CHAPTER XXX

THE HISTORY OF THE CONGO STATE

“At the present time the body called the International Association—however startling it may appear to you—is invulnerable and unassailable. All the armies in the world could not reach it. It is impalpable, intangible as air. I call it Benevolence, Charity, Philanthropy—the Spirit of Peace, good-will to all men—Progress. It is here amongst you to-night ... It eludes your armies, it mocks your best efforts; at a whisper it has disappeared and you cannot recall it.... The founders of the International Association have been called dreamers.... Men understand, or think they do, why a George Peabody should invest hundreds of thousands in model lodgings, or a Josiah Mason in an Institute.... They can understand also why an entire nation spent £20,000,000 to free the slaves in the West Indies.... Though they understand the satisfaction of a sentiment when applied to England, they are slow to understand that it may be a sentiment that induced King Leopold II. to father the International Association. He is a dreamer like his _confrères_ in the work, because the sentiment is applied to the neglected millions of the Dark Continent. They cannot appreciate rightly, _because there are no dividends attaching to it_, this restless, ardent, vivifying, and expansive sentiment which seeks to extend civilising influences among the dark races, and to brighten up with the glow of civilisation the dark places of sad-browed Africa.”—Sir H. M. STANLEY at the London Chamber of Commerce, September 19, 1884.

“Tous les pouvoirs émanent du Souverain qui les exerce par lui-même ou par ses délégués. Il consulte s’il le juge bon le Conseil Supérieur siégeant à Bruxelles. Il prend en personne les mesures les plus importantes.... Le Souverain manifeste sa volonté sous la forme de décrets contresignés par le Secrétaire d’Etat....”—M. A. J. WAUTERS, “L’Etat Indépendant du Congo,” chap. xxxii., “Pouvoir législatif,” p. 433.

Legends die hard. The legend which attributes to King Leopold of Belgium and the Congo State a philanthropic motive in African affairs is still alive among us, although not quite to the extent that it used to be. It would have died long ago but for two causes, the misstatements indulged in by two or three well-known Englishmen and the apparent failure of the British Press, as a whole, to comprehend the _fons et origo mali_ which is raising up such terrible future complications for Europe in Central Africa. Upon occasion one is tempted to think—and the supposition is strengthened by such articles as that which the _Times_ recently devoted to the Congo annexation debate in the Belgian Chamber—that the curious omission to come to close quarters with the subject proceeds not so much from inability to see things as they really are, as from an unwillingness to criticise the Sovereign of the Congo State himself. Personalities are held to be bad form, especially where Royalty is concerned. If that be, indeed, the real explanation of the whitewashing of the Congo State which finds favour in many quarters, there is nothing to prevent the process from going on indefinitely. I maintain that it is utterly impossible to arrive at the truth, if the king’s personal responsibility in the maladministration of the Congo State is to be perpetually shelved. Why should it be? The administrative _régime_ of the State, as M. Cattier has truly said, is an “absolute despotism.” No one who is acquainted with that _régime_ believes for a moment that a Van Eetvelde, a Droogmans, a Liebrechts or a Cuvelier exist for any purpose than that of carrying out the king’s instructions and superintending the routine work which those instructions entail. King Leopold is sole master, and must bear the responsibility for the _sequelæ_ of measures which he himself has initiated and, through his agents, caused to be applied. The king has openly and repeatedly claimed for himself this position before the world. He has posed, and continues to pose, as the regenerator of the African. He has put it on record, in a letter to his agents, that “his only programme is the work of moral and material regeneration.” He has written of the “results achieved” by the Congo State as being due “to the concentration of all my efforts in one field of action.” He has, throughout, loudly insisted upon the purity and unselfishness of his intentions. Adverse comment has been dismissed by him with a loftiness of tone, a simulated consciousness of high purpose, a dignified picturesqueness of expression from which it is impossible to withhold a meed of admiration, as in the case of a play repugnant to one’s sentiments but yet so excellently rendered that objection to the theme cannot blind one to the art of the performers. “My aim throughout life has been to find the truth and make the truth known to others. I have often been misunderstood and misrepresented, but we must not be discouraged; let us ever go forward in the path of duty, striving to let the light shine forth.” It cannot be a subject of complaint on the part of his Majesty or his Majesty’s friends if, under these circumstances, we take the Sovereign of the Congo State at his word; if we recognise that in the management of the affairs of the Congo State he has adopted to the uttermost the proud assertion of Louis XIV.: “_L’Etat: c’est moi_”; if, making due note that his declared policy has been the regeneration of the African Negro—a policy in the execution of which he shuns not publicity but only desires light and truth—we judge his acts and the consequences of those acts from the standpoint he himself has laid down.

It is essential for our purpose to give an historical retrospect of the events which preceded the General Act of Berlin in 1885.

On September 12, 1876, King Leopold held a conference in Brussels to consider the best means which could be devised in order to open up Central Africa to European civilisation. The “barbarism” of Africa had already begun to perturb his Majesty, who was careful to place on record the absolute disinterestedness of his intentions. Addressing the assembled scientists and explorers,[251] King Leopold spoke thus: “Is it necessary for me to say that in inviting you to Brussels I have not been guided by egotism? No, gentlemen, if Belgium is small, Belgium is happy and content with her lot, ... but I should be pleased to think that this civilising movement had been inaugurated from Brussels.” The outcome of this conference was an “International Association for the exploration and civilisation of Central Africa.” Its professed objects were exploration, together with the establishment of sundry centres where explorers of all nationalities might refit. Committees for the collection of funds were to be established in all the countries represented,[252] and an Executive Committee appointed in Brussels to manage the funds. King Leopold, who from the commencement was pursuing his own ends—as he clearly showed later—saw to it that the Belgian Committee should be in the forefront of the subscribers, and to such good purpose that ere long the Association came to be looked upon as a Belgian Organisation.

The association first of all directed its efforts towards the East Coast of Africa; but when Stanley arrived home in January 1878, after having discovered the course of the Congo, the necessity of a change of policy became obvious. The king speedily secured Stanley’s services, a “Committee of Studies” for the Upper Congo was formed, and Colonel Strauch was despatched to the Congo as a representative of both the association and the committee of studies. Meanwhile King Leopold’s ambitions were slowly maturing, and the theory of an African State in which he would be the representative head was already shaping itself in his Majesty’s mind. In a letter which he wrote to Stanley, Colonel Strauch suggested the formation “of an independent confederacy of free negroes, the king, to whom the conception and the creation of such a confederacy would be due, to be president thereof.” “Our enterprise,” continued Colonel Strauch, “does not tend to the creation of a Belgian Colony, but to the establishment of a powerful _negro kingdom_.” This idea appears to have been sedulously fostered by Colonel Strauch among the European traders established in the Lower Congo, with results which afterwards became apparent. Whether it was put forward as a blind or not it is difficult to say. Anyhow, Stanley knocked it on the head. About this time France and Portugal began to evince uneasiness at the somewhat exclusive complexion which the association and the committee were beginning to assume, and there ensued a long intrigue in which the principal actors were Stanley and De Brazza. De Brazza forestalled Stanley on the right bank of the Congo, and Stanley checkmated De Brazza on the left bank above Stanley Pool. Portugal, whose explorers discovered the Congo’s mouth in 1484,[253] whose treaties with the natives undoubtedly possessed greater validity than those concluded by the association’s agents, and who still retained commercial interests in the region, now became thoroughly alarmed, and endeavoured, with the assistance of Great Britain, to make good her claims. On February 26, 1884, a Convention was signed between Great Britain and Portugal, the practical effect of which would have been to put a stop to the expansion of the Association in the interior. The Convention was attacked at home and abroad; abroad, from various motives, including the fear that Great Britain’s political influence on the Congo would become paramount; at home, because, by the terms of the Convention, the right of Portugal to impose a moderate import tariff was recognised, and it was feared that this recognition might lead later on to the application of differential tariffs to which Portugal was wedded, and because the British Chambers of Commerce and the British Press were deluded as to the real nature of the International Association, which represented itself as devoted to free-trade principles. The Convention was opposed by European merchants in the Congo for the same reasons, backed by the belief that the aims of the Association tended towards the maintenance and strengthening of native rule, which the community of mercantile West African interests well knows to be the best guarantee of the development of legitimate trade.

The Convention was by mutual consent abandoned. Its abandonment was preceded by a remarkable event, viz. the recognition by the United States of the Association[254] as a friendly State. The king, aided by Stanley, who was still at that time, I believe, an American subject, had played his cards cleverly with General Henry S. Sandford (subsequently one of the two American representatives at the Berlin Conference), and the declaration sent by the former to the United States Government, in which he stated that “the International Association of the Congo hereby declares that by treaties with the legitimate sovereigns in the basins of the Congo and of the Niadi-Kwilu, and in adjacent territories upon the Atlantic, there has been ceded to it territory for the use and benefit of Free States established and being established,” appears to have exercised a considerable influence. The “Free States” appealed to American sentiment.[255] Needless to say, the one thing that has not been created in any shape or form in the Congo is freedom either for native States, or native institutions, or European trade,[256] and how General Sandford could have been deceived to the extent of penning the above despatch, in view of the emphatic manner in which Stanley had rejected Colonel Strauch’s suggestion in 1878 (which presumably General Sandford had in his mind, although six years had passed since it was made), it is hard to understand. The American recognition of the new status of the association was followed by Bismarck’s suggestion of a conference of the Powers, in order to set at rest the rivalries which had arisen in the Congo Basin. The conference first met in November 1884, and subsequently in February 1885. Largely influenced by the decision of the United States, the Powers authorised their representatives to follow the lead of the American Government, and on August 1, 1885, King Leopold had the inexpressible satisfaction of notifying the Powers that the association would be henceforth known as the Congo Free State, and himself as the Sovereign of that State. In this manner was the evolution of King Leopold from a pure philanthropist to the ruler of a million square miles of territory in Central Africa accomplished. The king, argue his admirers, had come to see that patriotism was a duty greater even than philanthropy. The practical had outweighed the ideal. Very well; but as we study the next stage in this royal metamorphosis, let those who follow us remember the memorable words spoken in 1876 before the assembled scientists and explorers in Brussels: “Is it necessary for me to say that, in inviting you to Brussels, I have not been guided by egotism? No, gentlemen; if Belgium is small, Belgium is happy and content with her lot.”

The Berlin Conference laid it down that no import dues should be established in the mouth of the Congo for twenty years. But in 1890 King Leopold, alleging the heavy expenses to which he had been put by the campaign against the Arabs in the Upper Congo, applied for permission to levy import duties. It was the first disillusionment; and the British Chambers of Commerce began to wonder whether their opposition to the Anglo-Portuguese Convention had not been mistaken. The king’s request was granted (the Powers merely reserving to themselves the right to revert to the original arrangement in fifteen years), but not without the bitter opposition of the Dutch, who had very important commercial interests in the Congo, backed by the British Chambers of Commerce and all the traders in the Congo, irrespective of nationality. A representative gathering was held in London on November 4, 1900, presided over by Sir Albert Rollit, to protest against the imposition of import duties and to denounce the hypocrisy which attributed to philanthropic motives the desire on the part of the Congo State so to impose them. The speakers at the meeting drew attention to the strange anomaly revealed by the sight of a monarch who, having spent certain sums with alleged (and loudly advertised) philanthropic motives, now came forward to claim repayment of those sums, just like an ordinary business man, but a business man who, having acquired a vast estate under false pretences, demanded from the victims the wherewithal to pay for its management! They quoted with telling effect Stanley’s speech at Manchester on October 21, 1884, given on behalf of the association and against the Anglo-Portuguese Convention, in which he declared that “the £500,000 which it (the association) has given away to the Congo, it gave freely; the thousands of pounds which it may give annually it gives without any hope of return, further _than a sentimental satisfaction_.” They were able to show that—even then—King Leopold, notwithstanding his formal assurances to the commercial world that the Congo State would never directly or indirectly itself trade within its dominions, was buying, or rather stealing, ivory from the natives in the Upper Congo and retaining the proceeds of the sale on the European market. They proved that, profiting by the silence of the Berlin Treaty on the subject of export duties, the Congo State had already imposed taxes amounting to 17½ per cent. on ivory, 13 per cent. on rubber and 5 per cent. on palm-kernels, palm-oil, and ground-nuts, the total taxation amounting to no less than 33 per cent. of the value of the whole of the trade. Finally, they had no difficulty in demonstrating that, with all his professed wish to stamp out the slave-raiding carried on by the half-caste Arabs in the Upper Congo,[257] his Majesty was himself tacitly encouraging the slave trade by receiving tribute from conquered chiefs in the shape of slaves, who were promptly enrolled as soldiers in the State army.[258] The sincerity of King Leopold’s solicitude for the natives of Africa was in other respects appearing in its true colours, _vide_ the letter of Colonel Williams, a British officer in King Leopold’s employ, who, in disgust at the outrages which were taking place on the Congo, denounced them to the king. This letter, from which I give the following extracts, was read at the conference by Mr. Philipps, representing the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. It ran thus:

“Your Majesty’s Government has been and is now guilty of waging unjust and cruel wars against natives, with the hope of securing slaves and women to minister to the behests of the officers of your Government. In such slave-hunting raids one village is armed by the State against the other, and the force thus secured is incorporated with the regular troops. I have no adequate terms with which to depict to your Majesty the brutal acts of your soldiers upon such raids as these. The soldiers who open the combat are usually the bloodthirsty cannibalistic Bangalas, who give no quarter to the aged grandmother or the nursing child at the breast of its mother. There are instances in which they have brought the heads of their victims to their white officers on the expeditionary steamers and afterwards eaten the bodies of the slain children.”[259]

The history of King Leopold’s action in Central Africa between 1876 and 1890 may therefore be summed up as follows. First stage: Inauguration of a “movement” for the “exploration and civilisation of Africa” from motives (so stated) of pure philanthropy, devoid of any shade of personal egotism or ambition on the part of Belgium. The expenditure of a certain sum of money for this (alleged) intent. The acquisition of a certificate of high moral purpose. Second stage: The “movement” takes the form of a State, possibly an “independent confederacy of free negroes,” with the king as president. This idea is abandoned, and for it is substituted the theory of an “Independent State” administered directly by the king and his representatives. The theory takes root, and by the Act of Berlin is converted into a _fait accompli_. According to this Act, the king becomes sovereign of the “Congo Independent State,” and undertakes that the State shall grant no monopoly or privilege in matters of trade, shall watch over the welfare of the natives and shall not impose any import duties. Formal assurances are also given to the commercial world that the State will not trade on its own account, directly or indirectly. Third stage: The State promptly starts trading for ivory in the Upper Congo, and wages war against the natives by means of a cannibal army, raised from slaves captured in war and paid by the vanquished as tribute. Its agents begin to be accused of shocking treatment of natives. Fourth stage: The king asks for permission to impose import duties, pleading the expenses which he is incurring in putting down slave-raiding, and the Brussels Conference grants the request.

It may, I think, be fairly argued that the “sentimental satisfaction” which in 1884, according to Sir H. M. Stanley, was all that the king required as a reward for his out-of-pocket expenses, had assumed a singularly practical shape in 1890. From a philanthropist to an ivory-trader is a long step.

No sooner had the Sovereign of the Congo State obtained the acquiescence of the Powers in the imposition of import duties, which, it is almost unnecessary to say, enormously strengthened the international position of the State, than the plans which his Majesty had conceived for the development of what was rapidly becoming tantamount to a Belgian possession, manifested themselves. What were those plans and what were their _leit motif_? So far as the plans are concerned, I will come to them later. But their _leit motif_ may be briefly stated now. To those who have studied the personality of King Leopold, acceptance of the philanthropic claim put forward by that monarch is simply impossible at any stage of his African undertaking. In any case, the philanthropic claim weakened with every year that passed after 1876. The revelations at the London meeting of November 4, 1890, definitely exploded it. Whoever attributed philanthropy to the Sovereign of the Congo State after that meeting was foolishly credulous, although he might still be honest. Whoever, being acquainted with the edicts of 1891 and 1892, from the time those edicts were thoroughly known in Europe, that is to say, towards the middle of 1892, has endorsed the philanthropic claim must have been guilty of gross deceit. I would go even farther than this, and say that such persons have been guilty of conniving and inducing the public to connive at a crime which has been steadily growing ever since, in the extent and heinousness of its criminality; a crime for which Europe will yet pay dearly.

King Leopold found himself in 1885 possessed of an enormous territory, in the acquirement of which he had expended a certain sum as an investment. Not being a philanthropist; but, on the contrary, a very shrewd man of business, his next thought was how to get his capital back—with interest. By throwing open the Congo to legitimate commerce; by encouraging and facilitating the trade of all nations as he solemnly undertook to do; by pursuing a common-sense policy towards the natives, the Sovereign of the Congo State might have recovered the original capital he had sunk on the Congo, and even have realised a fair percentage upon it. At the same time he would have laid the foundations of a peaceful and commercially prosperous colony _for Belgium_, a colony with vast resources, a magnificent river system and unlimited future possibilities. That would have been true patriotism, and the ends attained might have justified the not very honourable means employed. King Leopold preferred to adopt another course, which has led him from illegality to violence, and from violence to barbarism. The king’s intention all through was to recoup himself for his expenditure at the earliest possible moment. So much for the _leit motif_.

The measures adopted by his Majesty to bring about this desired result were as follows: Five months after the termination of the Berlin Conference, King Leopold issued a decree (July 1885), whereby the State asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the Congo territory. It was intended that the term “vacant lands” should apply in the broadest sense to lands not actually occupied by the natives at the time the decree was issued. By successive decrees, promulgated in 1886, 1887 and 1888, the king reduced the rights of the natives in their land to the narrowest limits, with the result that the whole of the odd 1,000,000 square miles assigned to the Congo State, except such infinitesimal proportions thereof as were covered by native villages or native farms, became _terres domaniales_. On October 17, 1889, the king also issued a decree ordering merchants to limit their commercial operations in rubber to bartering with the natives. This decree was interesting merely as a forewarning of what came later, because at that time the rubber trade was very small. In July 1890, the same year as the Brussels Conference, the Congo State went a step farther. A decree issued in that month confirmed all that was advanced in November of the same year by the speakers at the London Conference, held to protest against the imposition of import dues by the State. By its terms King Leopold asserted that the State was entitled to trade on its own account in ivory—the first open violation of his pledges. Moreover, the decree imposed sundry extra taxes upon all ivory bought by merchants from the natives; which, since the State had become itself a trading concern, constituted an equally direct violation of the Berlin Act, by establishing differential treatment in matters of trade. Such were the plans King Leopold made, preparatory to obtaining from the Powers the power to impose import duties.[260] Everything was ready for the great _coup_, which should also inaugurate the fifth stage of his Majesty’s African policy.

The Brussels Conference met. The Powers with inconceivable fatuity allowed themselves to be completely hoodwinked, and within a year the greatest injury perpetrated upon the unfortunate natives of Africa since the Portuguese in the fifteenth century conceived the idea of expatriating them for labour purposes had been committed, and committed, too, by a monarch who had not ceased for fifteen years to pose as their self-appointed regenerator! On September 21, 1891, King Leopold drafted in secret a decree which he caused to be forwarded to the Commissioners of the State in the Ubanghi-Welle and Aruwimi-Welle districts, and to the chiefs of the military expeditions operating in the Upper Ubanghi district. This decree never having been published in the official Bulletin of the State, its exact terms can only be a matter of conjecture; but we know that it instructed the officials to whom it was addressed “to take urgent and necessary measures to preserve the fruits of the Domain to the State, especially ivory and rubber.” By “fruits of the Domain,” King Leopold meant the products of the soil throughout the “vacant lands” which he had attributed to himself, as already explained, by the decree of 1885. The king’s instructions were immediately followed, and three circulars, dated respectively Bangala, December 15, 1891, Basankusu, May 8, 1892, and Yakoma, February 14, 1892, were issued by the officials in question. Circular No. 1 forbade the natives to hunt elephants unless they brought the tusks to the State’s officers. Circular No. 2 forbade the natives to collect rubber unless they brought it to the State’s officers. Circular No. 3 forbade the natives to collect either ivory or rubber unless they brought the articles to the State’s officers, and added that “merchants purchasing such articles from the natives, whose right to collect them the State only recognised provided that they were brought to it, would be looked upon as receivers of stolen goods and denounced to the judicial authorities.”

Thus did the Sovereign of the Congo State avail himself of the additional prestige conferred upon him by the Brussels Conference. He did not obtain his own way entirely, because the years which had elapsed since the Berlin Conference had witnessed the creation of a powerful group of Belgian trading companies, presided over by one Colonel Thys, who afterwards brought the construction of the railway which unites the Lower to the Upper Congo to a successful termination, and who is now probably the largest land-owner in Africa. These companies were doing a large trade in rubber and ivory with the natives. They were well organised, and the man at their head was both capable and fearless. The companies invoked the Act of Berlin, protested against its gross infringement by the State, dwelt largely upon the sacredness of free trade and native rights, pleaded for Belgium and the world at large; and, finding these considerations insufficient, violently attacked the king himself with the avowed intention of forcing him to abdicate his “sovereignty” on the Congo. It is useless to detail the process of an agitation which, if it did nothing else, showed up in lurid colours how much the patriotism of the King of the Belgians was subordinated to the egotism of the Sovereign of the Congo State. The upshot of it was that the king squared the colonel, and the commercial companies of the Rue Bréderode group, as they are familiarly designated, were induced to keep silence by the grant of a trading monopoly over a very large area where they would be free to carry on their business unmolested. His resolute adversary being thus disposed of, the king forthwith issued a decree, dated October 1892, by which he defined the limits of his _terres domaniales_, and crowned the policy he had ever steadily pursued by creating for himself in Central Africa a vast preserve, a _Domaine Privé_, from which he might draw unlimited resources with a view to his own personal enrichment. The extent of this preserve cannot cover less than 800,000 square miles.[261] The summit of King Leopold’s ambition had been attained.