tion. And that negro population has declined; Stanley overestimated it at forty millions, other early estimates placed it at twenty, but to-day it is only eight and oue-half. The negroes, moreover, have not forgotten the greed and cruelty with which Leopold introduced them to industrial civilization. Occasional revolts still reveal a bitter resentment. If the Belgian authorities rely on free labor, there is still a long process of education and civilization to be undergone before the negroes will give efficient voluntary labor in exchange for wages with which to purchase the goods of civilization; for the prodigal bounty of the tropical climate renders it easy for the native to live a carefree life little marred by toil.

The booklet which I have just mentioned informs us that negro labor in Katanga may be had for 25 to 31 francs a month (about five cents a day) without board, on a three-month contract. The Lever interests employ thousands of natives at fifteen to thirty francs a month, with rations provided by the company. Many of the natives work long enough to pay the government tax of fifteen francs and 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 fox trot 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 a dawning taste for luxuries have spurred some natives to work, but the shortage of labor is generally admitted.1

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 ten million dollars in annual value; after the war, the imports rose to about twentyfive 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 handle the largest share of the Congo's export trade (43% in 1922)-chiefly the palm nuts, diamonds, gold, copal and ivory. But the copper goes to other countries.2

1 Of. Congo, Dec., 1924, p. 794.

'See illuminating itemized tables in L'Annuaire statistique de la Belgique, XLVIII, pp. 263-70, and 277.

How far we have wandered from the original theme of King Leopold! Civilization of the natives, not commerce, was the question in the seventies. If civilization means education, it may be said that, according to recent statistics (1924), the government was spending on education a little less than six 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 fourteen hundred missionaries who are inculcating Christian doctrines. The latter must seem, to the untutored native, a strange commentary on European rule in the Congo.1

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 Mittelafrika. 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 1885.2 Later on, when England was endeavoring 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 1 Cf. Congo, June, 1924, pp. 1-8.

1

'Art. 16 of the Franco-German Convention of Nov. 4, 1911. Staatsarchiv, 81, No. 14256. An interesting point in this connection is that Caillaux, French premier, thought of getting Belgium to lease to France a strip of territory along the Ubangi River, so that French Congo would not be cut off from the French Sudan: see Caillaux, Agadir, p. 226, and Daye, L'Empire Colonial belge, pp. 66 ff.

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 raid as justification, used the Congo as a base for military attacks on German East Africa. Over ten thousand 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 Ruanda and Urundi districts, about 19,000 square miles in allwas given to Belgium under a mandate from the League of Nations.

4

3

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 ten per cent 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.5

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 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)."

1 Deuxième Livre Gris Belge, No. 2, Baron Beyens to M. Davignon, April 2, 1914.

2 Cf. infra, p. 498.

'Cf. supra, p. 84.

'Hertslet, Commercial Treaties, 19, p. 304.

5 See United States Tariff Commission, Colonial Tariff Policies, pp. 90120.

The treaty, signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on Sept. 10, 1919, by the U. S., Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Japan and Portugal, applies to the "conventional basin" of the Congo, which includes parts of 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, pp. 120-2.

CHAPTER VI

FIVE DECADES OF BUSINESS AND DIPLOMATIC BARGAINING IN WEST AFRICA

WHEN King Leopold sent Stanley, in 1879, to obtain an empire in Congo, he unintentionally precipitated what may be described, with more accuracy than elegance, as an undignified scramble for possessions on the western coast of tropical Africa. Prior to this date, the malarial coastlands had appeared to be anything but prizes of diplomacy. To be sure, several nations had trading posts, scattered here and there, but since the abolition of the slave trade these had lost their chief reason for existence, and most of them were allowed to languish in neglect. One might, perhaps, make an exception in the case of Senegal, where a gallant French governor, General Faidherbe, had employed his restless energy in conquering native “kingdoms" until he ruled the coast from Cape Blanc to Gambia, a stretch of more than seven hundred kilometers, and the Senegal valley for two hundred kilometers or more inland.1 But this, after all, was an exception.

Stanley's expedition of 1879 was taken as a challenge by Savorgnan de Brazza, then governor of the little French colony of Gabun; and as we have seen, de Brazza promptly took possession, in 1880, of the north bank of the Congo, thus giving France a claim to what later became "French Congo." The scramble began.

EARNING KNIGHTHOOD IN NIGERIA

Simultaneously keen rivalry appeared at other points of the coast, particularly at the delta of the Niger River. Like the Congo and the Nile, the Niger is one of the truly great rivers of Africa. Before railways were built, waterways were the arteries of commerce and of conquest in Africa. River-basins

1

See Dubois et Terrier, Un Siècle d'expansion coloniale, pp. 330-48 and M. Petit (ed.), Les Colonies françaises, I, pp. 531-642.

were the stakes of diplomacy. And the Niger with its affluents was a magnificent highway through the coastal jungles into the far interior. Next to the Congo, the Niger seemed the choicest prize of western Africa. For its possession, empire-builders of three Great Powers contended. German merchants and explorers, and imperialist writers in Germany, made no secret of their desire to obtain the Niger for their Fatherland; but the cautious Bismarck delayed, and the real conflict was between French and English.

The conflict began as a skirmish between trading companies. In the very year that Stanley went to the Congo, an English ex-officer by the name of George Goldie Taubman established the United African Company, to trade in the Niger delta. More or less by chance of acquaintanceships, and of travels in Africa, Taubman had invested most of his small fortune in a Niger trading company, and, anxious regarding the value of his investment, had visited the area in person. In bold imagination he envisioned the future of the region. With persistence and tact, and business acumen, he built up, out of numerous companies doing business in the delta, the merger which he called the United African Company, with a capital of £125,000. He himself became a director, while for the presidency of the corporation he shrewdly selected Baron Aberdare, a former Liberal politician who had served in Gladstone's first cabinet, and subsequently a president of the Royal Geographical Society-an influential and dignified figure-head. Even with Aberdare's influence, however, Taubman long tried in vain to obtain from Gladstone a charter and official protection for the new company. Meanwhile he had French competition to deal with. A French ex-officer, Count de Semellé, had persuaded several friends to form with him a French Company of Equatorial Africa (Compagnie française de l'Afrique équatoriale), with a modest capital of half a million francs. Untimely death had prevented the enterprising count from reaping his material reward, but his friends remained loyal to his project. They went to Gambetta the great republican politician and premier, and from him re ceived encouragement and authority to make treaties with native chiefs. Their agent then made numerous treaties with the dark rulers of the Niger valley, and established a score or more of trading posts. Between the French and the English company,