FEATURES OF THE LAND SYSTEM IN THE AFRICAN COLONIES OF GERMANY, GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND PORTUGAL
The following notes are taken from the Bulletin Officiel of June, 1903, reporting to the Sovereign the accounts of the Congo Free State for the nineteenth year of its existence. The apt comparisons and pointed remarks upon the land system of the State are the work of M. le Chevalier de Cuvelier, Secretary of State for the Congo Free State, an official of great executive ability, to whose tremendous energy is due much of the later prosperity and progress which the Congo State enjoys to the chagrin of its detractors. Chevalier de Cuvelier has been engaged twenty years in the work of creating and developing the State. His official utterances have the quality of long experience behind them.
“During the twenty years that the rule of the State possession of vacant lands has been inscribed in the laws of the Congo State, not one of the Powers Signatory of the Berlin Act has pointed it out as being contrary to that International Act, either at the time of the publication in the Official Bulletin of the regulation of 1885, or on the occasion of any of the public applications made by the State on successive occasions either in exploiting en régie certain lands of the Domain with the object of assuring to the Treasury indispensable resources, or in granting concessions to certain societies for the purpose of carrying out works of general utility and contributing towards the public expenses.
“It can be said on the contrary that the Powers which, together with the Congo State, are in possession of territory in the zone of commercial liberty—France, Germany, Great Britain, Portugal—have followed the same principles, and considered, like it, that the Berlin Act no more excluded the right of property on the part of the State than it excluded that of private individuals.
“In German East Africa the regulation of 1st September, 1891, says:
“‘Article 1.—The Government alone has the right to take possession of vacant lands in the limits of the German sphere of influence in East Africa fixed by the Anglo-German Convention of 1st July, 1890, excepting for the length of the coast strip which was formerly part of the Zanzibar sultanate, and in the provinces of Usambara, Nguru, Usegua, Ukami, and the island of Mafia.’
“By the prior arrangement of 20th November, 1890, between the Imperial Government and the Deutsch Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft, the vacant lands of these latter regions were already found to be assigned to that Company. The produce of the exploitation of the forests throughout these territories, in the terms of Article 4 of the contract of 5th February, 1894, was to be shared in equal halves between the [German] Government and the Company.
“The [German] regulation of the 26th November, 1895, readmits the principle:
“‘Article 1.—Under reserve of the rights of property, or of other real rights that individuals or judicial persons, native chiefs or villages, may advance, as well as rights of occupation by third parties resulting from contracts effected with the Imperial Government, all vacant land in German East Africa belongs to the Crown.’