AFRICA, 1890-1906

1890-1906. Agreements among European powers on the regulation of the slave trade and the liquor traffic.-On July 2, 1890, a convention relative to the African slave trade was framed at a conference of the representatives of European, American, African, and Asiatic states, at Brussels. The treaty, known as the General Act of Brussels, was signed July 2, 1890, but did not come into force until April 2, 1894. The text of it may be found in (U. S.) House Doc. No. 276, 56th Congress, 3d Sess. It put an end to the slave trade (See SLAVERY: 1869-1893) and either forbade entirely or greatly restricted traffic in arms or liquors in specified regions. Without interfering with European settlements in the North and South, the Act was designed to protect the native races. In June, 1899, representatives of the governments of Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, Spain, the Congo State, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and Norway, and Turkey, assembled at Brussels, with due authorization, and there concluded an international convention respecting the liquor traffic in Africa. Subsequently the governments of Austria-Hungary, the United States of America, Liberia and Persia, gave their adhesion to the convention, and ratifications were deposited at Brussels in June, 1900. The convention was, in a measure, supplemental to the General Act of Brussels. It provided: "Article I. From the coming into force of the present Convention, the import duty on spirituous liquors, as that duty is regulated by the General Act of Brussels, shall be raised throughout the zone where there does not exist the system of total prohibition provided by Article XCI. of the said General Act, to the rate of 70 fr. the hectolitre at 50 degrees centigrade, for a period of six years. It may, exceptionally, be at the rate of 60 fr. only the hectolitre at 50 degrees centigrade in the Colony of Togo and in that of Dahomey. The import duty shall be augmented proportionally for each degree above 50 degrees centigrade; it may be diminished proportionally for each degree below 50 degrees centigrade. At the end of the abovementioned period of six years, the import duty shall be submitted to revision, taking as a basis the results produced by the preceding rate. The Powers retain the right of maintaining and increasing the duty beyond the minimum fixed by the present Article in the regions where they now possess that right. Article II. In accordance with Article XCIII. of the General Act of Brussels, distilled drinks made in the regions mentioned in Article XCII. of the said General Act, and intended for consumption, shall pay an excise duty. This excise duty, the collection of which the Powers undertake to insure as far as possible, shall not be lower than the minimum import duty fixed by Article I. of the present Convention. Article III. It is understood that the Powers who signed the General Act of Brussels, or who have acceded to it, and who are not represented at the present Conference, preserve the right of acceding to the present Convention."-Great Britain, Parliamentary publications (Papers by command: Treaty series, no. 13, 1900).-A later conference at Brussels in 1906 again increased the duties on liquors, and as we shall see below, the World War settlements secured still greater protection for the African native.

1890-1914.-Extension of existing European possessions. "The period 1890-1914 again shows a change in the nature of Europe's penetration into Africa. On the east and west coasts the claims of posterity had been fully pegged out by the different States. The increase in territory ap

AFRICA, 1914

propriated was therefore caused by extension of existing possessions on the coast into the hinterlands. In fact in these regions the States were occupied not in acquiring new possessions, but in rounding off their previous conquests, and in converting spheres of interest into full colonial dominion. And, since in tropical Africa there was nothing left for Europe to do but attempt to digest what she had swallowed, those who still had cravings for 'expansion' and for economic imperialism had to turn once more to the only remaining places where it was possible to expand, the north and the south. Consequently the history of our last period, 1890-1914, reverts to that of our first, 1815-80, the penetration of France into the north by the acquisition of Tunis and Morocco, and the penetration of the south by Britain through the conquest or absorption of Rhodesia, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State."-L. Woolf, Empire and commerce in Africa (1915), PP. 58-59.

1914.-Distribution of European sovereignty in Africa. "The following European Powers possessed sovereign rights in Africa before the war: -Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. In addition, and as the result of the Boer War, the various British Colonies in South Africa had been welded together and formed, with the newly-annexed Boer Republics, a self-governing British Dominion, a State in Africa controlled by, and in part composed of. men of European blood, but African-born, known as The Union of South Africa, and stretching from Capetown to the Zambesi. The only part of Africa enjoying its own native government was Abyssinia. For although a certain area on the Kru Coast, together with its hinterland, known as Liberia, supposedly constitutes a 'government' ... and is recognised as an Independent State, its 'government' consists of a few thousand descendants of repatriated American blacks, who enjoy no authority outside the confines of their settlements on the coast line. Egypt was virtually, although not then nominally, a British dependency I give below the African dependencies of the various European governments with their area and population, ... as they existed at the outbreak of the war.

AFRICA, 1914

(C: Self-governing Dominion)

AFRICA, 1914

Europeans for the remainder of the gigantic area affected, and Egypt accounts for more than half of these. It will be well to bear this fact carefully in mind when, later on, we pass to a consideration of the African problem in its fundamental aspects.

FRENCH AFRICA

Area in

Square Miles Population

AFRICA, 1914

Italian and Spanish-in 1911 was 752,043. The census of 1911 showed a European and mixed European population in Tunis of 126,265, of whom 46,044 were French (exclusive of the army of occupation); in Madagascar 12,000, of whom some 10,000 were French; in West Africa 7,104, of whom 6,377 were French. Before the war there were a considerable number of French troops and French colored troops in Morocco, and a few hundred French and other European residents. In 1914 the European population of French Africa, apart from the white troops in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunis, was slightly in excess of a million.

AFRICA, 1914

A narrow strip of territory on the Mediterranen coastline of Morocco and a small 'Enclave' on the Atlantic coast-line of Morocco."-E. D. Morel, Africa and the peace of Europe, pp. 11-15.

SUMMARY OF EUROPEAN OCCUPATION.-"Such, in brief outline, is the process by which Africa has been conquered and partitioned. Africa has been an easy prey because of its divisions, its military weakness, and its low civilisations. Though no one of the incoming Powers has established its position without a struggle, only in Morocco and Abyssinia has the native opposition proved really formidable. More serious difficulties have been encountered in the settlement of rival claims. England and Portugal came to the brink of war over Central Africa in 1891, as did England and France over the Sudan in 1898, and France and Germany over Morocco in 1904. The wide field of enterprise which has given scope to the ambitions of every colonising Power, a spirit of reasonableness, and the definite principles previously agreed upon for the decision of doubtful questions, have made it possible hitherto to reach a peaceful settlement of all disputes. The political divisions have not been formed according to geographical divisions-no one of the great river basins belongs exclusively to a single Powerbut exhibit a strange diversity, being, in each sphere, a resultant of the forces which historic position and, later, energy and foresight, gave to the competing Powers. England owes much to the happy possession of points of access to the interior from south and north, much also to the energy of private persons acting singly or through Companies, and to the far-reaching conceptions of a few great leaders; as usual, she owes least of any Power to the direct intervention of Government. France, too, has expanded her rule from historic settlements, and owes her great dominion to the imagination which outlined, and the steadfastness which pursued, a vast ambition. The pertinacity with which the Germans discovered weak points in existing claims, the swiftness of their action, their unyielding diplomacy, . . . enabled them, while starting without advantages, to secure extensive possessions. [See also GERMANY: 19061907.] Belgium owes her share to the activity of her late sovereign, who by benevolent profession rescued a mighty domain from the international scramble to transform it into an estate for private gain. The Portuguese hold, much diminished, the heritage bequeathed them from a distant past. The work of conquest and political organization is too recent for us to estimate its effects on the peoples of Africa, and that of economic organization is but beginning. One general end the Powers have had in view-the suppression of the slave trade at its sources-now practically achieved after a century of effort. Domestic slavery-an ancient African institution-is a different problem. but it has been discouraged in lands under direct British government. Tribal life continues and is deliberately preserved. The transformation of the native economy has not been attempted. Whether desirable or not, it is beyond the strength of any Government yet established in tropical Africa Economic development in most cases proceeds but slowly. Governments are poor, for their subjects are poor; and the problem of adapting taxation to the organization of primitive peoples, though varying in difficulty, has nowhere been found easy. The immense task of associating the native in the development of the country on European lines requires so considerable a change in his ideas and life that it may take a long time to carry out, save where it is attempted by methods of

AFRICA, 1914-1920

In

compulsion which public opinion more and more decisively condemns. Yet, without the aid of the native, the value of these tropical regions to their European conquerors is much diminished. Europe, the occupation of Africa has increased wealth and trade, and cheapened some of the comforts of life; what it will mean for Africa cannot yet be judged."-E. A. Benians, European colonies (Cambridge modern history, pp. 657-666). 1914-1920.-Obstacles to European occupation. There are many obstacles to the white race from Europe overrunning and colonizing the continent of Africa as it has overrun and colonized the two Americas and Australasia. One is the insalubrity of the well-watered regions and the uninhabitability of the desert tracts, that is, the climatic conditions. Another is the opposition of strong indigenous races influenced by successful Moslem occupation and proselytizing. A third obstacle is the lack of adequate railway communication, although, as we shall see, efforts have been made to build many new lines. Another obstacle is the labor problem, and still another is a body of adverse public opinion at home, based largely on the fact that many of the colonies are not self-supporting, but a source of expense.

(1) CLIMATIC CONDITIONS AND TOPOGRAPHICAL FEATURES.-"Deserts, to be made habitable and cultivable, only need irrigation, and apparently there is a subterranean water supply underlying most African deserts which can be tapped by artesian wells. The extreme unhealthiness of the wellwatered parts of Africa is due not so much to climate as to the presence of malaria in the systems of the Negro inhabitants. This malaria is conveyed from the black man to the white man by certain gnats of the genus Anopheles-possibly by other agencies. But the draining of marshes and the sterilisation of pools, together with other measures, may gradually bring about the extinction of the mosquito; while, on the other hand, it seems as though the drug (Cassia Beareana) obtained from the roots of a cassia bush may act as a complete cure for malarial fever.

"For practical purposes the only areas south of the Sahara Desert which at the present time are favourable to white colonisation are the following. In West Africa there can be no white colonisation under existing conditions; the white man can only remain there for a portion of his working life as an educator and administrator.

In North-East Africa, Abyssinia and Eritrea will suggest themselves as white man's countries— presenting, that is to say, some of the conditions favourable to European colonisation. The actual coast of Eritrea is extremely hot, almost the hottest country in the world, but it is not necessarily very unhealthy. The heat, however, apart from the existence of a fairly abundant native population, almost precludes the idea of a European settlement. But on the mountains of the hinterland which are still within Italian territory there are said to be a few small areas suited at any rate to settlement by Italians, who, by-the-by, seem to be getting on very well with the natives in that part of Africa. But a European colonisation of Abyssinia, possible as it might be climatically, is out of the question in view of the relatively abundant and warlike population indigenous to the Ethiopian Empire.

"Then comes Central Africa, which may be taken to range from the northern limits of the Congo basin and the Great Lakes on the north to the Cunene River and the Zambesi on the south. British East Africa and Uganda offer probably the largest continuous area of white man's country

AFRICA, 1914-1920

in the central section of the continent. The Ankole country in the southwest of the Uganda Protectorate and the highlands north of Tanganyika, together with the slopes of the Ruwenzori range, offer small tracts of land thoroughly suited to occupation by a white race so far as climate and fertility are concerned; but these countries have already been occupied, to a great extent, by some of the earliest forerunners of the Caucasian (the Bahima), as well as by sturdy Negro tribes who have become inured to the cold. To the northeast of the Victoria Nyanza, however, there is an area which has as its outposts the southwest coast of Lake Rudolf, the great mountains of Debasien and Elgon, and the snow-clad extinct volcanoes of Kenia and Kilimanjaro. This land of plateaux and rift valleys is not far short of 70,000 square miles in extent, and so far as climate and other physical conditions are concerned is as well suited for occupation by British settlers as Queensland 'or New South Wales. But nearly 50,000 square miles of this East African territory is more less in the occupation of sturdy Negro or Negroid races whom it would be neither just nor easy to expel. . . .

or

"The only portion of German East Africa which is at all suited to European settlement lies along the edge of the Nyasa-Tanganyika Plateau. Here is a district of a little more than a thousand square miles which is not only elevated and healthy, but very sparsely populated by Negroes. A few patches in the Katanga district and the extreme southern part of the Congo Free State offer similar conditions.

"In British Central Africa we have perhaps 6,000 square miles of elevated, sparsely populated, fertile country to the northwest of Lake Nyasa and along the road to Tanganyika. There is also land of this description in the North-East Rhodesian province of British Central Africa, in Manikaland, and along the water-parting between the Congo and the Zambesi systems. Then in the southernmost prolongation of British Central Africa are the celebrated Shiré Highlands, which, together with a few outlying mountain districts to the southwest of Lake Nyasa, may offer a total area of about 5,000 square miles suitable to European colonisation. A small portion of the Moçambique province, in the interior of the Angoche coast, might answer to the same description. Then again, far away to the west, under the same latitudes, we have, at the back of Mossamedes and Benguela, other patches of white man's country in the mountains of Bailundo and Shella.

"In South Africa, beyond the latitudes of the Zambesi, we come to lands which are increasingly suited to the white man's occupation the further we proceed south. Nearly all German SouthWest Africa is arid desert, but inland there are plateaux and mountains which sometimes exceed 8,000 feet in altitude, and which have a sufficient rainfall to make European agriculture possible. ... About two-thirds of the Transvaal, a third of Rhodesia, a small portion of southern Bechuanaland, two-thirds of the Orange River Colony, fourfifths of Cape Colony, and a third of Natal sum up the areas attributed to the white man in South Africa. The remainder of this part of the continent must be considered mainly as a reserve for the black man, and to a much smaller degree (in South-East Africa) as a field for Asiatic colonisation, preferentially on the part of British Indians.

"Counting the white-skinned Berbers and Arabs of North Africa, and the more or less pureblooded, light-skinned Egyptians, as white men,

AFRICA, 1914-1920

and the land they occupy as part of the white man's share of the Dark Continent, we may then by a rough calculation arrive (by adding to white North Africa the other areas enumerated in the rest of the continent) at the following estimate: that about 970,000 square miles of the whole African continent may be attributed to the white man as his legitimate share. If, however, we are merely to consider the territory that lies open to European colonisation, then we must considerably reduce our North African estimate."-H. H. Johnston, White man's place in Africa (Nineteenth Century, June, 1904).

"What is Europe going to do with Africa? It seems to me there are three courses to be pursued, corresponding with the three classes of territory into which Africa falls when considered geographically. There is, to begin with, that much restricted

area, lying outside the tropics (or in very rare cases, at great altitudes inside the tropics), where the climate is healthy and Europeans can not only support existence under much the same conditions as in their own lands and freely rear children to form in time a native European race, but where at the same time there is no dense native population to dispute by force or by an appeal to common fairness the possession of the soil. Such lands as these are of relatively small extent compared to the mass of Africa. They are confined to the districts south of the Zambezi (with the exception of the neighborhood of the Zambezi and the eastern coast-belt); a few square miles on the mountain plateaux of North and South Nyasaland; the northern half of Tunisia, a few districts of North-east and North-west Algeria and the Cyrenaica (northern projection of Barka); perhaps also the northernmost portion of Morocco. The second category consists of countries like much of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli; Barka, Egypt, Abyssinia and parts of Somaliland; where climatic conditions and soil are not wholly opposed to the healthful settlement of Europeans, but where the competition or numerical strength or martial spirit of the natives already in possession are factors opposed to the substitution of a large European population for the present owners of the soil. The third category consists of all that is left of Africa, mainly tropical, where the climatic conditions make it impossible for Europeans to cultivate the soil with their own hands, to settle for many years, or to bring up healthy families. Countries lying under the first category I should characterize as being suitable for European colonies, a conclusion somewhat belated, since they have nearly all become such. The second description of territory I should qualify as 'tributary states,' countries where good and settled government cannot be maintained by the natives without the control of a European power, the European power retaining in return for the expense and trouble of such control the gratification of performing a good and interesting work, and a field of employment for a few of her choicer sons and daughters. The third category consists of 'plantation colonies'-vast territories to be govened as India is governed, despotically but wisely, and with the first aim of securing good government and a reasonable degree of civilization to a Large population of races inferior to the European." Here, however, the Europeans may come in small numbers with their capital, their energy, and their knowledge to develop a most lucrative commerce, and obtain products necessary to the use of their advanced civilization H. H. Johnston, Colonization of Africa, pp. 278 279.

MOSTEM OCCUPATION.-Another great obsta

AFRICA, 1914-1920

cle in the way of European colonization is the opposition offered to Christian nations by the rapid spread of the Moslem faith.

"The reasons for the great strides that Mohammedanism has made among the primitive, pagan tribes of Africa are not far to seek. Before an aggressive, coördinating faith like Islam, the inferior civilization of the negro kingdoms and states in the interior practising polytheism and fetichism, continually at war with each other and thus in a perpetual state of trade stagnation, must inevitably give way." Through the ubiquitous Arab traders, all of whom are potential missionaries, the new, simple, quasi-political doctrine is peculiarly attractive. "And it has progressed in the same ratio as European nations have penetrated to the interior, and pushed their hinterlands against the savage negro societies, leaving them exposed to the fierce light of civilization. Thus, in Islam, these kingdoms and principalities of backward races are finding a ready and effective method of centralization and government. Pagan tribes like the Gallas and Shoans of Ethiopia, under centuries of fierce and perpetual persecution from their Abyssinian rulers, successfully resisted Christianity; yet they have easily fallen under the sway of Islam. Even so in the interior of Africa and along the coast, wherever Christian missionaries have . . . [come in] contact with them, the savage tribes have proved impervious to all Christian advances, but have readily turned to Islam, in spite of the fact that for centuries they were cruelly exploited by the Moslem Arab slavedealers, before the European nations stamped out the trade. The virtue of such wholesale conversions lies in the ease with which Islam, like Hinduism in India, has adopted the customs and traditions of its rude adherents. The community life of these savages is allowed to continue. Rigid though Islam is on the subject of liquor, yet many of these tribes still retain their native habits of intemperance: likewise it must be said that those tribes on the coast that have suffered from the early European drink traffic, being of a higher order of intelligence and orthodoxy, have renounced liquor with their conversion to Islam. The cannibalism of British Ashantee, of French Dahomey, the fetichism and idolatry of the rest of Africa, have passed away in the wake of Islam, degenerating though the new influences may be in the eyes of the orthodox Islamic pundits of AlAzhar in Cairo. Too much, however, cannot be made of the reforming influence of Islam among the savage Africans. . . . The Asiatic, and likewise the African, finds himself forlorn and isolated in Christianity, and no amount of official protection can save him from the social and economic tyranny to which all such converts are subjected In Africa, the pagan negro races find themselves welcome in Islam with all their native customs They are allowed to practise their polygamy, and their family or home unit is emphasized-a factor of prime importance in Asiatic psychology from China to Turkey. On the other hand, too much must not be made of the fact that Islam encourages lust and easy divorce. Accurate observers report that this offers no particular attraction to savage converts, especially when such vices have long been endemic among African, and some Asiatic tribes. Not the least picturesque feature of the conversions to Islam in Asia and Africa is the important part played by women, particularly when we consider that the Prophet degraded women and barred them from the rewards of a future [life]. In an unconscious way, Islam has spread through their efforts. Among the raiding