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."
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.
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.
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.
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].
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]."
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]."
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].
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.
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.
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].
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]."
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].
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]."
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."
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].
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.
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.
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].
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.
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].
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]."
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"?
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[455] L'Afrique nouvelle. Par. E. Descamps, Brussels, Paris, 1903, p. 8.
[456] For details see J. de C. Macdonell, King Leopold II., p. 113.
[457] H. von Wissmann, My Second Journey through Equatorial Africa, 1891. Rev. W.H. Bentley, Pioneering on the Congo, 2 vols.
[458] See Protocols, Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 4 (1885), pp. 119 et seq.
[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.
[460] The Congo State, by D.C. Boulger (London, 1896), p. 62.
[461] Cattier, Droit et Administration de l'État indépendent du Congo, p. 82.
[462] Cattier, op. cit. pp. 134-135.
[463] A.J. Wauters, L'État indépendent du Congo, p. 52.
[464] Stanley, In Darkest Africa, vol. i. pp. 60-70.
[465] The Fall of the Congo Arabs, by Capt. S.L. Hinde (London, 1897).
[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).
[467] H.R. Fox-Bourne, Civilisation in Congoland p. 277.
[468] M. Cattier, op. cit. p. 88.
[469] L'Afrique nouvelle, by E. Descamps (1903), chap. xv. Much of the credit of the early railway-making was due to Colonel Thys.
[470] Ibid. pp. 589-590.
[471] Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), p. 26.
[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.
[473] Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1904), p. 27.
[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).
[475] Sir Charles Dilke stated this very forcibly in a speech delivered at the Holborn Town Hall on June 7, 1905.
[476] Cattier, Droit et Administration . . . du Congo, pp. 243-245.
[477] For a map of the domains now appropriated by these and other privileged "Trusts," see Morel, op. cit. p. 466.
[478] See the evidence in Parl. Papers, Africa. No. 8 (1896).
[479] Morel, op. cit. chaps. xxiii.-xxv.
[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).
[481] Ibid. pp. 34, 43, 44, 49, 76, etc.
[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.