ting them starve. But his plan was discovered, and civil war resulted. Deposed by the Mohammedans, King Mwanga joined with the missionaries in asking aid from a British officer, Frederick Jackson, who had been sent to Lake Victoria by the British East Africa Company. Jackson offered to use his force of five hundred riflemen to help the king, if his expenses were paid and the British flag raised over Uganda. But he delayed, and once again, as they had so often done, the Germans profited by British procrastination. Carl Peters, founder of German East Africa, restlessly seeking new empires to conquer, was at this time leading a German expedition through Uganda to the Upper Nile Valley, to rescue a German (Emin Pasha) who was there beleaguered by fanatical Moslems. Peters happened to obtain some of Jackson's letters regarding Uganda, and was not a man to neglect opportunity. He quickly marched to the capital, and in February, 1890, concluded a treaty with the king, thanks to the help of the French missionaries, who preferred even German rule to English Protestantism.1

THE ANGLO-GERMAN AGREEMENT

This time, however, Peters was not supported by Bismarckian diplomacy. Bismarck had previously been negotiating with Lord Salisbury for the cession of Heligoland in exchange for African territory. Though Bismarck fell from power early in 1890, his successor, Caprivi, continued the bargaining, and concluded on July 1, 1890, the famous Heligoland Treaty,' whereby Germany obtained Heligoland, and, in exchange, gave up all claim to Uganda (thus nullifying the exploit of Peters), Zanzibar and Pemba islands, Witu (a district on the British East African coast, hitherto claimed by Germans), Nyasaland (a region which Peters had coveted, as a southwestward extension of German East Africa), and some disputed territory in western Africa, on the border between Togoland (German) and Ashanti (British).

The treaty has been described as a one-sided bargain giving England a whole suit of clothes in exchange for a trouser

'Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, I, pp. 231 ff.

'Hertslet, New Map of Africa, II, pp. 642 ff. See the secret correspondence, now published in Die Grosse Politik, IV, ch. 29, and VIII, ch. 51.

button. But Heligoland was more than a button, it was a useful naval base for the protection of Hamburg and Bremen, and Germany got more than Heligoland. German South West Africa was given a long and narrow extension (often called "Caprivi's finger" or the Caprivizipfel), twenty miles wide, reaching eastward to the Zambesi River, on which an outlet was much desired. German Kamerun, in West Africa, was extended to Lake Chad. And, in the east, although Germany gave up all hope of penetrating through Uganda into the Sudan, nevertheless she did extend the boundary of German East Africa westward to the great lakes (Tanganyika and Nyasa) and Congo Free State, thus barring the road which British imperialists dreamed of stretching from Cape Colony to Cairo. In pursuance of this bargain of 1890, the Germans were able to purchase from Zanzibar for about a million dollars the coast they had hitherto leased.

There were minor boundary disputes still to be settled, but for all practical purposes, the German East Africa Company was in possession of a colony almost twice as large as Germany. The colony was taken over from the company by the German government in 1897. It was Germany's richest and greatest colony. In the highlands, German settlers could find healthful homes, although by 1914 only four thousand had done so.

The German aim was to transform East Africa into a land of productive plantations, conducted by German settlers with negro labor. Huge tracts of land were granted to capitalist companies, and smaller plots to individual planters. But labor was scarce, and rather than become landless serfs the natives rose in violent rebellion in 1905, a rebellion which is said to have caused the death, either in battle or by starvation, of 120,000 natives. After that, the natives were reduced to submission, and large numbers toiled as serfs on German plantations, growing sisal, hemp, cotton, rubber, and other tropical crops. The raw cotton exports increased from less than half a ton in 1902 to about 3000 tons in 1913-14, and about 32,000 acres of cotton fields were in the hands of white planters.1

Although the colony had not yet become self-supporting (deficit of 6.6 million marks in 1913) and though the trade was

'From British Parliamentary Paper, Cmd. 1428 (1921); cf. Lugard, Dual Mandate, 391-2 on the British policy.

only 89 million marks in 1913, hope ran high that the plantations would some day supply many a German factory with raw cotton and other raw materials, and that the healthful uplands would become prosperous German cattle-ranches. But such hopes were cut short by the Great War of 1914.1

THE UGANDA AFFAIR

In the meantime, England took advantage of the treaty of 1890 by declaring protectorates over Nyasaland, Zanzibar, Pemba and Uganda. Regarding the last, at least some suggestion should be given of a very interesting history.2 In the winter of 1890, an able British adventurer-explorer (Capt. Lugard) was sent with three hundred armed natives to offer the king of Uganda the "protection and powerful assistance" of the British. East Africa Company. Mwanga's lack of interest in this magnanimous offer was converted, by threats, into acquiescence, and a treaty was signed. But there was still such intense triangular conflict among "French" Christians, "English" Christians and Mohammedans, that Lugard sought to strengthen his position by bringing in several hundred Sudanese soldiers; with them he brought in unwittingly, it is said, the dread sleeping-sickness which killed off a quarter-million Uganda negroes in the next few years. Nevertheless, the "French" faction dared rebel, and only by force was order restored.

Alarmed by the cost of incessant fighting, the British company decided to withdraw its forces from Uganda, unless it could ob

1 For development of these points, see A. F. Calvert, German East Africa. (London, 1917); H. Fonck, Deutsch-Ostafrika (Berlin, 1909); F. S. Joelson, The Tanganyika Territory (London, 1920); British annual reports on the Tanganyika mandate; British Foreign Office, Handbook of German East Africa; H. Meyer, Das deutsche Kolonialreich, I, pt. 1; Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1920), passim; Dreissig Jahre Deutsche Kolonialpolitik (Berlin), passim. The chief products of the colony in 1913 were sisal (10.3 million marks), rubber (6.6), hides and skins (5.5), raw cotton (2.4), copra (2.3). But these were rapidly increasing. The sisal exports, for instance, grew from 15 tons in 1901 to 7,000 in 1910 and 20,834 in 1913. After the area became a British mandate, by the way, the sisal output dropped to 7,923 tons in 1921 but recovered to 18,428 in 1924. Under British rule, the natives have been encouraged to grow cotton on their own land, and the crop grown by natives has increased from 1,229,099 lbs. to 5,100,000 lbs. in two years, while the crop grown by European planters has remained about 1,700,000 lbs.

See Johnston, op. cit., I, pp. 232 ff.; F. D. Lugard, Rise of our East African Empire (1893), II, chs. 1 ff.

tain financial aid from the British government. Lugard went back to England to make a "buzz" against abandoning Uganda,1 that is to say, to write letters to the press, to make speeches, to conduct a strenuous propaganda, in favor of a government grant to the company. The Church Missionary Society was persuaded to advance a few thousand pounds to postpone the evil day of evacuation, for to missionary organizations evacuation meant abandonment of Protestant converts to either native paganism or French Catholicism. The Church's contribution, a trifling sum, could doubtless have been raised by the East Africa Com. pany's wealthy directors, but it was shrewd tactics to obtain the funds from the church, for it presented the issue as a matter of religion and altruism. The influential London Times likewise gave support, by editorials appealing to British patriotism, or representing Uganda (in very exaggerated terms) as a great market without which English labor would be unemployed, or as a field for British capital. Chambers of commerce joined in the plea. Every motive, political, economic, humanitarian, was urged. Abolition of the slave-trade was put forward, along with other reasons.

3

What the Company actually wanted was almost half a million dollars a year from the Government, to defray the cost of retaining Uganda until that troublesome possession became orderly enough to be profitable. The Government, however, had caution enough to investigate the enterprise it was asked to finance, and the commissioner sent to study the East Africa Company's administration presently returned to London with the report that "the history of British East Africa for the last five years, and its present condition, show us clearly that the experiment of combining administration and trade in the same hands has proved a failure, so far as this part of Africa is concerned; and that the sooner this system is discontinued the better it will be for native races, for British commerce, for

1 F. D. Lugard, op. cit., II, p. 514.

'Cf. Lugard, op. cit., ch. 15. The London Chamber of Commerce in April, 1893, said in a report, apropos of Uganda: "The uniform experience of this country from 1568 down to the present reign is that colonies amply repay the first expenditure in blood and money, and that they pay both by extension of trade and shipping and in the growth of national power and status. . . It should be sufficient for us to know that investments of this class are invariably good in the long run."

3 Ibid., II, p. 643.

Zanzibar, and, as I believe, for the Company itself." This was plain enough. The Government decided to buy out the Company's rights and properties in East Africa and Uganda.

If the establishment of British protectorates in Uganda (1894) and British East Africa (1895) was "an answer to the Church's prayer," as the Church Missionary Society described it, Providence in this case worked through somewhat devious financial negotiations. An offer of £200,000 was refused by the Company as too small a valuation of its humane and patriotic achievements. By persistent haggling, the price was raised to £250,000. Even this sum, so it is asserted, left the Company, when its affairs were liquidated, with a deficit of about £194,000. Governing East Africa and Uganda was not a profitable business, as the British Treasury learned when it was called on to pay deficits ranging usually between one and two hundred thousand pounds a year, after taking over the Company's rights. East Africa has cost the British taxpayers over sixty million dollars (in budget deficits and payments for the Uganda Railway).

BLACK AND WHITE IN KENYA

The British and German shares of East Africa were now well marked out. Germany had gained 384,000 sq. miles; Britain 353,000 (including British East Africa, Uganda, Zanzibar and Pemba). Neither was entirely satisfied. In 1898, as part of the secret bargain described in connection with West Africa, the two Great Powers agreed to divide the Portuguese colony of Mozambique between them, Britain taking the southern part, Germany the northern, in case Portugal should be willing to sell. And when Portugal evinced no such disposition, the two drafted an agreement, in 1913, for the division of Mozambique without Portugal's consent. The outbreak of the Great War occurred in time to prevent final signature of this machiavellian compact. Instead of sharing with Germany, Great Britain was able, through victory, to take German East Africa as a mandate, and to treat all Portuguese Mozambique as a British sphere of economic interest.

'As quoted by Leonard Woolf, Empire and Commerce in Africa, p. 300. I am indebted to his excellent chapter on Zanzibar and East Africa for this and several other facts in this section, particularly regarding the subsidy and purchase price questions.

Cf. infra, p. 498.