CHAPTER VIII

THE BRITISH IN AFRICA, I
(West Coast, Morocco, North-Central.)

From very early days in the history of the Portuguese monarchy close and friendly relations had been established between England and Portugal. A large body of English (together with German and Flemish) troops on their way out to the Crusades had assisted the first king of Portugal to capture Lisbon from the Moors in the 12th century. A later king of Portugal married a daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and his sons, among them the great Prince Henry the Navigator, were half English in blood. These friendly relations were no doubt partly to be accounted for by the French origin of both ruling houses.

Therefore, when the effect of Portuguese discoveries in West Africa began to be felt in England by the extension of the spice trade (hitherto a monopoly of Venice), and the dawning idea that negro slaves from Africa would be an excellent commodity for American plantations, British seamen-adventurers were prompt to follow in the path of the Portuguese. The trade in spices seems to have been the first inducement, more powerful than gold or slaves. Englishmen had previously shipped on board Portuguese vessels before they ventured to sail to West Africa in craft of their own. Quite early in the 16th century several Englishmen thus found their way to Benin in company with the Portuguese. But their proceedings were looked upon with suspicion, and friendly relations between the two nationalities soon cooled under the influence of rivalry in what the Portuguese would have liked to make their monopoly of West African trade. At the end of the reign of Edward VI (1553), and during that of Mary (1554-5), English ships ventured to cruise to the Gambia, the Grain Coast, and even the Gold Coast and Benin river, bringing back gold, ivory, Guinea pepper[108] and “grains of Paradise[109]” for spice making. In 1562-4-7 Captain (Sir) John Hawkins visited the West African coast with a ship of his own, and later one or more ships of Queen Elizabeth. He piratically attacked the Portuguese ships and robbed them of their negro slaves; he bought and kidnapped slaves on his own account and conveyed them to the West Indies. But actual trading ventures of a peaceful or honest nature were rendered very hazardous by the hostility of the Portuguese. When, however, in the latter part of the 16th century, Portugal was absorbed by Spain and Spain went to war with England, Queen Elizabeth had no hesitation in granting charters to two companies of merchant adventurers to trade with the West coast of Africa. In 1585 the first charter was granted to a body of London adventurers for the carrying on of commerce with Morocco and the Barbary States; in 1588 another charter was given to Devonshire merchants, who had been for some time previously endeavouring to trade on the Senegambia coast. Thus in 1588 were laid the foundations of the British settlement of the Gambia. This river, which was at first, and probably more accurately, known as the “Gambra,” is remarkable among African rivers in that it has a mouth with a deep bar, which can be crossed by big ships at any time of the tide. Next to the Congo, it is probably the safest river to enter on all the West African coast; and as its navigability extends for over 200 miles into the interior of Senegambia, it is a very valuable means of access to the heart of the fertile regions of North-west Africa. When the British arrived on the Gambia, and for two centuries afterwards, the banks of the river were thickly studded with Portuguese trading settlements. The Portuguese, however, never seem to have raised any difficulties about its passing under British control. It was the French from Senegal who made the most determined attempts to oust the British from the Gambia.

In 1592 Queen Elizabeth chartered a further association for trading on the coast between the Gambia and Sierra Leone. As regards the subsequent history of the Gambia, it may be mentioned that the first consolidated company formed to work the trade and administer the British settlements was incorporated in 1618, but it was not successful and the association following it also failed[110]. In 1664 a fort, subsequently called Fort James, was built on the island of St Mary, off the south bank of the mouth of the Gambia. This was the nucleus of the present capital of Bathurst, named a century and a half afterwards from the same Colonial Secretary whose name was given to the Australian town. In the 17th century the French made determined attacks on the Gambia, and in 1696 succeeded in destroying the British settlement, which however was reoccupied and restored four or five years later. In spite of the dissipation of the rumours of gold in the country of the Upper Gambia (the result of the mission of enquiry conducted in 1723 by Captain Bartholomew Stibbs), the Gambia settlement became rich and prosperous in the 18th century owing to the slave trade. The Gambia River became the starting place of the first serious British explorations in Western Africa and Nigeria. In 1783 the intermittent struggle with France was concluded by the French recognition of exclusive British trading rights on the Gambia, with the exception of the French factory at Albreda, in return for a similar concession to themselves of the commercial monopoly of the river Senegal; but as a set-off against the French factory on the Gambia the British retained the exclusive right to trade with the Moors of Portendik (near Cape Blanco) for gum. In 1857 these two rights were exchanged. During the Napoleonic wars England seized the French settlements at the mouth of the river Senegal, and British merchants went thither to trade. Upon the surrender of Senegal to France in 1817 these British merchants left the Senegal and founded the town of Bathurst, now the capital of the Gambia colony. In 1807, the tiny Gambia colony, now much impoverished by the abolition of the slave trade, had been subjected to the newly-founded government of Sierra Leone. In 1843, its prosperity having somewhat revived owing to the growing trade in ground-nuts, and its area having been increased by various additions of territory along the banks of the river, it was rendered independent of Sierra Leone; but again in 1866 was attached to that colony until once more it was given a separate administration in 1888. In the early seventies attempts had been made to assert British claims to the coast separating the Gambia and Sierra Leone, where Portuguese rule had lapsed; but Portugal having succeeded in asserting her claims (p. 98), the project was dropped, and during the period of discouragement which followed France was allowed to extend her sway over all the country on either side of the lower Gambia. Several times during the 19th century the project was mooted of exchanging the Gambia with France, first for her possessions on the Gaboon coast, and later on for Porto Novo, and Grand Bassam. The first project, which would have ultimately given us French Congo, was opposed and defeated by the British merchants on the Gambia; and the second, which would have eventually led to a continuous British coast line from Sierra Leone to the Niger, was upset by the opposition of Marseilles trading houses at Porto Novo. In 1891 the best was made of a bad position, and a delimitation agreement was come to with France, which at any rate secured to Great Britain both banks of the river Gambia to the limits of its seaward navigability. After this settlement with the French there was a certain amount of friction amongst the Muhammadan (Mandingo and Fula) natives due to interference with their slave-raiding. A chief named Fodi Kabba had to be expelled for this reason from British territory. Two years afterwards another slave-raider, Fodi Silah, inflicted severe losses on a punitive expedition sent against him, but eventually was driven into French territory where he died. Meantime Fodi Kabba, having fixed his residence in French Senegambia at Medina, the celebrated town in Wuli associated with Mungo Park, directed thence an insurgent movement against the British which resulted in the death of two British officials. But the French forces cooperated in 1901 with those of Great Britain; Medina was captured and occupied; and Fodi Kabba was killed. Since then the Gambia region—once a great recruiting ground for slaves—has been peaceful and prosperous. A hut tax has increased its revenues since 1894. In 1906 domestic slavery was extinguished by an ordinance, the slave trade having been extirpated by joint British and French occupation of the trade routes a few years previously.

The words “Sierra Leone” are a kind of compromise between Spanish and Portuguese due to the dull hearing and careless spelling of foreign names so characteristic of the English until the present generation. Projecting into the sea on this part of the coast (a coast otherwise flat and swampy) is a mountainous peninsula with bold hills facing the sea front. If these mountains are not sufficiently high[111] to be the “Theion Oχema” of the Greek translators of Hanno’s journal, they were at any rate sufficiently striking to make an impression on the early Portuguese explorers, who dubbed them “Serra Leoa” or the “Lion-like Mountain Range” because the reverberating thunder from the frequent storms booms and echoes between these forested peaks and valleys exactly like the roar of many lions. (The Spanish form would be Sierra Leona, and it was apparently the Spanish name that the English navigators adopted.) The British first frequented this coast in 1562 when (Sir) John Hawkins came to the Sierra Leone (Rokel) river to get slaves. From that time onwards British ships called at Sierra Leone whenever they could elude the warships of the angry Portuguese. A British trading station was established here in the latter part of the 17th century and did not wholly disappear (though usually tenanted as the slave depôt of some English-speaking mulatto) till it was merged in the definite occupation of 1787. Towards the end of the 18th century the fine harbour—the best harbour on the West coast of Africa—attracted the attention of Dr Henry Smeathman; and inspired by his writings the British Government obtained the cession of the Sierra Leone peninsula in 1788. Four years later a charter was granted and the territory was transferred to a philanthropic association known as the “St George’s Bay Company,” which decided to establish in that part of West Africa a settlement for freed negro slaves from the West Indies and Canada.

Upon the granting of the charter the name was changed to the “Sierra Leone Company.” To Sierra Leone had been brought in 1787 loyal free negroes, who had fought on the British side during the American War of Independence, and were therefore given their liberty, but whom it was thought better to deport to a climate more suitable to Africans than that of Nova Scotia, where they were at first disbanded. Then were sent out about 400 masterless negroes picked up in England after the judicial decision obtained by Granville Sharp as to the illegality of slavery in England. These were known as the “Granvilles.” To them were added later the “Maroons[112]”—Jamaica negroes mixed in a slight degree with the blood of the extinct West Indian natives, who had taken to the bush in Jamaica, and were making themselves troublesome. Further, as soon as Sierra Leone was adopted as the dumping ground of the slaves set free from the captured slave-trading ships, there were added to these ex-slaves of America and England the heterogeneous sweepings of West, Central, and South-east Africa, generally known as “Willyfoss Niggers,” because their freedom was originally due to the exertions of Mr Wilberforce. Then of course there were the original Timne, Bullom, Mendi, and Susu inhabitants; so that altogether the negro population of modern Sierra Leone is an extraordinarily mixed stock, to which a large colony of Kruboys from the Liberian coast has since been added.

The philanthropic company which started this settlement in 1787 had some quaint notions in its inception. Sixty London prostitutes were sent out to Sierra Leone to marry with the negroes and become honest women, while numbers of English, Dutch, and Swedes were invited to go there as free settlers, under the belief that West Africa was as suited for European colonization as Cape Colony. The result was of course that nearly all these European immigrants died a few years after their arrival, though not before they had left their impression upon the strangely mixed population of Sierra Leone. The whole settlement had to be begun over again in 1791.

In 1807 the rule of the colony was transferred to the Crown; and in 1821 Sierra Leone was for the first time joined with the Gold Coast and the Gambia into the “Colony of the West African Settlements.” In 1843 the Gambia was detached, in 1866 joined again; and in 1874 the Gold Coast and Lagos were separated from the supreme control of Sierra Leone. Finally in 1888, the Gambia having been made a separate administration, Sierra Leone became an isolated colony. Between 1862 and 1864 its territory was considerably extended along the coast; and a treaty of delimitation with France in 1894, though it cut off the access of Sierra Leone to the Niger, still extended the influence of the colony a considerable distance inland. During the eighties of the 19th century there were considerable difficulties with turbulent tribes, especially the ‘Yonnis,’ who were subdued by an expedition under Sir Francis de Winton. In 1898 an uprising of the natives of the interior in opposition to the suppression of the slave trade and the levying of a hut tax seriously disturbed the colony, and led to some months’ obstinate bush fighting mainly against the Timne, Kisi, and Mendi peoples, and a massacre of American missionaries. But this little war produced excellent results. The turbulent, slave-trading, and—in the south-east—fetish-governed, cannibalistic natives were for the first time effectively conquered by the white man. A resettlement of the territory of 30,000 square miles took place. The old colonial nucleus of Sierra Leone was limited to the peninsula of that name and the coast strip. All the interior was declared a protectorate and divided into districts wherein the rule of the native chiefs was maintained or revived, under the control of British resident commissioners. The hut tax was firmly instituted, but the natives’ exclusive rights to the land were carefully respected. Finally a railway was built for some 230 miles across the south-east half of the Protectorate to the Liberian frontier. Other railways or tramways are being constructed to the French frontier on the north. A short but very important mountain railway now carries passengers to the healthy summit of the beautiful mountain range above the hot and unhealthy capital (Freetown). Here the European residents can reside, can pass the night in a comparatively cool climate. Sierra Leone has ceased to be the white man’s grave. From many points of view it has become the model West African colony.

Although British traders in gold and in slaves came to the Gold Coast in the wake of the Portuguese in the 16th century, they established no form of administration there until 1672, when Charles II gave a charter to the Royal African Company and the monopoly of trade between Morocco and Cape Colony. The Royal African Company built forts at various places on the Gold Coast, and at Whyda[113] on the coast of Dahomé. It was succeeded in 1750 by the African Company of merchants, a company subsidized by the Government, which continued to exist until 1821, at which date the British forts on the Gold Coast were placed under the Sierra Leone government of the West African settlements, and the fort at Whyda was abandoned. In 1807, the powerful Ashanti tribe thrust itself anew on the attention of European nations (already acquainted with it as a great provider of slaves and a diligent worker of the alluvial gold deposits) by forcing its way to the coast, and attacking and destroying the British fort of Anamabu and the Dutch fort of Kormantyn. They even besieged Cape Coast Castle. In 1817 a mission, eventually under the charge of Thomas Edward Bowdich, was sent to Ashanti to bring about more friendly relations with the King of Kumasi. It succeeded, but the terms of the treaty then made were not carried into effect by the British Government, out of pity for the harassed Fanti coast tribe; consequently the relations between Cape Coast Castle (then the head-quarters of British administration in the Gold Coast) and Ashanti once more became strained[114]. In 1824, while on a tour of inspection, the Governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Charles Macarthy, landed at Cape Coast Castle, and unfortunately embarked on a war with the Ashanti without properly organized forces. He was defeated and killed. The Imperial Government carried on the war for three years, finally inflicting a defeat on the Ashanti near Accra, which led three years later to a peace. But this lengthy campaign had disgusted the Imperial Government with rule on the Gold Coast, and as soon as peace was concluded with the Ashanti they handed over these settlements to a committee of London merchants. This committee selected and sent out an excellent man as Governor—Mr Charles Maclean. This administrator contrived with a yearly subsidy of £4000 and a force of 100 police to extend British influence over an area nearly coincident with the present Gold Coast Colony. But in 1843 the rule of the merchants was replaced once more by that of the Crown, though Maclean was taken into the service of the new Imperial administration.

The Danes and Swedes on account of the slave trade had established forts on the Gold Coast in the 17th and 18th centuries, respectively, to supply the West Indian islands with slaves. The Swedes soon abandoned their trading forts, but Denmark still retained four down to the middle of the 19th century, all of which she then sold to England in 1850 for £10,000. For the same modest payment Denmark transferred to England the protectorate over a considerable area to the east of the Gold Coast Colony, along the river Volta. The Dutch during the 17th and 18th centuries had planted forts on the Gold Coast in rivalry with the English, and in most cases alongside of them. After the abolition of the slave trade Holland lost interest in her West African possessions. Their existence was very awkward to the English, as it prevented the collection of customs duties. In 1868 a partition of the coast was negotiated between England and Holland, the Dutch taking over all the forts west of a certain line, and the English those which lay to the east of this boundary. In this manner the English acquired at last the whole of the town of Accra, which is now the capital of the Gold Coast. In 1871-2 the Dutch agreed to abandon to the English all their remaining possessions on the Gold Coast in return for the cession of certain British claims over Sumatra. Unfortunately, the transfer of territory from the Dutch entailed a quarrel with the powerful negro kingdom of Ashanti, situated behind the coast tribes of this region but striving always to reach the sea. The Ashanti kingdom was rather a confederacy of small negro states, with the King of Kumasi at its head, than a homogeneous monarchy. In 1872 this paramount King of Kumasi despatched an army of 40,000 men to invade the British Protectorate and assert his claim to domination over the Fanti tribes of the colony. A large force of Fantis was to some extent armed and organized by the British Government, but the Ashantis defeated them twice with great slaughter, and then attacked the British fort of Elmina, where the Ashanti army sustained such a serious repulse that it avoided any further attacks on British fortified settlements. A year afterwards, Sir John Glover (as he subsequently became) marched with Hausa levies to attack the Ashanti from the east, while Sir Garnet Wolseley[115], arriving in the winter of 1873 with a strong expedition composed of British soldiers, contingents of the West Indian regiments, British seamen, and marines, drove the enemy back into their country, reached the capital, Kumasi, and captured and burned that place. A somewhat dubious peace was arrived at, the king never afterwards fulfilling the terms of the treaty, which he was supposed to have signed with a pencil cross; and for the following twenty-one years British relations with Ashanti (which was also devastated by civil war) were unsatisfactory. At last, in 1895, another strong expedition marched on the capital without firing a shot, and took the king prisoner. But the Ashanti people bided their time; and when, in 1900, the British forces seemed fully occupied with the South African trouble, three tribes of the Ashanti confederation (40,000 fighting men) rose in rebellion just at the time when the Governor of the Gold Coast and his wife were visiting Kumasi Fort. The rebellion broke out on April 1, and the Governor and his wife remained shut up till June 23, only a slender relief of negro soldiers and British officers arriving. On June 23 the Governor and his wife (Sir F. Hodgson and Lady Hodgson) left Kumasi with an escort of 600 Hausa soldiers, cut their way through the Ashanti besiegers (with the loss of two British officers killed), and safely reached the Gold Coast Colony. A slender garrison of 100 Hausa soldiers and three white officers was left to defend Kumasi. Colonel (Sir) James Willcocks arriving from Nigeria with a few hundred Yoruba and Hausa troops marched through incredible difficulties of flooded lands, impenetrable forest and lack of transport to the relief of Kumasi. In the course of a few weeks he was reinforced by negro and Indian troops from British Central Africa and a number of British officers and non-commissioned officers, till at length he had a force of 3500 officers and men, besides the allied friendly tribes of Ashanti. Kumasi was effectually relieved on July 15 (the garrison was too weak to stand); and by the end of the year the whole of Ashanti had been effectually conquered and annexed. A railway from Kumasi to Sekondi on the coast, completed in 1903, sealed the pacification of the country. Ashanti now forms a large province (some 23,000 square miles) of the government of the Gold Coast. Beyond the forests of Ashanti, to the north, is the considerable area (33,000 square miles) known as the Northern Territories. This is separated from Ashanti mainly by the course of the Volta and of its great tributary the Black Volta. Unlike Ashanti, it contains no great area of dense forest, but is a grassy park-like country, dry and even treeless in the south-east. The negro population belongs mainly to the Dagomba-Moshi group, and is largely Muhammadan in religion. These northern territories were practically part of unknown Africa until the eighties of the last century. They were revealed to us by the journey of English, French, and educated negro explorers, and became a British protectorate between 1892 and 1899. The principal products are cattle and shea-butter (a vegetable oil).

The oldest possession in this region and the southernmost of the three great provinces of this important British territory is the Gold Coast Colony proper, which lies between Ashanti and the sea and covers an area of 24,200 square miles. Celebrated for its alluvial gold from prehistoric times onwards, it has of late become more remarkable for its rock gold from reefs of quartz and auriferous conglomerates. To work these more efficiently a railway was constructed from Sekondi to the interior by 1908, with a branch line. The average value of the gold exported annually since 1907 is about one million sterling. Since the beginning of the 20th century there has been a great development of cacao planting amongst the natives, on their own land; and the importance of this movement and its profitable results has quite changed the European conception of African colonization. It is now realized that the native proprietor works far harder on his own land if there is a market for his produce than he does as a paid servant on a European-owned estate.

Although the Gold Coast is perhaps the most unhealthy of the British West African possessions, it is prosperous in its finances, and has made great progress in trade. In the last ten years the total value of its trade has quadrupled, and stands now at £6,000,000 in approximate yearly value.

The colony of Lagos came into existence in 1863[116]. It was afterwards added to the government of the West African Settlements, then attached to the Gold Coast; and finally in 1886 made an independent colony. Lagos, as its name shows, was originally a discovery of the Portuguese, who so named it from the large lagoon, which until recently was a harbour of very doubtful value, even on this harbourless coast, but is now by a vast expenditure of money rendered safe for the exit and entrance of steamers at high tide. In the days of the early Portuguese adventurers the modern territory of Lagos was partly under the influence of Dahomé, partly under the rule of Benin; and the Portuguese and subsequently the British came there to buy slaves which native warfare rendered so abundant. In prosecuting the crusade against the slave trade in the middle of the last century the British Government came into contact with the king of Lagos, who had become one of the most truculent slave traders on the coast. This king, Kosoko, was expelled by a British naval expedition in 1851, and his cousin was placed on the throne, after having made a treaty with the British binding himself to put down the slave trade. A British consul was appointed to superintend the execution of this treaty, but neither the king who signed it nor the son who succeeded him kept faithfully to its provisions. At length, in 1861, the king of Lagos ceded his state to the British Government in return for a pension of £1000 a year, which he drew until his death twenty-four years later. Under British rule Lagos attained remarkable prosperity, though unhappily its extremely unhealthy climate caused great loss of life amongst the officials appointed to administer the colony. Owing to the great commercial movement in its port (the adaptation of which to ocean-going steamers proved very difficult and very expensive) it was called, with some justice, the “Liverpool of West Africa.”

At any time between the annexation of Lagos and, say, 1880, the small strip of coast which separates Lagos from the Gold Coast might easily have been taken under British protection, the only power with any intervening rights being Portugal with one fort on the coast of Dahomé; but the Home Government would never agree to this procedure until it was too late and France and Germany had intervened. Subsequently, until about 1898, there was growing trouble with France owing to her extending her protection or colonization over the little kingdom of Porto Novo, the large negro state of Dahomé, and the adjoining country of Borgu. These disputes as to delimitation of the frontier were settled in 1889 as far north as the 9th parallel. Then ensued in 1897 and 1898 a strenuous attempt on the part of the French to cut across the Lagos hinterland up to the Niger, but this difference was again happily solved by the Convention signed between the two countries in the summer of 1898.

Beyond Lagos, and indeed connected with it by half choked-up creeks, begins the great delta of the Niger, which extends along an elbow of the coast about 200 miles to the eastward, and ends—so far as direct connection with the Niger is concerned—at the mouth of the river Kwo-ibo, though there are probably creeks inside the coast-line which would carry on the connection of the delta to the Old Calabar estuary. These innumerable branches of the Niger stream were taken to be independent rivers (which indeed they are to some extent, receiving as they do many streams rising independently of the main Niger) until well into the present century, when it was at last made clear that they constituted the outlets of the third greatest river of Africa. Together with the adjoining rivers of Old Calabar and the Cameroons, they became known as the “Oil Rivers,” because they produced the greater part and the best quality of the palm oil sent to the European market. The Portuguese first came here in the 17th and 18th centuries (after falling out with the king of Benin) to trade in slaves; and the English followed them at the end of the 18th century and displaced them altogether. Evidence of former Portuguese interest in the Niger Delta is sufficiently shown by the fact that some of these rivers have Portuguese names, or Portuguese corruptions of native names. The remaining names are chiefly those of naval officers or ships that surveyed them, or occasionally a native designation more or less corrupted.

By the time the slave trade was rendered illegal, the wonderful virtues of palm oil had been discovered, chiefly in connection with its value as a lubricant for machinery (especially locomotives) and as a material for making candles and soap. Therefore the development of railways in Britain and other European countries, the new cleanliness, which coincidently was preached as a British gospel, and the spread of education and love of reading made the fortune of the Oil Rivers and those merchants who settled there at imminent risk of death from fever. Already in the forties of the last century British trading interests had become so important in the Niger Delta that a consul was appointed. The first consul, Captain John Beecroft, was a most notable personality, as an explorer and peacemaker. To him Great Britain owes the definite establishment of her influence on the Cross River and at Old Calabar. The British Government, for the purpose of putting down the slave trade, had, with the consent of Spain, occupied during the first half of the 19th century the Spanish island of Fernando Pô; and the administration of this island was for some time connected with the consular post for the Bights of Biafra and Benin[117]. Afterwards, when Spain resumed the possession of Fernando Pô, the British consul for the Bights was also consul for the Spanish island; but little by little his duties obliged him to reside more on the “Oil Rivers” than on the adjoining island. With the exception of the brilliant Richard Burton, who for four years was consul for the Bights of Biafra and Benin, the post was usually held by a gentleman who had been to some extent previously connected with African trade, and whose purview was not much extended politically; but in 1880 Mr E. H. Hewett, formerly Vice-Consul in Angola, and a man of some distinction, was appointed to the post. He took up his residence at Old Calabar, and his reports aroused great interest in the Government of that period, which was disposed to accede to the petitions of the chiefs and to take all the coast under British protection from Lagos to the Gaboon. But the plans of the Ministry were not fully settled until the end of 1883; and when Mr Hewett returned to the coast with full powers he was delayed by ill-health and still more so by the beginning of the Niger Question, and the importance of securing a hold over the lower Niger. Consequently he left the Cameroons region to a later visit; and the German representative at Duala, the celebrated traveller, Dr Nachtigal, taking advantage of this omission, suddenly concluded a treaty with a chief at the mouth of the Cameroons estuary. The British flag was erected over all the remaining territories in South Nigeria, the Cross River district and the north-west Cameroons. But Germany was determined to have a fair slice of West Africa, and the British Government thought it wiser to deal with German aspirations liberally. The British flag was therefore withdrawn from the vicinity of the Cameroons river and mountain. The last patch of Cameroons territory which was given up to Germany was the interesting little settlement of Ambas Bay, on the flanks of the mighty Cameroons mountain, founded in 1858 by the English Baptist Mission when expelled from Fernando Pô. Mr Hewett annexed this territory in 1884, and (Sir) H. H. Johnston administered it from 1885 until the time of its surrender to Germany in 1887.

The limits of the “Oil Rivers Protectorate” were then drawn at the Rio del Rey on the east, and the boundary of Lagos Colony on the west. The eastern boundary was subsequently extended by agreement with Germany to the upper waters of the river Benue. This acquisition—now known as the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and merged into the one great government, almost an Empire, of British Nigeria—was at first administered by consular authority, amongst others by the author of this book; and these consular administrators were obliged to face a serious difficulty in the determined opposition of certain coast chiefs to the carrying on of direct trade with the interior. These were the “middle men,” who had for several centuries prevented the penetration of Africa from the West coast by Europeans, in the dread that they would lose their lucrative commission on the products of the interior which they retailed on the coast. Some of these chiefs were of long established ruling families; others again had commenced life as slaves and had risen to be wealthy merchant-kings with incomes of £10,000 to £20,000 a year, derived from their profits on the goods from the interior which passed through their hands. Foremost among these obstructive individuals was Jaja, a slave from the Ibo country, who as servant, trader and counsellor to chiefs of Bonny had risen to such a position of wealth and influence that he had armed a large force of fighting men and a flotilla of war canoes, and made himself the most powerful chief in the Niger Delta. He resided on the river Opobo, and was very jealous of his independence, only signing a qualified treaty of protection with the British Government, from the well-grounded fear that, if he did not do so, the French would take his country as an access to the Niger. As Jaja at last went to the length of forcibly opposing trade between the British merchants and the natives of the interior, Mr H. H. Johnston, then acting consul for the Oil Rivers, removed him to the Gold Coast to be tried before a commissioner. As a result of the trial he was deposed and sentenced to five years’ banishment in the West Indies. With the exile of Jaja the principal resistance of the middle-men was broken, though at Benin and behind Old Calabar similar action had to be taken to secure free trade.

In 1893, under Sir Claude Macdonald, a regular administration was established over Southern Nigeria (the Niger Coast Protectorate, as it was called until 1906). In 1896-7 a peaceful mission to the King of Benin in the western part of the Protectorate was attacked by the soldiers of that chieftain and the leader (J. R. Phillips) and seven other British officials were slain, together with many of the native porters.

Benin had been in relations with British traders since 1553. The Dutch traded there in the 17th and 18th centuries for slaves, but were ousted by the French, and the French (in 1792) by the British. In 1823, Giovanni Belzoni, the Italian Egyptologist, died near Benin city when starting from this part of the Niger Delta to reach Timbuktu. In 1863 (Sir) Richard Burton came to Benin as British consul to try (in vain) to persuade the king to renounce his devastating human sacrifices, performed once a year for the king’s “customs” of ancestor worship. (Sir) H. H. Johnston, after making an agreement with the king’s viceroy, Nana, on the coast, explored the Benin river in a gun-boat, but was refused permission to proceed to the capital. This was accorded to (Sir) H. L. Gallwey in 1892; and a treaty was then made.

After the massacre of Mr J. R. Phillips and his companions on January 1, 1897 (only two Englishmen escaped) a British punitive expedition was rapidly organized by Admiral Sir Harry Rawson; and a month afterwards the city of Benin was taken, its king was exiled, and the worst offenders among his chiefs were executed. A second punitive expedition ranged through the Benin country in 1899, since when this ancient kingdom has been peaceful. The Benin expedition revealed to us, in a far more extensive degree than had hitherto been realized, the marvellous art which had sprung up in that blood-guilty city, an art chiefly manifested by bronze castings in the cire perdue process. A splendid series of examples of this work has since been exhibited at the British Museum. In all probability this art of working brass and bronze reached the Lower Niger and parts of the Niger Delta, such as Benin on the one hand and Old Calabar on the other, from the central Sudan, where it was introduced by Arab craftsmen, teachers and traders from Egypt and Tripoli; though some writers of late have argued an even earlier introduction of copper, bronze, and brass work emanating from Egypt prior to the Arab conquest, and extending from east to west across the central Sudan to the Upper Niger. In any case, this art had taken root in Benin, where it had acquired a special and national development. Concurrently with this had arisen an exquisite taste in the carving of ivory, almost oriental in its grace and finish.

In 1906 the Niger Coast Protectorate which had come under the Colonial Office in 1900, was fused with the contiguous colony of Lagos under the name of Southern Nigeria. It had previously (1900) united its east and west halves by acquiring the whole deltaic course of the Niger from Idda to the sea, after the Royal Niger Companies’ territories had been taken over by the British Government. Several small native wars were necessary between 1900 and 1910 for the subdual of the Arõ tribe (whose cruel fetish rites—the “long juju”—demanded constant victims) in the north-eastern part of the delta, and the Ibo people in the north; but the prosperity of Southern Nigeria has been notable. Its total trade averages in the year a value of £11,000,000. A railway now proceeds inland from Lagos to the Niger and from the Niger to Kano, about 850 miles. In 1912, the government of Southern and Northern Nigeria were united under a joint Governor-General.

Lagos, the delta of the Niger and the lands of the Cross river (Old Calabar), have thus been united at last in peaceful and prosperous development under the British flag. But strong as were the British claims to control the lands along the main stream of the Niger, they were vigorously contested by France in the second half of the 19th century. The Niger had been discovered from its source to the last rapid at the head of its seaward navigability by Mungo Park, one of the greatest of British explorers, and by later travellers from Sierra Leone. The rest of the exploration from Busa to the sea had been completed by other British adventurers and officials; from the point of view of discovery the whole Niger was British from source to mouth. The navigation of the river from the sea to above its confluence with the Benue was first organized in 1832 by a Scotchman, MacGregor Laird, who has been rightly called “the father of British trade on the Niger.” Laird between 1832 and 1859 spent about £60,000 vainly in developing Nigerian commerce. In 1841, 1854 and 1857 the British Government despatched or supported various expeditions to explore and make treaties; they also established a consulate at Lokoja, where the Benue meets the Niger, but the loss of life from the effects of the climate was so great in those days that the British Government became discouraged. The most distinguished of their consuls at Lokoja was Dr W. B. Baikie, who between 1854 and 1864 established the beginnings of British Nigeria[118]. But the consulate at Lokoja was abolished in 1868; and in another direction no attempt whatever was made to attach to the interior of Sierra Leone the rich countries lying beyond the sources of the Niger. But for independent action on the part of British traders the Niger would have become either entirely French, or in the main a French river with a German estuary. During the eighties the French Government of Senegal pushed forward to the Upper Niger. Earlier still, by the influence of Gambetta, two powerful French politico-commercial companies were formed to establish trading houses all along the Lower Niger. In spite of much discouragement, however, the numerous British firms that traded with the Niger had stuck to the river; but although they were, doing a great deal of trade their profits were reduced by excessive competition. From the British point of view, the hour had come to strike for the Niger; but where was the man? Captain George Goldie-Taubman[119] (a Royal Engineers’ officer) had been left several thousand pounds’ worth of shares in one of these small Niger Companies. Having spent some time in Egypt, he resolved to go to the Niger (1877) and see whether his shares were worth retaining. Like an analogous great man in South Africa, he decided on working for amalgamation. With untiring energy and great tact he brought about the consolidation of all the British companies trading on the Niger. Then he bought out the French company, discouraged as they were by Gambetta’s death, and boldly applied to the Imperial Government for a charter, being able to show them that no other trading firm but his own existed on the Niger. Britain was just about to take part at that time in the Conference of Berlin. She lost the Congo but won the eastern Niger. When the British claim to a protectorate was acceded to in principle at the Berlin Conference, a charter was granted to the National African Company founded by Captain Goldie-Taubman, who changed the name of his association to that of the Royal Niger Company. The main course of the river Niger down to the sea was placed under the administration of this chartered company, but the Benin district to the west, and the Brass, Bonny, Opobo, and Old Calabar districts to the east were, as already related, eventually organized as the Niger Coast Protectorate under direct Imperial administration, because in these countries the Niger Company had no predominating interests.

When Sir George Goldie’s Company had expended nearly all its available capital in buying out the French and purchasing governing rights from the native chiefs, a fresh obstacle had to be overcome: German rivalry came into play. The Germans had just taken the Cameroons but had failed to secure the Oil Rivers, on which in 1884-5 they made several attempts. Herr Flegel was sent to obtain concessions beyond the limits of the Royal Niger Company’s immediate jurisdiction in the Nigerian Sudan. But Flegel was forestalled in his principal object by the explorer Joseph Thomson, who most ably conducted a mission to the court of Fula Sultan or the Emperor of Sokoto, and secured a treaty with that important potentate which brought his territories under British influence. In 1890 the British claims to a vast Niger empire were recognized by France and Germany. But the French recognition was allowed to remain too vague in regard to the northern, western, and eastern boundaries of British Nigeria; thus rendering it possible for France in the ensuing eight years to strive to cut into the British sphere from two directions, if not three. On the north it was sought to push back the boundary of the empire of Sokoto, so as to bring the French sphere as far as possible to the south, though this assertion went little beyond map-making. On the south, the Benue basin, Lieutenant Mizon made the most persistent, and, as it would seem, unpractical attempts to secure for France a large sphere of influence on the river Benue, which could hardly be approached from French territory because the German sphere would stand in the way. Finally as the delimitation in the Anglo-French agreement of 1890 merely carried the British boundary from Lake Chad to Say on the middle Niger, and did not provide a western boundary, the French (though unofficially according the British in 1890 a straight line drawn from Say due south to the boundary between Lagos and Dahomé) gradually pushed their acquisitions eastward from Senegambia until they had secured all the right bank of the Middle and Lower Niger as far as Busa, which is at the end of the Niger cataracts and at the commencement of its navigability seawards. A British protectorate over Busa having been announced to France in 1894, this act on the part of the French was considered a distinct trespass on British rights and caused considerable excitement at the time; but, as may be seen by the 1898 convention, the French finally yielded to British claims. They had some time before tacitly disowned the enterprise of Lieutenant Mizon, which had been rendered the more hopeless, firstly by the agreement between England and Germany in 1893 (which provided for a continuous Anglo-German boundary from the Rio del Rey on the coast to the southern shores of Lake Chad), and secondly by the subsequent Franco-German agreement of 1894 by which a wedge of German territory was interposed between the French claims in Congoland and on the river Shari, and the British sphere on the Benue; though nevertheless the Germans admitted the French to a point on the extreme upper waters of the Benue in return for German access to the Sanga, one of the Congo tributaries.

Besides being hampered by the conflicting ambitions of other European powers, the Niger Company had to conduct a difficult campaign against the Amir of Nupe. Like most great Muhammadan empires, Sokoto consisted of a bundle of vassal states owing a varying degree of allegiance to the dominant power. British Nigeria then contained four important civilized negro peoples, and an indefinite number of savage tribes who were politically of no account whatever. These four great peoples are the Songhai on the north-west, the Hausa occupying all the centre, the Bornu or Kanuri on the north-east, and the Nupe on the south-west. Over three of these (excepting the Kanuri) the Fula conquests of a century ago had established Fula rule with its head-quarters in the Hausa States. But the kingdom of Nupe, though ruled by a Fula dynasty, held its allegiance to the court of Sokoto but cheaply, and requested at the hands of the Niger Company a recognition of its complete independence, which for political reasons the Company could not give. This powerful kingdom, however, stood in the way of all access to Sokoto, and in its defiance of the Niger Company raided for slaves far down on the Lower Niger. Unless a way was to be opened for successful foreign intrigue by allowing Nupe to assert its independence of Sokoto and the Royal Niger Company, it was necessary to subdue its pretensions. Therefore Sir George Goldie, with the aid of a staff of British officers, of Hausa troops and machine guns, inflicted a crushing defeat on the forces of Nupe (mainly Fula), captured their capital, and successfully asserted the sovereign rights of the Company as conferred on them by the Sultan of Sokoto. Subsequently other turbulent and slave-raiding tribes were dealt with, and the Company gradually rendered itself master of a great riverain dominion in west-central Africa.

But the whole position was a false one so far as Great Britain was concerned. The British Government at the Berlin Conference on the affairs of Africa had pleaded everywhere the cause of Free Trade; yet here, in the British Nigerian sphere, a chartered company had secured the virtual monopoly of trade. Above Abo on the deltaic Niger it was practically impossible for anyone to carry on commerce except the natives and the Royal Niger Company. Yet the British Government was already called upon to protest against King Leopold’s monopoly of trade in the interior of the Congo State and the French exclusion of British merchants from French Congo. So the step was taken in 1899 of buying out the administrative rights of the Royal Niger Company; and on January 1, 1900, the British Government commenced the direct rule of “Northern Nigeria,” a territory of approximately 256,400 square miles (as delimited by the 1890-1898-1902 conventions with France and Germany—338,000 square miles with Southern Nigeria) which stretched from the confines of the Sahara Desert and Lake Chad to the Upper Benue, the Central Niger, Borgu, and the Cameroons frontier. In three and a half years’ time (1900-04) practically the whole of this enormous area had been brought under effective British control—thanks to the courage and indomitable energy of its first Governor, Sir Frederick Lugard (who had won Borgu and Illórin for the Niger Company in 1897-99). Colonel T. L. N. Morland commanded a force of 800 negro soldiers with British officers and non-commissioned officers, which with its light pieces of artillery and maxim guns defeated the large forces of cavalry brought against it by the Fula princes. In a campaign which lasted from the autumn of 1902 to the early summer of 1903 Colonel Thomas Morland marched from Nupe to Bornu, and Bornu to Sokoto, capturing the great Hausa city of Kano by the way. The inimical Fula Sultan of Sokoto was deposed, and a relative raised to the throne, who could be more depended on to work loyally with the British in suppressing the slave-trade and in discouraging those slave raids which were fast depopulating Northern Nigeria. It is pleasant to record that in the course of these operations the dynasty of the Kanemi Sheikhs of Bornu (the founder of which had been so good to the trans-Saharan expeditions sent out from England in the first half of the 19th century) was restored to the headship of that country. They had been driven out of Bornu in an extraordinary invasion of the Central Sudan by Rabah, a former slave of Zobeir Pasha in the Egyptian Sudan. Rabah, deserting the crumbling Dervish power of Omdurman, had marched to the west and entered Bornu in 1895 at the head of a large army. Rapidly he made himself master of the regions between Hausaland and the Congo basin. Ultimately he and his son, Fadl-Allah, fell in battle with the French; and the British, when they took over Bornu as the result of Colonel Morland’s victories, replaced as Sheikh or native ruler of that ancient kingdom the great-grandson of Muhammad-al-Amin-al-Kanemi, the man who so befriended Denham and Clapperton in 1822-4.

The Fula power[120] is not extinct in Nigeria. Far from it. The more intelligent Fula princes and aristocracy now assist the British as great chiefs, and in minor administrative posts. The trade of Hausaland is reviving, and a considerable mining development (mainly tin) is going on in the hilly country of Bauchi. A railway now links up Kano with Lagos on the Gulf of Guinea, and a branch of this great trunk line turns southward into Bauchi and may some day reach the upper Benue; just as the Kano line will in the future, far or near, join the French Trans-Saharan line and carry passengers from the Central Sudan and the eastern Niger to the Mediterranean ports of French North Africa.

An interest in the trading possibilities of the Central Sudan was evinced by the British Government early in the 19th century, quite apart from the Niger problem; and it was at the expense of Great Britain that expeditions set out from Tripoli across the Sahara Desert in 1818 and 1822 to discover Lake Chad. This move was partly occasioned by the successes of a remarkable man, Muhammad-al-Amin-al-Kanemi[121], who had become the virtual ruler of Bornu and had opened up relations with Tripoli. Clapperton, a member of the 1822-25 expedition, traversed Hausaland and reached the court of the Fula Emperor at Sokoto. Denham nearly lost his life in joining a Bornu army which went to attack the Fulas of Mandara. Another expedition sent out from Tripoli in 1849 under Consul Richardson was mainly carried through to its ultimate purposes by one of its members, a German, Dr Heinrich Barth, who reached Timbuktu on the west and the Upper Benue on the south-east. So that Great Britain laid the foundations of her future Nigerian Empire both from the direction of the Mediterranean and by ascending the Niger and Benue from the Gulf of Guinea.

At one time British influence was so strong with the semi-independent Basha of Tripoli, that it seemed possible British protection might be accorded to this Barbary state, seeing that France in a similar manner had ignored equally valid Turkish claims to the suzerainty of Algiers. But the uprising of Muhammad Ali in Egypt awakened the Turks to the necessity of reinforcing their claims to Tripoli, and British projects in that direction were abandoned.

As regards Morocco, the Portuguese fortress of Tangier had been ceded to England in 1662, the British having desired it as giving them a port of call close to the Straits of Gibraltar. It was found difficult however to maintain it against the continual attacks of the Moors, and it was therefore surrendered to the Emperor of Morocco in 1684. It is not impossible that it may return one day to British keeping.