CHAPTER XXVII

FRENCH AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT IN WEST AFRICA

Apart from the belief, which has been dealt with in the previous chapter, that France cannot manage her West African possessions successfully, another idea appears to be widely entertained. It is said that French methods of rule in West Africa are excessively harsh. I cannot find any evidence to support this view. The records of all the Powers who have possessions in West Africa are tarnished by acts of oppression and injustice to the native, but I have seen no proof that in this respect France compares unfavourably with either England, Germany, or Portugal. On the whole, France’s record is perhaps cleaner than that of most other Powers. North of the Bights, the portion of West Africa which has engaged our attention hitherto, I should say the balance of evidence is decidedly to France’s credit. That is the opinion of Sir Charles Dilke; it was the opinion of the late Miss Kingsley, and one or two other competent authorities. Speaking in September of last year at a meeting of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, an African of the Africans, and a distinguished scholar, Dr. Blyden, who has had exceptional facilities for judging, and who, withal, holds an official position under the Sierra Leone Government, made a striking reference to the subject.

“France,” said Dr. Blyden, “has a peculiar work to do for Africa—a work much needed and suited to the genius of the Celtic race.... The contribution of the French to the civilisation of Africa evidently springs not only from what they have in common with all mankind, but from what is special to themselves. France is France. England is England. France can do for Africa what England cannot do, and England can do for Africa what France cannot do. This all thinking Africans recognise, and all gladly co-operate with each nation according to the measure in which their systems agree with native ideas and customs and traditions. And there seems to be more of conformity in the French methods than in the more rigid and unimaginative system of the Anglo-Saxon. Whatever there is among the natives of original, racy, or romantic interest is not perishing under French administration.”

That is a true saying, and it goes far towards explaining the political success of the French in West Africa.

It is surely a circumstance which should impress us that the French have been able to successfully apply direct taxation in their possessions without bloodshed or disturbance, while in Sierra Leone we have failed so disastrously. As direct taxation in West Africa is a problem fraught with great danger, one needing the utmost care and discrimination, it seems worth while to give more than passing notice to what has already been done by the French and ourselves in the matter. A poll-tax was applied in French Guinea in 1897. In 1900 it yielded £90,000, and I am informed on good authority that the returns for 1901 will reach £140,000, and will still further increase, as the taxable radius has not yet been reached. It has been peacefully collected. Was this the result of overwhelming military strength? Not at all, for although French Guinea is now about three times the size of Sierra Leone, the military, or rather the police, force of the French Protectorate is just a little over half what it is in Sierra Leone. The “show of force” theory has, therefore, been conspicuous by its absence. It has been replaced by a plentiful supply of imagination, plus the appreciation of certain scientific facts. What, in the first place, are the scientific facts? The tax in French Guinea is a poll-tax, the tax in Sierra Leone is a property-tax. In the one case there was no interference with native land tenure; in the other there was indirect interference with native land tenure. Mr. Chamberlain[219] himself was “disposed to think that the natives saw in the tax an attempt to interfere with their property.” Yet Mr. Chamberlain has maintained the tax. Farther on Mr. Chamberlain says, “that the aversion of the natives to the payment of the tax is not insuperable may be inferred from the fact that a similar tax is levied without difficulty from similar races by the French in the neighbouring territory.” There Mr. Chamberlain showed that he was not properly informed. The tax was not a “similar” tax, and the “races” in French territory are not “similar” but dissimilar. What ethnic similarity is there, for instance, between the Fulani, the ruling race in a large portion of French Guinea, and the Mendi, Timini, Konnos and Sulimas of Sierra Leone? Such confusion is extraordinary. The peoples of French Guinea are either Mohammedan, or for the most part inured to direct taxation for many centuries past by Mohammedan conquest.[220] The peoples of Sierra Leone were independent races, who have beaten back every attempt at Mohammedan conquest, and among whom a regularly recurring impost is unknown, and contrary to all native ideas. An almost identical argument has been made use of in regard to the Gambia. We collect a hut-tax in the Gambia; why not in Sierra Leone? For the same reason that what may be sound in one place is not sound in another. You cannot lump West Africa together and evolve identical legislation for the whole! The passion for assimilation is fatal to good government in West Africa. The peoples of the Gambia are, again, either Mohammedan or have undergone conquest by Mohammedans. The case of the Gambia, moreover, is in another sense quite different from Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is covered with dense forests. Gambia is a small strip of territory on either bank of a river. The villages along its shores can be raked by gun-boats. Every part is easily accessible, and on the other side of the border the French are in occupation. What chance is there of resisting Government demands, even though the tax were bitterly opposed, which is not the case for the reasons already given; although the Gambia natives are probably no more in love with it than we are with our income-tax? Direct taxation is ever unpopular; among primitive peoples particularly so. Finally, the natives of French Guinea are much richer than those of Sierra Leone. So much for the scientific facts. Is it not about time that the Colonial Office took over the services of a trained ethnologist, or created independent native councils in West Africa in touch with the Administration?

[Illustration: SUSU CHIEF AND STAFF]

Dahomey and Ashanti also offer a parallel in another way. In Dahomey the poll-tax was applied for the first time since the Conquest (1892) in 1899. It yielded £8200 in 1899 and £22,290 in 1900. There has been no trouble, and as in French Guinea, the tax has not prevented a steady increase in the export trade, notwithstanding the thousands of able-bodied men employed on the railway. In both Dahomey and Ashanti the people taxed are Negroes, and were formerly subject to an unusual state-form in West Africa, viz. a despotism. They have been conquered, and conquest implies a tacit right to levy an impost. But conquest involves great hardships on the conquered in West Africa. Villages and granaries are destroyed, crops burnt, acres of land laid waste; many of those who would be sowing and reaping and gathering produce have been killed, and general distress ensues. That is the time for the conqueror with his higher culture, and the lofty ideals of the religion he professes, to take the conquered by the hand and try to renovate what he has shattered, but on better lines; to act, since he chooses to call the Negro a child, as a parent, who, after administering castigation, makes friends once more with the offender. Put differently, every assistance should be given, and due latitude allowed to a tribe which has been so unfortunate as to incur the wrath of the superior people, whose reforming zeal is nothing if not drastic. The French gave the Dahomeyans seven years’ breathing space before they taxed them.[221]

[Illustration: ASHANTI FIELD FORCE AT CAPE COAST _EN ROUTE_ FOR KUMASI]

What has been our action in Ashanti? No sooner has a desolating war been ended, a war attended by certain incidents which do not reflect credit upon us as a nation; a war which was caused by a series of official blunders of the grossest kind, than we clap on direct taxation, and in such a form that a premium is put upon future troubles. In fact, shortly after this taxation was announced to the beaten chiefs, yet another rising was only averted by the prompt despatch of more troops to Kumasi.[222] Could anything less imaginative—to put it mildly—be devised than this application of a war indemnity nearly thirty years old, previous non-payment of which was made the excuse for the arrest and deportation of Prempreh and the annexation of the country; and when the revival of the claim by the authorities in 1900 is admitted to have been one of the contributory causes of the last rising? As Sir William Geary pointed out in 1900:

“To take a metaphor from private property, one cannot foreclose a mortgage, receive the rents and profits of the land, and then beyond that ask for interest on the debt when one has helped oneself to payment. We annexed Ashanti in 1896, and not only have we obtained formal sovereignty, but the matter has turned out a good bargain for us. We are carrying away the natural gold of the country for the benefit of European shareholders. Now we want to tax the natives.”

Is policy of this kind calculated to bring prosperity to British West Africa? In 1864 the _Times_ expressed itself as follows with regard to the ruler of Ashanti:

“Instead of harbouring culprits against his crown, instead of disregarding the treaties between himself and us, instead of trying to sap the foundations of his throne, we should strive to cultivate acquaintance with him by the tranquil arts of trade. At the back of his vast dominions, receding to the foot of the Kong mountains, reside natives who owe and yield him obedience. What benefits might be showered on the Protectorate if we would set our heads together to foster and consolidate an intercourse based on amity and on the extension of legitimate traffic!”

Wise words, excellent precepts. Why does not the _Times_ preach them now for application in other parts of West Africa, where the Crown Colony system has not yet quite succeeded in undoing the work of generations of peaceful, commercial efforts? If there be still life left in this miserable residue of the once powerful Ashanti nation, no doubt but that more trouble arising out of the tax will ensue. It does not seem as though the contingency were looked upon as altogether remote even in official eyes, and there are some significant passages in the last Blue Book on the subject. Happily at present we have an excellent resident at Kumasi in the person of Captain Donald Stewart, a man of broad sympathies, and it may be that his personal influence will prevail against the slumbering discontent which the policy of his chiefs renders inevitable in the country, whether it be given open expression to or not.[223]

[Illustration: RETURN OF ASHANTI FIELD FORCE]

There is a passage in the evidence of one of the European witnesses before Sir David Chalmers, in the course of the inquiry into the hut-tax war, which explains better than anything else perhaps the difference between the procedure of the French in Guinea and that of the British authorities in Sierra Leone. “They are not so particular there. The great man Alimami Dowla is supposed to collect the tax, and he brings the money to the Governor and says, ‘This is what I have been able to collect,’ and the Government say, ‘Thank you.’” That is precisely what the French have done all through. They have gone to the chiefs as “big friend”; explained to them that they required money for the railway, roads, and so on; pointed out the advantages; asked them to contribute; presented them with an extremely handsome commission of one-third of the moneys collected (in other words, subsidised them) in their respective districts, and “winked the other eye,” so to speak, when the moneys presented have not equalled the amount due. At the same time the prestige of the chiefs has been everywhere upheld; the native courts preserved; vexatious European legal formulas kept out of the country; European merchants encouraged to come in, and regularly consulted in the work of administration; the numbers of officials restricted; economy practised in every branch of the service, and military methods tabooed. Result, a magnificent success politically, commercially, financially. Compare this with what has taken place in Sierra Leone. We are taking away the power of the chiefs instead of strengthening it.[224] The hut-tax was originally enforced in a hasty, not to say brutal manner. Instant payment was demanded. Chiefs were dragged from their villages, treated as felons, handcuffed and marched off to gaol under the eyes of their unresisting people. The Frontier Police, an ill-disciplined force[225] recruited from the dregs of the Protectorate, committed all sorts of abuses, and, to use the words of the Royal Commissioner, “oppressive severity” was exercised, and this most delicate business was approached in a general spirit of “imperious and uncompromising force.” A rising very naturally ensued which convulsed the whole Protectorate. Sir David Chalmers’ subsequent report, which condemned the hut-tax and recommended its withdrawal, was not acted upon; the hut-tax has been maintained, and an expensive civil, military and magisterial _régime_ set up, unsuited to the country and beyond its power to maintain. Result, the expenditure has risen to about 60 per cent. of the producing power of the Colony, which is steadily decreasing; and the up-keep of the machinery to collect the tax costs more than the tax produces. The Colonial Office, which exhausted itself in ingenious explanations to disconnect the rising with the hut-tax, has recently issued an optimistic statement—on top of many others of a similar kind—containing the report of the new Governor’s tour in the hinterland.[226] It seems that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The natives are delighted with everything, the hut-tax included. The fall in the exports (the true test of prosperity of a West African colony), which have been on the downward grade since the hut-tax was introduced, and were lower last year than they have been for twenty years (the year of the rebellion excepted), is accounted for by “want of activity on the part of native producers,” and to the action of the French. With regard to the latter, the French have for many years levied a tax upon native caravans crossing the frontier, and the rapid development and the judicious management of French Guinea have killed the transit trade which used to pass _viâ_ Freetown, and is now concentrated at Konakry. Yet, in view of French competition, the authorities deem it politic to keep up the tax and all the incidental expenses it involves. The caravan traffic with the far interior was doomed when the French secured the back country; and the revival of the complaint about taxing caravans strikes one as a little insincere for several reasons, and among them because, although it is natural that the natives of our Protectorate adjoining the French possession should be sorry to lose the profits they derived from the passage of caravans through their districts, and complain accordingly, no evidence has been adduced to show that the natives from the remoter hinterlands beyond the frontier, which, be it remembered, belong to France, are desirous of travelling all the way to Freetown to dispose of their products, when there are French factories quite as near where as good prices can be obtained for produce. It is curious, too, to contrast these explanations with other official assurances given out both in 1899 and 1900, that the country would soon recover from the hut-tax war and the export trade regain its normal dimensions. French competition is no new thing. To conclude, the export trade of Sierra Leone twenty years ago is given at £366,000 for an expenditure of £72,000: last year the expenditure was £173,457 including the railway expenses, and £154,210 minus the railway expenses. The expenditure has, therefore, excluding the railway expenses, increased by over 100 per cent. in the face of a decline in the producing power of the country. That is the road to financial ruin, and those concerned know it well enough; but until the British public makes up its mind to seriously tackle these West African questions, the few who say so will, no doubt, continue to be looked upon as pessimists, “sentimental theorists,” or fools, until the inevitable day of reckoning comes.

PART V