The Government of the Congo State addressed a letter on the 14th March, 1903, to Sir C. Phipps, requesting him to be good enough to communicate the facts which had formed the subject of any reports from British Consuls.
No reply was received to this application.
Lord Lansdowne’s despatch of the 8th August, 1903, contained the following passage:—
“Representations to this effect (alleged cases of ill-treatment of natives and existence of trade monopolies) are to be found ... in despatches from His Majesty’s Consuls.”
The impression was thus created that at that date His Majesty’s Government were in possession of conclusive evidence furnished by their Consuls: but none the less it seemed clearly necessary that Consul Casement should undertake a journey in the Upper Congo. It would appear, therefore, as if the conclusions contained in the note of the 8th August were at least premature; it equally follows that, contrary to what was said in that note, the British Consul was at liberty to undertake any journey in the interior that he thought fit. In any case, it is to be observed that, in spite of the repeated applications of the Congo State, the White Paper (“Africa No. 1 (1904)”) recently presented to Parliament does not contain any of these former Consular Reports, which nevertheless would have been the more interesting as dating from a time when the present campaign had not yet been initiated.
The present Report draws attention to the fact that in certain places visited by the Consul the population is decreasing. Mr. Casement does not give the facts on which he bases his comparative figures for 1887 and 1903. The question arises how, during the course of his rapid and hasty visits, he was able to get his figures for this latter year. On what facts, for instance, does he found his assertion that the riverain population of Lake Mantumba seems to have diminished from 60 to 70 per cent. in the course of the last ten years. He states that at a certain place designated as F* the population of all the villages together does not at present amount to more than 500 souls; a few lines further on these same villages are spoken of as only containing 240 inhabitants altogether. These are only details, but they show at once what a lack of precision there is in certain of the deductions made by the Consul. It is, no doubt, unfortunately only too true that the population has diminished; but the diminution is due to other causes than to the exercise on the native population of a too exacting or oppressive Administration. It is owing chiefly to the sleeping-sickness, which is decimating the population throughout Equatorial Africa. The Report itself observes that “a prominent place must be assigned to this malady,”[83] and that this malady is “probably one of the principal factors” in the diminution of the population.[84] It is only necessary to read the Rev. John Whitehead’s letter, quoted by the Consul (Annex II to the Report) to obtain an idea of the ravages of the malady, to which this missionary attributes half of the deaths which take place in the riverain parts of the district. In a recent interview Mgr. Van Ronslé, Vicar Apostolic of the Belgian Congo, who speaks with the authority of one who has had a large experience of African matters, and has resided for long periods in many different localities in the Congo, explained the development of this scourge and the inevitable decay of the populations it attacks, whatever the conditions of their social existence; mentioning among other cases the terrible loss of life caused by this disease in Uganda. If to this principal cause of the depopulation of the Congo are added small-pox epidemics, the inability of the tribes at the present moment to keep up their numbers by the purchase of slaves, and the ease with which the natives can migrate, it can be explained how the Consul and the missionaries may have been struck with the diminution of the number of inhabitants in certain centres without that diminution necessarily being the result of a system of oppression. Annex I contains the declarations on the subject made by Mgr. Van Ronslé. His remarks as to the effect of the suppression of slavery on the numbers of the population are printed elsewhere:—
“The people (slave) are for the most part originally prisoners of war. Since the Decree of emancipation they have simply returned to their own distant homes, knowing their owners have no power to recapture them. This is one reason why some think the population is decreasing, and another reason is the vast exodus up and down river.”[85]
“So long as the Slave Trade flourished the Bobangi flourished, but with its abolition they are tending to disappear, for their towns were replenished by slaves.”[86]
The Consul mentions cases, the causes of which, however, are unknown to him, of an exodus of natives of the Congo to the French bank. It is not quite clear on what grounds he attaches blame to the State on their account, to judge at least from the motives by which some of them have been determined—for instance, the examples of such emigration which are given and explained by the Rev. W. H. Bentley, an English missionary. One relates to the station at Lukolela:—
“The main difficulty has been the shifting of the population. It appears that the population, when the station was founded in 1886, was between 5,000 and 6,000 in the riverain Colonies. About two years later the Chief Mpuki did not agree with his neighbours or they with him. When the tension became acute, Mpuki crossed over with his people to the opposite (French) side of the river. This exodus took away a large number of people. In 1890 or 1891 a Chief from one of the lower towns was compelled by the majority of his people to leave the State side, and several went with him. About 1893 the rest of the people at the lower towns either went across to the same place as the deposed Chief or took up their residence inland. Towards the end of 1894 a soldier, who had been sent to cut firewood for the State steamers on an island off the towns, left his work to make an evil request in one of the towns. He shot the man who refused him. The rascal of a soldier was properly dealt with by the State officer in charge; but this outrage combined with other smaller difficulties to produce a panic, and nearly all the people left for the French side, or hid away inland. So the fine township has broken up.”[87]