Many stations were established, steamers began running between them, treaties were concluded with the chiefs of independent native tribes to protect the territory so occupied against the claims of subsequent explorers; administrative and police services were required, and all the effective essentials of a central authority and an actual government were then and there established.
At this juncture the Committee changed its name to the International Congo Association and redoubled its activities. The Niadi Kwilu Basin was explored; that important factor in late Congo prosperity, the Upper Kassai, was brought under the influence of Belgian regeneration, and the Lunda country and districts beyond were taken within the Government’s sphere.
In five years discoveries of great value had been made in Darkest Africa, hundreds of tribes had been peacefully visited, over five hundred treaties of suzerainty had been made with the ruling chiefs, forty stations had been erected and their complement of officers put to the work of administering a definite system of local government, and five steamers on the Upper Congo were regularly communicating the affairs of a Government which now effectively controlled all the territory between the East Coast and Stanley Falls, between Bangala and Luluabourg.[2]
This, then, was the position of the Government in the Congo Basin in 1883, long before the Berlin Conference. The status that Government acquired as a consequence of its administrative acts in, and dominion over, the territory it occupied, has been briefly indicated from the point of view of American authorities on the subject of international law. Before examining the leading European authorities, whose approaches to the subject are peculiar to European experience and learning, it is interesting to observe how consistently the action of the Government of the United States followed the American view of the law on the subject.
A Learned Belgian.
Baron A. Descamps’ New Africa, an excellent essay on government civilisation in new countries, embodies a concise statement of what occurred in the fortunes of the infant State early in 1884, when its progressive work had extended a civilising influence to those regions of the Congo Basin where the Arab slave trade had not retained its devastating sway. The writer says:
The practical sympathy speedily accorded to the International Congo Association by the greatest Power of the New World, the United States of America, full of life and vigour and ever inclined to progress, proved that King Leopold’s enterprise had secured public support and official suffrage far beyond the limits of Europe. On April 10, 1884, the American Senate, on Mr. Morgan’s remarkable report,[3] passed a resolution asking the President of the United States to recognise the Association “as the governing power of the Congo.” A few days later, on April 22, 1884, that recognition was an accomplished fact. In officially recalling, at the opening of the Berlin Conference, the nature and cause of this great Act, Mr. Kasson, Chief Plenipotentiary of the United States, pointed out that, following upon Stanley’s explorations, the newly discovered regions “would be exposed to the dangerous rivalries of conflicting nationalities. It was the earnest desire of the Government of the United States that these discoveries should be utilised for the civilisation of the native races, and for the abolition of the slave-trade; and that early action should be taken to avoid international conflicts likely to arise from national rivalry in the acquisition of special privileges in the vast region so suddenly exposed to commercial enterprises.” Referring to the work so effectively performed by the International Congo Association “under high and philanthropic European patronage,” he said that those gallant pioneers of civilisation had “obtained concessions and jurisdiction throughout the basin of the Congo from the native sovereignties which were the sole authorities existing there and exercising dominion over the soil or the people. They immediately proceeded,” added he, “to establish a Government de facto.” Declaring next that the legality of the acts of that Government should be recognised, under penalty of recognising “neither law, order, nor justice in all that region,” he concluded as follows: “The President of the United States, on being duly informed of this organisation, and of their peacefully acquired rights, of their means of protecting persons and property, and of their just purposes towards all foreign nations, recognised the actual government established, and the flag adopted by this Association. Their rights were grounded on the consent of the native inhabitants, in a country actually occupied by them, and whose routes of commerce and travel were under their actual control and administration. He believed that in thus recognising the only dominant flag found in that country he acted in the common interest of civilised nations.”
“In so far,” said the American Plenipotentiary, “as this neutral and peaceful zone shall be expanded, so far he foresees the strengthening of the guarantees of peace, of African civilisation, and of profitable commerce with the whole family of nations.”[4]
Such was the position taken up by the United States of America in regard to the recognition of the newly installed government in Equatorial Africa. Germany was the first European Power to consider this subject of recognition, and to accord to the new enterprise marks of its sympathy and the support of its authority. In acknowledging, by the Convention of November 8, 1884, concluded before the Berlin Conference opened, the flag of the International Congo Association “as that of a friendly State,” the German Government clearly indicated that, so far as it was concerned, the new State ought to take its place from the first among the Powers called to the Conference.
Another Learned Belgian.