Chapter VII: The Slave Trade

Man had not long attained full humanity before he conceived the idea
of enslaving instead of, or as well as, eating his enemies or his
inferiors. Slavery and the slave trade, however—mere servitude—need
not excite great horror or pity when it occurs among people of the
same race or the same religion, or in countries which are not far
from the home of the enslaved. It is where the state of servitude
exists between widely divergent races that it gives rise to abuses,
which are obvious even to those who are not sensitive
philanthropists.

The Negro, more than any other human type, has been marked out by
his mental and physical characteristics as the servant of other
races. There are, of course, exceptions to the general rule. There
are tribes like the Kruboys of the West African coast, the
Mandingo, the Wolof, and the Zulu, who have always shown
themselves so recalcitrant to slavery that they have generally
been let alone; while the least divergence from the negro stock in
an upward direction—such as in the case of the Fula, Gala and
Somali—appears to produce an unconquerable love of freedom. But
the Negro in a primitive state is a born slave. He is possessed of
great physical strength, docility, cheerfulness of disposition, a
short memory for sorrows and cruelties, and an easily aroused
gratitude for kindness and just dealing. He does not suffer from
home-sickness to the over-bearing extent that afflicts other
peoples torn from their homes, and, provided he is well fed, he is
easily made happy. Above all, he can toil hard under the hot sun
and in the unhealthy climates of the torrid zone. He has little or
no race-fellowships—that is to say, he has no sympathy for other
negroes; he recognizes, follows and imitates his master
independently of any race affinities, and, as he is usually a
strong man and a good fighter, he has come into request not only
as a labourer but as a soldier.

Negro slaves were imported into Lower Egypt as servants in the
earliest dynastic times. A few reached Carthage from time to time
and many were brought to Imperial Rome; but the determined
exploitation of the black races did not begin on a large scale till
the Muhammadan conquest of Africa. The Arabs had swept across
Northern Africa, and become directly acquainted with the Sudan[99].
Before the promulgation of Islam they traded with the East coast of
Africa, and after the Islamic outburst they ruled there as sultans.
The secluding of women in harims guarded by eunuchs had come into
vogue during the Byzantine Empire; but it was probably a custom of
Syrian, Mesopotamian, or Egyptian origin. It was adopted with
emphasis among the civilized Mussulmans, and the negro eunuch proved
the most efficient and faithful guardian of the gynæceum. So the
slave trade developed mightily in the Muhammadan world. Household
slaves and eunuchs were imported into North Africa, Arabia, Turkey,
and Persia from the Sudan; while in a later century the Emperors of
Morocco established their power firmly by importing fighting negroes
from Nigeria. Arabia, Persia, and India obtained negroes from the
Egyptian Sudan, Abyssinia, and the Zanzibar coast. Into the West
coast of India negro slaves were imported from East Africa to become
the guards of palaces and the fighting seamen of navies. In the
Bombay Presidency these negroes became so useful or powerful that
they carved out states for themselves, one or more of which, still
ruled by negro princes, are in existence at the present day as
dependencies of the Government of India[100].

The final impetus was given to this traffic by the European. When
the Spanish, Portuguese and English discovered and settled America
they found the native races too few in numbers, too fierce, or too
weakly to be suited for compulsory agricultural work; and so early
as 1503 African slaves were working in the mines of Hispaniola,
brought thither by the Spaniards[101]. A few years later they were
being imported into Mexico, Panama and Peru. In 1517 the slave trade
between Africa and America was regularly established, Charles V of
Spain having granted to a Flemish merchant the exclusive privilege
of importing into America 4000 slaves a year. This monopoly was
subsequently sold by the concessionaire to a company of Genoese
merchants, who struck a bargain with the Portuguese government to
supply the slaves from Guinea.

English adventurers, who had first found their way out in Portuguese
ships to investigate the spice trade, soon determined to take up the
traffic in negro labourers for the plantations in America as being
more profitable. John Hawkins, one of the famous seamen of the
Elizabethan era, in 1562 took over to the West Indies the first
cargo of slaves transported under the British flag. Afterwards made
Sir John Hawkins (and adopting a “demi-Moor in his proper colour,
bound with a cord” as his crest) he made two other voyages (1564,
1567) to the West coast of Africa, conveying some eight hundred
kidnapped or purchased negroes to the West Indies. England did not
engage largely in the slave trade on her own account until in the
17th century she commenced to possess Jamaica and other West Indian
islands, and to develop the tobacco plantations of Virginia. Then
she almost outdid rival nations. The late Dr Robert Brown, in his
interesting work, “The Story of Africa,” computed that in a little
more than a century, from 1680 to 1786, 2,130,000 negro slaves were
imported into the British-American colonies, Jamaica in the course
of 80 years absorbing 610,000. Towards the latter end of the 18th
century the various European powers interested in America imported
on an average over 70,000 slaves a year, the British bringing more
than one half, and sometimes a still greater proportion. At first
the slaves came chiefly from the Gambia and the other rivers
southward to Sierra Leone, and from the Gold Coast, where they were
supplied to the Dutch through the incessant wars of the Ashanti
people. Later they were brought from Dahomé and Benin, and from the
Portuguese possessions of Angola and the Zambezi. Then, as the
demand grew, a rich field was tapped in the 18th century in that
network of swampy rivers, which we now know as the delta of the
Niger river. But slowly there grew up in England, in Denmark, and in
the United States a feeling that there was something wrong in this
system which imposed so much misery on beings, who, though in some
degree inferior to white men, were yet of the same species, since
they could interbreed with us and learn to talk our language. That
such feelings must have existed at all times was evident from the
desire of good men when dying to grant freedom to their slaves. But
the feeling as a national one remained dormant, and was not general
in England until the close of the 18th century. Here and there cases
of a negro prince being sold into slavery attracted attention and
sympathy and caused a searching of consciences among enlightened
men.

In 1768-72 a great-minded Englishman, Granville Sharp, succeeded by
pushing a test case in getting a judicial decision that slavery
could not exist in England, and that therefore any slave landing in
England became free, and could not be taken back into slavery. In
1787 Wilberforce, Clarkson, and other philanthropists formed
themselves into an association to secure the abolition of slavery,
and by their exertions in Great Britain a bill was passed in 1807
which did not go to the lengths they desired, but which subjected
the slave trade under the British flag to severe disabilities. In
1811 this measure was completed and enforced by another bill
declaring the Slave Trade to be a felony punishable by penal
servitude. Yet it is doubtful whether, before these acts were
passed, the hardships of the slaves transported by sea were so
terrible as they became after the restrictions placed on the trade
rendered it necessary to carry large numbers of human beings on a
single voyage more or less concealed from sight in the hold of the
vessel with an utter disregard for sanitary conditions[102]. In
these later days, when it was necessary to evade tiresome
regulations or to carry on the trade in the face of direct
prohibition, the sufferings of the slaves were so appalling that
they almost transcend belief. It would seem as though the inhuman
traffic had created in Arabs, Negroes and white men a deliberate
love of cruelty, amounting often to a neglect of commercial
interest; for it would obviously have been more to the interest of
the slave raider and the slave trader and transporter that the
slaves should be landed at their ultimate destination in good
condition—certainly with the least possible loss of life. Yet, as
the present writer can testify from what he has himself seen in the
eighties and nineties of the last century, a slave gang on its march
to the coast was loaded with unnecessarily heavy collars or
slave-sticks, with chains and irons that chafed and cut into the
flesh, and caused virulent ulcers. The slaves were half starved,
over-driven, insufficiently provided with drinking water, and
recklessly exposed to death from sunstroke. If they threw themselves
down for a brief rest or collapsed from exhaustion they were shot or
speared or had their throats cut with fiendish brutality. I have
seen at Taveita (now a civilized settlement in British East Africa)
boys and youths left in the bush to die by degrees from
mortification and protrusion of the intestines owing to the
unskilful way in which they had been castrated by the Arabs, who had
attempted to make eunuchs of them for sale to Turkish and Arab
harims. Children whom their mothers could not carry, and who could
not keep up with the caravan, had their brains dashed out. Many
slaves (I again write from personal knowledge) committed suicide
because they could not bear to be separated from their homes and
children. They were branded and flogged, and, needless to say,
received not the slightest medical treatment for the injuries
resulting from this usage.

So much for the overland journey which brought them to the depôt or
factory of the European slave trader on the coast; then began the
horrors of the sea passage, the description of which, it must be
admitted, refers almost entirely to the ships of civilized nations,
like the English, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Americans, and not
to the Arabs and Indians, who carried slaves across from the East
coast of Africa to Arabia or India. In the latter case the sailing
vessels were not often overcrowded, and the slaves were allowed a
fair degree of liberty. In the slave trade with America, especially
when it was placed under restrictions and finally penalized, it was
the aim of the masters to pack as many slaves as possible on board
the vessel, the peril of making one run being only half of what was
entailed in making two. Very often the slaves were sent on board
stark naked. They were packed like herrings in the hold or on the
middle deck, and in times of bad weather, or for reasons of
security, were kept under hatches. The stench they produced then was
appalling, and many died asphyxiated. On some ships, and where the
captain was a humane man, the slaves were occasionally allowed to go
on deck, and were watered with a hose; and where the skipper’s
commission made it profitable to him to land the slaves in good
condition, they received better food, and occasional luxuries like
tobacco; but if the slaver were chased by a British cruiser, no
scruple was shown in throwing the slaves overboard to drown.

Denmark has the credit of being the first European power to forbid
the slave trade to her subjects (1792). Two years later the United
States of America forbade their subjects to “participate in the
exportation of negroes to foreign countries”; and in 1804 an act
(first promulgated in 1794) was revived, which prohibited the
introduction of any more slaves into the United States. A long
struggle had taken place in Great Britain (many of the Liverpool and
Bristol merchants being deeply interested in the slave trade)
before, in 1807, an act of Parliament was passed (intensified in
1811) abolishing the slave trade so far as British subjects were
concerned. At the Congress of Vienna (1814) France agreed in
principle that the slave trade should be done away with, and even
signed a treaty providing that whilst the slave trade continued with
French colonies it should only be carried on by French subjects.
During Napoleon’s hundred days of rule in 1815 a decree was issued
ending the slave trade for good and all. In the same year Portugal
subjected the slave trade to certain restrictions, but did not
finally abolish it till 1830. In 1836 Britain paid Portugal the sum
of £300,000 in order to get the export of slaves from any Portuguese
possession prohibited. Great Britain had also in 1820 paid £400,000
to Spain to purchase a promise from the Spaniards that they would
cease to buy negroes in Africa. Both contracts, though ostensibly
agreed to by the Governments concerned, were frequently violated by
individuals. In 1814 and 1815 the Dutch and Swedes respectively
prohibited the slave trade to their subjects, and a few years later
most of the Spanish South American states abolished the slave trade
on attaining their independence. Slavery was abolished as a legal
condition in all parts of the British dominions by 1840; in Jamaica
and the West Indies in 1833, in South Africa 1834-1840, and in India
about the same time[103]. Besides the sums mentioned which Britain
paid to Spain and Portugal to induce them to give up the traffic in
slaves, she distributed twenty millions of pounds amongst slave
owners of the West Indies as compensation for the abolition of
slavery, and £1,250,000 to those who possessed slaves in Cape Colony
when they were emancipated. Add to these sums the millions of money
she has spent in founding Sierra Leone as a slave settlement, in
helping Liberia[104] (from the same motive), in patrolling the East
and West coasts of Africa and the Persian Gulf, and it will be
admitted that we have here a rare case of a nation doing penance for
its sins, and making that real reparation which is evidenced by a
monetary sacrifice.

By 1848 the French had abolished slavery in all their possessions.
The Dutch did not do so till 1863; in which year also the status of
slavery ceased in the United States. Slavery lingered in some of the
South American states until 1840-5. In the Portuguese African
possessions slavery was abolished in 1878 and in Spanish Cuba and
Porto Rico in 1886; while Brazil remained a slave-holding country
until 1888, the final and somewhat abrupt abolition of slavery being
one of the causes which led to the downfall of the Emperor. However,
long after British or French possessions had ceased to offer
inducements to the slave trader to run illegal cargoes, there were
sufficient countries in the Western Hemisphere to provide an
excellent market for negroes, while the Muhammadan world in the East
continued to make greater demands than ever on the Central African
slave preserves[105].

To counteract the attempts to evade the law a powerful British
squadron swept the West coast of Africa; but in spite of British
efforts to intercept slave-trading vessels, these latter continued
to run cargoes across to the United States, Cuba and Brazil, and it
was not possible for this traffic to be wholly vanquished until the
abolition of slavery in those countries closed the last markets to
the slave trader. A most interesting light is thrown on the vastness
of the area covered by these slave-trading operations in a work by
the Rev. S. W. Koelle (a missionary of the Church Missionary
Society) published in 1854, entitled “Polyglotta Africana.” Mr
Koelle established himself at Sierra Leone for some years and busied
himself in collecting from the slaves who were landed there from
British cruisers vocabularies of the languages they spoke in their
own homes. In this way he took down over 200 languages, which
represented most of the tongues of the West coast of Africa, of the
upper Niger, of Senegal, of Lake Chad, the South-west African coast
as far as Benguela, Nyasaland, the Zambezi delta and the South-east
coast of Africa, and even Wadai.

When, at the close of the 18th century, British philanthropists were
desirous of repatriating loyalist negroes in North America who
wished to return to Africa, the Sierra Leone Company was started,
which purchased from native chiefs the nucleus of the present colony
of Sierra Leone. Here, for three-quarters of a century, British
cruisers landed and set free the slaves that were captured off the
West coast of Africa. Zanzibar, on the other side of the continent,
became about twenty years ago the eastern analogue of Sierra Leone.
Since the British occupation of Egypt, slavery has practically
ceased to exist in that country; and owing to the French occupation
of Algeria and Tunis, and the influence brought to bear by Britain
on Turkey in regard to Tripoli, there is not much traffic in slaves
across the Sahara Desert to those countries; though anybody visiting
the south of Tunis will be surprised at the large number of negroes
in all the villages, showing that quite recently constant supplies
must have been received from Bornu and the Hausa states. The
devastating slave raids of the Matebele Zulus have been abolished by
the British South Africa Company; and similar raids of the Angoni
have been put an end to by the British and German Governments in
East and Central Africa.

The Arabs of Zanzibar had acquired an evil fame for their gigantic
slave raids in East-central Africa. Great Britain, who had assisted
to separate Zanzibar from Maskat as an independent state in 1862,
began to concern herself a few years later with the slave trade
which flourished in those dominions. By 1873 the Sultan of Zanzibar
had, after considerable pressure, been induced to make the slave
trade illegal in his Sultanate, though it continued to flourish in
an illegal manner until the administration of his territories by the
British and Germans.

Arabs from ’Oman in South-west Arabia and from Zanzibar pushed ever
farther and farther into Central Africa from the East coast until
they reached the Upper Congo, where they established themselves as
sultans amongst the negroes, and enslaved millions. Here and there
they Muhammadanized a tribe like the Wa-yao, Manyema, or
Wa-nyamwezi, whom they provided with muskets and made worse slave
raiders than themselves. These slave raids in the districts of Lakes
Nyasa and Tanganyika, revealed to the world by Livingstone, greatly
concentrated the attention of Great Britain on these regions; and
one of the intentions of the British Government in establishing a
protectorate in South-central Africa was the abolition of the slave
trade, which was brought about in 1896, after six years’ campaigns
with a small force of Indian soldiers[106], and the placing of two
gunboats on Lake Nyasa. At the same time the Belgian officers of the
Congo State had attacked and broken up the Arabs, the principal
slave-hunters amongst whom were slain or expelled from the Congo.
The Germans under the brilliant Major von Wissmann hanged several
Arab slave-raiders in East-central Africa, and had completely
abolished the traffic of the others. The slave-raiding states of
Dahomé and Ashanti, of the Mandingo conqueror Samori, and of the
Fula and Nupe Sultans and Vicegerents in Eastern Nigeria had been
conquered by France or Britain between 1893 and 1903. Finally
between 1904 and 1911, France conquered and occupied Wadai, the most
powerful Muhammadan state of the Central Sudan and thus put an end
to the slave-raiding of the Maba power which was fast depopulating
the heart of Africa; while this action was fortified by the Italian
occupation of Tripoli and Cyrenaica (1911). So long as any
Muhammadan power held under its direct and uncontrolled sway any
part of the African coast, there was bound to be slave-raiding and
slave-trading in the interior.

In short, though slavery still exists, avowed or disguised, in many
parts of Africa, the slave trade is almost at an end, and slave
raids are confined to such parts of Nigeria, S.W. Congoland and
Abyssinian Galaland as are not under complete European control.

Abominable as the slave trade has been in filling Tropical Africa
with incessant warfare and rapine, it has added much to our
knowledge of that continent, and has furnished the excuse or cause
of European intervention in many cases, resulting sometimes in a
vastly improved condition of the natives when European rule has
taken the place of that of Negro or Arab sultans. Its ravages will
soon be repaired by a few decades of peace and security during which
this prolific, unextinguishable negro race will rapidly increase its
numbers. Yet about the African slave trade, as with most other
instinctive human procedure, and the movements of one race against
another, there is an underlying sense of justice. The White and
Yellow peoples have been the unconscious agents of the Power behind
Nature in punishing the negro for his lazy backwardness. In this
world Natural Law ordains that all mankind must work to a reasonable
extent, must wrest from its environment sustenance for body and
mind, and a bit over to start the children from a higher level than
the parents. The races that will not work persistently and doggedly
are trampled on, and in time displaced, by those who do. Let the
Negro take this to heart; let him devote his fine muscular
development in the first place to the setting of his own rank,
untidy continent in order. If he will _not_ work of his own free
will, now that freedom of action is temporarily restored to him; if
he will not till and manure and drain and irrigate the soil of his
country in a steady, laborious way as do the Oriental and the
European; if he will not apply himself zealously under European
tuition to the development of the vast resources of Tropical Africa,
where hitherto he has in many of his tribes led a wasteful
unproductive life; then force of circumstances, the pressure of
eager, hungry, impatient, outside humanity, the converging energies
of Europe and Asia will once more relegate the Negro to a servitude
which will be the alternative—in the continued struggle for
existence—to extinction. The Negro in some parts of Africa has been
given back his freedom that he may use it with a man’s sense of
responsibility for the waste of time and opportunities. In not a few
European “colonies” or protectorates in Africa the over-ruling white
man, or more often the irresponsible trader, planter, prospector and
labour recruiter, stills looks upon the Negro race as a people
doomed to perpetual serfage. But this mental outlook is fast being
modified—under British influence, mainly—into an honest appreciation
of native rights to land and produce.

An episode in the history of African colonization which may be most
fitly mentioned here, in relation to the effects of the slave trade
on West Africa, is the foundation of the negro Republic of Liberia
by private agencies in the United States.

When the Napoleonic wars were over and the great western expansion
of the United States was beginning, the question—not yet wholly
solved—arose: what was to be done with the Negro or Mulatto as
citizen, as a free man with every right to a vote? There were
already many manumitted negroes in North America and in the West
Indies, and their position in the first half of the 19th century was
an indeterminate one. As it commenced to be irksome, from the social
and ethical problems it involved, an attempt was made (1816-20) by
certain benevolent and political societies to solve it by deporting
all discontented free negroes and negroids back to Africa, where
they might make a new home for themselves and even enjoy the
privileged position that the one-eyed man occupies amongst the
blind. Great Britain, as we have already seen, had much the same
problem to face at an earlier date and answered it by the foundation
of Sierra Leone. At first it seemed simplest for the various
missionary and philanthropic societies to dump their free negroes on
the coast of Sierra Leone (in 1820); but the Governor of that colony
seems to have received the proposal rather coldly. The fact was that
at Sierra Leone (almost a failure from the “repatriation” point of
view) we were beginning to find that it is scarcely easier to plant
a Black colony in any part of inhabited Africa than to found a White
one; you have to displace some other people, and such indigenes, if
asked to choose, would rather make way for an intrusive white
element than a band of foreign negroes. And when such negroes or
negroids come from America or Asia they resist the African climate,
or rather its germ diseases, not much better than Europeans.
Probably the Sierra Leone Government had begun by 1820 to think more
of the interests of the really indigenous, native tribes of that
“colony,” than of the woes and welfare of American ex-slaves.

Being thus rebuffed, the promoters of the expatriation of American
free negroes made a hasty compact with the chiefs of the Dē tribe at
Cape Mesurado, on the Grain Coast, just beyond the Sierra Leone
influence; and in 1821 sent out a large batch of negro and mulatto
colonists under the tutelage of American white men. The white men
all died of fever or abandoned the enterprise in severe ill-health;
but amongst the future colonists was a courageous negro, Elijah
Johnson, who by his indomitable courage and resourcefulness kept the
infant colony from perishing at the hands of the natives, who had
not really understood the transaction by which they were supposed to
have sold for a few pounds’ worth of trade goods a considerable
tract of coast land. In 1823 however there came out a white man of
high character and great abilities, the Rev. Jehudi Ashmun; and he
it was who practically founded “Liberia” (as the new settlements
were called by the Rev. Robert Gurley of the American Colonization
Society, in 1824).

The town which American negroes built on Cape Mesurado was named
“Monrovia,” after the President of the United States who formulated
the “Monroe” doctrine. Other settlements were made on Cape Mount
(Robertsport), at Cape Palmas (Maryland), at Sinô (Greenville), and
at Grand Basa. In course of time these grew into two separate
republics, “Liberia” and “Maryland.” The existence of the former as
a sovereign and independent State was first recognized by Great
Britain in 1847; indeed the British Government had not only been
very benevolent all through to the struggling Liberian communities,
and several times come to their assistance when they were attacked
by native forces, but had urged on the American negroes the
advisability of their forming a State that European Powers could
recognize as a valid government on the Grain Coast. Britain was the
first Power to recognize Liberia as a sovereign State. The first
President of Liberia, an octoroon American named Joseph Jenkins
Roberts, went to England in 1847, was very kindly received by Queen
Victoria, and made a treaty with Lord Palmerston and the Colonial
Office. He afterwards visited the principal countries of western
Europe. In 1857 Maryland was united with Liberia; and this negro
republic then (in the eyes of Europe) ruled the West African coast
from near Sherbro on the west to the river San Pedro on the
east—about 400 miles, an extent of littoral since reduced by about
90 miles.

Yet this State has not so far been a success. American immigration
on any large scale ceased with the outbreak of the American Civil
War and the emancipation of American slaves. The natives of the Kru
coast and of the Muhammadan interior spurned any idea of being
governed or taxed by foreign Europeanized negroes; and the
Americo-Liberians lacked either the courage or the monetary means to
effect a conquest of the regions outside the portions of the coast
belt on which they had built their towns and established their
plantations. As the more vigorous among the American negroes and
mulattoes, who had started the settlement, died out, the younger
generation failed to bring a similar degree of energy into the
development of their native country. All had their faces far too
much turned towards either America or England. English, of course,
was and remained the official language of Liberia, its adoption
being facilitated by the close connection between the Kru population
and British West Coast trade (many Krumen also served, and serve
still, in the British Navy); the constitution of the Republic was
closely, too closely, modelled on that of the United States; very
little interest was taken in the languages, history, manners and
customs of the million and a half of Liberian aborigines, or in the
wonderful native flora and fauna[107]. With the exception of the
journeys of Benjamin Anderson in the sixties of the last century,
there arose no Liberian explorer of any note who revealed anything
about the geography or natural history of the hinterland. This
indeed remained (geographically) a closed book down to 1903, when a
series of explorations by British, French, Swiss, German and Dutch
explorers at last brought to light by 1910 the main features of
Liberian geography and ethnology. British and German traders and
pioneers (not Americo-Liberians) alone discovered and worked the
gold and diamonds of western Liberia and the rubber forests of the
centre and east.

Meantime, from the beginning of the seventies onwards Liberia got
into financial difficulties. Attempts to open up the interior were
costly in a country of dense forests and unnavigable rivers. A loan
was contracted in England in 1871, the proceeds of which were
vaguely squandered without results. Another loan in 1906 enabled the
Liberian Government to pay off some of its German, Dutch and British
creditors; but, although this loan brought about the installation of
a British official as head of the Liberian customs, and consequently
a vast improvement in the revenue, the disorder in the country’s
finances continued. France took occasion to press for a settlement
of the inland frontier on terms not favourable to Liberia, though as
favourable perhaps as the circumstances warranted. Great Britain had
greater vested interests in the country than any other foreign
nation, but forbore to press them out of regard for American
feelings and a wish not to seem to impinge too much on the French
sphere. Germany had trading interests in the country scarcely
inferior to those of Great Britain, and but for the American factor
would probably have pressed for a German protectorate, an
intervention which might have been displeasing to Britain and
France, the two _limitrophe_ Powers. In these circumstances the
Liberians were encouraged to appeal to their mother-country, the
United States; and, after considerable deliberation, an American
proposal was made for taking over the control of Liberian finances
and a general supervision of Liberian affairs on somewhat the same
lines as have been followed by American intervention in Santo
Domingo. This was accomplished in the year 1912. What the results
will be it is difficult to say.

But for international jealousies, the preferable solution of the
Liberian problem would have been fusion with the adjoining colony of
Sierra Leone, the coast settlements of which had an origin very
similar to that of Liberia, while the use of the English language,
laws, forms of Christianity, were common to both. Not a few among
the Sierra Leone citizens have attained local eminence in
administrative capacities; one or two even have become
“world-citizens”; and several have received marks of distinction
from British sovereigns. Liberia has produced her noteworthy
personalities, men like Dr Edward Wilmot Blyden (a great writer on
Africa), and Arthur Barclay, President of Liberia from 1904 to 1911;
but they have been men of a European culture and class of mind, and
have contributed little to the solution of African problems.

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Footnote 99:

Sudan means in Arabic “Black men” or the “Land of the Blacks.”

Footnote 100:

As for example, Janjira in Konkan, which has an area of 325 sq.
m., and Jafarabad in Kathiawar, 42 sq. m. in extent.

Footnote 101:

Three hundred negro porters and soldiers accompanied Cortes on his
march to Mexico in 1519; negroes carried the loads of Balboa when
he discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513, and accompanied Hernandez
to Peru in 1530. Negro workmen assisted the Spaniards to found the
city of St Augustine in Florida in 1565; and negroes, rising high
in the Spanish service, in the first half of the 16th century
explored for Spain the lands of New Mexico and Arizona.

Footnote 102:

For particulars on this subject consult my book on the _Negro in
the New World_ (1910).

Footnote 103:

Natives of British India, however, continued to hold slaves on the
East coast of Africa until it was made a criminal offence in 1873.

Footnote 104:

Liberia commenced with an attempt made by philanthropic Americans
(the American Colonization Society) in 1820 to repatriate free
negroes from the United States. It was formally recognized as an
independent state by the British Government in 1847 and
occasionally assisted to maintain its authority by British war
vessels. Liberia did not enter into diplomatic relations with the
United States till 1862.

Footnote 105:

Slavery was abolished in the Turkish dominions after the Crimean
War, but the slave trade exists still to some degree on account of
the harims, which demand a supply of eunuchs. Slavery of a mild
kind also continues in force in the states of Arabia, in Persia,
and in Morocco.

Footnote 106:

Sikhs from the Indian Army. These campaigns have been described in
the present writer’s work on _British Central Africa_; and by Mr
Alfred Swann in _Fighting the Slave-Hunters in Central Africa_.

Footnote 107:

Though Liberia is quite a small country—some 40,000 square
miles—and is not clearly demarcated by natural features from the
surrounding lands of the West African coast, it is found to
possess a peculiar mammalia of great interest and a rich flora
which also has its regional peculiarities. Amongst singular
Liberian mammals may be noted the pigmy Hippopotamus, the Zebra
antelope and Jentinck’s duiker.