West African studies

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley

It seems that as soon as a West Coast region falls under direct governmental control with us a process of petrification sets in, and a policy of international amiability and Reubenism, for which we have Scriptural authority to expect nothing but failure. It was of course necessary for our Government to take charge in West Africa when the partitioning of that continent took place; but I fail to admire those men who at the Council Board of Europe lost for England what had been won for her by better, braver men. Still it is no use, in these weird un-Shakespearian times, for any one to use strong language, so I’ll turn to the consideration of the advance made in West Africa by France; for any one can understand how a woman must admire the deeds of brave men and the backing up of those deeds by a brave Government.

The earlier history of the French occupation of Africa is that of a series of commercial companies, who all came to a bad end. Of the Association of the Merchants of Dieppe and Rouen in the fourteenth century I have already spoken; and whatever may be the difficulty of proving its existence in 1364, there is, I believe, no one who doubts that it had an existence that terminated in 1664. The French authorities ascribe its fall to the wars in France that succeeded the death of Charles VI, 1392, and to the death of some of the principal merchants belonging to it; but “the greatest cause of all was that many who had gotten vast riches began to be ashamed of the name of traders, although to that they owed their fortunes, and allying with the nobility set up as quality,” and neglected business in the usual way, when this happens. The most flourishing settlements went into decay, and were abandoned all save one, on the Isle of Sanaga, or what Labat calls the Niger, the river we now call the Senegal.[47]

This French settlement is to this day one of the main French ports in Africa, and it has remained in their possession, with the brief interval of falling into the hands of the English for a few months.

The company that took over the enterprise of this Rouen and Dieppe Association in 1664 was called the Compagnie des Indes Occidentals; it paid for the stock and rights of the previous association the sum of 150,000 livres, and it had tremendous ambitions, for not only did it buy up the West African enterprise, but also the rights of the lords proprietors in the isles of Martinique, Guadaloupe, St. Christopher, Santa Cruz, and Maria Galanta in the West Indies. This company came to a sad end when it had still thirty years of its charter to run; in 1673 it sold its remaining term of West African rights to a new company called d’Afrique for 7500 livres. Its West Indian possessions the king seized in 1674, and united them with the Crown.

Its successor, the Compagnie d’Afrique, started with its thirty years’ charter, and all the great ambitions of its predecessor. The king gave it every assistance in the way of ships and troops to carry out its designs; and it availed itself of these, for finding its trade incommoded by the Dutch, who were then settled at Anguin and Goree in 1677, it got the king to remove the Dutch nuisance from Goree by an expedition under Count d’Estras, and in 1678, by an expedition of its own, under M. de Casse, it cleared the Dutch out of Anguin.

This company also made many treaties with the native chiefs. In 1679, by means of treaty with the chiefs of Rio Fresco, nowadays barbarously spelt Rufisque, and Portadali, now Portindal, and Joal, whose name is still uninjured, it acquired rights over all the territory between Cape Verde and the Gambia;[48] an exclusion from there of all other traders, and an exemption from all customs; and in addition to these enterprises it entered into a contract with the King of France to provide him with 2,000 negroes per annum for his West Indian Islands, and as many more as he might require for use in the galleys. Shortly after this the Compagnie d’Afrique expired in bankruptcy, compounding with its creditors at the rate of 5s. in the £, which I presume was paid mainly out of the 1,010,000 livres for which it sold its claim to its successors. The successors were a little difficult to find at first, for there seems to have been what one might call distaste for West African commercial enterprise among the French public just then. However, a company was got together to buy up its rights, accept its responsibilities and carry on business in 1681.

In the matter of the company that succeeded the d’Afrique, confusion is added to catastrophe, owing to the then Minister of State, M. Seignelay, for some private end, having divided up the funds and created two separate companies,—one to have the trade from Cape Blanco and the Gambia—the Compagnie du Senegal; the other to hold the rest of the Guinea trade to the Cape of Good Hope, the Compagnie du Guinea. This arrangement, of course, left the Senegal Company with all the responsibility of the compagnie d’Afrique, and without sufficient funds to deal with them; and the Compagnie du Senegal complained, when, in 1694, it found its affairs in much confusion, throwing the blame on the Government; but, says Astley, “the great are seldom without excuses for what they do,” and the division of the concession was persisted in, on the grounds that when the company that succeeded d’Afrique was intact it failed to fulfil the Government contract of sending 2,000 negroes annually to the West Indies; and also that it had not imported as much gold from Africa as it might have done. Against this the Directors remonstrated loudly, saying that, during the two years and a half during which they had been responsible for exporting negroes to the West Indies, they had supplied 4,560 negroes, that the register of the Mint proved they had sent home in three years 400 marks of gold, and that it had cost them 400,000 livres to re-establish the trade of the Compagnie d’Afrique, for which they had already paid more than it was worth. All they got by these complaints was an extension of their trade rights from Gambia to Sierra Leone and a confirmation of their monopoly in exporting negroes to the French West Indies, and of their rights to Anguin and Goree, that is to say, a promise of Government assistance if those Dutch should come and attempt to reinstate themselves to the incommodation of French commerce.

All this however did not avail to make the Compagnie du Senegal flourish, so in 1694 it sold its remaining seventeen years of rights for 300,000 livres, to Sieur d’Apougny, one of the old Directors; and this enterprising man secured the assistance of eighteen new shareholders, and obtained from the Crown a new charter, and started afresh under the name of the “Compagnie du Senegal, Cap Nord et Coté d’Afrique.” It did not prosper; nevertheless it may be regarded as having produced the founder of modern Senegal, for it sent out to attend to its affairs, when things were in a grievous mess, one of the greatest men who have ever gone from Europe to Africa—namely, Sieur Brüe.

The name of this company of Sieur d’Apougny was d’Afrique; and the usual thing happened to it in 1709, when, for 250,000 livres, it made over its rights to a set of Rouen merchants, reserving, however, to itself the right of carrying on certain branches of the trade for which it held Government contracts; failing to carry these out they were taken from it and handed over to the company of Rouen merchants, who succumbed to their liabilities in 1717. Their rights were then bought up, for 1,600,000 livres, by the already established Mississippi Company of Paris—a company which survived until 1758.

In 1758 the English again captured St. Louis, the French main post in Senegal. In 1779 the French recaptured it, and it was ceded to them by England officially in the treaty of 1783. This was merely the usual kind of international amenity prevalent on the West Coast in those days. Dutch, French, English, Danes, Portuguese, and Courlanders would gallantly seize each other’s property out there, while their respective Governments at home, if the matter were brought before their notice, and it was apparently worth their while, disowned all knowledge of their representatives’ villainies and returned the booty to the prior owner on paper. The aggrieved Power then engaged in the difficult undertaking of regaining possession; the said original villain knowing little and caring less about the arrangements made on the point by his home Government. But just at this period England dealt French trade a frightful blow. The whole of her iniquity took the form of one John Law, a native of Edinburgh,[49] who raised himself to the dignity of comptroller-general of the finance of France by a specious scheme for a bank, an East India Company and a Mississippi Company, by the profits of which the French national debt was to be paid off, a thing then in urgent need of doing, and every one connected with the affair was to make their fortunes, an undertaking always in need of doing in any country. The French Government gave him every encouragement, and in 1716 he opened the bank; in 1719 the shares of that bank were worth more than eighty times the current specie in France; in 1720 that bank burst, spreading commercial ruin. To this may be ascribed the period of paralysis in the Senegal trade from 1719. The Compagnie de Senegal had handed over their interest to the Mississippi Company involved in John Law’s bank scheme. After this, up to 1817, France like F. M. the Duke of Wellington anent playing upon the harp, “had other things to do” than attend to West Africa. During the Napoleonic Wars England took all the French possessions in West Africa, but by the treaty of Paris of 1814 she handed back those in Senegal, save the Gambia. The French vessel sent out to take over the territory was the ill-starred and ill-navigated Méduse. Owing to her wreck it was not until 1817 that France replaced officially her standard on this Coast. On the 25th of January of that year, and represented by Colonel Smaltz, she again entered into possession of Goree and St. Louis in the mouth of the Senegal, which was practically all she had, and that was in a very unsatisfactory state. Colonel Smaltz, in 1819, had to come to an agreement with the Oulof chief of the St Louis district to pay him a subsidy, but a mere catalogue of the wars between the French and the Oulofs is not necessary here; they were mutually unsatisfactory until there enters on the scene that second great founder of the French power in Africa, General Faidherbe, in 1854. Faidherbe is indeed the founder; but had it not been for Sieur Brüe and his travels far into the interior, and the evidence he collected regarding the riches therein, and of the general value of the country, it is not likely that, as things were in 1854, France would have troubled herself so much about extending her power in Senegal.