Part 43 (1/2)
Much of the credit of the early railway-making was due to Colonel Thys.]
[Footnote 470: _Ibid_. pp. 589-590.]
Far more important is the moral gain which has resulted from the suppression of the slave-trade over a large part of the State. On this point we may quote the testimony of Mr. Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt, British Consul at Boma, in an official report founded on observations taken during a long tour up the Congo. He writes: ”The open selling of slaves and the canoe convoys which once navigated the Upper Congo have everywhere disappeared. No act of the Congo State Government has perhaps produced more laudable results than the vigorous suppression of this widespread evil[471].”
[Footnote 471: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), p. 26.]
King Leopold has also striven hard to extend the bounds of the Congo State. Not satisfied with his compact with France of April 1887, which fixed the River Ubangi and its tributaries as the boundary of their possessions, he pushed ahead to the north-east of those confines, and early in the nineties established posts at Lado on the White Nile and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin. Clearly his aim was to conquer the districts which Egypt for the time had given up to the Mahdi. These efforts brought about sharp friction between the Congolese authorities and France and Great Britain. After long discussions the Cabinet of London agreed to the convention of May 12, 1894, whereby the Congo State gained the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin and the left bank of the Upper Nile, together with a port on the Albert Nyanza. On his side, King Leopold recognised the claims of England to the right bank of the Nile and to a strip of land between the Albert Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Owing to the strong protests of France and Germany this agreement was rescinded, and the Cabinet of Paris finally compelled King Leopold to give up all claims to the Bahr-el-Ghazal, though he acquired the right to lease the Lado district below the Albert Nyanza. The importance of these questions in the development of British policy in the Nile basin has been pointed out in Chapter XVII.
The ostensible aim, however, of the founders of the Congo Free State was, not the exploitation of the Upper Nile district, the making of railways and the exportation of great quant.i.ties of ivory and rubber from Congoland, but the civilising and uplifting of Central Africa. The General Act of the Berlin Conference begins with an invocation to Almighty G.o.d; and the Brussels Conference imitated its predecessor in this particular. It is, therefore, as a civilising and moralising agency that the Congo Government will always be judged at the bar of posterity.
The first essential of success in dealing with backward races is sympathy with their most cherished notions. Yet from the very outset one of these was violated. On July 1, 1885, a decree of the Congo Free State a.s.serted that all vacant lands were the property of the Government, that is, virtually of the King himself. Further, on June 30, 1887, an ordinance was decreed, claiming the right to let or sell domains, and to grant mining or wood-cutting rights on any land, ”the owners.h.i.+p of which is not recognised as appertaining to any one.” These decrees, we may remark, were for some time kept secret, until their effects became obvious.
All who know anything of the land systems of primitive peoples will see that they contravened the customs which the savage holds dear. The plots actually held and tilled by the natives are infinitesimally small when compared with the vast tracts over which their tribes claim hunting, pasturage, and other rights. The land system of the savage is everywhere communal. Individual owners.h.i.+p in the European sense is a comparatively late development. The Congolese authorities must have known this; for nearly all troubles with native races have arisen from the profound differences in the ideas of the European and the savage on the subject of land-holding.
Yet, in face of the experience of former times, the Congo State put forward a claim which has led, or will lead, to the confiscation of all tribal or communal land-rights in that huge area. Such confiscation may, perhaps, be defended in the case of the United States, where the new-comers enormously outnumbered the Red Indians, and tilled land that previously lay waste. It is indefensible in the tropics, where the white settlers will always remain the units as compared with the millions whom they elevate or exploit[472]. The savage holds strongly to certain rudimentary ideas of justice, especially to the right, which he and his tribe have always claimed and exercised, of _using_ the tribal land for the primary needs of life. When he is denied the right of hunting, cutting timber, or pasturage, he feels ”cribbed, cabined, and confined.”
This, doubtless, is the chief source of the quarrels between the new State and its _proteges_, also of the depression of spirits which Mr.
Cas.e.m.e.nt found so prevalent. The best French authorities on colonial development now admit that it is madness to interfere with the native land tenures in tropical Africa.
The method used in the enlisting of men for public works and for the army has also caused many troubles. This question is admittedly one of great difficulty. Hard work must be done, and, in the tropics, the white man can only direct it. Besides, where life is fairly easy, men will not readily come forward to labour. Either the inducement offered must be adequate, or some form of compulsory enlistment must be adopted. The Belgian officials, in the plentiful lack of funds that has always clogged their State, have tried compulsion, generally through the native chiefs. These are induced, by the offer of cotton cloth or bright-coloured handkerchiefs, to supply men from the tribe. If the labourers are not forthcoming, the chief is punished, his village being sometimes burned. By means, then, of gaudy handkerchiefs, or firebrands, the labourers are obtained. They figure as ”apprentices,” under the law of November 8, 1888, which accorded ”special protection to the blacks.”
[Footnote 472: The number of whites in Congoland is about 1700, of whom 1060 are Belgians; the blacks number about 29,000,000, according to Stanley; the Belgian Governor-General, Wahis, thinks this below the truth. See Wauters, _L'etat independant du Congo,_ pp. 261, 432.]
The British Consul, Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt, in his report on the administration of the Congo, stated that the majority of the government workmen at Leopoldville were under some form of compulsion, but were, on the whole, well cared for[473].
[Footnote 473: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1904), p. 27.]
According to a German resident in Congoland, the lot of the apprentices differs little from that of slaves. Their position, as contrasted with that of their former relation to the chief, is humorously defined by the term _liberes_[474] The hards.h.i.+ps of the labourers on the State railways were such that the British Government refused to allow them to be recruited from Sierra Leone or other British possessions.
[Footnote 474: A. Boshart, _Zehn Jahre Afrikanischen Lebens_ (1898), quoted by Fox Bourne, _op. cit._ p. 77. For further details see the article by Mr. Glave, once an official of the Congo Free State, in the _Century Magazine_, vol. liii.; also his work, _Six Years in the Congo_ (1892).]
However, now that a British Cabinet has allowed a great colony to make use of indentured yellow labour in its mines, Great Britain cannot, without glaring inconsistency, lodge any protest against the infringement, in Congoland, of the Act of the Berlin Conference in the matter of the treatment of hired labourers. If the lot of the Congolese apprentices is to be bettered, the initiative must be taken at some capital other than London.
Another subject which nearly concerns the welfare of the Congo State is the recruiting and use of native troops. These are often raised from the most barbarous tribes of the far interior; their pay is very small; and too often the main inducement to serve under the blue banner with the golden star, is the facility for feasting and plunder at the expense of other natives who have not satisfied the authorities. As one of them navely said to Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt, _he preferred to be with the hunters rather than with the hunted._
It seems that grave abuses first crept in during the course of the campaign for the extirpation of slavery and slave-raiding in the Stanley Falls region. The Arab slave-raiders were rich, not only in slaves, but in ivory--prizes which tempted the cupidity of the native troops, and even, it is said, of their European officers. In any case, it is certain that the liberating forces, hastily raised and imperfectly controlled, perpetrated shocking outrages on the tribes for whose sake they were waging war. The late Mr. Glave, in the article in the _Century Magazine_ above referred to, found reason for doubting whether the crusade did not work almost as much harm as the evils it was sent to cure. His words were these: ”The black soldiers are bent on fighting and raiding; they want no peaceful settlement. They have good rifles and ammunition, realise their superiority over the natives with their bows and arrows, and they want to shoot and kill and rob. Black delights to kill black, whether the victim be man, woman, or child, and no matter how defenceless.” This deep-seated habit of mind is hard to eradicate; and among certain of the less reputable of the Belgian officers it has occasionally been used, in order to terrorise into obedience tribes that kicked against the decrees of the Congo State.
Undoubtedly there is great difficulty in avoiding friction with native tribes. All Governments have at certain times and places behaved more or less culpably towards them. British annals have been fouled by many a misdeed on the part of harsh officials and grasping pioneers, while recent revelations as to the treatment of natives in Western Australia show the need of close supervision of officials even in a popularly governed colony. The record of German East Africa and the French Congo is also very far from clean. Still, in the opinion of all who have watched over the welfare of the aborigines--among whom we may name Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Fox Bourne--the treatment of the natives in a large part of the Congo Free State has been worse than in the districts named above[475]. There is also the further d.a.m.ning fact that the very State which claimed to be a great philanthropic agency has, until very recently, refused to inst.i.tute any full inquiry into the alleged defects of its administration.
[Footnote 475: Sir Charles Dilke stated this very forcibly in a speech delivered at the Holborn Town Hall on June 7, 1905.]
Some of these defects may be traced to the bad system of payment of officials. Not only are they underpaid, but they have no pension, such as is given by the British, French, and Dutch Governments to their employees. The result is that the Congolese officer looks on his term of service in that unhealthy climate as a time when he must enrich himself for life. Students of Roman History know that, when this feeling becomes a tradition, it is apt to lead to grave abuses, the recital of which adds an undying interest to the speech of Cicero against Verres. In the case of the Congolese administrators the State provided (doubtless unwittingly) an incentive to harshness. It frequently supplemented its inadequate stipends by ”gratifications,” which are thus described and criticised by M. Cattier: ”The custom was introduced of paying to officials prizes proportioned to the amount of produce of the 'private domain' of the State, and of the taxes paid by the natives. That amounted to the inciting, by the spur of personal interest, of officials to severity and to rigour in the application of laws and regulations.”
Truly, a more pernicious application of the plan of ”payment by results”
cannot be conceived; and M. Cattier affirms that, though nominally abolished, it existed in reality down to the year 1898.
Added to this are defects arising from the uncertainty of employment. An official may be discharged at once by the Governor-General on the ground of unfitness for service in Africa; and the man, when discharged, has no means of gaining redress. The natural result is the growth of a habit of almost slavish obedience to the authorities, not only in regard to the written law, but also to private and semi-official intimations[476].
[Footnote 476: Cattier, _Droit et Administration . . . du Congo,_ pp.
243-245.]