Chapter XIII: Belgian Africa

It has been already related in the preceding chapter how the
geographical ardour of the King of the Belgians resulted in the
sending of Stanley with an important expedition to explore the
Congo. Previous to this enterprise, however, King Leopold II had
shown himself deeply interested in the fate of Central Africa.
Following on the successful crossing of the continent from the
Zanzibar to the Benguela coast by Commander V. L. Cameron, R.N., and
his revelation of the richly endowed territories of the Southern
Congo basin, King Leopold had summoned to Brussels under his own
presidency a conference of geographers, which created an
International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of
Central Africa and for the abolition of the Slave Trade which then
was really ravaging that region. This International Association soon
separated into a number of National Committees; that of Belgium was
founded in November, 1876, and in 1877-79 Belgian Expeditions were
sent out _via_ Zanzibar to Tanganyika. By August, 1879, Capitaine
Cambier (an excellent pioneer), had founded the station of Karema on
the south-east Coast of Tanganyika. Captain E. Storms established
himself here (together with the White Fathers’ Catholic Mission) in
1880, and set to work to unite the Tanganyika tribes in self-defence
against the Arab slave raiders. Storms became quite a hero after
beating off the Arab forces with merely native material, hastily
drilled as soldiers. By 1885, he had become recognized as the great
White Chief and Protector of southern Tanganyika.

In 1879 from out of the Belgian branch of the African International
Association there grew the Comité d’Études du Haut Congo, which
projected the idea of Stanley’s concluding in its name treaties with
the paramount chiefs of the Congo region, treaties by means of which
these chiefs should agree to join in a sort of confederation for
purposes of mutual support, while at the same time they admitted
into their territories the traders who would be sent out by the
Committee, which was in some sort to become the suzerain of this
Congo Federation. Mr Stanley appears to have been under the
impression that the final protectorate over the central Congo would
be a British one; until 1884 few people seemed to think that the
King of the Belgians would make himself the sovereign of the Congo.
In the early eighties a kind of Anglo-French duel had taken place on
the Congo, De Brazza representing the French cause and Stanley the
British. When it began to dawn on the British Government that the
King of the Belgians was working for purely Belgian interests, it
occurred to them that there was no reason why England and Portugal
might not come to terms, at any rate about the Lower Congo. So the
abortive treaty of 1884 was drawn up, but not ratified. Believing
that this was a preliminary to a British Protectorate of the Congo,
France and Germany joined hands; and a Conference on African affairs
was convened at Berlin, the first of a long series of actions taken
jointly by the other states of Europe to check the extension of
British influence.

At the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 the Congo Independent State[186]
was recognized by all the leading powers of Europe as a sovereign
state with the King of the Belgians at its head. The boundaries were
not definitely fixed, but the west coast of Tanganyika was made the
eastern limit; and Captain Storms, to his great chagrin, was
recalled. Before giving her consent, however, France reserved to
herself the right of preemption over these Congo territories,
besides securing by an agreement with the King of the Belgians a
large portion of western Congoland. Mr (afterwards Sir Henry)
Stanley then ceased to administer the Congo State, and was succeeded
first by Sir Frederick Goldsmid, and then by Sir Francis De Winton,
who governed for the King of the Belgians, but gave a distinctly
English tone to the administration. Mons. Camille Janssen, however,
succeeded Sir Francis De Winton in 1886; the international character
of the state was dropped; and the British, French, Portuguese,
Swedish and German officials were gradually replaced by Belgians, so
that by 1891 the entire administration was Belgian. Stanley,
however, had once more intervened (in 1887) in the affairs of the
Free State, which had got into great difficulties owing to the
attacks of the Zanzibar Arabs on the Upper Congo. Stanley
temporized, seeking to gain time for the young state, and recognized
Tipu Tipu[187], the leading Arab, as Governor for the King of the
Belgians over the Upper Congo. Tipu Tipu withdrew about 1890, when
the Arab revolt against the Germans had caused grave tension between
the Arabs and Europeans in Central Africa. After his withdrawal, the
Arabs, who had now become extremely powerful on the Upper Congo,
attacked the Belgians in 1892, murdering a trader, Hodister, and the
unoffending Emin Pasha, and imprisoning and eventually killing the
Belgian resident and his assistant at the Arab capital (Kasongo),
besides massacring the men at several outposts. The forces of the
State—largely composed of Congo natives with a few Hausas from
Nigeria and one or two noteworthy Liberian negroes—were ably led by
nineteen Belgian and one English officers, and commanded by
Commandant (afterwards created Baron) Dhanis. The English officer
referred to was Captain (originally Surgeon) Sidney L. Hinde,
afterwards a British official in East Africa.

Dhanis commenced, in July 1892, a most noteworthy campaign from a
base—Lusambo—on the Sankuru river. His little army marched through
forest paths to the Lomami and thus took the Arabs in flank. From
the Lomami the Belgian force gained the banks of the great
Lualaba-Congo, and, victory succeeding victory, they captured
Nyangwe (the great Slave City of Livingstone’s day) on March 4,
1893, and carried Kasongo (the Arab stronghold) by assault on April
22, 1893. The story, as told by Captain Sidney Hinde[188], of the
capture of Nyangwe and Kasongo reads like episodes in an impossible
Rider Haggard romance. It was one of the greatest feats of arms, of
endurance and splendid courage that the history of Africa can show.
By the beginning of 1894, the Belgians had achieved the conquest of
the whole of the country up to the west shores of Tanganyika, and
the death or expulsion from Congoland of all the Arab leaders. This
brilliant episode in Belgian Congo history was however sullied by
the judicial murder, in September, 1893, of Gongo Lutete, the great
Manyema chief who at the commencement of the struggle with the Arabs
had come over to the Belgian side and whose alliance alone made
victory possible to the Belgian force. The execution of this warrior
chief—without respite or appeal, on no credible evidence of
treachery—following a drumhead court-martial presided over by a
young Belgian lieutenant, is as painful to read as the preceding
campaign of Baron Dhanis against the Arab slave-traders is a source
of satisfaction to all interested in the welfare of Africa. The
Belgians were eventually to pay dearly for this miscarriage of
justice. The remembrance of the death of Gongo Lutete smouldered
amongst the negro soldiery he had raised for service with the
Belgians; and in 1895 they broke out into open mutiny at Luluabourg
and killed their Belgian commanding officer. Baron Dhanis composed
this mutiny by punishment and negotiations; but in 1897 the mutiny
broke out again amongst those Manyema and Batetela soldiers who had
been transferred to the Lado enclave of the Nile basin. The revolt
spread far and wide and was not at an end till 1900.

In 1892, King Leopold II, alarmed by the progress of the British
South Africa Company, sent out an expedition under Captain Stairs
(Stanley’s former Lieutenant—a Nova-Scotian) to occupy in his name
the territory of Katanga, which was a debateable land, to some
extent under British missionary influence, but claimed as lying
within the boundaries of the Congo State. Its king (Msidi) was an
Mnyamwezi adventurer and slave trader; nevertheless he had ruled his
country with a certain degree of wisdom, and had permitted British
missionaries to settle there and British travellers to explore;
therefore it was learned with some regret that he had been summarily
shot for refusing to hand over his territory to the Belgians. Not
content with the gigantic dominion already under his control, the
King of the Belgians aspired to extend it to the banks of the White
Nile. In 1894 an agreement was concluded with the British Government
by which, in exchange for a strip of territory which would enable
the latter to connect the northern end of Tanganyika with Uganda,
the King of the Belgians took over on lease the administration of
territories as far north as the Bahr-al-Ghazal and the White Nile.
But this settlement was practically annulled by the subsequent
Belgian convention with France, which restricted the northern
boundary of the Congo Independent State to the Mbomu affluent of the
Wele River, while the King of the Belgians retained for a time the
lease of a small patch of territory on the west bank of the White
Nile, opposite Lado.

Another event in the recent history of the Congo State, which has
caused some anger in England, was the summary execution of the
unfortunate Charles Stokes by a Belgian officer named Lothaire. Mr
Stokes (who was an Ulster Irishman) had once been a missionary, and
used to travel backwards and forwards to Uganda. He then set up for
himself as a trader, and, although a British subject, he was
sufficiently international in his sympathies to work for the Germans
in helping to found their East African colony. In the course of his
ivory-trading expeditions he entered the Congo State. It was
suspected by Lothaire that he was furnishing the Arabs with powder;
he therefore sent a messenger to Stokes, summoning him to his camp.
Stokes came unsuspecting. He was put through a cross-examination
over-night, and in the early morning taken out of his hut and
hanged. In plain language, he was murdered; for not only did he
receive no trial, but at that time British consular jurisdiction was
maintained in the Congo State, and no sufficient evidence was
brought forward to show that Stokes had sold any powder to the
Arabs, or done anything worthy of death. Major Lothaire was tried
for the murder of Stokes both at Boma and again at Brussels, but was
pronounced not guilty at each trial, and was regarded by a portion
of the Belgian press as having been a national hero. He was,
however, eventually dismissed from the service of the Congo Free
State, and an indemnity of £6000 was paid to the child of Stokes.

In July 1898, there was opened for public use (largely through the
enterprise of Colonel Thys) a railway from Matadi to Stanley Pool,
about 250 miles long, which had taken about 8½ years to construct,
but which, once finished, was of enormous aid in the development of
the natural resources of Congoland. Matadi is a port on the lower
Congo (110 miles from the sea), up to which ocean-going steamers are
able to ascend. From Léopoldville on Stanley Pool there are between
4000 and 5000 miles of navigable waterways along which steamers and
steam-launches can penetrate into the hinterland of French Congo and
the Cameroons, to within a few days’ journey of the Central Sudan
(Shari basin) and the Egyptian Sudan, German East Africa and
Rhodesia.

But the effects which followed the opening of this railway were
different from King Leopold’s anticipations. It was
discovered—slowly—by European public opinion that one of the boldest
outrages on international law and equity known to history had been
perpetrated by the man who had posed before Europe in 1876 as a
disinterested philanthropist desirous of devoting his spare funds to
the realization of Livingstone’s ideals, and to the regeneration of
Negro Africa. By means of Stanley he had between 1879 and 1885
founded his Congo Independent State, basing his right to call
himself “Roi-Souverain” of this vast dominion on a number of
treaties made by his agents in the region now known as French Congo,
and also along both banks of the main Congo river from the sea
upwards to the Kwa-Kasai confluence; that is to say, over only
one-fortieth part of the area he claimed to govern by the assent of
its native chiefs as well as of Europe.

Two of the numerous conditions imposed on his government of the
Congo were freedom of trade throughout the Congo basin, and the
right of missionaries to travel, to settle, and to build where they
would, without hindrance. Yet no sooner was King Leopold II
acknowledged internationally as King-Sovereign of the Congo State
than he began to set on one side all such stipulations of the Act of
Berlin as fettered his intentions of self-enrichment and
unquestionable autocracy. Freedom of trade, except at the mouth and
along the estuarine Congo, became an impossibility. By 1890, in the
Congo basin above Stanley Pool, ivory had been constituted a State
monopoly; and rubber was soon placed in much the same category.
Commerce was chiefly restricted to the State, and to one Dutch and
various Belgian firms, though commercial agencies on the Lower Congo
were still maintained by merchants of other nations. This policy on
the part of the Congo State, which on the strength of its
philanthropic assurances had obtained permission in 1891 to levy
import duties, was much criticized, and led to some alienation of
sympathy in England. Added to this were the extraordinary stories of
atrocities which began to be spread by British, American, and
Swedish missionaries. It was said that, to enforce the payment of
tribute in ivory and rubber, the Belgian officials ordered their
negro subordinates to cut off the hands of all who refused payment.
It was stated that the natives were plunged into a slavery worse
than anything the Arabs had introduced, that they were shot down for
trifling causes, and that the negro police and soldiers of the State
were allowed without hindrance to devour the bodies of the slain in
battle. These charges in some cases were scarcely credible as
applied to the actions of civilized human beings; King Leopold in
1896 instituted a committee of missionaries to enquire into them,
and to offer suggestions for better methods of administration. But
the committee was fettered in many ways and prevented from obtaining
evidence. The charge of permitting cannibalism has been
substantiated by the accounts of Captain S. L. Hinde, already
referred to, and by other British officers in the Congo service. The
fact was, that a territory nearly as large as Brazil had been handed
over to be governed by a number of young Belgian officers and the
employés of a few concessionaire companies. The subordinates whom
they employed in their administration and warfare were savages
barely reclaimed from the most barbarous practices; and just as, in
a far less degree, the Matebele police of the British South Africa
Company were guilty of malpractices that the Company would never
knowingly have allowed to be perpetrated, so the negro soldiers of
the Congo State committed appalling outrages before their officers
could become cognizant of their intended actions and prevent them.
But nothing can be said in excuse or mitigation of the behaviour of
certain agents of privileged companies and even persons employed on
the private domain of King Leopold, whose actions as recorded in
undisputed evidence were almost those of devils.

In July 1885 the King-Sovereign of the Congo State issued a decree
that all vacant land within the boundaries of the State were the
“private property” (the _Domaine privé_) of the Government; the
Government being then and for twenty-five years afterwards the
despotic King-Sovereign. Little objection was raised to this measure
at first, the general idea (very similar to announcements made then
and later by other European Powers in their African possessions)
being that King Leopold wished to protect the rights of the natives
from being hurriedly and foolishly sold to private speculators in
land, or concession-hunters. But in 1891 a “secret decree” was sent
out from the King’s cabinet, reserving to the State all elephants
and their ivory and all wild rubber and forest-produce on the
“vacant lands” of the _Domaine privé_. The officers of the State
were enjoined to organize the collection (as a form of taxes) of all
the ivory and rubber procurable; and the natives of Congoland
(except the small western strip near the Atlantic) were obliged to
sell all their produce to the State only. By a later decree they
were actually forbidden to leave their villages without a special
permit. In short, so far as the King-Sovereign’s writ ran, the whole
population of Belgian Congo—nearly a million square miles—was
virtually enslaved, and this by the man who in 1876 stood up before
Europe and announced that he was going to devote such of his time
and money as he could spare from Belgium to the abolition of slavery
in Central Africa and the raising of the Negro to a condition of
freedom and enlightenment.

In 1896 another “secret decree” created the _Domaine de la
Couronne_, and carved out for King Leopold II an area of 112,000
square miles in the very heart of Congoland, between the Sankuru and
the Busira rivers. This region, amazingly rich in wild rubber, was
to be privately administered by Leopold II without rendering any
account to the State exchequer, and of course without laying its
enormous revenues (wrung from the inhabitants by cruelties and
stress scarcely surpassed by the recently-revealed horrors of the
Putumayo) under any contribution towards the annual expenses of
public administration in the Congo State. In addition, the whole
rest of the _Domaine privé_ (except always the exhausted strip along
the Congo banks between Stanley Pool and the sea) was divided up
into regions strictly reserved for a State monopoly of products, and
others which were farmed out to concessionaire companies, in which
either the State, or King Leopold, or both, were partners in
profits. To these concessionaire companies were at first given
almost unlimited powers over the natives, from which resulted the
frightful abuses that shocked the conscience of Europe and
Anglo-Saxon America. One foreign trading-house which might have
protested was squared by being given part of the plunder; most other
old-established trading houses on the Lower River were prevented
from trading inland; influential Englishmen (not forgetting several
connected with the press) were admitted to this profit-taking; and
for some twelve years these truly iniquitous proceedings were
ignored, in spite of the missionary protests which began in 1898,
and of Mr Fox-Bourne’s trenchant attack[189] on King Leopold’s
policy published in 1903—ignored, that is to say, by the governments
of the States which had taken part in the Berlin Conference of 1884.
Statesmen of probity found it impossible at first to believe that
Leopold II, King of the Belgians, grandson of Louis Philippe, cousin
of Queen Victoria, husband of an Austrian Archduchess, a devoted
upholder of the Roman Church, and a very rich man, could for a
moment lend himself to a policy at once infamous, flagrantly unjust,
exceedingly cruel, and incredibly mean[190]. The gallant actions of
many a Belgian pioneer on Tanganyika and on the Lualaba—even on the
fringe of that Egyptian Sudan which Great Britain then lacked the
resolution to enter—were pointed to. The great record of Storms was
unearthed from missionary records, and public opinion was asked “Is
it possible that the man who sent out such officers as these, who
quenched the slave traffic which Livingstone abhorred but was
powerless to arrest, who brought relief from Dervish tyranny to the
harassed natives of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, could wish to enrich
himself, and himself alone, with the produce of all Congoland, could
tolerate the collection of rubber or the obtaining of ivory by
methods of compulsion only to be parallelled in the worst records of
Spain in the New World?” Yet it was true. Side by side with this
devastation of the Congo basin—a devastation which has left Arab
slave-raids far, far behind, which has reduced the native population
in fifteen years (sleeping sickness aiding) from an approximate
twenty millions to a bare nine millions—a work of civilization as
good in its way as anything that Britain or France has done in
Uganda or Nigeria was going on. Wherever Belgian officers could get
a free hand, and were not the mere agents of this singularly
heartless man, they built up native communities anew, and were even
loved and honoured by the natives. It was not the Belgian nation, so
much, that was to blame, or Belgian men who failed in those great
administrative qualities which are possessed by so many other
European nations; it was the system imposed on them by a being born
out of due time, a personality that had stepped unaltered from the
16th century into the 19th. Yet, to be just, this conception of
“African colonization” was not peculiar to Leopold II. It was the
ideal of some English minds and was still more the vogue with a
certain type of French Colonial administrator or minister. As we
have seen, French Congo had a history very like that of the Belgian
Congo.

King Leopold preserved himself long from attack and warded off many
a blow from the British Parliament by pointing to British companies
and British monopolies in Africa. And we had—it seems—no statesman
sufficiently adroit to indicate to him the cardinal difference. In
none of her permanent arrangements and at no time even in theory did
Great Britain tolerate in her African dominions or spheres of
influence monopolies which limited the trade of the country to one
or more privileged organizations, or which obliged the natives to
confine their commerce to any particular firm or individual trader.
Great Britain did acknowledge (usually where it was impossible to do
otherwise) that certain pioneer companies or persons held by
purchase under fair conditions large areas of land in “new” Africa;
but the natives’ rights to the land they occupied and used were
respected, provision was always made for their expansion, and in
most cases the whole of the vacant land was vested in the British
Government. But not on lines parallel to those which were followed
by Leopold II, not with the result of enriching the private revenues
of Queen Victoria or King Edward, or of endowing Margate with a
bandstand, Bournemouth with an opera house, or London with a new
museum. The British Government has regarded itself as holding the
vacant lands in trust for the infant state and for all its future
inhabitants, without distinction of colour, except it be that a more
liberal treatment is to be shown to black than white. All the
revenues derived from the state lands in British Africa are
accounted for annually and are applied to the service and for the
benefit of the country from which they are derived. Therein lies the
radical difference between the spoliations of King Leopold (or of
the old Spanish Colonial Empire) and the policy of Great Britain and
most other modern European powers in Asia and Africa. It may or may
not be a good thing that one half of the land in Uganda or in
Nigeria is the property of the State, a state mainly administered at
present by Europeans. But at any rate all the revenue derived from
the land can be ascertained by any native sufficiently educated to
read annual reports; and all this revenue is spent—usually with the
knowledge and advice of native counsellors—on Nigeria or Uganda, as
the case may be, and not on any other land. King Leopold, it is
true, while he took unto himself all the revenues, direct and
indirect, derived from the Congo State, had, prior to 1890,
supported out of his privy purse the cost of creating and
maintaining the Congo State (a total amount about £500,000 in value)
and probably spent in addition up till 1901 another £400,000. But
even after allowing him interest at 4 per cent, (in theory) on this
outlay of £900,000 and adding to that a theoretical Civil List at
£20,000 a year as King-Sovereign, he was still owing the Congo State
an amount understated at £4,000,000, when that State was annexed by
Belgium in 1909. That is to say, he profited by his intervention in
Congo affairs at least to that amount, and probably to an extent
much greater. And his great riches were obtained at a cruel cost in
human lives and human misery.

I desire to present all aspects of this astounding episode in the
history of the colonization of Africa. Therefore I would state that
King Leopold employed a small percentage of the profits above
computed—say £100,000—in promoting the scientific investigation of
his territories and subject peoples, with the result that our
knowledge of the fauna, flora, meteorology and above all ethnology
of the Congo basin were immensely increased. Also, however unfair in
regard to solemn treaty stipulations were his concessions and his
monopolies, these did much to enrich Belgium and Antwerp in
particular. It can well be imagined that, when so many of the king’s
subjects were raking in large and small fortunes out of Congo
rubber, ivory, and palm oil, when churches were rising from Congo
donations, museums were endowed, kiosques and public gardens were
being presented to Belgian towns from out of the fringe of this
profit-taking, Belgians (very ignorant as a rule about Africa or
Colonial policy or subjects outside Belgian life) should have been
enthusiastic about their monarch, his “slimness,” and his Congo
milch-cow. And notable English potentates in shipping and finance
were partners with King Leopold, whose press department further
stifled criticism in the journals of America, France, and Germany.
Few stories therefore are at once more romantic—and will seem more
incredible to posterity—than that which relates how this Goliath was
overcome by a David in the person of a poor shipping clerk in the
office of a Liverpool shipping firm which was amongst the partners
of King Leopold.

This shipping clerk—E. D. Morel—was sent over to Antwerp, and
Belgium generally, because he could speak French, and could
therefore arrange all the minutiae of steamer fares and passenger
accommodation, and the scales of freights for goods and produce,
with the Congo State officials. In the course of his work he became
acquainted with some of the grisly facts of Congo maladministration.
He drew his employers’ attention to these stories and their
verification. The result was his dismissal.

Almost penniless, he set to work with pen and paper to enlighten the
world through the British press and British publishers on the state
of affairs on the Congo. From African merchants, not quite so
callous as his late employers, he received support, which also came
slowly and at first grudgingly from the public. He succeeded in
interesting the Government of the day; for his charges were amply
borne out by the British consuls sent to Congoland to report (the
best-known of whom was Sir Roger Casement). Morel had to face the
insults and even the personal assaults of paid opponents at his
meetings, and the calumnies of King Leopold’s subsidized press; but
he roused public opinion in Britain, Belgium, the United States,
Switzerland, France and Germany. The first notice Goliath took of
David was—very reluctantly—to appoint a Commission of enquiry
consisting of a Belgian, an Italian, and a Swiss jurist of
distinction and honesty. Their report, though its publication was
only partial, was a virtual admission of the truth of the
allegations made by Morel and the British consuls and missionaries.
King Leopold, in fact, had no defence to offer; and although,
exerting his powers as King, as the relation of Kings and Emperors,
as a rich man, to the utmost, he managed to prolong discussions and
negotiations as long as possible, the end was inevitable. The Congo
was taken from him and was annexed by Belgium on November 14, 1908.
On December 17, 1909, King Leopold died. Stanley, “Bula Matadi,” the
real creator of the Congo State, had predeceased him by five years,
dying in 1904, the last few years of his life saddened by the
disheartening conviction that the immediate effect of his life’s
work had been a sordid scandal and the most monstrous piece of
hypocrisy ever perpetrated by Europe in Africa[191].

Leopold II found many champions in England and the United States,
even among men and women travellers of good repute, incapable of
being bribed or cajoled. But the explanation of this seeming
anomaly, in contrast to the withering denunciations of Morel, of
British, American, Swedish, and Belgian missionaries and publicists,
lies in the fact that these apologists or eulogists of the King or
of his Belgian officers never entered the vast _Domaine de la
Couronne_ (a territory larger in area than the United Kingdom) or
penetrated far into the jealously-closed concessions of the Belgian
companies; and also from the strange ignorance many of such
travellers showed in the elementary ethics of native rights. They
saw—as the present writer did—order taking the place of disorder,
improved cultivation, handsome buildings, Arab slavery at an end,
education spreading among and through the native soldiery, and many
other beneficent signs of civilization, and they never examined into
what was going on away from the stereotyped travel routes. Or if
they were of the Emil Torday class of scientific explorer, they
penetrated at great risk into remote parts of south-west, north, and
north-east Congoland wherein the native tribes were too powerful to
be enslaved and constrained to gather rubber or to confine their
trade to the King’s agents and concessionaires. Fortunately such
districts escaped the Leopoldian ravages and are now ripe for a
well-ordered civilization to be imparted to their peoples through
Belgian agency.

Any historian who omitted to dwell on the devoted and usually poorly
paid work of many a Belgian officer and civilian in Congoland
amongst quarrelsome or cruel native tribes, the achievements for the
good of the natives of many a Belgian engineer, doctor, planter,
road-maker, stockman, and schoolmaster, would indeed be unjust. The
destruction of Arab tyranny will always remain a feat of
extraordinary courage and of lasting good to Central Africa; and
fortunately it was not in the regions rescued from Arab sway that
the wrong-doing of the King and his concessionaires took place. The
Arab-conquered portions of the Congo basin have never gone back in
prosperity and well-being of the natives since they became Belgian
provinces; and much the same might be said about Katanga, which
under its usurping Wa-nyamwezi chiefs had been soaked in blood. But
the Congo basin is still governed by Belgium under a régime which
fails to conform precisely to the conditions laid down by the Act of
Berlin or to satisfy those who desire justice of treatment for
native races leading a settled agricultural life.

The present King of the Belgians (Albert I) visited the Congo
territories in 1907, traversed Congoland from Katanga to the mouth
of the Congo, and resolved that his policy as King-Sovereign should
be on lines radically different from those of his predecessor.
Already a current of free trade is permeating the dominion and
bringing with it freedom in other directions. The greater native
chiefs are now encouraged to work with the Belgian Government and to
look after the immediate interests of their own subjects. Railways
have been rapidly pushed forward in eastern Congoland, which will
some day link up Northern Rhodesia with Uganda, with the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the French Sudan.

There should be a great future, commercially at any rate, before the
Belgian Congo, which in wealth of vegetable and mineral products and
length of navigable waterways resembles Brazil and Guiana; and,
theoretically, there should be no reason why Flemings and Walloons
as guardians of this rich Central African state should not play as
great a _rôle_ in the Dark Continent as they have done in the
industrial and artistic history of Europe. Yet little Belgium has a
tremendous task before her in raising this immense territory to the
condition of Brazil or Java; and the regret naturally felt by
English, German, and French writers that this wealthy territory was
more or less disdained by their Governments in the days of Cameron’s
and Stanley’s earlier journeys and advertisements of its
capabilities, no doubt stimulates on their part a destructive
criticism of Belgian efforts and capabilities. It is sometimes
hinted that this unwieldy state will not long outlive as a political
entity the monarch who founded it, and that its southern provinces
will fall to England, its northern to France, and its western to
Germany. But predictions in regard to the evolution of African
history are very uncertain of fulfilment, and the Congo State may
yet become and remain a Belgian India.

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Footnote 186:

It was never officially styled the Congo “Free” State. The meaning
of the French words was “the Independent State of the Congo”; and
unhappily it was no more “free” in its subsequent history than in
name. _Bula Matadi_ was its local title in Congoland, such being
Stanley’s nickname (Rock-breaker).

Footnote 187:

Hamed bin Muhammad bin Juma, nicknamed Tipu Tipu or “Tippootib.”

Footnote 188:

_The Fall of the Congo Arabs_, Methuen, 1897. This campaign is
also described in my book _George Grenfell and the Congo_.

Footnote 189:

_Civilization in Congoland._

Footnote 190:

The direct trading agents of King Leopold and his concessionaire
companies, and the ofttimes worthy and gallant servants of the
Congo State, were miserably underpaid.

Footnote 191:

Sir Henry Morton Stanley (John Rowlands) was born in 1842 at
Denbigh in North Wales, the son of a farmer’s daughter who was
very poor. He became eventually a work-house boy, but managed to
acquire a passable education and to find his way twice to the
United States, where he pursued many careers till at length he
became a press reporter and a special correspondent. In this
capacity he “found” and relieved Livingstone and prolonged
Livingstone’s life by two years. In 1899 Stanley, who had been in
Parliament since 1895, was made G.C.B. by the British Government.