Slavery and the slave trade in Africa

by Henry M. Stanley

It therefore required eighty-two years to extirpate slavery within lands professing to be civilized. Africa in the mean time was not neglected. Her burdens and pains were gradually but surely being reduced. The cruising squadrons sailing up and down the eastern and western coasts made it extremely difficult for slave-ships to break through the close blockade, and after the introduction of steam it was rendered impossible. Education had also greatly spread, and it became a universal conviction that slave-trading was as wicked as piracy.

It has since been attempted by more than one power to continue the trade under the disguised form of cooly and contract labor. Were it honestly conducted, and the contracts punctually executed on the part of the employers, there can be no doubt that it would be a means of elevating the benighted people into a higher standard by the contact with and example of a superior or, rather, more advanced race. But it requires a strong and enlightened government to act as umpire in such cases, and governments, unless they find their influence remunerative, do not care to take too much trouble. The ignorant islanders of the South Seas have suffered terribly from this supineness, indifference, or want of close scrutiny and rigid enforcement of every detail in the contract by the Queensland government. They have been decoyed on board the labor-ships under various pretences, and conveyed away never to return; or they have been allowed to go to the Queensland plantations uncared and unprovided for; or, after the term of contract has expired, they have been landed on islands with which they were totally unacquainted, and become food for savages or been made slaves. That such things should be possible in a British colony argues a woful ignorance of the uses of a government, inexcusable stupidity, a shocking lack of feeling, and an incredible amount of ingratitude. It would not be difficult to prove such a system worse than open slavery.

The Portuguese have also been until recently offenders against public sentiment in the matter of exporting “colonials” from Angola for the cocoa groves of Prince’s Island and the sugar estates of St. Thomas. These colonials are natives collected from the interior, who, before embarkation, are looked at by a government functionary, and then have tin tickets slung around their necks, are given a blanket and a few flimsy cottons, and are deported to the islands for a term which to too many of them must be indefinite. The official declared that all was fair and just, but no one with a fair mind on viewing a barge-load of these unfortunates could possibly accept such a statement from an underbred and illiterate official as a voucher. It appears to me that if the colonials are absolutely required for the islands by the Portuguese, or contract kanakas by Queensland planters, their engagement might be made as honest as an agreement with a number of English navvies for the Suakim-Berber Railway, or Italians for the Congo Railway, or Jamaicans for the Panama Canal. But it should be remembered that the lower, the more degraded, and more ignorant the people from whom these labor gangs are drawn, the greater are the responsibilities of the government sanctioning such engagements. For in cases where the government authorizes “contract labor” or “colonialism,” it should be prepared to supply to the ignorant native that care, knowledge, prudence, and security which the English, Italian, and Jamaican navvies possess by education, color, and experience. And it is only in this way, and no other, that coolyism, colonialism, and contract labor can be relieved of their objectionable features.

We may now see that the progress of the world in philanthropic feeling and sentiment has been continuous, and as satisfactory as its progress in the adoption and use of the mechanical inventions of the age. It has been comparatively slow, but the world is large and its nations are many; but for an idea—born in the sympathetic heart of the humble Fox—to be found permeating the minds of all the civilized peoples of the world, until all authority is ranged on its side, is surely wonderful. Wherefore we may go on hoping and working till no son of Adam shall be found a slave to his fellow in all the world.

Now let us see what has already been done, or may in the near future be done, in Africa, which has been during historic time the nursery of slaves. I have before me an autograph letter of Dr. David Livingstone, written in 1872, wherein he concludes a long exposé of the evils of the slave trade which he had met in his travels thus: “The west coast slave-trade is finished, but it is confidently hoped, now that you have got rid of the incubus of slavery [in America], the present holders of office will do what they can to suppress the infamous breaches of the common law of mankind that still darken this eastern coast, and all I can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven’s rich blessings descend on whoever lends a helping hand!”

It was this and other letters from Livingstone which provoked that earnest attention to Africa which I feel convinced will not abate until it will be as impossible to kidnap a slave there as in England. The traveller’s death, which occurred a few months later, stirred his countrymen into action. At a great meeting held at the Mansion House the necessity for vigorously grappling with the slave trade on the east coast was unmistakably expressed. It resulted in Sir Bartle Frere being sent to Zanzibar to engage the Sultan’s co-operation. For that prince derived a considerable revenue from the duty on imported slaves; his subjects were the people against whom Livingstone had written those terrible indictments; the British Indian merchants residing in his capital furnished the means whereby the Arabs were equipped for their marauding expeditions. But with all Sir Bartle’s tact, discretion, and proverbial suavity, the mission intrusted to him narrowly approached failure. Fortunately, in Dr. (now Sir) John Kirk, the consul-general, the British government possessed an official of rare ability, and who from long acquaintance with the Sultan knew him thoroughly. Through his assistance, and the opportune appearance of Admiral Cumming with a powerful fleet, a treaty was finally concluded, and the Zanzibar prince was enlisted on the side of the antislavery cause.

Those, however, who expected too much from the treaty were greatly disappointed when, a few months later, reports reached England that the slave trade was as flourishing as ever. No suspicion was entertained of the sincerity of the Zanzibar prince, for upon every occasion involving the punishment of the slavers he proved his honesty by permitting the law, without protest, to be applied. The objects of the treaty were being, however, evaded by the enterprising Arabs on the mainland, who marched their caravans northward along the coast to points whence at favorable opportunities they could ship their captives to ports in southern Arabia or in the Egyptian protectorate.

To counteract these new proceedings of the Arabs, another large meeting was convened at Stafford House in May, 1874, for the consideration of other means of suppression of the trade. I suggested at that meeting that commissioners should be appointed at various ports along the coast whose duty it would be to keep a record of the number of persons attached to all caravans bound for the interior, as well as of the material of their equipment; that each caravan leader, before receiving permission to set out, should be compelled to bind himself not to engage in the slave trade, and that such leader on returning to the coast should, upon being convicted of having evaded or broken his obligations, forfeit his bond and be fined $5000; that each captain of a slave-vessel, upon conviction that he was engaged in the transport of slaves, should receive capital punishment; that trading depots should be established on Lakes Nyassa and Tanganika to encourage legitimate commerce in the natural products of the interior; and that the lake coasts should be patrolled by flotillas of steam-launches. The above were the main features of a plan which I still believe would have been adequate in meeting the wishes of the principal speakers in that assembly. Those who know what has since been done by the imperial German government along that same coast and on the lakes will perceive how closely the suggestions are paralleled to-day by the actions of the German commissioners and the trading depots on the lakes belonging to the African Lakes Company. No caravan is permitted to leave without search; gunpowder and arms are confiscated; slave-traders are tried, and hanged after conviction (the chief judge on the German coast lately sentenced seventeen Arabs to be hanged at Lindi). The trading depots of the African Lakes Company are pre-eminently successful in subserving the antislavery cause by suppressing the odious trade in slaves. Had the British done then what is being done now, no other power could have usurped her rights in the immense territory lately abandoned to the Germans.

The history of events at Zanzibar for some years following consists principally of relations of capture of slave-dhows and the confiscation of the vessels, the visit of the Zanzibar prince to England, the appointment of a number of vice-consuls to the principal ports along the coast, the departures of explorers for inner Africa, the gradual but steady increase of missionaries in the interior, and the establishment of Christian missions at Usambara, Mombasa, and Nyassa.

Meanwhile the Arabs in the far interior had discovered a new field for bolder operations in a country west of Lake Tanganika, called Manyuema, and the enormous forested area adjoining it to the north, which has lately been discovered to be about 400,000 square miles in extent. Nyangwé, the principal town of Manyuema, is situate but a few miles south of the vast forest, on the right bank of the Lualaba. It was the furthest point of Livingstone’s explorations. Manyuema is surpassingly beautiful, the soil is exceedingly fertile, and the people, though troubled by tribal feuds, are industrious cultivators. By the time Livingstone had penetrated the country the Arabs had assumed lordship over it, and each chief was compelled to pay tribute to them in ivory. The Arabs not only monopolized the ivory, but the fear of them was so great among the Manyuema that, to protect themselves from too many masters, they elected to serve some one powerful Arab, to whom they surrendered themselves, their liberties, as well as their properties of all kinds. In a few years Manyuema was emptied of its elephant teeth. The Arabs then began to extend their operations into the forest, suffering many a disaster and mishap as they advanced. But continuous practice enabled them in the end to thwart the craft of the forest natives, and to acquire that experience by which eventually they easily became masters of every country they entered. The success attending the ventures of such men as Dugumbi, Mtagamoyo, Mohammed-bin-Nasur, and Abed-bin-Salim, and scores of lesser leaders, increased the avarice and excited the ardor of younger and more daring spirits. An apprenticeship with men who had grown gray in the arts of slave-catching and ivory-raiding had taught them that it was a waste of time to pretend to barter cloth and beads as practised in lands east of Lake Tanganika. They had realized how complete was the isolation of the forest aborigines, how the little settlements buried in the recesses of the forest were too weak to resist their trained battalions, and how the natives shrank from facing the muzzles of their thundering guns, and how they might range at will and pillage to their hearts’ content through an unlimited area without let or hindrance.