The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

The traveller in the free city of Bremen, on arriving at the marketplace, will see before him a great stone column which is called the Rolands Saule. This column supports the colossal figure of a man, holding in his right hand a sword, and crushing under his feet the head and hand of a man. This is emblematical of the right of the city to dispose of the lives and labour of its inhabitants. The present column was erected in 1412, but it replaced a wooden column which dated back to the period of the First Crusade, and whose origin is unknown. Other monuments of analogous character to this are found in many of the cities of Germany, and they are symbols of the right which the magistrates of these cities had to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction. They bear witness that these cities were sui juris in regard to the power to make and execute their laws. Should an institution which contributed so much to attach the North of Europe to the civilisation of the South, which rooted itself so firmly upon the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic that its vitality withstood the strain of wars and civil dissensions for six centuries,—should that be regarded as an innovation in the usages of nations when transplanted into Equatorial Africa?

When the Dutch Provinces of Spain revolted against the Spanish Crown, and the Prince of Orange granted letters of mark to individuals, to make reprisals against Spain, the Spanish Government refused to recognise the legality of these letters of mark, upon the pretext that a republic could not exercise rights of admiralty which belonged exclusively to crowned heads. This is the origin of the term of opprobrium, quex de mer, which the Spaniards employed to degrade the Dutch, but which the Dutch adopted as a title of honour. In the same way as now, it was then attempted to make it appear that under the law of nations states alone could exercise sovereign rights. But the facts contradicted this proposition. The suggestion recalls the fable of the hare and the tortoise. According to the principles of pure mathematics the tortoise should never be able to catch the hare, but the problem is simplified enormously when recourse is had to the proof of the facts. To use a scholastic expression, “Experience discovers the truth”—solvitur ambulando. For example, the right of the International African Association to hoist a flag upon its steamboats upon the Lower Congo cannot be denied, while the English society, in possession of the rights of the Sultans of Brunei and Sooloo, implying the exercise of rights of sovereignty, has raised its flag, and the British admiralty has been authorised to recognise it.

To return to the objection of certain publicists that a State alone can exercise sovereign rights. The free cities of ancient Rome and of the empire of Germany (to distinguish it from the present empire) were not subjects of the Emperor, but vassals of the empire, and when the free city of Strasbourg capitulated, in the year 1681, the King of France received it under his royal protection, and it preserved all its privileges and its magistrates with civil and criminal jurisdiction, as a free republic, with a territorial zone, under the protection of France, until the French Revolution.

What are the obstacles which delay the establishment of a system of free cities on the banks of the Upper Congo, and which prevent the powers whose subjects have establishments on the Lower Congo from coming to an agreement as to an international protectorate of the river? There is a European power which arrogates to itself, in virtue of a discovery of the mouth of the river Congo in the year 1484, the sovereignty of all territory watered by this river and its affluents. I do not speak of the pretensions of this power over all the territory of the west coast of Africa, between 5°, 12´, and 8° south latitude—pretensions which have been contested by France, by Holland, and even by England since the slave trade was abolished by conventions between the British and Portuguese Governments. So long as the slave trade existed, everybody hunted Negroes in common in the regions of the Congo. Since the slave trade was abolished the maritime powers of Europe have treated the pretensions of Portugal with courtesy, but not one has admitted them.

I affirm, with all the respect due to the country of Prince Henry the Navigator, that this is the condition of things upon the Congo, although the Portuguese Government, in a circular dispatch, written in reply to a resolution of the Institute of International Law, has asserted that its rights are not disputed.

In support of this assertion of the Portuguese Government the author of the dispatch cites an incident of the last Franco-German war. During the war a French corvette captured a German merchant vessel, the Hero, lying at anchor in Banana Creek, inside the mouths of the Congo. The circular dispatch states that the German Government requested the Portuguese Government to demand the rendition of the prize, as captured in Portuguese waters; but it does not say that the Portuguese Government took any steps before the French prize courts, or that the French Government acceded thereto. The statement of facts stops there. Then, the dispatch says that “the news soon reached Europe that the French governor of Gaboon, the port into which the captor had carried his prize, had set at liberty the crew, and caused the German ship to be taken back to Banana Creek, where it remained at anchor till the close of the war.”

The author of the dispatch appears to me the victim of the paralogism described by the phrase post hoc, propter hoc, for he attempts to draw from these facts the “irresistible conclusion” that the Governor of Gaboon recognised the waters of Banana Creek as Portuguese waters. It appears, on the contrary, that the ship was set at liberty by the Governor of Gaboon, motu suo proprio, and in no manner on account of any demand of the Portuguese Government; and the only legitimate conclusion from the premises is this: The Governor of Gaboon recognised that the capture of the ship had been effected in territorial waters, where, whether they belonged to a native King or to a European power, France had not the right as a belligerent power to capture the enemy’s ships.[62] The Governor of Gaboon conducted himself loyally without waiting special instructions from his Government. This fact, which the author of the dispatch cites as a proof of Portuguese sovereignty over the territories of the west coast of Africa, between 5°, 12´, and 8°, south latitude, comprising the mouths of the Congo, has absolutely no significance as an argument.

Another event which the dispatch of the Portuguese Government recalls is that of the 1st of May, 1877, which had previously acquired considerable notoriety by the publication of the correspondence between the Portuguese Government and the Government of her Britannic Majesty. Several old slave-traders, established at Punta da Lenha, were carrying on a regular and legal commerce with the natives, but, at the same time, were slave-owners. In consequence of an incendiary attempt upon a Dutch factory, the residents of Punta da Lenha made a “noyade” (drowning of several persons at the same time) of Negroes in the river opposite Boma. The British consul, who resides ordinarily at Saint Paul de Loando, which city is under the jurisdiction of the Portuguese crown, wished to make inquiries at the scene of the crime in regard to the summary execution of twenty-nine Negroes by order of their masters, but he did not dare to disembark at Punta da Lenha because of the threats of the inhabitants. Under these circumstances, the Portuguese Government conducted itself in a very proper manner. At the instance of Consul Hopkins, of Loando, the governor of the Portuguese province of Angola sent a gunboat to Punta da Lenha, and arrested a British subject named Scott, implicated in the noyade, and was perfectly willing to try the accused according to the laws of Portugal with the consent of the English consul; but the correspondence between the two governments shows that the English Government was unwilling to admit Portuguese sovereignty over the banks of the Congo. It is surprising that the author of the circular dispatch should have cited this incident as indicating the recognition of Portuguese sovereignty by the English Government, when the correspondence presented to the British Parliament in regard to the matter proves precisely the reverse. Here, for example, are the terms of a dispatch of Sir Julian Pauncefote, under secretary of state, to the English consul at Loando, which closes the correspondence:

“The territory in which these outrages have been committed has long been claimed by the Portuguese Government, and this claim is renewed in the correspondence with the Portuguese authorities inclosed in your dispatches. Her Majesty’s Government, however, as you are aware, have always contested and opposed that claim, and cannot, therefore, admit the jurisdiction of the Portuguese tribunals to deal with the case of Scott.”[63]

No one accuses Portugal of wishing to impede the free navigation of the Congo, but it is to be regretted that, being powerless to insure that navigation to its own subjects, it is unwilling to consent to a friendly agreement with the powers whose subjects have factories upon the north bank, to put the navigation of the river beyond risk of danger. I have said advisedly that Portugal is powerless to insure the navigation of the river to its own subjects. I have already spoken of the tribes which inhabit the borders of Pirates’ Bay, upon the north bank of the river, against whom the English commander, Hewitt, had to organise an expedition in 1875, because they had plundered an English merchant ship and massacred the crew. But there is, on the south bank, a considerable tribe who practise piracy on a large scale, and do not even respect Portuguese vessels. The pirates especially infest San Antonio, at the southern extremity of the mouth, in the immediate neighbourhood of the column of Point del Padron. The author of a book entitled Four Years on the Congo,[64] published in Paris, describes an attack by these pirates upon a Portuguese brig. The account is interesting, but I will not now go into details. What it imports is, the powerlessness of the Portuguese Government to suppress the piracy of this tribe and to punish the guilty ones. I cite an extract from this work which gives the history of the Portuguese expedition sent to punish the Mussorangos who had attacked the Portuguese brig: