Chapter 6
section six of imperialism and world politics part one of four by parker thomas moon this librivox recording is in the public domain read by alister Chapter 5. Clothes, Culture and Kachuk in Congo. To the romance and drama in the story of imperialist world politics, no normal human being can be entirely insensible. Nor should he be.
But the romantic element is incidental, and should not obscure the chief goal of this study, a factual analysis of the 20th century's gravest problem. The aim of the following 14 chapters is to present the world drama of imperialism, that the reader may judge for himself the roles
which ideals and interests have played. The tale may be told more clearly and interestingly, and its significance will be more easily appreciated if we discard the customary chronological method, and instead of flitting back and forth between Asia and Africa, between the West Indies and the East, take one region at a time. Africa may well come first, Then, by easy stages, the journey may proceed to the Near East and Middle East,
to Southern Asia and the Far East, thence to the Pacific and to Latin America, and finally back to Europe. Then, and only then, shall we be in a position for generalized conclusions. Subsection, the Five Africas.
There are five Africas. The northern coastland, washed by the Mediterranean, is temperate more like Southern Europe than like Central Africa. it does not belong to the so-called dark continent on the contrary it is a white man's country inhabited by arabs and berbers and mixed races fairly advanced in civilization and linked with europe by more than two millenniums of history south of the coastline lies the desert belt the zahara the libyan desert and the nubian desert a region of parched and shifting sands with here and there a palmy oasis to which arab caravans resort for refreshment
Here, the dusky white of Arab and Berber blends and contends with the black of the Sudanese Negro. It is a racial transition region. Farther south is true black man's Africa. Stretching across the continent from Cape Verde in the west to the Nile on the east is the
Sudan, land of the blacks. A belt of grasslands, prairies, forests and rivers, a land inhabited by fairly dense and capable Negro populations, skilful in primitive tillage and handicrafts. Next comes Central Africa, an equatorial land of drenching rains, dense jungles, tropical fevers. This, too, is black man's country, inhabited by barbarous Negro tribes,
and only the cool uplands are fit for white colonisation. Finally, the southern tip of the continent emerges into a temperate zone, and its highlands, its rolling plains and upland prairies invite the white settler. Before 1875, not one-tenth of this, the second largest continent, had been appropriated by the civilised nations of Europe.
France had conquered Algiers on the northern coast in 1830, and had annexed the surrounding region. Great Britain had taken Cape Colony from Holland in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars and had annexed in 1843 the smaller and younger colony of a Natal. Portugal had inherited historic claims to the region called Mozambique on the eastern coast
and Angola on the western coast. But the claims were undefined and Portuguese authority had not been actively asserted in the interior. In addition, along the western coast, there were a number of footholds, barely more than trading posts, in possession of the French, Senegal, Gambon, Ivory Coast, the British, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, Lagos, the Niger Delta, the Portuguese, Portuguese Guinea, Angola, and the islands of Principe and Sao Tome, and the Spaniards, Rio de Oro and Spanish Guinea. Better than words, the accompanying sketch map shows how little of Africa had been taken before the mad scramble for colonies occurred in the last quarter of the 19th century.
Intrepid explorers opened up the continent for conquest. Exploration was one of the ways in which 19th century Europe gave vent to its scientific enthusiasm and at the same time found relief from the prosaic propriety and industrialism which were robbing European life of romance in measure, as they added to its comfort. The public was fascinated by the thrilling adventures and bizarre experiences of explorers,
while to the minute descriptions of strange beasts, of pygmy races, of tropical flora, at least a respectful attention was given. The returning explorer was received and petted by royalty, lionised by society, listened to by academies of science and, enriched, if fortunate, by the sale of books describing his travels. Space forbids any attempt to do justice to the explorations of Mungo Park, Major Lang, Caillie, Claperton, Denham, Naktigal, Horniman, Rufs and
Bath in the Sahara and Sudan. Of Burton and Speak, Grant and Baker, Dr Schweinfurth and Carl von Deccan in the Nile Valley and the eastern lake region, of Deshayu in Gabun, of David Livingston in the Zambezi Valley, of Stanley and De Braza in the Congo. These and many others aroused the interest of Europe in Africa, not only in the scientific aspects of the explorations, in the quest for the elusive sources of the Nile River, in mapping out of hitherto uncharted
wilderness, in the discovery of the man-like but ferocious gorilla was their keen public interest, but also in the possibilities of commerce, the question of slavery, and the opportunity for missionary work. Livingston, a missionary at the start, and a missionary at heart, even to the end, felt that he was blazing the trail for the gospel. Stanley, though far from being a missionary himself, was at pains to point out the need and the opening for Christianity in pagan Africa.
As regards commerce, most of the explorers were convinced of Africa's immense potentialities. In glowing superlatives, they described the amazing fertility of Africa's rich soil. With ready intuition, they divined the existence of minerals in fabulous abundance. Africa was indeed El Dorado. The question of slavery merits further explanation.
From the days of John Hawkins, that pious 16th century sea captain who enjoined his men to love one another and serve God daily, while he kidnapped African Negroes to sell to Spanish colonists in America, down to the 19th century a systemic trade in West African Negroes has been conducted by European slave traders. With awakening conscience, however, France, during the revolution of 1789, had abolished
slavery in French colonies, Denmark in 1792, and the United States in 1794 prohibited the slave trade. Great Britain in 1811 had forbidden British subjects to engage in the traffic. Sweden followed in 1813, Holland the next year, and the Congress of Vienna had proclaimed Europe's general, but ineffective abhorrence of the commerce and men, but an illegal traffic still
persisted. Moreover, the Arab slave traders who terrorised tropical Africa were under no compunction to obey European laws, and continued their business. Blood-curdling were the tales told by European explorers in the 19th century regarding the Arab slave trade. As I write, I recall reading as a boy descriptions of Arab attacks on unsuspecting Negro villages. The most likely Negroes were seized, the others wantonly slaughtered. Then the captives were
linked in a long chain by a forked stick and a crossbar holding the neck of each. Those that attempted to escape or faltered on the long marches across country were killed and their bones marked out the trails. Here was an evil for Christian Europe to stamp out. Explorers and missionaries urged their governments to action. How much of the crusade against slavery was sincere, how much mere moral mask for imperialism, is not easy to discover. Perhaps the fairest judgment
is that a sincere desire to extirpate the slave traffic at first reinforced the economic and patriotic motives for conquest, and later was used to justify it. Subsection. Leopold's Altruism. The story of the Congo Basin reads like a romance. A romance with its touches of pathos and its lapses into bathos. It begins when Henry Morton Stanley, with his little band of Arab guides and Negro porters, plunged into the African
wilderness on the eastern coast, to push his way through prairie, jungle and swamp, braving the poisonous dance of savages and the more perilous fever of the tropics, until he had reached the upper stretches of the Congo River and followed that mighty stream down its long winding course to the Atlantic. The three white men who had started with him perished before the journey's end, and his 400 porters had dwindled to 115, but Stanley hastened back to Europe with manuscript
for his publishers, and for the public, news of his discovery of the vast Congo basin. Footnote. Henry Morton Stanley, through the dark continent, London, 1878. End of footnote. The news travelled before him. When his steamer stopped at Marseille in January 1878, he was met by Baron Grandel and General Sanford, who came in the name of King Leopold II of Belgium, offering to do something substantial for Africa and begging Stanley to return to the Congo on a secret mission. Footnote, Henry Morton Stanley, the Congo and the founding of its free state. London, 1885, volume 1, page 20. End of footnote. The Belgian king who thus comes suddenly into the story
was an interesting character, rakish in his incognito private life, an eloquent spokesman of mid-Victorian humanitarianism in his public utterances, a shrewd and ambitious monarch, much interested in industrial development, widely travelled, highly intelligent. Years before either his own fellow countrymen or the great powers had been converted to the new imperialism, Leopold had the conviction that Belgium must gain a share in the new and vast market of the Far East,
and had toyed with various colonial projects. Emile Banning, archivist in the Belgian Foreign Office, had helped to give point to such convictions by directing Leopold's attention to the opportunity for commerce and industry to profit by the opening up of Central Africa. When Leopold in 1876 summoned at Brussels a geographic conference of geographers,
explorers and prominent men of many countries, he did not speak of acquiring commercial outlets for Belgium. Rather, he said, to open to civilization the only part of our globe where it has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness which envelops whole populations, is a crusade, if I may say so, a crusade worthy of this century of progress.
Then and there was founded an international association for the exploration and civilization of Central Africa. the name itself is expressive of the disinterested and international spirit in which this new organisation seemed to be conceived, and it was from this international association that envoys were sent to meet the returning Stanley in January 1878. Stanley, however, was too exhausted to return at once to Africa as the agent of the association, or, let us say more simply, of
Leopold II. Moreover, he wished an opportunity to interest England in the magnificent empire he had explored. Stanley, after all, was of British birth, and fighting on both sides in the American Civil War had failed to obliterate his native allegiance. England must have the first chance. Great was his disappointment when his eloquent descriptions of Congo's wealth failed to arouse any interest in England. Says Stanley in his autobiography, all this, meaning the Congo Basin, could have belonged
to Great Britain, but was refused. Alas, discouraged, he crossed over to Brussels, saw Leopold, and consented to serve the latter's aims. Leopold's plans now began to reveal a less disinterested nature. A prospectus was circulated regarding the opportunity for railway construction in Africa. A group of Belgian businessmen and other prominent persons was organised by Banning, under Leopold's direction, with the rather non-committal name of the Committee for the
Study of the Upper Congo, Comité d'études du Haut Congo, and with a capital of a million francs with which to operate. This committee sent Stanley back to Africa in 1879, under the cover of absolute secrecy, he was going now to carve out an empire. Footnote. On the keen interest of the committee in the Congo's economic future, see Stanley, The Congo, volume 1, page 26. Footnote ends. To disarm suspicion and to recruit porters, the explorer sailed first to Zanzibar on the eastern
coast, although he intended to ascend the Congo from the west. Then, quietly, he slipped back to the western coast, and with five small steamers sailed up the Congo River. Slowly the expedition progressed. Leaving the steamers behind at the rapids, Stanley's party had to cross marshes and ravines and forests, often literally chopping a road through the jungle. When at length in December 1881, after two years of toil and peril, Stanley arrived in the neighbourhood of Stanleypool,
above the cataracts. What was his chagrin to encounter the tricolour of France? A French explorer, de Braza, had stolen a march on Stanley by cutting across from the French trading station of Gabun, a little north of the Congo, to Stanleypool on the Congo. De Braza had arrived there 15 months earlier and had persuaded the local native king, Makoko, to sign treaties placing the northern bank and part of the southern bank under French
protection. Vainly did Stanley sputter that the treaties were worthless scraps of paper. They were promptly ratified at Paris. The northern bank became French Congo, and the town of Brazzaville, conspicuous on the map, still bears witness to de Brazzaville's foresight. Not to be disheartened, Stanley founded Leopoldville on the southern bank of the pool, and pushed more than 400 miles up the river before he returned to Europe in October 1882
to give his report. He had founded five stations, forts and training posts, on the Congo. By constructing roads around the rapids and cataracts, making portages easy between the navigable stretches of the river, he had opened up an easy route for the future. Natives called him the rock breaker, for through many a rocky obstacle had he blasted his way. But this was not enough. He was immediately sent back to open up and take possession of the upper valley.
Seventeen more stations were founded. Four hundred treaties were made with the native chieftains, conferring on the Association Internationale du Congo, the Comité d'Étude under a new name since 1882, a protectorate over their lands.
Such treaties, easily obtained from illiterate natives by presence, cajolery or intimidation, were sufficient to establish, before Europe, a claim to the sovereignty over the Congo. Stanley, however, had his own plans. Resigning the governorship of the Congo, he urged the English to take possession of the region. But, to his urging, the diplomats of
Downing Street were deaf. They too had plans. Gladstone was in power in England, and Gladstone had no desire to annex more colonies. Still, Lord Granville, his foreign minister, did not care to have the Congo fall into the hands of King Leopold, behind whose humanitarian platitudes British statesmen were beginning to perceive a shrewd economic and political purpose. It were better that Portugal, for centuries a friendly satellite of England, should take
possession, even though the Portuguese colonial administration was notoriously corrupt and oppressive. On February the 26th, 1884, was signed an Anglo-Portuguese treaty recognising Portuguese sovereignty over the mouth of the Congo, and providing for an Anglo-Portuguese commission to control navigation on the river. England, of course, was assured of free navigation and most favoured nation treatment. The manoeuvre was clever. It would nip Leopold's project in the
bud, for Portuguese possession of the outlet of the Congo could cut Leopold's projected empire off from commercial access to the sea. Leopold therefore turned to France and Germany for help. With the former, a bargain was struck in April 1884. Jules Ferry, his name continually recurs, promised to respect the international association's territory. In return, the association gave France an option on its possessions, in case the association should wish to sell. Ferri accordingly
protested against the Anglo-Portuguese treaty. At this juncture, the ever-watchful Bismarck intervened. Footnote. Documents number 684, 687, 688, 689 in De Gros Politique, volume 3. throw interesting light on bismarck's manoeuvre and on the way in which he and ferri agreed in advance what the conference was to do end of footnote here was an opportunity to promote better relations with france by supporting the french policy and by placing france under obligations now to earn french diplomatic support in case england should oppose the colonial ventures bismarck was about to launch in cameroon togoland and southwest africa and besides german merchants feared exclusion if portugal controlled the congo bismarck supported the french protest and adopted frey's suggestion of an international conference to deal with the problem
In the face of such opposition, Lord Granville announced that the Anglo-Portuguese treaty would not be ratified. Before the international conference met at Berlin, the International Association's claims had been recognised by the United States through the influence of General Sanford, who had served on Leopold's committee, and by Germany, and France was supporting it.
It was, therefore, a foregone conclusion that the International Association's title to the Congo would be generally recognised, as it soon was. The three months during which the conference was deliberated were mainly devoted to other questions, trade, slavery, missionaries, tariffs. At the end, a general act was drawn up and signed by most of the European powers and the United States. The latter, it may be remarked, took a prominent part in the proceedings and employed
Stanley as an expert advisor. Subsection. International altruism at the Berlin Conference. Remembering that missionaries, explorers and statesmen had represented European activity in Africa as a humanitarian crusade to advance science, spread the gospel, abolish slavery, and uplift the natives, we may profitably examine the provisions of the General Act. The signatories promised to protect the natives in their moral and material well-being,
to cooperate in the suppression of slavery and the slave trade, to further education and civilisation of the natives, to protect missionaries, scientists and explorers. All of this was excellent, as an expression of good intentions. When the discussion approached practical questions,
such as forbidding the sale of liquor to the natives, humanitarianism proved weak. It was clear that the Negroes were being debauched by the cheap gin and other civilised beverages, to the use of which they were unaccustomed. But there was a profit in gin, and, as the American delegate wrote home, the Dutch and Germans claimed that in the portions of this region commerce is dependent on the exchange of such liquors
for native goods. Of the blessings of European civilisation, the natives had learned to appreciate only one, gin. Nor was the sale of firearms to the natives forbidden. That too was profitable. More care was exercised as regards commercial opportunities. Detailed provisions were made for freedom of trade, for equal treatment of commerce of all nations. this freedom was at first intended to apply only to the Congo
but at the instance of Stanley and of the American delegates the free trade zone was extended clear across to the Indian Ocean between the latitude of 5 degrees north and the Zambezi River on the east coast ships of all nations were given freedom of navigation over the Congo and Niger and all their tributaries
an American proposal that Central Africa should be neutralized and war forever banished from at least this much of the earth's surface, was unacceptable to France and Portugal, who possessed colonies partly within the proposed neutral zone. Consequently, the powers framed an optional neutrality clause, which permitted Leopold's Congo state to declare itself perpetually neutral. Such was the work of a conference which, meeting on the eve of the
great scramble for African territory, might have safeguarded native rights against exploitation, and devised means of international control to prevent greedy aggression and dangerous conflict had the diplomats at Berlin possessed either the foresight or the will. They were but human, and as patriots concern themselves more with safeguarding the present interests of their own countries, even in the liquor and arms traffic, than with the future. One interesting
provision they did make to prevent any one power from excessive land grabbing. No power it was agreed should declare a new protectorate without first giving due notice to the others. This would enable the others to either protest or to make equivalent annexations. The territories claimed must be effectively occupied. This would prevent wholesale annexations but it should not be taken too seriously, as occupation need not mean more than building a rude fort to occupy a vast province.
Disputes were to be settled by arbitration. A good intention. Subsection. Altruism or rubber? The Congo Free State. It is high time we return to the broken thread of our story. the story of Leopold and the Congo. Having gained international recognition, Leopold's international association, which had already undergone so many chameleon-like metamorphoses,
transformed itself into the Congo Free State, État Indépendente de Congo, with Leopold as its sovereign in July 1885. The Free State was an independent sovereignty ruled by the Belgian king, but not subject in any way to Belgium. Footnote. The Belgian parliament, not yet won over to imperialism, stipulated that the union must be strictly personal. Footnote ends. The next few
years were employed in making agreements with France, Portugal and Great Britain, settling border disputes, and in building forts and trading stations. Establishing the free state's authority in its vast dominion of over 900,000 square miles, was an expensive operation. Moreover, Leopold was determined to buy out the foreign interests in the organisation. He therefore had to borrow heavily from the Belgian government, besides digging deeply into his own pocket.
He is said to have advanced 25 million francs in the first five years. At one time, in 1895, the financial difficulties were so grave that Leopold was on the point of turning the whole enterprise over to the Belgian government, but a sudden increase in the production of rubber and ivory occurred, and he continued his rule of the enormous African empire for 33 years. It was a long enough period to show the truth or falsity of Stanley's prediction that
this unique humanitarian and political enterprise would be a fruitful blessing to a region that was until lately as dark as its own deep sunless forest shades. One of the first humanitarian acts of the new Free State Government in 1885 was to declare all recant lands the property of the state, Domaine privé de l'état. This, however, meant little, until there were issued in years 1890 to 1895 a series of decrees and orders for the more effective introduction of European
civilisation. One decree conferred on the state a monopoly of rubber and ivory in the vacant lands, and an accompanying order forbade the natives to sell these products, except to the agents of the state. Rubber and ivory, it should be explained, were then looked upon as the chief resources of the region. The vast forests contained countless herds of elephants, whose tusks provided the ivory. The rubber came from the latex, or sap of the rubber vines which grew wild in great abundance
likewise in the forests. As the vacant lands included the forests and all land except the small patches actually cultivated by the natives or occupied by their huts, it will be seen that the state was to have a real monopoly. But would the natives willingly go out into the jungle to collect rubber and tusks for the state? Little appreciating the dignity of labour, the Congo Negroes evinced a marked distaste for the task which their humane sovereign expected them to
perform. Accordingly, another civilised innovation was introduced. Taxes. Each native village was assessed so many kilograms of rubber or ivory, and to enforce these decrees, a native army was raised by conscription. This system was introduced gradually in different parts of the domain privé. Leopold found it more expedient, for various reasons, to entrust the exploitation of parts of his domain to private companies rather than to undertake the gigantic task directly.
Concessions were granted to corporations to exploit large blocks, whole provinces, of the state's domain. The concessionaire company was empowered to exact the tax in rubber and ivory from the natives. In some cases it received authority to raise troops and enforce its demands. Despite Leopold's patriotism, foreign capital was welcomed. The American Congo Company, for example, was given a large concession,
but regardless of the nationality of the other shareholders, Leopold himself usually reserved a block of stock, usually half. To cap the climax, in 1896, he created, by secret decree, the Domaine de la Croix, virtually a private estate for himself, comprising about 112,000 square miles of the choicest rubber forests,
and formed a commercial organisation or foundation to exploit it in its interest. The Leopoldian system produced gratifying results. From the Domaine de la Couronne alone, were produced in 10 years, 11,354 tonnes of rubber, yielding a royal profit of about $15 million. The following table shows the results of the system.
Table ends at about 33 minutes and 11 seconds. 1891 had an export of ivory of 2.8 million francs and an export of rubber of 0.3 million francs 1892 had an export of ivory of 3.7 million francs and an export of rubber of 0.6 million francs 1893 had an export of ivory of 3.7 million francs and an export of rubber of 0.9 million francs 1894 had an export of ivory of 5 million francs and an export of rubber of 1.5 million francs
1895 had an export of ivory of 5.8 million francs and an export of rubber of 2.9 million francs 1896 had an export of ivory of 3.8 million francs, and an export of rubber of 6.6 million francs. 1897 had an export of ivory of 4.9 million francs, and an export of rubber of 8.3 million francs. 1898 had an export of ivory of 4.3 million francs and an export of rubber of 15.9 million francs 1899 had an export of ivory of 5.8 million francs and an export of rubber of 28.1 million francs
1900 had an export of ivory of 5.3 million francs, and an export of rubber of 39.9 million francs. End of table. Besides, Leopold enjoyed dividends from the concessionaire companies. One of these corporations in six years made a net profit of over $3 million on a paid-up capital of about 45,000. The fortunate shareholders not only received annual dividends averaging more than 10 times the original value of the stock, but also profited by the rise of the stock's
market value to Empyrean Heights. Sir Harry Johnston, an eminent British authority, has estimated that Leopold's humanitarian enterprise netted him $20 million. As an enlightened monarch, he spent his revenue generously in construction of royal palaces, in realty purchases on the Riviera, one of his favourite resorts, and in the laudable endeavour to make Ostend a bathing city unique in the world. All this, however, was a departure from
the originally proclaimed intention of piercing the veil of darkness and bringing Christian civilisation to the benighted heathens of the Congo. Critics were not lacking, especially English critics, to point out the discrepancy between Leopold's professed aims and his practice. As early as 1893, an Aborigines Protection Society of Great Britain raised protests against the treatment of the natives. In following years, foreign missionaries heaped accusation
upon accusation. By 1903, the British government was stirred to propose an international inquiry. The next year was published the report of Sir Roger Casement, a British consul who alleged that the natives were being treated with inconceivable brutality. Other investigations followed. Although a few travellers found nothing but praise for the work of the Free State, the overwhelming burden of evidence was incriminating. It was charged that when a
native village failed to produce its required quota of rubber, the native soldiers were sent to punish the offenders, and often brought back the hands of the villagers as trophies to prove that the punishment had been effective. One writer alleged that officials in some districts employed cannibals as soldiers, and encouraged cannibalism at the expense of unproductive villages. Some of the accusations were undoubtedly exaggerated. Others were based on occasional
atrocities rather than on ordinary practices, but there can be little doubt that in some areas a practice was made of holding women as hostages for the delivery of the required rubber tribute by their husbands. Nor can it be denied that thousands of executions occurred, that native rebellions had been put down in blood, that thousands of natives fled from the country to escape the Leopoldian variety of civilisation. Perhaps the actual atrocities were the least
injurious feature of the system. Whenever a district was in the charge of an exacting agent, so heavy were the levies of rubber that the natives had no time to cultivate their patches of grain. Famine found its victims, and infant mortality, always high, became appalling. Many a prosperous village fell into decay, and some parts of the crowned domain, travellers tell us, became deserted wilderness, where the silence of the forest was broken only by the occasional trampling of the elephant and buffalo, the chatter of white-maned monkeys, the scream of the grey parrot.
to the psalm his critics leopold appointed a commission of inquiry in 1904 to investigate the condition of the congo the evidence taken by the commission was suppressed it would perhaps have made too racy reading but the report and recommendations were published in 1905 that the commission was not unduly captious in its criticisms may be inferred from the fact that it approved the concession system, sanctioned compulsory labour as the only means of exploiting the Congo region, denied that white men had sanctioned mutilation of natives, and praised whatever it could find to praise in the Free State's administration.
Yet even so well disposed a commission was impelled to report that the freedom of trade guaranteed in the Berlin Act of 1885 was practically nullified, that no new concessions should be granted, that the concessionaire companies should be forbidden to employ force, that military expeditions needed regulation, that it was oppressive to require more than 40 hours a month of compulsory labour from the natives,
that the stationing of military sentries in native villages to exact rubber tribute ought to be stopped, and that the land laws were too harshly applied. But these proposals failed to satisfy Leopold's critics. The British government insisted on effective reforms. The United States Senate offered to support President Roosevelt in efforts to better the natives' condition. The Belgian parliament began to manifest a determination to take the Congo over from
Leopold. Whether for purely economic reasons or to conciliate foreign opinion, Leopold in 1906 granted four sweeping concessions, one to the American Congo Company for rubber, another for minerals in the Katanga district, a third for an ambitious railway project, a fourth for a combination of mining activity with dealings in forest products. As British, French and American capitalists were largely interested in these new concessions, Belgian opinion became more than ever
excited, and the Belgian Parliament determined to insist on the transfer of the Congo from Leopold to Belgium. Recognising the inevitability of such a transfer, the monarch shrewdly endeavoured to secure a guarantee of the profitable crown domain, and of the concessions he had granted. Such a solution, the British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey declared, would be regarded by Great Britain as a violation of the Berlin Act, and Leopold was compelled to abandon the crown
domain, in return for 50 million francs, which he promised to spend in ways beneficial to the Congo, an additional 45 million francs to be spent on his projected works of embellishment in Belgium, and a guarantee of annuities to the royal family. Moreover, the concessions of the American Congo Company and the Compagnie Forestier-Eminiere were to be respected. On such terms, Belgium took possession November 15th, 1908, and the Congo Free State became Belgian Congo, a Belgian colony.
Subsection, Belgium's future in Congo. With admirable sincerity, the Belgian government endeavoured to substitute a better regime for the grasping autocracy which Leopold had practised. The Belgian Congo was placed under a governor-general responsible to a colonial minister, who in turn must answer to the Belgian parliament for his acts. The first colonial minister, Jules Renkin, visited the Congo, which Leopold had never seen.
The natives were given the right to sell their labour freely. Native chiefs were recognised and given local autonomy. Many of the old monopolies were abolished, though not all the concessions could be cancelled. The difference between the new government and the old may be illustrated by one instance. In 1912, a Congo official was sentenced to ten years in jail for his cruelty in arbitrarily executing seven native men, four women, and a child.
In the old days, such executions would have passed without notice. Humanitarianism of the new type was less profitable, however, than Leopoldian methods. Throwing the colony open to international trade, abolishing forced labour, relinquishing the profitable Leopoldian monopolies, and assuming the debts of the free state, left the Belgian government with a colony whose revenues were inadequate to defray current expenditures.
The annual deficit has averaged 16 million francs in recent years, 1920 through 1924, and the colony's debt was 543 million francs in 1924. Yet King Albert, on New Year's Day 1924, declared that Belgium's chief hope for the future lay in the development of a Congo colony. The Congo, says a Belgian publicist, is
Overflowing with riches of every sort. It is. The vastest reservoir that a country can have at its disposal. Without it, Belgium would... Stifle.
This point of view is characteristic. Present burdens are to be shouldered cheerfully in anticipation of future profits. What prospect of profit does the future offer? Trade, certainly, is increasing with some rapidity, as the following figures show. Table ends at 43 minutes and 15 seconds.
1895. $9,100,000. 1908. $31,770,000. 1922. $40,724,000. 1924. $44,500,000. End of table.
In these figures, rubber is a dwindling element. the rubber vines ruthlessly hacked to pieces under leopold's regime now yield but a small fraction of the colony's exports the rubber trees twenty or thirty millions of them planted by the natives under leopold's supervision proved a disappointment The Congo rubber industry today is a negligible factor in the competition with the rubber plantations of the East. The Belgian Congo's rubber output has actually declined at a startling rate, as the figures show. Table ends at about 44 minutes and 21 seconds.
Year 1900, value of rubber output, 40 million francs. Year 1905, value of rubber output, 44 million francs. Year 1908. Value of rubber output, 31 million francs. Year 1924. Value of rubber output, 3.5 million francs. End of table.
More important now is the mining of copper, and to a less extent of gold and diamonds, in the Katanga district of southern Congo. A chart exhibited in 1925 by the Union Minier de Haut Katanga shows how rapidly the copper production has developed. Table ends at about 45 minutes and 22 seconds.
End of table. This Union Minier, by the way, was formed in 1906 as a joint stock company with 10 million francs capital, half Belgian and half British, and obtained the right to exploit all copper mines in a zone about half as large as Belgium until the year 1990, as well as to build railways and roads, and to exploit certain coal, mica, iron and gold mines.
As the business of the union expanded, Robert Williams of the Tanganyika Concessions Limited and the group of British capitalists he represented was unable to take 50% of the new stock issues and soon found itself a minority holder. The union is now controlled by a Belgian engineer, Jus Cousin. It is now one of the greatest copper concerns in the world.
Copper has become the chief export of Belgian Congo and has made Katanga the most prosperous and highly developed part of the colony. Indeed, the great mining plants there and the neat whitewashed, thatched-rooved huts of the black miners present a quite civilised and almost European appearance. As for diamonds, the so-called Forminière, Société Internationale Forester et Minier du Congo,
Founded in 1906 with a capital of 3,500,000 francs, with a concession to prospect over nine-tenths of the colony, made important discoveries in 1912 and soon became an important producer. Its capital was increased by jumps to 8 million, then 16 million francs. the output of diamonds in ten years from nineteen thirteen to nineteen twenty two was one million three hundred and ninety thousand five hundred carats it will be more than twice that in the next decade if the production remains at its present figure
the actual mining is done by seventeen thousand negroes working at a wage from six to eight francs a month besides food and lodging both very simple to use a euphemism another infant industry almost entirely a post leopoldian development is the production of coconuts palm kernels and palm oil used chiefly in making soap candles and margarine this industry by the way is in the hands of british soap makers the lever brothers who obtained concessions in nineteen eleven giving them vast areas in which they have a monopoly of oil palms although the lever interests operate through a belgian company la société des huileries de congo belge belgian publicists are prone to lament the predominantly british character of the enterprise for imperialism tends to monopoly However, these British soapmakers have built up a great industry in Congo.
They've established plants with hospitals, modern native dwellings, and even football and tennis grounds, at Kinshasa and other places. And palm nuts and palm oil now occupy second place in Congo's exports. The fertile, well-watered soil of the Congo can also bear cotton, cocoa, and rice, But these require the development of plantations, large-scale organisation, railways and waterways and industrious but cheap and plentiful labour.
The railways Belgium is building, waterways exist, plantations can be created, but labour is the problem. Footnote 1. The Kampen de Cotonnière Congolais, Cotton Co., with 6 million francs capital, has established a number of cotton farms and hopes someday to supply Belgium with raw cotton. Footnote 2. There were 1,268 miles of railway open in 1924. The greatest interest has focused in projects for a trunk line to provide an outlet for the Katanga mining region,
which cannot conveniently use the Congo waterway. A line has been constructed which links Elizabethville and Bukama in Katanga with the Rhodesian and South African lines. But plans for a short line reaching the sea at Bengala in Portuguese Angolia were backed by Belgian interests in agreement with Robert Williams, the British promoter so prominent in Katanga's development.
Williams, however, ran short of capital and appealed to the British government for aid, which was refused at the insistence of General Smuts, perhaps to prevent competition with the South African railways. Accordingly, in 1922, the Belgian government adopted a substitute plan to construct and run a railroad entirely through Belgian territory from Katanga,
via Bukama, Ilibo and Leopoldville, to the Matadi, near the mouth of the Congo. Small sections of the line are already in operation. Confer article by G. Vanderkirken in Congo, December 1924, page 719. Footnotes end. In the last analysis, the economic future of Congo depends upon the employment of native labour
in copper mines and on plantations, and perhaps in exploitation of the immense timber resources. In Belgian Congo, there are now about 8.5 million Bantu Negroes, thinly spread over an area 80 times as large as Belgium. Of whites, there are only 10,000, almost all officials, business agents, missionaries. Nor is it probable that European immigrants will ever be numerous even in the mountain areas, much less in the sweltering heat of fever-infested lowlands. I have before me an
attractive illustrated booklet entitled Alésia Faire Comus, which urges ambitious Belgians to colonise in the Congo where they can create very fine estates for themselves where they will lead a large life free from the cares of Europe. The pictures are attractive and so are the biographies of successful colonists. The Guthals brothers, for example, have concessions covering 20,000 hectares, part cultivated, and boast possession of un autofod. They employ 170
Negroes, and each acre cultivated becomes worth about 1,000 francs. But there are not many Belgians willing to emigrate who have the 50,000 francs of capital considered necessary for the prospective colonist in Congo. The Negro population is the all-important element in the situation, and that Negro population has declined. Stanley overestimated it at 40 millions, other early estimates placed it at 20, but today it is only 8 and one half.
The Negroes, moreover, have not forgotten the greed and cruelty with which Leopold introduced them to industrial civilisation. Occasional revolts still reveal a bitter resentment. If Belgian authorities rely on free labour, there is still a long process of education and civilisation to be undergone before the Negroes will give efficient voluntary labour in exchange for wages, with which to purchase the goods of civilisation. For the prodigal bounty of the
tropical climate renders it easy for the natives to live a carefree life, little marred by toil. The booklet which I have just mentioned informs us that Negro labour in Katanga can be had for 25 to 35 francs a month, about five cents a day, without board, on a three-month contract. The lever interests employ thousands of natives at 15 to 30 francs a month, with rations provided by the company. Many of the natives work long enough to pay the government
tax of 15 francs and to buy a little cloth, then return to their villages. On the other hand, skilled negro workers, machinists for example, earn as much as 800 francs, about $40 a month, wear European clothes, attend the movies, dance the foxtrot in their clubs, and order their wives dresses from Paris department stores. In short, the need of work to pay taxes, and in some cases adorning taste for luxuries, have spurred some natives to work, but the shortage of labour is
generally admitted. There can be no doubt that the colony is valuable to some Belgian manufacturers, financiers and merchants. Before the war, it provided a market for cotton cloth, machinery, liquor, arms and other goods averaging about $10 million in annual value. After the war, the imports rose about 25 millions. Of these, Belgium provided almost half, and has usually supplied by far the largest quantity, except during the Great War, when the trade fell into
British hands. And Belgians likewise handled the largest share of the Congo's export trade, 43% in 1922, chiefly the palm nuts, diamonds, gold, copper, and ivory. But the copper goes to other countries. How far we have wandered from the original theme of King Leopold. Civilization of the natives, not commerce, was the question in the 70s. If civilization means education, it may be said that, according to recent statistics, 1924,
the government was spending on the education a little less than 6 million francs a year, less than one twenty-eighth of its budget, less than New York City spends in pensions to superannuated teachers. The Belgian government, nevertheless, boasts that 200,000 Negroes are receiving some sort of education.
Many of the schools are conducted by the 1,400 missionaries who are inculcating Christian doctrines. The latter must seem to the untutored native a strange commentary on European rule in the Congo. Subsection, Congo Diplomacy
A few words must be added about diplomacy concerning the Congo. France, it will be recalled, had obtained in 1884 an option on the Congo, then owned by the International Association. Subsequently, France agreed that this option should not prevent the transfer of the Congo to Belgium, but even after Belgium had annexed the colony in 1908,
France still held a first claim in case Belgium should ever wish to dispose of the Congo. In 1911, however, as part of the settlement of the Morocco crisis, Germany demanded that France surrender her right of preemption. It was obvious that German imperialists hoped to incorporate the Belgian Congo, eventually, into a great German empire of Middle Africa.
France refused to yield her option to Germany. Instead, a compromise was adopted providing that should the Congo ever be relinquished by Belgium, its fate would be decided by a conference of the powers which had signed the Berlin Act of 1885. Later on, when England was endeavouring to settle her colonial difficulties with Germany, the English government secretly expressed its willingness to permit the Germans to regard the Belgian Congo as a German sphere of economic action,
a region in which German capital would not be seriously opposed by British interests. This secret bargain, of course, was wiped out by the Great War. In March 1914, the German foreign minister hinted to the French ambassador that Congo was too great a burden for Belgium. At the outbreak of war, Belgium desired to maintain the neutrality of the Congo in accordance with the Berlin Act of 1885, but France and England were determined to attack the German colonies in
Africa, and presently Belgium, taking a German border aid as justification, used the Congo as a base for military attacks on German East Africa. Over 10,000 native troops were used in the campaign. At the close of the war, Belgium's native troops were in possession of the northwestern part of the German colony, and when peace was made, this region, comprising most of the Rwanda and Urandi districts, about 19,000 square miles in all, was given to Belgium under a mandate from
the League of Nations. Another important diplomatic change was the revision of the Berlin Act of 1885, which had provided for free trade and the open door in the Congo Basin. In 1890, by the Brussels Declaration, the powers allowed an import tax of 10% ad valorem, equal for goods of all nations. These open-door provisions, however, were in effect nullified by the Leopoldian system of monopolies and concessions. Moreover, the Declaration did not allow such freedom in
adjusting the tariff as Belgians would have desired. At the close of the war, a new treaty was signed, allowing Belgium to fix the tariff rates freely, subject only to the restriction that duties must be equal for goods of all members of the League of Nations, and the signatories of the Berlin Act, all now members of the League, except the United States and Russia. Footnote. The treaty signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 10th 1919 by the United States,
Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Japan and Portugal applies to the conventional basin of the Congo, which includes parts of the Cameroons of French Equatorial Africa, of Portuguese Angola, British East Africa, or Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland, German East Africa, or Tanganyika, and parts of Rhodesia and of Italian Somaliland. The text is reprinted in Colonial Tariff Policies, pages 120 through 122.
End of footnote. End of section 6.
