CHAPTER XXIX

INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS AND MONOPOLY

“As to the ground on which we contend for the rights we have in the interior of Africa, they have really been our own guiding principles throughout. _It is not territory, it is freedom of trade_, and on that ground we are strong and shall do our very utmost.”—Extract from a speech by LORD SALISBURY to a deputation of Chambers of Commerce, 1898.

Speaking at Manchester in 1884, Sir H. M. Stanley prophesied, as a result of the creation of the Congo State, an export of British cotton goods to the Congo State of £26,000,000 annually. According to the same speaker, one firm on the Congo River alone imported, in 1879, British goods to the value of £185,000. After seventeen years’ existence, the _total_ imports of British goods to the Congo State is far below that figure—viz. £133,200 in 1901!

The importance of British trade interests in French West Africa may be estimated from the fact that in 1900 the French possessions absorbed British goods to the value of £709,900, and sent £534,727 of produce to British ports.

In the _cahier de charges_ or agreements between the French Government and the Concessionnaire Companies the latter were held to respect the “acquired rights of third parties,” and the “general rights created by the Berlin Act.” Who were the “third parties”? What were their “acquired rights?” What were the “general rights created by the Berlin Act”?

When in the early part of the nineteenth century the European nations put a stop to the export slave trade, Great Britain, having led the way in securing this reform, entered into treaties with most of the chiefs and head-men along the West Coast, giving some of them subsidies and, by means of consular and naval visitations, encouraging them to give their attention to the gathering of their forest products for sale to Europeans in exchange for the merchandise of Europe. In this way the trade in palm-oil was stimulated in the Niger Delta and Windward Coast; whilst in Gaboon it took the shape of barwood, ebony and ivory, and in the River Congo palm-oil and ivory. At that time there was no European Government established on the African coast between the Gold Coast and Ambriz. The Europeans who settled along the coast traded from their vessels. After the introduction of steam, the European traders (chiefly British) traded in hulks in the Niger Delta, and built houses and stores at various points along the whole coast-line down to Ambriz. Small sailing vessels plied between these trading places and the terminus of the ocean steamers (then Fernando Po, or Cameroons), and sailing vessels from Europe sailed regularly to and fro, bringing their goods and taking home their cargoes of vegetable and animal products. Soon after the establishment of steam the French Government made a treaty with the chiefs of the Gaboon River, by which ground was ceded for a coaling station for the French men-of-war then plying on the African coast to put down the foreign slave trade. Shortly afterwards, an American citizen established in Fernan Vaz discovered a vine, of which the sap, when exposed to the atmosphere, was found to yield india rubber, and in course of time this new industry was fairly started and gradually spread over the adjoining territory. It was a slow process, but in a few years the gathering of rubber became general in that part of the coast, and in Gaboon the French naval officers saw that there was a trade to be taxed, and forthwith a Custom House was built and duties placed on imports.

When British merchants first established themselves in Gaboon the political authority of the French Government was confined to the Gaboon River estuary, and the up-river trade was carried on at our merchants’ personal risk. In order to induce the natives to collect rubber, European traders had perforce to let the natives have goods on credit, as those natives near the coast had to go far into the interior to buy from other natives; who, in their turn, had to be given credit wherewith to buy from natives still farther inland, and induce them to seek the vines and make the rubber. In this way the credit system, as it exists to-day, was created.

In the pursuit of this rubber trade, fostered by British merchants, the natives of Gaboon, crossing their country to the South, struck the Ogowe River, which gave them easy access to a wide field from which to collect produce. In course of time the European traders followed the natives across country, and meeting the river,[237] lost no time in tracing its course to the sea and at once establishing sea communication between Gaboon and the Ogowe. Their example was imitated by the French Government, and in due course possession was taken by France of the Ogowe and Fernan Vaz; but when at Berlin the Governments of Europe settled who were to become the owners of the Congo and the adjoining maritime territories, France had, in point of fact, no political influence south of Fernan Vaz. This expansion of Gaboon was initiated by British and German enterprise, French white traders coming in after the pioneer work was accomplished. When 2° 30´ of South latitude was fixed as the northern boundary of the free-trade zone, it was expected that that line would include within it the trade of Sette Camma, the trade of which was British and German entirely. The Chambers of Commerce of Liverpool and Manchester set forth these facts at the time: before the treaty was made, and when urging the principle of free trade within the zone fixed by treaty, no idea was in the mind either of the traders, the Chambers of Commerce, or the representatives of the various Governments concerned in the making of the Berlin Treaty, other than that the freedom of trade therein referred to applied to the only known trade in existence, viz. the collection and sale by the natives of the vegetable and other products of their country in exchange for European merchandise. Any legislation, therefore, of which the effect is to alienate the rights of the natives to collect the produce of their country, and to dispose of those products freely to whomsoever they wish, is a direct violation of the principles of equitable treatment towards the natives which animated the Conference and the rights of the signatory Powers of that Conference.

It is then perfectly clear (1) that the “third parties” mentioned in the _cahier de charges_ were the European merchants who had created the existing trade of the French Congo, the taxes upon which supplied the local administration with funds for purposes of revenue; (2) that the “acquired rights” of those merchants consisted in the right to continue their trade, the freedom of which was guaranteed under the Berlin Act; (3) that the “general rights created by the Berlin Act” were, on the one part, the rights of the natives (“whose moral and material well-being” the contracting Powers to the Berlin Act bound themselves to “care for”) to their land and the produce thereof; and, on the other part, the rights of each of the signatory Powers to ensure that the principles of the Berlin Act were not violated by any one of the parties to that Act. The way in which the rights of the natives are “cared for” under the concessions _régime_ was dealt with in the last chapter. It remains to be said to what usage the “acquired rights” of the merchants trading in the country have been subjected.

Two of the most important firms trading in the French Congo at the time of the issue of the Decree of Concessions (March 1899) were British.[238] They were among the very first to open up the country to trade, their representatives had always been law-abiding citizens under the French flag; they had ever worked harmoniously with the French officers, who from time to time had sought their assistance in developing this or that district, had asked them to send their native traders into such and such a region, and generally encouraged them in every way to promote and extend the area of their trading operations. In the course of over a quarter of a century’s trade in the country the British firms had contributed large sums to the local revenue, and had cheerfully paid the enormous differential customs tariffs levied upon British goods, the taxes, the licences, the duties of all sorts affecting the various branches of their businesses prescribed by the law of the land. Their standing was, of course, well known to the French Government, and in a secret letter of instructions[239] communicated to the concessionnaires by the French Colonial Minister, the former were required to pledge themselves “to leave entire latitude for two years to the existing foreign firms for all the commercial undertakings which they may perform in the territory conceded” to them; and further, that they should propose to the said foreign firms at the end of the two years, and in the event of difficulties arising with the latter, to buy up their establishments. The pledge was duly given. But it was not carried out. The French Government, finding itself incapable of compelling obedience, allowed the matter to slide, and was brought by successive stages in the development of affairs to the issue of the Decree of March 26, 1901 (mentioned in the previous chapter), which declared, as has already been stated, that the products of the soil—that is to say, the only medium of trade in the country—belonged exclusively to the concessionnaires, and that the natives were not free to dispose of them to any one but the concessionnaires. The “acquired rights of third parties,” and the rights of the natives, had gone by the board; the rights of England as a signatory Power of the Berlin Act had been infringed; and the Act itself had been violated in one of its most essential articles, viz. Article V., which says that “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.”

To describe the series of outrages[240] perpetrated by the agents of the Belgian groups, masquerading as French patriots, upon our merchants which took place during the two years that the Concessionnaire Companies had bound themselves to allow “entire latitude” to the firms trading in the country; the protests of our merchants, who were never informed by the French authorities that their _locus standi_ had become modified; who continued on the one hand to pay customs dues on their imports, licences for the factories and native traders, while forcibly prevented, under the eyes of the same authorities and with their tacit assent, from disposing of their goods to natives against produce; the expostulations of Sir Edmund Monson, our Ambassador in Paris; the promises of M. Décrais which were never fulfilled; the actions at law brought by our merchants at great expense in the Congo to test the legality of the concessionnaires’ proceedings; the deputation of nine Chambers of Commerce to Lord Lansdowne; the upholding of the concessionnaires’ claim by the local courts, whose judgments as _Le Temps_ (which has pleaded, together with one or two other French papers,[241] for justice to our merchants) has pointed out, was based not upon law, but upon the Decree of March 1901, which the judges could not go beyond; the persecution of our merchants by the concessionnaires for purchasing produce from their concessions on the strength of the said judgment; the infliction of heavy fines upon our merchants; the entire stoppage of their trade; the seizure of their produce at African ports and even at a French port;[242] the evacuation of our merchants which is now proceeding; the renewed representations of British Chambers to the Foreign Office; above all, the unaccountable lethargy of the British Government,[243] and, with one or two honourable exceptions,[244] the indifference of the British Press—to adequately describe these things would require a couple of chapters at least.

The position to-day is this, that from the greater part of the Ogowe Basin, which alone is unaffected by the Berlin and Brussels Acts, being outside the Conventional Basin of the Congo, our merchants have been expelled, without a penny compensation. In the Conventional Basin of the Congo, where—as in the Ogowe—our merchants have been established for upwards of twenty years; where their rights to trade freely with the natives are solemnly guaranteed by International Treaties, British subjects are being expelled, not only without compensation but with ignominy and insult, after suffering heavy losses; the trade which they brought into being ruined, the trading stations they have built deserted, themselves arbitrarily removed from regions where they have laboured for so long.[245]

It is a shameful, a discreditable episode. But if it be true that out of evil good may come, there is still some hope that out of the treatment—treatment which to those who know all the details is beyond the reach of Parliamentary language to characterise—meted out to British merchants in the French Congo may come the liberation of the peoples of the Congo State from the Belgian yoke, and an international understanding binding upon the Powers whereby a rational, common-sense, and just native policy may be mutually agreed upon, and the vast region of the Congo Basin thrown open to the legitimate commerce of all nations. The movement against monopoly based upon force in West Africa; against the evil which King Leopold has sown; against the follies as well as the horrors which that evil has engendered, is growing apace. The expulsion of British subjects from French Congo may yet serve as the lever whereby the edifice of fraud and greed and cruelty reared by Africa’s self-styled “regenerator” may be overthrown. And the reason is this.

The British Government has for years been pressed to inquire into the doings of the Congo States upon humanitarian grounds. The German Government, the Governments of the United States and of France have been similarly approached. None of them have taken definite steps in the direction desired. The chief reasons in the case of England, France and Germany are probably three. First, international rivalries in the partition of Africa and the political ambitions which those rivalries have begotten. By a combination of circumstances of which King Leopold took full advantage, the Sovereign of the Congo State has been able to intrigue first with France against England (1892-94), with England against France (1894), with France against England (1897-99). When the expedition of Major Marchand—who would never have reached Fashoda but for the reinforcements in men, ammunition and stores despatched to him over the Congo Railway, through Congo State territory—was seen to be a political failure, King Leopold turned fawning upon England, and attempted to gain our consent to his appropriation of the Bahr-el-Ghazal. With his usual astuteness he endeavoured to strengthen his diplomacy at the Court of St. James by securing, meanwhile, a _fait accompli_ in Africa. In this he failed, mainly through journalistic enterprise in exposing his carefully laid plans (that also, by the way, would make an interesting little story). After the Fashoda episode King Leopold was again pro-British for a short time, until he became once more France’s good friend, and plunged the French Congo into chaos. In the interval of acting honest broker to England and France alternately, he has tried to play Germany off against England in sundry matters, such as the Trans-African railway scheme. So much for international rivalries on the Western Central African field, in which the Sovereign of the Congo State has held most of the trumps. To these must, of course, be added other rivalries on a wider field amongst the Powers in question, which tended still farther to paralyse all useful, disinterested and combined action for humanitarian ends in the Congo. The second reason is dynastic. King Leopold is connected with the Royal Families of England and Germany. Only those who are in Court secrets know the exact extent to which the Sovereign of the Congo State has profited by that, to him, happy circumstance. It has, undeniably, been considerable. The third reason is the self-imposed halo of sanctity with which the public press has been gulled for years by the happy knack of attributing abuses of a more than usually flagrant character to individual wrongdoing of agents—a plea used again and again with never-failing results. To these reasons—there are others, no doubt, and two of them are briefly touched upon in the next chapter—are mainly due the failure of the Powers to fulfil their duties under the Berlin Act _upon humanitarian grounds_.

But now an altogether different aspect of the Congo problem has sprung up. So far the Stokes affair[246] has alone provided what might be termed a _material_ cause of complaint against the Congo State. The effect of this outrage was modified by renewed international rivalries which occurred shortly afterwards, and even the subsequent appointment of Major Lothaire as Managing Director in Africa for one of the “Companies” in which the Congo State holds 50 per cent. of the shares, and of which King Leopold appoints the agents, failed to exercise the influence which, but for the international rivalries aforesaid, it would otherwise have wielded. But the horizon has cleared of late. The scramble for Africa is over. The Powers are beginning to think seriously of the immense problems which beset them in Tropical Western Africa. And it is precisely at this turning-point, as it were, in European policy in Western Africa that the material side of the question has risen. England and Germany have both in their respective ways been sharply confronted with the Nemesis of their past indifference to the repeated violation of the Berlin Act by the Congo State. Germany has seen her ivory trade in German East Africa disappear, her protected natives driven out of Congo State territory, forbidden to purchase ivory or produce of any kind from the natives on the Congo side of the German Congo State frontier, because by the laws of the Congo State every product of the forest, whether vegetable or animal—when either is of intrinsic value—belongs not to the native owner of that forest, whose ownership the State does not recognise, but to the State itself. England has seen her merchants expelled from the French Congo by an extension of the system of territorial monopolies involving absolute rights over the products of the soil, inaugurated by the Congo State in 1892. The Belgian conception has thrived upon the Powers’ _non possumus_. The African cancer has attacked both banks of the Congo, and wherever spreads the fell disease, liberty, legitimate commerce, free trade, alike for white man and black, disappear.

The Belgian conception of development in Tropical Western Africa is observed a little late in the day to have another side to it. It is not now merely an institution for earning dividends and reducing the African population. It stands forth as a menace to all legitimate European interests in West Africa. What England and Germany could not agree to do when humanitarian considerations alone were in question, they can no longer ignore with safety to their interests in Africa. The tentacles of the Belgian octopus are flung wider and wider, French Congo, Fernando Po, the Muni Territory, Dahomey, the Ivory Coast and South West Abyssinia are all alike either threatened, or victims to the insidious embrace which breeds death and devastation to the natives of Africa.[247] The treatment of our merchants in French Congo has given a fresh impetus, and an added motive, to the demand of public opinion that the Congo State shall be called to the bar of international inquiry; for if the expulsion of British subjects from a region solemnly declared internationally free commercial land, necessitates specific action on the part of the British Government in the form of a request for arbitration, which is the line I have reason to believe our Government has taken, there remains the larger question behind—the question of the violation of the Berlin Act by the Congo State, originator of the new African slavery. The Upas-tree has thrown up a new sucker, and although the fresh growth may be removed, no permanent good will ensue unless the tree itself be rooted up and destroyed. The whole scheme, the _raison d’être_, the entire future of European action in Tropical Western Africa is involved in this question. If the Governments are still slow in realising it, the people are not.

The well-informed press of England and of Germany is unanimous in calling upon the British and German Governments to act in combination for the suppression of the monopolistic _régime_ in West Africa, and its fountain-head the Congo State. The German Colonial Society, with its 32,000 members, has held two great meetings for this purpose, and has passed resolutions of the most emphatic kind, and at the same time is using its considerable influence to ensure that in the two Cameroons concessions engineered at the same time as the French Congo concessions and by the same means, trade shall be unrestricted and the native free to dispose of his products, to whomsoever he will.[248] In that respect, Germany is trying her best to undo an initial error, committed under false advice, and the full consequences of which are now understood. In England, we are witnessing a happy alliance of genuine philanthropy, of scientific knowledge, and of commerce united in a common aim, testifying to the fact that there never has been a question of African politics where morality and practicability are so closely entwined,[249] and if the British Press as a whole still lags behind, it is only fair to remember that England has but just emerged from a great war which has absorbed for three years the energies of the country. Indeed, when all the circumstances are considered, we should perhaps be thankful for the amount of attention which the Press has given to the subject, while maintaining the view that, in the specific matter of the treatment of our merchants in French Congo, it has displayed singular lack of foresight. In the United States signs are not wanting that the special responsibility incurred by America, which first recognised the International _status_ of the International African Association—subsequently the Congo State—is beginning, now that the policy of the State is better known, to weigh with thoughtful Americans, who for many reasons ought not to disinterest themselves from West African affairs; and President Roosevelt has been appealed to, to co-operate with other of the signatory Powers of the Berlin Act to bring about a new Conference. It is to be hoped that the appeal will be heard. America’s position is such that she can act in this matter without a suspicion of selfish motive, and the importance of her moral support at this juncture cannot be over-estimated. In France, it may safely be asserted that the _élite_ of the French official element in West Africa is entirely opposed to the monopolistic conception,[250] that the most powerful French merchant firms are profoundly and anxiously antagonistic, and that with few exceptions the best-informed French writers on West African affairs and French local explorers (Mr. Chevalier, for instance) are dead against it. How, then, can we account for what has occurred? Very easily, I think. A grave mistake has been committed. It is recognised, not always publicly, on nearly all sides in France. But the French Government hesitates to admit it, and the incident of the British merchants intensifies the difficulty. Every French Government dreads the parrot-cry of being too friendly to the English, and no one knows better than Lord Lansdowne how that permanent feature in French politics hampers French statesmen. The influence behind the concessionnaires is still strong. They have still the majority of the French Colonial Press on their side—for reasons which need not be too closely inquired into; and King Leopold’s personal influence in Government circles (which he takes every opportunity of strengthening, witness, for instance, the despatch of a special envoy of welcome to President Loubet on his return from Russia), is still conspicuous, as every diplomatist in Europe knows. The truth is that the French Government is marking time. The next few months will be crucial ones in the history of the concession experiment. The concessionnaires will make a supreme effort to justify their existence, and to force the Government to raise a large standing army in the Congo to coerce the natives into collecting rubber. If they fail, the Government may begin to gently remind them that they have fulfilled none of the terms of the _cahiers de charge_, and if England and Germany can succeed in coming to a definite understanding between themselves and the United States, France may be only too glad to fall back upon a joint Conference as the best way out of the _impasse_ into which her so-called friends, the Belgians, have plunged her.

It is possible that this forecast errs on the side of optimism, and, in any case, it is but too obvious that the monopolists are very strong and have great wealth and influence at their back. Meanwhile all those to whom the continuation and growth of the Belgian conception in Africa appears as a virulent disease spreading wherever it can obtain a foothold, and to be fought without pause or rest, can best be fulfilling what they conceive to be their duty, by throwing more and more light upon the proceedings of the Congo State.