The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 Part 41

[Footnote 448: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1885), p. 14.]

The British Government was incensed at this procedure, and all the more so as plans were then on foot for consolidating British influence in the Cameroons. On that river there were six British, and two German firms, and the natives had pet.i.tioned for the protection of England; but H.M.S.

_Flint_, on steaming into that river on July 20, found that the German flag had been hoisted by the officers of the German warship _Mowe_.

Nachtigall had signed a treaty with "King Bell" on July 12, whereby native habits were to remain unchanged and no customs dues levied, but the whole district was placed under German suzerainty[449]. The same had happened at neighbouring districts. Thereupon Consul Hewitt, in accordance with instructions from London, established British supremacy at the Oil Rivers, Old and New Calabar, and several other points adjoining the Niger delta as far west as Lagos.

[Footnote 449: _Ibid_. p. 24.]

For some time there was much friction between London and Berlin on these questions, but on May 7, 1885, an agreement was finally arrived at, a line drawn between the Rio del Rey and the Old Calabar River being fixed on as the boundary of the spheres of influence of the two Powers, while Germany further recognised the sovereignty of Britain over St. Lucia Bay in Zululand, and promised not to annex any land between Natal and Delagoa Bay[450]. Many censures were lavished on this agreement, which certainly sacrificed important British interests in the Cameroons in consideration of the abandonment of German claims on the Zulu coast which were legally untenable. Thus, by pressing on various points formerly regarded as under British influence, Bismarck secured at least one considerable district--one moreover that is the healthiest on the West African coast. Subsequent expansion made of the Cameroons a colony containing some 140,000 square miles with more than 1,100,000 inhabitants.

[Footnote 450: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 6 (1885), p. 2.]

It is an open secret that Germany was working hard in 1884-85 to get a foothold on the Lower Niger and its great affluent, the Benue. Two important colonial societies combined to send out Herr Flegel in the spring of 1885 to secure possession of districts on those rivers where British interests had hitherto been paramount. Fortunately for the cause of Free Trade (which Germany had definitely abandoned in 1880) private individuals had had enough foresight and determination to step in with effect, and to repair the harm which otherwise must have come from the absorption of Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues in home affairs.

In the present case, British merchants were able to save the situation, because in the year 1879 the firms having important business dealings with the River Niger combined to form the National African Company in order to withstand the threatening pressure of the French advance soon to be described. In 1882 the Company's powers were extended, largely owing to Sir George Taubman Goldie, and it took the name of the National African Company. Extending its operations up the River Niger, it gradually cut the ground from under the French companies which had been formed for the exploitation and ultimate acquisition of those districts, so that after a time the French shareholders agreed to merge themselves in the British enterprise.

This important step was taken just in time to forestall German action from the side of the Cameroons, which threatened to shut out British trade from the banks of the River Benue and the sh.o.r.es of Lake Chad.

Forewarned of this danger, Sir George Goldie and his directors urged that bold and successful explorer, Mr. Joseph Thomson, to safeguard the nation's interests along the Benue and north thereof. Thomson had scarcely recovered from the hardships of his epoch-marking journey through Masailand; but he now threw himself into the breach, quickly travelled from England to the Niger, and by his unrivalled experience alike of the means of travel and of native ways, managed to frame treaties with the Sultans of Sokoto and Gando, before the German envoy reached his destination (1885). The energy of the National African Company and the prompt.i.tude and tact of Mr. Thomson secured for his countrymen undisputed access to Lake Chad and the great country peopled by the warlike Haussas[451].

[Footnote 451: This greatest among recent explorers of Africa died in 1895. He never received any appropriate reward from the Court for his great services to science and to the nation at large.]

Seeing that both France and Germany seek to restrict foreign trade in their colonies, while Great Britain gives free access to all merchants on equal terms, we may regard this brilliant success as a gain, not only for the United Kingdom, but for the commerce of the world. The annoyance expressed in influential circles in Germany at the failure of the plans for capturing the trade of the Benue district served to show the magnitude of the interests which had there been looked upon as prospectively and exclusively German. The delimitation of the new British territory with the Cameroon territory and its north-eastern extension to Lake Chad was effected by an Anglo-German agreement of 1886, Germany gaining part of the upper Benue and the southern sh.o.r.e of Lake Chad. In all, the territories controlled by the British Company comprised about 500,000 square miles (more than four times the size of the United Kingdom).

It is somewhat characteristic of British colonial procedure in that period that many difficulties were raised as to the grant of a charter to the company which had carried through this work of national importance; but on July 10, 1886, it gained that charter with the t.i.tle of the Royal Niger Company. The chief difficulties since that date have arisen from French aggressions on the west, which will be noticed presently.

In 1897 the Royal Niger Company overthrew the power of the turbulent and slave-raiding Sultan of Nupe, near the Niger, but, as has so often happened, the very success of the company doomed it to absorption by the nation. On January 1, 1900, its governing powers were handed over to the Crown; the Union Jack replaced the private flag; and Sir Frederick Lugard added to the services which he had rendered to the Empire in Uganda by undertaking the organisation of this great and fertile colony.

In an interesting paper, read before the Royal Geographical Society in November 1903, he thus characterised his administrative methods: "To rule through the native chiefs, and, while checking the extortionate levies of the past, fairly to a.s.sess and enforce the ancient tribute. By this means a fair revenue will be a.s.sured to the emirs, in lieu of their former source of wealth, which consisted in slaves and slave-raiding, and in extortionate taxes on trade. . . . Organised slave-raiding has become a thing of the past in the country where it lately existed in its worst form." He further stated that the new colony has made satisfactory progress; but light railways were much needed to connect Lake Chad with the Upper Nile and with the Gulf of Guinea. The area of Nigeria (apart from the Niger Coast Protectorate) is about 500,000 square miles[452].

[Footnote 452: _The Geographical Journal_, January 1, 1904, pp. 5, 18, 27.]

The result, then, of the activity of French and Germans in West Africa has, on the whole, not been adverse to British interests. The efforts leading to these noteworthy results above would scarcely have been made but for some external stimulus. As happened in the days of Dupleix and Montcalm, and again at the time of the little-known efforts of Napoleon I. to appropriate the middle of Australia, the spur of foreign compet.i.tion furthered not only the cause of exploration but also the expansion of the British Empire.

The expansion of French influence in Africa has been far greater than that of Germany; and, while arousing less attention on political grounds, it has probably achieved more solid results--a fact all the more remarkable when we bear in mind the exhaustion of France in 1871, and the very slow growth of her population at home. From 1872 to 1901 the number of her inhabitants rose from 36,103,000 to 38,962,000; while in the same time the figures for the German Empire showed an increase from 41,230,000 to 56,862,000. To some extent, then, the colonial growth of France is artificial; at least, it is not based on the imperious need which drives forth the surplus population of Great Britain and Germany.

Nevertheless, so far as governmental energy and organising skill can make colonies successful, the French possessions in West Africa, Indo-China, Madagascar, and the Pacific, have certainly justified their existence[453]. No longer do we hear the old joke that a French colonial settlement consists of a dozen officials, a _restaurateur_, and a hair-dresser.

[Footnote 453: See _La Colonisation chez les Peuples modernes_, by Paul Leroy-Beaulieu; _Discours et Opinions_, by Jules Ferry; _La France coloniale_ (6th edit. 1893), by Alfred Rambaud; _La Colonisation de l'Indo-Chine_ (1902), by Chailley-Bert; _L'Indo-Chine francaise_ (1905), by Paul Doumer (describing its progress under his administration); _Notre Epopee coloniale_ (1901), by P. Legendre; _La Mise en Valeur de notre Domaine coloniale_ (1903), by C. Guy; _Un Siecle d'Expansion coloniale_ (1900), by M. Dubois and A. Terrier; _Le Partage de l'Afrique_ (1898), by V. Deville.]

In the seventies the French Republic took up once more the work of colonial expansion in West Africa, in which the Emperor Napoleon III.

had taken great interest. The Governor of Senegal, M. Faidherbe, pushed on expeditions from that colony to the head waters of the Niger in the years 1879-81. There the French came into collision with a powerful slave-raiding chief, Samory, whom they worsted in a series of campaigns in the five years following. Events therefore promised to fulfil the desires of Gambetta, who, during his brief term of office in 1881, initiated plans for the construction of a trans-Saharan railway (never completed) and the establishment of two powerful French companies on the Upper Niger. French energy secured for the Republic the very lands which the great traveller Mungo Park first revealed to the gaze of civilised peoples. It is worthy of note that in the year 1865 the House of Commons, when urged to promote British trade and influence on that mighty river, pa.s.sed a resolution declaring that any extension of our rule in that quarter was inexpedient. So rapid, however, was the progress of the French arms on the Niger, and in the country behind our Gold Coast settlements, that private individuals in London and Liverpool began to take action. Already in 1878 the British firms trading with the Lower Niger had formed the United African Company, with the results noted above. A British Protectorate was also established in the year 1884 over the coast districts around Lagos, "with the view of guarding their interests against the advance of the French and Germans[454]."

[Footnote 454: For its progress see Colonial Reports, Niger Coast Protectorate, for 1898-99. For the Franco-German agreement of December 24, 1885, delimiting their West African lands, see Banning, _Le Partage politique de l'Afrique_, pp. 22-26. For the Anglo-French agreement of August 10, 1889, see Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 3 (1890).]

Meanwhile the French were making rapid progress under the lead of Gallieni and Archinard. In 1890 the latter conquered Segu-Sikoro, and a year later Bissandugu. A far greater prize fell to the tricolour at the close of 1893. Boiteux and Bonnier succeeded in leading a flotilla and a column to the mysterious city of Timbuctu; but a little later a French force sustained a serious check from the neighbouring tribes. The affair only spurred on the Republic to still greater efforts, which led finally to the rout of Samory's forces and his capture in the year 1898. That redoubtable chief, who had defied France for fifteen years, was sent as a prisoner to Gaboon.

These campaigns and other more peaceful "missions" added to the French possessions a vast territory of some 800,000 square kilometres in the basin of the Niger. Meanwhile disputes had occurred with the King of Dahomey, which led to the utter overthrow of his power by Colonel Dodds in a brilliant little campaign in 1892. The crowned slave-raider was captured and sent to Martinique.

These rapid conquests, especially those on the Niger, brought France and England more than once to the verge of war. In the autumn of the year 1897, the aggressions of the French at and near Bussa, on the right bank of the Lower Niger, led to a most serious situation. Despite its inclusion in the domains of the Royal Niger Company, that town was occupied by French troops. At the Guildhall banquet (November 9), Lord Salisbury made the firm but really prudent declaration that the Government would brook no interference with the treaty rights of a British company. The p.r.o.nouncement was timely; for French action at Bussa, taken in conjunction with the Marchand expedition from the Niger basin to the Upper Nile at Fashoda (see Chapter XVII.), seemed to betoken a deliberate defiance of the United Kingdom. Ultimately, however, the tricolour flag was withdrawn from situations that were legally untenable. These questions were settled by the Anglo-French agreement of 1898, which, we may add, cleared the ground for the still more important compact of 1904.

The limits of this chapter having already been pa.s.sed, it is impossible to advert to the parts played by Italy and Portugal in the part.i.tion of Africa. At best they have been subsidiary; the colonial efforts of Italy in the Red Sea and in Somaliland have as yet produced little else than disaster and disappointment. But for the part played by Serpa Pinto in the Zambesi basin, the role of Portugal has been one of quiescence. Some authorities, as will appear in the following chapter, would describe it by a less euphonious term; it is now known that slave-hunting goes on in the upper part of the Zambesi basin owned by them. The French settlement at Obock, opposite Perim, and the part.i.tion of Somaliland between England and Italy, can also only be named.

The general results of the part.i.tion of Africa may best be realised by studying the map at the close of this volume, and by the following statistics as presented by Mr. Scott Keltie in the _Encyclopoedia Britannica_:--

Square Miles.

French territories in Africa (inclusive of the Sahara) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,804,974 British (inclusive of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies, but exclusive of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan--610,000 square miles) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,713,910 German. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 933,380 Congo Free State. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 900,000 Portuguese. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 790,124 Italian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188,500

These results correspond in the main to the foresight and energy displayed by the several States, and to the initial advantages which they enjoyed on the coast of Africa. The methods employed by France and Germany present a happy union of individual initiative with intelligent and persistent direction by the State; for it must be remembered that up to the year 1880 the former possessed few good bases of operation, and the latter none whatever. The natural portals of Africa were in the hands of Great Britain and Portugal. It is difficult to say what would have been the present state of Africa if everything had depended on the officials at Downing Street and Whitehall. Certainly the expansion of British influence in that continent (apart from the Nile valley) would have been insignificant but for the exertions of private individuals.

Among them the names of Joseph Thomson, Sir William Mackinnon, Sir John Kirk, Sir Harry Johnston, Sir George Goldie, Sir Frederick Lugard, John Mackenzie, and Cecil Rhodes, will be remembered as those of veritable Empire-builders.

Viewing the matter from the European standpoint, the part.i.tion of Africa may be regarded as a triumph for the cause of peace. In the years 1880-1900, France, Germany, Great Britain, Portugal, Italy, and Belgium came into possession of new lands far larger than those for which French and British fleets and armies had fought so desperately in the eighteenth century. If we go further back and think of the wars waged for the possession of the barrier towns of Flanders, the contrast between the fruitless strifes of that age and the peaceful settlement of the affairs of a mighty continent will appear still more striking. It is true, of course, that the cutting up of the lands of natives by white men is as indefensible morally as it is inevitable in the eager expansiveness of the present age. Further, it may be admitted that the methods adopted towards the aborigines have sometimes been disgraceful.

But even so, the events of the years 1880-1900, black as some of them are, compare favourably with those of the long ages when the term "African trade" was merely a euphemism for slave-hunting.

NOTE.--The Parliamentary Papers on Angra Pequena (1884) show that the dispute with Germany was largely due to the desire of Lord Derby to see whether the Government of Cape Colony would bear the cost of administration of that whole coast if it were annexed. Owing to a change of Ministry at Cape Town early in 1884, the affirmative reply was very long in coming; and meantime Germany took decisive action, as described on p. 524.

CHAPTER XIX

THE CONGO FREE STATE

"The object which unites us here to-day is one of those which deserve in the highest degree to occupy the friends of humanity. To open to civilisation the only part of our globe where it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness which envelops entire populations, is, I venture to say, a crusade worthy of this century of progress."--KING LEOPOLD II., _Speech to the Geographical Congress of 1876 at Brussels_.

The Congo Free State owes its origin, firstly, to the self-denying pioneer-work of Livingstone; secondly, to the energy of the late Sir H.M. Stanley in clearing up the problems of African exploration which that devoted missionary had not fully solved, and thirdly, to the interest which His Majesty, Leopold II., King of the Belgians, has always taken in the opening up of that continent. It will be well briefly to note the chief facts which helped to fasten the gaze of Europe on the Congo basin; for these events had a practical issue; they served to bring King Leopold and Mr. Stanley into close touch with a view to the establishment of a settled government in the heart of Africa.

In 1874 Mr. H.M. Stanley (he was not knighted until the year 1899) received a commission from the proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_ to proceed to Central Africa in order to complete the geographical discoveries which had been cut short by the lamented death of Livingstone near Lake Bangweolo. That prince of explorers had not fully solved the riddle of the waterways of Central Africa. He had found what were really the head waters of the Congo at and near Lake Moero; and had even struck the mighty river itself as far down as Nyangwe; but he could not prove that these great streams formed the upper waters of the Congo.

Stanley's journey in 1874-1877 led to many important discoveries. He first made clear the shape and extent of Victoria Nyanza; he tracked the chief feeder of that vast reservoir; and he proved that Lake Tanganyika drained into the River Congo. Voyaging down its course to the mouth, he found great and fertile territories, thus proving what Livingstone could only surmise, that here was the natural waterway into the heart of "the Dark Continent."

Up to the year 1877 nearly all the pioneer work in the interior of the Congo basin was the outcome of Anglo-American enterprise. Therefore, so far as priority of discovery confers a claim to possession, that claim belonged to the English-speaking peoples. King Leopold recognised the fact and allowed a certain s.p.a.ce of time for British merchants to enter on the possession of what was potentially their natural "sphere of influence." Stanley, however, failed to convince his countrymen of the feasibility of opening up that vast district to peaceful commerce. At that time they were suffering from severe depression in trade and agriculture, and from the disputes resulting from the Eastern Question both in the Near East and in Afghanistan. For the time "the weary t.i.tan"

was preoccupied and could not turn his thoughts to commercial expansion, which would speedily have cured his evils. Consequently, in November 1878, Stanley proceeded to Brussels in order to present to King Leopold the opportunity which England let slip.

Already the King of the Belgians had succeeded in arousing widespread interest in the exploration of Africa. In the autumn of 1876 he convened a meeting of leading explorers and geographers of the six Great Powers and of Belgium for the discussion of questions connected with the opening up of that continent; but at that time, and until the results of Stanley's journey were made known, the King and his coadjutors turned their gaze almost exclusively on East Africa. It is therefore scarcely appropriate for one of the Belgian panegyrists of the King to proclaim that when Central Africa celebrates its Day of Thanksgiving for the countless blessings of civilisation conferred by that monarch, it will look back on the day of meeting of that Conference (Sept. 12, 1876) as the dawn of the new era of goodwill and prosperity[455]. King Leopold, in opening the Conference, made use of the inspiring words quoted at the head of this chapter, and asked the delegates to discuss the means to be adopted for "planting definitely the standard of civilisation on the soil of Central Africa."

[Footnote 455: _L'Afrique nouvelle_. Par. E. Descamps, Brussels, Paris, 1903, p. 8.]

As a result of the Conference, "The International a.s.sociation for the Exploration and Civilisation of Africa" was founded. It had committees in most of the capitals of Europe, but the energy of King Leopold, and the sums which he and his people advanced for the pioneer work of the a.s.sociation, early gave to that of Brussels a priority of which good use was made in the sequel[456]. The Great Powers were at this time distracted by the Russo-Turkish war and by the acute international crisis that supervened. Thus the jealousies and weakness of the Great Powers left the field free for Belgian activities, which, owing to the energy of a British explorer, were definitely concentrated upon the exploitation of the Congo.

[Footnote 456: For details see J. de C. Macdonell, _King Leopold II_., p. 113.]

On November 25, 1878, a separate committee of the International a.s.sociation was formed at Brussels with the name of "Comite d'etudes du Haut Congo." In the year 1879 it took the t.i.tle of the "International a.s.sociation of the Congo," and for all practical purposes superseded its progenitor. Outwardly, however, the a.s.sociation was still international.

Stanley became its chief agent on the River Congo, and in the years 1879-1880 made numerous treaties with local chiefs. In February 1880 he founded the first station of the a.s.sociation at Vivi, and within four years established twenty-four stations on the main river and its chief tributaries. The cost of these explorations was largely borne by King Leopold.

The King also commissioned Lieutenant von Wissmann to complete his former work of discovery in the great district watered by the River Kasai and its affluents; and in and after 1886 he and his coadjutor, Dr.