. In the one case
there was no interference with native land tenure; in the other there
was indirect interference with native land tenure. Mr. Chamberlain[219]
himself was “disposed to think that the natives saw in the tax an attempt
to interfere with their property.” Yet Mr. Chamberlain has maintained
the tax. Farther on Mr. Chamberlain says, “that the aversion of the
natives to the payment of the tax is not insuperable may be inferred
from the fact that a similar tax is levied without difficulty from
similar races by the French in the neighbouring territory.” There Mr.
Chamberlain showed that he was not properly informed. The tax was not
a “similar” tax, and the “races” in French territory are not “similar”
but dissimilar. What ethnic similarity is there, for instance, between
the Fulani, the ruling race in a large portion of French Guinea, and the
Mendi, Timini, Konnos and Sulimas of Sierra Leone? Such confusion is
extraordinary. The peoples of French Guinea are either Mohammedan, or
for the most part inured to direct taxation for many centuries past by
Mohammedan conquest.[220] The peoples of Sierra Leone were independent
races, who have beaten back every attempt at Mohammedan conquest, and
among whom a regularly recurring impost is unknown, and contrary to
all native ideas. An almost identical argument has been made use of in
regard to the Gambia. We collect a hut-tax in the Gambia; why not in
Sierra Leone? For the same reason that what may be sound in one place is
not sound in another. You cannot lump West Africa together and evolve
identical legislation for the whole! The passion for assimilation is
fatal to good government in West Africa. The peoples of the Gambia are,
again, either Mohammedan or have undergone conquest by Mohammedans. The
case of the Gambia, moreover, is in another sense quite different from
Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is covered with dense forests. Gambia is a
small strip of territory on either bank of a river. The villages along
its shores can be raked by gun-boats. Every part is easily accessible,
and on the other side of the border the French are in occupation. What
chance is there of resisting Government demands, even though the tax were
bitterly opposed, which is not the case for the reasons already given;
although the Gambia natives are probably no more in love with it than
we are with our income-tax? Direct taxation is ever unpopular; among
primitive peoples particularly so. Finally, the natives of French Guinea
are much richer than those of Sierra Leone. So much for the scientific
facts. Is it not about time that the Colonial Office took over the
services of a trained ethnologist, or created independent native councils
in West Africa in touch with the Administration?
[Illustration: SUSU CHIEF AND STAFF]
Dahomey and Ashanti also offer a parallel in another way. In Dahomey
the poll-tax was applied for the first time since the Conquest (1892)
in 1899. It yielded £8200 in 1899 and £22,290 in 1900. There has been
no trouble, and as in French Guinea, the tax has not prevented a
steady increase in the export trade, notwithstanding the thousands of
able-bodied men employed on the railway. In both Dahomey and Ashanti
the people taxed are Negroes, and were formerly subject to an unusual
state-form in West Africa, viz. a despotism. They have been conquered,
and conquest implies a tacit right to levy an impost. But conquest
involves great hardships on the conquered in West Africa. Villages and
granaries are destroyed, crops burnt, acres of land laid waste; many of
those who would be sowing and reaping and gathering produce have been
killed, and general distress ensues. That is the time for the conqueror
with his higher culture, and the lofty ideals of the religion he
professes, to take the conquered by the hand and try to renovate what he
has shattered, but on better lines; to act, since he chooses to call the
Negro a child, as a parent, who, after administering castigation, makes
friends once more with the offender. Put differently, every assistance
should be given, and due latitude allowed to a tribe which has been so
unfortunate as to incur the wrath of the superior people, whose reforming
zeal is nothing if not drastic. The French gave the Dahomeyans seven
years’ breathing space before they taxed them.[221]
[Illustration: ASHANTI FIELD FORCE AT CAPE COAST _EN ROUTE_ FOR KUMASI]
What has been our action in Ashanti? No sooner has a desolating war been
ended, a war attended by certain incidents which do not reflect credit
upon us as a nation; a war which was caused by a series of official
blunders of the grossest kind, than we clap on direct taxation, and
in such a form that a premium is put upon future troubles. In fact,
shortly after this taxation was announced to the beaten chiefs, yet
another rising was only averted by the prompt despatch of more troops
to Kumasi.[222] Could anything less imaginative—to put it mildly—be
devised than this application of a war indemnity nearly thirty years old,
previous non-payment of which was made the excuse for the arrest and
deportation of Prempreh and the annexation of the country; and when the
revival of the claim by the authorities in 1900 is admitted to have been
one of the contributory causes of the last rising? As Sir William Geary
pointed out in 1900:
“To take a metaphor from private property, one cannot foreclose
a mortgage, receive the rents and profits of the land, and then
beyond that ask for interest on the debt when one has helped
oneself to payment. We annexed Ashanti in 1896, and not only
have we obtained formal sovereignty, but the matter has turned
out a good bargain for us. We are carrying away the natural
gold of the country for the benefit of European shareholders.
Now we want to tax the natives.”
Is policy of this kind calculated to bring prosperity to British West
Africa? In 1864 the _Times_ expressed itself as follows with regard to
the ruler of Ashanti:
“Instead of harbouring culprits against his crown, instead of
disregarding the treaties between himself and us, instead of
trying to sap the foundations of his throne, we should strive
to cultivate acquaintance with him by the tranquil arts of
trade. At the back of his vast dominions, receding to the foot
of the Kong mountains, reside natives who owe and yield him
obedience. What benefits might be showered on the Protectorate
if we would set our heads together to foster and consolidate an
intercourse based on amity and on the extension of legitimate
traffic!”
Wise words, excellent precepts. Why does not the _Times_ preach them now
for application in other parts of West Africa, where the Crown Colony
system has not yet quite succeeded in undoing the work of generations
of peaceful, commercial efforts? If there be still life left in this
miserable residue of the once powerful Ashanti nation, no doubt but
that more trouble arising out of the tax will ensue. It does not seem
as though the contingency were looked upon as altogether remote even
in official eyes, and there are some significant passages in the last
Blue Book on the subject. Happily at present we have an excellent
resident at Kumasi in the person of Captain Donald Stewart, a man of
broad sympathies, and it may be that his personal influence will prevail
against the slumbering discontent which the policy of his chiefs renders
inevitable in the country, whether it be given open expression to or
not.[223]
[Illustration: RETURN OF ASHANTI FIELD FORCE]
There is a passage in the evidence of one of the European witnesses
before Sir David Chalmers, in the course of the inquiry into the hut-tax
war, which explains better than anything else perhaps the difference
between the procedure of the French in Guinea and that of the British
authorities in Sierra Leone. “They are not so particular there. The
great man Alimami Dowla is supposed to collect the tax, and he brings
the money to the Governor and says, ‘This is what I have been able to
collect,’ and the Government say, ‘Thank you.’” That is precisely what
the French have done all through. They have gone to the chiefs as “big
friend”; explained to them that they required money for the railway,
roads, and so on; pointed out the advantages; asked them to contribute;
presented them with an extremely handsome commission of one-third of the
moneys collected (in other words, subsidised them) in their respective
districts, and “winked the other eye,” so to speak, when the moneys
presented have not equalled the amount due. At the same time the prestige
of the chiefs has been everywhere upheld; the native courts preserved;
vexatious European legal formulas kept out of the country; European
merchants encouraged to come in, and regularly consulted in the work of
administration; the numbers of officials restricted; economy practised
in every branch of the service, and military methods tabooed. Result,
a magnificent success politically, commercially, financially. Compare
this with what has taken place in Sierra Leone. We are taking away the
power of the chiefs instead of strengthening it.[224] The hut-tax was
originally enforced in a hasty, not to say brutal manner. Instant payment
was demanded. Chiefs were dragged from their villages, treated as felons,
handcuffed and marched off to gaol under the eyes of their unresisting
people. The Frontier Police, an ill-disciplined force[225] recruited from
the dregs of the Protectorate, committed all sorts of abuses, and, to use
the words of the Royal Commissioner, “oppressive severity” was exercised,
and this most delicate business was approached in a general spirit of
“imperious and uncompromising force.” A rising very naturally ensued
which convulsed the whole Protectorate. Sir David Chalmers’ subsequent
report, which condemned the hut-tax and recommended its withdrawal, was
not acted upon; the hut-tax has been maintained, and an expensive civil,
military and magisterial _régime_ set up, unsuited to the country and
beyond its power to maintain. Result, the expenditure has risen to about
60 per cent. of the producing power of the Colony, which is steadily
decreasing; and the up-keep of the machinery to collect the tax costs
more than the tax produces. The Colonial Office, which exhausted itself
in ingenious explanations to disconnect the rising with the hut-tax,
has recently issued an optimistic statement—on top of many others of a
similar kind—containing the report of the new Governor’s tour in the
hinterland.[226] It seems that everything is for the best in the best
of all possible worlds. The natives are delighted with everything, the
hut-tax included. The fall in the exports (the true test of prosperity
of a West African colony), which have been on the downward grade since
the hut-tax was introduced, and were lower last year than they have been
for twenty years (the year of the rebellion excepted), is accounted for
by “want of activity on the part of native producers,” and to the action
of the French. With regard to the latter, the French have for many years
levied a tax upon native caravans crossing the frontier, and the rapid
development and the judicious management of French Guinea have killed the
transit trade which used to pass _viâ_ Freetown, and is now concentrated
at Konakry. Yet, in view of French competition, the authorities deem it
politic to keep up the tax and all the incidental expenses it involves.
The caravan traffic with the far interior was doomed when the French
secured the back country; and the revival of the complaint about taxing
caravans strikes one as a little insincere for several reasons, and
among them because, although it is natural that the natives of our
Protectorate adjoining the French possession should be sorry to lose
the profits they derived from the passage of caravans through their
districts, and complain accordingly, no evidence has been adduced to
show that the natives from the remoter hinterlands beyond the frontier,
which, be it remembered, belong to France, are desirous of travelling
all the way to Freetown to dispose of their products, when there are
French factories quite as near where as good prices can be obtained for
produce. It is curious, too, to contrast these explanations with other
official assurances given out both in 1899 and 1900, that the country
would soon recover from the hut-tax war and the export trade regain its
normal dimensions. French competition is no new thing. To conclude, the
export trade of Sierra Leone twenty years ago is given at £366,000 for an
expenditure of £72,000: last year the expenditure was £173,457 including
the railway expenses, and £154,210 minus the railway expenses. The
expenditure has, therefore, excluding the railway expenses, increased by
over 100 per cent. in the face of a decline in the producing power of the
country. That is the road to financial ruin, and those concerned know it
well enough; but until the British public makes up its mind to seriously
tackle these West African questions, the few who say so will, no doubt,
continue to be looked upon as pessimists, “sentimental theorists,” or
fools, until the inevitable day of reckoning comes.
PART V
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE CONCESSIONS _RÉGIME_ IN FRENCH CONGO
“What is important in colonial matters is that the Governments,
in their difficult and uncertain, but systematic, march, should
have increasingly before them the ideal which they proposed to
themselves, and which they never lose sight of in the darkest
nights, the star which shines in the heavens, and of which the
beams are justice and humanity.”—M. DÉCRAIS, Colonial Minister
in the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet.
“We even think that on account of the difficulty, of the
impossibility, in which the natives find themselves of making
known their feelings and expressing their grievances, the
interests of those natives should be the object of special
kindness and solicitude....
“Can we allow these natives to be subjected to the unbridled
exploitation, to the economical servitude with which they are
threatened? The exclusive right which the Concessionnaires
will arrogate to themselves of buying from the natives
living upon their concessions at such prices as they, the
Concessionnaires, choose to impose, the natural products of
the soil, or the harvest which their labour has produced, is
but a disguised form of slavery.... In conclusion, we can
but say that this Concession _régime_ is antagonistic to the
well-being, to the material and moral progress of our natives,
and to the responsibilities we have assumed in submitting them
to our domination.”—“Memorial” of the “French West African
Company”[227] to M. Décrais.
By one of those extraordinary contradictions of which French history
affords so many curious examples, liberty-loving France, with her
splendid record in West Africa, having proved her capacity to
successfully manage possessions in West Africa; numbering among her
officials and merchants connected with West Africa men of the highest
moral calibre, imbued with humanitarian instincts and earnest advocates
of a sound native policy; has within the last few years sanctioned the
institution of a _régime_ of territorial monopolies in the French Congo
which has already led to deplorable occurrences, and cannot fail to cause
still greater evils if permitted to continue. To explain all the phases
of this grave departure from French traditions in West Africa would
require a great deal more space than is here available. One can only give
its origin, indicate its main lines and the events which have hitherto
taken place in connection with it, and briefly discuss how it affects
the general relationship of Western Europe with Western Africa and the
interests of British subjects in the maritime zone of the French Congo.
Some three years and a half ago the huge profits earned by certain
rubber companies, so-called, in the Congo State; the enormous premiums
at which their shares stood on the Antwerp Stock Exchange; the wild
speculations which anything to do with Congo rubber gave rise to in
Belgium; the colossal increase in the yearly output of rubber from the
Congo State, which from a value of 260,000 francs in 1888 had risen to
15,850,000 francs in 1898,[228] provoked in France—or, at any rate,
among some influential Frenchmen, notably in Government circles—a desire
that similar results should accrue in the French Congo. “Here,” ran the
argument, “we have an immense territory as rich in forest products,
notably rubber, as the Congo State, which is doing very little, which
for years has been a drag upon the metropolis; while the Belgians—these
new-comers in Africa, these tyros at tropical colonisation—are making
fortunes every day. Why cannot we imitate them?” The feeling was
thoroughly natural. Those who entertained it, however, forgot four
things—three of which may at this stage be referred to—or, if they did
not forget them, they at all events brushed them aside in the enthusiasm
of the moment. They forgot the causes which had led to the comparative
stagnation of French Congo on the one hand and the causes which were
moulding a state of prosperity in the remaining French Colonies on the
other. They forgot the political ambitions of the astutest diplomatist in
Europe—the Sovereign of the Congo State. They forgot _how_ the inflated
premiums, colossal profits, and the exaggerated production had been and
were being brought about. If the latter point did present itself to the
minds of a minority, it was assumed that, under a French administration,
abuses such as those known to exist in the Congo State were impossible,
and that results in every sense equal to those obtained in the Congo
State could be secured in French Congo without them. Swayed by these
considerations, the French Government and French Colonial public, with
the exception of a handful of far-seeing and experienced men, sought to
carry out the new programme without delay.
King Leopold foresaw at once the danger and the opportunity; the danger
if a sudden influx of French capital into French Congo should lead to the
construction of a railway from the French coast-line to Brazzaville on
the Upper Congo, to threaten the monopoly of traffic with the interior
enjoyed by the Matadi-Stanley Pool railway; the necessity of averting it
by placing the financial control of the French concessions in Belgian
hands, whereby the construction of such a line could be delayed _ad
infinitum_; and the double advantage of (1) fostering the movement in
France, on account of the increased railway freight the development of
the movement would bring for the existing Belgian line, to say nothing
of the increased customs duties on goods and material for the French
Upper Congo (whose only practical route was, of course, _viâ_ Congo
State territory), which would accrue to the Congo State for the same
reason; and (2) of securing for the small but influential Belgian group
of which he is the supremely able leader a preponderating position in
the possessions adjoining his own.[229] Gathering his financiers and
co-partners in that vast Trust—which is called the Independent State
of the Congo—King Leopold flung himself into the breach, and with such
good effect that French Congo was in an incredibly short space of time
partitioned on paper into some forty odd concessions of all shapes and
dimensions, with nominal French heads, but with Belgians on the board of
administration, a majority of Belgian shareholders behind, with Belgian
capital either openly or in disguised form the controlling factor, with
strings pulled in Belgium, ideas borrowed from Belgium, Belgian methods
of tropical African development and Belgian methods of rigging the home
markets writ large all over them.[230] With what consummate skill the
Sovereign of the Congo State weaved his nets, flung them forth and
landed his fish, only those who have had a glimpse of what has gone
on behind the scenes can describe. It would make a curious story, and
not an altogether savoury one, and perhaps some day it will be fully
told.[231] The clever manipulating tactics of the king were only equalled
by the infatuation, the heedlessness, the utter want of reflection which
characterised the action of the French Government of the day and the
noisiest section of the French Colonial party. A policy involving the
most far-reaching consequences was suddenly adopted with, as a French
writer of distinction has said, “une insouciance, une désinvolture
presque criminelles.” Seemingly hypnotised, France plunged headlong
into an abyss whence she is vainly seeking to emerge, and in which she
has already soiled her hands, and as De Brazza rather nobly puts it,
“compromised her dignity.”
Meanwhile the French Congo Concessions are in being, and what has
been the outcome up to the present after more than two years of the
experiment? The promoters have done excellently well. Floating their
concessions at absurd premiums on the Antwerp market, and coming on
the crest of the rubber wave, they were able—not in all cases perhaps,
but generally—to dispose of their holdings at substantial profits. The
shareholders who imitated their example showed prescience, for, with the
exception of two companies, there has not been one single transaction
this year in the shares of forty-three of these companies which are still
quoted in the Antwerp financial and Congo organs! Their paper, in fact,
is unsaleable. Several of the companies have fizzled out. Those who
have not been allowed to prey on the legitimate barter trade existing
in the Maritime Zone are in more or less of a moribund condition, and
after squandering their shareholders’ money have accomplished absolutely
nothing. But what of the effect upon the country? Free trade in the
Maritime Zone has disappeared, and with it the revenue it supplied to the
Administration. The export trade has actually decreased. The finances are
so gravely compromised that a loan of 10,000,000 francs is spoken of,
and at one period last year there was not even available in the local
treasury sufficient cash to pay the salaries of officials. All public
works and improvements of any kind are, of course, suspended. The local
Courts are kept busy with endless litigation between Concessionnaire
Companies who accuse one another of poaching upon their respective
preserves, the boundaries of none of which have, by the way, ever been
delimited. There have been two native risings attended with considerable
loss of life and destruction of property, and chaos reigns supreme. The
Paris Colonial organs are filled with suggestions, exhortations, threats,
revilings, but with the solitary exception of one Deputy[232]—M. le
Comte d’Agoult—and a handful of courageous journalists, such as M. Jean
Hess, the African explorer, and M. Serge Basset, of _La Revue_, no one
of note in French Colonial circles has boldly tackled the subject, gone
to the root of it, or preached the only possible solution. The fact that
the affair has raised an international problem—or rather two—of great
delicacy, may have something to do with the unwillingness to come to
close quarters displayed by the leading organs of the French Press. But
it is lamentable, in every sense of the word, that France with all her
generous instincts should be able on this occasion to record but very few
protesting voices against the fatal reversal of the wise and just native
policy she has hitherto pursued in the main, and with such conspicuous
success, in her other West African possessions.
For it is in the relation it bears towards the natives that the
concession _régime_ in French Congo offers the strongest ground for
criticism. The saying that “evil communications corrupt good manners”
was never more applicable than in this case. Once started on the road
mapped out three years ago, subsequent events became inevitable. It
would have needed a man of iron—and the warmest friends of the ex-French
Colonial Minister, who was not the initiator, but the successor to a
heritage of trouble, would not credit him with such proclivities—to have
stemmed the tide and refused, even at the risk of resigning, to allow
his country to be dragged along the path of reaction towards which the
concession _régime_ infallibly tended. Step by step the French Government
has found itself impelled to gravitate nearer to the Belgian conception.
The Concessionnaires found English and German merchants trading
peacefully with the natives on what they claimed, according to their
contracts with the French Government, to be their own property. Disputes
arose, seizures of produce took place, and it became increasingly urgent
to define the “rights” of the concessionnaires. M. Décrais hung back
a long time, but goaded by nearly all the Colonial and some of the
daily newspapers, with constant pressure brought to bear upon him from
influential quarters, he was fain at last to take the leap. He took it,
and through the Governor of French Congo issued a decree (March 20,
1901) as to which one can only say that, if a few years ago it had been
predicted that a French Minister could have framed such a document, the
prophecy would have earned the contemptuous unbelief of all Frenchmen, or
foreigners acquainted with the part played by France in Western Africa.
The decree declared that one idea dominated[233] the entire
concession policy, viz. that the products of the soil belonged to the
concessionnaires, who alone had a right to dispose of them, the natives
not being entitled to sell them to any one but the concessionnaires. To
tone down the arbitrary nature of this promulgation, mention was made
of native reserves, where the natives would be free to do what they
liked. But this apparent modification of the absolutism of the decree
is entirely illusory for three reasons: (1) the area of the reserves
was not delimited, and in view of the enormous difficulty and expense
delimitation would involve, could not hope to be for many years to
come; (2) a decision of the local courts had ordained that, pending
delimitation of the reserves, the reserves were legally non-existent, and
that the whole country was therefore exploitable by the concessionnaires;
(3) an antecedent ministerial decree had announced that, when the
reserves were delimited, the areas reserved should not include any land
producing saleable products.[234] Whatever may have been the difficulties
with which the French Colonial Minister was beset, the issue of the
above decree cannot in equity be defended. It virtually handed over the
population of French Congo to the mercy of European speculators, of
Belgians grown fat on the misery and the degradation of the natives in
the Congo State. It left the door open to the grossest abuses, the most
cynical outrages against humanity. It let loose the tongues and pens
of all the apostles of force and coercion for Africa. It reduced the
natives to the level of servants and serfs of the greedy clique which had
fastened its talons in the country, and it strengthened the position of
the Congo State in Europe.
Secure in the official recognition of their “rights,” the concessionnaire
companies’ next move was precisely what might have been expected in view
of the class of men controlling them. Legitimate commerce having no place
in their calculations, they at once started a “campaign” for the purpose
of forcing the French Government to coerce the natives into bringing
rubber and other forest produce to their factories, on such terms as
they, the concessionnaires, chose to pay for the labour expended by the
natives in collecting it. While their subsidised organs daily devoted
reams to prove that compulsion was essential in dealing with primitive
peoples, their agents in Africa hastened, as far as possible, to put
these principles into practice. Arms of precision were smuggled into
the country, and soon the concessionnaires were attempting on a smaller
scale to copy the exploits of their countrymen on the other side of the
Congo River. _Facilis descensus Averni._ The agitation was partly met by
the application of a hut-tax paid in kind, the produce to be handed in
by the natives to the Government authorities, who would dispose of it
to the concessionnaires at a nominal price; thus giving an appearance
of legality to the transaction, and disguising coercion in the garb of
administrative requirements. The Government having accomplished nothing
whatever in the way of bettering the country, improving communication,
or constructing public works from which the natives might be expected to
derive some benefit, the hut-tax was naturally resented; its application
in French Congo being, moreover, scientifically unsound, and only
feasible of accomplishment by a long course of preparation. Grafted upon
the action of the concessionnaires, the measure was followed by outbreaks
in various directions, especially among the warlike Fans of the Ogowe and
the Upper Sangha people.
This new step on the part of the French Government stirred up for a time
the opponents of the concessionnaire _régime_ in France. De Brazza sent
a memorable protest to the _Temps_. Its concluding passage is well worth
quoting:
“France has assumed a duty towards the native tribes (of French
Congo) who for twenty-seven years have lent their assistance
in the work of expansion. These people have received from us
the seal of their future liberties.... We must not sacrifice
them to the vain hope of immediate results by thoughtless
measures of coercion opposed to the generous ideas which our
flag personifies. We should be committing a great mistake to
discount that result, by enforcing at the present time taxes
upon the products of the soil, or by compelling the natives to
work in the form of forced labour or military service. It would
constitute a great blow to our dignity if such labour and such
taxes were converted into a sort of draft-to-order in favour of
the concessionnaires.... It is to recall these considerations
to men’s minds, and to avoid the moral bankruptcy to which
economic and financial disasters may lead us, that I have
emerged from the reserve I had imposed upon myself.”[235]
Just then, too, one of the very few genuine French concerns among the
concessionnaire companies, managed by a Frenchman distinguished for his
explorations in the country, M. Fondère, wrote publicly to the Colonial
Minister, abandoning his concession:
“Experience has convinced us,” he wrote, “that, notwithstanding
any modifications of detail which your department might
suggest, either in the administrative organisation of the Congo
Colony or in the agreement between the Government and the
Concessionnaires, the exclusive monopoly of the concessions is
a vain epithet. The right to sell his products to whomsoever
he may please cannot be denied to the native, because he has
always possessed it. Moreover, all stipulations to the contrary
notwithstanding, it would be quite illusory to think of taking
this right away from the native. That could only be done by
force of arms.”
Shortly afterwards, M. Albert Cousin, also a well-known man in French
Colonial circles, who had previously been a warm defender of the
concessions _régime_, published a pamphlet to the effect that he had
changed his mind, and was now convinced the experiment was a mistaken
one.[236]
These repeated blows staggered for a moment the defenders of the
Belgian conception in France. The newspaper which had the most largely
contributed to influence French Colonial opinion even went so far as to
admit that it could not but be “very much impressed by the new ideas
which are coming to light.” The ideas are not new. They are as old as the
hills. They date back from the time when man, evolving from the brute,
became a law-maker, and decided that certain fixed principles of morality
should form the basis of social order.
That temporary hesitation offered a great opportunity for French
statesmanship, but no one came forward to enforce the lesson. And so the
powerful influences which had been at work from the first set themselves
to destroy the “impression” created. They partially succeeded, but they
could not destroy it altogether, and I rather fancy it is becoming more
pronounced and will eventually carry the day. One factor, at any rate, is
likely to assist its growth not a little—the extravagant demands of the
concessionnaires and the violent attacks on the French Government on the
part of the Belgian organs devoted to the interests of their compatriots
in French Congo. The institution of the hut-tax was merely a sop. It
staved off the clamour for a time, but in the nature of things could not
last for long. To feed the army of concessionnaires with the proceeds
of a hut-tax an army of native levies is required. That is what the
concessionnaires claim must be organised, and once more the same strings
are being pulled, the same arguments put forward, the same machinery set
in motion. The French Government must do what the Congo State has done.
It must raise 15,000 or 20,000 men, arm them with weapons of precision
and turn them loose upon the population in order to enforce a tribute
on the yield of which the concessionnaires shall not only live but run
their shares up to high premiums, present respectable dividends to their
Belgian holders, and generally make money at the expense of the natives
of the French Congo, using the French Government as a sort of decoy-duck
the while. I doubt if it will work. I fancy King Leopold and his friends
are going rather too far. But one thing at least is certain. Either the
concessionnaires, who know nothing of trade and are not concerned with
mere matter-of-fact commercial considerations, who have never looked
upon commerce as an element in their “business,” will themselves be
compelled to throw up the sponge; or they will compel in one shape or
another the French Government to give them physical means to establish
slavery in the French Congo, as it has been established in the Congo
State. To suppose the latter is almost an impossibility, notwithstanding
all that has happened, and it is perhaps not displaying too great an
optimism to hope that the concession _régime_ in French Congo may perish
from its own internal corruption. Meanwhile it remains to be seen how
that _régime_ has affected and continues to affect British interests,
and the part it plays in the international situation created by the
proceedings of the Congo State.
CHAPTER XXIX
INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS AND MONOPOLY
“As to the ground on which we contend for the rights we have in
the interior of Africa, they have really been our own guiding
principles throughout. _It is not territory, it is freedom
of trade_, and on that ground we are strong and shall do our
very utmost.”—Extract from a speech by LORD SALISBURY to a
deputation of Chambers of Commerce, 1898.
Speaking at Manchester in 1884, Sir H. M. Stanley prophesied,
as a result of the creation of the Congo State, an export
of British cotton goods to the Congo State of £26,000,000
annually. According to the same speaker, one firm on the Congo
River alone imported, in 1879, British goods to the value
of £185,000. After seventeen years’ existence, the _total_
imports of British goods to the Congo State is far below that
figure—viz. £133,200 in 1901!
The importance of British trade interests in French West
Africa may be estimated from the fact that in 1900 the French
possessions absorbed British goods to the value of £709,900,
and sent £534,727 of produce to British ports.
In the _cahier de charges_ or agreements between the French Government
and the Concessionnaire Companies the latter were held to respect the
“acquired rights of third parties,” and the “general rights created by
the Berlin Act.” Who were the “third parties”? What were their “acquired
rights?” What were the “general rights created by the Berlin Act”?
When in the early part of the nineteenth century the European nations
put a stop to the export slave trade, Great Britain, having led the way
in securing this reform, entered into treaties with most of the chiefs
and head-men along the West Coast, giving some of them subsidies and, by
means of consular and naval visitations, encouraging them to give their
attention to the gathering of their forest products for sale to Europeans
in exchange for the merchandise of Europe. In this way the trade in
palm-oil was stimulated in the Niger Delta and Windward Coast; whilst in
Gaboon it took the shape of barwood, ebony and ivory, and in the River
Congo palm-oil and ivory. At that time there was no European Government
established on the African coast between the Gold Coast and Ambriz. The
Europeans who settled along the coast traded from their vessels. After
the introduction of steam, the European traders (chiefly British) traded
in hulks in the Niger Delta, and built houses and stores at various
points along the whole coast-line down to Ambriz. Small sailing vessels
plied between these trading places and the terminus of the ocean steamers
(then Fernando Po, or Cameroons), and sailing vessels from Europe sailed
regularly to and fro, bringing their goods and taking home their cargoes
of vegetable and animal products. Soon after the establishment of steam
the French Government made a treaty with the chiefs of the Gaboon River,
by which ground was ceded for a coaling station for the French men-of-war
then plying on the African coast to put down the foreign slave trade.
Shortly afterwards, an American citizen established in Fernan Vaz
discovered a vine, of which the sap, when exposed to the atmosphere, was
found to yield india rubber, and in course of time this new industry was
fairly started and gradually spread over the adjoining territory. It was
a slow process, but in a few years the gathering of rubber became general
in that part of the coast, and in Gaboon the French naval officers saw
that there was a trade to be taxed, and forthwith a Custom House was
built and duties placed on imports.
When British merchants first established themselves in Gaboon the
political authority of the French Government was confined to the Gaboon
River estuary, and the up-river trade was carried on at our merchants’
personal risk. In order to induce the natives to collect rubber, European
traders had perforce to let the natives have goods on credit, as those
natives near the coast had to go far into the interior to buy from other
natives; who, in their turn, had to be given credit wherewith to buy from
natives still farther inland, and induce them to seek the vines and make
the rubber. In this way the credit system, as it exists to-day, was
created.
In the pursuit of this rubber trade, fostered by British merchants,
the natives of Gaboon, crossing their country to the South, struck the
Ogowe River, which gave them easy access to a wide field from which to
collect produce. In course of time the European traders followed the
natives across country, and meeting the river,[237] lost no time in
tracing its course to the sea and at once establishing sea communication
between Gaboon and the Ogowe. Their example was imitated by the French
Government, and in due course possession was taken by France of the Ogowe
and Fernan Vaz; but when at Berlin the Governments of Europe settled
who were to become the owners of the Congo and the adjoining maritime
territories, France had, in point of fact, no political influence south
of Fernan Vaz. This expansion of Gaboon was initiated by British and
German enterprise, French white traders coming in after the pioneer
work was accomplished. When 2° 30´ of South latitude was fixed as the
northern boundary of the free-trade zone, it was expected that that line
would include within it the trade of Sette Camma, the trade of which
was British and German entirely. The Chambers of Commerce of Liverpool
and Manchester set forth these facts at the time: before the treaty was
made, and when urging the principle of free trade within the zone fixed
by treaty, no idea was in the mind either of the traders, the Chambers
of Commerce, or the representatives of the various Governments concerned
in the making of the Berlin Treaty, other than that the freedom of
trade therein referred to applied to the only known trade in existence,
viz. the collection and sale by the natives of the vegetable and other
products of their country in exchange for European merchandise. Any
legislation, therefore, of which the effect is to alienate the rights of
the natives to collect the produce of their country, and to dispose of
those products freely to whomsoever they wish, is a direct violation of
the principles of equitable treatment towards the natives which animated
the Conference and the rights of the signatory Powers of that Conference.
It is then perfectly clear (1) that the “third parties” mentioned in
the _cahier de charges_ were the European merchants who had created the
existing trade of the French Congo, the taxes upon which supplied the
local administration with funds for purposes of revenue; (2) that the
“acquired rights” of those merchants consisted in the right to continue
their trade, the freedom of which was guaranteed under the Berlin Act;
(3) that the “general rights created by the Berlin Act” were, on the one
part, the rights of the natives (“whose moral and material well-being”
the contracting Powers to the Berlin Act bound themselves to “care for”)
to their land and the produce thereof; and, on the other part, the
rights of each of the signatory Powers to ensure that the principles of
the Berlin Act were not violated by any one of the parties to that Act.
The way in which the rights of the natives are “cared for” under the
concessions _régime_ was dealt with in the last chapter. It remains to be
said to what usage the “acquired rights” of the merchants trading in the
country have been subjected.
Two of the most important firms trading in the French Congo at the time
of the issue of the Decree of Concessions (March 1899) were British.[238]
They were among the very first to open up the country to trade, their
representatives had always been law-abiding citizens under the French
flag; they had ever worked harmoniously with the French officers, who
from time to time had sought their assistance in developing this or
that district, had asked them to send their native traders into such and
such a region, and generally encouraged them in every way to promote
and extend the area of their trading operations. In the course of over
a quarter of a century’s trade in the country the British firms had
contributed large sums to the local revenue, and had cheerfully paid
the enormous differential customs tariffs levied upon British goods,
the taxes, the licences, the duties of all sorts affecting the various
branches of their businesses prescribed by the law of the land. Their
standing was, of course, well known to the French Government, and in a
secret letter of instructions[239] communicated to the concessionnaires
by the French Colonial Minister, the former were required to pledge
themselves “to leave entire latitude for two years to the existing
foreign firms for all the commercial undertakings which they may perform
in the territory conceded” to them; and further, that they should
propose to the said foreign firms at the end of the two years, and in
the event of difficulties arising with the latter, to buy up their
establishments. The pledge was duly given. But it was not carried out.
The French Government, finding itself incapable of compelling obedience,
allowed the matter to slide, and was brought by successive stages in
the development of affairs to the issue of the Decree of March 26, 1901
(mentioned in the previous chapter), which declared, as has already been
stated, that the products of the soil—that is to say, the only medium
of trade in the country—belonged exclusively to the concessionnaires,
and that the natives were not free to dispose of them to any one but
the concessionnaires. The “acquired rights of third parties,” and the
rights of the natives, had gone by the board; the rights of England as a
signatory Power of the Berlin Act had been infringed; and the Act itself
had been violated in one of its most essential articles, viz. Article V.,
which says that “no Power which exercises, or shall exercise, sovereign
rights in the above-mentioned regions shall be allowed to grant therein
a monopoly or favour of any kind in matters of trade.”
To describe the series of outrages[240] perpetrated by the agents of the
Belgian groups, masquerading as French patriots, upon our merchants which
took place during the two years that the Concessionnaire Companies had
bound themselves to allow “entire latitude” to the firms trading in the
country; the protests of our merchants, who were never informed by the
French authorities that their _locus standi_ had become modified; who
continued on the one hand to pay customs dues on their imports, licences
for the factories and native traders, while forcibly prevented, under the
eyes of the same authorities and with their tacit assent, from disposing
of their goods to natives against produce; the expostulations of Sir
Edmund Monson, our Ambassador in Paris; the promises of M. Décrais which
were never fulfilled; the actions at law brought by our merchants at
great expense in the Congo to test the legality of the concessionnaires’
proceedings; the deputation of nine Chambers of Commerce to Lord
Lansdowne; the upholding of the concessionnaires’ claim by the local
courts, whose judgments as _Le Temps_ (which has pleaded, together with
one or two other French papers,[241] for justice to our merchants) has
pointed out, was based not upon law, but upon the Decree of March 1901,
which the judges could not go beyond; the persecution of our merchants
by the concessionnaires for purchasing produce from their concessions on
the strength of the said judgment; the infliction of heavy fines upon
our merchants; the entire stoppage of their trade; the seizure of their
produce at African ports and even at a French port;[242] the evacuation
of our merchants which is now proceeding; the renewed representations
of British Chambers to the Foreign Office; above all, the unaccountable
lethargy of the British Government,[243] and, with one or two honourable
exceptions,[244] the indifference of the British Press—to adequately
describe these things would require a couple of chapters at least.
The position to-day is this, that from the greater part of the Ogowe
Basin, which alone is unaffected by the Berlin and Brussels Acts, being
outside the Conventional Basin of the Congo, our merchants have been
expelled, without a penny compensation. In the Conventional Basin of
the Congo, where—as in the Ogowe—our merchants have been established
for upwards of twenty years; where their rights to trade freely with
the natives are solemnly guaranteed by International Treaties, British
subjects are being expelled, not only without compensation but with
ignominy and insult, after suffering heavy losses; the trade which they
brought into being ruined, the trading stations they have built deserted,
themselves arbitrarily removed from regions where they have laboured for
so long.[245]
It is a shameful, a discreditable episode. But if it be true that
out of evil good may come, there is still some hope that out of the
treatment—treatment which to those who know all the details is beyond
the reach of Parliamentary language to characterise—meted out to British
merchants in the French Congo may come the liberation of the peoples of
the Congo State from the Belgian yoke, and an international understanding
binding upon the Powers whereby a rational, common-sense, and just
native policy may be mutually agreed upon, and the vast region of the
Congo Basin thrown open to the legitimate commerce of all nations. The
movement against monopoly based upon force in West Africa; against the
evil which King Leopold has sown; against the follies as well as the
horrors which that evil has engendered, is growing apace. The expulsion
of British subjects from French Congo may yet serve as the lever whereby
the edifice of fraud and greed and cruelty reared by Africa’s self-styled
“regenerator” may be overthrown. And the reason is this.
The British Government has for years been pressed to inquire into
the doings of the Congo States upon humanitarian grounds. The German
Government, the Governments of the United States and of France have
been similarly approached. None of them have taken definite steps in
the direction desired. The chief reasons in the case of England, France
and Germany are probably three. First, international rivalries in the
partition of Africa and the political ambitions which those rivalries
have begotten. By a combination of circumstances of which King Leopold
took full advantage, the Sovereign of the Congo State has been able
to intrigue first with France against England (1892-94), with England
against France (1894), with France against England (1897-99). When
the expedition of Major Marchand—who would never have reached Fashoda
but for the reinforcements in men, ammunition and stores despatched to
him over the Congo Railway, through Congo State territory—was seen to
be a political failure, King Leopold turned fawning upon England, and
attempted to gain our consent to his appropriation of the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
With his usual astuteness he endeavoured to strengthen his diplomacy
at the Court of St. James by securing, meanwhile, a _fait accompli_ in
Africa. In this he failed, mainly through journalistic enterprise in
exposing his carefully laid plans (that also, by the way, would make an
interesting little story). After the Fashoda episode King Leopold was
again pro-British for a short time, until he became once more France’s
good friend, and plunged the French Congo into chaos. In the interval
of acting honest broker to England and France alternately, he has tried
to play Germany off against England in sundry matters, such as the
Trans-African railway scheme. So much for international rivalries on the
Western Central African field, in which the Sovereign of the Congo State
has held most of the trumps. To these must, of course, be added other
rivalries on a wider field amongst the Powers in question, which tended
still farther to paralyse all useful, disinterested and combined action
for humanitarian ends in the Congo. The second reason is dynastic. King
Leopold is connected with the Royal Families of England and Germany.
Only those who are in Court secrets know the exact extent to which
the Sovereign of the Congo State has profited by that, to him, happy
circumstance. It has, undeniably, been considerable. The third reason is
the self-imposed halo of sanctity with which the public press has been
gulled for years by the happy knack of attributing abuses of a more than
usually flagrant character to individual wrongdoing of agents—a plea used
again and again with never-failing results. To these reasons—there are
others, no doubt, and two of them are briefly touched upon in the next
chapter—are mainly due the failure of the Powers to fulfil their duties
under the Berlin Act _upon humanitarian grounds_.
But now an altogether different aspect of the Congo problem has sprung
up. So far the Stokes affair[246] has alone provided what might be termed
a _material_ cause of complaint against the Congo State. The effect
of this outrage was modified by renewed international rivalries which
occurred shortly afterwards, and even the subsequent appointment of Major
Lothaire as Managing Director in Africa for one of the “Companies” in
which the Congo State holds 50 per cent. of the shares, and of which King
Leopold appoints the agents, failed to exercise the influence which,
but for the international rivalries aforesaid, it would otherwise have
wielded. But the horizon has cleared of late. The scramble for Africa is
over. The Powers are beginning to think seriously of the immense problems
which beset them in Tropical Western Africa. And it is precisely at this
turning-point, as it were, in European policy in Western Africa that the
material side of the question has risen. England and Germany have both
in their respective ways been sharply confronted with the Nemesis of
their past indifference to the repeated violation of the Berlin Act by
the Congo State. Germany has seen her ivory trade in German East Africa
disappear, her protected natives driven out of Congo State territory,
forbidden to purchase ivory or produce of any kind from the natives on
the Congo side of the German Congo State frontier, because by the laws
of the Congo State every product of the forest, whether vegetable or
animal—when either is of intrinsic value—belongs not to the native owner
of that forest, whose ownership the State does not recognise, but to the
State itself. England has seen her merchants expelled from the French
Congo by an extension of the system of territorial monopolies involving
absolute rights over the products of the soil, inaugurated by the Congo
State in 1892. The Belgian conception has thrived upon the Powers’ _non
possumus_. The African cancer has attacked both banks of the Congo, and
wherever spreads the fell disease, liberty, legitimate commerce, free
trade, alike for white man and black, disappear.
The Belgian conception of development in Tropical Western Africa is
observed a little late in the day to have another side to it. It is not
now merely an institution for earning dividends and reducing the African
population. It stands forth as a menace to all legitimate European
interests in West Africa. What England and Germany could not agree to
do when humanitarian considerations alone were in question, they can no
longer ignore with safety to their interests in Africa. The tentacles of
the Belgian octopus are flung wider and wider, French Congo, Fernando Po,
the Muni Territory, Dahomey, the Ivory Coast and South West Abyssinia
are all alike either threatened, or victims to the insidious embrace
which breeds death and devastation to the natives of Africa.[247] The
treatment of our merchants in French Congo has given a fresh impetus, and
an added motive, to the demand of public opinion that the Congo State
shall be called to the bar of international inquiry; for if the expulsion
of British subjects from a region solemnly declared internationally free
commercial land, necessitates specific action on the part of the British
Government in the form of a request for arbitration, which is the line I
have reason to believe our Government has taken, there remains the larger
question behind—the question of the violation of the Berlin Act by the
Congo State, originator of the new African slavery. The Upas-tree has
thrown up a new sucker, and although the fresh growth may be removed,
no permanent good will ensue unless the tree itself be rooted up and
destroyed. The whole scheme, the _raison d’être_, the entire future of
European action in Tropical Western Africa is involved in this question.
If the Governments are still slow in realising it, the people are not.
The well-informed press of England and of Germany is unanimous in
calling upon the British and German Governments to act in combination
for the suppression of the monopolistic _régime_ in West Africa, and
its fountain-head the Congo State. The German Colonial Society, with
its 32,000 members, has held two great meetings for this purpose, and
has passed resolutions of the most emphatic kind, and at the same
time is using its considerable influence to ensure that in the two
Cameroons concessions engineered at the same time as the French Congo
concessions and by the same means, trade shall be unrestricted and the
native free to dispose of his products, to whomsoever he will.[248]
In that respect, Germany is trying her best to undo an initial error,
committed under false advice, and the full consequences of which are
now understood. In England, we are witnessing a happy alliance of
genuine philanthropy, of scientific knowledge, and of commerce united
in a common aim, testifying to the fact that there never has been a
question of African politics where morality and practicability are so
closely entwined,[249] and if the British Press as a whole still lags
behind, it is only fair to remember that England has but just emerged
from a great war which has absorbed for three years the energies of
the country. Indeed, when all the circumstances are considered, we
should perhaps be thankful for the amount of attention which the Press
has given to the subject, while maintaining the view that, in the
specific matter of the treatment of our merchants in French Congo, it
has displayed singular lack of foresight. In the United States signs
are not wanting that the special responsibility incurred by America,
which first recognised the International _status_ of the International
African Association—subsequently the Congo State—is beginning, now
that the policy of the State is better known, to weigh with thoughtful
Americans, who for many reasons ought not to disinterest themselves
from West African affairs; and President Roosevelt has been appealed
to, to co-operate with other of the signatory Powers of the Berlin Act
to bring about a new Conference. It is to be hoped that the appeal will
be heard. America’s position is such that she can act in this matter
without a suspicion of selfish motive, and the importance of her moral
support at this juncture cannot be over-estimated. In France, it may
safely be asserted that the _élite_ of the French official element in
West Africa is entirely opposed to the monopolistic conception,[250]
that the most powerful French merchant firms are profoundly and
anxiously antagonistic, and that with few exceptions the best-informed
French writers on West African affairs and French local explorers (Mr.
Chevalier, for instance) are dead against it. How, then, can we account
for what has occurred? Very easily, I think. A grave mistake has been
committed. It is recognised, not always publicly, on nearly all sides
in France. But the French Government hesitates to admit it, and the
incident of the British merchants intensifies the difficulty. Every
French Government dreads the parrot-cry of being too friendly to the
English, and no one knows better than Lord Lansdowne how that permanent
feature in French politics hampers French statesmen. The influence behind
the concessionnaires is still strong. They have still the majority of
the French Colonial Press on their side—for reasons which need not be
too closely inquired into; and King Leopold’s personal influence in
Government circles (which he takes every opportunity of strengthening,
witness, for instance, the despatch of a special envoy of welcome to
President Loubet on his return from Russia), is still conspicuous,
as every diplomatist in Europe knows. The truth is that the French
Government is marking time. The next few months will be crucial ones in
the history of the concession experiment. The concessionnaires will make
a supreme effort to justify their existence, and to force the Government
to raise a large standing army in the Congo to coerce the natives into
collecting rubber. If they fail, the Government may begin to gently
remind them that they have fulfilled none of the terms of the _cahiers de
charge_, and if England and Germany can succeed in coming to a definite
understanding between themselves and the United States, France may be
only too glad to fall back upon a joint Conference as the best way out
of the _impasse_ into which her so-called friends, the Belgians, have
plunged her.
It is possible that this forecast errs on the side of optimism, and, in
any case, it is but too obvious that the monopolists are very strong
and have great wealth and influence at their back. Meanwhile all those
to whom the continuation and growth of the Belgian conception in Africa
appears as a virulent disease spreading wherever it can obtain a
foothold, and to be fought without pause or rest, can best be fulfilling
what they conceive to be their duty, by throwing more and more light upon
the proceedings of the Congo State.
CHAPTER XXX
THE HISTORY OF THE CONGO STATE
“At the present time the body called the International
Association—however startling it may appear to you—is
invulnerable and unassailable. All the armies in the world
could not reach it. It is impalpable, intangible as air. I call
it Benevolence, Charity, Philanthropy—the Spirit of Peace,
good-will to all men—Progress. It is here amongst you to-night
... It eludes your armies, it mocks your best efforts; at a
whisper it has disappeared and you cannot recall it.... The
founders of the International Association have been called
dreamers.... Men understand, or think they do, why a George
Peabody should invest hundreds of thousands in model lodgings,
or a Josiah Mason in an Institute.... They can understand also
why an entire nation spent £20,000,000 to free the slaves in
the West Indies.... Though they understand the satisfaction
of a sentiment when applied to England, they are slow to
understand that it may be a sentiment that induced King Leopold
II. to father the International Association. He is a dreamer
like his _confrères_ in the work, because the sentiment is
applied to the neglected millions of the Dark Continent. They
cannot appreciate rightly, _because there are no dividends
attaching to it_, this restless, ardent, vivifying, and
expansive sentiment which seeks to extend civilising influences
among the dark races, and to brighten up with the glow of
civilisation the dark places of sad-browed Africa.”—Sir H. M.
STANLEY at the London Chamber of Commerce, September 19, 1884.
“Tous les pouvoirs émanent du Souverain qui les exerce par
lui-même ou par ses délégués. Il consulte s’il le juge bon le
Conseil Supérieur siégeant à Bruxelles. Il prend en personne
les mesures les plus importantes.... Le Souverain manifeste sa
volonté sous la forme de décrets contresignés par le Secrétaire
d’Etat....”—M. A. J. WAUTERS, “L’Etat Indépendant du Congo,”
chap. xxxii., “Pouvoir législatif,” p. 433.
Legends die hard. The legend which attributes to King Leopold of Belgium
and the Congo State a philanthropic motive in African affairs is still
alive among us, although not quite to the extent that it used to be. It
would have died long ago but for two causes, the misstatements indulged
in by two or three well-known Englishmen and the apparent failure of the
British Press, as a whole, to comprehend the _fons et origo mali_ which
is raising up such terrible future complications for Europe in Central
Africa. Upon occasion one is tempted to think—and the supposition
is strengthened by such articles as that which the _Times_ recently
devoted to the Congo annexation debate in the Belgian Chamber—that the
curious omission to come to close quarters with the subject proceeds
not so much from inability to see things as they really are, as from an
unwillingness to criticise the Sovereign of the Congo State himself.
Personalities are held to be bad form, especially where Royalty is
concerned. If that be, indeed, the real explanation of the whitewashing
of the Congo State which finds favour in many quarters, there is nothing
to prevent the process from going on indefinitely. I maintain that it
is utterly impossible to arrive at the truth, if the king’s personal
responsibility in the maladministration of the Congo State is to be
perpetually shelved. Why should it be? The administrative _régime_ of the
State, as M. Cattier has truly said, is an “absolute despotism.” No one
who is acquainted with that _régime_ believes for a moment that a Van
Eetvelde, a Droogmans, a Liebrechts or a Cuvelier exist for any purpose
than that of carrying out the king’s instructions and superintending
the routine work which those instructions entail. King Leopold is sole
master, and must bear the responsibility for the _sequelæ_ of measures
which he himself has initiated and, through his agents, caused to be
applied. The king has openly and repeatedly claimed for himself this
position before the world. He has posed, and continues to pose, as the
regenerator of the African. He has put it on record, in a letter to
his agents, that “his only programme is the work of moral and material
regeneration.” He has written of the “results achieved” by the Congo
State as being due “to the concentration of all my efforts in one field
of action.” He has, throughout, loudly insisted upon the purity and
unselfishness of his intentions. Adverse comment has been dismissed by
him with a loftiness of tone, a simulated consciousness of high purpose,
a dignified picturesqueness of expression from which it is impossible
to withhold a meed of admiration, as in the case of a play repugnant to
one’s sentiments but yet so excellently rendered that objection to the
theme cannot blind one to the art of the performers. “My aim throughout
life has been to find the truth and make the truth known to others. I
have often been misunderstood and misrepresented, but we must not be
discouraged; let us ever go forward in the path of duty, striving to let
the light shine forth.” It cannot be a subject of complaint on the part
of his Majesty or his Majesty’s friends if, under these circumstances, we
take the Sovereign of the Congo State at his word; if we recognise that
in the management of the affairs of the Congo State he has adopted to the
uttermost the proud assertion of Louis XIV.: “_L’Etat: c’est moi_”; if,
making due note that his declared policy has been the regeneration of the
African Negro—a policy in the execution of which he shuns not publicity
but only desires light and truth—we judge his acts and the consequences
of those acts from the standpoint he himself has laid down.
It is essential for our purpose to give an historical retrospect of the
events which preceded the General Act of Berlin in 1885.
On September 12, 1876, King Leopold held a conference in Brussels to
consider the best means which could be devised in order to open up
Central Africa to European civilisation. The “barbarism” of Africa
had already begun to perturb his Majesty, who was careful to place on
record the absolute disinterestedness of his intentions. Addressing the
assembled scientists and explorers,[251] King Leopold spoke thus: “Is it
necessary for me to say that in inviting you to Brussels I have not been
guided by egotism? No, gentlemen, if Belgium is small, Belgium is happy
and content with her lot, ... but I should be pleased to think that this
civilising movement had been inaugurated from Brussels.” The outcome of
this conference was an “International Association for the exploration and
civilisation of Central Africa.” Its professed objects were exploration,
together with the establishment of sundry centres where explorers of all
nationalities might refit. Committees for the collection of funds were
to be established in all the countries represented,[252] and an Executive
Committee appointed in Brussels to manage the funds. King Leopold, who
from the commencement was pursuing his own ends—as he clearly showed
later—saw to it that the Belgian Committee should be in the forefront of
the subscribers, and to such good purpose that ere long the Association
came to be looked upon as a Belgian Organisation.
The association first of all directed its efforts towards the East
Coast of Africa; but when Stanley arrived home in January 1878, after
having discovered the course of the Congo, the necessity of a change of
policy became obvious. The king speedily secured Stanley’s services,
a “Committee of Studies” for the Upper Congo was formed, and Colonel
Strauch was despatched to the Congo as a representative of both the
association and the committee of studies. Meanwhile King Leopold’s
ambitions were slowly maturing, and the theory of an African State in
which he would be the representative head was already shaping itself
in his Majesty’s mind. In a letter which he wrote to Stanley, Colonel
Strauch suggested the formation “of an independent confederacy of free
negroes, the king, to whom the conception and the creation of such a
confederacy would be due, to be president thereof.” “Our enterprise,”
continued Colonel Strauch, “does not tend to the creation of a Belgian
Colony, but to the establishment of a powerful _negro kingdom_.” This
idea appears to have been sedulously fostered by Colonel Strauch among
the European traders established in the Lower Congo, with results which
afterwards became apparent. Whether it was put forward as a blind or
not it is difficult to say. Anyhow, Stanley knocked it on the head.
About this time France and Portugal began to evince uneasiness at the
somewhat exclusive complexion which the association and the committee
were beginning to assume, and there ensued a long intrigue in which
the principal actors were Stanley and De Brazza. De Brazza forestalled
Stanley on the right bank of the Congo, and Stanley checkmated De
Brazza on the left bank above Stanley Pool. Portugal, whose explorers
discovered the Congo’s mouth in 1484,[253] whose treaties with the
natives undoubtedly possessed greater validity than those concluded by
the association’s agents, and who still retained commercial interests
in the region, now became thoroughly alarmed, and endeavoured, with the
assistance of Great Britain, to make good her claims. On February 26,
1884, a Convention was signed between Great Britain and Portugal, the
practical effect of which would have been to put a stop to the expansion
of the Association in the interior. The Convention was attacked at home
and abroad; abroad, from various motives, including the fear that Great
Britain’s political influence on the Congo would become paramount; at
home, because, by the terms of the Convention, the right of Portugal to
impose a moderate import tariff was recognised, and it was feared that
this recognition might lead later on to the application of differential
tariffs to which Portugal was wedded, and because the British Chambers
of Commerce and the British Press were deluded as to the real nature of
the International Association, which represented itself as devoted to
free-trade principles. The Convention was opposed by European merchants
in the Congo for the same reasons, backed by the belief that the aims
of the Association tended towards the maintenance and strengthening of
native rule, which the community of mercantile West African interests
well knows to be the best guarantee of the development of legitimate
trade.
The Convention was by mutual consent abandoned. Its abandonment was
preceded by a remarkable event, viz. the recognition by the United
States of the Association[254] as a friendly State. The king, aided by
Stanley, who was still at that time, I believe, an American subject, had
played his cards cleverly with General Henry S. Sandford (subsequently
one of the two American representatives at the Berlin Conference), and
the declaration sent by the former to the United States Government, in
which he stated that “the International Association of the Congo hereby
declares that by treaties with the legitimate sovereigns in the basins of
the Congo and of the Niadi-Kwilu, and in adjacent territories upon the
Atlantic, there has been ceded to it territory for the use and benefit of
Free States established and being established,” appears to have exercised
a considerable influence. The “Free States” appealed to American
sentiment.[255] Needless to say, the one thing that has not been created
in any shape or form in the Congo is freedom either for native States,
or native institutions, or European trade,[256] and how General Sandford
could have been deceived to the extent of penning the above despatch,
in view of the emphatic manner in which Stanley had rejected Colonel
Strauch’s suggestion in 1878 (which presumably General Sandford had in
his mind, although six years had passed since it was made), it is hard to
understand. The American recognition of the new status of the association
was followed by Bismarck’s suggestion of a conference of the Powers, in
order to set at rest the rivalries which had arisen in the Congo Basin.
The conference first met in November 1884, and subsequently in February
1885. Largely influenced by the decision of the United States, the Powers
authorised their representatives to follow the lead of the American
Government, and on August 1, 1885, King Leopold had the inexpressible
satisfaction of notifying the Powers that the association would be
henceforth known as the Congo Free State, and himself as the Sovereign
of that State. In this manner was the evolution of King Leopold from a
pure philanthropist to the ruler of a million square miles of territory
in Central Africa accomplished. The king, argue his admirers, had come
to see that patriotism was a duty greater even than philanthropy. The
practical had outweighed the ideal. Very well; but as we study the next
stage in this royal metamorphosis, let those who follow us remember
the memorable words spoken in 1876 before the assembled scientists and
explorers in Brussels: “Is it necessary for me to say that, in inviting
you to Brussels, I have not been guided by egotism? No, gentlemen; if
Belgium is small, Belgium is happy and content with her lot.”
The Berlin Conference laid it down that no import dues should be
established in the mouth of the Congo for twenty years. But in 1890 King
Leopold, alleging the heavy expenses to which he had been put by the
campaign against the Arabs in the Upper Congo, applied for permission to
levy import duties. It was the first disillusionment; and the British
Chambers of Commerce began to wonder whether their opposition to the
Anglo-Portuguese Convention had not been mistaken. The king’s request was
granted (the Powers merely reserving to themselves the right to revert to
the original arrangement in fifteen years), but not without the bitter
opposition of the Dutch, who had very important commercial interests
in the Congo, backed by the British Chambers of Commerce and all the
traders in the Congo, irrespective of nationality. A representative
gathering was held in London on November 4, 1900, presided over by Sir
Albert Rollit, to protest against the imposition of import duties and to
denounce the hypocrisy which attributed to philanthropic motives the
desire on the part of the Congo State so to impose them. The speakers at
the meeting drew attention to the strange anomaly revealed by the sight
of a monarch who, having spent certain sums with alleged (and loudly
advertised) philanthropic motives, now came forward to claim repayment
of those sums, just like an ordinary business man, but a business man
who, having acquired a vast estate under false pretences, demanded from
the victims the wherewithal to pay for its management! They quoted with
telling effect Stanley’s speech at Manchester on October 21, 1884, given
on behalf of the association and against the Anglo-Portuguese Convention,
in which he declared that “the £500,000 which it (the association) has
given away to the Congo, it gave freely; the thousands of pounds which
it may give annually it gives without any hope of return, further _than
a sentimental satisfaction_.” They were able to show that—even then—King
Leopold, notwithstanding his formal assurances to the commercial world
that the Congo State would never directly or indirectly itself trade
within its dominions, was buying, or rather stealing, ivory from the
natives in the Upper Congo and retaining the proceeds of the sale on the
European market. They proved that, profiting by the silence of the Berlin
Treaty on the subject of export duties, the Congo State had already
imposed taxes amounting to 17½ per cent. on ivory, 13 per cent. on rubber
and 5 per cent. on palm-kernels, palm-oil, and ground-nuts, the total
taxation amounting to no less than 33 per cent. of the value of the whole
of the trade. Finally, they had no difficulty in demonstrating that, with
all his professed wish to stamp out the slave-raiding carried on by the
half-caste Arabs in the Upper Congo,[257] his Majesty was himself tacitly
encouraging the slave trade by receiving tribute from conquered chiefs in
the shape of slaves, who were promptly enrolled as soldiers in the State
army.[258] The sincerity of King Leopold’s solicitude for the natives of
Africa was in other respects appearing in its true colours, _vide_ the
letter of Colonel Williams, a British officer in King Leopold’s employ,
who, in disgust at the outrages which were taking place on the Congo,
denounced them to the king. This letter, from which I give the following
extracts, was read at the conference by Mr. Philipps, representing the
Manchester Chamber of Commerce. It ran thus:
“Your Majesty’s Government has been and is now guilty of
waging unjust and cruel wars against natives, with the hope of
securing slaves and women to minister to the behests of the
officers of your Government. In such slave-hunting raids one
village is armed by the State against the other, and the force
thus secured is incorporated with the regular troops. I have no
adequate terms with which to depict to your Majesty the brutal
acts of your soldiers upon such raids as these. The soldiers
who open the combat are usually the bloodthirsty cannibalistic
Bangalas, who give no quarter to the aged grandmother or the
nursing child at the breast of its mother. There are instances
in which they have brought the heads of their victims to their
white officers on the expeditionary steamers and afterwards
eaten the bodies of the slain children.”[259]
The history of King Leopold’s action in Central Africa between 1876 and
1890 may therefore be summed up as follows. First stage: Inauguration
of a “movement” for the “exploration and civilisation of Africa” from
motives (so stated) of pure philanthropy, devoid of any shade of personal
egotism or ambition on the part of Belgium. The expenditure of a certain
sum of money for this (alleged) intent. The acquisition of a certificate
of high moral purpose. Second stage: The “movement” takes the form of a
State, possibly an “independent confederacy of free negroes,” with the
king as president. This idea is abandoned, and for it is substituted the
theory of an “Independent State” administered directly by the king and
his representatives. The theory takes root, and by the Act of Berlin is
converted into a _fait accompli_. According to this Act, the king becomes
sovereign of the “Congo Independent State,” and undertakes that the State
shall grant no monopoly or privilege in matters of trade, shall watch
over the welfare of the natives and shall not impose any import duties.
Formal assurances are also given to the commercial world that the State
will not trade on its own account, directly or indirectly. Third stage:
The State promptly starts trading for ivory in the Upper Congo, and
wages war against the natives by means of a cannibal army, raised from
slaves captured in war and paid by the vanquished as tribute. Its agents
begin to be accused of shocking treatment of natives. Fourth stage: The
king asks for permission to impose import duties, pleading the expenses
which he is incurring in putting down slave-raiding, and the Brussels
Conference grants the request.
It may, I think, be fairly argued that the “sentimental satisfaction”
which in 1884, according to Sir H. M. Stanley, was all that the king
required as a reward for his out-of-pocket expenses, had assumed
a singularly practical shape in 1890. From a philanthropist to an
ivory-trader is a long step.
No sooner had the Sovereign of the Congo State obtained the acquiescence
of the Powers in the imposition of import duties, which, it is almost
unnecessary to say, enormously strengthened the international position
of the State, than the plans which his Majesty had conceived for the
development of what was rapidly becoming tantamount to a Belgian
possession, manifested themselves. What were those plans and what were
their _leit motif_? So far as the plans are concerned, I will come to
them later. But their _leit motif_ may be briefly stated now. To those
who have studied the personality of King Leopold, acceptance of the
philanthropic claim put forward by that monarch is simply impossible at
any stage of his African undertaking. In any case, the philanthropic
claim weakened with every year that passed after 1876. The revelations at
the London meeting of November 4, 1890, definitely exploded it. Whoever
attributed philanthropy to the Sovereign of the Congo State after that
meeting was foolishly credulous, although he might still be honest.
Whoever, being acquainted with the edicts of 1891 and 1892, from the time
those edicts were thoroughly known in Europe, that is to say, towards
the middle of 1892, has endorsed the philanthropic claim must have been
guilty of gross deceit. I would go even farther than this, and say that
such persons have been guilty of conniving and inducing the public to
connive at a crime which has been steadily growing ever since, in the
extent and heinousness of its criminality; a crime for which Europe will
yet pay dearly.
King Leopold found himself in 1885 possessed of an enormous territory, in
the acquirement of which he had expended a certain sum as an investment.
Not being a philanthropist; but, on the contrary, a very shrewd man of
business, his next thought was how to get his capital back—with interest.
By throwing open the Congo to legitimate commerce; by encouraging and
facilitating the trade of all nations as he solemnly undertook to do;
by pursuing a common-sense policy towards the natives, the Sovereign of
the Congo State might have recovered the original capital he had sunk on
the Congo, and even have realised a fair percentage upon it. At the same
time he would have laid the foundations of a peaceful and commercially
prosperous colony _for Belgium_, a colony with vast resources, a
magnificent river system and unlimited future possibilities. That would
have been true patriotism, and the ends attained might have justified
the not very honourable means employed. King Leopold preferred to adopt
another course, which has led him from illegality to violence, and from
violence to barbarism. The king’s intention all through was to recoup
himself for his expenditure at the earliest possible moment. So much for
the _leit motif_.
The measures adopted by his Majesty to bring about this desired result
were as follows: Five months after the termination of the Berlin
Conference, King Leopold issued a decree (July 1885), whereby the State
asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the
Congo territory. It was intended that the term “vacant lands” should
apply in the broadest sense to lands not actually occupied by the natives
at the time the decree was issued. By successive decrees, promulgated
in 1886, 1887 and 1888, the king reduced the rights of the natives in
their land to the narrowest limits, with the result that the whole of
the odd 1,000,000 square miles assigned to the Congo State, except such
infinitesimal proportions thereof as were covered by native villages
or native farms, became _terres domaniales_. On October 17, 1889, the
king also issued a decree ordering merchants to limit their commercial
operations in rubber to bartering with the natives. This decree was
interesting merely as a forewarning of what came later, because at that
time the rubber trade was very small. In July 1890, the same year as
the Brussels Conference, the Congo State went a step farther. A decree
issued in that month confirmed all that was advanced in November of the
same year by the speakers at the London Conference, held to protest
against the imposition of import dues by the State. By its terms King
Leopold asserted that the State was entitled to trade on its own
account in ivory—the first open violation of his pledges. Moreover, the
decree imposed sundry extra taxes upon all ivory bought by merchants
from the natives; which, since the State had become itself a trading
concern, constituted an equally direct violation of the Berlin Act, by
establishing differential treatment in matters of trade. Such were the
plans King Leopold made, preparatory to obtaining from the Powers the
power to impose import duties.[260] Everything was ready for the great
_coup_, which should also inaugurate the fifth stage of his Majesty’s
African policy.
The Brussels Conference met. The Powers with inconceivable fatuity
allowed themselves to be completely hoodwinked, and within a year the
greatest injury perpetrated upon the unfortunate natives of Africa
since the Portuguese in the fifteenth century conceived the idea
of expatriating them for labour purposes had been committed, and
committed, too, by a monarch who had not ceased for fifteen years to
pose as their self-appointed regenerator! On September 21, 1891, King
Leopold drafted in secret a decree which he caused to be forwarded to
the Commissioners of the State in the Ubanghi-Welle and Aruwimi-Welle
districts, and to the chiefs of the military expeditions operating in the
Upper Ubanghi district. This decree never having been published in the
official Bulletin of the State, its exact terms can only be a matter of
conjecture; but we know that it instructed the officials to whom it was
addressed “to take urgent and necessary measures to preserve the fruits
of the Domain to the State, especially ivory and rubber.” By “fruits of
the Domain,” King Leopold meant the products of the soil throughout the
“vacant lands” which he had attributed to himself, as already explained,
by the decree of 1885. The king’s instructions were immediately followed,
and three circulars, dated respectively Bangala, December 15, 1891,
Basankusu, May 8, 1892, and Yakoma, February 14, 1892, were issued by
the officials in question. Circular No. 1 forbade the natives to hunt
elephants unless they brought the tusks to the State’s officers. Circular
No. 2 forbade the natives to collect rubber unless they brought it to
the State’s officers. Circular No. 3 forbade the natives to collect
either ivory or rubber unless they brought the articles to the State’s
officers, and added that “merchants purchasing such articles from the
natives, whose right to collect them the State only recognised provided
that they were brought to it, would be looked upon as receivers of stolen
goods and denounced to the judicial authorities.”
Thus did the Sovereign of the Congo State avail himself of the additional
prestige conferred upon him by the Brussels Conference. He did not
obtain his own way entirely, because the years which had elapsed since
the Berlin Conference had witnessed the creation of a powerful group
of Belgian trading companies, presided over by one Colonel Thys, who
afterwards brought the construction of the railway which unites the Lower
to the Upper Congo to a successful termination, and who is now probably
the largest land-owner in Africa. These companies were doing a large
trade in rubber and ivory with the natives. They were well organised,
and the man at their head was both capable and fearless. The companies
invoked the Act of Berlin, protested against its gross infringement by
the State, dwelt largely upon the sacredness of free trade and native
rights, pleaded for Belgium and the world at large; and, finding these
considerations insufficient, violently attacked the king himself with
the avowed intention of forcing him to abdicate his “sovereignty” on the
Congo. It is useless to detail the process of an agitation which, if it
did nothing else, showed up in lurid colours how much the patriotism of
the King of the Belgians was subordinated to the egotism of the Sovereign
of the Congo State. The upshot of it was that the king squared the
colonel, and the commercial companies of the Rue Bréderode group, as they
are familiarly designated, were induced to keep silence by the grant of a
trading monopoly over a very large area where they would be free to carry
on their business unmolested. His resolute adversary being thus disposed
of, the king forthwith issued a decree, dated October 1892, by which he
defined the limits of his _terres domaniales_, and crowned the policy
he had ever steadily pursued by creating for himself in Central Africa
a vast preserve, a _Domaine Privé_, from which he might draw unlimited
resources with a view to his own personal enrichment. The extent of this
preserve cannot cover less than 800,000 square miles.[261] The summit of
King Leopold’s ambition had been attained.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE _DOMAINE PRIVÉ_
“Our only programme, I am anxious to repeat, is the work of
moral and material regeneration.”—Extract from a published
letter of his Majesty King LEOPOLD II., King of the Belgians,
Sovereign of the Congo Free State.
It is to be regretted that writers who, from time to time, call attention
to the terrible maladministration prevailing in the Congo State do not,
as a rule, strive to bring its _causa causans_ clearly before the public.
The main issue becomes too often imbedded in a mass of surplus detail,
and the bewildered individual searching for light gropes about in despair
with an eternal query on his lips—“Why?” Why these atrocities which have
been attested by dozens of honourable men[262]—atrocities which the Congo
State Administration has long ceased to deny, and now merely attempts to
minimise; atrocities of which every mail from the Congo brings additional
proof?[263] Why this callous ferocity which appears at first sight to
have in it naught but incoherence and downright stupidity, which seems
so monstrous as to be almost incredible, and yet is vouched for, not
only by travellers and missionaries who have witnessed its effects, not
only by those who are in a position to guarantee the authenticity of
information received from persons unwilling to allow their names to
appear through fear of jeopardising their means of livelihood, but by
the actual perpetrators, who, not without reason—although this excuse
cannot shield them from execration—throw the responsibility upon the
system whose servants they have been? Where is the underlying motive of
it all? The answer to the query is, the _Domaine Privé_. When you have
learnt what the _Domaine Privé_ is, what it means, what it involves,
what it necessitates, what it renders inevitable, the story is told and
everything is explained.
In the first place, let these main facts be borne well in mind. The vast
territories of the _Domaine Privé_ have for eleven years been absolutely
closed to legitimate private enterprise. Trade, which in Central Africa
means the exchange of European merchandise for raw products, does not
exist therein. The native living within these territories has been
deprived by Royal Decree of his rights as a land-owner. Property held
for centuries by well-defined native laws, vested in particular families
and tribes, has been appropriated without consulting the interested
parties, let alone compensating them. With the deprivation of his land
the native has been dispossessed of the fruits thereof; the rubber
growing so luxuriously in his forests he may (by decree) only gather
for the State—we will see presently how the “may” becomes “must”; the
ivory stacked about his villages is no longer his, but another’s; the
elephants which roam about his country and damage his plantations he can
incur the physical peril of destroying, but may not reap the reward to
which he is thereby entitled, for the tusks of the slain beast do not,
according to Royal Decree, belong to him. Since he cannot dispose of his
produce, which is his wealth and also his currency; since he has lost his
rights in his own land; since he cannot even hunt the wild beast which
provides him with the wherewithal to make horns for war and the chase,
armlets and anklets for his wives, ornaments for his habitation, he is
no longer a free agent, but has become _de facto_ a serf. In theory,
then, the decrees of September 1891 and October 1892 made of the native
throughout the _Domaine Privé_ a serf. In theory a serf he remained
for a little while. But as the grip of Africa’s regenerator tightened
upon the _Domaine Privé_, as the drilled and officered army, armed with
repeating-rifles, gradually grew and grew until it was larger than the
native forces kept up by any of the great Powers of Europe on African
soil,[264] as the radius of the rubber taxes was extended, as portions
of the country began to be farmed out to so-called “companies,” whose
agents were also officials of the king; the native of the _Domaine Privé_
became a serf not in theory only but in fact, ground down, exploited,
forced to collect rubber at the bayonet’s point, compelled to pay onerous
tribute to men whose salaries depend upon the produce returns from their
respective stations—the punishment for disobedience, slothfulness,
or inability to comply with demands ever growing in extortion, being
anything from mutilation to death, accompanied by the destruction of
villages and crops.
The _Domaine Privé_ is “worked” in two ways. The country is vaguely
divided into districts, and the business of the _Commissaires_ of
districts, and their agents and sub-agents, is to collect _impôts de
nature_, the taxes in kind, which the king levies. There is no limit to
this taxation. The _Commissaires_ are told to “devote all their energies
to the harvesting of rubber,” but at the same time to proceed “_as
far as possible_ by persuasion rather than force.” The purport of the
instructions maybe briefly summed up thus: “Obtain all the rubber and
ivory you can; your future advancement depends upon your energy.”[265]
Of course, this _régime_ in a country like Africa, where the native is
not obliged to “work” in order to live, would be so much beating of the
air, if force were not used to give it practical effect. King Leopold
understood that well enough, and, to use the expression of a French
Colonial writer of repute—M. Pierre Mille—“the basis of the king’s
economic policy has been the formation of an army sufficiently strong to
force the natives to pay the rubber and ivory tax.” A large army, chiefly
recruited from the Bangalas and Batetlas—both cannibal tribes—was raised,
and when not engaged in rebelling against its officers, it has proved
only too well its value.
Side by side with the enforcement of the _impôts de nature_, King Leopold
bethought him of another scheme whereby to increase his revenue, and, at
the same time, to throw dust in the eyes of European public opinion, by
professing to sanction private enterprise in the _Domaine Privé_. His
Majesty took to farming out portions of his domain to certain financiers
with whom it suited him to keep on good terms. “Companies” were formed,
in which the State retained a half interest. These companies are supposed
to obtain the rubber and ivory they ship home in such large quantities
by barter; but as more often than not the king’s officials and the
companies’ agents are the same persons, and as the companies have the
assistance of the _Force Publique_ (or permission to raise their own
forces) to facilitate their commercial operations,[266] we may judge of
the amount of legitimate barter trade which is carried on. There are six
of these companies[267] in existence. The first group of five consists
of the _Société Anversoise du Commerce au Congo, the Abir, the Compagnie
du Lomami, the Comptoir Commercial Congolais, and the Société Générale
Africaine_. The State holds half the shares of the _Abir_ and half the
shares of the _Société Anversoise_. It has no shares in the _Comptoir
Congolais_, but receives 50 per cent. of the profits. Its arrangement
with the _Compagnie du Lomami_ is, I believe, on the same lines as
that with the _Comptoir Commercial Congolais_; and with the _Société
Générale Africaine_ on the same lines as the _Abir_ and _Anversoise_.
The _Société_, or rather _Comité Spécial du Katanga_, is also a _Domaine
Privé_ company, but under a somewhat different form. One-third of the
profits of the latter institution go to the Thys group of companies and
two-thirds to the State. The principal officials of the _Comité Spécial
du Katanga_—the sixth _Domaine Privé_ company—are Messrs. Droogmans
(president and Secrétaire-Général), Arnold, De Keyser, and Lombard. All
these men are highly-placed officials of the State. Droogmans is the
Minister of Finance, Arnold is director of the Domaine, director of
Agriculture, and of “Central book-keeping”; De Keyser is a director of
the Finance Department, and Lombard is a director of the Department of
the Interior.
The _Société Anversoise du Commerce au Congo_ being a typical
representative, we may examine its condition. It was formed in August
1892 under Belgian law, but reconstructed in January 1898 under Congo
law—quite a unique jurisprudence, of which it may be said _summum jus
summa injuria_—with a capital of 1,700,000 francs divided into 3400
shares of 500 francs each. King Leopold has conferred upon this company
some 12,000 square miles situated in the Mongalla district. Within
that large area, of course, no one has the right to enter; in that
particular, the Mongalla district resembles every other portion of the
Congo _Free_ State above Leopoldville, in the sense of being a monopoly
within a monopoly. The administrative seat of the _Anversoise_ is 104
Rempart des Béguines, Antwerp; its principal headquarters in Africa are
at Mobeka. Its president is M. A. de Browne de Tiège, nominated under
the constitution of the company by the king himself. M. de Browne de
Tiège is the king’s principal financial adviser in Congo affairs, and
has several times lent moneys to the State. He has a seat in the House.
The administrators are Baron Goffinet,[268] Ed. Bunge, and C. de Browne
de Tiège; the “Commissaire” is Count Emile le Grelle. The original
shareholders are: the Congo State, 1700 shares; A. de Browne de Tiège,
1100 shares; Bunge & Co., 100 shares; E. P. Grisar, 130 shares; Deyman
& Druart, 100 shares—which accounts for 3130 out of the 3400. No one
with even a superficial knowledge of Belgian society need be told of the
relations between the king and Baron Goffinet, Count le Grelle and E. P.
Grisar. The net profits for the four years 1897-1900 have been: 1897,
120,697 francs; 1898, 3,968,832 francs; 1899, 3,083,976; 1900, 84,333, or
say a profit in four years of 7,275,838 francs. The “State’s” holdings
being 50 per cent., its share in the profits would be proportionate. At
this point it may be well to remark that the inspired utterances which
from time to time appear in the British Press, dated from Brussels, to
the effect that the Sovereign of the Congo State does not hold a single
share in these companies, constitute, of course, a polite fiction. In all
matters affecting the _Domaine Privé_ the State is the King. The _Domaine
Privé_, let it be reaffirmed once again, is the king’s property and his
alone. The shares of the _Société Anversoise_ have stood as high as
13,730 francs (March 1900), which for a 500-franc share is sufficiently
alluring. At that figure, which can be easily verified by the sceptical,
his Majesty’s 1700 shares were worth over 23,000,000 francs, or say
£933,000. During the last two years, outbreaks in the Mongalla district
have been so numerous that the profits of the company have fallen
somewhat.
The performances of this particular offshoot of King Leopold’s _Domaine
Privé_ have been worthy of the regenerating nature of the Congo State
rule. In 1900, one or two of its agents confessed to killing, by order,
150 natives, cutting off 60 hands, crucifying women and children, and
impaling the sexual remains of slaughtered males on the stockade of the
villages whose inhabitants were slow in gathering rubber! “_Les scandales
de la Mongalla_” led to stormy debates in the Belgian Chamber on July 16
and 17 of last year. It may not be out of place to recall their nature.
“July 17.—M. VANDERVELDE: We are not anti-colonial in
principle.... But we are adversaries of a capitalist colonial
policy which entails exploitation, theft, and assassination....
You dare not, in the name of Christian morality, defend the
exploitation of the _Domaine Privé_.... Rubber and ivory
represent 93 per cent. of the exports.... The _Domaine Privé_
produces much more than the budgetary returns. How are these
extraordinary results obtained?... The Congo State has
introduced forced labour, tribute, paid in kind, and a twelve
years’ military service.... We protest against this disguised
form of slavery. (Applause.) The greatest names in England
and Germany have condemned this system. The premiums given
to Congolese agents have been repudiated by the honest ones
amongst them. (M. DE BROWNE DE TIÈGE interrupts.) M. de Browne
de Tiège, who is interested in Congo affairs, must be admirably
posted in the Mongalla lawsuit, which revealed acts of cruelty
in his very own district.
“M. DE BROWNE DE TIÈGE: It is false.
“M. MAROILLE: No doubt; like the stories of the severed hands.
“M. LORAND: It is so true that, as a result of what I have
stated here, the particular officer whom I challenged to deny
the facts has written giving me information, in which he admits
that these ‘war trophies’ were brought in. That is Congo
civilisation! On all sides war, massacres, crimes continue
there. How can you possibly defend these things?
“M. FURNEMONT: On the coat-of-arms of the city of Antwerp
figure cut hands. M. de Browne, who inhabits Antwerp, no doubt
considers the emblem very appropriate....
“M. DE SMET DE NAEYER (Belgian Premier): The exploitation of
the _Domaine Privé_ is conformable with jurisprudence....
People criticise tribute paid in kind (_prestations de
nature_). Do they not exist to a certain extent in Belgium? Why
suspect the Congo State of cruelty?
“M. LORAND: We are entitled to do so. Remember the 1300 severed
hands.
“M. DE SMET DE NAEYER: Faults have certainly been committed,
but the State is applying itself to their disappearance. The
disinterestedness of the creators of the Congo State will find
its reward in the gratitude of the country....