XVIII. THE PARTITION OF AFRICA
In the opening up of new lands by European peoples the order of events is generally somewhat as follows:--First come explorers, pioneers, or missionaries. These having thrown some light on the character of a land or of its people, traders follow in their wake; and in due course factories are formed and settlements arise. The ideas of the new-comers as to the rights of property and landholding differ so widely from those of the natives, that quarrels and strifes frequently ensue. Warships and soldiers then appear on the scene; and the end of the old order of things is marked by the hoisting of the Union Jack, or the French or German tricolour. In the case of the expansion of Russia as we have seen, the procedure is far otherwise. But Africa has been for the most part explored, exploited, and annexed by agencies working from the sea and proceeding in the way just outlined.
The period since the year 1870 has for the most part witnessed the operation of the last and the least romantic of these so-called civilising efforts. The great age of African exploration was then drawing to a close. In the year 1870 that devoted missionary explorer, David Livingstone, was lost to sight for many months owing to his earnest longing peacefully to solve the great problem of the waterways of Central Africa, and thus open up an easy path for the suppression of the slave-trade. But when, in 1871, Mr. H.M. Stanley, the enterprising correspondent of the New York Herald, at the head of a rescue expedition, met the grizzled, fever-stricken veteran near Ujiji and greeted him with the words--"Mr. Livingstone, I presume," the age of mystery and picturesqueness vanished away.
A change in the spirit and methods of exploration naturally comes about when the efforts of single individuals give place to collective enterprise[424], and that change was now rapidly to come over the whole field of African exploration. The day of the Mungo Parks and Livingstones was passing away, and the day of associations and companies was at hand. In 1876, Leopold II., King of the Belgians, summoned to Brussels several of the leading explorers and geographers in order to confer on the best methods of opening up Africa. The specific results of this important Conference will be considered in the next chapter; but we may here note that, under the auspices of the "International Association for the Exploration and Civilisation of Africa" then founded, much pioneer work was carried out in districts remote from the River Congo. The vast continent also yielded up its secrets to travellers working their way in from the south and the north, so that in the late seventies the white races opened up to view vast and populous districts which imaginative chartographers in other ages had diversified with the Mountains of the Moon or with signs of the Zodiac and monstrosities of the animal creation.
[Footnote 424: In saying this I do not underrate the achievements of explorers like Stanley, Thomson, Cameron, Schweinfurth, Pogge, Nachtigall, Pinto, de Brazza, Johnston, Wissmann, Holub, Lugard, and others; but apart from the first two, none of them made discoveries that can be called epoch-marking.]
The last epoch-marking work carried through by an individual was accomplished by a Scottish explorer, whose achievements almost rivalled those of Livingstone. Joseph Thomson, a native of Dumfriesshire, succeeded in 1879 to the command of an exploring party which sought to open up the country around the lakes of Nyassa and Tanganyika. Four years later, on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society, he undertook to examine the country behind Mombasa which was little better known than when Vasco da Gama first touched there. In this journey Thomson discovered two snow-capped mountains, Kilimanjaro and Kenia, and made known the resources of the country as far inland as the Victoria Nyanza. Considering the small resources he had at hand, and the cruel and warlike character of the Masai people through whom he journeyed, this journey was by far the most remarkable and important in the annals of exploration during the eighties. Thomson afterwards undertook to open a way from the Benuë, the great eastern affluent of the Niger, to Lake Chad and the White Nile. Here again he succeeded beyond all expectation, while his tactful management of the natives led to political results of the highest importance, as will shortly appear.
These explorations and those of French, German, and Portuguese travellers served to bring nearly the whole of Africa within the ken of the civilised world, and revealed the fact that nearly all parts of tropical Africa had a distinct commercial value.
This discovery, we may point out, is the necessary preliminary to any great and sustained work of colonisation and annexation. Three conditions may be looked on as essential to such an effort. First, that new lands should be known to be worth the labour of exploitation or settlement; second, that the older nations should possess enough vitality to pour settlers and treasure into them; and thirdly, that mechanical appliances should be available for the overcoming of natural obstacles.
Now, a brief glance at the great eras of exploring and colonising activity will show that in all these three directions the last thirty years have presented advantages which are unique in the history of the world. A few words will suffice to make good this assertion. The wars which constantly devastated the ancient world, and the feeble resources in regard to navigation wielded by adventurous captains, such as Hanno the Carthaginian, grievously hampered all the efforts of explorers by sea, while mechanical appliances were so weak as to cripple man's efforts at penetrating the interior. The same is true of the mediaeval voyagers and travellers. Only the very princes among men, Columbus, Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Cabot, Cabral, Gilbert, and Raleigh, could have done what they did with ships that were mere playthings. Science had to do her work of long and patient research before man could hopefully face the mighty forces and malignant influences of the tropics. Nor was the advance of knowledge and invention sufficient by itself to equip man for successful war against the ocean, the desert, the forest, and the swamp. The political and social development of the older countries was equally necessary. In order that thousands of settlers should be able and ready to press in where the one great leader had shown the way, Europe had to gain something like peace and stability. Only thus, when the natural surplus of the white races could devote itself to the task of peacefully subduing the earth rather than to the hideous work of mutual slaughter, could the life-blood of Europe be poured forth in fertilising streams into the waste places of the other continents.
The latter half of the eighteenth century promised for a brief space to inaugurate such a period of expansive life. The close of the Seven Years' War seemed to be the starting point for a peaceful campaign against the unknown; but the efforts of Cook, d'Entrecasteaux, and others then had little practical result, owing to the American War of Independence, and the great cycle of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. These in their turn left Europe too exhausted to accomplish much in the way of colonial expansion until the middle of the nineteenth century. Even then, when the steamship and the locomotive were at hand to multiply man's powers, there was, as yet, no general wish, except on the part of the more fortunate English-speaking peoples, to enter into man's new heritage. The problems of Europe had to be settled before the age of expansive activity could dawn in its full radiance. As has been previously shown, Europe was in an introspective mood up to the years 1870-1878.
Our foregoing studies have shown that the years following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8, brought about a state of political equilibrium which made for peace and stagnation in Europe; and the natural forces of the Continent, cramped by the opposition of equal and powerful forces, took the line of least resistance--away from Europe. For Russia, the line of least resistance was in Central Asia. For all other European States it was the sea, and the new lands beyond.
Furthermore, in that momentous decade the steamship and locomotive were constantly gaining in efficiency; electricity was entering the arena as a new and mighty force; by this time medical science had so far advanced as to screen man from many of the ills of which the tropics are profuse; and the repeating rifle multiplied the power of the white man in his conflicts with savage peoples. When all the advantages of the present generation are weighed in the balance against the meagre equipment of the earlier discoverers, the nineteenth century has scant claim for boasting over the fifteenth. In truth, its great achievements in this sphere have been practical and political. It has only fulfilled the rich promise of the age of the great navigators. Where they could but wonderingly skirt the fringes of a new world, the moderns have won their way to the heart of things and found many an Eldorado potentially richer than that which tempted the cupidity of Cortes and Pizarro.
In one respect the European statesmen of the recent past tower above their predecessors of the centuries before. In the eighteenth century the "mercantilist" craze for seizing new markets and shutting out all possible rivals brought about most of the wars that desolated Europe. In the years 1880-1890 the great Powers put forth sustained and successful efforts to avert the like calamity, and to cloak with the mantle of diplomacy the eager scrambles for the unclaimed lands of the world.
For various reasons the attention of statesmen turned almost solely on Africa. Central and South America were divided among States that were nominally civilised and enjoyed the protection of the Monroe Doctrine put forward by the United States. Australia was wholly British. In Asia the weakness of China was but dimly surmised; and Siam and Cochin China alone offered any field for settlement or conquest by European peoples from the sea. In Polynesia several groups of islands were still unclaimed; but these could not appease the land-hunger of Europe. Africa alone provided void spaces proportionate to the needs and ambitions of the white man. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 served to bring the east coast of that continent within easy reach of Europe; and the discoveries on the Upper Nile, Congo, and Niger opened a way into other large parts. Thus, by the year 1880, everything favoured the "partition of Africa."
Rumour, in the guise of hints given by communicative young attachés or "well-informed" correspondents, ascribes the first beginnings of the plans for the partition of Africa to the informal conversations of statesmen at the time of the Congress of Berlin (1878). Just as an architect safeguards his creation by providing a lightning-conductor, so the builder of the German Empire sought to divert from that fabric the revengeful storms that might be expected from the south-west. Other statesmen were no less anxious than Bismarck to draw away the attention of rivals from their own political preserves by pointing the way to more desirable waste domains. In short, the statesmen of Europe sought to plant in Africa the lightning-conductors that would safeguard the new arrangements in Europe, including that of Cyprus. The German and British Governments are known then to have passed on hints to that of France as to the desirability of her appropriating Tunis. The Republic entered into the schemes, with results which have already been considered (Chapter XII.); and, as a sequel to the occupation of Tunis, plans were set on foot for the eventual conquest of the whole of the North-West of Africa (except Morocco and a few British, Spanish, and Portuguese settlements) from Cape Bon to Cape Verde, and thence nearly to the mouth of the River Niger. We may also note that in and after 1883 France matured her schemes for the conquest of part, and ultimately the whole, of Madagascar, a project which reached completion in the year 1885[425].
[Footnote 425: For the French treaty of December 17, 1885, with Madagascar see Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 2 (1886).]
The military occupation of Egypt by Great Britain in 1882 also served to quicken the interest of European Powers in Africa. It has been surmised that British acquiescence in French supremacy in Tunis, West Africa, and Madagascar had some connection with the events that transpired in Egypt, and that the perpetuation of British supremacy in the valley of the Nile was virtually bought by the surrender of most of our political and trading interests in these lands, the lapse of which under the French "protective" regime caused much heart-burning in commercial circles.
Last among the special causes that concentrated attention on Africa was the activity of King Leopold's Association at Brussels in opening up the Congo district in the years 1879-1882. Everything therefore tended to make the ownership of tropical Africa the most complex question of the early part of the eighties.
For various reasons Germany was a little later than France and England in entering the field. The hostility of France on the west, and, after 1878, that of Russia on the east, made it inadvisable for the new Empire to give hostages to Fortune, in the shape of colonies, until by alliances it secured its position at home and possessed a fleet strong enough to defend distant possessions. In some measure the German Government had to curb the eagerness of its "colonial party." The present writer was in Germany in the year 1879, when the colonial propaganda was being pushed forward, and noted the eagerness in some quarters, and the distrust in others, with which pamphlets like that of Herr Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland Colonien? were received. Bismarck himself at first checked the "colonials," until he felt sure of the European situation. That, however, was cleared up to some extent by the inclusion of Italy in the compact which thus became the Triple Alliance (May 1882), and by the advent to office of the pacific Chancellor, de Giers, at St. Petersburg a little later. There was therefore the less need officially to curb the colonising instinct of the Teutonic people. The formation of the German Colonial Society at Frankfurt in December 1882, and the immense success attending its propaganda, spurred on the statesmen of Berlin to take action. They looked longingly (as they still do) towards Brazil, in whose southern districts their people had settled in large numbers; but over all that land the Monroe Doctrine spread its sheltering wings. A war with the United States would have been madness, and Germany therefore turned to Polynesia and Africa. We may note here that in 1885 she endeavoured to secure the Caroline Islands from Spain, whose title to them seemed to have lapsed; but Spanish pride flared up at the insult, and after a short space Bismarck soothed ruffled feelings at Madrid by accepting the mediation of the Pope, who awarded them to Spain--Germany, however, gaining the right to occupy an islet of the group as a coaling station.
Africa, however, absorbed nearly all the energy of the German colonial party. The forward wing of that party early in the year 1884 inaugurated an anti-British campaign in the press, which probably had the support of the Government. As has been stated in chapter XII., that was the time when the Three Emperors' League showed signs of renewed vitality; and Bismarck, after signing the secret treaty of March 24, 1884 (later on ratified at Skiernevice), felt safe in pressing on colonial designs against England in Africa, especially as Russia was known to be planning equally threatening moves against the Queen's Empire in Asia. We do not know enough of what then went on between the German and Russian Chancellors to assert that they formed a definite agreement to harry British interests in those continents; but, judging from the general drift of Bismarck's diplomacy and from the "nagging" to which England was thenceforth subjected for two years, it seems highly probable that the policy ratified at Skiernevice aimed at marking time in European affairs and striding onwards in other continents at the expense of the Island Power.
The Anglophobes of the German press at once fell foul of everything British; and that well-known paper the Kölnische Zeitung in an article of April 22, 1884, used the following words:--"Africa is a large pudding which the English have prepared for themselves at other people's expense, and the crust of which is already fit for eating. Let us hope that our sailors will put a few pepper-corns into it on the Guinea coast, so that our friends on the Thames may not digest it too rapidly." The sequel will show whether the simile correctly describes either the state of John Bull's appetite or the easy aloofness of the Teutonic onlooker.
It will be convenient to treat this great and complex subject on a topographical basis, and to begin with a survey of the affairs of East Africa, especially the districts on the mainland north and south of the island of Zanzibar. At that important trade centre, the natural starting point then for the vast district of the Great Lakes, the influence of British and Indian traders had been paramount; and for many years the Sultan of Zanzibar had been "under the direct influence of the United Kingdom and of the Government of India[426]." Nevertheless, in and after 1880 German merchants, especially those of Hamburg, pressed in with great energy and formed plans for annexing the neighbouring territories on the mainland.
[Footnote 426: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1886), p. 2.]
Their energy was in strange contrast to the lethargy shown by the British Government in the protection of Anglo-Indian trade interests. In the year 1878 the Sultan of Zanzibar, who held a large territory on the mainland, had offered the control of all the commerce of his dominions to Sir W. Mackinnon, Chairman of the British-India Steam Navigation Company; but, for some unexplained reason, the Beaconsfield Cabinet declined to be a party to this arrangement, which, therefore, fell through[427]. Despite the fact that England and France had in 1862 agreed to recognise the independence of the Sultan of Zanzibar, the Germans deemed the field to be clear, and early in November 1884, Dr. Karl Peters and two other enthusiasts of the colonial party landed at Zanzibar, disguised as mechanics, with the aim of winning new lands for their Fatherland. They had with them several blank treaty forms, the hidden potency of which was soon to be felt by dusky potentates on the mainland. Before long they succeeded in persuading some of these novices in diplomacy to set their marks to these documents, an act which converted them into subjects of the Kaiser, and speedily secured 60,000 square miles for the German tricolour. It is said that the Government of Berlin either had no knowledge of, or disapproved of, these proceedings; and, when Earl Granville ventured on some representations respecting them, he received the reply, dated November 28, 1884, that the Imperial Government had no design of obtaining a protectorate over Zanzibar[428]. It is difficult to reconcile these statements with the undoubted fact that on February 17, 1885, the German Emperor gave his sanction to the proceedings of Dr. Peters by extending his suzerainty over the signatory chiefs[429]. This event caused soreness among British explorers and Indian traders who had been the first to open up the country to civilisation. Nevertheless, the Gladstone Ministry took no effective steps to safeguard their interests.
[Footnote 427: The Partition of Africa, by J. Scott Keltie (1893), pp. 157, 225.]
[Footnote 428: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1886), p. 1.]
[Footnote 429: Ibid. pp. 12-20.]
In defence of their academic treatment of this matter some considerations of a general nature may be urged.
The need of colonies felt by Germany was so natural, so imperious, that it could not be met by the high and dry legal argument as to the priority of Great Britain's commercial interests. Such an attitude would have involved war with Germany about East Africa and war with France about West Africa, at the very time when we were on the brink of hostilities with Russia about Merv, and were actually fighting the Mahdists behind Suakim. The "weary Titan"--to use Matthew Arnold's picturesque phrase--was then overburdened. The motto, "Live and let live," was for the time the most reasonable, provided that it was not interpreted in a weak and maudlin way on essential points.
Many critics, however, maintain that Mr. Gladstone's and Lord Granville's diplomatic dealings with Germany in the years 1884 and 1885 displayed most lamentable weakness, even when Dr. Peters and others were known to be working hard at the back of Zanzibar, with the results that have been noted. In April 1885 the Cabinet ordered Sir John Kirk, British representative at Zanzibar, and founder of the hitherto unchallenged supremacy of his nation along that coast, forthwith to undo the work of a lifetime by "maintaining friendly relations" with the German authorities at that port. This, of course, implied a tacit acknowledgment by Britain of what amounted to a German protectorate over the mainland possessions of the Sultan. It is not often that a Government, in its zeal for "live and let live," imposes so humiliating a task on a British representative. The Sultan did not take the serene and philosophic view of the situation that was held at Downing Street, and the advent of a German squadron was necessary in order to procure his consent to these arrangements (August-December 1885.)[430]
[Footnote 430: J. Scott Keltie, The Partition of Africa, ch. xv.]
The Blue Book dealing with Zanzibar (Africa, No. 1, 1886) by no means solves the riddle of the negotiations which went on between London and Berlin early in the year 1885. From other sources we know that the most ardent of the German colonials were far from satisfied with their triumph. Curious details have appeared showing that their schemes included the laying of a trap for the Sultan of Zanzibar, which failed owing to clumsy baiting and the loquacity of the would-be captor. Lord Rosebery also managed, according to German accounts, to get the better of Count Herbert Bismarck in respect of St. Lucia Bay (see page 528) and districts on the Benuë River; so that this may perhaps be placed over against the losses sustained by Britain on the coast opposite Zanzibar. Even there, as we have seen, results did not fully correspond to the high hopes entertained by the German Chauvinists[431].
[Footnote 431: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, vol. iii. pp. 135, 144-45. Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1886), pp. 39-45, 61 et seq.; also No. 3 (1886), pp. 4, 15.]
In the meantime (June 1885) the Salisbury Cabinet came into office for a short time, but the evil effects of the slackness of British diplomacy were not yet at an end. At this time British merchants, especially those of Manchester, were endeavouring to develop the mountainous country around the giant cone of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where Mr. (now Sir) Harry Johnston had, in September 1884, secured some trading and other rights with certain chiefs. A company had been formed in order to further British interests, and this soon became the Imperial British East Africa Company, which aspired to territorial control in the parts north of those claimed by Dr. Peters' Company. A struggle took place between the two companies, the German East Africa Company laying claim to the Kilimanjaro district. Again it proved that the Germans had the more effective backing, and, despite objections urged by our Foreign Minister, Lord Rosebery, against the proceedings of German agents in that tract, the question of ownership was referred to the decision of an Anglo-German boundary commission.
Lord Iddesleigh assumed control of the Foreign Office in August, but the advent of the Conservatives to power in no way helped on the British case. By an agreement between the two Powers, dated November 1, 1886, the Kilimanjaro district was assigned to Germany. From the northern spurs of that mountain the dividing line ran in a north-westerly direction towards the Victoria Nyanza. The same agreement recognised the authority of the Sultan of Zanzibar as extending over the island of that name, those of Pemba and Mafia, and over a strip of coastline ten nautical miles in width; but the ownership of the district of Vitu north of Mombasa was left open[432]. (See map at the close of this volume.)
[Footnote 432: Banning, op. cit. pp. 45-50; Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 3 (1887), pp. 46, 59.]
On the whole, the skill which dispossessed a sovereign of most of his rights, under a plea of diplomatic rearrangements and the advancement of civilisation, must be pronounced unrivalled; and Britain cut a sorry figure as the weak and unwilling accessory to this act. The only satisfactory feature in the whole proceeding was Britain's success in leasing from the Sultan of Zanzibar administrative rights over the coast region around Mombasa. The gain of that part secured unimpeded access from the coast to the northern half of Lake Victoria Nyanza. The German Company secured similar rights over the coastline of their district, and in 1890 bought it outright. By an agreement of December 1896, the River Rovuma was recognised by Germany and Portugal as the boundary of their East African possessions.
The lofty hopes once entertained by the Germans as to the productiveness of their part of East Africa have been but partially realised[433]. Harsh treatment of the natives brought about a formidable revolt in 1888-89. The need of British co-operation in the crushing of this revolt served to bring Germany to a more friendly attitude towards this country. Probably the resignation, or rather the dismissal, of Bismarck by the present Emperor, in March 1890, also tended to lessen the friction between England and Germany. The Prince while in retirement expressed strong disapproval of the East African policy of his successor, Count Caprivi.
[Footnote 433: See the Report on German East Africa for 1900, in our Diplomatic and Consular Reports.]
Its more conciliatory spirit found expression in the Anglo-German agreement of July 1, 1890, which delimited the districts claimed by the two nations around the Victoria Nyanza in a sense favourable to Great Britain and disappointing to that indefatigable treaty-maker, Dr. Peters. It acknowledged British claims to the northern half of the shores and waters of that great lake and to the valley of the Upper Nile, as also to the coast of the Indian Ocean about Vitu and thence northwards to Kismayu.
On the other hand, Germany acquired the land north of Lake Nyassa, where British interests had been paramount. The same agreement applied both to the British and German lands in question the principle of free or unrestricted transit of goods, as also between the great lakes. Germany further recognised a British Protectorate over the islands held by the Sultan of Zanzibar, reserving certain rights for German commerce in the case of the Island of Mafia. Finally, Great Britain ceded to Germany the Island of Heligoland in the North Sea. On both sides of the North Sea the compact aroused a storm of hostile comment, which perhaps served to emphasise its fairness[434]. Bismarck's opinion deserves quotation:--
Zanzibar ought not to have been left to the English. It would have been better to maintain the old arrangement. We could then have had it at some later time when England required our good offices against France or Russia. In the meantime our merchants, who are cleverer, and, like the Jews, are satisfied with smaller profits, would have kept the upper hand in business. To regard Heligoland as an equivalent shows more imagination than sound calculation. In the event of war it would be better for us that it should be in the hands of a neutral Power. It is difficult and most expensive to fortify[435].
[Footnote 434: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 6 (1890).]
[Footnote 435: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, vol. iii. p. 353. See, too, S. Whitman, Personal Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck, p. 122.]
The passage is instructive as showing the aim of Bismarck's colonial policy, namely, to wait until England's difficulties were acute (or perhaps to augment those difficulties, as he certainly did by furthering Russian schemes against Afghanistan in 1884-85[436]), and then to apply remorseless pressure at all points where the colonial or commercial interests of the two countries clashed.
[Footnote 436: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, vol. iii. pp. 124, 133: also see p. 426 of this work.]
The more his policy is known, the more dangerous to England it is seen to have been, especially in the years 1884-86. In fact, those persons who declaim against German colonial ambitions of to-day may be asked to remember that the extra-European questions recently at issue between Great Britain and Germany are trivial when compared with the momentous problems that were peacefully solved by the agreement of the year 1890. Of what importance are Samoa, Kiao-chow, and the problem of Morocco, compared with the questions of access to the great lakes of Africa and the control of the Lower Niger? It would be unfair to Wilhelm II., as also to the Salisbury Cabinet, not to recognise the statesmanlike qualities which led to the agreement of July 1, 1890--one of the most solid gains peacefully achieved for the cause of civilisation throughout the nineteenth century.
Among its many benefits may be reckoned the virtual settlement of long and tangled disputes for supremacy in Uganda. We have no space in which to detail the rivalries of French and British missionaries and agents at the Court of King M'tesa and his successor M'wanga, or the futile attempt of Dr. Peters to thrust in German influence. Even the Anglo-German agreement of 1890 did not end the perplexities of the situation; for though the British East Africa Company (to which a charter had been granted in 1888) thenceforth had the chief influence on the northern shores of Victoria Nyanza, the British Government declined to assume any direct responsibility for so inaccessible a district. Thanks, however, to the activity and tact of Captain Lugard, difficulties were cleared away, with the result that the large and fertile territory of Uganda (formerly included in the Khedive's dominions) became a British Protectorate in August 1894 (see Chapter XVII).
The significance of the events just described will be apparent when it is remembered that British East Africa, inclusive of Uganda and the Upper Nile basin, comprises altogether 670,000 square miles, to a large extent fertile, and capable of settlement by white men in the more elevated tracts of the interior. German East Africa contains 385,000 square miles, and is also destined to have a future that will dwarf that of many of the secondary States of to-day.
The prosperity of British East Africa was greatly enhanced by the opening of a railway, 580 miles long, from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza in 1902. Among other benefits, it has cut the ground from under the slave-trade, which used to depend on the human beast of burden for the carriage of all heavy loads[437].
[Footnote 437: For the progress and prospects of this important colony, see Sir G. Portal, The British Mission to Uganda in 1893; Sir Charles Elliot, British East Africa (1905); also Lugard, Our East African Empire; Sir H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate.]
The Anglo-German agreement of 1890 also cleared up certain questions between Britain and Germany relating to South-West Africa which had made bad blood between the two countries. In and after the year 1882 the attention of the colonial party in Germany was turned to the district north of the Orange River, and in the spring of the year 1883 Herr Lüderitz founded a factory and hoisted the German flag at Angra Pequeña. There are grounds for thinking that that district was coveted, not so much for its intrinsic value, which is slight, as because it promised to open up communications with the Boer Republics. Lord Granville ventured to express his doubts on that subject to Count Herbert Bismarck, whom the Chancellor had sent to London in the summer of 1884 in order to take matters out of the hands of the too Anglophil ambassador, Count Münster. Anxious to show his mettle, young Bismarck fired up, and informed Lord Granville that his question was one of mere curiosity; later on he informed him that it was a matter which did not concern him[438].
[Footnote 438: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, vol. iii. p. 120.]
It must be admitted, however, that the British Government had acted in a dilatory and ineffective manner. Sir Donald Currie had introduced a deputation to Lord Derby, Colonial Minister in the Gladstone Cabinet, which warned him seriously as to German aims on the coast of Damaraland; in reply to which that phlegmatic Minister stated that Germany was not a colonising Power, and that the annexation of those districts would be resented by Great Britain as an "unfriendly act[439]." In November 1883 the German ambassador inquired whether British protection would be accorded to a few German settlers on the coast of Damaraland. No decisive answer was given, though the existence of British interests there was affirmed. Then, when Germany claimed the right to annex it, a counter-claim was urged from Whitehall (probably at the instigation of the Cape Government) that the land in question was a subject of close interest to us, as it might be annexed in the future. It was against this belated and illogical plea that Count Bismarck was sent to lodge a protest; and in August 1884 Germany clinched the matter by declaring Angra Pequeña and surrounding districts to be German territory. (See note at the end of the chapter.)
[Footnote 439: See Sir D. Currie's paper on South Africa to the members of the Royal Colonial Institute, April 10, 1888 (Proceedings, vol. xix. p. 240).]
In this connection we may remark that Angra Pequeña had recently figured as a British settlement on German maps, including that of Stieler of the year 1882. Walfisch Bay, farther to the north, was left to the Union Jack, that flag having been hoisted there by official sanction in 1878 owing to the urgent representations of Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor of Cape Colony. The rest of the coast was left to Germany; the Gladstone Government informed that of Berlin that no objection would be taken to her occupation of that territory. Great annoyance was felt at the Cape at what was looked on as an uncalled for surrender of British claims, especially when the Home Government failed to secure just treatment for the British settlers. Sir Charles Dilke states in his Problems of Greater Britain that only the constant protests of the Cape Ministry prevented the authorities at Whitehall from complying with German unceasing requests for the cession of Walfisch Bay, doubtless as an item for exchange during the negotiations of 1889-90[440].
[Footnote 440: Op. cit. vol. i. p. 502.]
We may add here that in 1886 Germany defined the northern limits of "South-West Africa"--such was the name of the new colony--by an agreement with Portugal; and in 1890 an article of the Anglo-German agreement above referred to gave an eastward extension of that northern border which brought it to the banks of the River Zambesi.
The British Government took a firmer stand in a matter that closely concerned the welfare of Natal and the relations of the Transvaal Republic to Germany. In 1884 some German prospectors sought to gain a footing in St. Lucia Bay in Zululand and to hoist the German flag. The full truth on this interesting matter is not yet known; it formed a pendant to the larger question of Delagoa Bay, which must be briefly noticed here.
Friction had arisen between Great Britain and Portugal over conflicting claims respecting Delagoa Bay and its adjoining lands; and in this connection it may be of interest to note that the Disraeli Ministry had earlier missed an opportunity of buying out Portuguese claims. The late Lord Carnarvon stated that, when he took the portfolio for colonial affairs in that Ministry, he believed the purchase might have been effected for a comparatively small sum. Probably the authorities at Lisbon were aroused to a sense of the potential value of their Laurenço Marquez domain by the scramble for Africa which began early in the eighties; and it must be regretted that the British Government, with the lack of foresight which has so often characterised it, let slip the opportunity of securing Delagoa Bay until its value was greatly enhanced. It then agreed to refer the questions in dispute to the arbitration of General MacMahon, President of the French Republic (1875). As has generally happened when foreign potentates have adjudicated on British interests, his verdict was wholly hostile to us. It even assigned to Portugal a large district to the south of Delagoa Bay which the Portuguese had never thought of claiming from its native inhabitants, the Tongas[441]. In fact, a narrative of all the gains which have accrued to Portugal in Delagoa Bay, and thereafter to the people who controlled its railway to Pretoria, would throw a sinister light on the connection that has too often subsisted between the noble theory of arbitration and the profitable practice of peacefully willing away, or appropriating, the rights and possessions of others. Portugal soon proved to be unable to avail herself of the opportunities opened up by the gift unexpectedly awarded her by MacMahon. She was unable to control either the Tongas or the Boers.
[Footnote 441: Sir C. Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain, vol. i. pp. 553-556.]
England having been ruled out, there was the chance for some other Power to step in and acquire St. Lucia Bay, one of the natural outlets of the southern part of the Transvaal Republic. It is an open secret that the forerunners of the "colonial party" in Germany had already sought to open up closer relations with the Boer Republics. In 1876 the President of the Transvaal, accompanied by a Dutch member of the Cape Parliament, visited Berlin, probably with the view of reciprocating those advances. They had an interview with Bismarck, the details of which are not fully known. Nothing, however, came of it at the time, owing to Bismarck's preoccupation in European affairs. Early in the "eighties," the German colonial party, then beginning its campaign, called attention repeatedly to the advantages of gaining a foothold in or near Delagoa Bay; but the rise of colonial feeling in Germany led to a similar development in the public sentiment of Portugal, and indeed of all lands; so that, by the time that Bismarck was won over to the cause of Teutonic Expansion, the Portuguese refused to barter away any of their ancient possessions. This probably accounts for the concentration of German energies on other parts of the South African coast, which, though less valuable in themselves, might serve as points d'appui for German political agents and merchants in their future dealings with the Boers, who were then striving to gain control over Bechuanaland. The points selected by the Germans for their action were on the coast of Damaraland, as already stated, and St. Lucia Bay in Zululand, a position which President Burgers had striven to secure for the Transvaal in 1878.
In reference to St. Lucia Bay our narrative must be shadowy in outline owing to the almost complete secrecy with which the German Government wisely shrouds a failure. The officials and newspaper writers of Germany have not yet contracted the English habit of proclaiming their intentions beforehand and of parading before the world their recriminations in case of a fiasco. All that can be said, then, with certainty is that in the autumn of 1884 a German trader named Einwold attempted to gain a footing in St. Lucia Bay and to prepare the way for the recognition of German claims if all went well. In fact, he could either be greeted as a Mehrer des Reichs, or be disowned as an unauthorised busybody.
We may here cite passages from the Diary of Dr. Busch, Bismarck's secretary, which prove that the State took a lively interest in Einwold's adventure. On February 25, 1885, Busch had a conversation with Herr Andrae, in the course of which they "rejoiced at England's difficulties in the Sudan, and I expressed the hope that Wolseley's head would soon arrive in Cairo, nicely pickled and packed." Busch then referred to British friction with Russia in Afghanistan and with France in Burmah, and then put the question to Andrae, "'Have we given up South Africa; or is the Lucia Bay affair still open?' He said that the matter was still under consideration[442]."
[Footnote 442: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, vol. iii. p. 132.]
It has since transpired that the British Government might have yielded to pressure from Berlin, had not greater pressure been exercised from Natal and from British merchants and shipowners interested in the South African trade. Sir Donald Currie, in the paper already referred to, stated that he could easily have given particulars of the means which had to be used in order to spur on the British Government to decisive action. Unfortunately he was discreetly reticent, and merely stated that not only St. Lucia Bay, but the whole of the coast between Natal and the Delagoa Bay district was then in question, and that the Gladstone Ministry was finally induced to telegraph instructions to Cape Town for the despatch of a cruiser to assert British claims to St. Lucia Bay. H.M.S. Goshawk at once steamed thither, and hoisted the British flag, by virtue of a treaty made with a Zulu chief in 1842. Then ensued the usual interchange of angry notes between Berlin and London; Bismarck and Count Herbert sought to win over, or browbeat, Lord Rosebery, then Colonial Minister. In this, however, he failed; and the explanation of the failure given to Busch was that Lord Rosebery was too clever for him and "quite mesmerised him." On May 7, 1885, Germany gave up her claims to that important position, in consideration of gaining at the expense of England in the Cameroons[443]. Here again a passage from Busch's record deserves quotation. In a conversation which he had with Bismarck on January 5, 1886, he put the question:--
"Why have we not been able to secure the Santa Lucia Bay?" I asked. "Ah!" he replied, "it is not so valuable as it seemed to be at first. People who were pursuing their own interests on the spot represented it to be of greater importance than it really was. And then the Boers were not disposed to take any proper action in the matter. The bay would have been valuable to us if the distance from the Transvaal were not so great. And the English attached so much importance to it that they declared it was impossible for them to give it up, and they ultimately conceded a great deal to us in New Guinea and Zanzibar. In colonial matters we must not take too much in hand at a time, and we already have enough for a beginning. We must now hold rather with the English, while, as you know, we were formerly more on the French side[444]. But, as the last elections in France show, every one of any importance there had to make a show of hostility to us."
[Footnote 443: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 6 (1885), p. 2.]
[Footnote 444: He here referred to the Franco-German agreement of Dec. 24, 1885, whereby the two Powers amicably settled the boundaries of their West African lands, and Germany agreed not to thwart French designs on Tahiti, the Society Isles, the New Hebrides, etc. See Banning, Le Partage politique de l'Afrique, pp. 22-26.]
This passage explains, in part at least, why Bismarck gave up the nagging tactics latterly employed towards Great Britain. Evidently he had hoped to turn the current of thought in France from the Alsace-Lorraine question to the lands over the seas, and his henchmen in the Press did all in their power to persuade people, both in Germany and France, that England was the enemy. The Anglophobe agitation was fierce while it lasted; but its artificiality is revealed by the passage just quoted.
We may go further, and say that the more recent outbreak of Anglophobia in Germany may probably be ascribed to the same official stimulus; and it too may be expected to cease when the politicians of Berlin see that it no longer pays to twist the British lion's tail. That sport ceased in and after 1886, because France was found still to be the enemy. Frenchmen did not speak much about Alsace-Lorraine. They followed Gambetta's advice: "Never speak about it, but always think of it." The recent French elections revealed that fact to Bismarck; and, lo! the campaign of calumny against England at once slackened.
We may add that two German traders settled on the coast of Pondoland, south of Natal; and in August 1885 the statesmen of Berlin put forth feelers to Whitehall with a view to a German Protectorate of that coast. They met with a decisive repulse[445].
[Footnote 445: Cape Colony, Papers on Pondoland, 1887, pp. 1, 41. For the progress of German South-West Africa and East Africa, see Parl. Papers, Germany, Nos. 474, 528, 2790.]
Meanwhile, the dead-set made by Germany, France, and Russia against British interests in the years 1883-85 had borne fruit in a way little expected by those Powers, but fully consonant with previous experience. It awakened British statesmen from their apathy, and led them to adopt measures of unwonted vigour. The year 1885 saw French plans in Indo-China checked by the annexation of Burmah. German designs in South Africa undoubtedly quickened the resolve of the Gladstone Ministry to save Bechuanaland for the British Empire.
It is impossible here to launch upon the troublous sea of Boer politics, especially as the conflict naturally resulting from two irreconcilable sets of ideas outlasted the century with which this work is concerned. We can therefore only state that filibustering bands of Boers had raided parts of Bechuanaland, and seemed about to close the trade-route northwards to the Zambesi. This alone would have been a serious bar to the prosperity of Cape Colony; but the loyalists had lost their confidence in the British Government since the events of 1880, while a large party in the Cape Ministry, including at that time Mr. Cecil Rhodes, seemed willing to abet the Boers in all their proceedings. A Boer deputation went to England in the autumn of 1883, and succeeded in cajoling Lord Derby into a very remarkable surrender. Among other things, he conceded to them an important strip of land west of the River Harts[446].
[Footnote 446: For the negotiations and the Convention of February 27, 1884, see Papers relating to the South African Republic, 1887.]
Far from satisfying them, this act encouraged some of their more restless spirits to set up two republics named Stellaland and Goshen. There, however, they met a tough antagonist, John Mackenzie. That devoted missionary, after long acquaintance with Boers and Bechuanas, saw how serious would be the loss to the native tribes and to the cause of civilisation if the raiders were allowed to hold the routes to the interior. By degrees he aroused the sympathy of leading men in the Press, who thereupon began to whip up the laggards of Whitehall and Downing Street. Consequently, Mackenzie, on his return to South Africa, was commissioned to act as British Resident in Bechuanaland, and in that capacity he declared that country to be under British protection (May 1884). At once the Dutch throughout South Africa raised a hue and cry against him, in which Mr. Rhodes joined, with the result that he was recalled on July 30.
His place was taken by a statesman whose exploits raised him to a high place among builders of the Empire. However much Cecil Rhodes differed from Mackenzie on the native question and other affairs, he came to see the urgent need of saving for the Empire the central districts which, as an old Boer said, formed "the key of Africa." Never were the loyalists more dispirited at the lack of energy shown by the Home Government; and never was there greater need of firmness. In a sense, however, the action of the Germans on the coast of Damaraland (August-October 1884) helped to save the situation. The imperious need of keeping open the route to the interior, which would be closed to trade if ever the Boers and Germans joined hands, spurred on the Gladstone Ministry to support the measures proposed by Mr. Rhodes and the loyalists of Cape Colony. When the whole truth on that period comes to be known, it will probably be found that British rule was in very grave danger in the latter half of the year 1884.
Certainly no small expedition ever accomplished so much for the Empire, at so trifling a cost and without the effusion of blood, as that which was now sent out. It was entrusted to Sir Charles Warren. He recruited his force mainly from the loyalists of South Africa, though a body named Methuen's Horse went out from these islands. In all it numbered nearly 5000 men. Moving quickly from the Orange River through Griqualand West, he reached the banks of the Vaal at Barkly Camp by January 22, 1885, that is, only six weeks after his arrival at Cape Town. At the same time 3000 troops took their station in the north of Natal in readiness to attack the Transvaal Boers, should they fall upon Warren. It soon transpired, however, that the more respectable Boers had little sympathy with the raiders into Bechuanaland. These again were so far taken aback by the speed of his movements and the thoroughness of his organisation as to manifest little desire to attack a force which seemed ever ready at all points and spied on them from balloons. The behaviour of the commander was as tactful as his dispositions were effective; and, as a result of these favouring circumstances (which the superficial may ascribe to luck), he was able speedily to clear Bechuanaland of those intruders[447].
[Footnote 447: See Sir Charles Warren's short account of the expedition, in the _Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute for _1885-86, pp. 5-45; also Mackenzie's Austral Africa, vol. ii. ad init., and John Mackenzie, by W.D. Mackenzie (1902).]
On September 30 it became what it has since remained--a British possession, safeguarding the route into the interior and holding apart the Transvaal Boers from the contact with the Germans of Damaraland which could hardly fail to produce an explosion. The importance of the latter fact has already been made clear. The significance of the former will be apparent when we remember that Mr. Rhodes, in his later and better-known character of Empire-builder, was able from Bechuanaland as a base to extend the domain of his Chartered Company up to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika in the year 1889.
It is well known that Rhodes hoped to extend the domain of his company as far north as the southern limit of the British East Africa Company. Here, however, the Germans forestalled him by their energy in Central Africa. Finally, the Anglo-German agreement of 1890 assigned to Germany all the hinterland of Zanzibar as far west as the frontier of the Congo Free State, thus sterilising the idea of an all-British route from the Cape to Cairo, which possessed for some minds an alliterative and all-compelling charm.
As for the future of the vast territory which came to be known popularly as Rhodesia, we may note that the part bordering on Lake Nyassa was severed from the South Africa Company in 1894, and was styled the British Central Africa Protectorate. In 1895 the south of Bechuanaland was annexed to Cape Colony, a step greatly regretted by many well-wishers of the natives. The intelligent chief, Khama, visited England in that year, mainly in order to protest against the annexation of his lands by Cape Colony and by the South Africa Company. In this he was successful; he and other chiefs are directly under the protection of the Crown, but parts of the north and east of Bechuanaland are administered by the British South Africa Company. The tracts between the Rivers Limpopo and Zambesi, and thence north to the Tanganyika, form a territory vaster and more populous than any which has in recent years been administered by a company; and its rule leaves much to be desired.
* * * * *
It is time now to turn to the expansion of German and British spheres of influence in the Bight of Guinea and along the course of the Rivers Niger and Benuë. In the innermost part of the Bight of Guinea, British commercial interests had been paramount up to about 1880; but about that time German factories were founded in increasing numbers, and, owing to the dilatory action of British firms, gained increasing hold on the trade of several districts. The respect felt by native chiefs for British law was evinced by a request of five of the "Kings" of the Cameroons that they might have it introduced into their lands (1879). Authorities at Downing Street and Whitehall were deaf to the request. In striking contrast to this was the action of the German Government, which early in the year 1884 sent Dr. Nachtigall to explore those districts. The German ambassador in London informed Earl Granville on April 19, 1884, that the object of his mission was "to complete the information now in possession of the Foreign Office at Berlin on the state of German commerce on that coast." He therefore requested that the British authorities there should be furnished with suitable recommendations for his reception[448]. This was accordingly done, and, after receiving hospitality at various consulates, he made treaties with native chiefs, and hoisted the German flag at several points previously considered to be under British influence. This was especially the case on the coast to the east of the River Niger.
[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 petitioned 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 Möwe. 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 Benuë. 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 Benuë and the shores 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 Benuë 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 promptitude 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 Benuë 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 Benuë and the southern shore 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 title 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 assess and enforce the ancient tribute. By this means a fair revenue will be assured 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 competition 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 française (1905), by Paul Doumer (describing its progress under his administration); Notre Epopée coloniale (1901), by P. Legendre; La Mise en Valeur de notre Domaine coloniale (1903), by C. Guy; Un Siècle 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, passed 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 pronouncement 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 passed, it is impossible to advert to the parts played by Italy and Portugal in the partition 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 rôle 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 partition of Somaliland between England and Italy, can also only be named.
The general results of the partition 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 partition 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 Pequeña (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.
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 space 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 Titan" 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 Association 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 Association, 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 Association was formed at Brussels with the name of "Comité d'Études du Haut Congo." In the year 1879 it took the title of the "International Association of the Congo," and for all practical purposes superseded its progenitor. Outwardly, however, the Association 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 Association 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. Wolf, greatly extended the knowledge of the southern and central parts of the Congo basin[457]. In the meantime the British missionaries, Rev. W.H. Bentley and Rev. G. Grenfell, carried on explorations, especially on the River Ubangi, and in the lands between it and the Congo. The part which missionaries have taken in the work of discovery and pacification entitles them to a high place in the records of equatorial exploration; and their influence has often been exerted beneficially on behalf of the natives. We may add here that M. de Brazza did good work for the French tricolour in exploring the land north of the Congo and Ubangi rivers; he founded several stations, which were to develop into the great French Congo colony.
[Footnote 457: H. von Wissmann, My Second Journey through Equatorial Africa, 1891. Rev. W.H. Bentley, Pioneering on the Congo, 2 vols.]
Meanwhile events had transpired in Europe which served to give stability to these undertakings. The energy thrown into the exploration of the Congo basin soon awakened the jealousy of the Power which had long ago discovered the mouth of the great river and its adjacent coasts. In the years 1883, 1884, Portugal put forward a claim to the overlordship of those districts on the ground of priority of discovery and settlement. On all sides that claim was felt to be unreasonable. The occupation of that territory by the Portuguese had been short-lived, and nearly all traces of it had disappeared, except at Kabinda and one or two points on the coast. The fact that Diogo Cam and others had discovered the mouth of the Congo in the fifteenth century was a poor argument for closing to other peoples, three centuries later, the whole of the vast territory between that river and the mouth of the Zambesi. These claims raised the problem of the Hinterland, that is, the ownership of the whole range of territory behind a coast line. Furthermore, the Portuguese officials were notoriously inefficient and generally corrupt; while the customs system of that State was such as to fetter the activities of trade with shackles of a truly mediaeval type.
Over against these musty claims of Portugal there stood the offers of "The International Association of the Congo" to bring the blessings of free trade and civilisation to downtrodden millions of negroes, if only access were granted from the sea. The contrast between the dull obscurantism of Lisbon and the benevolent intentions of Brussels struck the popular imagination. At that time the eye of faith discerned in the King of the Belgians the ideal godfather of a noble undertaking, and great was the indignation when Portugal interfered with freedom of access to the sea at the mouth of the Congo. Various matters were also in dispute between Portugal and Great Britain respecting trading rights at that important outlet; and they were by no means settled by an Anglo-Portuguese Convention of February 26 (1884), in which Lord Granville, Foreign Minister in the Gladstone Cabinet, was thought to display too much deference to questionable claims. Protests were urged against this Convention, by the United States, France, and Germany, with the result that the Lisbon Government proposed to refer all these matters to a Conference of the Powers; and arrangements were soon made for the summoning of their representatives to Berlin, under the presidency of Prince Bismarck.
Before the Conference met, the United States took the decisive step of recognising the rights of the Association to the government of that river-basin (April 10, 1884)--a proceeding which ought to have secured to the United States an abiding influence on the affairs of the State which they did so much to create. The example set by the United States was soon followed by the other Powers. In that same month France withdrew the objections which she had raised to the work of the Association, and came to terms with it in a treaty whereby she gained priority in the right of purchase of its claims and possessions. The way having been thus cleared, the Berlin Conference met on November 15, 1884. Prince Bismarck suggested that the three chief topics for consideration were (1) the freedom of navigation and of trade in the Congo area; (2) freedom of navigation on the River Niger; (3) the formalities to be thenceforth observed in lawful and valid annexations of territories in Africa. The British plenipotentiary, Sir Edward Malet, however, pointed out that, while his Government wished to preserve freedom of navigation and of trade upon the Niger, it would object to the formation of any international commission for those purposes, seeing that Great Britain was the sole proprietory Power on the Lower Niger (see Chapter XVIII.)[458]. This firm declaration possibly prevented the intrusion of claims which might have led to the whittling down of British rights on that great river. An Anglo-French Commission was afterwards appointed to supervise the navigation of the Niger.
[Footnote 458: See Protocols, Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 4 (1885), pp. 119 et seq.]
The main question being thus concentrated on the Congo, Portugal was obliged to defer to the practically unanimous refusal of the Powers to recognise her claims over the lower parts of that river; and on November 19 she conceded the principle of freedom of trade on those waters. Next, it was decided that the Congo Association should acquire and hold governing rights over nearly the whole of the vast expanse drained by the Congo, with some reservations in favour of France on the north and Portugal on the south. The extension of the principle of freedom of trade nearly to the Indian Ocean was likewise affirmed; and the establishment of monopolies or privileges "of any kind" was distinctly forbidden within the Congo area.
An effort strictly to control the sale of intoxicating liquors to natives lapsed owing to the strong opposition of Germany and Holland, though a weaker motion on the same all-important matter found acceptance (December 22). On January 7, 1885, the Conference passed a stringent declaration against the slave-trade:--". . . these regions shall not be used as markets or routes of transit for the trade in slaves, no matter of what race. Each of these Powers binds itself to use all the means at its disposal to put an end to this trade, and to punish those engaged in it."
The month of February saw the settlement of the boundary claims with France and Portugal, on bases nearly the same as those still existing. The Congo Association gained the northern bank of the river at its mouth, but ceded to Portugal a small strip of coast line a little further north around Kabinda. These arrangements were, on the whole, satisfactory to the three parties. France now definitively gained by treaty right her vast Congo territory of some 257,000 square miles in area, while Portugal retained on the south of the river a coast nearly 1000 miles in length and a dominion estimated at 351,000 square miles. The Association, though handing over to these Powers respectively 60,000 and 45,000 square miles of land which its pioneers hoped to obtain, nevertheless secured for itself an immense territory of some 870,000 square miles.
The General Act of the Berlin Conference was signed on February 26, 1885. Its terms and those of the Protocols prove conclusively that the governing powers assigned to the Congo Association were assigned to a neutral and international State, responsible to the Powers which gave it its existence. In particular, Articles IV. and V. of the General Act ran as follows:--
Merchandise imported into these regions shall remain free from import and transit dues. The Powers reserve to themselves to determine, after the lapse of twenty years, whether this freedom of import shall be retained or not.
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. Foreigners, without distinction, shall enjoy protection of their persons and property, as well as the right of acquiring and transferring movable and immovable possessions, and national rights and treatment in the exercise of their professions.
Before describing the growth of the Congo State, it is needful to refer to two preliminary considerations. Firstly, it should be noted that the Berlin Conference committed the mistake of failing to devise any means for securing the observance of the principles there laid down. Its work, considered in the abstract, was excellent. The mere fact that representatives of the Powers could meet amicably to discuss and settle the administration of a great territory which in other ages would have provoked them to deadly strifes, was in itself a most hopeful augury, and possibly the success of the Conference inspired a too confident belief in the effective watchfulness of the Powers over the welfare of the young State to which they then stood as godfathers. In any case it must be confessed that they have since interpreted their duties in the easy way to which godfathers are all too prone. As in the case of the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, so in that of the Conference of Berlin of 1885, the fault lay not in the promise but in the failure of the executors to carry out the terms of the promise.
Another matter remains to be noted. It resulted from the demands urged by Portugal in 1883-84. By way of retort, the plenipotentiaries now declared any occupation of territory to be valid only when it had effectively taken place and had been notified to all the Powers represented at the Conference. It also defined a "sphere of influence" as the area within which one Power is recognised as possessing priority of claims over other States. The doctrine was to prove convenient for expansive States in the future.
The first important event in the life of the new State was the assumption by King Leopold II. of sovereign powers. All nations, and Belgium not the least, were startled by his announcement to his Ministers, on April 16, 1885, that he desired the assent of the Belgian Parliament to this proceeding. He stated that the union between Belgium and the Congo State would be merely personal, and that the latter would enjoy, like the former, the benefits of neutrality. The Parliament on April 28 gave its assent, with but one dissentient voice, on the understanding stated above. The Powers also signified their approval. On August 1, King Leopold informed them of the facts just stated, and announced that the new State took the title of the Congo Free State (L'État indépendant du Congo)[459].
[Footnote 459: The Story of the Congo Free State, by H.W. Wack (New York, 1905), p. 101; Wauters, L'État indépendant du Congo, pp. 36-37.]
Questions soon arose concerning the delimitation of the boundary with the French Congo territory; and these led to the signing of a protocol at Brussels on April 29, 1887, whereby the Congo Free State gave up certain of its claims in the northern part of the Congo region (the right bank of the River Ubangi), but exacted in return the addition of a statement "that the right of pre-emption accorded to France could not be claimed as against Belgium, of which King Leopold is sovereign[460]."
[Footnote 460: The Congo State, by D.C. Boulger (London, 1896), p. 62.]
There seems, however, to be some question whether this clause is likely to have any practical effect. The clause is obviously inoperative if Belgium ultimately declines to take over the Congo territory, and there is at least the chance that this will happen. If it does happen, King Leopold and the Belgian Parliament recognise the prior claim of France to all the Congolese territory. The King and the Congo Ministers seem to have made use of this circumstance so as to strengthen the financial relations of France to their new State in several ways, notably in the formation of monopolist groups for the exploitation of Congoland. For the present we may remark that by a clause of the Franco-Belgian Treaty of Feb. 5, 1895, the Government of Brussels declared that it "recognises the right of preference possessed by France over its Congolese possessions, in case of their compulsory alienation, in whole or in part[461]."
[Footnote 461: Cattier, Droit et Administration de l'État indépendent du Congo, p. 82.]
Meanwhile King Leopold proceeded as if he were the absolute ruler of the new State. He bestowed on it a constitution on the most autocratic basis. M. Cattier, in his account of that constitution sums it up by stating that
The sovereign is the direct source of legislative, executive, and judiciary powers. He can, if he chooses, delegate their exercise to certain functionaries, but this delegation has no other source than his will. . . . He can issue rules, on which, so long as they last, is based the validity of certain acts by himself or by his delegates. But he can cancel these rules whenever they appear to him troublesome, useless, or dangerous. The organisation of justice, the composition of the army, financial systems, and industrial and commercial institutions--all are established solely by him in accordance with his just or faulty conceptions as to their usefulness or efficiency[462].
[Footnote 462: Cattier, op. cit. pp. 134-135.]
A natural outcome of such a line of policy was the gradual elimination of non-Belgian officials. In July 1886 Sir Francis de Winton, Stanley's successor in the administration of the Congo area, gave place to a Belgian "Governor-General," M. Janssen; and similar changes were made in all grades of the service.
Meanwhile other events were occurring which enabled the officials of the Congo State greatly to modify the provisions laid down at the Berlin Conference. These events were as follows. For many years the Arab slave-traders had been extending their raids in easterly and south-easterly directions, until they began to desolate the parts of the Congo State nearest to the great lakes and the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
Their activity may be ascribed to the following causes. The slave-trade has for generations been pursued in Africa. The negro tribes themselves have long practised it; and the Arabs, in their gradual conquest of many districts of Central Africa, found it to be by far the most profitable of all pursuits. The market was almost boundless; for since the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the Congress of Verona (1822) the Christian Powers had forbidden their subjects any longer to pursue that nefarious calling. It is true that kidnapping of negroes went on secretly, despite all the efforts of British cruisers to capture the slavers. It is said that the last seizure of a Portuguese schooner illicitly trading in human flesh was made off the Congo coast as late as the year 1868[463]. But the cessation of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade only served to stimulate the Arab man-hunters of Eastern Africa to greater efforts; and the rise of Mahdism quickened the demand for slaves in an unprecedented manner. Thus, the hateful trade went on apace, threatening to devastate the Continent which explorers, missionaries, and traders were opening up.
[Footnote 463: A.J. Wauters, L'État indépendent du Congo, p. 52.]
The civilising and the devastating processes were certain soon to clash; and, as Stanley had foreseen, the conflict broke out on the Upper Congo. There the slave-raiders, subsidised or led by Arabs of Zanzibar, were specially active. Working from Ujiji and other bases, they attacked some of the expeditions sent by the Congo Free State. Chief among the raiders was a half-caste Arab negro nick-named Tipu Tib ("The gatherer of wealth"), who by his energy and cunning had become practically the master of a great district between the Congo and Lake Tanganyika. At first (1887-1888) the Congo Free State adopted Stanley's suggestion of appointing Tipu Tib to be its governor of the Stanley Falls district, at a salary of £30 a month[464]. So artificial an arrangement soon broke down, and war broke out early in 1892. The forces of the Congo Free State, led by Commandants Dhanis and Lothaire, and by Captain S.L. Hinde, finally worsted the Arabs after two long and wearisome campaigns waged on the Upper Congo. Into the details of the war it is impossible to enter. The accounts of all the operations, including that of Captain Hinde[465], are written with a certain reserve; and the impression that the writers were working on behalf of civilisation and humanity is somewhat blurred by the startling admissions made by Captain Hinde in a paper read by him before the Royal Geographical Society in London, on March 11, 1895. He there stated that the Arabs, "despite their slave-raiding propensities," had "converted the Manyema and Malela country into one of the most prosperous in Central Africa." He also confessed that during the fighting the two flourishing towns, Nyangwe and Kasongo, had been wholly swept away. In view of these statements the results of the campaign cannot be regarded with unmixed satisfaction.
[Footnote 464: Stanley, In Darkest Africa, vol. i. pp. 60-70.]
[Footnote 465: The Fall of the Congo Arabs, by Capt. S.L. Hinde (London, 1897).]
Such, however, was not the view taken at the time. Not long before, the Continent had rung with the sermons and speeches of Cardinal Lavigerie, Bishop of Algiers, who, like a second Peter the Hermit, called all Christians to unite in a great crusade for the extirpation of slavery. The outcome of it all was the meeting of an Anti-Slavery Conference at Brussels, at the close of 1889, in which the Powers that had framed the Berlin Act again took part. The second article passed at Brussels asserted among other things the duties of the Powers "in giving aid to commercial enterprises to watch over their legality, controlling especially the contracts for service entered into with natives." The abuses in the trade in firearms were to be carefully checked and controlled.
Towards the close of the Conference a proposal was brought forward (May 10, 1890) to the effect that, as the suppression of the slave-trade and the work of upraising the natives would entail great expense, it was desirable to annul the clause in the Berlin Act prohibiting the imposition of import duties for, at least, twenty years from that date (that is, up to the year 1905). The proposal seemed so plausible as to disarm the opposition of all the Powers, except Holland, which strongly protested against the change. Lord Salisbury's Government neglected to safeguard British interests in this matter; and, despite the unremitting opposition of the Dutch Government, the obnoxious change was finally registered on January 2, 1892, it being understood that the duties were not to exceed 10 per cent ad valorem except in the case of spirituous liquors, and that no differential treatment would be accorded to the imports of any nation or nations.
Thus the European Powers, yielding to the specious plea that they must grant the Congo Free State the power of levying customs dues in order to further its philanthropic aims, gave up one of the fundamentals agreed on at the Berlin Conference. The raison d'être of the Congo Free State was, that it stood for freedom of trade in that great area; and to sign away one of the birthrights of modern civilisation, owing to the plea of a temporary want of cash in Congoland, can only be described as the act of a political Esau. The General Act of the Brussels Conference received a provisional sanction (the clause respecting customs dues not yet being definitively settled) on July 2, 1890[466].
[Footnote 466: On August 1, 1890, the Sultan of Zanzibar declared that no sale of slaves should thenceforth take place in his dominions. He also granted to slaves the right of appeal to him in case they were cruelly treated. See Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1890-91).]
On the next day the Congo Free State entered into a financial arrangement with the Belgian Government which marked one more step in the reversal of the policy agreed on at Berlin five years previously. In this connection we must note that King Leopold by his will, dated August 2, 1889, bequeathed to Belgium after his death all his sovereign rights over that State, "together with all the benefits, rights and advantages appertaining to that sovereignty." Apparently, the occasion that called forth the will was the urgent need of a loan of 10,000,000 francs which the Congo State pressed the Belgian Government to make on behalf of the Congo railway. Thus, on the very eve of the summoning of the European Conference at Brussels, the Congo Government (that is, King Leopold) had appealed, not to the Great Powers, but to the Belgian Government, and had sought to facilitate the grant of the desired loan by the prospect of the ultimate transfer of his sovereign rights to Belgium.
Unquestionably the King had acted very generously in the past toward the Congo Association and State. It has even been affirmed that his loans often amounted to the sum of 40,000,000 francs a year; but, even so, that did not confer the right to will away to any one State the results of an international enterprise. As a matter of fact, however, the Congo State was at that time nearly bankrupt; and in this circumstance, doubtless, may be found an explanation of the apathy of the Powers in presence of an infraction of the terms of the Berlin Act of 1885.
We are now in a position to understand more clearly the meaning of the Convention of July 3, 1890, between the Congo Free State and the Belgian Government. By its terms the latter pledged itself to advance a loan of 25,000,000 francs to the Congo State in the course of ten years, without interest, on condition that at the close of six months after the expiration of that time Belgium should have the right of annexing the Free State with all its possessions and liabilities.
Into the heated discussions which took place in the Belgian Parliament in the spring and summer of 1901 respecting the Convention of July 3, 1890, we cannot enter. The King interfered so as to prevent the acceptance of a reasonable compromise proposed by the Belgian Prime Minister, M. Beernaert; and ultimately matters were arranged by a decree of August 7, 1901, which will probably lead to the transference of King Leopold's sovereign rights to Belgium at his death. In the meantime, the entire executive and legislative control is vested in him, and in a Colonial Minister and Council of four members, who are responsible solely to him, though the Minister has a seat in the Belgian Parliament[467]. To King Leopold, therefore, belongs the ultimate responsibility for all that is done in the Congo Free State. As M. Cattier phrased it in the year 1898: "Belgium has no more right to intervene in the internal affairs of the Congo than the Congo State has to intervene in Belgian affairs. As regards the Congo Government, Belgium has no right either of intervention, direction, or control[468]."
[Footnote 467: H.R. Fox-Bourne, Civilisation in Congoland p. 277.]
[Footnote 468: M. Cattier, op. cit. p. 88.]
Very many Belgians object strongly to the building up of an _imperium in imperio _in their land; and the wealth which the ivory and rubber of the Congo brings into their midst (not to speak of the stock-jobbing and company-promoting which go on at Brussels and Antwerp), does not blind them to the moral responsibility which the Belgian people has indirectly incurred. It is true that Belgium has no legal responsibility, but the State which has lent a large sum to the Congo Government, besides providing the great majority of the officials and exploiters of that territory, cannot escape some amount of responsibility. M. Vandervelde, leader of the Labour Party in Belgium, has boldly and persistently asserted the right of the Belgian people to a share in the control of its eventual inheritance, but hitherto all the efforts of his colleagues have failed before the groups of capitalists who have acquired great monopolist rights in Congoland.
Having now traced the steps by which the Congolese Government reached its present anomalous position, we will proceed to give a short account of its material progress and administration.
No one can deny that much has been done in the way of engineering. A light railway has been constructed from near Vivi on the Lower Congo to Stanley Pool, another from Boma into the districts north of that important river port. Others have been planned, or are already being constructed, between Stanley Falls and the northern end of Lake Tanganyika, with a branch to the Albert Nyanza. Another line will connect the upper part of the River Congo with the westernmost affluent of the River Kasai, thus taking the base of the arc instead of the immense curve of the main stream. By the year 1903, 480 kilometres of railway were open for traffic, while 1600 more were in course of construction or were being planned. It seems that the first 400 kilometres, in the hilly region near the seaboard, cost 75,000,000 francs in place of the 25,000,000 francs first estimated[469]. Road-making has also been pushed on in many directions. A flotilla of steamers plies on the great river and its chief affluents. In 1885 there were but five; the number now exceeds a hundred. As many as 1532 kilometres of telegraphs are now open. The exports advanced from 1,980,441 francs in 1885-86 to 50,488,394 francs in 1901-02, mainly owing to the immense trade in rubber, of which more anon; the imports from 9,175,103 francs in 1893 to 23,102,064 in 19O1-O2[470].
[Footnote 469: L'Afrique nouvelle, by E. Descamps (1903), chap. xv. Much of the credit of the early railway-making was due to Colonel Thys.]
[Footnote 470: Ibid. pp. 589-590.]
Far more important is the moral gain which has resulted from the suppression of the slave-trade over a large part of the State. On this point we may quote the testimony of Mr. Roger Casement, British Consul at Boma, in an official report founded on observations taken during a long tour up the Congo. He writes: "The open selling of slaves and the canoe convoys which once navigated the Upper Congo have everywhere disappeared. No act of the Congo State Government has perhaps produced more laudable results than the vigorous suppression of this widespread evil[471]."
[Footnote 471: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), p. 26.]
King Leopold has also striven hard to extend the bounds of the Congo State. Not satisfied with his compact with France of April 1887, which fixed the River Ubangi and its tributaries as the boundary of their possessions, he pushed ahead to the north-east of those confines, and early in the nineties established posts at Lado on the White Nile and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin. Clearly his aim was to conquer the districts which Egypt for the time had given up to the Mahdi. These efforts brought about sharp friction between the Congolese authorities and France and Great Britain. After long discussions the Cabinet of London agreed to the convention of May 12, 1894, whereby the Congo State gained the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin and the left bank of the Upper Nile, together with a port on the Albert Nyanza. On his side, King Leopold recognised the claims of England to the right bank of the Nile and to a strip of land between the Albert Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Owing to the strong protests of France and Germany this agreement was rescinded, and the Cabinet of Paris finally compelled King Leopold to give up all claims to the Bahr-el-Ghazal, though he acquired the right to lease the Lado district below the Albert Nyanza. The importance of these questions in the development of British policy in the Nile basin has been pointed out in Chapter XVII.
The ostensible aim, however, of the founders of the Congo Free State was, not the exploitation of the Upper Nile district, the making of railways and the exportation of great quantities of ivory and rubber from Congoland, but the civilising and uplifting of Central Africa. The General Act of the Berlin Conference begins with an invocation to Almighty God; and the Brussels Conference imitated its predecessor in this particular. It is, therefore, as a civilising and moralising agency that the Congo Government will always be judged at the bar of posterity.
The first essential of success in dealing with backward races is sympathy with their most cherished notions. Yet from the very outset one of these was violated. On July 1, 1885, a decree of the Congo Free State asserted that all vacant lands were the property of the Government, that is, virtually of the King himself. Further, on June 30, 1887, an ordinance was decreed, claiming the right to let or sell domains, and to grant mining or wood-cutting rights on any land, "the ownership of which is not recognised as appertaining to any one." These decrees, we may remark, were for some time kept secret, until their effects became obvious.
All who know anything of the land systems of primitive peoples will see that they contravened the customs which the savage holds dear. The plots actually held and tilled by the natives are infinitesimally small when compared with the vast tracts over which their tribes claim hunting, pasturage, and other rights. The land system of the savage is everywhere communal. Individual ownership in the European sense is a comparatively late development. The Congolese authorities must have known this; for nearly all troubles with native races have arisen from the profound differences in the ideas of the European and the savage on the subject of land-holding.
Yet, in face of the experience of former times, the Congo State put forward a claim which has led, or will lead, to the confiscation of all tribal or communal land-rights in that huge area. Such confiscation may, perhaps, be defended in the case of the United States, where the new-comers enormously outnumbered the Red Indians, and tilled land that previously lay waste. It is indefensible in the tropics, where the white settlers will always remain the units as compared with the millions whom they elevate or exploit[472]. The savage holds strongly to certain rudimentary ideas of justice, especially to the right, which he and his tribe have always claimed and exercised, of using the tribal land for the primary needs of life. When he is denied the right of hunting, cutting timber, or pasturage, he feels "cribbed, cabined, and confined." This, doubtless, is the chief source of the quarrels between the new State and its protégés, also of the depression of spirits which Mr. Casement found so prevalent. The best French authorities on colonial development now admit that it is madness to interfere with the native land tenures in tropical Africa.
The method used in the enlisting of men for public works and for the army has also caused many troubles. This question is admittedly one of great difficulty. Hard work must be done, and, in the tropics, the white man can only direct it. Besides, where life is fairly easy, men will not readily come forward to labour. Either the inducement offered must be adequate, or some form of compulsory enlistment must be adopted. The Belgian officials, in the plentiful lack of funds that has always clogged their State, have tried compulsion, generally through the native chiefs. These are induced, by the offer of cotton cloth or bright-coloured handkerchiefs, to supply men from the tribe. If the labourers are not forthcoming, the chief is punished, his village being sometimes burned. By means, then, of gaudy handkerchiefs, or firebrands, the labourers are obtained. They figure as "apprentices," under the law of November 8, 1888, which accorded "special protection to the blacks."
[Footnote 472: The number of whites in Congoland is about 1700, of whom 1060 are Belgians; the blacks number about 29,000,000, according to Stanley; the Belgian Governor-General, Wahis, thinks this below the truth. See Wauters, L'État indépendant du Congo, pp. 261, 432.]
The British Consul, Mr. Casement, in his report on the administration of the Congo, stated that the majority of the government workmen at Léopoldville were under some form of compulsion, but were, on the whole, well cared for[473].
[Footnote 473: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1904), p. 27.]
According to a German resident in Congoland, the lot of the apprentices differs little from that of slaves. Their position, as contrasted with that of their former relation to the chief, is humorously defined by the term libérés[474] The hardships of the labourers on the State railways were such that the British Government refused to allow them to be recruited from Sierra Leone or other British possessions.
[Footnote 474: A. Boshart, Zehn Jahre Afrikanischen Lebens (1898), quoted by Fox Bourne, op. cit. p. 77. For further details see the article by Mr. Glave, once an official of the Congo Free State, in the Century Magazine, vol. liii.; also his work, Six Years in the Congo (1892).]
However, now that a British Cabinet has allowed a great colony to make use of indentured yellow labour in its mines, Great Britain cannot, without glaring inconsistency, lodge any protest against the infringement, in Congoland, of the Act of the Berlin Conference in the matter of the treatment of hired labourers. If the lot of the Congolese apprentices is to be bettered, the initiative must be taken at some capital other than London.
Another subject which nearly concerns the welfare of the Congo State is the recruiting and use of native troops. These are often raised from the most barbarous tribes of the far interior; their pay is very small; and too often the main inducement to serve under the blue banner with the golden star, is the facility for feasting and plunder at the expense of other natives who have not satisfied the authorities. As one of them naïvely said to Mr. Casement, he preferred to be with the hunters rather than with the hunted.
It seems that grave abuses first crept in during the course of the campaign for the extirpation of slavery and slave-raiding in the Stanley Falls region. The Arab slave-raiders were rich, not only in slaves, but in ivory--prizes which tempted the cupidity of the native troops, and even, it is said, of their European officers. In any case, it is certain that the liberating forces, hastily raised and imperfectly controlled, perpetrated shocking outrages on the tribes for whose sake they were waging war. The late Mr. Glave, in the article in the Century Magazine above referred to, found reason for doubting whether the crusade did not work almost as much harm as the evils it was sent to cure. His words were these: "The black soldiers are bent on fighting and raiding; they want no peaceful settlement. They have good rifles and ammunition, realise their superiority over the natives with their bows and arrows, and they want to shoot and kill and rob. Black delights to kill black, whether the victim be man, woman, or child, and no matter how defenceless." This deep-seated habit of mind is hard to eradicate; and among certain of the less reputable of the Belgian officers it has occasionally been used, in order to terrorise into obedience tribes that kicked against the decrees of the Congo State.
Undoubtedly there is great difficulty in avoiding friction with native tribes. All Governments have at certain times and places behaved more or less culpably towards them. British annals have been fouled by many a misdeed on the part of harsh officials and grasping pioneers, while recent revelations as to the treatment of natives in Western Australia show the need of close supervision of officials even in a popularly governed colony. The record of German East Africa and the French Congo is also very far from clean. Still, in the opinion of all who have watched over the welfare of the aborigines--among whom we may name Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Fox Bourne--the treatment of the natives in a large part of the Congo Free State has been worse than in the districts named above[475]. There is also the further damning fact that the very State which claimed to be a great philanthropic agency has, until very recently, refused to institute any full inquiry into the alleged defects of its administration.
[Footnote 475: Sir Charles Dilke stated this very forcibly in a speech delivered at the Holborn Town Hall on June 7, 1905.]
Some of these defects may be traced to the bad system of payment of officials. Not only are they underpaid, but they have no pension, such as is given by the British, French, and Dutch Governments to their employees. The result is that the Congolese officer looks on his term of service in that unhealthy climate as a time when he must enrich himself for life. Students of Roman History know that, when this feeling becomes a tradition, it is apt to lead to grave abuses, the recital of which adds an undying interest to the speech of Cicero against Verres. In the case of the Congolese administrators the State provided (doubtless unwittingly) an incentive to harshness. It frequently supplemented its inadequate stipends by "gratifications," which are thus described and criticised by M. Cattier: "The custom was introduced of paying to officials prizes proportioned to the amount of produce of the 'private domain' of the State, and of the taxes paid by the natives. That amounted to the inciting, by the spur of personal interest, of officials to severity and to rigour in the application of laws and regulations." Truly, a more pernicious application of the plan of "payment by results" cannot be conceived; and M. Cattier affirms that, though nominally abolished, it existed in reality down to the year 1898.
Added to this are defects arising from the uncertainty of employment. An official may be discharged at once by the Governor-General on the ground of unfitness for service in Africa; and the man, when discharged, has no means of gaining redress. The natural result is the growth of a habit of almost slavish obedience to the authorities, not only in regard to the written law, but also to private and semi-official intimations[476].
[Footnote 476: Cattier, Droit et Administration . . . du Congo, pp. 243-245.]
Another blot on the record of the Congo Free State is the exclusive character of the trading corporation to which it has granted concessions. Despite the promises made to private firms that early sought to open up business in its land, the Government itself has become a great trading corporation, with monopolist rights which close great regions to private traders and subject the natives to vexatious burdens. This system took definite form in September 1891, when the Government claimed exclusive rights in trade in the extreme north and north-east. At the close of that year Captain Baert, the administrator of these districts, also enjoined the collection of rubber and other products by the natives for the benefit of the State.
The next step was to forbid to private traders in that quarter the right of buying these products from natives. In May 1892 the State monopoly in rubber, etc., was extended to the "Equator" district, natives not being allowed to sell them to any one but a State official. Many of the merchants protested, but in vain. The chief result of their protest was the establishment of privileged companies, the "Société Anversoise" and the "Anglo-Belgian," and the reservation to the State of large areas under the title of Domaines privés (Oct. 1892)[477]. The apologetic skill of the partisans of the Congo State is very great; but it will hardly be equal to the task of proving that this new departure is not a direct violation of Article V. of the General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1885, quoted above.
[Footnote 477: For a map of the domains now appropriated by these and other privileged "Trusts," see Morel, op. cit. p. 466.]
A strange commentary on the latter part of that article, according full protection to all foreigners, was furnished by the execution of the ex-missionary, Stokes, at the hands of Belgian officials in 1895--a matter for which the Congo Government finally made grudging and incomplete reparation[478]. Another case was as bad. In 1901 an Austrian trader, Rabinek, was arrested and imprisoned for "illegal" trading in rubber in the "Katanga Trust" country. Treated unfeelingly during his removal down the country, he succumbed to fever. His effects were seized and have not been restored to his heirs[479].
[Footnote 478: See the evidence in Parl. Papers, Africa. No. 8 (1896).]
[Footnote 479: Morel, op. cit. chaps. xxiii.-xxv.]
When such treatment is meted out to white men who pursued their trade in reliance on the original constitution of the State, the natives may be expected to fare badly. Their misfortunes thickened when the Government, on the plea that natives must contribute towards the expenses of the State, began to require them to collect and hand in a certain amount of rubber. The evidence of Mr. Casement clearly shows that the natives could not understand why this should suddenly be imposed on them; that the amount claimed was often excessive; and that the punishment meted out for failure to comply with the official demands led to many barbarous actions on the part of officials and their native troops. Thus, at Bolobo, he found large numbers of industrious workers in iron who had fled from the "Domaine de la Couronne" (King Leopold's private domain) because "they had endured such ill-treatment at the hands of the Government officials and Government soldiers in their own country that life had become intolerable, that nothing had remained for them at home but to be killed for failure to bring in a certain amount of rubber, or to die of starvation or exposure in their attempts to satisfy the demands made upon them[480]."
[Footnote 480: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), pp. 29, 60. A missionary, Rev. J. Whitehead, wrote in July 1903: "During the past seven years this 'domaine privé' of King Leopold has been a veritable 'hell on earth.'" (Ibid. p. 64).]
On the north side of Lake Mantumba Mr. Casement found that the population had diminished by 60 or 70 per cent since the imposition of the rubber tax in 1893--a fact, however, which may be partly assigned to the sleeping sickness. The tax led to constant fighting, until at last the officials gave up the effort and imposed a requisition of food or gum-copal; the change seems to have been satisfactory there and in other parts where it has been tried. In the former time the native soldiers punished delinquents with mutilation: proofs on this subject here and in several other places were indisputable. On the River Lulongo, Mr. Casement found that the amount of rubber collected from the natives generally proved to be in proportion to the number of guns used by the collecting force[481]. In some few cases natives were shot, even by white officers, on account of their failure to bring in the due amount of rubber[482]. A comparatively venial form of punishment was the capture and detention of wives until their husbands made up the tale. Is it surprising that thousands of the natives of the north have fled into French Congoland, itself by no means free from the grip of monopolist companies, but not terrorised as are most of the tribes of the "Free State"?
[Footnote 481: Ibid. pp. 34, 43, 44, 49, 76, etc.]
[Footnote 482: Ibid. p. 70. The effort made by the Chevalier De Cuvelier to rebut Mr. Casement's charges consists mainly of an ineffective tu quoque. To compare the rubber-tax of the Congo State with the hut-tax of Sierra Leone begs the whole question. Mr. Casement proves (p. 27) that the natives do not object to reasonable taxation which comes regularly. They do object to demands for rubber which are excessive and often involve great privations. Above all, the punishments utterly cow them and cause them to flee to the forests.
The efforts of Mr. Macdonnell in King Leopold II. (London, 1905) to refute Mr. Casement also seem to me weak and inconclusive. The reply of the Congo Free State is printed by Mr. H.W. Wack in the Appendix of his Story of the Congo Free State (New York, 1905). It convicts Mr. Casement of inaccuracy on a few details. Despite all that has been written by various apologists, it may be affirmed that the Congo Free State has yet made no adequate defence. Possibly it will appear in the report which, it is hoped, will be published in full by the official commission of inquiry now sitting.]
Livingstone, in his day, regarded ivory as the chief cause of the slave-trade in Central and Eastern Africa; but it is questionable whether even ivory (now a vanishing product) brought more woe to millions of negroes than the viscous fluid which enables the pleasure-seekers of Paris, London, and New York to rush luxuriously through space. The swift Juggernaut of the present age is accountable for as much misery as ever sugar or ivory was in the old slave days. But it seems that, so long as the motor-car industry prospers, the dumb woes of the millions of Africa will count for little in the Courts of Europe. During the session of 1904 Lord Lansdowne made praiseworthy efforts to call their attention to the misgovernment of the Congo State; but he met with no response except from the United States, Italy, and Turkey(!) A more signal proof of the weakness and cynical selfishness now prevalent in high quarters has never been given than in this abandonment of a plain and bounden duty.
A slight amount of public spirit on the part of the signatories of the Berlin Act would have sufficed to prevent Congolese affairs drifting into the present highly anomalous situation. That land is not Belgian, and it is not international--except in a strictly legal sense. It is difficult to say what it is if it be not the private domain of King Leopold and of several monopolist-controlling trusts. Probably the only way out of the present slough of despond is the definite assumption of sole responsibility by the Belgian people; for it should be remembered that a very large number of patriotic Belgians urgently long to redress evils for which they feel themselves to be indirectly, and to a limited extent, chargeable. At present, those who carefully study the evidence relating to the Berlin Conference of 1885, and the facts, so far as they are ascertainable to-day, must pronounce the Congo experiment to be a terrible failure.
XX. RUSSIA IN THE FAR EAST
"This war, waged . . . for the command of the waters of the Pacific Ocean, so urgently necessary for the peaceful prosperity, not only of our own, but of other nations."--The Czar's Proclamation of March 3, 1905.
Of all the collisions of racial interests that have made recent history, none has turned the thoughts of the world to regions so remote, and events so dramatic in their intensity and momentous in their results, as that which has come about in Manchuria. The Far Eastern Question is the outcome of the expansion of two vigorous races, that of Russia and Japan, at the expense of the almost torpid polity of China. The struggle has taken place in the debatable lands north and west of Korea, where Tartars and Chinese formerly warred for supremacy, and where geographical and commercial considerations enhance the value of the most northerly of the ice-free ports of the Continent of Asia.
In order to understand the significance of this great struggle, we must look back to the earlier stages of the extension of Russian influence. Up to a very recent period the eastern growth of Russia affords an instance of swift and natural expansion. Picture on the one side a young and vigorous community, dowered with patriotic pride by the long and eventually triumphant conflict with the Tartar hordes, and dwelling in dreary plains where Nature now and again drives men forth on the quest for a sufficiency of food. On the other hand, behold a vast territory, well-watered, with no natural barrier between the Urals and the Pacific, sparsely inhabited by tribes of nomads having little in common. The one active community will absorb the ill-organised units as inevitably as the rising tide overflows the neighbouring mud-flats when once the intervening barrier is overtopped. In the case of Russia and Siberia the only barrier is that of the Ural Mountains; and their gradual slopes form a slighter barrier than is anywhere else figured on the map of the world in so conspicuous a chain. The Urals once crossed, the slopes and waterways invite the traveller eastwards.
The French revolutionists of 1793 used to say, "With bread and iron one can get to China." Russian pioneers had made good that boast nearly two centuries before it was uttered in Paris. The impelling force which set in motion the Muscovite tide originated with a man whose name is rarely heard outside Russia. Yet, if the fame of men were proportionate to the effect of their exploits, few names would be more widely known than that of Jermak. This man had been a hauler of boats up the banks of the Volga, until his strength, hardihood, and love of adventure impelled him to a freebooting life, wherein his powers of command and the fierce thoroughness of his methods speedily earned him the name of Jermak, "the millstone." In the year 1580, the wealthy family of the Stroganoffs, tempted by stories of the wealth to be gained from the fur-bearing animals of Siberia, turned their thoughts to Jermak and his robber band as the readiest tools for the conquest of those plains. The enterprise appealed to Jermak and the hardy Cossacks with whom he had to do. He and his men were no less skilled in river craft than in fighting; and the roving Cossack spirit kindled at the thought of new lands to harry. Proceeding by boat from Perm, they worked their way into the spurs of the Urals, and then by no very long portage crossed one of its lower passes and found themselves on one of the tributaries of the Obi.
Thenceforth their course was easy. Jermak and his small band of picked fighters were more than a match for the wretchedly armed and craven-spirited Tartars, who fled at the sound of firearms. In 1581 the settlement, called Sibir, fell to the invaders; and, though they soon abandoned this rude encampment for a new foundation, the town of Tobolsk, yet the name Siberia recalls their pride at the conquest of the enemy's capital. The traditional skill of the Cossacks in the handling of boats greatly aided their advance, and despite the death of Jermak in battle, his men pressed on and conquered nearly the half of Siberia within a decade. What Drake and the sea-dogs of Devon were then doing for England on the western main, was being accomplished for Russia by the ex-pirate and his band from the Volga. The two expansive movements were destined finally to meet on the shores of the Pacific in the northern creeks of what is now British Columbia.
The later stages in Russian expansion need not detain us here. The excellence of the Cossack methods in foraying, pioneer-work, and the forming of military settlements, consolidated the Muscovite conquests. The Tartars were fain to submit to the Czar, or to flee to the nomad tribes of Central Asia or Northern China. The invaders reached the River Lena in the year 1630; and some of their adventurers voyaged down the Amur, and breasted the waves of the Pacific in 1636. Cossack bands conquered Kamchatka in 1699-1700[483].
[Footnote 483: Vladimir, Russia en the Pacific.]
Meanwhile the first collision between the white and the yellow races took place on the River Amur, which the Chinese claimed as their own. At first the Russians easily prevailed; but in the year 1689 they suffered a check. New vigour was then manifested in the councils of Pekin, and the young Czar, Peter the Great, in his longing for triumphs over Swedes and Turks, thought lightly of gains at the expense of the "celestials." He therefore gave to Russian energies that trend westwards and southwards, which after him marked the reigns of Catharine II., Alexander I., and, in part, of Nicholas I. The surrender of the Amur valley to China in 1689 ended all efforts of Russia in that direction for a century and a half. Many Russians believe that the earlier impulse was sounder and more fruitful in results for Russia than her meddling in the wars of the French Revolution and Empire.
Not till 1846 did Russia resume her march down the valley of the Amur; and then the new movement was partly due to British action. At that time the hostility of Russia and Britain was becoming acute on Asiatic and Turkish questions. Further, the first Anglo-Chinese War (1840-42) led to the cession of Hong-Kong to the distant islanders, who also had five Chinese ports opened to their trade. This enabled Russia to pose as the protector of China, and to claim points of vantage whence her covering wings might be extended over that Empire. The statesmen of Pekin had little belief in the genuineness of these offers, especially in view of the thorough exploration of the Amur region and the Gulf of Okhotsk which speedily ensued.
The Czar, in fact, now inaugurated a forward Asiatic policy, and confided it to an able governor, Muravieff (1847). The new departure was marked by the issue of an imperial ukase (1851) ordering the Russian settlers beyond Lake Baikal to conform to the Cossack system; that is, to become liable to military duties in return for the holding of land in the more exposed positions. Three years later Muravieff ordered 6000 Cossacks to migrate from these trans-Baikal settlements to the land newly acquired from China on the borders of Manchuria[484]. In the same year the Russians established a station at the mouth of the Amur, and in 1853 gained control over part of the Island of Saghalien.
[Footnote 484: Popowski, The Rival Powers in Central Asia, p. 13.]
For the present, then, everything seemed to favour Russia's forward policy. The tribes on the Amur were passive; an attack of an Anglo-French squadron on Petropaulovsk, a port in Kamchatka, failed (Aug. 1854); and the Russians hoped to be able to harry British commerce from this and other naval bases in the Pacific. Finally, the rupture with England and France, and the beginning of the Taeping rebellion in China, induced the Court of Pekin to agree to Russia's demands for the Amur boundary, and for a subsequent arrangement respecting the ownership of the districts between the mouth of that river and the bay on which now stands the port of Vladivostok (May 15, 1858). The latter concession left the door open for Muravieff to push on Russia's claims to this important wedge of territory. His action was characteristic. He settled Cossacks along the River Ussuri, a southern tributary of the Amur, and, by pressing ceaselessly on the celestials (then distracted by a war with England and France), he finally brought them to agree to the cession of the district around the new settlement, which was soon to receive the name of Vladivostok ("Lord of the East"). He also acquired for the Czar the Manchurian coast down to the bounds of Korea (November 2, 1860). Russia thus threw her arms around the great province which had provided China with her dynasty and her warrior caste, and was still one of the wealthiest and most cherished lands of that Empire. Having secured these points of vantage in Northern China, the Muscovites could await with confidence further developments in the decay of that once formidable organism.
Such, in brief, is the story of Russian expansion from the Urals to the Sea of Japan. Probably no conquest of such magnitude was ever made with so little expenditure of blood and money. In one sense this is its justification, that is, if we view the course of events, not by the limelight of abstract right, but by the ordinary daylight of expediency. Conquests which strain the resources of the victors and leave the vanquished longing for revenge, carry their own condemnation. On the other hand, the triumph of Russia over the ill-organised tribes of Siberia and northern Manchuria reminds one of the easy and unalterable methods of Nature, which compels a lower type of life to yield up its puny force for the benefit of a higher. It resembles the victory of man over quadrupeds, of order over disorder, of well-regulated strength over weakness and stupidity.
Muravieff deserves to rank among the makers of modern Russia. He waited his time, used his Cossack pawns as an effective screen to each new opening of the game, and pushed his foes hardest when they were at their weakest. Moreover, like Bismarck, he knew when to stop. He saw the limit that separated the practicable from the impracticable. He brought the Russian coast near to the latitudes where harbours are free from ice; but he forbore to encroach on Korea--a step which would have brought Japan on to the field of action. The Muscovite race, it was clear, had swallowed enough to busy its digestive powers for many a year; and it was partly on his advice that Russian North America was sold to the United States.
Still, Russia's advance southwards towards ice-free ports was only checked, not stopped. In 1861 a Russian man-of-war took possession of the Tshushima Isles between Korea and Japan, but withdrew on the protest of the British admiral. Six years later the Muscovites strengthened their grip on Saghalien, and thereafter exercised with Japan joint sovereignty over that island. The natural result followed. In 1875 Russia found means to eject her partner, the Japanese receiving as compensation undisputed claim to the barren Kuriles, which they already possessed[485].
[Footnote 485: The Russo-Japanese Conflict, by K. Asakawa (1904), p. 67; Europe and the Far East, by Sir R.K. Douglas (1904), p. 191.]
Even before this further proof of Russia's expansiveness, Japan had seen the need of adapting herself to the new conditions consequent on the advent of the Great Powers in the Far East. This is not the place for a description of the remarkable Revolution of the years 1867-71. Suffice it to say that the events recounted above undoubtedly helped on the centralising of the powers in the hands of the Mikado, and the Europeanising of the institutions and armed forces of Japan. In face of aggressions by Russia and quarrels with the maritime Powers, a vigorous seafaring people felt the need of systems of organisation and self-defence other than those provided by the rule of feudal lords, and levies drilled with bows and arrows. The subsequent history of the Far East may be summed up in the statement that Japan faced the new situation with the brisk adaptability of a maritime people, while China plodded along on her old tracks with a patience and stubbornness eminently bovine.
The events which finally brought Russia and Japan into collision arose out of the obvious need for the construction of a railway from St. Petersburg to the Pacific having its terminus on an ice-free port. Only so could Russia develop the resources of Siberia and the Amur Province. In the sixties and seventies trans-continental railways were being planned and successfully laid in North America. But there is this difference: in the New World the iron horse has been the friend of peace; in the Far East of Asia it has hurried on the advent of war; and for this reason, that Russia, having no ice-free harbour at the end of her great Siberian line, was tempted to grasp at one which the yellow races looked on as altogether theirs.
The miscalculation was natural. The rapid extension of trade in the Pacific Ocean seemed to invite Russia to claim her full share in a development that had already enriched England, the United States, and, later, Germany and France; and events placed within the Muscovite grasp positions which fulfilled all the conditions requisite for commercial prosperity and military and naval domination.
For many years past vague projects of a trans-Siberian railway had been in the air. In 1857 an English engineer offered to construct a horse tramway from Perm, across the Urals, and to the Pacific. An American also proposed to make a railway for locomotives from Irkutsk to the head waters of the Amur. In 1875 the Russian Government decided to construct a line from Perm as far as a western affluent of the River Obi; but owing to want of funds the line was carried no farther than Tiumen on the River Tobol (1880).
The financial difficulty was finally overcome by the generosity of the French, who, as we have already seen (Chapter XII.), late in the eighties began to subscribe to all the Russian loans placed on the Paris Bourse. The scheme now became practicable, and in March 1891 an imperial ukase appeared sanctioning the mighty undertaking. It was made known at Vladivostok by the Czarevitch (now Nicholas II.) in the course of a lengthy tour in the Far East; and he is known then to have gained that deep interest in those regions which has moulded Russian policy throughout his reign. Quiet, unostentatious, and even apathetic on most subjects, he then, as we may judge from subsequent events, determined to give to Russian energies a decided trend towards the Pacific. As Czar, he has placed that aim in the forefront of his policy. With him the Near East has always been second to the Far East; and in the critical years 1896-97, when the sufferings of Christians in Turkey became acute, he turned a deaf ear to the cries of myriads who had rarely sent their prayers northwards in vain. The most reasonable explanation of this callousness is that Nicholas II. at that time had no ears save for the call of the Pacific Ocean. This was certainly the policy of his Ministers, Prince Lobánoff, Count Muravieff, and Count Lamsdorff. It was oceanic.
The necessary prelude to Russia's new policy was the completion of the trans-Siberian railway, certainly one of the greatest engineering feats ever attempted by man. While a large part of the route offers no more difficulty than the conquest of limitless levels, there are portions that have taxed to the utmost the skill and patience of the engineer. The deep trough of Lake Baikal has now (June 1905) been circumvented by the construction of a railway (here laid with double tracks) which follows the rocky southern shore. This part of the line, 244 versts (162 miles) long, has involved enormous expense. In fifty-six miles there are thirty-nine tunnels, and thirteen galleries for protection against rock-slides. This short section is said to have cost £1,170,000. The energy with which the Government pushed on this stupendous work during the Russo-Japanese war yields one more proof of their determination to secure at all costs the aims which they set in view in and after the year 1891[486].
[Footnote 486: See an article by Mr. J.M. Price in The Fortnightly Review for May 1905.]
Other parts of the track have also presented great difficulties. East of Lake Baikal the line gradually winds its way up to a plateau some 3000 feet higher than the lake, and then descends to treacherous marsh lands. The district of the Amur bristles with obstacles, not the least being the terrible floods that now and again (as in 1897) turn the whole valley into a trough of swirling waters[487].
[Footnote 487: Russia on the Pacific, by "Vladimir"; The Awakening of the East, by P. Leroy-Beaulieu, chaps, ix. x.]
All these difficulties have been overcome in course of time; but there remained the question of the terminus. Up to the year 1894 the objective had been Vladivostok; but the outbreak of the Chino-Japanese War at that time opened up vast possibilities. Russia could either side with the islanders and share with them the spoils of Northern China, or, posing as the patron of the celestials, claim some profitable douceurs as her reward.
She chose the latter alternative, and, in the opinion of some of her own writers, wrongly. The war proved the daring, the patriotism, and the organising skill of the Japanese to be as signal as the sloth and corruptibility of their foes. Then, for the first time, the world saw the utter weakness of China--a fact which several observers (including Lord Curzon) had vainly striven to make clear. Even so, when Chinese generals and armies took to their heels at the slightest provocation; when their battleships were worsted by Japanese armoured cruisers; when their great stronghold, Port Arthur, was stormed with a loss of about 400 killed, the moral of it all was hidden from the wise men of the West. Patronising things were said of the Japanese as conquerors--of the Chinese; but few persons realised that a new Power had arisen. It seemed the easiest of undertakings to despoil the "venomous dwarfs" of the fruits of their triumph over China[488].
[Footnote 488: See the evidence adduced by V. Chirol, _The Far Eastern Question, _chap, xi., as to the ultimately aggressive designs of China on Japan.]
The chief conditions of the Chino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 17, 1895) were the handing over to Japan the island of Formosa and the Liaotung Peninsula. The latter was very valuable, inasmuch as it contained good ice-free harbours which dominated the Yellow Sea and the Gulf of Pechili; and herein must be sought the reason for the action of Russia at this crisis. Li Hung Chang, the Chinese negotiator, had already been bought over by Russia in an important matter[489], and he early disclosed the secret of the terms of peace with Japan. Russia was thus forewarned; and, before the treaty was ratified at Pekin, her Government, acting in concert with those of France and Germany, intervened with a menacing declaration that the cession of the Liaotung Peninsula would give to Japan a dangerous predominance in the affairs of China and disturb the whole balance of power in the Far East. The Russian Note addressed to Japan further stated that such a step would "be a perpetual obstacle to the permanent peace of the Far East." Had Russia alone been concerned, possibly the Japanese would have referred matters to the sword; but, when face to face with a combination of three Powers, they decided on May 4 to give way, and to restore the Liaotung Peninsula to China[490].
[Footnote 489: _Manchu and Muscovite, _by B.L. Putnam Weale, p. 60.]
[Footnote 490: Asakawa, _op. cit. _p, 76.]
The reasons for the conduct of France and Germany in this matter are not fully known. We may safely conjecture that the Republic acted conjointly with the Czar in order to clinch the new Franco-Russian alliance, not from any special regard for China, a Power with which she had frequently come into collision respecting Tonquin. As for Germany, she was then entering on new colonial undertakings; and she doubtless saw in the joint intervention of 1895 a means of sterilising the Franco-Russian alliance, so far as she herself was concerned, and possibly of gaining Russia's assent to the future German expansion in the Far East.
Here, of course, we are reduced to conjecture, but the conjecture is consonant with later developments. In any case, the new Triple Alliance was a temporary and artificial union, which prompt and united action on the part of Great Britain and the United States would have speedily dissolved. Unfortunately these Powers were engrossed in other concerns, and took no action to redress the balance which the self-constituted champions of political stability were upsetting to their own advantage.
The effects of their action were diverse, and for the most part unforeseen. In the first place, Japan, far from being discouraged by this rebuff, set to work to perfect her army and navy, and with a thoroughness which Roon and Moltke would have envied. Organisation, weapons, drill, marksmanship (the last a weak point in the war with China) were improved; heavy ironclads were ordered, chiefly in British yards, and, when procured, were handled with wonderful efficiency. Few, if any, of those "disasters" which are so common in the British navy in time of peace, occurred in the new Japanese navy--a fact which redounds equally to the credit of the British instructors and to the pupils themselves.
The surprising developments of the Far Eastern Question were soon to bring the new armaments to a terrible test. Japan and the whole world believed that the Liaotung Peninsula was made over to China in perpetuity. It soon appeared that the Czar and his Ministers had other views, and that, having used France and Germany for the purpose of warning off Japan, they were preparing schemes for the subjection of Manchuria to Russian influence. Or rather, it is probable that Li Hung Chang had already arranged the following terms with Russia as the price of her intervention on behalf of China. The needs of the Court of Pekin and the itching palms of its officials proved to be singularly helpful in the carrying out of the bargain. China being unequal to the task of paying the Japanese war indemnity, Russia undertook to raise a four per cent loan of 400,000,000 francs--of course mainly at Paris--in order to cover the half of that debt. In return for this favour, the Muscovites required the establishment of a Russo-Chinese Bank having widespread powers, comprising the receipt of taxes, the management of local finances, and the construction of such railway and telegraph lines as might be conceded by the Chinese authorities.
This in itself was excellent "brokerage" on the French money, of which China was assumed to stand in need. At one stroke Russia ended the commercial supremacy of England in China, the result of a generation of commercial enterprise conducted on the ordinary lines, and substituted her own control, with powers almost equal to those of a Viceroy. They enabled her to displace Englishmen from various posts in Northern China and to clog the efforts of their merchants at every turn. The British Government, we may add, showed a singular equanimity in face of this procedure.
But this was not all. At the close of March 1896, it appeared that the gratitude felt by the Chinese Andromeda to the Russian Perseus had ripened into a definite union. The two Powers framed a secret treaty of alliance which accorded to the northern State the right to make use of any harbour in China, and to levy Chinese troops in case of a conflict with an Asiatic State. In particular, the Court of Pekin granted to its ally the free use of Port Arthur in time of peace, or, if the other Powers should object, of Kiao-chau. Manchuria was thrown open to Russian officers for purposes of survey, etc., and it was agreed that on the completion of the trans-Siberian railway, a line should be constructed southwards to Talienwan or some other place, under the joint control of the two Powers[491].
[Footnote 491: Asakawa, pp. 85-87.]
The Treaty marks the end of the first stage in the Russification of Manchuria. Another stage was soon covered, and, as it seems, by the adroitness of Count Cassini, Russian Minister at Pekin. The details, and even the existence, of the Cassini Convention of September 30, 1896, have been disputed; but there are good grounds for accepting the following account as correct. Russia received permission to construct her line to Vladivostok across Manchuria, thereby saving the northern detour down the difficult valley of the Amur; also to build her own line to Mukden, if China found herself unable to do so; and the line southwards to Talienwan and Port Arthur was to be made on Russian plans. Further, all these new lines built by Russia might be guarded by her troops, presumably to protect them from natives who objected to the inventions of the "foreign devils." As regards naval affairs, the Czar's Government gained the right to "lease" from China the harbour of Kiao-chau for fifteen years; and, in case of war, to make use of Port Arthur. The last clauses granted to Russian subjects the right to acquire mining rights in Manchuria, and to the Czar's officers to drill the levies of that province in the European style, should China desire to reorganise them.[492]
[Footnote 492: Asakawa, chap. ii.]
But the protector had not reaped the full reward of his timely intervention in the spring of 1895. He had not yet gained complete control of an ice-free harbour. In fact, the prize of Kiao-chau, nearly within reach, now seemed to be snatched from his grasp by Kaiser Wilhelm. The details are well known. Two German subjects who were Roman Catholic missionaries in the Shan-tung province were barbarously murdered by Chinese ruffians on November 1, 1897. The outrage was of a flagrant kind, but in ordinary times would have been condoned by the punishment of the offenders and a fine payable by the district. But the occasion was far from ordinary. A German squadron therefore steamed into Kiao-chau and occupied that important harbour.
There is reason to think that Germany had long been desirous of gaining a foothold in that rich province. The present writer has been assured by a geological expert, Professor Skertchley, who made the first map of the district for the Chinese authorities, that that map was urgently demanded by the German envoy at Pekin about this time. In any case, the mineral wealth of the district undoubtedly influenced the course of events. In accordance with a revised version of the old Christian saying: "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of--the Empire," the Emperor William despatched his brother Prince Henry--the "mailed fist" of Germany--with a squadron to strengthen the Imperial grip on Kiao-chau. The Prince did so without opposition either from China or Russia. Finally, on March 5, 1898, the Court of Pekin confirmed to Germany the lease of that port and of the neighbouring parts of the province of Shan-tung.
The whole affair caused a great stir, because it seemed to prelude a partition of China, and that, too, in spite of the well-meaning declarations of the Salisbury Cabinet in favour, first, of the integrity of that Empire, and, when that was untenable, of the policy of the "open door" for traders of all nations. Most significant of all was the conduct of Russia. As far as is known, she made no protest against the action of Germany in a district to which she herself had laid claim. It is reasonable, on more grounds than one, to suppose that the two Powers had come to some understanding, Russia conceding Kiao-chau to the Kaiser, provided that she herself gained Port Arthur and its peninsula. Obviously she could not have faced the ill-will of Japan, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States--all more or less concerned at her rapid strides southward; and it is at least highly probable that she bought off Germany by waiving her own claims to Kiao-chau, provided that she gained an ideal terminus for her Siberian line, and a great naval and military stronghold. It is also worth noting that the first German troops were landed at Kiao-chau on November 17, 1897, while three Russian warships steamed into Port Arthur on December 18; and that the German "lease" was signed at Pekin on March 5, 1898; while that accorded to Russia bears date March 27[493].
[Footnote 493: Asakawa, p. 110, note.]
If we accept the naive suggestion of the Russian author, "Vladimir," the occupation of Kiao-chau by Germany "forced" Russia "to claim some equivalent compensation." Or possibly the cession of Port Arthur was another of the items in Li Hung Chang's bargain with Russia. In any case, the Russian warships entered Port Arthur, at first as if for a temporary stay; when two British warships repaired thither the Czar's Government requested them to leave--a request with which the Salisbury Cabinet complied in an inexplicably craven manner (January 1898). Rather more pressure was needed on the somnolent mandarins of Pekin; but, under the threat of war with Russia if the lease of the Liao-tung Peninsula were not granted by March 27, it was signed on that day. She thereby gained control of that peninsula for twenty-five years, a period which might be extended "by mutual agreement." The control of all the land forces was vested in a Russian official; and China undertook not to quarter troops to the north without the consent of the Czar. Port Arthur was reserved to the use of Russian and Chinese ships of war; and Russia gained the right to erect fortifications.
The British Government, which had hitherto sought to uphold the integrity of China, thereupon sought to "save its face" by leasing Wei-hai-wei (July 1). An excuse for the weakness of the Cabinet in Chinese affairs has been put forward, namely, that the issue of the Sudan campaign was still in doubt, and that the efforts of French and Russians to reach the Upper Nile from the French Congo and Southern Abyssinia compelled Ministers to concentrate their attention on that great enterprise. But this excuse will not bear examination. Strength at any one point of an Empire is not increased by discreditable surrenders at other points. No great statesman would have proceeded on such an assumption.
Obviously the balance of gain in these shabby transactions in the north of China was enormously in favour of Russia. She now pushed on her railway southwards with all possible energy. It soon appeared that Port Arthur could not remain an open port, and it was closed to merchant ships. Then Talienwan was named in place of it, but under restrictions which made the place of little value to foreign merchants. Thereafter the new port of Dalny was set apart for purposes of commerce, but the efficacy of the arrangements there has never been tested. In the intentions of the Czar, Port Arthur was to become the Gibraltar of the Far East, while Dalny, as the commercial terminus of the trans-Siberian line, figured as the Cadiz of the new age of exploration and commerce opening out to the gaze of Russia.
That motives of genuine philanthropy played their part in the Far Eastern policy of the Czar may readily be granted; but the enthusiasts who acclaimed him as the world's peacemaker at the Hague Congress (May 1899) were somewhat troubled by the thought that he had compelled China to cede to his enormous Empire the very peninsula, the acquisition of which by little Japan had been declared to be an unwarrantable disturbance of the balance of power in the Far East.
These events caused a considerable sensation in Great Britain, even in a generation which had become inured to "graceful concessions." In truth, the part played by her in the Far East has been a sorry one; and if there be eager partisans who still maintain that British Imperialism is an unscrupulously aggressive force, ever on the search for new enemies to fight and new lands to annex, a course of study in the Blue Books dealing with Chinese affairs in 1897-99 may with some confidence be prescribed as a sedative and lowering diet. It seems probable that the weakness of British diplomacy induced the belief at St. Petersburg that no opposition of any account would be forthcoming. With France acting as the complaisant treasurer, and Germany acquiescent, the Czar and his advisers might well believe that they had reached the goal of their efforts, "the domination of the Pacific."
With the Boxer movement of the years 1899-1900 we have here no concern. Considered pathologically, it was only the spasmodic protest of a body which the dissectors believed to be ready for operation. To assign it solely to dislike of European missionaries argues sheer inability to grasp the laws of evidence. Missionaries had been working in China for several decades, and were no more disliked than other "foreign devils." The rising was clearly due to indignation at the rapacity of the European Powers. We may note that it gave the Russian governor of the town of Blagovestchensk an opportunity of cowing the Chinese of northern Manchuria by slaying and drowning some 4500 persons at that place (July 1900). Thereafter Russia invaded Manchuria and claimed the unlimited rights due to actual conquest. On April 8, 1902, she promised to withdraw; but her persistent neglect to fulfil that promise (cemented by treaty with China) led to the outbreak of hostilities with Japan[494].
[Footnote 494: Asakawa, chap. vii.; and for the Korean Question, chaps. xvi, xvii]
We can now see that Russia, since the accession of Nicholas II., has committed two great faults in the Far East. She has overreached herself; and she has overlooked one very important factor in the problem--Japan. The subjects of the Mikado quivered with rage at the insult implied by the seizure of Port Arthur; but, with the instinct of a people at once proud and practical, they thrust down the flames of resentment and turned them into a mighty motive force. Their preparations for war, steady and methodical before, now gained redoubled energy; and the whole nation thrilled secretly but irresistibly to one cherished aim, the recovery of Port Arthur. How great is the power of chivalry and patriotism the world has now seen; but it is apt to forget that love of life and fear of death are feelings alike primal and inalienable among the Japanese as among other peoples. The inspiring force which nerved some 40,000 men gladly to lay down their lives on the hills around Port Arthur was the feeling that they were helping to hurl back in the face of Russia the gauntlet which she had there so insolently flung down as to an inferior race.
XXI. THE NEW GROUPING OF THE GREAT POWERS[495]
(1900-1907)
When I penned the words at the end of Chapter XX. it seemed probable that the mad race in armaments must lead either to war or to revolution. In these three supplementary chapters I seek to trace very briefly the causes that have led to war, in other words, to the ascendancy (perhaps temporary) of the national principle over the social, and international tendencies of the age.
[Footnote 495: Written in May-July 1915.]
The collapse of the international and pacifist movement may be ascribed to various causes. The Franco-German and Russo-Turkish Wars left behind rankling hatreds which rendered it very difficult for nations to disarm; and, after the decline of those resentments, there arose others as the outcome of the Greco-Turkish War and the Boer War. Further, the conflict between Japan and Russia so far weakened the latter as to leave Germany and Austria almost supreme in Europe; and, while in France and the United Kingdom the social movement has made considerable progress, Germany and Austria have remained in what may be termed the national stage of development, which offers many advantages over the international for purposes of war. Then again in the Central Empires parliamentary institutions have not been successful, tending on the whole to accentuate the disputes between the dominant and the subject races. The same is partially true of Russia, and far more so of the Balkan States. Consequently, in Central and Eastern Europe the national idea has become militant and aggressive; while Great Britain, the Netherlands, and to some extent France, have sought as far as possible to concentrate their efforts upon social legislation, arming only in self-defence. In this contrast lay one of the dangers of the situation.
Nationality caused the movements and wars of 1848-77. Thereafter, that principle seemed to wane. But it revived in redoubled force among the Balkan peoples owing partly to the brutal oppressions of the Sublime Porte; and the cognate idea, aiming, however, not at liberty but conquest, became increasingly popular with the German people after the accession of Kaiser William II. The sequel is only too well known. Civilisation has been overwhelmed by a recrudescence of nationalism, and the wealthiest age which the world has seen is a victim to the perfection and potency of its machinery. A recovery of the old belief in the solidarity of mankind and a conviction of the futility of all efforts for domination by any one people, are the first requisites towards the recovery of conditions that make for peace and good-will.
Meanwhile, recent history has had to concern itself largely with groupings or alliances, which have in the main resulted from ambition, distrust, or fear. As has already been shown, the Partition of Africa was arranged without a resort to arms; but after that appropriation of the lands of the dark races, the white peoples in the south came into collision late in 1899.
Much has been written as to the causes of the Boer War; but the secret encouragements which those brave farmers received from Germany are still only partly known. Even in 1894 Mr. Merriman warned Sir Edward Grey of the danger arising from "the steady way in which Krüger was Teutonising the Transvaal." Germany undoubtedly stiffened the neck of Krüger and the reactionary Boers in resisting the much-needed reforms. It is significant that the Kaiser's telegram to Krüger after the defeat of Jameson's raiders was sent only a few days before his declaration, January 18, 1896, that Germany must now pursue a World-Policy, as she did by browbeating Japan in the Far East. These developments had been rendered possible by the opening of the Kiel-North Sea Canal in 1895, an achievement which doubled the naval power of Germany. Thenceforth she pushed on construction, especially by the Navy Bill of 1898. Reliance on her largely accounts for the obstinate resistance of the Boers to the just demands of England and the Outlanders in 1899. A German historian, Count Reventlow, has said that "a British South Africa could not but thwart all German interests"; and the anti-British fury prevalent in Germany in and after 1899 augured ill for the preservation of peace in the twentieth century so soon as her new fleet was ready[496].
[Footnote 496: E, Lewin, The Germans and Africa, p. xvii. and chaps. v.-xiii.; J.H. Rose, The Origins of the War, Lectures I.-III.; Reventlow, Deutschlands auswärtige Politik, p. 71.]
The results of the Boer War were as follows. For the time Great Britain lost very seriously in prestige and in material resources. Amidst the successes gained by the Boers, the intervention of one or more European States in their favour seemed highly probable; and it is almost certain that Krüger relied on such an event. He paid visits to some of the chief European capitals, and was received by the French President (November 1900), but not by Kaiser William. The personality and aims of the Kaiser will concern us later; but we may notice here that in that year he had special reasons for avoiding a rupture with the United Kingdom. The Franco-Russian Alliance gave him pause, especially since June 1898, when a resolute man, Delcassé, became Foreign Minister at Paris and showed less complaisance to Germany than had of late been the case[497]. Besides, in 1898, the Kaiser had concluded with Great Britain a secret arrangement on African affairs, and early in 1900 acquired sole control of Samoa instead of the joint Anglo-American-German protectorate, which had produced friction. Finally, in the summer of 1900, the Boxer Rising in China opened up grave problems which demanded the co-operation of Germany and the United Kingdom.
[Footnote 497: Delcassé was Foreign Minister in five Administrations until 1905.]
It has often been stated that the Kaiser desired to form a Coalition against Great Britain during the Boer War; and it is fairly certain that he sounded Russia and France with a view to joint diplomatic efforts to stop the war on the plea of humanity, and that, after the failure of this device, he secretly informed the British Government of the danger which he claimed to have averted[498]. His actions reflected the impulsiveness and impetuosity which have often puzzled his subjects and alarmed his neighbours; but it seems likely that his aims were limited either to squeezing the British at the time of their difficulties, or to finding means of breaking up the Franco-Russian alliance. His energetic fishing in troubled waters caused much alarm; but it is improbable that he desired war with Great Britain until his new navy was ready for sea. The German Chancellor, Prince von Bülow, has since written as follows: "We gave England no cause to thwart us in the building of our fleet: . . . we never came into actual conflict with the Dual Alliance, which would have hindered us in the gradual acquisition of a navy[499]." This, doubtless, was the governing motive in German policy, to refrain from any action that would involve war, to seize every opportunity for pushing forward German claims, and, above all, to utilise the prevalent irritation at the helplessness of Germany at sea as a means of overcoming the still formidable opposition of German Liberals to the ever-increasing naval expenditure.
[Footnote 498: Sir V. Chirol, Quarterly Review, Oct. 1914.]
[Footnote 499: Bülow, Imperial Germany, pp. 98-9 (Eng. transl.); Rachfahl, Kaiser und Reich (p. 163), states that, as in 1900-1, the German fleet, even along with those of France and Russia, was no match for the British fleet, Germany necessarily remained neutral. See, too, Hurd and Castle, German Sea Power, chap. v.]
In order to discourage the futile anti-British diatribes in the German Press, Bülow declared in the Reichstag that in no quarter was there an intention to intervene against England. There are grounds for questioning the sincerity of this utterance; for the Russian statesman, Muraviev, certainly desired to intervene, as did influential groups at Petrograd, Berlin, and Paris. In any case, the danger to Great Britain was acute enough to evoke help from all parts of the Empire, and implant the conviction of the need of closer union and of maintaining naval supremacy. The risks of the years 1899-1902 also revealed the very grave danger of what had been termed "splendid isolation," and aroused a desire for a friendly understanding with one or more Powers as occasion might offer.
The war produced similar impressions on the German people. Dislike of England, always acute in Prussia, especially in reactionary circles, now spread to all parts and all classes of the nation; and the Kaiser, as we have seen, made skilful use of it to further his naval policy. His speech at Hamburg on October 18, 1899, on the need of a great navy, marked the beginning of a new era, destined to end in war with Great Britain. Admiral von Tirpitz, in introducing the Amending Bill of February 1900, demanded the doubling of the navy in a scheme working automatically until 1920. The Socialist leader, Bebel, opposed it as certain to strain relations with England, a war with whom would be the greatest possible misfortune for the German people. On the other hand, the Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, voiced the opinions of the governing class and the German Navy League when he declared that the demand for a great navy originated in the ambition of the German nation to become a World-Power[500]. The Bill passed; and thenceforth the United Kingdom and Germany became declared rivals at sea. Fortunately for the islanders, the new German Navy could not be ready for action before the year 1904; otherwise, a very dangerous situation would have arisen. Even as it was, British statesmen were induced to secure an ally and to end the Boer War as quickly as possible.
[Footnote 500: Prince Hohenlohe, Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 480.]
During that conflict the tension between England and the Dual Alliance (France and Russia) was at times so acute as to render it doubtful whether we should not gravitate towards the rival Triple Alliance. The problem was the most important that had confronted British statesmen during a century. Kinship and tradition seemed to beckon us towards Germany and Austria. On the other hand, democracy and social intercourse told in favour of the French connection. Further, now that Russia was retiring more and more from her Balkan and Central Asian projects in order to concentrate on the Far East, she ceased to threaten India and the Levant. Moreover, the personality of the Tsar, Nicholas II., was reassuring, while that of Kaiser Wilhelm II. aroused distrust and alarm.
In truth, the inordinate vanity, restless energy, and flamboyant Chauvinism of the Kaiser placed great difficulties in the way of an Anglo-German Entente. An article believed to have been inspired by Bismarck contained the following reference to the Kaiser's megalomania: "It causes the deepest anxiety in Germany, because it is feared that it may lead to some irreparable piece of want of tact, and thence to war. For it is argued that, vanity being at the bottom of it all, and the Emperor finding he is unable to gain the premature immortality he thirsts for by peaceful prodigies, his restless nervous irritability may degenerate into recklessness, and then his megalomania may blind him to the dangers he and, above all, poor blood-soaken Germany may encounter on the war-path[501]." Kaiser William possesses more power of self-restraint than this passage indicates; for, though he has spread a warlike enthusiasm through his people, he has also restrained it until there arrived a fit opportunity for its exercise. It arrived when Germany and her Allies were far better prepared, both by land and sea, than the Powers whom she expected to meet in arms.
[Footnote 501: Contemporary Review, April 1892.]
His attitude towards Great Britain has varied surprisingly. During several years he figured as her friend. But it is difficult to believe that a man of his keen intellect did not discern ahead the collision which his policy must involve. His many claims to acquire maritime supremacy and a World-Empire were either mere bluff or a portentous challenge. Only the good-natured, easy-going British race could so long have clung to the former explanation, thereby leaving the most diffuse, vulnerable, and ill-armed Empire that has ever existed face to face with an Empire that is compact, well-fortified, and armed to the teeth. In this contrast lies one of the main causes of the present war.
Moreover, the internal difficulties of France and the preoccupation of Russia in the Far East gave to Kaiser William a disquietingly easy victory in the affairs of the Near East. His visit to Constantinople and Palestine in 1898 inaugurated a Levantine policy destined to have momentous results. On the Bosphorus he scrupled not to clasp the hand of Sultan Abdul Hamid II., still reeking with the blood of the Christians of Armenia and Macedonia. At Jerusalem he figured as the Christian knight-errant, but at Damascus as the champion of the Moslem creed. After laying a wreath on the tomb of Saladin, he made a speech which revealed his plan of utilising the fighting power of Islam. He said: "The three hundred million Mohammedans who live scattered over the globe may be assured of this, that the German Emperor will be their friend at all times." Taken in conjunction with his pro-Turkish policy, this implied that the Triple Alliance was to be buttressed by the most terrible fighting force in the East[502].
[Footnote 502: See Hurgronje, The Holy War; made in Germany, pp. 27-39, 68-78; also G.E. Holt, Morocco the Piquant (1914), who says (chap, xiv.): "Islam is waiting for war in Europe. . . . A war between any two European Powers, in my opinion, would mean the uprising of Islam."]
During the tour he did profitable business with the Sublime Porte by gaining a promise for the construction of a railway to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf, under German auspices. The scheme took practical form in 1902-3, when the Sultan granted a firman for the construction of that line together with very extensive proprietary rights along its course. Russian opposition had been bought off in 1900 by the adoption of a more southerly course than was originally designed; and the Kaiser now sought to get the financial support of England to the enterprise. British public opinion, however, was invincibly sceptical, and with justice, for the scheme would have ruined our valuable trade on the River Tigris and the Persian Gulf; while the proposed prolongation of the line to Koweit on the gulf would enable Germany, Austria, and Turkey to threaten India.
By the year 1903 Austria was so far mistress of the Balkans as to render it possible for her and Germany in the near future to send troops through Constantinople and Asia Minor by the railways which they controlled. Accordingly, affairs in the Near East became increasingly strained; and, when Russia was involved in the Japanese War, no Great Power could effectively oppose Austro-German policy in that quarter. The influence of France and Britain, formerly paramount both politically and commercially in the Turkish Empire, declined, while that of Germany became supreme. Every consideration of prudence therefore prompted the Governments of London and Paris to come to a close understanding, in order to make headway against the aggressive designs of the two Kaisers in the Balkans and Asia Minor. Looking forward, we may note that the military collapse of Russia in 1904-5 enabled the Central Powers to push on in the Levant. Germany fastened her grip on the Turkish Government, exploited the resources of Asia Minor, and posed as the champion of the Moslem creed. Early in the twentieth century that creed became aggressive, mainly under the impulse of Sultan Abdul Hamid II., who varied his propagandism by massacre with appeals to the faithful to look to him as their one hope in this world. Constantinople and Cairo were the centres of this Pan-Islamic movement, which, aiming at the closer union of all Moslems in Asia, Europe, and Africa around the Sultan, threatened to embarrass Great Britain, France, and Russia. The Kaiser, seeing in this revival of Islam an effective force, took steps to encourage the "true believers" and strengthen the Sultan by the construction of a branch line of the Bagdad system running southwards through Aleppo and the district east of the Dead Sea towards Mecca. Purporting to be a means for lessening the hardships of pilgrims, it really enabled the Sultan to threaten the Suez Canal and Egypt.
The aggressive character of these schemes explains why France, Great Britain, and Russia began to draw together for mutual support. The three Powers felt the threat implied in an organisation of the Moslem world under the aegis of the Kaiser. He, a diligent student of Napoleon's career, was evidently seeking to dominate the Near East, and to enrol on his side the force of Moslem enthusiasm which the Corsican had forfeited by his attack on Egypt in 1798. The construction of German railways in the Levant and the domination of the Balkan Peninsula by Austria would place in the hands of the Germanic Powers the keys of the Orient, which have always been the keys to World-Empire.
Closely connected with these far-reaching schemes was the swift growth of the Pan-German movement. It sought to group the Germanic and cognate peoples in some form of political union--a programme which threatened to absorb Holland, Belgium, the greater part of Switzerland, the Baltic Provinces of Russia, the Western portions of the Hapsburg dominions, and, possibly, the Scandinavian peoples. The resulting State or Federation of States would thus extend from Ostend to Reval, from Amsterdam (or Bergen) to Trieste.
Even those Germans who did not espouse these ambitious schemes became deeply imbued with the expansively patriotic ideas championed by the Kaiser. So far back as 1890 he ordered their enforcement in the universities and schools[503]. Thenceforth professors and teachers vied in their eagerness to extol the greatness of Germany and the civilising mission of the Hohenzollerns, whose exploits in the future were to eclipse all the achievements of Frederick the Great and William I. Moreover, the new German Navy was acclaimed as a necessary means to the triumph of German Kultur throughout the world. Other nations were depicted as slothful, selfish, decadent; and the decline in the prestige of Great Britain, France, and Russia to some extent justified these pretensions. The Tsar, by turning away from the Balkans towards Korea, deadened Slav aspirations. For the time Pan-Slavism seemed moribund. Pan-Germanism became a far more threatening force.
[Footnote 503: Latterly, the catchword, _England ist der Feind _("England is the enemy"), has been taught in very many schools.]
Summing up, and including one topic that will soon be dealt with, we may conclude as follows: Germany showed that she did not want England's friendship, save in so far as it would help her to oppose the Monroe Doctrine or supply her with money to finish the Bagdad Railway. For reasons that have been explained, she and Austria were likely to undermine British interests in the Near East; while, on the other hand, the diversion of Russia's activities from Central Asia and the Balkans to the Far East, lessened the Muscovite menace which had so long determined the trend of British policy. Moreover, Russia's ally, France, showed a conciliatory spirit. Forgetting the rebuff at Fashoda (see ante, pp. 501-6), she aimed at expansion in Morocco. Now, Korea and Morocco did not vitally concern us. The Bagdad Railway and the Kaiser's court to Pan-Islamism were definite threats to our existence as an Empire. Finally, the development of the German Navy and the growth of a furiously anti-British propaganda threatened the long and vulnerable East Coast of Great Britain.
A temporary understanding with Germany could have been attained if we had acquiesced in her claim for maritime equality and in the oriental and colonial enterprises which formed its sequel. But that course, by yielding to her undisputed ascendancy in all parts of the world, would have led to a policy of partition. Now, since 1688, British statesmen have consistently opposed, often by force of arms, a policy of partition at the expense of civilised nations. Their aim has been to support the weaker European States against the stronger and more aggressive, thus assuring a Balance of Power which in general has proved to be the chief safeguard of peace. In seeking an Entente with France, and subsequently with Russia, British policy has followed the course consistent with the counsels of moderation and the teachings of experience. We may note here that the German historian, Count Reventlow, has pointed out that the Berlin Government could not frame any lasting agreement with the British; for, sooner or later, they would certainly demand the limitation of Germany's colonial aims and of her naval development, to neither of which could she consent. The explanation is highly significant[504].
[Footnote 504: Reventlow, Deutschlands auswärtige Politik, pp. 178-9; Mr. Chamberlain's Speeches, vol. ii. p. 68.]
Nevertheless, at first Great Britain sought to come to a friendly understanding with Germany in the Far East, probably with a view to preventing the schemes of partition of China which in 1900 assumed a menacing guise. At that time Russia seemed likely to take the lead in those designs. But opposite to the Russian stronghold of Port Arthur was the German province of Kiao Chau, in which the Kaiser took a deep interest. His resolve to play a leading part in Chinese affairs appeared in his speech to the German troops sent out in 1900 to assist in quelling the Boxer Rising. He ordered them to adopt methods of terrorism like those of Attila's Huns, so that "no Chinaman will ever again dare to look askance at a German." The orders were ruthlessly obeyed. After the capture of Pekin by the Allies (September 1900) there ensued a time of wary balancing. Russia and Germany were both suspected of designs to cut up China; but they were opposed by Great Britain and Japan. This obscure situation was somewhat cleared by the statesmen of London and Berlin agreeing to maintain the territorial integrity of China and freedom of trade (October 1900). But in March 1901 the German Chancellor, Prince von Bülow, nullified the agreement by officially announcing that it did not apply to, or limit, the expansion of Russia in Manchuria. What caused this volte face is not known; but it implied a renunciation of the British policy of the status quo in the Far East and an official encouragement to Russia to push forward to the Pacific Ocean, where she was certain to come into conflict with Japan. Such a collision would enfeeble those two Powers; while Germany, as tertius gaudens would be free to work her will both in Europe and Asia[505].
[Footnote 505: In September 1895 the Tsar thanked Prince Hohenlohe for supporting his Far East policy, and said he was weary of Armenia and distrustful of England; so, too, in September 1896, when Russo-German relations were also excellent (Hohenlohe Mems., Eng. edit., ii. 463, 470).]
On the other hand, Eckardstein, the German ambassador in London, is said to have made proposals of an Anglo-German-Japanese Alliance in March-April 1901. If we may trust the work entitled Secret Memoirs of Count Hayashi (Japanese ambassador in London) these proposals were dangled for some weeks, why, he could never understand. Probably Germany was playing a double game; for Hayashi believed that she had a secret understanding with Russia on these questions. He found that the Salisbury Cabinet welcomed her adhesion to the principles of maintaining the territorial integrity of China and of freedom of commerce in the Far East[506].
[Footnote 506: Secret Memoirs of Count Hayashi (London, 1915), pp. 97-131. There are suspicious features about this book. I refer to it with all reserve. Reventlow (Deutschlands auswärtige Politik, p. 178) thinks Eckardstein may have been playing his own game--an improbable suggestion.]
In October 1901 Germany proposed to the United Kingdom that each Power should guarantee the possessions of the other in every Continent except Asia. Why Asia was excepted is not clear, unless Germany wished to give Russia a free hand in that Continent. The Berlin Government laid stress on the need of our support in North and South America, where its aim of undermining the Monroe Doctrine was notorious. The proposed guarantee would also have compelled us to assist Germany in any dispute that might arise between her and France about Alsace-Lorraine or colonial questions. The aim was obvious, to gain the support of the British fleet either against the United States or France. A British diplomatist of high repute, who visited Berlin, has declared that the German Foreign Office made use of garbled and misleading documents to win him over to these views[507]. It was in vain. The British Government was not to be hoodwinked; and, as soon as it declined these compromising proposals, a storm of abuse swept through the German Press at the barbarities of British troops in South Africa. That incident ended all chance of an understanding, either between the two Governments or the two peoples.
[Footnote 507: Quarterly Review, Oct. 1914, pp. 426-9.]
The inclusion of Germany in the Anglo-Japanese compact proving to be impossible, the two Island Powers signed a treaty of alliance at London on January 30, 1902. It guaranteed the maintenance of the status quo in the Far East, and offered armed assistance by either signatory in the event of its ally being attacked by more than one Power[508]. The alliance ended the isolation of the British race, and marked the entry of Japan into the circle of the World-Powers. The chief objections to the new departure were its novelty, and the likelihood of its embroiling us finally with Russia and France or Russia and Germany. These fears were groundless; for France and even Russia(!) expressed their satisfaction at the treaty. Lord Lansdowne's diplomatic coup not only ended the isolation of two Island States, which had been severally threatened by powerful rivals; it also safeguarded China; and finally, by raising the prestige of Great Britain, it helped to hasten the end of the Boer War. During the discussion of their future policy by the Boer delegates at Vereeniging on May 30, General Botha admitted that he no longer had any hope of intervention from the Continent of Europe; for their deputation thither had failed. All the leaders except De Wet agreed, and they came to terms with Lords Kitchener and Milner at Pretoria on May 31. That the Anglo-Japanese compact ended the last hopes of the Boers for intervention can scarcely be doubted.
[Footnote 508: E.g., if the Russians alone attacked Japan we were not bound to help her: but if the French also attacked Japan we must help her. The aim clearly was to prevent Japan being overborne as in 1895 (see p. 577). The treaty was signed for five years, but was renewed on August 12, 1905, and in July 1911.]
Still more significant was the new alliance as a warning to Russia not to push too far her enterprises in the Far East. On April 12, 1902, she agreed with China to evacuate Manchuria; but (as has appeared in Chapter XX.) she finally pressed on, not only in Manchuria, but also in Korea, in which the Anglo-Japanese treaty recognised that Japan had predominant interests. For this forward policy Russia had the general support of the Kaiser, whose aims in the Near East were obviously served by the transference thence of Russia's activities to the Far East. It is, indeed, probable that he and his agents desired to embroil Russia and Japan. Certain it is that the Russian people regarded the Russo-Japanese War, which began in February 1904, as "The War of the Grand Dukes." The Russian troops fought an uphill fight loyally and doggedly, but with none of the enthusiasm so conspicuous in the present truly national struggle. In Manchuria the mistakes and incapacity of their leaders led to an almost unbroken series of defeats, ending with the protracted and gigantic contests around Mukden (March 1-10, 1905). The almost complete destruction of the Russian Baltic fleet by Admiral Togo at the Battle of Tsushima (May 27-28) ended the last hopes of the Tsar and his ministers; and, fearful of the rising discontent in Russia, they accepted the friendly offers of the United States for mediation. By the Treaty of Portsmouth (Sept. 5, 1905) they ceded to Japan the southern half of Saghalien and the Peninsula on which stands Port Arthur: they also agreed to evacuate South Manchuria and to recognise Korea as within Japan's sphere of influence. No war indemnity was paid. Indeed it could not be exacted, as Japan occupied no Russian territory which she did not intend to annex. To Russia the material results of the war were the loss of some 350,000 men, killed, wounded, and prisoners; of two fleets; and of the valuable provinces and ice-free harbours for the acquisition of which she had constructed the Trans-Siberian Railway. So heavy a blow had not been dealt to a Great Power since the fall of Napoleon III.; and worse, perhaps, than the material loss was that of prestige in accepting defeat at the hands of an Island State, whose people fifty years before fought with bows and arrows.
Japan emerged from the war triumphant, but financially exhausted. Accordingly, she was not loath to conclude with Russia, on July 30, 1907, a convention which adjusted outstanding questions in a friendly manner[509]. The truth about this Russo-Japanese rapprochement is, of course, not known; but it may reasonably be ascribed in part to the good services of England (then about to frame an entente with Russia); and in part to the suspicion of the statesmen of Petrograd and Tokio that German influences had secretly incited Russia to the policy of reckless exploitation in Korea which led to war and disaster.
[Footnote 509: Hayashi, op. cit. ch. viii. and App. D. On June 10, 1907, Japan concluded with France an agreement, for which see Hayashi, ch. vi. and App. C.]
The chief results of the Russo-Japanese War were to paralyse Russia, thereby emasculating the Dual Alliance and leaving France as much exposed to German threats as she was before its conclusion; also to exalt the Triple Alliance and enable its members (Germany, Austria, and Italy) successively to adopt the forward policy which marked the years 1905, 1908, 1911, and 1914. The Russo-Japanese War therefore inaugurated a new era in European History. Up to that time the Triple Alliance had been a defensive league, except when the exuberant impulses of Kaiser William forced it into provocative courses; and then the provocations generally stopped at telegrams and orations. But in and after 1905 the Triple Alliance forsook the watchwords of Bismarck, Andrassy and Crispi. Expansion at the cost of rivals became the dominant aim.
We must now return to affairs in France which predisposed her to come to friendly terms, first with Italy, then with Great Britain. Her internal history in the years 1895-1906 turns largely on the Dreyfus affair. In 1895, he, a Jewish officer in the French army, was accused and convicted of selling military secrets to Germany. But suspicions were aroused that he was the victim of anti-Semites or the scapegoat of the real offenders; and finally, thanks to the championship of Zola, his condemnation was proved to have been due to a forgery (July 1906). Meanwhile society had been rent in twain, and confidence in the army and in the administration of justice was seriously impaired. A furious anti-militarist agitation began, which had important consequences. Already in May 1900, the Premier, Waldeck-Rousseau, appointed as Minister of War General André, who sympathised with these views and dangerously relaxed discipline. The Combes Ministry, which succeeded in June 1902, embittered the strife between the clerical and anti-clerical sections by measures such as the separation of Church and State and the expulsion of the Religious Orders. In consequence France was almost helpless in the first years of the century, a fact which explains her readiness to clasp the hand of England in 1904 and, in 1905, after the military collapse of Russia in the Far East, to give way before the threats of Germany[510].
[Footnote 510: Even in 1908 reckless strikes occurred, and there were no fewer than 11,223 cases of insubordination in the army. Professor Gustave Hervé left the University in order to direct a paper, La Guerre sociale, which advocated a war of classes.]
The weakness of France predisposed Italy to forget the wrong done by French statesmen in seizing Tunis twenty years before. That wrong (as we saw on pp. 328, 329) drove Italy into the arms of Germany and Austria. But now Crispi and other pro-German authors of the Triple Alliance had passed away; and that compact, founded on passing passion against France rather than community of interest or sentiment with the Central Empires, had sensibly weakened. Time after time Italian Ministers complained of disregard of their interests by the men of Berlin and Vienna[511], whereas in 1898 France accorded to Italy a favourable commercial treaty. Victor Emmanuel III. paid his first state visit to Petrograd, not to Berlin. In December 1900 France and Italy came to an understanding respecting Tripoli and Morocco; and in May 1902 the able French Minister, Delcassé, then intent on his Morocco enterprise, prepared the way for it by a convention with Italy, which provided that France and Italy should thenceforth peaceably adjust their differences, mainly arising out of Mediterranean questions. Seeing that Italy and Austria were at variance respecting Albania, the Franco-Italian Entente weakened the Triple Alliance; and the old hatred of Austria appeared in the shouts of "Viva Trento," "Viva Trieste," often raised in front of the Austrian embassy at Rome. Despite the renewal of the Triple Alliance in 1907 and 1912, the adhesion of Italy was open to question, unless the Allies became the object of indisputable aggression.
[Footnote 511: Crispi, Memoirs (Eng. edit.) vol. ii. pp. 166, 169, 472; vol. iii. pp. 330, 347.]
Still more important was the Anglo-French Entente of 1904. That the Anglophobe outbursts of the Parisian Press and populace in 1902 should so speedily give way to a friendly understanding was the work, partly of the friends of peace in both lands, partly of the personal tact and charm of Edward VII. as manifested during his visit to Paris in May 1903, but mainly of the French and British Governments. In October 1903 they agreed by treaty to refer to arbitration before the Hague Tribunal disputes that might arise between them. This agreement (one of the greatest triumphs of the principle of arbitration[512]) naturally led to more cordial relations. During the visit of President Loubet and M. Delcassé to London in July 1903, the latter discussed with Lord Lansdowne the questions that hindered a settlement, namely, our occupation of Egypt (a rankling sore in France ever since 1882); French claims to dominate Morocco both commercially and politically, "the French shore" of Newfoundland, the New Hebrides, the French convict-station in New Caledonia, as also the territorial integrity of Siam, championed by England, threatened by France. A more complex set of problems never confronted statesmen. Yet a solution was found simply because both of them were anxious for a solution. Their anxiety is intelligible in view of the German activities just noticed, and of the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904. True, France was allied to Russia only for European affairs; and our alliance with Japan referred mainly to the Far East. Still, there was danger of a collision, which both Paris and London wished to avert. It was averted by the skill and tact of Lord Lansdowne and M. Delcassé, whose conversations of July 1903 pointed the way to the definitive compact of April 8, 1904.
[Footnote 512: Sir Thomas Barclay, Anglo-French Reminiscences (1876-1906), ch. xviii-xxii; M. Hanotaux (La Politique de l'Équilibre, p. 415) claims that Mr. Chamberlain was chiefly instrumental in starting the negotiations leading to the Entente with France.]
Stated briefly, France gave way on most of the questions named above, except one, that is, Morocco. There she attained her end, the recognition by us of her paramount claims. For this she conceded most of the points in dispute between the two countries in Egypt, though she maintains her Law School, hospitals, mission schools, and a few other institutions. Thenceforth England had opposed to her in that land only German influence and the Egyptian nationalists and Pan-Islam fanatics whom it sought to encourage. France also renounced some of her fishing rights in Newfoundland in return for gains of territory on the River Gambia and near Lake Chad. In return for these concessions she secured from us the recognition of her claim to watch over the tranquillity of Morocco, together with an offer of assistance for all "the administrative, economic, financial, and military reforms which it needs." True, she promised not to change the political condition of Morocco, as also to maintain equality of commercial privileges. Great Britain gave a similar undertaking for Egypt[513].
[Footnote 513: A. Tardieu, _Questions diplomatiques de l'année 1904, _Appendix II. England in 1914 annulled the promise respecting Egypt because of the declaration of war by Turkey and the assistance afforded her by the Khedive, Abbas II. (see Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt and Abbas II.), On February 15, 1904, France settled by treaty with Siam frontier disputes of long standing.]
The Anglo-French Entente of 1904 is the most important event of modern diplomacy. Together with the preceding treaty of arbitration, it removed all likelihood of war between two nations which used to be "natural enemies"; and the fact that it in no respect menaced Germany appeared in the communication of its terms to the German ambassador in Paris shortly before its signature. On April 12 Bülow declared to the Reichstag his approval of the compact as likely to end disputes in several quarters, besides assuring peace and order in Morocco, where Germany's interests were purely commercial. Two days later, in reply to the Pan-German leader, Count Reventlow, he said he would not embark Germany on any enterprise in Morocco. These statements were reasonable and just. The Entente lessened the friction between Great Britain and Russia during untoward incidents of the Russo-Japanese War. After the conclusion of the Entente the Russian ambassador in Paris publicly stated the approval of his Government, and, quoting the proverb, "The friends of our friends are our friends," added with a truly prophetic touch--"Who knows whether that will not be true?" The agreement also served to strengthen the position of France at a time when her internal crisis and the first Russian defeats in the Far East threatened to place her almost at the mercy of Germany. A dangerous situation would have arisen if France had not recently gained the friendship both of England and Italy.
Finally, the Anglo-French Entente induced Italy to reconsider her position. Her dependence on us for coal and iron, together with the vulnerability of her numerous coast-towns, rendered a breach with the two Powers of the Entente highly undesirable, while on sentimental grounds she could scarcely take up the gauntlet for her former oppressor, Austria, against two nations which had assisted in her liberation. As we shall see, she declared at the Conference of Algeciras her complete solidarity with Great Britain.
Even so, Germany held a commanding position owing to the completion of the first part of her naval programme, which placed her far ahead of France at sea. For reasons that have been set forth, the military and naval weakness of France was so marked as greatly to encourage German Chauvinists; but the Entente made them pause, especially when France agreed to concentrate her chief naval strength in the Mediterranean, while that of Great Britain was concentrated in the English Channel and the North Sea. It is certain that the Entente with France never amounted to an alliance; that was made perfectly clear; but it was unlikely that the British Government would tolerate an unprovoked attack upon the Republic, or look idly on while the Pan-Germans refashioned Europe and the other Continents. Besides, Great Britain was strong at sea. In 1905 she possessed thirty-five battleships mounting 12-in. guns; while the eighteen German battleships carried only 11-in. and 9.4-in. guns. Further, in 1905-7 we began and finished the first Dreadnought; and the adoption of that type for the battle-fleet of the near future lessened the value of the Kiel-North Sea Canal, which was too small to receive Dreadnoughts. In these considerations may perhaps be found the reason for the caution of Germany at a time which was otherwise very favourable for aggressive action.
Meanwhile Kaiser William, pressed on by the colonials, had intervened in a highly sensational manner in the Morocco Affair, thus emphasising his earlier assertion that nothing important must take place in any part of the world without the participation of Germany. Her commerce in Morocco was unimportant compared with that of France and Great Britain; but the position of that land, commanding the routes to the Mediterranean and the South Atlantic, was such as to interest all naval Powers, while the State that gained a foothold in Morocco would have a share in the Moslem questions then arising to prime importance. As we have seen, the Kaiser had in 1898 declared his resolve to befriend all Moslem peoples; and his Chancellor, Bülow, has asserted that Germany's pro-Islam policy compelled her to intervene in the Moroccan Question. The German ambassador at Constantinople, Baron von Marschall, said that, if after that promise Germany sacrificed Morocco, she would at once lose her position in Turkey, and therefore all the advantages and prospects that she had painfully acquired by the labour of many years[514].
[Footnote 514: Bülow, Imperial Germany, p. 83.]
On the other hand, the feuds of the Moorish tribes vitally concerned France because they led to many raids into her Algerian lands which she could not merely repel. In 1901 she adopted a more active policy, that of "pacific penetration," and, by successive compacts with Italy, Great Britain, and Spain, secured a kind of guardianship over Moroccan affairs. This policy, however, aroused deep resentment at Berlin. Though Germany was pacifically penetrating Turkey and Asia Minor, she grudged France her success in Morocco, not for commercial reasons but for others, closely connected with high diplomacy and world-policy. As the German historian, Rachfahl, declared, Morocco was to be a test of strength[515].
[Footnote 515: Tardieu, Questions diplomatiques de 1904, pp. 56-102; Rachfahl, Kaiser und Reich, pp. 230-241; E.D. Morel, Morocco in Diplomacy, chaps, i-xii.]
In one respect Germany had cause for complaint. On October 6, 1904, France signed a Convention with Spain in terms that were suspiciously vague. They were interpreted by secret articles which defined the spheres of French and Spanish influence in case the rule of the Sultan of Morocco ceased. It does not appear that Germany was aware of these secret articles at the time of her intervention[516]. But their existence, even perhaps their general tenor, was surmised. The effective causes of her intervention were, firstly, her resolve to be consulted in every matter of importance, and, secondly, the disaster that befel the Russians at Mukden early in March 1905. At the end of the month, the Kaiser landed at Tangier and announced in strident terms that he came to visit the Sultan as an independent sovereign. This challenge to French claims produced an acute crisis. Delcassé desired to persevere with pacific penetration; but in the debate of April 19 the deficiencies of the French military system were admitted with startling frankness; and a threat from Berlin revealed the intention of humiliating France, and, if possible, of severing the Anglo-French Entente. Here, indeed, is the inner significance of the crisis. Germany had lately declared her indifference to all but commercial questions in Morocco. But she now made use of the collapse of Russia to seek to end the Anglo-French connection which she had recently declared to be harmless. The aim obviously was to sow discord between those two Powers. In this she failed. Lord Lansdowne and Delcassé lent each other firm support, so much so that the Paris Temps accused us of pushing France on in a dangerous affair which did not vitally concern her. The charge was not only unjust but ungenerous; for Germany had worked so as to induce England to throw over France or make France throw over England. The two Governments discerned the snare, and evaded it by holding firmly together[517].
[Footnote 516: Rachfahl, pp. 235, 238. For details, see Morel, chap. ii.]
[Footnote 517: In an interview with M. Tardieu at Baden-Baden on October 4, 1905, Bülow said that Germany intervened in Morocco because of her interests there, and also to protest against this new attempt to isolate her (Tardieu, Questions actuelles de Politique étrangère, p. 87). If so, her conduct increased that isolation. Probably the second Anglo-Japanese Treaty of August 12, 1905 (published on September 27), was due to fear of German aggression. France and Germany came to a preliminary agreement as to Morocco on September 28.]
The chief difficulty of the situation was that it committed France to two gigantic tasks, that of pacifying Morocco and also of standing up to the Kaiser in Europe. In this respect the ground for the conflict was all in his favour; and both he and she knew it. Consequently, a compromise was desirable; and the Kaiser himself, in insisting on the holding of a Conference, built a golden bridge over which France might draw back, certainly with honour, probably with success; for in the diplomatic sphere she was at least as strong as he. When, therefore, Delcassé objected to the Conference, his colleagues accepted his resignation (June 6). His fall was hailed at Berlin as a humiliation for France. Nevertheless, her complaisance earned general sympathy, while the bullying tone of German diplomacy, continued during the Conference held at Algeciras, hardened the opposition of nearly all the Powers, including the United States. Especially noteworthy was the declaration of Italy that her interests were identical with those of England. German proposals were supported by Austria alone, who therefore gained from the Kaiser the doubtful compliment of having played the part of "a brilliant second" to Germany.
It is needless to describe at length the Act of Algeciras (April 7, 1906). It established a police and a State Bank in Morocco, suppressed smuggling and the illicit trade in arms, reformed the taxes, and set on foot public works. Of course, little resulted from all this; but the position of France was tacitly regularised, and she was left free to proceed with pacific penetration. "We are neither victors nor vanquished," said Bülow in reviewing the Act; and M. Rouvier echoed the statement for France. In reality, Germany had suffered a check. Her chief aim was to sever the Anglo-French Entente, and she failed. She sought to rally Italy to her side, and she failed; for Italy now proclaimed her accord with France on Mediterranean questions. Finally the North German Gazette paid a tribute to the loyal and peaceable aims of French policy; while other less official German papers deplored the mistakes of their Government, which had emphasised the isolation of Germany[518]. This is indeed the outstanding result of the Conference. The threatening tone of Berlin had disgusted everybody. Above all it brought to more cordial relations the former rivals, Great Britain and Russia.
[Footnote 518: Tardieu, La Conference d'Algeciras, pp. 410-20.]
As has already appeared, the friction between Great Britain and Russia quickly disappeared after the Japanese War. During the Congress of Algeciras the former rivals worked cordially together to check the expansive policy of Germany, in which now lay the chief cause of political unrest. In fact, the Kaiser's Turcophile policy acquired a new significance owing to the spread of a Pan-Islamic propaganda which sent thrills of fanaticism through North-West Africa, Egypt, and Central Asia. At St. Helena Napoleon often declared Islam to be vastly superior to Christianity as a fighting creed; and his imitator now seemed about to marshal it against France, Russia, and Great Britain. Naturally, the three Powers drew together for mutual support. Further, Germany by herself was very powerful, the portentous growth of her manufactures and commerce endowing her with wealth which she spent lavishly on her army and navy. In May 1906 the Reichstag agreed to a new Navy Bill for further construction which was estimated to raise the total annual expenditure on the navy from £11,671,000 in 1905 to £16,492,000 in 1917; this too though Bebel had warned the House that the agitation of the_ German Navy League had for its object a war with England.
In 1906 and 1907 Edward VII. paid visits to William II., who returned the compliment in November 1907. But this interchange of courtesies could not end the distrust caused by Germany's increase of armaments. The peace-loving Administration of Campbell-Bannerman, installed in power by the General Election of 1906, sought to come to an understanding with Berlin, especially at the second Hague Conference of 1907, with respect to a limitation of armaments. But Germany rejected all such proposals[519]. The hopelessness of framing a friendly arrangement with her threw us into the arms of Russia; and on August 31, 1907, Anglo-Russian Conventions were signed defining in a friendly way the interests of the two Powers in Persia, Afghanistan, and Thibet. True, the interests of Persian reformers were sacrificed by this bargain; but it must be viewed, firstly, in the light of the Bagdad Railway scheme, which threatened soon to bring Germany to the gates of Persia and endanger the position of both Powers in that land[520]; secondly, in that of the general situation, in which Germany and Austria were rapidly forcing their way to a complete military ascendancy and refused to consider any limitation of armaments. The detailed reasons which prompted the Anglo-Russian Entente are of course unknown. But the fact that the most democratic of all British Administrations should come to terms with the Russian autocracy is the most convincing proof of the very real danger which both States discerned in the aggressive conduct of the Central Powers. The Triple Alliance, designed by Bismarck solely to safeguard peace, became, in the hands of William II., a menace to his neighbours, and led them to form tentative and conditional arrangements for defence in case of attack. This is all that was meant by the Triple Entente. It formed a loose pendant to the Dual Alliance between France and Russia, which was binding and solid. With those Powers the United Kingdom formed separate agreements; but they were not alliances; they were friendly understandings on certain specific objects, and in no respect threatened the Triple Alliance so long as it remained non-aggressive[521].
[Footnote 519: See the cynical section in Reventlow, op. cit. (pp. 280-8), entitled "Utopien und Intrigen im Haag." For Austria's efforts to prevent the Anglo-Russian Entente, see H.W. Steed, The Hamburg Monarchy, p. 230.]
[Footnote 520: Rachfahl (p. 307) admits this, but accuses England of covert opposition everywhere, even at the Hague Conference.]
[Footnote 521: On December 24, 1908, the Russian Foreign Minister, Izvolsky, assured the Duma that "no open or secret agreements directed against German interests existed between Russia and England."]
One question remains. When was it that the friction between Great Britain and Germany first became acute? Some have dated it from the Morocco Affair of 1905-6. The assertion is inconsistent with the facts of the case. Long before that crisis the policy of the Kaiser tended increasingly towards a collision. His patronage of the Boers early in 1896 was a threatening sign; still more so was his World-Policy, proclaimed repeatedly in the following years, when the appointments of Tirpitz and Bülow showed that the threats of capturing the trident, and so forth, were not mere bravado. The outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, followed quickly by the Kaiser's speech at Hamburg, and the adoption of accelerated naval construction in 1900, brought about serious tension, which was not relaxed by British complaisance respecting Samoa. The coquetting with the Sultan, the definite initiation of the Bagdad scheme (1902-3), and the completion of the first part of Germany's new naval programme in 1904 account for the Anglo-French Entente of that year. The chief significance of the Morocco Affair of 1905-6 lay in the Kaiser's design of severing that Entente. His failure, which was still further emphasised during the Algeciras Conference, proved that a policy which relies on menace and ever-increasing armaments arouses increasing distrust and leads the menaced States to form defensive arrangements. That is also the outstanding lesson of the career of Napoleon I. Nevertheless, the Kaiser, like the Corsican, persisted in forceful procedure, until Army Bills, Navy Bills, and the rejection of pacific proposals at the Hague, led to their natural result, the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907. This event should have made him question the wisdom of relying on armed force and threatening procedure. The Entente between the Tsar and the Campbell-Bannerman Administration formed a tacit but decisive censure of the policy of Potsdam; for it realised the fears which had haunted Bismarck like a nightmare[522]. Its effect on William II. was to induce him to increase his military and naval preparations, to reject all proposals for the substitution of arbitration in place of the reign of force, and thereby to enclose the policy of the Great Powers in a vicious circle from which the only escape was a general reduction of armaments or war.
[Footnote 522: Bismarck, his Reflections and Recollections, vol. ii. pp. 252, 289. There are grounds for thinking that William II. has been pushed on to a bellicose policy by the Navy, Colonial, and Pan-German Leagues. In 1908 he seems to have sought to pause; but powerful influences (as also at the time of the crises of July 1911 and 1914) propelled him. See an article in the Revue de Paris of April 15, 1913, "Guillaume II et les pangermanistes." In my narrative I speak of the Kaiser as equivalent to the German Government; for he is absolute and his Ministers are responsible solely to him.]