Intervention and colonization in Africa

Front matter

H3I

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Preface

Empeeoe William II is fond of quoting the remark of Prince von Biilow that Germany must have " a place in the sun." By this he means that the Empire has joined the expansion movement in which all the leading nations are participating, and intends to take a prominent part in it. She desires, not only to develop her national resources, trade, and colonies, but also to secure a place of influence and of power. Great Britain and France, by reason of their history, their commerce, and their colonies, have a recognized position today in the forefront of the world's activities. And Germany must have a place of equal advantage. The expansion of nations in recent years has been an attempt of the European states to secure territory and economic concessions, in order that they may provide adequately for the future development of their respective countries, and that they may maintain their present prominent positions in the family of nations. It is a contest for power and privilege.

In the following pages the author has attempted to trace, chiefly from official sources, the origin and development of this movement in its main features during the past forty years. To avoid confusion, which is certain to arise with the presentation of a multiplicity of facts and events, no mention has been made of the smaller colonial developments that have had little bearing upon the general issue. Great Britain has four valuable colonies on the west coast of Africa: Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria ; but the history of one — Nigeria — has been given in detail. The story of this colony furnishes an excellent example of the British colonial methods and policy on the vi PREFACE

West Coast, and is the only one specially connected with the general contest for territory in that part of Africa. Portugal has extensive possessions in Portuguese Angola and East Africa, but thus far the development of these territories has not been materially affected by the general competition for land in Africa. Therefore they have not been dealt with extensively in this volume. And for sinular reasons descriptions of the French colony of Madagascar, of Italian Eritrea, and of British, French, and Italian SomalUand have been omitted.

The author hopes to complete this study of European Expansion and World Politics in a second volume on European Intervention and Competition in Asia. And he wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to his colleague, Dr. Benjamin B. Wallace, who has read the proofs, prepared the third appendix and the index, and given valuable assistance in the collection of material.

EvANSTON, May, 1914.

Contents

INTRODUCTION. By James T. Shotwell . . . . iv

I. EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND WORLD POLITICS 1 Character and causes of European expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — Industrial and financial revolution — Changes in colonial ideals and methods — Influence of the popular will on foreign policy — Effect of the increase of population and emigration — Motives for expansion and imperialism — Colonial possessions of European states in Africa in 1870 — The great explorations.

II. THE FOUNDING OF THE CONGO INDEPENDENT STATE 20

Introduction

There is a tradition among historians that, since history deals with the past, the further a subject is removed from the present, the more historical it is. School-books and lectures often reflect this point of view. The Peloponnesian War was forced upon the innocent children of the nineteenth century in all its wearisome detail, while the pages of the history manuals closed either with Napoleon in exile or at most with Bismarck dictating terms of peace. Just across the threshold of the world of to-day one read the word " finis." It was the close of the world's story !

The exclusion of recent events from the field of history was justified by the historians upon the plea that only as events receded into the past could their proper perspective be seen. Often what seems of most moment at the time proves to be but temporary and local in importance. The Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, for example, is now seen to have been an incident of less importance than the relatively unknown social revolution of 1789, which destroyed the remnants of medieval feudalism in France. The dramatic interest of the tragedy led those closest to it to concentrate unduly upon the story of mobs and guillotine, and only the sober historian of a later day could correct the perspective, after the issues involved had ceased to arouse the passions of the investigator. Warned by such experiences, scientific historians of the last century accepted it as a canon, that one could write accurately and intelligently only of things that happened before one's time.

There is much force in this contention, but if carried out to its logical conclusion, — that one must wait for facts to rvi INTRODUCTION

be dead before the historian can deal with theto, — historywould cease to have interest or value for any but antiquarians. There is fortunately no need to accept such a conclusion. The history of one's ovm time is as proper a theme for the modem historian as it was for Thucydides or Polybius. Whatever future historians may recast of what we write or teach, if we bring to the task the scientific temper and the patient labor of scholarship, we need not hesitate to correct that worst blunder in education, which, by cutting off the past from the present, made the one unreal and robbed the other of its truer meaning.

The last thirty years have witnessed two of the greatest changes in all the varied history of European civilization. On the one hand, the rise of capitalized industry has reached such a point that it has practically remade the Old World, destroying and rebuilding out-worn, medieval cities, planting factories and awakening democracy. On the other hand, and largely as a result of the new economic and social forces, this European society has expanded throughout the world. This expansion has come both by way of the enterprise of adventurous traders pushing their wares and gathering in the rich natural treasures of savage lands, and through formal conquest by imperialistic governments. In the years of peace which followed the attainment by Germany and Italy of national unity, and more especially in the thirty years from 1884 to 1914, the main problems confronting statesmen were bound up with either of these two policies : the adjustment of the nation to the changing conditions of life at home, and expansion, for markets or colonies, abroad.

Naturally, this story of expansion cannot be properly understood when divorced from that of the affairs at home. But, if we keep the thread of connection in our minds, and from time to time refresh our memories with statistics of stock markets and parliamentary debates, we can follow

INTRODUCTION xvii

here a theme which should appeal to the imagination, like a tale from an Elizabethan romance. In the twentieth century, conquistadors, clad in khaki or glittering in helmeted display, have proclaimed to most of the savages of the globe that they belong henceforth to European nations. On the wharves of London there are goods from German workshops for the merchant adventurers of to-day to carry off to Bantus or Negritos. Piles of coal from Cardiff lie inside the coral reefs of Australasian islands, for the ships which come to break the silence of farther Hebrides than Wordsworth dreamed of. But for the historian there is more significance than romance in such events. The men whom Joseph Conrad and Kipling describe are responsible for the transformation of Africa and Asia. And that transforma? tion in its turn is mainly responsible for those policies ol imperial expansion, of commercial and colonial rivalries which underlie the causes of the present war.

The partitioning of Africa and the penetration of Asia are thus chapters of the history of European civilization. But they are of vital interest to more than historians. They furnish as well the data for a survey of economic and political forces to-day. The partitioning and penetrating are still going on : the war itself is part of the process. They wiU go on when the war is over, though perhaps with crippled pace from the destruction of resources. And in that vast worldmovement of the coming years, the United States is bound to have a growing interest as it develops the way of other industrial nations. So far we have lacked the capital for any serious expansion of business — except in one or two branches — outside the limits of the country, and we continue to use foreign capital to help us out at home. But the time is coming rapidly when the American capitalist will be turning his attention elsewhere, and mainly toward exploiting whatever is left to exploit in the great world outxviii INTRODUCTION

side. When that time does come, old ideals of national seclusion will be rudely shattered. Whatever policies we may accept as a nation — and in the light of recent events it is impossible to forecast what they will be — the lessons of statecraft should be learned from those whose enterprise and whose blunderings have given us this page of history — now blurred and stained with the blood of the vastest tragedy in the history of civilization.

We have, therefore, more than a passing interest in the account here given of the various types of European civilization in Africa. The fine and heroic work of British residents in the Niger region, for instance, thrown into contrast with the sordid, cruel methods employed in other parts of the continent, the battle with disease and the conquest of natural obstacles — desert and tropical jungles — are all parts of a common heritage in the new world-history which the age of the industrial revolution has opened up. It is not simply that we are affected by such things as the increased output of African gold, which helps to raise the price of all we buy and sell, but that with the emergence of world-politics, we inherit something of the result of other nations' achievements and so make their past our own as well. It is sincerely to be hoped that, in this transformar tion of our outlook, this book may contribute helpfully its wealth of fact and breadth of view.

J. T. Shotwell.

Coi-trMBiA UurvBRsrrY.

Chapter I Eueopean Expansion And World Politics

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the leading nations of the world engaged in a remarkable territorial expansion, — an expansion with an imperialistic tendency. The age of exploration and discovery which produced a Columbus and a Cortez was reproduced again in an era which gave forth a Stanley and a King Leopold II. Africa was to be to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries what the Americas had been to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Between the years 1884 and 1900, France and Great Britain each acquired over 3,500,000 square miles of territory in the Dark Continent — an amount equal to the whole of the United States including Alaska, — while the Kaiser and the King of Belgium were marking out 1,000,000 and 900,000 square miles respectively for themselves.

This expansion, however, was not confined to Africa ; it spread to Central Asia, to the Far East, to the Philippines and the distant isles of the Pacific. There was an intimate connection running through the whole movement ; and the activities of Russia in Turkestan and Manchuria, of France in the Sudan and Madagascar, of England in Nigeria and South Africa, and of Germany in East Africa and Samoa,

2 INTERVENTION AND COLONIZATION IN AFBICA

must be carefully studied in order to grasp its real ^^^^ " cance. At first, the European states directed their eftoi-ts towards the acquisition of territory and the founding of colonial empires, in order to secure commercial power and the control of trade centers. As time went on, however, their point of view changed ; and the movement, within the last decade, has become economic and commercial, rather than territorial. Narrow and selfish ideas of colonial politics and economics have given place to broader and saner conceptions of the relations of the mother countries to their offspring and to one another. The European powers have realized that the acquisition of vast territories is not in itself genuine national expansion, and that these great possessions cannot be maintained without a scientific study of their peoples, customs, and institutions, and the proper development of their governments and natural resources. This places a great burden upon the home country, as it involves the expenditure of immense sums of money and the employment of hundreds of its best citizens. And the nations have learned that, after all, the world is a small place where the interests of all constantly overlap, and where it is no longer wise or possible to maintain exclusive trade monopolies.

Previous to 1880, the European governments were too much occupied with local affairs, and too weak financially and economically, to think seriously of colonial empires. When the smoke of those vital conflicts of the nineteenth century — the Franco -Prussian War and the Eusso -Turkish struggle of 1877-78 — had cleared away, and the map of Europe had been adjusted for a time with a fair degree of satisfaction, the statesmen were able to rise above the petty strife for military glory and local territorial aggrandizement, and to take a saner, broader view of a nation's destiny. And a transformation was begun which was to lift European diplomacy out of its Mediterranean leading-strings and place it upon a plane as wide as the world. Man's political horizon was elevated until European and American politics became world politics, embracing every state and every land.

Fortunately, during the years 1870 to 1890 the world was undergoing a remarkable financial and economic development that would make possible this world diplomacy of the future. In Germany an industrial revolution took place, which dotted the land with factories and increased its trade to over $1,700,000,000 in 1890. France paid off her §1,000,000,000 war indemnity within two years ; and she underwent an equally astonishing development, loaned Germany $250,000,000 for industrial improvements, and became the banker of Europe. The extensive British trade grew from ,£547,000,000 in 1870 to £749,000,000 by 1890, and the production of manufactured goods in the United States from $3,000,000,000 to $9,000,000,000 in the same period.

The total output of gold increased from $477,000,000 to $836,000,000 during the same time ; and the yearly product of sUver grew from $39,000,000 in 1850 to $135,- 000,000 in 1885, and reached $217,700,000 by 1904. By 1900 the wealth of European states was reputed to be approximately $246,600,000,000 ; and private resources were accumulating with equal rapidity. In 1870 the Bank of England, the Bank of France, and a few private institutions in the capitals of those states and in New York City, were furnishing most of the capital for foreign investment ; but by 1907 there were twenty-one private banks in England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, which possessed a total of over $2,480,000,000 of capital, surplus and deposits. In December of 1909, the Comptroller of the Treasury reported that the total resources of the banks of the United States reached the stupendous sum of

4 INTERVENTION AND COLONIZATION IN AFRICA 121,100,000,000. To grasp the value and significance of this marvelous growth in capital, one has only to recall the rapid development of the multitude of rich and powerful corporations both in this country and abroad during the last quarter of a century.

This astonishing increase in capital and industry was accompanied by an equally remarkable development in methods of production and transportation. Machinery replaced hand labor in the shop and on the farm, —on the latter to such an extent that in twenty years' time 600 men were doing the work formerly requiring 2145. Steam, extensively employed in manufacturmg only since 1865, has more than doubled man's productive power, and electricity has increased it still more. The steamboat and the railway displaced the sailing-vessel and the horse, while at the same time the cost of transportation was greatly reduced. In 1860 to 1870 wheat could hardly be moved 150 to 200 miles in Europe without losing its value. Now it can be transported halfway round the world for a fraction of its price.

Thus, through a wonderful material development in industry, capital, and transportation facilities, the way was prepared for a world-wide colonial expansion. In the political field, also, new movements were taking place. Governments were growing in resources, in wealth, in effectiveness, and in concentration of power. The France, which with dignity, firmness, and skill incorporated Tunis and entered with determined tread the jungles of the Sudan in the early eighties, was not the prostrate and divided nation of the seventies. The British lion, which with a calm forcefulness insisted upon its share of Africa in the eighties and nineties, was not the vacillating, meek creature of the sixties and seventies. The masterful, united Germany, backed by a Triple Alliance, interfering in Southwest Africa and Morocco, was no longer the jealous group of mediocre states, cajoled into a union by the exigencies of war and the persuasion of a Bismarck.

This development has been accompanied in nearly every state by a growth in the power of the Federal or Central authority and by a thorough organization of the work of the executive. Within the United States, where the labors of the cabinet departments have been so carefully and systematically developed, the Federal Government has been steadily taking unto itseK duties and responsibilities of which none would have dreamed fifty years ago. In Germany the Imperial Government has increased steadily in strength since its organization in 1871, while its ruler has elaborated his theory of divine right. In France the growth of the Central Government in power and efficiency has been steady, until French premiers and cabinets are able to direct the affairs of state with a firmness and decision unknown in the days of Guizot and Thiers. And in England the strength of the cabinet, which became a fixture under Queen Victoria, has increased until it has now secured a control over the House of Lords nearly equal to that which it enjoys in the House of Commons.

Equally important changes were taking place in the colonial activities of European states, as well as in their general attitude towards colonization. By 1830 the old "mercantile system " had served its day ; and the powers realized that colonial monopolies and the uncontrolled rule of governors from the home country were no longer an unmixed blessing, either for the colonies or for the mother country. Great Britain — the greatest of the colonial states — was the first to move ; and between 1830 and 1860 a complete reversal of her whole colonial policy took place. The adoption of the free-trade policy at home brought about the emancipation of the colonies, and was the source of as much benefit abroad as it was to the British Isles themselves. This was accompanied, through the influence of Mr. Wakefield and of the Colonization Society founded in 1830, by the granting of home rule to the colonies. Up to that time the bureaucratic system of colonial rule employed by England, where everything — even to unimportant details — was controlled from Downing Street, had proved highly detrimental to the development and progress of the colonies. Not even the strong hand of a Lord Stanley or a Lord Grey, now and then in control of the Colonial Office, was sufficient to redeem the system.

" In some back room," wrote Mr. C. Buller, " you will find all the Mother Country which really exercises supremacy, and really maintains connection with the vast and widely scattered Colonies of Britain. We know not the name, the history, or the functions of the individual, into the narrow limits of whose person we find the Mother Country shrunk.

" There are rooms in the Colonial Office with old and meager furniture, bookcases crammed with colonial gazettes and newspapers, tables covered with baize, and some old and faded chairs scattered about, in which those who have personal applications to make are doomed to wait until the interview can be obtained. Here, if perchance you shall some day be forced to tarry, you will find strange, anxiouslooking beings, who pace to and fro in feverish impatience or sit dejected at the table, unable in the agitation of their thoughts to find any occupation to while away their hours, and starting every time the doors open, in hopes that the messenger is come to announce that their turn is arrived. Those are men with colonial grievances. . . . One is a recalled governor, boiling over with a sense of mortified pride and frustrated policy ; another a judge, recalled for daring to resist the compact of his Colony ; another a merchant, whose whole property has been destroyed by some job or oversight; another the organ of the remonstrances of some colonial Parliament ; another a widow struggling for some pension on which her hopes of existence hang ; and perhaps another is a man, whose project is under consideration. Every one has passed hours in that dull but anxious attendance. . . . After a short conference you will generally see him return, with disappointment stamped on his brow, and, quitting the Office, wend his lonely way home to despair, or perhaps to return to his Colony and rebel."

These are the words of a partisan, but they convey a reasonably accurate picture of the actual condition of affairs at the time.

It was from such leading-strings that the colonies were gradually emancipated. Beginning with Canada in 1840, where colonial home rule and union originated through the activities of Lord Durham in 1839 and 1840, responsible government was introduced into New South Wales in 1843, South Australia in 1844, Victoria and Tasmania in 1851, New Zealand in 1852, Cape Colony in 1854, and into Queensland in 1859. By 1870 the new system was thoroughly developed and ia good working order in all these typical British colonies.

While this was going on, the old wasteful system of free land grants was abolished, and the Government undertook to regulate the sale of the crown lands, on an equitable and scientific basis. The discussions of party politics in Great Britain were greatly relieved by the removal of numerous petty questions of colonial life and policy from the field of Parliament's activities. And the imperial forces were gradually withdrawn from the self-supporting colonies, until the Colonial Secretary reported, in 1873, that the military expenses for the colonies were confined almost entirely to the necessities of imperial defense.

During this period territorial expansion was not popular

8 INTERVENTION AND COLONIZATION IN AFRICA with the Colonial Office. Lord Derby, Lord Granville, and Lord Blachford — all pupils of the Manchester School of Bright and Cobden — had no faith in a " Greater Britain " or confidence in the policy of responsible government. Lord Blachford, who was a leading factor in directing the colonial policy from 1860 to 1870, wrote, "I have always believed — and the belief has so confirmed and consolidated itself that I can hardly realize the possibility of any one seriously thinking the contrary — that the destiny of our Colonies is independence ; and that in this point of view the function of the Colonial Office is to secure that our connection, while it lasts, shall be as profitable as possible."

Some acquisitions, like New Zealand in 1840, Natal in 1843, the Transvaal in 1852, Basutoland in 1871, and the Fiji Islands in 1874, were forced upon Great Britain by unexpected and serious developments. But in no case was the extension of territory due to any preconceived policy of expansion. The almost universal sentiment of the British statesmen was that none of the new acquisitions would in any way fairly compensate the Home Government for the expense and trouble of caring for them. It was felt that there should be no further expansion except through commercial enterprises. By 1860 Parliament had entered upon a policy of retrenchment ; and in 1865 a Committee of the House of Commons composed of CardweU, C. Forteseue, Lord Stanley, Adderley, and W. E. Forster, recommended that any further extension of territory was inexpedient and that England should withdraw as rapidly as possible from all her holdings on the west coast of Africa, except Sierra Leone.

Moreover, Great Britain was too poor to embark seriously upon great colonial undertakings. In the majority of cases where she was compelled by force of circumstances to take over new lands, fi^nancial reasons forced her to entrust the development and control of those countries to commerclal companies, such as the New Zealand Company from 1835 to 1850, the South Australian Company from 1835, and the River Niger Navigation Company in 1864. This practice of utilizing the services of great trading companies was taken up later as a regular method of colonial expansion by Lord Granville, when he chartered the British NcJrth Borneo Company in 1882.

Through the whole period from 1830 to 1880, the spirit of conservatism and hesitation was triumphant. The British Colonial Office seemed to know its own mind ; but it was " afraid to take in hand any definite policy." It was afraid of the expense, of the jealousy of other nations, and of the new responsibilities that every change of policy or accession of territory involved. But more than these was the serious handicap of a procession of colonial ministers and secretaries, each with his own policy and theories as to colonial rule and colonial expansion or regression. In the fifty-five years, extending from 1830 to 1885, there were thirty colonial secretaries,-^ of whom six served from four to six years, but the other twenty-four averaged scarcely a year and one fifth apiece.

Tendencies were at work as early as the sixties, which promised to bring to an end this period of uncertainty, and to create a new conception of the colonial relations and colonial activities of the British Empire. About 1885 the change in the policy and position of the Colonial Office was complete. The move for South African Confederation from 1874 to 1885 and the Colonial Conferences of 1883 and 1887 mark the beginning of a new era in the life of the British Empire. The " Imperial Federation Leagues " of Lord Eosebery and the colonial tariff union of Mr. Cham-

1 The office of Secretary of State for the Colonies was not created until 1854, the work of this department heing combined with the Department of War under one portfolio from 1801 to 1854.

10 INTERVENTION AND COLONIZATION IN AFRICA berlain were the first suggestions of the movement for imperial federation now so popular. One of the most important factors in this transformation was the influence of the people upon the British foreign policy. The franchise, which had been placed on a sound basis by the reforms of 1832, was enlarged by the laws of 1867 and 1884; and thereafter the effect of public opinion upon the conduct of British foreign affairs was distinctly noticeable. Disraeli, one of the first modern statesmen to undertake an aggressive foreign policy, was put out of ofBce in 1880 because his acts failed to meet with popular favor ; and the Gladstone ministry which succeeded him fell five years later, on account of the public disapproval of its vacillating conduct of foreign affairs. But it is safe to say that, when the British Government took a prominent and dignified part in the forward movement for territory during the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century, it had the support of the people behind it. The same lethargy and indecision prevailed in the direction of French foreign policy. No one took mucb interest in colonial affairs. To the majority of French statesmen, colonies were as useless and unjustifiable an expense as "poids mort a trainer " and " une loge a I'Opera." Officials appointed to the colonial service considered themselves exiled ; and pubKc men generally considered colonial possessions as places fit only for the training of soldiers and sailors, for the harboring of criminals, and for the dissipation of the wealth and blood of the French nation. There was little or no public discussion of the question ; and the masses were totally ignorant of, and indifferent to, the success or failure of the national colonial policy. Between 1815 and 1870 France more than doubled her territorial possessions outside of Europe, securing a firm foothold in Indo-China, Algeria, and Senegal ; but this was not the result of any preconceived or aggressive forward policy. These annexations were largely accidental — the result of the sudden desire of a few prominent officials to gain glory or popularity. In fact, the movement was so ill-conceived and so carelessly undertaken, while the greatest ignorance prevailed as to local conditions, that in both the Tonquin and the Algerian campaigns there was a great waste of life and money ; and it was many years before the French reaped any benefits from their new possessions.

For a decade after the Franco-Prussian War, all colonial progress was stopped by the weakness and poverty of the Government, by the long strife between the political parties which more than once brought the country to the verge of war or disrupture, and by the lack of scientific knowledge and modern methods of managing colonies. The system of home rule accompanied by universal suffrage and representation in the French Parliament, which had been given to the colonies by the First and Second Republics, and which had been the source of endless troubles, particularly in the Antilles, was replaced, from 1854 to 1866, by the more efficient rule of governors with almost full powers and supported by troops. Yet the service in many places remained so inefficient and slovenly that the French earned the reputation of poor colonizers.