treason of Sir Roger Casement should have tempted the belief that his indictment of the Congo State was distorted by instability of intellect, and Mr. E. D. Morel's zeal to punish the wrongs of the native of the Congo is perhaps hard to reconcile with the comparative leniency of his judgement of German.actions, not less abhorrent to humanity. It may be argued, therefore, that the claim of Belgium to enjoy the Congo in full sovereignty and free from restriction should not be called in question or form the object of examination. But this would be a partial and inaccurate view, and to adopt it would be to ignore the circumstances of the origin and development of the State which has subjected it to obligations of a special and important character.

Though in strict law it is true that the Congo as a State of international law does not owe its origin to international action at the Berlin Congress, yet it is equally true that but for that Congress it would never have come into being, that the principles of the Congress were developed with the express purpose of being applied to the new State, and that there was at the time a general belief that the action of the State in its development would be international in character. By a process of interest and importance the international character of the State has disappeared with its transformation into a Belgian possession, but the obligations which the Berlin Act imposed are no less binding than before the transformation and are loyally accepted by the Belgian Government. Yet, as will be shown in detail, it is idle to contend that these principles were not for years in practice violated and disregarded by the ruler of the Congo State, and that an agency, which was to have made for civilization, in many cases intensified the barbarism of the primitive

1 Cf. R. Williams, United Empire, 1917, p. 451.

2 The natural tendency to refuse to believe in accusations of atrocious conduct cannot survive an impartial review of such evidence as that collected by Mr. E. H. Gorges in his report on the treatment by Germany of the natives of South-West Africa, which establishes wholesale massacre, followed by the reduction of the survivors to serfdom.

peoples which it controlled. It is true that the most perfect Act might have been set at naught by an unprincipled government, but the mere existence of misrule suggests that the instrument itself was defective, and that a peace settlement should be contemporaneous with its revision or with provision for such revision. Nor is this presumption in discord with the facts:the history of the Congo reveals in the Act grave errors or omission, and still graver faults of vagueness, which must be remedied if in the future the government of African dependencies is to be conducted on the only principle which renders it justifiable, primary regard to the welfare of the native races over whom dominion is exercised. To neglect the lessons to be derived from the history of the Congo State is an unpardonable error which would certainly revenge itself. Moreover, there is another side to that history; amid grave error and crime a record of achievement which vindicates the right of Belgium to claim that the transformation of the Congo territory into a Belgian Colony is morally justifiable, and that Europe should entrust to her, on such new conditions as may be necessary, the control of the vast areas acquired for her by King Leopold.

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CONGO

Ir is to European travellers and to modern linguistic and ethnographic science that we owe the little knowledge we possess of the state of the Congo prior to the bright light cast upon it by the explorations of Stanley. Evidence of any early occupation of the river valley is not abundant, but it is a plausible conjecture that the pigmies, who are still found in many parts of the territory, were the earliest inhabitants. They appear to have been in part dispossessed, in part assimilated by two later invasions, in either case by tribes of Bantu speech. At least this theory accounts best for the clear distinction between the language of the lower Congo and south central Congoland and the speech of the tribes to the north, north-east, and east, and it is not impossible that the former tribes represent an offshoot from the Bantu migrations which founded kingdoms in Uganda, Nyasaland, and Zambesia, and, skirting the dense forests of the central Congo, penetrated as far west as the mouth of the river, and even carried their speech to Kabinda and Loango. In the valley of the Upper Nile, which may have been the starting-point of the migration, the negro stock, which is at the base of the population of the Congo, may have been modified by intermixture with Mediterranean man: in the Congo basin itself it has unquestionably mingled with the pigmy, and in the Katanga with the Bushman stock of South Africa.

2

It is idle to seek to assign dates, however approximate, to these tribal movements. There is more evidence for the

1 Cf. Sir H. Johnston, George Grenfell, ii. 497 sq.

2 Cf. V. Giuffrida-Ruggeri, Nuovi Studi sull' antropologia dell' Africa Orientale (Florence, 1916).

founding in the course of the fourteenth century of a small kingdom on the southern bank of the Lower Congo, which appears gradually to have acquired some measure of control of the lower course of the river. It was not, however, until the end of the next century that European relations with the Congo began. In 1471 the river Ogoué had been discovered by an expedition dispatched by the first Portuguese company formed to trade with Africa in slaves and gold dust in 1482-4 Dom Diogo Cão explored the coast south from the Ogoué and sailed some distance up the mouth of the Congo. From the natives whom he encountered he heard reports of a King of the Congo whose capital city was Mbanza 'Kongo, and on his return to Portugal in 1485 the explorer took with him some natives. from the river. Acting, doubtless, with imperfect knowledge of the real importance of the kingdom, Portugal dispatched to the King in 1490 a formal mission under Roderigo de Souza. The expedition was accompanied by Catholic missionaries, whose efforts were successful in converting the King in 1492, and, as usual, the conversion of the ruler brought with it the nominal conversion of large bodies of his subjects./The Christian kingdom flourished: in 1534 a cathedral was built at the capital, which was renamed San Salvador, and in 1549 a Jesuit mission was established there. Some twenty-one years later, however, disaster for a time overwhelmed the kingdom: an incursion of a fierce tribe of uncertain provenance,2 named Jaggas by the Portuguese, Giagas by the Italians, compelled the King and the Christians to take refuge on an island in the river while the cathedral and churches perished in a conflagration. Help, however, was forthcoming from Portugal: the

1 The original authority for the early period is a Portuguese, Duarte Lopes, who visited the Congo under Philip II of Spain, and whose narrative is reported by F. Pigafetta (1591: Eng. trans. by M. Hutchinson, 1881). See also J. J. Monteiro, Angola and the River Congo (1875); Johnston, op. cit. i. 69 sq.

2 Probably from the Middle Kwango; Johnston, George Grenfell, i. 71, note.

gallant and ambitious Dom Sebastião sent six hundred men armed with firearms, who speedily drove the Jaggas away, and the city and cathedral were rebuilt. In gratitude for this aid, the Portuguese narrative runs, the King ceded to Portugal the territory from the mouth of the Congo to the Kwanza river; but the version of the Dutch geographer Dapper, converts the cession into a mere offer of an annual tribute of slaves and the acceptance of suzerainty, which Dom Sebastião declined saying, that he regarded the King as his brother in arms, and that he was fully repaid by the constancy he displayed in the Catholic faith.1

This episode seems to have marked the highest point of Portuguese influence in the kingdom. Whether acting in virtue of the cession by the King or not, they proceeded in 1574 to the occupation of Angola, and the foundation of the important city of São Paulo de Loanda was begun in the following year. Their position was soon after seriously affected by the rivalry of the Dutch, when the death of the last King of the House of Avis resulted in the transfer of Portugal to the Spanish crown. It became necessary to concentrate Portuguese effort on the coast, and in 1608 the cathedral of San Salvador was abandoned in favour of that of São Paulo de Loanda. Even on the revival of the Portuguese monarchy the Dutch maintained the feud: São Paulo de Loanda fell into their hands in the period 1640-8, and they sent an embassy in 1642 to the King at San Salvador. The tide, however, turned shortly after, and with reinforcements from Brazil the Portuguese found themselves in a position to retake their capital and to expel the Dutch from the other settlements which they had made on the coast. The development of the traffic in slaves brought prosperity to Angola, as the introduction of a copper coinage in 1694 attests, and the priests who had clung to San Salvador gradually drifted in the last years of the century to the more settled and prosperous Angola.

Missionary effort from other sources was not lacking. 1 Stanley, The Congo, i. 13.