West African studies

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley

Secondly, the Chartered Company represents English trade interests in sections, instead of completely; English honour, common sense, military ability, and so on, the Royal Niger under Sir George Goldie has represented more perfectly than these things have ever been represented in West—or, I may safely say, Africa at large; but the trade interests of England it has only represented partially, or in other words, it has only represented the trade interests of its shareholders and the natives it has made treaties with, and what we want is something that will represent our trade interests there completely. Therefore, I do not advocate it as the general system for West Africa, for under another sort of man it might mean merely a more rapid crash than we are in for with the Crown Colony system. To my dying day I shall honour that great Trade Company, the Royal Niger, for representing England, that is, England properly so-called, to the world at large, during one of the darkest ages we have ever had since Charles II.; and, I believe that it, with the Committee of Merchants who held the Gold Coast for England after the battle of Katamansu, when her officials would have abandoned alike the Gold Coast and her honour in West Africa, will stand out in our history as grand things, but yet I say we want another system.

“Du binst der Geist der stets verneint!” you ejaculate. You do not like Crown Colonies. You won’t grovel to Chartered Companies, however good. You prove, on your own showing, that there is not in West Africa a sufficiently large, or a sufficiently long resident, local English population—what with their constantly leaving for home or for the cemetery—to form an independent colony. What else remains?

Well, I humbly beg to say that there is another system—a system that pays in all round peace and prosperity—a system whereby a region with a native population—a lively one in a Thirteenth century culture state—of about 30,000,000, is ruled. The total value of exports from the regions I refer to averages £14,000,000, out of a country of very much the same make as West Africa; the floating capital in its trade is some £25,000,000; its actual land area is 562,540 square miles; yet its trade with its European country amounts, nevertheless, to at least one half of that carried on between India and England. If you apply the system that has built this thing up, practically since 1830, to West Africa, you will not get the above figures out in forty years; but you will get at least two-thirds of them; and that would be a grand rise on your present West African figures, and in time you could surpass these figures, for West Africa is far larger, and far nearer European markets, and you have the advantage of superior shipping.

The region I am citing is not so unhealthy for whites as West Africa. Still, it has a stiff death-rate of its own; even nowadays, when it has pulled that death-rate down by Science—a thing, I may remark, you never trouble your head about in West Africa, or think worthy of your serious attention.

I will not insult your knowledge by telling you where this system is working to-day, or who works it, and all that. The same consideration also bars me from applying for a patent for this system; for although I lay it before you altered to what I think suitable for West Africa, the main lines of the system remain. The only thing I confess that makes me shaky about its being applied to West Africa is, that this system requires and must have experts black and white to work it, both at home in England and out in West Africa. Still, you have a sufficient supply of such experts, if only you would not leave things so largely in the hands of clerks and amateurs; who, with the assistance of faddists and renegade Africans, break up the native true Negro culture state, leaving you little sound stuff to work on in the regions now under the Crown Colony system.

Before I proceed to sketch the skeleton of the other system, I must lay before you briefly the present political state of West Africa in the words of the greatest living expert on the subject, as they are given in a remarkable article in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1898.

“The weighty utterance of Sir George Goldie should never be forgotten, ‘Central African races and tribes have, broadly speaking, no sentiment of patriotism as understood in Europe.’ There is, therefore, little difficulty in inducing them to accept what German jurisconsults term ‘Ober Hoheit,’ which corresponds with our interpretation of our vague term ‘Protectorate.’ But when complete sovereignty or ‘Landes Hoheit,’ is conceded, they invariably stipulate that their local customs and systems of government shall be respected. On this point they are, perhaps, more tenacious than most subject races with whom the British Empire has had to deal; while their views and ideas of life are extremely difficult for an Englishman to understand. It is therefore certain that even an imperfect and tyrannical native African administration, if its extreme excesses were controlled by European supervision, would be in the early stages productive of far less discomfort to its subjects than well-intentioned but ill-directed efforts of European magistrates, often young and headstrong, and not invariably gifted with sympathy and introspective powers. If the welfare of the native races is to be considered, if dangerous revolts are to be obviated, the general policy of ruling on African principles through native rulers must be followed for the present. Yet it is desirable that considerable districts in suitable localities should be administered on European principles by European officials, partly to serve as types to which the native governments may gradually approximate, but principally as cities of refuge in which individuals of more advanced views may find a living if native government presses unduly upon them, just as in Europe of the Middle Ages men whose love of freedom found the iron-bound system of feudalism intolerable, sought eagerly the comparative liberty of cities.”[77]

There are a good many points in the above classic passage on which I would fain become diffuse, but I forbear; merely begging you to note carefully the wording of that part concerning government by natives ruling on African principles, because here is a pitfall for the hasty. You will be told that this is the present policy in Crown Colonies—but it is not. What they are doing is ruling on European principles through natives, which is a horse of another colour entirely and makes it hot work for the unfortunate native catspaw chief, and so all round unsatisfactory that no really self-respecting native chief will take it on.

Well, to return to that other system: what it has got to do is to unite English interests—administrative, commercial and educational—into one solid whole, and combine these with native interests; briefly, to be a system where the Englishman and the African co-operate together for their mutual benefit and advancement, and therefore it must be a representative system, and one of those groups of representative systems which form the British Empire.