CHAPTER XIV.
What a League of Nations could do to protect
Tropical Africa from the eveils of Capitalistic
Exploitation and Militarism.
Whether a League of Nations can do anything within a measurable distance of time for colonisable and semi-colonisable Africa depends upon a great many considerations closely associated with the European settlement, which it would be out of place to discuss here. But a League of Nations could perform a great work for tropical Africa and perform it, or at least lay the basis for its execution, within a comparatively short period, if it were so minded.
In so far as the problem of the government of Africa by the white race is one which lends itself to international consideration, it is the non-colonisable tropical regions of the Continent which are susceptible of international treatment and decisions. Policy can there proceed, in the main, on simple and predetermined courses, provided that foresight, sagacity, humanity, and some imagination and knowledge are present at the European end. Policy is not there entangled in the ramified complexities of racial relationships. It is comparatively simple.
The task with which the white races are confronted in tropical Africa is that of undertaking for the first time in the history of mankind the direct government of the African in an immense region [by far the largest portion of the Continent] where, with a few isolated and restricted exceptions, the European cannot settle and perpetuate his race. Europe has barely crossed the threshold of that endeavour. There has been exploitation by European adventurers of certain parts of this immense area. Wicked systems of pillage and enslavement have been set up within it, and have perished. Others, less odious but nevertheless containing within them the seeds of deadly ills, have been introduced, and persist. But the actual government of tropical Africa, in the proper sense of the term, by the white man, is only beginning. There is still time to inaugurate and apply the principles of an enlightened international statesmanship to tropical Africa. And the birth of an international organism, or—if we put it no higher—the birth of a desire for an international organism which may eventuate into a true League of Nations, provides the opportunity.
What are the salient features which tropical Africa presents to our examination?
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Tropical Africa is about twice the size of Europe. It is, especially in its Western part, the greatest national preserve of tropical raw material in the world. It is more accessible to Europe than any other region of the tropics. It is peopled in some parts densely, in others, sparsely, by a prolific, muscular race in various stages of development, but generally speaking—although the term is open to abuse—primitive, and incapable of offering effective resistance to exploitation and injustice at the hands of Europeans. European intervention in its affairs nas given rise during the past thirty-five years to constant international friction in Europe, and has inflicted in some cases monstrous and unpardonable outrages upon its inhabitants.
The dangers which confront this enormous region and its peoples are only too obvious. They are threatened by European capitalism and by militarism in their worst forms. Capitalism seeks to exploit their natural wealth and their labour as rapidly as possible, without regard to the interests, liberties, general present and future welfare of the population, and without regard to the major interests of the European State involved. Militarism seeks to make of them a vast reservoir of plastic, human material for military purposes.
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Capitalism has several ways of encompassing its ends. The crudest was the system applied on the Congo. We have observed its results. The Angola system was a variant. The system in force in parts of East Africa is a variant of the Angola system. Then we have the comprehensive projects of the Empire Resources Development Committee, with which certain members of the present Government are coquetting. In the view of the spokesmen of the Empire Resources Development Committee, the population of British tropical Africa is an "undeveloped national asset," and the problem of Empire there consists in converting the African into a "useful human being." The land is not, it seems, the property of the people living upon it and using it; although, throughout the greater part of western tropical Africa, at any rate, the British hold these dependencies by virtue of original treaties of amity and commerce entered into with the native rulers, recognised by us as exercising authority over the land of the country. The land should be regarded as an "estate" of the British Crown, and the Crown should "keep in its own hands the power of producing, trading in and exporting certain special products." It is precisely those products, be it observed, which the native population is now itself producing, trading in and exporting in its own right, and by its own free labour. The mechanism for the production of the natural resources of the country should be in the hands of an "Imperial board composed of not more than 20 live (sic} business men," with a small sprinkling of civil servants. The mechanism itself should take the form of "Joint Stock Companies." The profits derived by the "State"—not the African "State," be it noted, but the British Crown—from this dual enterprise, will help to pay off the interests on the war loans. "The plan is for the State on its own account to develop some of the resources of the Empire, and to secure in this way both a large income with which to pay interest on the debt and also an immense unearned increment, out of which the whole national debt will be ultimately repaid." The profits derived from the corporations thus associated with the British Crown in this patriotic and unselfish enterprise, will naturally be distributed among the stock and bondholders. In short, the proposal is that the natural wealth of British tropical Africa shall be directly exploited by the British Crown, in partnership with particular capitalists seeking substantial profits on capital invested. In other words, African labour is to be regarded and treated as a human force for the furtherance of British national and sectional interests.
In such partnerships all the great colonial tragedies of the past have their origin. A system of this kind necessarily entails (a) the wholesale expropriation of the native population in favour of the British Crown, in defiance of right, and in violation of the plighted word inscribed upon hundreds of treaties between the representatives of the British Crown and the native rulers of the country; and (b) appropriation by the British Crown of the products of economic value which the land yields through the effort of native labour. Both these measures remain totally ineffective, of course, unless the native population can be coerced into working its own lands, no longer for its own benefits, but for the benefit of its despoilers.
In the British East Africa and Nyassaland protectorates, individuals and corporations have already been allowed to do, without the commercial co-operation of the British Crown, what the Empire Resources Development Committee desires the British Crown to besmirch itself by doing in West Africa in direct commercial association with such enterprises. Uprisings and partial famines have resulted, and if the policy is persisted in and extended, these will continue and they will increase, involving the partial massacre of the present European landowners, the usual sanguinary reprisals and the ultimate ruin of the country. But in British West Africa, upon which the committee casts its benevolent eye more particularly, such a policy would entail bloodshed on a large scale from one end of the protectorates to the other, the immediate collapse of the great existing export industries and in the long run complete economic disaster. The West African is not going to be made a slave of the British Crown without a fight, and the struggle would be bitter and prolonged.
Militarism works on different lines and with a different objective. When a few years before the war broke out the author paid a visit to West Africa, he had the opportunity of discussing with the Governor-General of French West Africa, at Dakar, the African Cherbourg, the scheme which was then being put into operation by that distinguished official to impose yearly levies for military purposes upon the male population of French West Africa. The scheme has made great headway since then. It is characteristic of the atmosphere of deceit and dishonesty which war generates that the potential militarisation of the inhabitants of the German African Dependencies in tropical Africa has been used as an argument for depriving Germany of them in the good old-fashioned way, while the actual militarisation of the inhabitants of the French Dependencies in tropical Africa has been conveniently ignored. The idea of utilising Africa as a military recruiting ground is as old as Hannibal. It had long been favoured, and so far as Algeria was concerned acted upon, by the French general staff. Algerian troops fought in the Franco-Prussian war, and the German literature of the day is full of accounts of alleged atrocities perpetrated by the Turcos upon German wounded. By one of those bitter ironies with which war is ever providing us, the fiercest engagement in the struggle between the France of Napoleon III. and the Prussia of Bismarck, was fought between Polish regiments under Prussian command and North African regiments under French command.
During the Great War of 1914–18, the French have used hundreds of thousands of North and West African troops on the Western and Macedonian fronts. They quartered a large number of West African troops in Morocco. They occupied the enemy Consulates in Greece with these black troops. They have employed them in Russia. They actually garrison German towns with them. The atrocities perpetualed by these savage auxiliaries on the Western front are known to every soldier. They have been found in possession of eyeballs, fingers, and heads of Germans in their haversacks. Mr. Chesterton's pious hope of seeing "Asiatics and Africans upon the verge of savagery," let loose against the Germans has been more than fulfilled.
Up to October 30, 1918, the French Government employed 695,000 fighting men and 238,000 coloured labourers in the war. Of the former the largest proportion came from Africa, and a large proportion of the latter. The official report of the troops from West Africa describes them as "regular athletes and formidable adversaries for the Germans." M. Diagne's report to the Colonial Minister, published in September of last year, records a total of 60,000 troops recruited under that gentleman's auspices in French West Africa proper, and 15,000 in the French Congo. Documents found upon prisoners attached to the so-called "Senegalese" battalion, No. 70, consisting of 840 men, are of peculiar interest. They have been published in the neutral, as well as in the German Press. They prove the wide extent of the recruiting area, for the units include representatives of tribes scattered throughout the Western Sudan, comprising, for example, among some thirty other tribes, Fulas, Soninkes, Mossis, Mandingoes, and Guransis. Altogether French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa (French Congo) produced 181,512 fighting men. On the day of the Armistice their numbers on the fronts, in camp in West Africa and in depots in North Africa, amounted to 136,500 (91 battalions averaging 1,500 to 2,000 rifles), without counting the Madagascar and Somali contingents.
Abominable abuses and bloody and extensive uprisings have attended these forcible recruitings in West Africa. Each district was marked down for a given number of recruits; chiefs were required to furnish the men, and bribed to do so, punished if they did not. Cash bonuses per man recruited were offered, and private kidnapping resulted necessarily—the days of the slave trade over again. There was a debate in the Chamber in July, 1917, all knowledge of which was kept from the British public. But the scandals which it brought to light did not lead to any substantial modification of the policy. Indeed, French West Africa produced more black cannon fodder for France in 1918 than in the preceding years, viz.: 63,208 men. The Acting-Governor-General, M. Clozel, an experienced and distinguished official, whose published works on Africa have long been familiar to students, viewed the whole scheme with the greatest aversion. He reported on November 10, 1916 :
My opinion is that the native peoples have no enthusiasm whatever for our cause, that their dislike to military and above all to foreign service cannot be overcome, and that any recruiting that would be really worth while can only be carried out through the operation of fear.
He followed this up by an even more vigorous protest on December 6 of the same year:
The political condition of the Colony—he wrote—is still a source of perpetual anxiety to us. The drafting of 50,000 men since the close of 1915 has been the pretext, as well as the occasion, for a rising which … has assumed considerable dimensions in the Niger region. Energetic and conscientious officials of the Government have strained every nerve to prevent this conflagration from overwhelming the entire Niger country. They have almost wholly succeeded in doing so, but the rising has only been mastered after six months' hard fighting by forces mainly sent up from the coast.
The war is now over. But the present rulers of France show no sign of relinquishing the militarist policy they pursued during the war. Quite the contrary. On July 30, 1919, conscription was decreed for all natives throughout the entire area of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa—an area over two million square miles in extent and containing a native population estimated at just under twenty million. A decree of December 12, 1919, applies the West African decree to Madagascar, which covers 228,000 miles and has a population of over three millions. The recruiting of a further 28,900 in West Africa is now proceeding in the following proportions: Senegal, 7,000; upper Senegal-Niger region, 5,600; upper Volta, 5,600; Guinea, 4,000; Ivory Coast, 4,200; Dahomey, 2,500. From 1922 onwards it is estimated that this negro army will consist of three classes and will total 100,000. It is anticipated that Madagascar, the French West Indian islands, the French Somali coast and the group of islands in the Pacific will furnish between them a further 100,000 men. This, of course, does not take into account the Arab and Berber contingents from Algeria, Tunis and Morocco, which may be reckoned at another 100,000 at least. The Negro conscripts will serve three years, and two out of the three will be spent, according to the French military and colonial newspapers, in France!
This new development of French action in Africa raises a number of distinct issues of the gravest international concern. There is the moral issue as it affect Africa. It is not surprising that the native peoples of West Africa should look upon this conscripting and removal to distant countries of their young men in the light of the revival of the slave trade. It is the revival of the slave trade. The men are taken by force; must be taken by force, either through the instrumentality of native troops under French officers, or through the instrumentality of their own chiefs acting under French orders. True, once secured, they are not sent to work in plantations; they are not lashed and kicked and tortured. They are sent to camps where they are taught to kill men—black men in Africa, white men in Europe; they are well fed and indulged. All the same they are slaves in every moral sense.
There is the issue of white government in Africa. The French example cannot fail to be imitated by other Powers with African possessions. Nothing is more certain than that British militarists will want to impose conscription upon the native peoples in the British Protectorates. And from their point of view they will be right. Reasons other than purely military ones will be evoked, and it will be difficult to oppose them. Should we be justified in leaving the hard-working, industrious, progressive native communities, of Nigeria, surrounded on three sides by French possessions, at the mercy of a Power which could invade the country at any moment with a force of 50,000 first-class fighting black troops? Alliances are not eternal. Again, can we run the risk of leaving Nigeria open to the invasion by a French native army in rebellion against its French officers? Such a rebellion is only a matter of time. What could a handful of French officers and administrators do against tens of thousands of black troops thoroughly inured to scientific warfare, and many of them having opposed trained white troops on European battlefields—"blooded" with white blood! The white man has dug the grave of the "prestige" of his race in West Africa, by employing West Africans to kill white men in Europe, and by stationing them in European cities where they have raped white women. In applying conscription not only to French West Africa proper, but south of the Equator to the Congo forest region, the French are virtually compelling the Belgians to do the same in their neighbouring Congo. The spirit of the Leopoldian régime is not so dead that the measure would not meet with eager approval by a number of the Belgian officials. And the Congo abuts upon British territory, upon the confines of the Union of South Africa. French action is replete with immeasurable consequences in Africa, and for Africa.
And what of the distinctively European issue? For the European democracy, this militarising of the African tropics and this introduction of African troops upon European soil is a terrific portent. The French militarists, whose schemes in Europe are a menace to the world, inform us that they intend to have a standing army of 200,000 coloured troops in France, 100,000 of which composed of primitive Africans. They will be used by the French militarists all over Europe in pursuance of their avowed purposes. They will garrison European towns. They will be billeted in European homes. They will kill Europeans who object to the policy of the French militarists. They will be used, no doubt, to fire upon French working-men should these at any time come into collision with the ruling classes in France. These are some of the vistas which this policy uncovers. And this is the military machine with which the British people are to conclude an alliance! Negroes, Malagasies, Berbers, Arabs, flung into Europe by the hundred thousand in the interests of a capitalist and militarist Order. That is the prospect—nay, that is the actuality—which the forces of organised European Labour have got to face, squarely.
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What could a League of Nations do to protect the peoples of tropical Africa from these evils? Is any machinery provided in the Covenant for this purpose? Let us take the latter point first.
The Covenant postulates a measure of international control for Africa, both of a political and of an administrative kind. Politically, it professes to introduce what is termed the "mandatory system," although that expression is not found in the Covenant itself, which merely speaks of "mandatories." But the Covenant limits the applicability of this system to "those colonies and territories which, as a consequence of the late war, have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly owned them, and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world." The Covenant goes on to say that the well-being and development of such peoples forms a sacred trust of civilisation, and that their "tutelage" should be entrusted to "advanced nations," who would be the League's mandatories.
It seems to be widely assumed that the wording of the Covenant permits of the extension of this system of "mandatories" to the whole of Africa. I can find no justification whatever for the belief. There is nothing in the wording of the Covenant which suggests that the framers of this instrument contemplate submitting their political control in Africa, except as regards the additional territory they have acquired through the war, to the supervision of the League. The mandatory purpose is clearly limited to the territory formerly governed by the States recently at war with the States responsible for drawing up the Covenant.
So far as Africa is concerned those territories are the former German dependencies, viz., Togo and Kamerun, in Western tropical Africa; Damaraland or German South-West Africa; and German East Africa. In the case of German South-West Africa, it is laid down that that particular territory shall become an "integral portion" of the mandatory's territory. From the point of view of political control, then, all that the Covenant does is to provide that the African territories formerly administered by Germany shall be administered henceforth by the European States which have conquered Germany in arms. In point of fact this obvious design was promptly consummated, before the ratification of the Peace Treaty, of which the Covenant forms part, i.e., before the League—which is composed exclusively of the States formerly at war with Germany—acquired legal existence. German South-West Africa passed to the Union of South Africa. Britain and France divided the Kamerun and Togo between them, and Britain took German East Africa, subsequently presenting Belgium with a substantial slice of it. In other words the "mandatory system" was introduced into the Covenant as a device to distribute Germany's dependencies in Africa between such of Germany's former enemies as were African Powers already.[1]
It should be clearly understood, therefore, that only the former German dependencies in Africa are subject to any kind of international control under the Covenant—i.e., 700,000 square miles of territory, the area of Africa being 11,500,000 square miles; and that the governing body of the League upon which that control will devolve, is composed of the particular States which have attributed the former German dependencies to themselves and to one another. It should be equally well understood that if this principle of international control is to be extended to the remaining 10,800,000 square miles of Africa, provision will have to be specifically made; for the Covenant neither allows of it nor hints at it.
So much for the political side.
What of the administrative side? We have observed that the government of the former German dependencies is to be regarded as a "sacred trust of civilisation." But why this differentiation in favour of the inhabitants of the former German dependencies? Why the responsibilities of Britain (for example) should be invested with a special moral significance when the well-being of the native races in German East Africa is concerned, is not apparent. The obligation is not less in the case of the native population of British East Africa, Nigeria, or Nyassaland. The moral obligations of the Belgians towards the peoples of the Congo are just as considerable as their moral obligations for the welfare of the inhabitants of that section of German East Africa, which we have graciously passed on to them, as if it were a bale of merchandise. And the same argument applies to the French. Putting that aside, how is the "sacred trust" interpreted in the Covenant? Those called upon to exercise it shall do so under conditions guaranteeing "freedom of conscience and religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, prohibition of abuses such as the Slave trade, the arms traffic and the liquor traffic, with the prevention of the establishment of fortifications, or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police services and the defence of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other members of the League." We will examine these conditions seriatim.
"Freedom of conscience and religion, subject to the maintenance of public order and morals." Here, indeed, is a prodigious safeguard for native rights! The phrase is merely an echo of the old formulæ of the Berlin Act of 1885. All that it means is that European Catholic missionaries shall not be favoured by the administrative Power at the expense of Protestant missionaries, and vice versa. It has nothing to do with the natives. "The prohibition of abuses such as the Slave trade, the arms traffic, and the liquor traffic." Here, again, is much solemn make-believe. The old-fashioned Slave trade is a thing of the past. The so-called internal Slave trade which the natives have to fear to-day does not arise from internecine warfare and the ensuing sale of prisoners of war, but from the acts of European governments. These are never, of course, described as "Slave trade": we find other and less repulsive terms for them. Prohibition of the "arms traffic" is a measure of European, not of native interest; it naturally does not suit European Administrations in Africa that the native population should purchase weapons of precision, licitly or illicitly. But it does suit the French Government that hundreds of thousands of African natives should have rifles placed in their hands, and should be taught how to use them against the enemies of the French Government. As regards the liquor traffic, its prohibition is a salutary measure; but an ineffective one if the prohibition is not universally applied to whites as well as blacks. Where liquor has become by long usage a recognised article of trade and large revenues are raised by taxes upon the import, prohibition can only be just and salutary provided it be not accompanied by administrative measures of direct taxation to supply the equivalent revenue lost, calculated to provoke local wars with their attendant loss of life and destruction of food supplies. The whole problem of liquor in Africa is an immensely complicated one, and its brief dismissal in the Covenant by the blessed word "prohibition" is in the nature of an appeal to the gallery. "The prevention of the establishment of fortifications, or military and naval bases…" This, once more, is a question that concerns, primarily, European interests, not African interests. No doubt it is entirely satisfactory that in 700,000 square miles of African territory, the European "mandatories" should not erect fortifications and naval and military bases. But when one recalls that there are 10,800,000 square miles of African territory to which this preventive clause does not apply, and in which there are numbers of fortifications and military and naval bases, it is difficult to feel deliriously enthusiastic. The prevention of "military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defence of territory." In this connection the natural comment is the same as in the case of military and naval bases. There is no reality in a policy which prevents the militarising of one-sixteenth of the African Continent, and which allows of it in the remaining fifteen-sixteenths. "Equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other members of the League." This would be an excellent provision were it not for the fact that considerably more than half the population of Europe is excluded from the League. When, and if, that population is included, the excellence of the provision will be unquestioned. But the spectacle (for example) of French administrators governing the Kamerun as mandatories of the League on free trade principles, and of French administrators governing the coterminous French territory as agents of a protectionist French Government, will assuredly be entertaining.
It is obvious that none of these stipulations, except, indirectly, the last, go to the heart of the problem of African administration even in the restricted and scattered area to which it is proposed to apply them. Outside that area the great mass of Africa, including about five-sixths of the tropical and sub-tropical zone, is left unprotected and untouched by the Covenant.
Hence we may say of the Covenant that it entirely fails to provide the requisite machinery to deal with the African problem, even of that part of Africa—the tropical region—where it is possible for an international standard of administrative conduct and policy to be evolved. Some method will have to be found by which such a standard can be created and internationally supervised. How is this to be done?
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We have seen that the mandatory system, such as the Covenant conceives it, is but a thinly disguised device to camouflage the acquisition by the African Powers of the Entente, of the African territories conquered by them from Germany. It is an attempt, not devoid of ingenuity, to reconcile the altruistic pronouncements of President Wilson with what is substantially a policy of imperialistic grab at the expense of the beaten foe on the familiar lines of the 17th and 18th century wars. But is a so-called "mandatory system" capable of becoming a genuine international instrument through which the equitable treatment of the African races shall be a recognised international concern? Is it the right sort of instrument to ensure that result? I confess to the gravest of doubts. People talk somewhat loosely of the extension of the system. Do they understand its implications? Are they prepared to abide by them? Are the European States which hold African territories to-day, either through the conquest of their indigenous inhabitants or through treaties of amity and commerce with the native rulers, prepared to recognise that in future they shall derive the powers they have hitherto exercised as sovereign States in Africa, from the League and as mandatories of that body? Is this a practicable proposition to-day when the League is, to all intents and purposes, merely the continued association of some of the State's allied in the war? Would it be more practicable if the existing League became in due course a real League of Nations? Unless it pre-supposes a power of censure and even of revocation of the mandate, resident in the League, a "mandatory system" is a mere phrase. It is, of course, possible to conceive of a change so complete not only in the character and composition of European Governments, but in the ethics of nationalism, that European States which are also colonial Powers, would consent to subordinate their status as colonial Powers to the League, while preserving their own machinery of administration. But he would be an optimist, indeed, who would deem such a consummation achievable within a measurable period. And, meantime, what of these African peoples, whose interests are at stake, who have no one to represent them at the council boards of the European States and who are threatened with grave and ever-increasing dangers? The difficulties of securing international sanction for a right policy in tropical Africa are great enough in all conscience. Why add to them a procedure which bristles with constitutional, legal and sentimental obstacles?
What is really needed is that certain definite principles by which administrative policy in tropical Africa should be guided, be worked out and laid down at an international Conference; and that this policy should have behind it the sanction of a real League of Nations, and the moral support of public opinion.
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I return to my original question. What could a League of Nations do to protect the peoples of tropical Africa from the evils of capitalistic exploitation and militarism?
So far as the militarisation of the African tropics is concerned, a League inspired by the purpose above mentioned, would recognise that anything short of cauterising the evil at its root was useless. So long as Europe persists in treating tropical Africa as a potential war zone, liable to be involved at any moment in European quarrels, and so long as France persists in treating her African dependencies as a reservoir of black cannon-fodder, the militarisation of the country is inevitable, and the conscription of its adult male population is bound to follow everywhere.
There is but one remedy: the exclusion of tropical Africa from the area of European conflict by international agreement. This can be accomplished only in one way. Tropical Africa should be placed under perpetual neutrality. It is, of course, perfectly true that its neutrality might be violated. But that applies to any provision enunciated by the League. The whole conception of a League of Nations is the subordination of selfish national interests to the major international interest. If the sanction of the League were obtained for the neutralisation of the African tropics, we should have the collective moral forces of civilisation arrayed in opposition to the Power, or Powers, which sought to infringe that neutrality: and there is no force carrying greater weight which humanity at its present stage of ethical development can invoke. If civilisation is incapable of rising, to the height of a self-denying ordinance affecting the most helpless section of the human race, the hopes centred in a League of Nations are mere illusions.
There is nothing fantastic in the suggestion to neutralise tropical Africa. It is merely a proposal to extend the provisions of the Congo Act (Berlin Conference, 1884) which neutralised the Congo Basin, i.e., a considerable portion of the tropical region, to the whole tropical region. It is true that the Congo Free State was never really neutral because its Sovereign was perpetually using, and being used by, European States competing for African territorial mastery. But that competition no longer exists. It is also true that when the Great War broke out, the neutrality of the Congo Basin was definitely broken. But that was the consequence of the European anarchy which the League of Nations is founded to combat. If the conception of the League of Nations possesses significance at all, that significance is derived from the desire of civilised humanity to substitute something better for the anarchy which produced the war; and from faith in the possibility of doing so. The failure of the experiment to neutralise a portion of the African tropics before the war was due to the inherent vices of the international order which civilised humanity desires to change. It should not, therefore, be regarded as a deterrent to a further experiment on the same lines, under the new international order, which it is the object of the League to promote. The principle is sound and is not invalidated because the first attempt to apply it failed.
Short of neutralisation, I see but one alternative course of action to prevent the militarisation of the African tropics. It is that the stipulations of the Covenant affecting the former German dependencies, should be applied to the whole tropical region. There is neither rhyme nor reason in prohibiting the erection of fortifications, etc., and the military training of the native population in a relatively small area of the tropical region, and allowing these things in the remainder. It is absurd, for instance, that the League's mandatory in the Kamerun should be restricted to retaining a police force; while the same Power in contiguous territory, should be permitted to conscript the native population. Anyone can see at a glance how preposterous is such a notion. But in one vital respect the stipulations of the Covenant would need amendment. The Covenant speaks of the "military training of the natives for other than police purposes, and the defence of territory." The italicised words leave the door wide open to the very evils which the Covenant professes to guard against. No State ever acknowledges that its military establishment is for other than "defensive" purposes. The phraseology used in the Covenant would permit of the military training of the adult male population in the former German dependencies by the mandatory State. Given an equitable administrative policy all that is required to maintain order in the tropical regions of Africa is a mobile, well disciplined force of a few hundred, or a couple of thousand or so, native police, at the disposal of each local Government. The number would vary, of course, with the size of the particular territory, and with the character and density of the native population. And this brings us to a consideration of the problem of administration itself.
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At this point, I venture upon a digression in order that subsequent remarks may not be misapprehended. If the purport of this volume has been in any sense fulfilled, I have succeeded in imparting the conviction I myself hold that a tremendous moral liability is laid upon Europe to do justice to the peoples of Africa; that recognition of this moral obligation should find expression, and that it can find such expression at an early date in concrete acts of policy as regards, at least, that very considerable section of the Dark Continent where the racial problem in its acute forms is non-existent. I am bold enough to hope that a perusal of these pages will have established that the moral obligation of repairing wrongs done to, and preventing further wrongs upon, the peoples of Africa, is the basis of the whole case I have sought to put forward here in behalf of these peoples.
I shall not, then, I trust be misunderstood when I say that unless the public opinion which admits this moral obligation and is anxious that it should be a powerful stimulus in the formation of policy, is prepared to face and examine with open eyes the material factors which influence and direct the relations of Europe with tropical Africa, there is little or no expectation that moral considerations will be able, in any appreciable degree, to affect policy. Mere negative criticism is useless. To denounce the material factors in Europe's relations with tropical Africa as necessarily evil, because they are material, is futile. The real problem is to ensure that a material relationship, which is inevitable, shall not preclude just, humane, and enlightened government of tropical African peoples by European States.
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In elaborating what should be, in effect, a charter of rights for the peoples of tropical Africa, a League of Nations would begin by frankly recognising that the driving force which has conducted European States to undertake the experiment of direct government of the tropical African region, is neither altruistic nor sentimental, but economic. The League would then find itself confronted (as a League) with the problem which confronts every European State now ruling in tropical Africa, and the public conscience within every such State. Can this economic purpose of Europe in tropical Africa be worked out in such a way that the native peoples shall benefit from its accomplishment? To put the matter even more baldly, is it possible that Europe can become possessed of the natural riches of the African tropics and of the riches which the soil of tropical Africa can produce through the labour of tropical man, without degrading, enslaving and, in the ultimate resort, probably destroying the peoples of tropical Africa? The reply is in the affirmative provided that native rights in land are preserved, and provided the natives are given the requisite facilities for cultivating and exploiting the raw material which it is Europe's economic purpose to secure. The League, if convinced of the accuracy of this affirmative assertion, would then regard the preservation of this fundamental native right as the first step in the elaboration of its charter.
This would be an easy matter in a considerable area of the tropical region, where policy has either been directed to the preservation of the land rights of the native population—in Nigeria, for example—or where policy has not been directed to usurping them. But what should be the attitude of the League where this fundamental right has been set aside; where the governing European administration has allocated great stretches of country to syndicates and concessionaires; where the natives, divorced from their land and unable, in consequence, to improve their material conditions, or even to sustain themsleves, have already lost their economic independence and with it their freedom; where they have become the wage slaves of alien white men without any means of safeguarding their interests even as wage slaves; where, in short, capitalistic exploitation of the native population is in full swing?
Should the League take up the position that the evil has gone too far to be arrested, and content itself with devising means whereby the wage slaves can be protected against the worst abuses of alien exploitation? Or should the League recommend the cancelling of the private interests which nave been created, with or without compensation to the beneficiaries—and a reversion to sound policy? The difficulty is a very real one. While it may be possible for a League in which the most important European States actually governing tropical Africa will presumably enjoy a dominating position for many years to come, to elaborate a general charter of native rights; it, is, a very different proposition to expect these States, which in any case would play the chief part in the drawing-up of such a charter, to sweep away, or to buy out, the vested interests established, with their sanction, in particular African dependencies. Nor is this the only point to be considered. Where the destruction of native rights in land has taken place and the native has become a helot, the edifice of native society has crumbled and cannot be repaired. Native life has been broken up. A community of free African landowners, cultivators and farmers has been converted into a landless proletariat, dependent upon alien enterprise for the wherewithal to feed and clothe itself. New conditions have been set up: certain consequences have resulted. The central mischief is done, and cannot be undone.
But that is no reason why an evil political and economic system should be allowed to grow, any more than a human disease. If it cannot be extirpated, its progress can be checked. If—to take a concrete case—a portion of the land of British East Africa has been handed over to European syndicates, that is no reason why the process should be continued. The remainder of the country can still be preserved for the native population. Nor is this all. Even where the evil has become implanted, it can be assailed indirectly. Labour legislation can be devised of such a character as will make it impossible for coercive influences to be brought to bear upon the native population in the unalienated areas, to give their labour to the corporations exploiting the alienated areas. It can also be made impossible for these corporations, or individuals, to prevent dispossessed natives from settling in the unalienated areas. The individual native in British East Africa inhabiting an alienated area can be placed by law in the position to acquire land in the unalienated areas sufficient in extent to support his family, and to enable him to cultivate valuable crops for sale and export; in which he, and the native population on the unalienated areas, should receive every encouragement and help from the Administration. Should these measures eventually bring about a state of affairs which would decrease the profits of the corporations or concessionaires by adding to the costliness of labour, this result need only perturb those who take a short view of the part which these tropical African dependencies ought to play in the economy of the world. And this, for reasons which have been indirectly touched upon already, and to which I now return.
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As I have pointed out, the problem of tropical Africa is at bottom the problem of so moulding and directing an economic relation which is inevitable, that it shall not entail degradation and destruction upon the African peoples, and disgrace to Europe. What public opinion in the European States, which are governing States in Africa, must insist upon; what all the decent and humane influences in internationalism must exact, is that the economic purpose of Europe in the African tropics shall be carried out in such a way as will permit of the moral responsibilities of Europe for a righteous government of tropical Africa being fulfilled. In much of the most populous, and intrinsically the richest portion of the African tropics, the development of this economic purpose is proceeding on lines which do not substantially conflict with just and wise government. On the other hand, this is not the case in a considerable portion of the tropical region. Government is not there performing its proper function of trustee for, and protector of, the native peoples. Its power is exerted on behalf of enterprises which make for the exploitation and impoverishment of the native population. The welfare of the natives is subordinated to the exigencies of the alien capitalist. The evil must be attacked, nationally and internationally, without cessation.
But there is special need to impress upon those who are already won over to the moral side of the question, or whose traditions and outlook would naturally induce them to take that side, that the attack will not be successful in the ultimate resort if it confines itself merely to insistence upon the moral issue. It must face the economic issue. It must form a clear conception of what is sound, and what is unsound in the methods of economic development in these regions. It must persuade by economic reasoning as well as by appeals to ethical and humanitarian instincts and motives. It must be in a position to demonstrate that what is morally right is also economically sound; that what is morally wrong is also economically unsound. It must seek to convince the public mind that the economic purpose of Europe in tropical Africa is served by the individual and collective prosperity of the native population, not by its impoverishment; by the existence of native communities of agriculturists and abori-culturists producing for their own profit, not for the benefit of the shareholders of white syndicates and concessionaires. It must be at great pains to show that the policy of encouraging forms of European enterprise which convert African labour into a dividend-producing force for the individual European, is sheer economic waste of the potentialities of African labour: whereas the full potentialities of African labour can be secured for the economic purpose of Europe by encouraging forms of European enterprise in which the African figures, not as a hired servant, but as co-operator and partner.
The task is not an easy one, because all the tendencies of our European capitalist system incline to make the test of "prosperity" of a tropical African territory depend upon the number of European enterprises therein established which are acquiring profits out of the direct employment of African labour. And curiously enough there is a type of European Socialist mind that unconsciously reinforces these tendencies, of course from an entirely different standpoint. This type of mind visualises the mass of African humanity in terms of a dogmatic economic theory. It would stand aside from any effort to preserve the native races from capitalistic exploitation, which it regards as a necessary and inevitable episode in human development. It would do nothing to safeguard native institutions, which it looks upon as archaic and reactionary. It would apply the same processes to all races (it refuses, apparently, to admit any other form of civilisation than the European socialised State) at whatever stage of cultural development. It would cheerfully, and with the purest of motives, assist at the destruction of African institutions, and assent to the conversion of African cultivators and farmers into wage-slaves, sublimely indifferent to the social havoc and misery thereby inflicted upon millions of living Africans and Africans yet unborn, content witVi the thought that in the fullness of time the wage-slaves would themselves evolve the Socialist African State. The only comment that I would venture to make upon the contentions of this school, is that the form of Socialism which Russia has evolved, and which, I suppose, is the most advanced form of European Socialism now available to study, approximates closely to the social conditions of an advanced tropical African community. The spinal column of both is a system of land tenure which ensures to the population a large measure of economic independence—in tropical Africa the degree of economic independence is necessarily greater; while the corporate character which the Soviet system imparts to all economic activities is substantially identical with the African social system. It seems a strange anomaly to laud advanced Socialism in Europe, and to assent to its destruction in tropical Africa.
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The ordinary business man's view of "prosperity" in relation to an African dependency, referred to above, is thoroughly fallacious. The true prosperity of a tropical African dependency is to be judged by altogether different standards, even from the standpoint we are now examining, that of Europe's utilitarian purpose in this part of the world. Flourishing towns and villages surrounded by well-kept fields, plantations and live stock (you may see thousands such in Nigeria): a happy and expanding population, self-supporting in the matter of foodstuffs, carrying on a brisk trade with its neighbours, cultivating products for export, becoming steadily wealthier, and in consequence—and here the European economic purpose comes in—providing an increasingly large market for the absorption of the manufactures of Europe, and an increasing revenue to the local European Government, which that Government, if it is in the hands of men of vision and commonsense, will spend upon improving means of communication and locomotion, water supply and sanitation, forestry and agricultural improvements: this is "prosperity." Take a concrete case. When I visited Nigeria a year or two before the war, some eight hundred villages in one particular district had been taught by the Forestry Department to start plantations of rubber. At that time the potential wealth of these native communities in their rubber plantations amounted already to several hundreds of thousands of pounds, and was, of course, increasing year by year. In due course they would gather and prepare that rubber. They would sell it to European merchants, and they would buy with the equivalent the merchandise of Europe. They would be purchasers of European goods on the basis of the intrinsic value of the article their labour had produced. A party of European capitalists came along one fine day, saw these flourishing native plantations, and proposed to the Administration that they should buy them up. They were told that the land belonged to the natives, not to the British Government, and that the plantations were the property of the owners of the land. Now what would have happened if these gentlemen had had their way, from the standpoint of the economic relationship of these particular native communities with Europe? Simply this—instead of being purchasers of European goods to the extent represented by the intrinsic value of the article they produced, they would have sunk to the level of wage earners on plantations henceforth owned by European concessionaires. Their purchasing capacity in terms of European goods would therefore have enormously declined, and the trade of the dependency would have suffered in the same proportion.
The economic purpose of Europe in tropical Africa, properly understood and judiciously directed, requires a free African labour, profiting from its activities, working under the stimulus which comes of the knowledge that the material reward of its labour is assured to it. That economic purpose requires that the African producer of raw material for the world's markets shall be encouraged to produce, by the consciousness that he will obtain the equivalent not only for his labour, but for the value of the article his labour has produced. It requires that the industrial classes of Europe shall find in tropical Africa an ever-widening market for the absorption of their output. This cannot be if African labour is exhausted and impoverished, because—if for no other reason—African purchasing capacity in the goods of Europe is thereby diminished. Other consequences are numerous and obvious: but that one is immediate.
Now consider the picture of a tropical African dependency—take British East Africa as typical—where policy is directed to ensuring that a dozen or so European concessionaires shall earn large dividends. The first call upon the labour of the country is for work on the plantations and estates of these concessionaires. As a result native villages decay. The population is unable to feed itself. The Administration has to import foodstuffs at great expense. The people sink immeasurably in the scale of their self-respect. They are reduced to a proletariat with no rights. There is no horizon before them: no honourable ambition to fulfil. Their capacities are arrested. Their condition becomes one of stagnancy. Add to this all the abuses incidental to labour thus economically forced, with their attendant discontents developing into sporadic outbreaks; the notorious inefficiency of African labour under such circumstances; the decrease in vitality consequent upon the introduction of an unnatural existence; the lowered birth rate ; the increase in prostitution and venereal disease. Here is no constructive policy, but a destructive one. Nothing is being built up, except the ephemeral fortunes of a few white men. The future, viewed from the broad standpoint of both European and African interests, is being undermined all the time.
The folly of the conception is palpable. If it be true in an economic sense, as true it is, that the "asset" of a tropical African dependency is primarily, the native; a system which enfeebles and impoverishes the native is suicidal, always from the same utilitarian point of view. That is one side of the case. The other side is that in enfeebling and impoverishing the African, you are destroying the major economic interest of Europe in the African. Every penny taken from the national wealth of a European State for the purpose of bolstering up a system of that kind in tropical Africa, is flung into the sea. Every European nation which is a governing State in tropical Africa and which tolerates a system of that kind in its dependencies, is allowing the major national interest to be sacrificed for the temporary enrichment of a restricted number of individuals. And, from the point of view of economics, the national interest is also the international interest.
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Such, broadly, are some of the most important considerations which one might hope would guide a League of Nations approaching the problem of tropical African Government with the desire of promoting an international policy for this vast region, at once intelligent and humane. The foundation upon which it would work would be that the material prosperity of the native was the key-note to administrative success: that the exploitation of African labour for sectional European interests was an economic error; that the native communities of tropical Africa need protection, in the major European interest and to ensure the progressive development and expansion of the economic purpose of Europe, from the positive evils of a capitalist system which, bad for all Europe, is fatal for Africa.
Apart from these fundamental issues it would be the object of the League to ensure the "open door" for commercial enterprise throughout the tropical region of Africa. This would involve absolute trading equality for all nations within the tropical area, and the consequent disappearance of the differential tariff and the territorial concessionaire. The subjects of the various Powers adhering to the League would enjoy complete equality in all commercial transactions. The European States, members of the League, that were also governing States in tropical Africa, would be free to make their own fiscal arrangements; they would not be free to differentiate in favour of their nationals—a fertile cause of endless international friction in the past. It would be very desirable that the principle of the "open door" should be broadened so as to include capital enterprises such as the construction of railways, harbour works, dredging of rivers and kindred matters. In these cases the permanent tropical African Commission, referred to in the next paragraphs, could be empowered to form a special department which would act as an impartial adjudicating body for the placing of contracts for public works of this character on a system of open international tender.
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There would be created under the auspices of the League a tropical African Commission in permanent session at the headquarters of the League, employing special commissions which would be continuously engaged in visiting the tropical African dependencies and reporting upon conditions. Such a Commission would be a centre for the collation of all material relevant to the affairs of tropical Africa, for the classification and study of all data bearing upon tropical African ethnology, social customs, philology, economic resources—actual and potential. It would receive and consider the reports of its travelling commissioners, and make recommendations to the League. It would be open to receive all reports, grievances and representations from whomsoever emanating, within the limits of its jurisdiction. The official papers of each Dependency would be regularly communicated to it by the respective Administrations—reports of Residents on political affairs, reports of Forestry Departments, Agricultural Departments, Native Affairs Departments, Treasuries, and so on. It would form, in effect, a permanent court of inquiry, investigation and scientific research. It would itself issue periodical reports and remain in close touch with universities, educational and agricultural institutions, labour organisations, scientific societies, and Chambers of commerce in every country adhering to the League. Through its instrumentality a link would be forged between the African tropics and the economic activities and requirements of the world of labour, commerce and affairs in Europe and elsewhere. It would help to create an international conscience with regard to tropical Africa which does not now exist, and would be the vehicle through which that aroused conscience would find expression.
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Were the problem of tropical African government approached in the manner indicated in this chapter, all that is good in European endeavour throughout that great region of the globe would be confirmed and consolidated, and would have free scope for increased usefulness. The men of vision and of humanitarian instincts, the men who regard the administration of these races as a high duty and a high privilege, would be encouraged by the thought that they were supported by piogressive and coalesced international influences: that an organised international moral force had been created upon which they could rely. A halt would be called to manifold errors and injustices which the absence of an international mechanism making for just and wise government and ensuring international publicity for the affairs of the tropical Continent, had rendered possible in the past. It would be perceived that the duty and the legitimate interests of Europe in tropical Africa lay on the same path. It would come to be regarded not only as right in essence, but expedient in practice, that government in tropical Africa should aim at establishing the well-being, self-respect and intellectual advancement of the native population. Philanthropic effort directed to the welfare and progress of the tropical African peoples would everywhere be strengthened, and the public conscience in the various European States governing in tropical Africa could be more easily invoked for the remedy and removal of abuses.
And out of this awakening and purifying process would grow a wider concept of the latent mental powers and spiritual potentialities of these African peoples, and a keener realisation of the great and noble task which unselfish effort could undertake among them. We should look back with horror and shame at a past in which the African, arbitrarily sundered from his land, his social and family life, ground out a life of servile toil, with no beacon of hope, no incentive to rise, no other stimulus to labour than starvation and the lash. For the first time in the history of contact between the white races and the black, the black man's burden would be lifted from the shoulders which for five hundred years have bent beneath its weight.
- ↑ I do not propose to discuss here the justice or the wisdom from the point of view of international peace of this wholesale appropriation of the German dependencies. I have expressed my views on that subject elsewhere ("Africa and the Peace of Europe": National Labour Press), and I have submitted arguments—which remain unanswered—that such a policy is both inequitable and unwise.