Chapter VIII

THE BRITISH IN AFRICA, I
(_West Coast, Morocco, North-Central_.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----

Footnote 108:

Made from various aromatic seeds, such as those of true pepper
vines (_Piper subpeltatum_, _Piper guineense_), and of the fruits
of (_Xylopia æthiopica_).

Footnote 109:

The seeds of the _Aframomum_, a zingiberaceous plant, of the same
order as cannas, bananas, etc. These early English voyages are
described in detail in my book on _Liberia_ (2 vols, 1906).

Footnote 110:

It was this company that sent out in 1618 George Thompson in
charge of a trading expedition. Thompson was killed in some
quarrel with his men at Tenda on the Upper Gambia. In 1620-21, his
companions were rescued, and his explorations continued by Captain
Richard Jobson, who ascended the Gambia as far as it was navigable
from the sea, came into contact with the Fula and Mandingo
peoples, and on his return wrote an account of his experiences in
a book called _The Golden Trade_. This work—recently republished
in the unabridged form of the MS.—is one of the most vivid
pen-pictures of Negro Africa ever penned.

Footnote 111:

They rise at the highest to 2000 feet.

Footnote 112:

‘Maroon’ was a corruption of the Spanish “Cimarron,” an outlaw
frequenting the summits (Cimas) of the mountains.

Footnote 113:

Properly ‘Hwida.’

Footnote 114:

All this period in the history of the Gold Coast, including
Bowdich’s mission, is described in detail in my book, _Pioneers in
West Africa_ (Blackie, 1911).

Footnote 115:

Afterwards Viscount Wolseley.

Footnote 116:

The territory was ceded by its king to Great Britain in 1861.

Footnote 117:

The powerful kingdom of Benin—remarkable for its development
of the arts of sculpture, ivory carving, and of
bronze-casting—extended its power seaward to the mouth of the
Benin branch of the Niger Delta, and gave its name to this
great bay or bight of the low-lying coast. Biafra was a native
name given by the Portuguese to the opposite (eastern) bight
between the Niger Delta and the Cameroons.

Footnote 118:

British Nigeria and the exploration of Africa generally—its
botany, anthropology, and languages—owe much to the work of
William Balfour Baikie, a native of the Orkney Islands, who
between 1854 and 1864 served the British Government on the Niger
and succeeded the equally remarkable John Beecroft as Consul.
Baikie founded Lokoja in 1860. Lander, Laird, Beecroft, Baikie,
and the black Bishop Samuel Crowther were the principal creators
of British Nigeria.

Footnote 119:

Afterwards the Right Hon. Sir George Taubman Goldie, P.C.

Footnote 120:

The Fulas, as already stated, are a semi-white race, who
originally came from the Western Sahara, and colonised much of
Senegambia and the Upper Niger basin, penetrating as far south as
Borgu, and south-east to Adamawa, Mandara, Bagirmi, and Darfur. In
the early 19th century, under a great leader, Othman Dan Fodio,
they conquered Sokoto and much of Eastern Nigeria, stopping short
of Bornu, where they were arrested by the power of the Kanemi
Sheikh of Bornu. A succinct account of the different Fula kingdoms
and conquests is given in a footnote on p. 201.

Footnote 121:

This man was no doubt a negroid Arab religious teacher from the
country of Kanem, north-east of Lake Chad. He settled in Bornu
early in the 19th century and became the adviser of the king of
that country, a phlegmatic descendant of a great and ancient
dynasty of Berber or Hamitic origin. Muhammad-al-Amin-al-Kanemi
assisted the Bornu sovereign and people to beat off the Fula
invasion and became the virtual ruler of Bornu. He bore the title
of Sheikh of Bornu.