CHAPTER X.
The Story of the French Congo.
Ruin and death … terrifying depopulation …. universal exodus … the continuous destruction of the population—purely and simply.—De Brazza.
In 1899 King Leopold planned what, after his initial triumph in hoodwinking public opinion fifteen years before, was the master-stroke of his African career. And he succeeded in carrying it out. He induced the French Government of the day by "scandalous, financial and political intrigues, bribery, corruption and cowardice," as a French author of repute remarks, to adopt and apply in the coterminous territory of the French Congo, the principles and the policy that he had inaugurated in the Congo Free State. Thenceforth the French Congo was ringed round by a fence of Franco-Belgian financial interests. His object in doing so was obvious. The Congo Reform movement in England was still weak and had aroused little or no echo abroad. But it was gathering in volume, and the Sovereign of the Congo State was uneasy. By persuading one of the great Powers to imitate his methods, he established a community of interest with its Government, thus enormously strengthening his position should it be severely assailed. He sought, indeed, `to contaminate not only the French Congo, but the whole of the French West African dependencies and the German Kamerun also. His success in Kamerun was shortlived. The German Government granted two concessions to Belgo-German financial groups, but after about twelve months' experience, drastically restricted their privileges and refused to grant any more. The attempt to introduce the System into French West Africa, though supported from Paris, was defeated by the combined opposition of the high officials and of the powerful trading firms established there. M. Ballay, the Governor-General, bluntly described it as requiring for its enforcement "a soldier behind every producer," and set his face against it absolutely.
So far as the French Congo was concerned, circumstances played into the hands of King Leopold and his financial bodyguard. As in the Congo Free State, the bulk of the French Congo forests are full of rubber vines and trees. Emulation and envy were aroused in French colonial circles by the prodigious development in rubber exports from the Congo Free State. French finance was excited by the wild wave of speculation in Congo rubber shares which swept over Belgium, and by the prodigious profits of the great Belgian Concessionaire Companies. These results were contrasted with the conditions prevailing in the French Congo, which had long been the Cinderella of the French African dependencies, and where French commercial enterprise had been almost wholly lacking. What trade existed, and it was by no means inconsiderable, was confined to the maritime region and to the Ogowe basin. It had been largely built up by British firms, and was almost wholly in their hands, although there was plenty of room, even within that area, for dozens of French firms had they chosen to embark on the venture. The whole of the middle and upper French Congo was commercially untouched. King Leopold played his cards skilfully. The French press was flooded with articles contrasting the "prosperity" of the Congo Free State with the "stagnation" of tho French Congo. Much pressure was brought to bear upon the French Government of the day. The King's personal friendship with a prominent politician conspicuously identified with the French "Colonial Party" was a useful asset. In due course the plunge was taken. Before the close of 1900 the whole territory of the French Congo had been parcelled out among forty financial corporations on a thirty years' charter. Belgian capital figured in most of them, and the men at the head of the Congo Free State corporations reappeared on the boards of many of them. With Belgian capital, Belgian methods, and Belgian agents to execute them, the "Belgianising" or, more justly, the Leopoldianising of the French Congo was, indeed, carried out in thorough-going fashion.
Other methods, other men. When these revolutionary changes were in their preliminary stage the necessity of getting rid of the then Governor of the dependency, De Brazza, was recognised and acted upon. De Brazza played so prominent a part in subsequent developments that his personality is woven into the story and demands brief reference. This naval officer of Brazilian descent and French naturalisation is an unique figure in modern African annals. For a quarter of a century, from 1874 to 1899, he toiled continuously and almost uninterruptedly for the political interests of his adopted country in this tropical region so deadly to white men. It was entirely owing to his labours that France was able to claim this vast territory as coming within her sphere of influence in the African Settlement of 1884. He possessed an extraordinary influence over the native mind. The type of political agent and administrator who carved bloody tracks through the "bush" he held in abhorrence. He travelled with no military retinue and with few personal attendants. He never fired a shot against the natives, whose internal quarrels he healed, and by whom he was venerated as the "great white father" over an enormous area. For these simple and primitive forest dwellers, whose many qualities he discerned and appreciated, he possessed a real affection, and the sight of their agony and ruin after six years of frantic exploitation broke his heart.
The System imported into the French Congo being fundamentally identical with the Congo Free State original upon which it modelled itself, the inevitable consequences followed as a matter of course. French officialdom shrank at first from avowing the logical interpretation of its decrees. It was, however, soon compelled to do so owing to the legal resistance offered by the British firms in the Lower Congo to the proceedings of the representatives of the Concessionaire Companies. Having committed the initial and fatal error, the French Government and the local Administration in the French Congo found themselves involved deeper and deeper in the mire, until the French Congo became an almost exact replica of its neighbour.
The Concessionaire Companies acquired by their charters the sole right of possession of the negotiable products of the country. They became de facto owners of the rubber trees and vines within their respective concessions. This implied, of course, dispossession of the native. Dispossession of the native implied, in its turn, the immediate cessation of the act of purchase and sale—otherwise trade—between the native population and white men. Where such trade was non-existent no vocal objection by third parties to the cardinal feature of the system would arise, since there were no third parties to raise it. It was otherwise where such trade had long existed, i.e., in the lower Congo, the portion of the territory nearest the Coast-line. Some of the Europeans engaged in it compounded with the Concessionaires and cleared out of the country. To their infinite credit, the British firms declined to do so. Their respective heads were prominent men in the civic and commercial life of Liverpool. One of them, Mr. John Holt, was one of the foremost living authorities on West Africa, and a man of very great personality and force of character. If he had followed the dictates of his business interests he would have allowed his firm to be bought out. But he realised that something over and above material interests was concerned; that a vital principle affecting his country's Treaty rights, the interests of a helpless population, and the sanctity of international law was in question. Thanks to his influence, the British firms made a firm stand. The moral strength of their position was unassailable. They had been in the country for a quarter of a century. Their enterprise furnished the local Administration with a substantial portion of its revenue—in the seven years preceding the introduction of the system they had paid £112,000 in custom dues, patents, and licences. They had always been on excellent terms with the French officials, with whom they had co-operated in exploring and opening up the country. They had received no communication of any kind from the French Government suggesting that their presence in the dependency was no longer desired. They took their stand upon the rights of law-abiding Englishmen to equitable treatment, and upon the clauses of an international Act—to which their Government was a signatory. The struggle they sustained for several years in the local Courts of the dependency, and, subsequently, by public action in which they were supported by all the important Chambers of Commerce in the country, was of immeasurable value in helping the wider public to understand the basic iniquities of the Congo System. The wrong inflicted upon them was ultimately acknowledged, and substantial compensation was paid them by the French Government. But the British Foreign Office could not be induced to take the wide view of the case which they themselves continuously urged: to treat it, i.e., not as a matter of personal injustice, but primarily as an international issue involving consequences of profound international importance.
••••••
"One idea dominates the system. All the products of the conceded territory, whatever they may be, are the property of the Concessionaire Company," thus ran the Decree which a Colonial Minister saw fit to promulgate as the result of the continuous litigation in the lower Congo Courts between British merchants and the Concessionaires. Thus officially guided, the Courts, which in several instances had rendered temporising or conflicting judgments, hastened to bring themselves into line with ministerial decisions. The Loango Court held that the Concessionaire Companies had "the exclusive right of collecting and exploiting the natural products of the soil." The Libreville Court proclaimed that "the rubber belongs to the Concessionaires, and not to the natives who gather it." This Decree and these judgments produced a painful effect among the few Frenchmen who knew what they portended. De Brazza came out of his retirement and wrote a letter to Le Temps:
France—he said—has assumed a duty towards the native tribes… We must not sacrifice them to the vain hope of immediate results by thoughtless measures of coercion. We should be committing a great mistake by enforcing … taxes upon the products of the soil… It would constitute a great blow to our dignity if such labour and such taxes were converted into a sort of draft-to-order in favour of the Concessionaires.
M. Cousin, a well-known authority on colonial questions, who had been a warm defender of the Concessionaire experiment, published a pamphlet, in which he declared that he had been mistaken. M. Fondère, another authority of repute, wrote an open letter to the Colonial Minister, in the course of which he said:
The right to sell his products to whomsoever he may please cannot be denied to the native, because he has always possessed it. Moreover, it would be quite illusory to think of taking this right away from him. That could only be done by force of arms.
No consideration of the latter kind was likely to stand in his way. The years which followed were to witness the attempt to compel "by force of arms" some nine million African natives, or as many of that total who could be reached, to submit not only to be robbed, but to spend their lives in the extremely arduous and dangerous task of gathering and preparing india-rubber in the virgin forests, on behalf of a few wealthy financiers in Brussels, Paris and Antwerp.
The Concessionaires settled down to their work, and the local Administration, which under the concession decrees received a royalty of 15 per cent, upon the Companies' output, associated itself still more closely with the latter by establishing a direct tax payable in rubber, the proceeds of which were turned over to the Companies. The local Administration and the Concessionaires thus became partners in a common object, that of forcing as much rubber as possible out of the natives. In the lower part of the French Congo the effect was immediate. Here, as already explained, the native population had been traders with white men, directly and indirectly, for decades. To their bewilderment they found themselves suddenly faced with a demand for rubber as a "tax" from the Administration, and with a demand for rubber as by right divine from strange white men who claimed to OWN it, and claimed power to compel the real owners to collect it for whatever the former chose to pay. The trading stations where the natives had been wont to carry their produce and barter it—and haggle over the price, as the native knows so well how to do—they were forbidden to approach. The natives of the French Congo did what any other people would have done. They declined to be despoiled of their property and robbed of the fruits of their labours. The chiefs appealed to the authorities and asked what they had done to be so "punished." Appeals were in vain. Refusal to "work rubber" was met with attempted compulsion. The natives rope, with that absence of combination and with that virtual powerlessness in the face of modern weapons of offence which characterises the unhappy inhabitant of the equatorial forest. The first year of the new "System" closed amid scenes of chaos and destruction, with raiding bands armed by the Concessionaires, and punitive expeditions conducted by the Administration carrying fire and sword from one end of the country to the other. The work of twenty years had been undone in twelve months.
In the upper French Congo, where European trade had not yet penetrated, the demand for rubber came with equal suddenness and was accompanied by the same results, but it was not until long afterwards that these results came to light. In Paris every effort was made to conceal the true state of affairs, and for three years the rubber saraband went on, a large quantity of that article finding its way to Bordeaux and Antwerp. As the new "System" took root, the morale of the Europeans involved in enforcing it followed the inevitable downward grade. Gradually the local Administration became demoralised from top to bottom. Reports from experienced officials of the old régime who, appalled at what was going on, communicated direct with the Colonial Office in Paris, were suppressed. The increasing vigour of the British agitation against the Congo Free State was an additional reason for keeping the truth from the French public. King Leopold's policy was bearing its fruits. The French Administration was committed to the hilt in a system of exploitation, which was being denounced in the Parliament and the Press of France's ally.
Up to this, time specific information was lacking, although the air was full of unpleasant rumours. A bombshell had been dropped into the Concessionaire camp by the remarks of the reporter of the Colonial Budget for 1904. The Colonial Budget in France is presented every year to the Chamber in an elaborate report drawn up by a deputy who is appointed for the purpose. M. Dubief, the reporter for that year, vigorously condemned the new "System," declaring that "slavery" was its "indispensable corollary." He was smothered in an avalanche of abuse in the French and Belgian Press, and his indictment was not discussed in the Chamber.
But murder will out. In this case the murders were numbered by tens of thousands.
Early in 1905 an "indiscretion" was committed, and a whole batch of suppressed official reports were precipitated into the light of day. The French public was edified to learn that crimes and atrocities similar to those with which the world was becoming familiar in the Congo Free State were of every-day occurrence in the French Congo, and apparently, although a& yet the connection was only vaguely understood, from the same causes. They learned of floggings and burning of villages, of rape and mutilation, of natives being used as targets for revolver practice, and as human experiments to test the efficacy of dynamite cartridges; of "hostage-houses" in which men, women and children perished—and all this in connection with the procuring of india-rubber. The sensation was considerable. "Interpellations" in the Chamber were threatened. The Government of the day was struck with panic. In its extremity, it turned to the man who had been neglected and put on one side, and whose warnings had been disregarded—De Brazza. He was asked to take charge of a Commission of investigation which should proceed at once to the French Congo. He accepted. The decision struck the Boards of the Concessionaire companies with consternation. Immense pressure was at once brought to bear upon the Government, and, repenting of their action almost ere the ink was dry on the letters of appointment, Ministers strove by every means to thwart their own nominee. Only by natural pertinacity and the considerable influence he wielded in certain quarters did De Brazza succeed in securing an official staff and in defeating an attempt to send out another Commission, independent of his own, to spy upon his movements. As it was, he was forced to leave without having been furnished by the Colonial Office with a single one of the dozens of reports from its officials in the French Congo, which had been accumulating in its bureaux for the past four years!
For four months De Brazza and his staff pursued their investigations. De Brazza did not spare himself. His activity was prodigious: his increasing grief pitiful to behold. "Ruin and terror," he wrote home, "have been imported into this unfortunate colony." The river banks were deserted where formerly a numerous population fished and traded. From the Ogowe and its affluents whole tribes had disappeared. Floggings, armed raids, "hostage-houses," had everywhere replaced the peaceful relationship of commercial intercourse. All over the country the wretched natives, goaded into rebellion, were struggling against their oppressors: fleeing to the forests, they subsisted—or starved on—roots and berries. Great numbers had perished. The following specific instances are selected from the mass of evidence. In the Upper Ubanghi the agent of a Concessionaire company had summoned the Chiefs of a number of neighbouring villages, which had been slow in gathering rubber, to "talk over matters." They were then seized, tied to trees, and flogged until the blood ran down their backs. Correspondence found in the offices of another company included letters from the Board in Paris containing such sentiments as these: "Do not forget that our agents must play the part of miniature pirates" (pirates au petit pied); and, in connection with troubles that had arisen with a particular Chief, stress was laid upon the utility of "that plaything which is called a Maxim." In the Lobaye region, the scene of repeated uprisings and bloody reprisals, the agent of the local Concessionaire company was an ex-agent of the infamous and notorious Abir company of the Congo State. In the N'Gunié region no fewer than five military expeditions had been sent against the natives in as many months at the request of the local Concessionaire company. In the Shari, the Chief of an important tribe had been arrested because his people did not bring in enough rubber, and had died in prison. In the neighbourhood of Bangui an official had caused fifty-eight women and ten children to be taken as hostages to compel their male relatives to bring in rubber: in three weeks forty-five of these women and two of the children had died of starvation and want of air, packed tightly in a small dwelling place. At Fort Sibut one hundred and nineteen women and little girls had been similarly arrested, and many had died. An official circular had prescribed that these "hostages-houses" should be erected in the bush and out of sight of possible travellers. In one of the concessions of the Lower Congo the natives had been forbidden to make salt in order to compel them to buy it from the company, which would only sell it against large quantities of rubber; widespread sickness ensuing, salt being an indispensable article of native diet in tropical Africa. The judicial machinery had become hopelessly corrupted, and the gravest abominations were left unpunished. This was hardly surprising in view of a circular from the Governor-General of the dependency to his officials complaining of the small yield from the rubber taxes and stating: "I do not conceal from you that I shall base myself, in recommending your promotion, especially upon the yield cf the native taxes, which should be the object of your constant attention." In the interior "terrifying depopulation," a "universal exodus." "In the Ubanghi-Shari," wrote De Brazza, "I have found an impossible situation, the continuous destruction of the population—purely and simply."
Another Frenchman of note, Auguste Chevalier, whose reputation as an expert in tropical forestry is world- wide, has since recorded in a bulky volume the state of the French Congo, whither he was sent on an official scientific expedition. His descriptions are pen pictures not of the more revolting atrocities, but of the daily, deadly, permanent effects of the "System" upon native life. They help, too, to bring home to us, all that there was of promise in these primitive peoples, before they were handed over body and soul to the cynical vileness of modern capitalistic finance. Commenting upon the ruined and abandoned villages on the river banks, as he proceeds on his northward journey, he writes:
It is impossible to describe the lamentable impression made upon one in the contemplation of these huts torn asunder by the storms. The neglected fruit trees and fields of manioc,[1] where monkeys and hippopotami now find nourishment. And yet how considerable was the effort involved on the part of these so-called lazy people. They had to conquer the forest and carve out of it their few acres of cultivated lands, fight the forest continuously to prevent it from winning back its ascendancy. And now, once again, the forest invades the site. The seeds of forest trees have germinated in the fields, and the high grasses grow upon the desolate pathways.
He goes on:
The majority of the inhabitants, terrified by the military oppressions, have fled… One gathers a very favourable impression from those that remain… Their thatch-roofed houses are spacious and clean… They have goats, hens, cats and dogs. Their plantations are most excellently kept. (He enumerates seven different cultivated vegetables, besides bananas and plantains.)
No doubt remains in my mind as to the cause of all these disturbances… The Concessionaires and the Senegalese soldiers treat the natives in the cruellest fashion, impose all kinds of forced labour upon them, often pillage without restraint. The agents of the Companies call the native a brute who will not gather rubber for them, talk of suppressing them and importing labour from other countries. It is odious and absurd. But some of the officers who are travelling on this steamer, especially the higher grade officer?, agree with these views. The natives fly at the approach of the steamer. (He then narrates several specific cases of burning of villages and slaughter of natives, and continues): It is this sort of policy which explains why the native is abandoning these rich and admirable valleys…
These are typical observations selected from a great number, and common to all the regions Chevalier traversed. Every phase of the system in the Congo Free State, reported by innumerable witnesses, is seen by Chevalier's narrative to be reproduced in the French Congo. Thus Chevalier notes everywhere famine resulting from requisitions in rubber and in foodstuffs, which leaves the inhabitants no time to attend to the cultivation of foodstuffs for their own sustenance; utter exhaustion among the men leading to sexual incapacity; tribal women forced to feed great numbers of idle female camp followers attached to the administrative centres, themselves dying of hunger, seeing their children perishing for lack of nourishment, compelled to thrust water into their babies' mouths through narrow-necked gourds to stop their cries as they suck vainly at withered teats; children so reduced that they appear like walking skeletons; one or two powerful so-called Arab chiefs in the far interior raiding right and left for slaves, whom they sell to cattle-raising communities further north in order to procure bullocks demanded of them by the Administration as tribute, or employed as agents to collect rubber and ivory for Concessionaires, who give them guns in exchange, which facilitate their raiding operations. He sums up the whole position as he then found it thus:
Soon, if this policy is persisted in, if the incendiarism and devastation of villages does not stop … if the concessionaires are always to enjoy the right of imposing such and such a "corvée" upon the inhabitants, and to place an embargo upon all the latter possess, the banks of the Congo, the Ubanghi, and the Sangha will be completely deserted… If this policy be not changed, in half a century from now these hardworking races will have completely disappeared, and the desert will enter into possession of French Central Africa.
One may compare that passage with another from one of the most terrible books which have ever illustrated the systematic prostitution of civilisation in the Congo Basin, by a junior French Congo official, himself a participator in this welter of abomination, unable to alter it and presently sinking to its level:
The dead, we no longer count them. The villages, horrible charnel-houses, disappear in this yawning gulf. A thousand diseases follow in our footsteps… And this martyrdom continues… We white men must shut our eyes not to see the hideous dead, the dying who curse us, and the wounded who implore, the weeping women and the starving children. We must stop our ears not to hear the lamentations, the cries, the maledictions which rise from every foot of land, from every tuft of grass.
••••••
De Brazza bad been furnished upon his departure with secret instructions from the French Government, in which he had been urged to make it clear in his report that the system established in the French Congo since 1899 was not identical with that of the Congo Free State. These instructions, which were subsequently published with the authority of the Comtesse de Brazza, are extraordinarily interesting. They show on the one hand, that French governing circles were fully aware as far back as 1905 of the character of the Belgian "System" (described in the "instructions" as "proceedings of methodical tyranny") which had been so calamitously imitated in the French Congo and of its necessary consequences; and their anxiety, on the other hand, to be able to dissociate their country from the charge of pursuing an identical policy in the French Congo. They ran, in part, as follows:
1. That the system of land concessions which she (France) has created (mis en vigueur) reposes upon principles differing from those inaugurated in the Congo State; that she has never instituted a "domain" analogous to that of the "domaine privé" of the King, thus identifying in the direct interest of a commercial exploitation conducted by herself, the principles of sovereignty, demesniality (Crown lands), and private property.
2. That she maintains an army (force publique) solely for the purpose of upholding general security, without ever compelling the natives, by various measures of coercion, to enter the service of a commercial, agricultural, or industrial concern.
3. That she has taken all necessary precautions to allow of third parties being able to trade freely in the French portion of the conventional basin of the Congo, even in conceded territory.
4. That she has scrupulously reserved all the customary rights and all the food crops of the natives (cultures vivrières), even in conceded territory.
5. That she has always been careful to punish acts of violence committed upon the natives when brought to the knowledge of the authorities; that these acts have, moreover, always been limited to individuals, without it being possible to attribute them to an organised system; that the French Congo has never witnessed a whole public or private enterprise having recourse as a principle, in order to maintain itself in being (pour subsister) or to hasten its success, to proceedings of methodical tyranny, analogous to those emploved in the portion of the Congo State actually forming the object of investigation.
The policy which dictated these instructions and the investigating mission confided to De Brazza, was clear enough. In the first place the revelations of what was taking place in the French Congo had caused so great a stir that there was no option but to order an inquiry, and to appoint a man to carry it out, whose integrity was universally acknowledged and whose reputation was international. In the second place the French Government had reason to believe that the Balfour-Lansdowne Government would not be able to resist the growing national demand for an international Conference into the affairs of the Congo Free State, and intended to press for such a conference which Lord Lansdowne had suggested in his circular Note to the signatory Powers. French Ministers were prepared to fall in with the British request, the more so as French diplomacy had been quietly working for several years for an international partition of the Congo Free State. But, if such a conference were held, it was indispensable that the French Government should be in a position to go into it with clean hands, vouched for as clean by a man of De Brazza's international standing. The French politicians then in office calculated, perhaps, that De Brazza would play the politico-diplomatic game they desired him to play. But De Brazza was determined to get at the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. His principal biographer on that memorable inquiry, M. Felicien Challaye, has recorded that "De Brazza felt a great personal responsibility weighing upon him." It was due to his influence that these millions of African natives had accepted French "protection." It was his manifest duty to secure justice and redress for them, if injustice had been inflicted.
In his very first reports from the French Congo, De Brazza made the Government understand that he could not do what was demanded of him in the secret instructions. He was driven to the painful necessity of telling his Government that the conditions he found in the French Congo could not be explained by individual actions of an atrocious character, but were due to the "System" itself. He felt impelled to inform his Government that France was permitting piracy and murder as an institution under the tri-colour; and that "liberty, equality and fraternity" in the French Congo, spelt liberty to rob and massacre, equality with the systematised scoundrelism reigning on the other side of the great African river, fraternity in crime with Leopold's slave-drivers.
••••••
From that moment French diplomacy placed every obstacle in the way of an International Conference into the affairs of the Congo Free State, and Franco-Belgian diplomacy worked all over the world against the efforts of the reformers, while the increasing tension between London and Berlin over the Morocco affair gave the Foreign Office a further excuse for doing nothing. Diplomatic intrigue, capitalist finance, the general anarchy of European relationships, combined to perpetuate for many years the agony and the extermination, in a literal sense, of millions of human beings in both Congos. From that moment, too, French Ministers, vigorously pressed by the Boards of the Concessionaire companies and by Belgian diplomacy, determined to hush up the scandal.
What prodigious happenings hang upon apparently slender issues. Had De Brazza lived to return to France the whole history of the ensuing seven years might well have been wholly different. French national policy is unutterably selfish and finance-ridden to a supreme degree. But no country in the world contains more individuals capable of casting aside every personal consideration in the pursuit of abstract justice. As it was, a few courageous men did arise who strove manfully to clear their country from the stain inflicted upon it. But De Brazza would have made an appeal direct to the hearts of the French people, which it is difficult to believe would not have proved irresistible. And who knows but that the coming together of the great Powers in a cause of human justice and mercy would not have proved a solvent to the bitter suspicions which divided them, and saved humanity the terrible experiences of the past five years. That was the thought which inspired some of us in the sustained efforts we made before and after De Brazza's untimely end, to bring such a conference about. The ways of Providence are, indeed, inscrutable. De Brazza died on his way home. M. Felicien Challaye, who was with him to the end, describes the last days of this distinguished man in terms of poignant emotion:
The fate of the Congo troubles him more than his own. When he has the strength to talk it is of the Congo that he speaks. … He was bowed down by an immense sorrow. M. de Brazza passionately loved the Congo, which he had explored and acquired for France, then governed and organised. He suffered to find it in a truly lamentable condition… From these sinister discoveries M. De Brazza suffered in the deepest recesses of his soul. They hastened his end.
••••••
The members of De Brazza's staff returned with all the necessary documents to elaborate a report. They wore forbidden to do so. A bitter personal campaign was at once started against them in the French Colonial Press, wholly subject to the Concessionaire Boards. They were instructed to hand over their documents to a Committee appointed by the Colonial Minister. The Committee as appointed was not free from bias in favour of the "System" which De Brazza condemned. But the evidence was so overwhelming that it could not but substantiate his findings. The Ministry suppressed the Committee's Report on two grounds. First, that its effect internationally would be prejudicial to France—a further tribute to the anarchy of international relationships. Secondly, that its publication would lead to actions at law by the Concessionaire companies which had threatened to take proceedings against the Government. This admission momentarily staggered the French Chamber before which it was made by the Colonial Minister. "But that is blackmail." remarked one Deputy. " And you have capitulated at its threat!" shouted another.
The three days' Debate (February 19–21, 1906) in the Chamber to which the suppression of the evidence, collected by De Brazza and his staff and the suppression of the Committee's report gave rise, was notable for further appalling revelations, greeted with cries of "monstrous," "scandalous," "unbelievable," from all over the Chamber. The most perfunctory accounts were given of those debates in the British Press. Indeed, acting no doubt under direct official inspiration from Downing Street, the tragedy of the French Congo has, from first to last, been withheld as far as possible from the British people. In the course of the debates in the Chamber, the Socialists and the Radicals joined forces. The gravamen of the charge against the Government was that it was upholding a system shameful for the honour of France, and that it was guilty of concealing atrocities "less to be imputed to men than to the 'System' itself, of which they constitute the expression." A large number of official documents were cited. It was conclusively shown that the practice of seizing women and children as hostages from villages and towns short in the rubber tribute had become "general in the Congo for the past five years," and that this organised warfare upon the helpless section of the population had become, as in the Congo Free State, one of the recognised media of coercion, "regarded as the natural complement of all disciplinary measures." These wretched women, thus torn from their homes, served other ends. They were used to attract, or to retain, the services of carriers to carry the foodstuffs and general equipment of the numerous "disciplinary expeditions" traversing the country in every direction, and to satisfy the lusts of the native soldiers. "I am sending you," ran one of the official documents quoted, a communication from one official to another, "to-day, by canoe, 54 women and children for Fort Possel. No doubt the presence of a considerable number of women will soon attract the men…" Grafted upon the demand for rubber came the demand for carriers to convey the stuff from long distances to the river banks, and also for the purposes mentioned above. Districts which did not produce rubber were taxed in carriers, i.e., in human labour, and became exhausted and drained of their population. An official report stated:
In order to find carriers we have to organise regular man-hunts amongst empty villages and abandoned plantations; everywhere thrust back, north, east, south and west by military posts which are instructed to prevent the mass-exodus of the population, the natives hide in the remoter parts of the forest or seek refuge in inaccessible caves, living the life of animals, and subsisting wretchedly off roots and berries.
Another official report spoke of the "awful mad terror of this race, which a few years ago was rich, numerous and prosperous, grouped in immense villages, to-day dispersed." Of 40,000 natives living in one particular region, 20,000 had been "destroyed" in two years. Many quotations were given of typical extracts from officials in the course of punishing native villages which had not furnished a sufficient quantity of rubber to the Concessionaires, or which refused to pay the rubber tax. Here are some of them:
Action against Kolewan village. The Fans of the Upper Cuno river had declined to pay the tribute. The village was burned and the plantations destroyed… Expedition against the Bekanis: The village was again burned and 3,000 banana trees (staple food supply) destroyed. The village of Kua was also burnt, and the plantations razed to the ground… Action against Abiemafal village: All the houses were set fire to and the plantations razed to the ground… Action against Alcun: The villages were bombarded, and afterwards destroyed, with the plantations… Action against the Essamfami: Villages destroyed. The country on the Borne river has been put to fire and sword.
The following passage was quoted from the report of one of the inspectors appointed by De Brazza:
What villages burned down, what plantations destroyed, what hatreds engendered against us in order to get in a few thousands of francs! Are not such deeds unworthy of France?
With terrible force the accusers in the Chamber drove home again and again the official circulars of the Governor-General to his officials, notifying them that their promotion would depend upon the measure of their success in increasing the yield of the rubber taxes. They commented upon the close connection between the Concessionaire Companies of the French Congo and the Belgian Congo Free State Companies. They emphasised the sinister influence of the Concessionaire Companies upon successive French Colonial Ministers, illustrating it with such facts as, for instance, that the chef de cabinet of one such Minister had subsequently become the director of six Concessionaire Companies. They asked what conceivable advantage could accrue to France from the prosecution of so atrocious a policy; what was the mysterious influence which permitted a number of financial corporations to impose their will upon a French Colony, making the Administration of it their active accomplices, massacring its inhabitants, ruining the country? They cited more official documents, in which specific agente of the Concessionaire Companies were charged with "torturing natives to death," or "raiding villages, carrying off their inhabitants and demanding ransom," or "inflicting acts of such bestiality upon the natives that it is difficult to narrate them"; or, again, importing large quantities of guns, raising levies, arming them and letting them loose upon the native villages. They showed the declension in the morality of the whole official hierarchy in the Congo, from the Governor-General, who had at first resisted the pressure brought to bear upon him by the Concessionaire Companies, and had even written to the Colonial Minister of the day: "They are relying upon me to organise the production of 'red' rubber in the French Congo. I have no intention of justifying such hopes": to officials of the lowest rank who could not be punished for their crimes without involving the whole Administration.
They brought forward an "Order of the Day" (Resolution) stating that the honour of France demanded the production of the whole of the De Brazza evidence, the whole of the official reports, and the report of the Committee of Inquiry. The chief sensation of the debates occurred when the President of that Committee, M. de Lanessan, formerly Governor of Indo-China, rose in his seat and urged the Government to accede to the request. The Minister persisted in his refusal, and the Chamber divided, 167 voting for the resolution, and 345 against.
••••••
This was the one serious effort made by the French Parliament to drag the full truth into light. Its defeat ensured immunity for the Concessionaire Companies and the prolongation of the "System." Everything went on as before. Not a single Concessionaire Company's charter was annulled. All that was done was to appoint a number of Government inspectors to travel about the French Congo. All their reports were suppressed as they were received, and it is only through the brave handful of French reformers that the contents of some of them have become known. In 1910 the French Government, finding that despite its efforts the nature of these reports was leaking out, and urged thereto by the Concessionaire Boards, suppressed the inspectors. All these things were kept from the knowledge of the British public. In 1908 an American traveller passed through the maritime regions of the French Congo and thus recorded her impressions:
Who is to blame for the annihilating conditions existing to-day in French Congo? Commerce is dead, towns once prosperous and plentiful are deserted and falling into decay, and whole tribes are being needlessly and ignominiously crushed for the aggrandisement of the few. … Towns are sacked and plundered; fathers, brothers, husbands, are put in foul-smelling prisons until those at home can get together the taxes necessary to secure their relief. France has granted exclusive rights to concessionaires who claim everything upon, above, in or about any hectare of land described in their grant. … To be hurled from active, prosperous freedom into inactive and enforced poverty would demoralise even a civilised country; how farther reaching, then, is it with the savage? … As the French say, the entire country is bouleversé, i.e., overthrown, in confusion, subverted, agitated, unsettled. And the French are right in so naming the result of their own misdeeds. All is desolation, demoralisation, annihilation. Native customs are violated; native rights ignored. … Great plains which not long since swarmed with the life and bustle of passing trade caravans are now silent and deserted. Ant-hills and arid grass and wind-swept paths are the only signs of life upon them.
The following are typical illustrations of the character of the reports received by the French Colonial Ministry from its inspectors between 1906 and 1909, and which successive French Ministers suppressed. They were published in full from time to time by the French League for the Defence of the Congo natives, but were suppressed by the entire French Press, with the exception of the Courrier Européen, the Humanité, and one or two other papers. An agent of the N'Kemi Keni Company is denounced for having allowed a native named Oio to be tied up by one of the armed ruffians in the Company's employ, so tightly that his hands sloughed away at the wrists. A judicial investigation ensued (one of the very few judicial decisions in the French Congo which have ever seen the light since 1899, for, like all other reports, they have been officially suppressed). The examining magistrate absolved the incriminated agent of direct responsibility, but fined him fifteen francs! The mental condition of the French Congo magistracy may be estimated by the following extract from this magistrate's report: "Oio presented himself in good health, minus his hands, and in cheerful fashion, deposed," etc. A dossier against the Lobaye Company deposited with the Court at Brazzaville contains one hundred and fifty-three counts of "crimes and delinquencies" against the Company's agents. The inspector reporting to the Ministry as to this Company and others, urges that "prosecution should no longer be directed against individual agents, but against the Companies themselves who have counselled, or even tolerated, practices against which humanity protests." Fraud to the detriment of the natives on the part of the Sette Cama Company is reported, and its suppression suggested. Of the Fernan Vaz Company, it is reported that the Company has caused "the exodus and revolt of the natives by the proceedings of its agents"; that it does not trade, but practises "coercion and slavery" and has violated "the most elementary rules of honesty." The Colonial Minister is urged to cancel its charter, as also that of the Brettonne Company. The Lefini Company is reported us treating its labour "with brutality and dishonesty" the Company's monopoly "becomes in its hands an odious weapon." The Mobaye Company is similarly denounced and its suppression recommended. The Haute N'Gunie Company is charged with having "by its exactions and brutalities caused uprisings in regions where merchants were formerly welcomed." The withdrawal of its charter is urged. A formidable indictment is drawn up and forwarded to the Colonial Minister in connection with the Company du Congo occidental. It includes the burning of 20 villages, and the capture of hostages—visited by a fine of £8 in the local court! There is a whole list of murders and acts of violence: the Company's proceedings have brought about "the gravest disorders" and its charter should be withdrawn. Of the Lobaye Company, a later report says that its recent profits "have been made in blood." Our silence would make us the accomplices of all its crimes and all its thefts. The Administration has the remedy—suppression. "The methods of the Bavili Company are described in yet another report as "methods of ruin, and a perpetual menace to public safety … methods especially resented by the natives after two hundred years' experience of freedom of commerce." The M'Poko Company is accused of having caused the murder of 1.500 natives in its concession.
Not only did successive French Governments suppress these reports of their own inspectors, but not a single Concessionaire company was proceeded against, or ever has been.
In 1910, M. Violette, the reporter for the French Colonial Budget of that year, concluded that:
The Dependency is absolutely exhausted… The rights of , the natives continue to be violated with the connivance of the Administration… The Concessionaire Companies are the most formidable enemies of the Dependency; it is time that they were spoken to in the only way which they are capable of understanding. … In this unfortunate dependency the Governor-General, the Governor, the Commissioners exist, and do not govern. There is no law, no authority, other than that of the Boards of the Concessionaire Companies.
If the Concessionaires ruled the French Congo on the spot, they also ruled the Colonial Ministry in all that pertained to Congo affairs. In 1909, the Colonial Minister was an honourable and amiable politician, who would have taken a strong line had he dared. He confessed, in his own cabinet, to the writer of this volume, that he was powerless. The financial interests had become too strong to be assailed; the financial ring too strong to be broken. Two years later these same interests played a -predominant but hidden role in bringing about the Franco-German Morocco crisis. They laboured strenuously to prevent the agreement of November of that year, which momentarily allayed it, and after the agreement was signed they did their best to precipitate another crisis.
The suppression of the travelling Inspectors dried up the sources of information from the French Congo, and since 1911 the veil has not been raised except as regards the coast region. There the long training which the native population had had in genuine commerce, the resolute character of most of the tribes, and the continued presence in the country of English merchants—who clung doggedly to their ground—have combined, more or less, to break down the "System" which has virtually perished after making a holocaust of victims.
An impenetrable mist still lies upon the forests of the middle and upper Congo, shutting them out from the observation of men.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
"French Parliamentary Papers, and Colonial Budgets."
"Affairs of West Africa." E. D. Morel. (Heinemann.)
"The British Case in French Congo." E. D. Morel. (Heinemann.)
"Great Britain and the Congo." E. D. Morel. (Smith, Elder and Co.)
"Le Congo français." Challaye. (Paris: Cahiers de la Quinzaine.)
"Les deux Congo." Challaye and Mille. (Paris: Cahiers de la Quinzaine.)
"La dernière mission de Brazza." (Paris: L. de Save et fils.)
"L'Afrique centrale française." Chevalier. (Paris: Challamel.)
"Les illegalités et les crimes du Congo." Anatole France, Mille, etc. (Paris: Jeulin.)
- ↑ The tropical plant, "Janipha-maniot" from which tapioca, and cassava—one of the staple food supplies of the Congo peoples—are prepared.