West African studies

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley

I feel confident that had Mr. Consul Johnston had the management of affairs in the Opobo a few years earlier, Ja Ja would never have been deported, and instead of having to censure him, he would have handled him in such a manner as to make use of his influence in furthering British interests. I do not think I can describe the late King Ja Ja better than Mr. Consul Johnston did in a letter he addressed to Lord Salisbury under date of September 24th, 1887, wherein he writes as follows:—“Ja Ja’s chief friends and supporters for years past have been the naval officers on the coast. His generous hospitality, his frank, engaging manner, his naïf discourse, and amusing crudities of diction have gained the ready sympathy of these gentlemen; no doubt Ja Ja is no common man, though he is in origin a runaway slave,[89] he was cut out by nature for a king, and he has the instinct of rule, though it not unfrequently degenerates into cruel tyranny.

“His demeanour is marked by quiet dignity, and his appearance and conversation are impressive.

“Nevertheless, I know Ja Ja to be a deliberate liar,[90] who exhibits little shame or confusion when his falsehoods are exposed. He is a bitter and unscrupulous enemy[91] of all who attempt to dispute his trade monopolies, and the five British firms whose trade he has almost ruined during the past two years.”

A complaint often made against the Government by merchants established on the West Coast of Africa is want of official protection and assistance; in many cases in the past this has been the case; but they certainly could not make this complaint during the few months that Mr. Consul Johnston was at the head of the Consular service in the Oil Rivers. I will here give a summary of what exertions were made by the Government to assist the merchants in their praiseworthy attempts to get behind the middlemen in this one river, where Ja Ja was always given the credit of being the head and front of the obstruction, nothing ever being said about the king and chiefs of Bonny, who were equally interested with Ja Ja in keeping the white men out of the markets, their principal markets being on the River Opobo.

Owing to the energetic representations of Mr. Consul H. H. Johnston, the British Government placed at his disposal for the settlement of the market question and the Ja Ja palaver the following Government vessels, viz., the Watchful, the Goshawk, the Alecto, the Acorn, the Royalist, and the Raleigh, the latter bringing Admiral Sir Hunt Grubbe up from the Cape of Good Hope for the trial of King Ja Ja.

Result: Within a very short time after the deportation of Ja Ja, all the firms who had been so anxious to establish in the interior markets and thus get behind the middlemen (without doubt the curse of the Oil Rivers and every part of Africa where they are tolerated) gave up trading at the interior markets that had caused the Government so much trouble to open for them, and made an agreement with the middlemen, represented in this case by the Bonny men and Opobo men, that they would not attempt to trade any more in the interior markets if the middlemen would promise to trade with no European firm that attempted to trade in the interior markets. On the writer’s last visit to the Opobo in 1896 there was only one firm trading in the interior markets, and that firm was not one of those that were in the river at the time of the clamour for the removal of Ja Ja and the opening of the interior in 1887.

KWO IBO.

This river was first visited in modern days in 1871 by the late Mr. Archie McEachan, who found the people very troublesome to deal with, and did not long remain there. No doubt the people were not so easy to deal with as those natives that have been for some hundreds of years dealing with Europeans; but as he was at the same time posing as a friend and supporter of Ja Ja, and the oil he got in Kwo Ibo was being diverted from Ja Ja’s markets, the latter no doubt exerted a certain amount of pressure on his friend, and aided, if he did not actually cause him to decide to withdraw from Kwo Ibo.

Kwo Ibo lay fallow for some time, then one or two Sierra Leone men attempted to trade there, but with little success, owing to the influence King Ja Ja had in the country. It was not until 1880-1 that any sustained effort was made to trade in this river; but about this time a Mr. Watts established a small trading station there, and succeeded in creating a trade, though he had a very difficult task to combat the opposition of King Ja Ja, who considered he was being defrauded of some of his supposed just rights. Had Mr. Watts pushed his way into the interior markets and dealt direct with the producers, he would deserve the united thanks of every merchant connected with the trade in the Niger Delta; but he did not, and contented himself with buying his produce on a little better terms than he could have done in Opobo or Old Calabar, and created another set of middlemen, who to-day consider they, like their neighbours, are justified in doing their utmost in keeping the European out of the interior. Mr. Watts eventually sold out his interest in the trade of this river to the combination of river firms now known under the name of the African Association of Liverpool.

A mission has been established here for some years and I had the pleasure of meeting the missionary in charge, some two years ago, on his way home after a long sojourn in the Kwo Ibo; his description of the people and of the success of his mission work was most interesting. If he has returned to the seat of his labours and is still alive, I can only wish him every success in the work in which evidently his whole heart was centred.