made less rapid economic progress than the neighboring French and British colonies. The comparison as regards commerce and railways is very striking: A great change was heralded in October, 1925, when Mr. Harvey Firestone, president of a great tire and rubber company, announced that the "Firestone Plantations Company" would invest a hundred million dollars in developing rubber plantations in Liberia. The company had a concession, it was reported, permitting it to select one million acres of suitable land. It was estimated that when the trees reach maturity in from six to eight years the crop will be 250,000 tons of rubber, more than half the world's present production. The Firestone concern, controlling this gigantic industry, and employing some three hundred thousand negro laborers, will be the dominant factor in the life of Liberia. That is to say, if the project is fully realized.1 Spain, as an old colonial power, still possesses the barren region of Rio de Oro, north of Senegal, and Spanish Guinea or Rio Muni, a small foothold near the equator, besides the Canary Islands and the island of Fernando Po, and a small share of Morocco. But these are mere shreds of an empire. THE VALUE OF FRENCH WEST AFRICA "French West Africa," as it is now called, includes the coast colonies of Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Dahomey, The foregoing inadequate account of Liberia may be supplemented by more elaborate historical and descriptive material in Sir H. H. Johnston, Liberia (London, 1906); R. C. F. Maugham, The Republic of Liberia (London, 1920); H. F. Reeve, The Black Republic: Liberia (London, 1923); British Foreign Office handbook, Liberia. The five-million dollar loan agreement of Oct. 28, 1921, reprinted in the N. Y. Nation, May 31, 1922, pp. 657-9, is interesting. See also N. Y. Times, Nov. 1, 1925, regarding the appointment of Mr. James L. Sibley as representative in Liberia of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, and the announcement of a comprehensive program of educational and social work. There is very illuminating material in T. J. Jones, Education in Africa (1922), ch. xii. together with the hinterland (Mauretania, French Sudan, Upper Volta, Niger Territory) for which they serve as outlets. Its governor-general, seated at Dakar (on the coast, near Cape Verde), rules an empire of 1,400,000 square miles and more than twelve millions of negro Berber and Arab subjects (not including mandated territories). On the north, it is connected by the French Sahara with the French colonies on the Mediterranean coast; to the east, it is linked with the hinterland of French Congo. It is an imposing monument to the bravery of adventurous explorers and the methodical, persistent, unremitting aggressiveness of French colonial governors. From the commercial point of view, however, French West Africa is not as impressive as its extent would suggest. Its trade to be sure has increased, from 79 million francs in 1895 to 155 millions in 1905 and 1418 millions in 1924. A popular manual telling "What every Frenchman should know about Our Colonies" assures its readers that "Henceforth its future is assured, from now on the black Indies of France are in full prosperity." But the increase has been relatively slow; if one allows for depreciation of the franc since the war, the figure for 1924 means only about 380 million gold francs or less than 75 million dollars. This is but a third of the value of the trade of the Philippine Islands. This fact is the more surprising, inasmuch as during the years of conquest French statesmen made commerce the great reason for colonial aggrandizement, and in the western Sudan France was generally considered to have won an enviable prize. Railways had to be built, before the products of the interior could be poured out in profusion, and although France has laid eighteen hundred miles of rails in West Africa, only a beginning has been made. French official maps show a projected railway network connecting the Sudan with ports on the Senegal, Guinea, Ivory, and Dahomey coasts, but only the line from Senegal has been carried any considerable distance into the interior. Automobiles on caterpillar treads have crossed the Sahara, and airplane routes have been planned, but for a large development of commerce, railways or waterways are still required. Moreover, French West Africa has not yet developed staple 'Ch. Regismanset and others, Ce que tout Français devrait savoir sur Nos Colonies (Paris. 1924), p. 69. COLONIES ARE NOT PROFITABLE products for export on a large scale. French imperialists like to think of West Africa as "a veritable empire whose resources are immense and whose inhabitants are profoundly attached to the mother-country." No important mines have been opened up. Wild rubber, once highly valued, is losing out in competition with East-Indian plantation rubber. Cotton plantations have been laid out, more or less experimentally, chiefly on the Upper Niger, but their output is still negligible in world markets, and irrigation is necessary. The capable negroes of Senegal have learned to use the curious combination of spade and hoe invented for them by an ingenious Frenchman, and some even use French plows; they, however, like the natives of the other colonies, tend to raise only the corn, rice, and manioc they need 'Camille Guy in L'Afrique Française, April, 1925. p. 173. to eat, and find it difficult to understand why they should exert themselves to cultivate more groundnuts, from which imitation olive oil is squeezed. Nuts form the bulk of Senegal's products. Palm kernels and the oil pressed from them have accounted for a remarkable increase in the trade of Dahomey, and mahogany has begun to overshadow the other products of Ivory Coast. The future may make West Africa a rich land of cotton, coffee, and cocoa plantations, of grain fields and cattle ranches, of lumber mills, of palm orchards-for all these are possible in different regions-but billions of French capital and decades of constructive enterprise will be needed to make this imperial vision real.1 A COLONIAL CINDERELLA-FRENCH CONGO French Congo, together with the old colony of Gabun and the hinterland, is now known as French Equatorial Africa. Including the part of German Cameroons acquired by the Great War, this colony is almost a million square miles in area. The regions of Gabun and Moyen-Congo are covered with dense jungle; to the north lies a zone of broad savannahs, pasture lands, and semi-desert areas. It is so sparsely populated, however, and its production of wild rubber and palm oil so small in quantity, that the colony must be regarded as of insignificant present value, and uncertain future worth. Frenchmen call it "the Cinderella of our large colonial family"-Cinderella before the fairy godmother came. Hoping to make it more profitable (or rather, less expensive), the government adopted King Leopold's system of concessions, forced labor, and monopolies, in 1899-1900. To forty companies about half the total area of French Congo was parcelled out in * See the interesting review of the assets and prospectus of development in A. Sarraut, La Mise en valeur des colonies françaises (Paris, 1923). 'See Rouget, op. cit., p. 609, and E. Etienne, Les Compagnies de colonisation (Paris, 1893, brochure). The had brought but it was killed in committee. Delcassé, later, as minister of colonies, granted three million hectares in the Ivory Coast to M. Verdier and eleven million hectares (an area equal to a fifth of France) in Congo to M. Daumas, but when the facts were made known, there were such protests that his successor, Chautemps, annulled the concessions. Nevertheless, a later minister, André Lebon, allowed Daumas to keep his land, and compensated Verdier. It was the apparent success of Leopold in Congo Free State that altered French opinion and in a bill to authorize concessions in great concessions, each carrying monopolistic ownership of rubber and other forest products and industry and agriculture of the conceded area. Native tribes, suddenly prohibited from selling rubber, and compelled to deliver fixed quantities as a tax to the company authorities, rebelled. Punitive expeditions and atrocities followed. Reports of what was going on leaked into the press in 1905. Natives were being flogged to work, their wives were taken as hostages, idlers were being mutilated. One official wrote, in a letter, that natives had been used as targets for pistol practice. De Brazza, former governor and founder of French Congo, was sent to investigate. He died on his way home -of heartbroken disappointment, it is said. The commission he headed was forbidden to publish a report, and the evidence collected was suppressed, even though its publication was loudly demanded by some members of the French Chamber of Deputies. In connection with the exploitation system, the following population figures are not uninteresting: the decline of population, it must be explained, is partly due to sleeping sickness, alcoholism, and abortions. Undernourishment has lessened resistance to disease; so it is claimed. 1900 (estimated) 1913 (estimated) .... 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 2,845,936 The total commerce of French Congo before the concession system averaged about 10,900,000 francs (average 1897-9); during the transition period it was 18 million; from 1903 to 1905 it averaged 20,800,000; in 1922 it was 65,028,576 francs (but the franc had depreciated). In the first five years of the system, six of the companies made a profit of 2,645,045 francs, while twenty-six others lost 12,510,219 francs; the net loss of all the companies taken together averaged almost 200,000 francs a year. In a word, it was speculative business, and on the whole unsuccessful. Partly because of this practical reason, partly because of criticism in France, and partly because of English 1 enabled Trouillot to grant concessions wholesale. Cf. L. Vignon, L'Exploitation de notre empire colonial (Paris, 1900); Henri Lorin, "La Crise du Congo Français" in Questions diplomatiques et coloniales, Dec. 1, 1900. 'From data given in Rouget, op. cit. |