CHAPTER I

FIVE YEARS OF BRITISH TRADE WITH WESTERN AFRICA

“West Africa, that great feeding-ground for British manufactures.”—MARY KINGSLEY.

One still—but too often, alas!—meets with people who wonder why England should bother about West Africa at all, and pooh-pooh the idea that we have interests there at the present time worth looking after, while as for the future possibilities of that huge country as a field for British enterprise, they simply will not trouble themselves to give the matter a moment’s consideration.

Now figures are very uninteresting things, no doubt, to the average reader; but they possess a practical significance superior to any number of the most glowing dissertations, and I trust my readers will forgive me if I make, as a basis of justification for inflicting this volume upon them, a few sets of figures which I would respectfully suggest as worthy of their attentive consideration. The statistics are compiled from the Custom House returns, and they show the extent, nature and distribution of British trade in Western Africa during the last few years. In perusing them, three facts should be borne in mind: first, that, although Europeans have been engaged in commercial transactions on the West Coast for upwards of five hundred and fifty years, those transactions were, prior to the abolition of the over-sea slave trade, confined, with very few exceptions[2]—so far as the exports from West Africa were concerned—to the human cargo, and to gold dust and ivory: that the trade in palm oil and kernels, which are now the staple articles of export from West Africa, is therefore of comparatively recent growth, and that the mahogany trade and the rubber trade have only come into existence—to any appreciable extent—within the last few years, a fair indication of the fertility and producing power and almost boundless resources of West Africa. Secondly, that the extensive business relationship which has been built up between Great Britain and West Africa, in the shape of a legitimate commerce, has grown to its present proportions under circumstances absolutely disadvantageous to development, without railways, with but few roads, with intertribal wars often preventing the circulation of trade for months at a time, by merely scratching the surface of the most prolific region in the world. Thirdly, that the figures given below do but show the actual volume of Britain’s trade with West Africa and the wages earned by thousands of English men and women who directly and indirectly benefit by that trade; the British capital invested in West Africa in factories, machinery, craft for navigating the rivers, coaling depôts, surf-boats and lighters, stores and the like, to which must now be added railway material, dredging apparatus, batteries and soon, we may hope, cotton gins, not to mention a fleet of some sixty steamers employed in the carrying trade and passenger traffic—all these things have to be taken into account in estimating West Africa’s worth to Great Britain.

The total values of British produce and manufactures[3] shipped to the _British possessions in West Africa_ in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:

1896 £1,828,395 1897 1,763,461 1898 1,999,505 1899 2,116,080 1900 2,148,149 ---------- Gross total £9,855,590

Percentage of increase in five years, 17½ per cent.

The total values of British produce and manufactures shipped to the _possessions of Foreign Powers_ in West Africa in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:

1896 £970,080 1897 1,002,318 1898 1,247,994 1899 1,490,603 1900 2,145,349 ---------- Gross total £6,856,344

Percentage of increase in five years, 121 per cent.

If we add these two totals together, we find that the value of British produce and manufactures shipped to _West Africa_ in the period mentioned was £16,711,934, which is a percentage of increase of 138 per cent.

From the British export trade we turn to the British import trade with West Africa.

The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain _from British West Africa_ in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:

1896 £2,223,925 1897 2,153,412 1898 2,352,285 1899 2,427,946 1900 2,137,023 ----------- Gross total £11,294,591

The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain from the _possessions of Foreign Powers_ in West Africa in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:

1896 £333,803 1897 553,130 1898 622,287 1899 651,043 1900 806,077 ---------- Gross total £2,966,340

These two totals added together show that Great Britain imported West African produce in the period under review to the amount of £14,260,931.

The value of Great Britain’s direct commerce with West Africa in the five years 1896-1900 was, therefore, £30,972,865. To this might be added a further sum of £1,750,888, representing foreign and colonial merchandise shipped to West Africa from British ports in the years mentioned.[4]

It is interesting, and valuable, to see which, among the possessions of Foreign Powers in West Africa, were the chief absorbers of British goods and the chief exporters of raw produce to Great Britain. Examination yields the following knowledge:

Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which absorbed in five years £6,856,344 of British goods:[5]

French. Portuguese. German. Others. £ £ £ £ 1896 348,258 402,445 68,355 151,022 1897 401,224 360,121 91,320 149,653 1898 531,848 438,320 109,580 178,246 1899 693,255 503,788 126,047 167,513 1900 709,900 1,084,072[6] 120,910 212,175

Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which exported to Great Britain in five years £2,966,340 of raw produce:

French. Portuguese. German. Others. £ £ £ £ 1896 203,442 33,937 42,001 54,423 1897 312,430 116,554 68,194 55,952 1898 431,192 85,544 35,165 70,186 1899 461,267 68,021 48,736 73,019 1900 534,727 75,037 94,681 101,632

The French possessions are, it will be observed, far and away our principal markets and our principal suppliers among the possessions of Foreign Powers. Our exports to and imports from the French possessions amounted together to £4,627,543, or just under 50 per cent. of our total export and import trade with the possessions of Foreign Powers together. The increasing importance of the French possessions in West Africa as a market for the sale of British goods and as suppliers of British home markets is a fact which it is of the utmost consequence for British statesmen to lay to heart. The subject is one which I shall refer to later on. It is already one of the dominant factors of West African politics affecting Great Britain, and is destined to become so more and more as the years go on, for France is in a territorial sense the mistress of West Africa, and may become so in a commercial sense as well.

The general conclusions to be drawn from a study of these figures are various. First and foremost there is the clearly established fact that British trade with West Africa is expanding enormously and has almost unlimited prospects before it, now that serious and concentrated efforts are being made on all sides to open up the untapped wealth of the interior by the means of roads and railways and by the improvement of navigable waterways, while the cessation of intertribal warfare in many districts must entail a large increase in the population, and therefore, in the native capacity for production and purchase. It is also demonstrated that every year West Africa absorbs a larger quantity of British manufactured goods: that the exports of British manufactured goods are steadily increasing to British West Africa and increasing to an extraordinary degree to the possessions of Foreign Powers in West Africa, especially to the French possessions: that Great Britain is consolidating her hold upon the carrying trade of West Africa as testified by the increased quantity of foreign and colonial manufactures shipped to West Africa from British ports: that the Continent—Germany[7] chiefly—is receiving a greater amount of raw produce from the British possessions in West Africa, a deduction which can be fairly drawn from the stationary aspect of the importation by Great Britain of such produce from her own West African possessions. And the final conclusion is this, that, in view of the restricted extent of the British possessions in West Africa, compared with the possessions of Foreign Powers in that part of the world, the latter offer a very much vaster field for the sale of British goods. Consequently, it is the bounden duty of the British Government and the British Chambers of Commerce, while in no way neglecting the brilliant possibilities which the British West African possessions offer under wise administration for the enterprise of Englishmen, to be ever on the alert to look to the future and to protect British trade with the possessions of the Foreign Powers in West Africa against legislation tending to close the door of those possessions against it; and to insist that, whenever international treaties guaranteeing freedom of trade to the subjects of all nations exist in West Africa, they shall be rigidly adhered to by the signatories. In this respect British diplomacy has shown itself singularly lax. But the mischief already committed may even yet be remedied, and further dangers which loom ahead averted, if the British public will only realise before it is too late the enormous issues at stake.