It has been asserted with some degree of probability that certain seamen-adventurers of Dieppe found their way along the West coast of Africa as far as the Gold Coast in the 14th century, a hundred years before the Portuguese; and that they established themselves on the Senegal river, built two or more settlements (Little Paris, and Little Dieppe) on the Liberian coast, and established trading stations at “La Mine d’Or” (Elmina), at Accra, and at Kormantin, on the Gold Coast. The Dieppois station at Elmina was said to have been founded in 1382; and the legend runs that forty years later, owing to the wars in France having distracted Norman commerce from over-sea enterprise, these settlements were abandoned. There may have been some truth in these accounts of Norman discoveries on the West coast of Africa set forth in the second half of the 17th century. A Norman adventurer undoubtedly rediscovered the Canary Islands in the 14th century; and it is probable that the Rio d’Ouro and even the whole coast of West Africa as far as the Gulf of Guinea were known to Italian seamen before these features were placed on the map by the Portuguese. When, three centuries later, the French founded a settlement at the mouth of the Senegal, they are said to have discovered the remains of a Norman fort (built by adventurers from Dieppe) and to have made it the nucleus of the modern town of St Louis.

At any rate, soon after the Portuguese had laid bare the coast of Guinea, ships began to sail from the Norman ports to resume or to commence the West African trade, though no attempt was made to establish any political settlements; for in the matter of founding colonies in Africa, France was considerably behind Portugal, Holland, and England. However, in 1637, a young Frenchman named Claude Jannequin de Rochefort was pacing the quays at Dieppe with vague aspirations to be “another Cortes.” Happening to ask where a certain ship was going, and being told in reply that she was bound for the “Senaga” river in Africa, near Cape de Verde, he instantly resolved to go, and before many hours were over was entered on the ship’s book as a soldier; he afterwards performed the duties of clerk to the captain. It would seem that this vessel, which had not only soldiers but monks on board, must have been despatched by some far-seeing authority, since before the Sieur de Rochefort joined its company it had been determined to stop on the West African coast north of the Senegal river, cut down trees, build a small boat, and use it to explore the Senegal. This plan had been formulated in complete ignorance of the fact that the coast north of the Senegal and south of Morocco contains no timber for boat-building. Finding this to be the case, the Dieppe expedition, under the command of Captain Lambert, with the Sieur de Rochefort among its soldiers, went on to the Senegal and put together a small boat out of timber which had been brought from France. Into this small vessel was transferred a portion of the crew, including De Rochefort; and the Senegal river was explored for 110 miles from its mouth. Although the Dieppe adventurers were said to have built a fort on the site of St Louis in 1360, and the Portuguese had a few trading posts on its lower reaches in the 15th century, there were no Europeans on the river when it was visited by De Rochefort, though the Dutch had established stations on the coast not far off. After obtaining concessions from the natives, Captain Lambert’s expedition returned to France, experiencing many delays and adventures on the way; and six years after he had started from Dieppe De Rochefort published an interesting account of their adventures.

But this pioneer expedition was not soon followed up, owing to the hostility of the Dutch. The Norman Company sold its rights to the French West India Company, and the latter again transferred them to a subsidiary association afterwards called the “Royal Senegal Company.” In 1677, the French navy (France being at war with Holland) captured the Dutch ports on the Senegal coast—Rufisque, Portudal, Joal, and Goree Island—this last, famous in the history of West Africa, being named after a little island on the Dutch coast, and commanding the now important harbour and capital of Senegal, Dakar. In 1717, Portendik, south of Cape Blanco, and in 1724, Arguin, an islet north of Cape Blanco, were also taken from the Dutch, who had earlier still acquired them from the Portuguese.

The Royal Senegal Company sent out in 1697 a very able man to attend to its affairs—André de Brüe—who made his head-quarters at Fort St Louis, which had been founded by De Rochefort’s party. This remarkable person, Brüe, combined the qualities of a man of science and a far-sighted trader, and may be said to have really laid the foundations of the French empire in West Africa. Brüe made two important journeys up the Senegal and into the interior. He remained eighteen years on the coast of Senegal, and visited the Gambia in 1700, finding English, Portuguese, and Spanish there, the first-named trading at the mouth of the river, and the two last settled some distance up its course as flourishing slave-traders. According to Brüe, the Portuguese slave-trading settlements exhibited some degree of civilization, but also of rowdiness among the European element, not unlike the proceedings of the “Mohocks” in the streets of London. In his writings Brüe expresses his amazement at the enormous number of bees inhabiting the mangrove swamps and coast-lands of Guinea. In 1716 Brüe sent out agents to extend French influence up the Senegal and towards the “Gold” country of Bambuk, the mountainous region on the upper Senegal. Brüe finally returned to France in 1715 and lived quietly for a long time afterwards on the large fortune he had accumulated. His is a name to be well remembered in the annals of the French Empire. He was a far-sighted, cultivated man, who had also the gift of choosing and employing good associates. Among these may be mentioned the Sieur Campagnon, the beau-idéal of a good-tempered, good-looking, supple, kind-hearted, valorous Frenchman. Only the charm of Campagnon’s winning ways enabled him to penetrate the recesses of Bambuk, whose secrets as a gold-bearing country were jealously guarded by the natives. One little incident of Campagnon’s life on the Senegal depicts his disposition. Walking round the outskirts of St Louis he came across an unfortunate lioness that had belonged to an inhabitant of the town, but had been thrown out on the rubbish heaps to die. The unfortunate beast had been suffering from some malady of the jaw which would not permit mastication, and was therefore nearly dead from hunger. When Campagnon saw the lioness, her eyes were glazing and her mouth was full of ants and dirt. He took pity on the unfortunate creature, washed her mouth and throat clean, and fed her with milk. This saved her life, and the grateful animal conceived a warm affection for him, and would afterwards follow him about like a dog and take food from no one else. Dr Robert Brown, who unearthed this charming anecdote, further informs us that after his romantic career in Africa Campagnon returned to France, and died, after a long and prosperous life, a master-mason and undertaker in Paris.

The French continued to develop their Senegal settlements with some prosperity until 1758, when they were captured by the British, who held them until 1778, and acquired them again for a time by the peace of 1783; after this they were in British hands a few years longer, but were French again by 1790. In 1800 the British took the island of Goree, which the French had acquired from the Dutch in 1677. By the peace of 1783 the English had secured from the French the exclusive right to trade with the Arabs or Moors of Portendik for gum. Portendik was a place on the Sahara coast about 120 miles north of St Louis. All the French possessions in Senegal which were held by the British from time to time during the Napoleonic wars were given back to France two years after the peace of 1815, though at that time the British hold over the Gambia was more clearly defined, the French only retaining one post on that river, given up in 1857 in return for the British trade monopoly with Portendik. The French had already resumed their explorations of Senegambia at the end of the 18th century; and after the final recovery of the Senegal river in 1817 these researches were pushed with some degree of ardour. In 1818 Mollien discovered the sources of the Gambia, and De Beaufort explored the country of Kaarta. In 1827 René Caillié started from the river Nunez with help derived from the colony of Sierra Leone (for which he was subsequently ungrateful) and descended the Niger to Timbuktu, thence making his way across the desert to Morocco. His journey, however, did not do much to lure the French Nigerwards at that time, especially as a great Fula conqueror had arisen, Al Hajji ’Omaru, whose conquests not only blocked the way to the Niger, but later on threatened the very existence of the French settlements on the Senegal. But after a long period of inaction and lack of interest, the French colony of the Senegal was to receive great extension. General Faidherbe, who for political reasons was rather distrusted by the newly-formed Second Empire, was exiled to Senegal in 1854 in the guise of an appointment as Governor-General. He was a man of great enterprise and intelligence, and immediately began to study the resources and extension of the Senegal colony. He first punished severely the Moorish tribes to the north of the river Senegal, who had again and again raided the settled country. Before he had been a year in Senegambia, Faidherbe had annexed the Wuli country, and had built the fort of Medina to oppose the progress of Al Hajji ’Omaru. ’Omaru sent an army of 20,000 men against Medina, but they were repulsed by the officer in command, and finally had to retreat before Faidherbe’s advance. Following on the repulse of the Fulas came the annexation of many countries along the Upper Senegal, and in the direction of the Gambia. A year later the country between St Louis and the mouth of the Gambia, past Cape Verde, had been annexed. Then the Casamanse river, between the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea, was taken; then, in the sixties, the coast between Portuguese Guinea and Sierra Leone was added to the French possessions, under the name of “Rivières du Sud.” In 1864, a French expedition under the gifted Lieutenant E. Mage (who was drowned off Brest in 1869) reached Segu on the Upper Niger and was detained there for two years by the suspicious Fula Sultan—Tidiani, nephew of the Emperor Al Hajji ’Omaru^[122].

A suspension of French activity occurred after the disastrous Franco-German war, but it was resumed again in 1880. Captain Galliéni surveyed the route for a railway to connect the navigable Senegal with the Upper Niger, which he reached in that year at Bamaku. By 1883 the post of Bamaku on the Upper Niger had been definitely founded and fortified. But General Borgnis-Desbordes, Galliéni, and other French officers had to contend with the imposing forces of king Ahmadu bin Tidiani, the grand-nephew and successor of Al Hajji ’Omaru, who ruled over the country between the upper Senegal and Jenné on the Niger. However Ahmadu was constrained by General Borgnis-Desbordes to make a treaty in 1887 which placed his territory under French protection. Nevertheless war with the Toucouleur (Takrur) Fulas followed in 1890 (and also with a vestige of the Masina Fulas under Ahmadu Abdulei); and the French occupied the great country of Kaarta (where Mungo Park suffered so greatly) in 1891, Segu on the Niger (also associated with Mungo Park) in 1892, Jenné and Timbuktu in 1893. The French as early as 1881 had taken under their protection the ancient Fula kingdom of Timbo or Futa Jallon. Their activities in this direction brought them into conflict with the forces of Samori, a negro (probably Mandingo) king who had risen from a very humble position to that of conqueror and ruler of the countries about the source of the Niger. Samori, like Al Hajji ’Omaru, commanded hordes of Mandingo negroes, whose conquests were often undertaken from propagandist motives, and who were to some extent in sympathy with the Muhammadan tribes of the Upper Niger. Samori’s forces were mainly recruited from among the Mandingo tribes between the Upper Niger and the hinterland of Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast. In 1885-6 a campaign had been undertaken by Colonel Frey against Samori, which did something to check the power of that raiding chief; but after the destruction of the Fula power in 1892 the attacks of Samori on the French outposts redoubled and nearly embroiled France with Britain over the affair of Waima. By 1888, a railway had been constructed which facilitated access to the Niger; and a small armed steamer having been put on that river at Bamaku, the Niger was for the first time since the last voyage of Mungo Park navigated beyond Segu. In 1887 this gunboat (named Le Niger) actually reached Kabara, the port of Timbuktu, but the hostility of the natives prevented its commander, Lieutenant Caron, from visiting the city. The gunboat returned without effecting more than an ominous reconnaissance.

In 1888 Captain Louis G. Binger commenced an exploring journey for France which had the most remarkable results. He was the first to enter the unknown country included within the great northern bend of the Niger. He secured by treaty for French influence Tieba, Kong, and other countries lying between the Niger and the Ivory Coast. Colonel Archinard, by his brilliantly conducted campaigns against Ahmadu bin Tidiani, added to the French West African dominions Kaarta, Bakhunu, Segu and Jenné, and thus freed from obstruction the road to Timbuktu. Later on Colonel Archinard defeated the raider-king Samori and occupied his capital, Bisandugu, near the frontiers of Liberia. An attempt was made in 1894-5 to attack him in the new kingdom which he soon conquered in the lands between the main Upper Niger and the Black Volta; and Colonel P. L. Monteil (who had previously, 1891-2, journeyed from Senegal to the Niger, and from the Niger to Bornu, and thence overland to Tripoli) led a military expedition against him from the Ivory Coast. Colonel Monteil was very unsuccessful, and was recalled by the French Government. Samori then attempted to advance northwards to the central Niger, as the last hope of breaking through the ring of French power with which he was being surrounded. Colonel Bonnier cut him off from that direction, however, in 1895; and Captain Marchand (of Fashoda fame) wrested from him the important town of Kong. In 1897 Samori had pushed eastwards, so that he was hovering about the northern boundary of the British Protectorate of Ashanti; and here his force attacked a small British surveying party, killed the native escort, and carried off the officer, Lieutenant Henderson. After a compulsory visit to Samori, Lieutenant Henderson was released; and the chief relieved himself from all responsibility for the wanton attack on the British party by saying, “It was the will of God.”

At length, in October 1898, the French military authorities on the Upper Niger made a determined attempt to abolish the power of this bandit king, who had begun his career as a religious mystic and who ended by organizing his disciples—“Sofas” or Sufis—into a tremendous slave-raiding army. They also determined to break the fighting strength of the Mandingos, as they had previously crushed that of the Fula and the Tawareq. By a brilliant feat of arms Samori was brought to bay and his forces routed by Lieutenant Woelfel. The Mandingo king was taken prisoner by Lieutenant Jacquin and Sergeant Bratières, and was exiled to the Gaboon.

During the reign of Louis Philippe a somewhat feeble revival of colonial enterprise had taken place, in which France made half-hearted attempts to establish herself in New Zealand, and secured New Caledonia and Tahiti in the Pacific. At this time also she thought of extending her possessions in unoccupied districts along the West Coast of Africa, and had acquired rights over Grand Bassam and Assini to the west of the British Gold Coast. During the sixties some efforts were made by Napoleon III to develop French trading and political influence in the Bight of Benin in Africa; and Porto Novo, near Lagos, was accorded French protection in 1868. These claims, however, had been allowed to lapse to some degree; and the places acquired would at one time have been willingly handed over to England for a small compensation. But in the scramble for Africa that commenced in 1884 they suddenly acquired immense value in the eyes of the French as footholds upon which to commence an expansion northwards from the Gulf of Guinea to the Niger empire of which France had begun to dream. In 1884 therefore Grand Bassam and Assini, on the Gold Coast, and Porto Novo, a tiny vassal kingdom of Dahomé, were effectively occupied. The journeys of Colonel Binger between the Niger and the Gold Coast in 1888-91 gave Grand Bassam a hinterland; and the consequence was that the Ivory Coast between Grand Bassam and Liberia (including the Rio Pedro district of Liberia) was annexed by France in 1891. Hitherto this coast, the interior of which was then and till the close of the 19th century one of the least known parts of Africa, had been of great importance to British trade, which was carried on chiefly by Bristol sailing ships. Moreover, from the Ivory Coast came the bulk of the celebrated Kruboys, who are the best labour-force obtainable along the West Coast of Africa from the Gambia to the Orange River. Nevertheless, although the petty chiefs of the Ivory Coast had often offered their friendship and vassalage to Great Britain, no steps were taken on the part of the British Government, and therefore no protest was offered when France annexed the Ivory Coast and became next neighbour to Liberia. In 1892 a somewhat stringent treaty was concluded between France and Liberia, by which, in the event of the latter coming under the influence or protection of any other power, France would have the reversion of much of her hinterland. The occupation of Porto Novo soon led to a quarrel with Dahomé, a kingdom of singular bloodthirstiness, which had defied both England and Portugal at different times, and had laughed at our futile blockades of its coast. After a preliminary occupation of the Dahomean coast towns and the imposition of a somewhat doubtful French suzerainty, the king, Behanzin, compelled the French to make their action more effective. A well-equipped expedition was sent out in 1893 under General Dodds, who had conducted the first operations in 1891. For the first time Dahomé was invaded by a well-organized European force; and after a fierce struggle the entire kingdom was overrun and conquered, and the king was captured and sent to the West Indies.

In the meantime, the French forces marching step by step along the upper Niger had captured the important town of Jenné in 1893—Jenné, the focus of Nigerian civilization, and the mother of Timbuktu. From Jenné at the close of 1893 Colonel Archinard directed a march to be made to Timbuktu—it is said, without or contrary to orders from the Governor of Senegal. Two squadrons marched overland, and a river flotilla of gunboats under Commandant Boiteux steamed to the port of Timbuktu, Kabara. The flotilla of gunboats and lighters arrived at Kabara in advance of the military forces, and caused considerable perturbation in Timbuktu. The civilized inhabitants of the town were willing to surrender it to the French, only fearing their hated masters—the Tawareq. The Tawareq, hearing of the coming of the land expedition, left the town to meet it; but the Niger being remarkably high, Lieutenant Boiteux was actually able to take two lighters armed with machine guns up the back-water, which in seasons of flood reaches the walls of Timbuktu. After a little deliberation the town surrendered to the French. Shortly afterwards the Tawareq attacked the naval station formed at Kabara on the Niger, killing a midshipman. Lieutenant Boiteux, hearing that firing was going on, rode out of Timbuktu with one other European, accompanied by his little garrison on foot, arrived at Kabara and routed the Tawareq. This was a truly gallant action, worthy to be recorded. After standing a short siege in Timbuktu and making a successful sortie, the little naval expedition was relieved from the anxiety of its position by the arrival of the first column under Colonel Bonnier on the 14th of January, 1894. Timbuktu was thus captured by the French with nineteen men, seven of whom were French, and the remainder Senegalese negroes. But a slight reverse was to follow. Over-rash, Colonel Bonnier started with a small force to reconnoitre the country round Timbuktu and rid the neighbourhood of the Tawareq. Too confident, they marched into a trap. Their camp was surprised by the Tawareq at early dawn, and almost all the French troops were massacred, only three French officers and a handful of men escaping to tell the tale. Twenty-five days afterwards, a second column under Colonel Jouffre arrived on the scene, and collected the remains of the unfortunate Frenchmen for interment at Timbuktu. It then set out to follow up the Tawareq, whom the French surprised in turn at night in their encampment, and of whom Colonel Jouffre believed his soldiers to have slain many. From that time the French have had no serious fighting near Timbuktu. French merchants are established there already and French missionaries—the White Fathers—from Algeria. A curious episode in the French conquest was an appeal, when hearing of the French approach, by the notables of Timbuktu to the Emperor of Morocco to intervene. After a year’s delay the Moroccan Sultan replied that upon receiving proofs of the vassalage of Timbuktu he would march upon the French and drive them away.

Subsequently the French patrolled the Niger far to the south of Timbuktu, and found it much more navigable than was at first believed. They established a post at Say, and Lieutenant Hourst explored that small portion of the river between Say and Gomba which till then had remained marked by dotted lines on the map. Numerous expeditions came across the bend of the Niger from its upper waters to its middle course, incessantly making treaties and extending the rule of France. Again, following on the conquest of Dahomé, the French marched northwards across the 9th parallel, which had hitherto marked the limitation between the French and British possessions, and occupied the country of Nikki, which had previously been acquired for the Royal Niger Company by Major, now Colonel Sir Frederick, Lugard. A bolder step still was taken by the occupation of Busa (already declared to be in the British protectorate), at a time when Sir George Goldie and his little army were winning victories over the forces of Nupe in the vicinity. This step however roused such a strong expression of popular feeling in England that a conference was formed in Paris to negotiate a settlement between England and France; and eventually France gave way on the point of Busa, though she kept Nikki, and was able to extend her control of the west bank of the Niger to Ilo, a considerable distance below Say. She thus united her Dahomean conquest to the rest of her Nigerian dominions. There is now no great native monarch or independent people existing in the vast area of French West Africa, though there are many kings and chiefs ruling their people peaceably and humanely under the eyes of French resident officers. There has been no serious breach of the peace in the Senegambian and Nigerian territories since 1900, with the exception of the fighting in the region to the north of the Senegal which is rather ineptly styled “Mauretania.” Here France had concluded treaties of protection with the chiefs of the Moorish and Arab tribes in 1903-5; but in 1905 the French Commissioner, Coppolani, was murdered in the far interior. Between 1908 and 1909 a force under Colonel Gouraud conquered all Mauretania and especially the hilly country of Adrar Temmur. The oasis of Air and Asben (which contains the old Songhai town of Agades) came under French control in 1905-6, and Bilma—farther east, in the Tibu country—at the same time.

In 1902-4 an administrative reorganisation of French West Africa took place, in which (and in the additional acts of 1909) the following divisions were recognised: Mauretania (344,967 sq. miles), bounded on the north by the Spanish protectorate of Rio de Oro and the 22° N. latitude and on the south by the river Senegal; Senegal colony and protectorate (74,000 sq. miles), bounded by the Senegal and Faleme rivers and Portuguese Guinea; French Guinea (95,000 sq. miles), bounded by Portuguese Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia; the Ivory Coast (130,000 sq. miles), between Liberia and the British Gold Coast; Dahomé (about 40,000 sq. miles), a narrow strip between Borgu, the Niger, and the Gulf of Guinea; and lastly the enormous “Colony of Upper Senegal and Niger,” which, with its military territories, has an area of something like 1,268,400 sq. miles. It is bounded on the west and south by the other divisions and by foreign possessions, and on the north by the Algerian and Moroccan protectorates. This last division of French West Africa stretches eastwards from the Faleme branch of the Senegal River to Lake Chad.

In Senegal and French Guinea, the ports of Dakar and Konakri have received a remarkable development, and are admitted to be the most splendid and civilized towns on the West Coast of Africa, far superior in sanitary arrangements and outward aspect to anything which as yet exists in the somewhat sluggish British West African possessions. From Konakri a railway has been constructed on to the healthy uplands of Futa Jallon and to the Upper Niger at Kankan. Nearly in front of Konakri is the little archipelago of the Isles de Los^[123]. These islands until the beginning of 1904 belonged to Great Britain, but under the Anglo-French Convention of 1904 they were very properly ceded to France, as they no longer commanded a coast which could become British.

The development of Senegal since the commencement of the 20th century has not been limited to the making of Dakar (now the residence of the Governor-General and the metropolis of French West Africa) a first-class port, but a great advance has also been made in railway construction. Landing at Dakar, which is only eight days’ steam from Bordeaux or Marseilles, the traveller journeys 165 miles by rail to St Louis (the old capital), there embarks in a river steamer on the Senegal and journeys to Kayès, enters the train again at Kayès and travels on 344 miles to Kulikoro on the Niger, whence he can proceed by river steamer to Timbuktu, the whole journey from Timbuktu to Paris being reduced to a possible nineteen days. Timbuktu the inaccessible, twenty to thirty years ago, is now only a ten days’ journey from an Atlantic seaport. Timbuktu is connected with Algeria (as well as with Dakar) by overland telegraph.

Dahomé and the Ivory Coast Colony have both shared in the development of French Africa. Dahomé is contented, peaceful, and prosperous under French rule. A railway due north from Kotonu to the Niger, beyond Borgu, is under construction, about half the line (200 miles) having been finished in 1910. On the Ivory Coast there has been a certain amount of financial depression owing to the failure to discover gold or other minerals in profitable quantities. A number of companies, mostly British, had been formed for developing the mineral resources of the Ivory Coast; but, in spite of the vigorous work of the French in opening up communications with the interior, no great degree of commercial prosperity has as yet come to that portion of French Africa. A serious native rising had to be suppressed in 1910. In 1910-11 the contiguous frontiers of Liberia and the French possessions in Guinea and on the Ivory Coast were settled, greatly to the advantage of the French possessions.

The total area of French West Africa to-day (1912) is approximately 1,952,000 square miles, with a negro and negroid population of about 12,000,000, and some 8000 whites. It does an annual trade of about £16,000,000, mainly with France; for France in her colonial policy still pursues the selfish policy of protection. But unlike what has happened in French Congo, the territories of Senegal, Guinea, Nigeria, the Sahara and Dahomé have enormously benefited from the imposition of French rule at the close of the 19th century. For the first time in their long, blood-stained history the industrious negro and Fula agriculturists and herdsmen of these tropical regions, and the semi-nomads of the Great Desert, know what it is to experience continual tranquillity, safety and commercial prosperity.

During the three centuries following the Turkish conquest of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, France, like most other Christian nations in the Mediterranean, suffered greatly at the hands of Moorish corsairs—suffered so much that, not being able to defend her own coasts sufficiently, it probably never entered into her head to conquer and possess the corsairs’ country; though under Francis I she tried, in rivalry with the Genoese, to obtain a trading and fishing station off the east Algerian coast, “Bastion de France,” near La Calle (about 1544). So far as political aspirations went, her eyes were turned fitfully towards Egypt. At the end of the 17th century Louis XIV not only attempted to enter into political relations with Abyssinia (his envoy was murdered in Sennar, 1704), but was advised by Leibnitz to make a descent on Egypt, and to hold it as a station on the way to India. The idea was not adopted, yet it lay dormant in the French archives, and was probably discovered there by the ministers of the Directory after the French Revolution. Either it was communicated to Napoleon Bonaparte with the idea of sending him off on a fool’s errand, or the notion had occurred to him independently as a means of striking a blow at the English. At any rate, with a suddenness that startled incredulous Europe, the Corsican General, fresh from the triumphs of his first Italian campaign, eluded the British fleet, and landed in Alexandria in 1798 with a force of 40,000 men. He met and defeated the Mamluk Beys, who ruled Egypt under Turkish suzerainty, and eventually chased them into Upper Egypt. He then established himself at Cairo, and sought to win over the Muhammadan population by professing more or less Muhammadan views of religion. But Nelson destroyed his fleet at Abukir Bay. A Turkish army landed in Egypt, but was cut to pieces and driven into the sea by the infuriated Napoleon, who then endeavoured to conquer Syria, with the stupendous idea that he might carry his arms to Constantinople, and possibly proclaim a revival in his own person of the Eastern Empire. He was foiled again by the British, who assisted the Turks to hold Acre. Napoleon, though victorious elsewhere in Syria, eventually drew back shattered by the unsuccessful siege of this fortress. He then abandoned his eastern conquests with disgust, and sailed for France. His able lieutenant, Kleber, was assassinated. A British and Turkish army settled the fate of the remaining French forces in Egypt, which after a capitulation were sent back to France. But this daring inroad on the East by Napoleon had far-reaching effects. It brought Egypt violently into contact with European civilization, and prepared the way for its detachment from the Turkish Empire. Moreover, it caused France to take henceforth an acute interest in the valley of the Nile, an interest which on several occasions brought her dangerously near rupture with a Power even more earnestly concerned with the Egyptian Question.

In 1827 the Dey of Algiers (a country which remained under nominal Turkish suzerainty), insolent beyond measure in his treatment of Europeans, because hitherto all European states had failed to subdue his pretensions, signalised some difference of opinion with the French Consul by striking him in the face with a fly-whisk. France brooded over the insult for three years, when the tottering government of Charles X sought to prop up the Bourbon dynasty by a successful military expedition, and in June 1830 landed 37,000 infantry, and a force of cavalry and artillery at Sidi Ferruj, near Algiers. Considering their renown as fierce fighters, the Algerians do not seem to have made a very sturdy resistance; though perhaps in the lapse of time since their last war with a European power the superiority of European artillery began to be felt. At any rate, three weeks after the French landed they had taken the town of Algiers and the Dey had surrendered. A week afterwards the Dey was banished to Naples. Great Britain then asked for information as to French projects, and was assured that within a very short time the French forces would be withdrawn when reparation had been made. But these assurances were as well meant and as valueless as Russian assurances in Central Asia, and our own repeated and unsolicited declarations that we hoped to be able to leave Egypt in six months. The government of Charles X fell, and the new Orleanist dynasty could hardly draw down on itself the odium of a withdrawal. But an unwise policy nevertheless was pursued towards the Arabs, a policy dictated by ignorance. The inhabitants of Algeria had not taken a very strong part in the defence of the Dey, who in their eyes was a Turk and a foreigner; but when they began to realize that their country was about to be taken possession of by Christians, and Christians who at that time did nothing to soothe their religious susceptibilities, they found a leader in a princely man, Abd al Kader^[124]. From 1835 to 1837 the French sustained defeat after defeat at his hands. In 1837 however a truce was made, by which Abd al Kader was recognized by the French as Sultan over a large part of western and central Algeria. Two years after war broke out again between the French and Abd al Kader. An army under Marshal Bugeaud attacked Abd al Kader with unwavering energy—perhaps with some cruelty. In 1841 the national hero had lost nearly every point of his kingdom, and fled into Morocco, from which country he afterwards returned with a large army, only to be again and again defeated, though he occasionally inflicted great losses on the French. Finally, to save his own special district from ruin, he came to terms with the French Governor-General, who gave him permission to retire to Alexandria or Naples. But the French Government repudiated the terms granted to Abd al Kader, and kept him a close prisoner for some years in a French fortress. When Louis Napoleon became Emperor he released him and allowed him to live at Damascus, where he died in 1883.

At the time when the French invaded Algeria that country was by no means under a homogeneous government. There were the Dey of Algiers, the Dey of Oran, and on the east the Bey of Constantine (who ruled over much of eastern Algeria); whilst the Berber tribes in the mountains and on the verge of the desert were practically independent. Constantine was an extremely strong place, and in their first wars with its Bey the French failed to take it. It was not finally captured till 1847. By this time France had warred against Morocco, and had crushed any attempt on the part of the “Emperor of the West” to interfere in the affairs of Algeria. They had overrun and to some degree conquered all Algeria north of the Sahara desert. Therefore, in 1848, the Government felt justified in declaring the new African acquisition to be French territory, divided into three departments, to be ruled as part of France, and to possess the right of representation in the French parliament. Under the Second Empire this constitutional government, which was quite unsuited to what Napoleon III fitly termed ‘an Arab kingdom,’ was set aside in favour of military government. But this was not organized on suitable lines, and proved a failure. In 1858 an attempt was made to imitate the change then taking place in the government of British India. An Algerian ministry was formed in Paris with Prince Napoleon as Minister; but this form of administration also was a failure, and was abolished by the Emperor when he returned from his visit to Algeria in 1863. The country was then governed by a military governor, generally with absolute powers, and attempts were made to conciliate the Kabail or Hill Berbers, whom utter mismanagement had driven into revolt. The country nevertheless continued to be afflicted with unrest; and in 1870, as the Empire was dying, a commission sat to enquire into the state of the colony, and to suggest remedies which might be applied to its misgovernment. By a vote of the Chamber military government was again abolished in favour of civil rule, but owing to an insurrection in Eastern Algeria which followed on the Franco-German War, the recommendations of this commission were not fully carried out till 1879, when the first civil governor was appointed. One of the first acts of the new French Republic at the end of 1870 was to bestow the franchise on the Jews of Algeria, an action, which by discriminating between the Jews and Arabs has since caused a great deal of trouble.

From 1848 to 1880 numerous attempts were made to induce French people to settle in Algeria, nor were the colonists of other nations discouraged. At one time young soldiers would be selected from the army, would be married to poor girls dowered by the State, and sent off to settle in Algeria, where they were given grants of land; but often as soon as the dowry was spent the newly-wedded wife was deserted by her husband, who made the best of his way back to France. In 1871 nearly 11,000 natives of Alsace and Lorraine were granted land in Algeria, and subsequently some 25,000 other French colonists were settled in the country at a cost of 15,000,000 francs. But despite failures, frauds and fickleness, the French settlers in Algeria increased in numbers by immigration and births, so that by the beginning of the 20th century there was a French element in the European population of Algeria of more than a quarter of a million (298,000 in 1910). Meantime, the peace and security of trade introduced by the French had attracted large numbers of Italians and Maltese to the eastern part of Algeria, and still larger numbers of Spaniards to the western department of Oran—so much so, that even at the present day Spanish is the common language of Oran, and Italian is as often heard as French at Bona, Constantine, and even inland as far as Tebessa. Several thousands of Maltese also settled in eastern Algeria, and became naturalized as French subjects. It is probable that in this way Algeria will be eventually colonized by Europe, not by the nations of the north, but by those Mediterranean peoples who are so nearly akin in blood to the Berber races of North Africa. The French type that prospers most is that drawn from the south of France; yet the fair-haired Alsatians are doing very well^[125]. There has been a certain intermixture between the French and the native races, and between these again and other European settlers. It is the present writer’s opinion, based on recent visits to Algeria, that a remarkable degree of fusion between these elements is being brought about. The Arabs and Berbers in the settled parts of the country are approximating more and more in their costume and their mode of life to the Europeans, while the latter are becoming to some extent Arabised. There is scarcely an Algerian in any town who cannot talk French, and there is scarcely a French settler in Algeria who cannot talk Arabic, while among the lower classes an ugly jargon is springing up, in which both languages are represented, mixed with Italian and Spanish words.

In 1863 the Emperor Napoleon brought about the passing of a law which exchanged for a tribal holding of land the recognition of the indigenes as individual proprietors of the soil. This law has to some extent broken up the tribal system, has corrected nomad tendencies, and has done much to settle the Berbers on the soil with loyalty to the existing government. Of course, outside the relatively well-watered, fertile districts the nature of the country induces a wandering, pastoral life amongst the sparse population; and here a warlike spirit still shows itself from time to time in revolts of ever diminishing extent. During the eighties of the 19th century the French were obliged to bring large forces into the field to suppress a serious insurrection under Bu Amama, a leader who represented the more-or-less Arab tribes inhabiting the steppe country, far to the south of Oran, on the borders of Morocco. Their turbulence was only finally subdued by the building of a railway into the heart of their country—a railway now reaching to south-eastern Morocco and destined to be prolonged across the Sahara to Timbuktu.

At the close of the 19th century the Jewish question gave rise to disturbances. The Jews, equally with the Christians in Algeria, are electors, while this privilege is granted to only a few Arab proprietors. As in Tunis, the Jews are greatly given to usury, and they were formerly disliked in Algeria with an intensity which is but little understood in England, where the Jews are scarcely to be distinguished from other subjects of the Crown in their demeanour or practices. But the fact is that parliamentary government, so far as Algeria and its connection with France are concerned is somewhat of a farce. Algeria will demand in future fuller measures of self-government, and less dependence on the selfish policy of French manufacturers and distillers. But the country nevertheless owes an immense debt of gratitude to France for its noble public works, its security, tranquillity and its successful battles against the forces of nature—drought, locusts and desert sands.

An example of a successful retention of native forms of government is to be seen in the adjoining country of Tunis, which under the ægis of a Turkish prince is governed despotically, ably, wisely, and well by a single Frenchman. Tunis, which, like Algeria and Tripoli, had since the close of the 16th century been more or less a Turkish dependency—that is to say, a country governed at first by Turkish officers, who finally became quasi-independent rulers, with a recognized hereditary descent—soon began to feel the results of the conquest of Algeria in an increase of interest felt by the French regarding its condition. At first the relations between France and Tunis were flattering to the latter country. The relatively enlightened character of the Husseinite Beys^[126] was recognized, and when France was in difficulties with Abd al Kader and the Bey of Constantine, proposals were even made to Tunis to supply from its ruling family two or three princes who should be made Beys of Constantine and Oran under French protection; but the idea was not carried out. In 1863 the Bey of Tunis went in state to visit the Emperor Napoleon at Algiers. Nevertheless, during the ’50’s and ’60’s Great Britain firmly maintained the independence of Tunis, at whose court she was represented for many years by a sage diplomatist, Sir Richard Wood. The disenchantment which Algeria caused in the early sixties diminished the interest which France felt in Tunis; and during this time, under the fostering care of Sir Richard Wood, British enterprise had acquired so large a hold over the Regency, that at the beginning of the seventies it would have been reasonable to have extended British protection to the Bey. But another factor had come into play—the newly-formed Power of United Italy. The finances of Tunis had from the time of the Crimean War onwards got into a disarray resembling in a minor degree the condition of Egypt under Ismail. Not only was the Bey extravagant, but still worse, his ministers, mostly of servile origin, robbed the country shamelessly, and loans were obtained over and over again merely to swell their ill-gotten gains. At last the Powers had to intervene, and in 1869 the finances of Tunis were brought under the control of a tripartite commission with representatives of England, France, and Italy. During the early ’70’s, however, British commercial interest waned, and the enterprise of France increased, with the result that France obtained permission to erect telegraphs, and took over an important railway concession which had been accepted and then abandoned by a British firm. It was becoming obvious that the native government of Tunis could not continue much longer without a definite European protector. Whatever right England may have had to assume such a position, she quietly surrendered it to France through her official representatives at the Congress of Berlin. The only other rival then was Italy; and Italy, though she would have dearly liked to resume control in the name of Rome over the Roman province of Africa, shrank from the danger of thus defying France. A small British railway which had been made from the town of Tunis to the port of Goletta was sold to an Italian company in 1881^[127]. At the same time, a British subject, really acting as a representative of the Tunisian Government, attempted on a point of law to prevent a very large estate in the interior of Tunis from falling into French hands. The French Government determined to delay action no longer. Taking advantage of the very insufficient plea, that a Tunisian tribe (the Khmirs or “Kroumirs”) had committed small robberies across the Algerian frontier, a strong force invaded Tunis, and wrung from the Bey in his suburban palace the treaty of Kasr-es-Said, by which he placed his territories under French protection. When the news spread into outlying districts there were uprisings against the French or against the Bey’s government which had placed the country under French control. The French troops had practically to conquer much of the south of Tunis, but in a year’s time tranquillity had been restored. In 1883 the treaty of Kasr-es-Said was replaced by another agreement which brought the Tunisian Government under complete French control. In this year the other Powers surrendered their consular jurisdiction, and recognized that of the French courts. By 1897 all former commercial treaties with the Bey were abandoned in favour of fresh conventions made with France. From the commencement of 1898, Tunis became emphatically an integral portion of the French Empire.

Through accident or design—let us hope the latter—a succession of able men was appointed to direct the affairs of France in Tunis. Several of these had a relatively long tenure of power, and were therefore able to carry out a continuous policy. Ablest amongst these French residents have been M. Jules Cambon, and M. René Millet. Tunis has been an example of almost unqualified success in French colonial administration. Of late, however, the protectionist policy which finds favour with the French Government has to some extent striven to secure the commerce of the Regency for France, a policy which may tend to qualify the praise which otherwise would be bestowed on a remarkable development of the country under French direction.

The extension of Senegal under General Faidherbe, and the occupation by the French of oases in the Sahara, such as Wargla and Golea, early suggested an overland connection between the two French possessions, and the “Chemin de fer Trans-Saharien” was hinted at, half in joke, during the sixties and became a subject of serious consideration in the seventies. But in 1881 the massacre of the Flatters expedition in the Sahara Desert, and the obvious hostility of the Tawareq to any further advance of the French across the desert temporarily discouraged the idea; though the main discouragement no doubt arose from the thought of the enormous cost of such a railway, and the unfruitful character of the country it would traverse. Still France, when the word “hinterland” was creeping into political terminology, began to feel anxious that no other European Power should intervene between her North African possessions and her empire on the Niger; and in 1890 she secured from the British Government a recognition of this important point, the British recognition carrying the French sphere of influence to the north-western coast of Lake Chad as well as to the Niger. In 1898 it was resolved to take effective possession of all this portion of the north-central Sudan, and three great expeditions converged on it; one from Algeria under Commandant Lamy with Mons. F. Foureau as political officer, one from French Congo (as to which more will be written when that region is considered), and the third from Senegal, under Captains Voulet and Chanoine. Unfortunately these last-named officers belonged to a type which in the closing years of the 19th century came into prominent notice in the French and Belgian operations in Central Africa, while it was not entirely unknown in the British and German records of that period, as colonial and “Congo Atrocity” scandals testified—a type which became recklessly cruel and immoral through the possession of unlimited power and the belief that its doings would never be heard of in Europe. But the mistreatment of the natives in the Niger Bend did come to the knowledge of the French authorities in Senegal, and Lieut.-Colonel Klobb was sent eastward to catch up with the Voulet-Chanoine column and take command. Klobb overtook these officers in the Sokoto country. Voulet ordered his men to fire on the officer sent to supersede him. Klobb fell dead. Then Voulet and Chanoine marched away with most of their troops to found an independent state in the heart of Africa, leaving their junior officers and the remnant of the negro soldiers to do as they pleased. But their own Senegalese troops, on reflection, objected to outlawry and permanent banishment from their homes. They held a rough court martial, sentenced Voulet and Chanoine to die, shot them, and then returned to the command of Lieut. Pallier, who had succeeded Klobb in command of this mis-managed expedition. Pallier bravely and adroitly (for the tragedy took place nominally on British territory and the natives were arming to punish these marauders) led the reorganized expedition to Zinder in northern Hausaland (July, 1899) where four months afterwards Foureau and Lamy arrived. From this time onwards the Sahara desert was occupied and pacified and is now traversed by several lines of telegraph wires. The Tawareq and Tibu have ceased to raid and devastate peaceful agriculturists in the oases, or the long caravans of traders. Between 1899 and 1903 French forces (chiefly native cavalry under French officers, and the Foreign Legion) had occupied all the prominent oases and centres of population in the Moroccan Sahara, from Figig and Beshar on the north to Tuāt, Tidikelt, Gurara and Insalah in the south.

The work of the 1890 and 1898 conventions between Britain and France was completed by the Agreement of 1904, in which the British Government acknowledged Morocco to be a sphere of exclusively French political influence, with the exception of Tangier and the portions which might be claimed by Spain on the Riff coast. But in 1905 the German Government showed its displeasure at this agreement by an ostentatious recognition of Moroccan independence. European diplomacy arranged the compromise of the Algeciras Conference in the spring of 1906, at which the thirteen assembled delegates drew up some regulations of a stop-gap nature for the policing of the Moroccan Atlantic ports, the re-establishment of Moroccan finances, the position of foreigners, etc. In 1907 however the disorder in Morocco became acute and French and English officials were captured or killed by the natives. To mark her displeasure, France occupied Ujda (Oudjda), a border town of north-east Morocco and advanced her troops to the Muluya river (which will probably be fixed as the theoretical boundary of “Morocco” in the north-east). Soon afterwards the tribesmen round Casablanca (Dar-al-baida) attacked and slew some European masons engaged on the harbour works. France (after the plunder of the town by the Shawia tribesmen) finally landed a force of 15,000 men and forcibly occupied the Shawia country all round Casablanca. More fighting took place in South Morocco (1907-8) and French expeditions traversed and occupied the regions south of the High Atlas. In 1908 occurred the civil war between the Sultans Abd-al-aziz and Mulai Hafid, which resulted in the defeat of the former, in spite of his English military advisers and non-commissioned officers^[128]. Germany seemed rather to espouse the cause of Mulai Hafid, but in any case the complication was unravelled by the abdication of Abd-al-aziz and the recognition of Mulai Hafid by France and the other signatory powers of the Algeciras conference.

But in 1909 the temporary peace in Morocco was again rudely broken by Spanish activity round Melilla—the building of a railway to secure a new post, La Mar Chica, and to reach and work mineral deposits. The Riff tribes attacked the Spaniards with results already described in Chapter V. The ferment among the Moors against European intervention next took the shape of attacking the Sultan Mulai Hafid at Fez (1910). To save the Sultan and the Sultan’s Government (the “Makhzen”) and the European residents from possible destruction, the French Government sent an expeditionary force from the Shawia coast region to reach and relieve Fez. This was accomplished after some difficulty in the spring of 1911, and a small army or government guard was organized for the Sultan under French officers.

This and other actions once more aroused German resentment and intervention on the grounds that France was creating a virtual protectorate over Morocco without Germany’s consent, and without compensation to Germany for the possible loss of a profitable field of commercial development. So the German war vessel, the Panther, was sent to Agadir in the Bay of Sūs to “protect German interests”; these interests being the mineralogical researches and acquisition of concessions of the firm of Mannesmann. If we brush aside diplomatic fictions, the kernel of the matter was this. Germany had long fixed her desires on the Bay of Sūs or Agadir, that semi-circular bight of the Moroccan coast south of the Atlas range and opposite the River and Country of Sūs which is the nearest approach on the whole Atlantic coast of Morocco to a large and good harbour protected from the north wind. It was believed in Germany that Great Britain was too much involved in domestic agitation to be prepared to go to war over Morocco; and that France would be willing to stave off trouble with Germany and obtain her consent to the acquisition of nearly all Morocco by agreeing to a German protectorate over the Sūs country and Anti-Atlas, thus admitting Germany as a territorial power in North Africa.

Spain gave Germany some encouragement in this intervention, having already found the French very grudging in their allotment of Spanish spheres of influence in the north of Morocco and opposite the Canary Islands. But had Germany succeeded in her demand for the Sūs country Spain would have been the first to suffer. The Cape-Jubi-Bojador region and the Canary Islands might ere long have become German also.

An attempt was made in Germany to enlist European sympathy on her side by advancing the plea that this intervention at Agadir stood for free trade in Morocco. But this important principle had already been secured by the Anglo-French Convention of 1904 and the Algeciras Act of 1906; moreover the whole of the bargaining between France and Germany, since 1906, bore reference to the selfish advantages which German concessionaires and traders were to obtain in Morocco to the detriment of (let us say) British, American, or Belgian competitors. Of course France, in the use she has made of North, West, and Central Africa and of Madagascar, has been inexcusably protectionist. She has adopted the thoroughly selfish policy of colonial exploitation characteristic of Spain and Portugal in the 16th-18th centuries and of Britain in the 17th to early 19th centuries. Nevertheless she has spent blood and treasure without stint in the redemption of North Africa; and in spite of her protectionist tariff the non-French, European trade with Algeria and Tunis is very considerable. But a question of even greater importance than a selfish French use of Morocco rose before Great Britain in 1911. Not to support France in this diplomatic struggle meant the establishment of Germany on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, meant that the Emperor Wilhelm’s half jesting description of himself at that period as “Admiral of the Atlantic” would become a reality, with all the consequences which might flow from such a position.

Germany realizing her false position shifted her ground, asked for reasonable “compensations in Central Africa,” got them, and in return recognized definitely a French Protectorate over Morocco. With the exception of the Riff Coast, of Tangier, and of the region opposite the Canary Islands (which with the exception of Tangier will become Spanish) France will soon be mistress of Morocco in name, but probably not in actuality and entirety till many years have passed. No sensible person need regret this. The condition of Algeria and Tunis under French direction are a sufficient guarantee for the future prosperity and happiness of the most interesting country in Africa—Morocco—under French guidance.

As already related, France, or rather—the State being then but the king—Louis XIV, had become interested in the affairs of Abyssinia early in the 18th century. This interest was reawakened in the middle of the next century by the remarkable researches of the brothers Antoine and Arnaud d’Abbadie, who though of partly Irish origin were French subjects. The elder brother had explored Brazil, the younger, Algeria; but both were attracted by the little-known civilization of Ethiopia and started together in 1838 for Abyssinia. Between 1838 and 1853 their researches were carried on from Masawa in the north to the little-known country of Kaffa in the far south; and, though the results were not entirely published until 1890 (the publication began in 1860), they gave to France a legitimate claim (together with the subsidized travels of Borelli in 1890) to an interest in the affairs and the future of Abyssinia.

In 1857, jealous of the British establishment at Aden, France had intended to seize the island of Perim, at the mouth of the Red Sea, but was forestalled by the British. She therefore turned her attention to the coast opposite Aden, and there purchased from a native chief (in 1862) the Bay of Obok. This place was not effectively occupied till 1883, after the break-up of the Egyptian Sudan empire. France then rapidly pushed her possessions southward to curtail as much as possible similar British operations in Somaliland. She thus secured the important bay of Tajurra, French territory now stretches inland to the vicinity of Harrar. On the north it is bounded by the Italian colony of Eritrea and in the interior by Abyssinia and British Somaliland. French Somaliland, as this possession is called, is about 5,790 sq. miles in extent and is chiefly important for the comparatively good harbour of Jibuti and for the fact that it controls the easiest access to Abyssinia. Indeed the only existing railway which enters Abyssinia and connects that country with the sea coast starts from Jibuti and is constructed to the Abyssinian capital, Adis Ababa (275 miles), with a branch to the old Semitic city of Harrar (altogether about 192 miles of rail on French territory). It was an unfulfilled aspiration of France in the last decade of the 19th century that a French Empire should extend across broadest Africa from Senegal to Abyssinia and the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. This project was to be essayed in a tentative manner by an expedition organized in the French Congo in 1894-5 (despite warnings from Great Britain that such action would be regarded as unfriendly) and led by an officer who had been very successful in the wars of Upper Nigeria, the brave Major J. B. Marchand, who advanced (mainly along the course of the Djur River) with a force of about 150 Senegalese and nine French officers to Fashoda, on the White Nile. Here they were saved from possible destruction at the hands of a large force of Dervishes by Lord Kitchener’s victory at Omdurman. In consequence of the protests of the British Government, Major Marchand in November 1898 was instructed to leave Fashoda and retire through Abyssinia to French Somaliland. This journey up the valley of the Sobat River was successfully accomplished; and at the end of May 1899 Marchand and his officers reached Paris, where they received a great ovation.

French interest in the Congo region began in the 18th century, mainly because of the importance of the servile labour of Congoland to the French West Indies and the desirability of preventing the Portuguese from regaining their monopolist hold over the Kongo kingdom and its commerce. The French Government contrived moreover to have French Catholic missionaries sent to the Congo and Loango in place of the Italian Capuchins. The Napoleonic Wars and the abolition of the slave trade suspended further action; but the idea of a French control over “Lower Guinea” revived in 1839, at the time when the government of Louis Philippe was making half-hearted efforts to found French settlements on the West Coast of Africa. At this date King ‘Denis’ of the Gaboon, who had shown favour to Roman Catholic missionaries and to French traders, was induced to transfer his kingdom to France. The Gaboon, or country of the Mpongwe tribes, lies to the south of the Cameroon region. Effective possession was not however taken till 1844, and Libreville, the present capital, was not founded till 1848, when a cargo of slaves was landed there from a captured slaving vessel and set free to commence the population of the new town. Attention was drawn to this French settlement by the remarkable journeys of a French-American, Paul du Chaillu, and his making definitely known the characteristics of the largest known anthropoid ape, the gorilla. The existence of this ape had been to some extent established by the American naturalist, Dr Savage, from skulls sent home by American missionaries settled on the Gaboon estuary; but the gorilla was scarcely made familiar to the general public, until Du Chaillu came to England with his specimens^[129]. In the early sixties French explorers established the lower half of the course of the important river Ogowé; and in the seventies these explorations were extended by other travellers, who carried the knowledge of the Ogowé to the limits of its watershed, and passed beyond—unknowingly—to affluents of the Congo. Among these explorers was the celebrated Savorgnan de Brazza, of Dalmatian origin but born on a French ship off the coast of Brazil.

Political interest in the Gaboon languished so much on the part of France that the country was once or twice offered to England in exchange for the Gambia. However in 1880, the awakening desire to found a great colonial empire urged France to extend her Gaboon possessions up the coast, towards the Cameroons, and southward in the direction of the mouth of that great river, the Congo, the course of which the explorer H. M. Stanley had just succeeded in tracing. Even before Stanley’s return, the King of the Belgians had summoned a number of geographers to Brussels to discuss the possibility of civilizing Africa by an International African association. This conference brought about the creation of national committees, which were to undertake on behalf of each participating nation a section of African exploration. The French committee sent De Brazza to explore the hinterland of the Gaboon. While Stanley was commencing his second Congo expedition for the King of the Belgians and slowly working his way up the lower river, De Brazza had made a rapid journey overland to Stanley Pool and the upper Congo, making treaties for France and planting the French flag wherever he went. Soon afterwards an English missionary, George Grenfell, discovered the lower course of the great Mubangi, and French explorers promptly directed their steps thither. For some years there was keen and even bitter rivalry between Stanley’s expedition, which gradually became a Belgian enterprise, and the French explorers under De Brazza; and when, at the Conference of Berlin in 1884-5, it was sought to create the Congo Independent State under the sovereignty of the King of the Belgians, the adhesion of France to this scheme could only be obtained by handing over to her much of the western and northern watershed of the Congo, besides giving her a promise that, if the Congo State were ever to be transferred from the Belgian sovereign to another Power, France should have the right of preemption. Before the French had been many years on the Mubangi River (which is one of the few means of communication between the southern, Bantu part of Africa, and the northern regions, the “Sudan,” populated by non-Bantu Negroes, Negroids, Hamites, and Semites^[130]), they had very naturally conceived the idea of pushing northwards to the Shari river and Lake Chad. In 1890 Paul Crampel was the first European to cross this mysterious Bantu boundary, to leave the forest regions of the Congo and lower Mubangi, and enter the more open park-lands of the central Sudan. But he was attacked and killed (1891) by suspicious Muhammadan raiders on the river Shari. Another Frenchman, of Polish descent, M. Dybowski, succeeded in chastising the murderers of Crampel, and further exploring the Shari. A further mission under Lieutenant Maistre continued the work of Dybowski, and was in turn followed by a well-equipped expedition under the command of the explorer Emile Gentil; which last succeeded in placing a small armed steamer on the river Shari, and thence reached the waters of Lake Chad.

By an agreement with Germany in 1892, France secured German recognition of her sphere of influence over the river Shari, over the Bagirmi country, and the southern shores of Lake Chad; while, by a treaty made with the King of the Belgians in 1894, the Belgian boundary line was drawn at the Mubangi, the Mbomu, and the Nile watershed. Lastly, by the Anglo-French convention of June 1898, Great Britain recognized the French sphere to the south and east of Lake Chad. Thus France obtained European recognition for a continuous empire stretching from Algiers to the Congo Coast, and Oran to Dakar—a remarkable outcome of the landing of 37,000 troops at the Bay of Sidi Ferruj, near Algiers, in the summer of 1830.

In the last decade of the 19th century, the French method of administering the territories of the Gaboon, Loango and Congo-Mubangi (grouped since 1888 in one government as “French Congo”) was infected by the “concessionaire” spirit, which had unhappily inspired King Leopold II about the same time in his attitude towards the development of the Congo Independent State. These monopolist, protectionist ideas were a heritage from the older style of colonization in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The great Berlin Conference of 1884 on the Congo question was supposed to have vetoed them and rendered their recurrence impossible. But no sooner was this conference over than this monopolist policy was revived by the Royal Niger Company on the Niger-Benue, by the infant Congo State on the Congo above Stanley Pool, by the French in Loango, and (though much more faintly) by the British South Africa Company in Rhodesia. But it was mainly in the case of the Royal Niger Company that the monopoly was one which completely crushed out other trade. That association did not theoretically forbid the natives to trade with any foreign merchants but itself; it merely said to outside traders: “Sorry! but this place is ours, and so is that—in fact the whole river-bank—and we cannot have you trading on our private land.” The King of the Belgians copied this policy pretty faithfully on the Congo, and so did the French. The whole of French Congo, except two or three old-established towns on the coast, was divided up into concessions, varying from 20 square miles in extent to 54,000 square miles. The villages and plantations actually occupied by the natives at the time were recognized as native property, but this recognition did not necessarily confer on the natives the right to trade with whom they pleased.

All the coast ports of the Gaboon and Loango had long been frequented by British merchants doing a big trade with Liverpool; and great was the indignation when they found their commerce with the interior cut off by French concessionaires who, it may be, had done nothing to develop the trade of the country. In spirit, of course, this policy was in flagrant contradiction with the commercial stipulations of the Berlin and Brussels Acts which followed the Congo Conference of 1884-5. But the French government, in reply to remonstrances, pointed to the monopoly of the Royal Niger Company^[131]; and the French courts of law gave decisions adverse to British appellants.

It is only fair to quote the justification for this policy of concessions, charters, and other documents conferring special privileges. It is desired—in the interests of the native as well as of the overruling European government—to attract capital to the opening-up and the exploiting of the natural riches of Africa, riches of which the native has remained in utter ignorance for millenniums of years. To invite investments of capital some security must be given that the immediate fruits of the investors’ labours and expenditure will not be unfairly garnered by others who have not run the like risks. No one questions the right of the native, in a varying degree, to a fair proportion of the land; the area being determined by his numbers, degree of civilization, energy, intellectual capacity, and the extent to which he has already developed its resources. It would be, for example, a ridiculous proposition that the 322,450 square miles of German South-West Africa should be the exclusive heritage of a few thousand nomad Hottentot and Bushman hunters, or even of sixty thousand Bantu cattle-keepers; that some Congo forest of ten thousand to thirty thousand square miles should be assigned in perpetuity to a few thousand wandering pygmies prowling over it in search of game and wild bees’ nests; or that the whole of the Sahara with its phosphates and salt-mines be allotted to the raiding Tawareq and Tibu. On the other hand, to say in connection with a well-populated, fairly well-known region like the Niger banks, the Gaboon and Loango coasts, or the lower Ogowé river, that the natives shall only trade with concessionaires or with the Government itself, or that one nation shall be specially favoured in its commerce or trading relations, is to impose a tyranny which the world at large and the subject races will no longer tolerate quietly. It does not follow from this that there is to be no interference with “native” rights, that “freedom should be free to slay herself,” as has often been the case in wild countries, where the unthinking inhabitants destroy the resources of the country without thought for the morrow. It is quite permissible ethically for the French, the British or any other government to take possession of some thoroughly backward or very sparsely populated country in a more or less savage condition, and rule that country impartially for its own benefit and for its general usefulness to humanity at large. Under such conditions they certainly are not obliged by any moral law to attribute to the nearest native community of savages some large area of uninhabited forest or metalliferous rock. Such a source of future wealth they are entitled to administer as a trustee might deal with an estate for the benefit of a minor or of an imbecile; but only on the condition of putting the profits derived therefrom into the treasury of the state or country thus administered, not into the funds, private or public, of a distant European nation. King Leopold II or the French Republic were quite justified in declaring the uninhabited, unexploited, uncultivated forests of French and Belgian Congo to be “State domains”; but not with the sole purpose in the one case of swelling the revenues of his own privy purse, and in the other of enriching political partisans or public servants. The wealth of these regions need not have gone to some native chief or tribe dwelling in the vicinity who had had nothing whatever to do with the getting of the wealth, but should have been attributed to the whole community of the state or colony in which these forest or mining areas were situated.

Another grave defect in the earlier administration of French Congo was the handing over of thousands of natives as veritable serfs of the glebe to these European concessionaires. This was a wicked return for the trust they had placed in envoys of France like De Brazza, who had obtained their adherence to French dominion by treaty. The result of this policy was that gross abuses ensued, followed by native risings. At length the French Government was constrained by European opinion (largely awakened by Mr E. D. Morel) to look into the affairs of French Congo; and in 1905 the virtual creator of this dominion, De Brazza, was sent out as a commissioner to investigate the charges brought against the officials and the concessionaires. It is believed that De Brazza was horrified at much of the devastation and depopulation which he saw, as were some other high-minded French officials who had the courage to publish their impressions. But De Brazza died at Dakar on his way home, and his report was never published, though the French Government made afterwards some changes in matters of administration.

In 1911 Germany, in return for acknowledging a French Protectorate over Morocco, obtained from France important territorial advantages in French Congo—about 107,000 square miles—giving Germany (1) a strip on the south of Corisco Bay and a large piece of the Osheba country, which permits her to surround the Spanish possession of Rio Muni (she also acquired from France rights of pre-emption over the Rio Muni); (2) a long strip down the valley of the river Sanga to the main Congo River opposite Lukolela; (3) the Laka and Baya countries east of the Cameroons watershed; and (4) a strip of land communicating with the Mubangi river. In return, Germany ceded to France a piece of land (6450 sq. miles) along the left bank of the lower Shari. It was generally rumoured that Germany had asked for the whole left bank of the Mubangi from Libenge down to the Congo, and the whole of French Congo between the Mubangi, the Congo and the Atlantic coast. If she did so, other circumstances caused her to modify her demands. In any case she has succeeded in cutting off French Congo from the Mubangi-Shari-Chad territories, so far as uninterrupted land communication is concerned. She has ringed the tree in the hope that it may some day fall to her. But if it does, it will only be in return for an equivalent in some other direction, perhaps a rectification of the Lorraine frontier.