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 | | From: | Johan Viroux | | Subject: | French IMPERIALISM in the French Congo: TERRIFYING STORIES | | Date: | Wed, 12 Jan 2005 18:53:35 +0100 |
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http://www.boondocksnet.com/editions/morel/morel10a.html
Chapter 10
The Story of the French Congo
Ruin and death ... terrifying depopulation, universal exodus ... the
continuous destruction of the population -- purely and simply. -- De Brazza.
In 1899 King Leopold planned what, after his initial triumph in hoodwinking
public opinion fifteen years before, was the master-stroke of his African
career. And he succeeded in carrying it out. He induced the French
Government of the day by "scandalous, financial and political intrigues,
bribery, corruption and cowardice," as a French author of repute remarks, to
adopt and apply in the coterminous territory of the French Congo, the
principles and the policy that he had inaugurated in the Congo Free State.
Thenceforth the French Congo was ringed round by a fence of Franco-Belgian
financial interests. His object in doing so was obvious. The Congo Reform
movement in England was still weak and had aroused little or no echo abroad.
But it was gathering in volume, and the Sovereign of the Congo State was
uneasy. By persuading one of the great Powers to imitate his methods, he
established a community of interest with its Government, thus enormously
strengthening his position should it be severely assailed. He sought,
indeed, to contaminate not only the French Congo, but the whole of the
French West African dependencies and the German Kamerun also. His success in
Kamerun was short-lived. The German Government granted two concessions to
Belgo-German financial groups, but after about twelve months' experience,
drastically restricted their privileges and refused to grant any more. The
attempt to introduce the System into French West Africa, though supported
from Paris, was defeated by the combined opposition of the high officials
and of the powerful trading firms established there. M. Ballay, the
Governor-General, bluntly described it as requiring for its enforcement "a
soldier behind every producer," and set his face against it absolutely.
So far as the French Congo was, concerned, circumstances played into the
hands of King Leopold and his financial bodyguard. As in the Congo Free
State, the bulk of the French Congo forests are full of rubber vines and
trees. Emulation and envy were aroused in French colonial circles by the
prodigious development in rubber exports from the Congo Free State. French
finance was excited by the wild wave of speculation in Congo rubber shares
which swept over Belgium, and by the prodigious profits of the great Belgian
Concessionaire Companies. These results were contrasted with the conditions
prevailing in the French Congo, which had long been the Cinderella of the
French African dependencies, and where French commercial enterprise had been
almost wholly lacking. What trade existed, and it was by no means
inconsiderable, was confined to the maritime region and to the Ogowe basin.
It had been largely built up by British firms, and was almost wholly in
their hands, although there was plenty of room, even within that area, for
dozens of French firms had they chosen to embark on the venture. The whole
of the middle and upper French Congo was commercially untouched. King
Leopold played his cards skilfully. The French press was flooded with
articles contrasting the "prosperity" of the Congo Free State with the
"stagnation" of the French Congo. Much pressure was brought to bear upon the
French Government of the day. The King's personal friendship with a
prominent politician conspicuously identified with the French "Colonial
Party" was a useful asset. In due course the plunge was taken. Before the
close of 1900 the whole territory of the French Congo had been parcelled out
among forty financial corporations on a thirty years' charter. Belgian
capital figured in most of them, and the men at the head of the Congo Free
State corporations reappeared on the boards of many of them. With Belgian
capital, Belgian methods, and Belgian agents to execute them, the
"Belgianising" or, more justly, the Leopoldianising of the French Congo was,
indeed, carried out in thorough-going fashion.
Other methods, other men. When these revolutionary changes were in their
preliminary stage the necessity of getting rid of the then Governor of the
dependency, De Brazza, was recognised and acted upon. De Brazza played so
prominent a part in subsequent developments that his personality is woven
into the story and demands brief reference. This naval officer of Brazilian
descent and French naturalisation is an unique figure in modern African
annals. For a quarter of a century, from 1874 to 1899, he toiled
continuously and almost uninterruptedly for the political interests of his
adopted country in this tropical region so deadly to white men. It was
entirely owing to his labours that France was able to claim this vast
territory as coming within her sphere of influence in the African Settlement
of 1884. He possessed an extraordinary influence over the native mind. The
type of political agent and administrator who carved bloody tracks through
the "bush" he held in abhorrence. He travelled with no military retinue and
with few personal attendants. He never fired a shot against the natives,
whose internal quarrels he healed, and by whom he was venerated as the
"great white father" over an enormous area. For these simple and primitive
forest dwellers, whose many qualities he discerned and appreciated, he
possessed a real affection, and the sight of their agony and ruin after six
years of frantic exploitation broke his heart.
The System imported into the French Congo being fundamentally identical with
the Congo Free State original upon which it modelled itself, the inevitable
consequences followed as a matter of course. French officialdom shrank at
first from avowing the logical interpretation of its decrees. It was,
however, soon compelled to do so owing to the legal resistance offered by
the British firms in the Lower Congo to the proceedings of the
representatives of the Concessionaire Companies. Having committed the
initial and fatal error, the French Government and the local Administration
in the French Congo found themselves involved deeper and deeper in the mire,
until the French Congo became an almost exact replica of its neighbour.
The Concessionaire Companies acquired by their charters the sole right of
possession of the negotiable products of the country. They became de facto
owners of the rubber trees and vines within their respective concessions.
This implied, of course, dispossession of the native. Dispossession of the
native implied, in its turn, the immediate cessation of the act of purchase
and sale -- otherwise trade -- between the native population and white men.
Where such trade was non-existent no vocal objection by third parties to the
cardinal feature of the system would arise, since there were no third
parties to raise it. It was otherwise where such trade had long existed,
i.e., in the lower Congo, the portion of the territory nearest the
Coast-line. Some of the Europeans engaged in it compounded with the
Concessionaires and cleared out of the country. To their infinite credit,
the British firms declined to do so. Their respective heads were prominent
men in the civic and commercial life of Liverpool. One of them, Mr. John
Holt, was one of the foremost living authorities on West Africa, and a man
of very great personality and force of character. If he had followed the
dictates of his business interests be would have allowed his firm to be
bought out. But he realised that something over and above material interests
was concerned; that a vital principle affecting his country's Treaty rights,
the interests of a helpless population, and the sanctity of international
law was in question. Thanks to his influence, the British firms made a firm
stand. The moral strength of their position was unassailable. They had been
in the country for a quarter of a century. Their enterprise furnished the
local Administration with a substantial portion of its revenue -- in the
seven years preceding the introduction of the system they had paid £112,000
in custom dues, patents, and licences. They had always been on excellent
terms with the French officials, with whom they had co-operated in exploring
and opening up the country. They had received no communication of any kind
from the French Government suggesting that their presence in the dependency
was no longer desired. They took their stand upon the rights of law-abiding
Englishmen to equitable treatment, and upon the clauses of an international
Act -- to which their Government was a signatory. The struggle they
sustained for several years in the local Courts of the dependency, and,
subsequently, by public action in which they were supported by all the
important Chambers of Commerce in the country, was of immeasurable value in
helping the wider public to understand the basic iniquities of the Congo
System. The wrong inflicted upon them was ultimately acknowledged, and
substantial compensation was paid them by the French Government. But the
British Foreign Office could not be induced to take the wide view of the
case which they themselves continuously urged: to treat it, i.e., not as a
matter of personal injustice, but primarily as an international issue
involving consequences of profound international importance.
· · · · · ·
"One idea dominates the system. All the products of the conceded territory,
whatever they may be, are the property of the Concessionaire Company," thus
ran the Decree which a Colonial Minister saw fit to promulgate as the result
of the continuous litigation in the lower Congo Courts between British
merchants and the Concessionaires. Thus officially guided, the Courts, which
in several instances had rendered temporising or conflicting judgments,
hastened to bring themselves into line with ministerial decisions. The
Loango Court held that the Concessionaire Companies had "the exclusive right
of collecting and exploiting the natural products of the soil." The
Libreville Court proclaimed that "the rubber belongs to the Concessionaires,
and not to the natives who gather it." This Decree and these judgments
produced a painful effect among the few Frenchmen who knew what they
portended. De Brazza came out of his retirement and wrote a letter to Le
Temps:
France -- he said -- has assumed a duty towards the native tribes.... We
must not sacrifice them to the vain hope of immediate results by thoughtless
measures of coercion. We should be committing a great mistake by enforcing
.... taxes upon the products of the soil.... It would constitute a great blow
to our dignity if such labour and such taxes were converted into a sort of
draft-to-order in favour of the Concessionaires.
M. Cousin, a well-known authority on colonial questions, who had been a warm
defender of the Concessionaire experiment, published a pamphlet, in which he
declared that he had been mistaken. M. Fondère, another authority of repute,
wrote an open letter to the Colonial Minister, in the course of which he
said:
The right to sell his products to whomsoever he may please cannot be denied
to the native, because he has always possessed it. Moreover, it would be
quite illusory to think of taking this right away from him. That could only
be done by force of arms.
No consideration of the latter kind was likely to stand in his way. The
years which followed were to witness the attempt to compel "by force of
arms" some nine million African natives, or as many of that total who could
be reached, to submit not only to be robbed, but to spend their lives in the
extremely arduous and dangerous task of gathering and preparing india-rubber
in the virgin forests, on behalf of a few wealthy financiers in Brussels,
Paris and Antwerp.
The Story of the French Congo (continued)
The Concessionaires settled down to their work, and the local
Administration, which under the concession decrees received a royalty of 15
per cent. upon the Companies' output, associated itself still more closely
with the latter by establishing a direct tax payable in rubber, the proceeds
of which were turned over to the Companies. The local Administration and the
Concessionaires thus became partners in a common object, that of forcing as
much rubber as possible out of the natives. In the lower part of the French
Congo the effect was immediate. Here, as already explained, the native
population had been traders with white men, directly and indirectly, for
decades. To their bewilderment they found themselves suddenly faced with a
demand for rubber as a "tax" from the Administration, and with a demand for
rubber as by right divine from strange white men who claimed to OWN it, and
claimed power to compel the real owners to collect it for whatever the
former chose to pay. The trading stations where the natives had been wont to
carry their produce and barter it -- and haggle over the price, as the
native knows so well how to do -- they were forbidden to approach. The
natives of the French Congo did what any other people would have done. They
declined to be despoiled of their property and robbed of the fruits of their
labours. The chiefs appealed to the authorities and asked what they had done
to be so "punished." Appeals were in vain. Refusal to "work rubber" was met
with attempted compulsion. The natives rose, with that absence of
combination and with that virtual powerlessness in the face of modern
weapons of offence which characterises the unhappy inhabitant of the
equatorial forest. The first year of the new "System" closed amid scenes of
chaos and destruction, with raiding bands armed by the Concessionaires, and
punitive expeditions conducted by the Administration carrying fire and sword
from one end of the country to the other. The work of twenty years had been
undone in twelve months.
In the upper French Congo, where European trade had not yet penetrated, the
demand for rubber came with equal suddenness and was accompanied by the same
results, but it was not until long afterwards that these results came to
light. In Paris every effort was made to conceal the true state of affairs,
and for three years the rubber saraband went on, a large quantity of that
article finding its way to Bordeaux and Antwerp. As the new "System" took
root, the morale of the Europeans involved in enforcing it followed the
inevitable downward grade. Gradually the local Administration became
demoralised from top to bottom. Reports from experienced officials of the
old régime who, appalled at what was going on, communicated direct with the
Colonial Office in Paris, were suppressed. The increasing vigour of the
British agitation against the Congo Free State was an additional reason for
keeping the truth from the French public. King Leopold's policy was bearing
its fruits. The French Administration was committed to the hilt in a system
of exploitation, which was being denounced in the Parliament and the Press
of France's ally.
Up to this time specific information was lacking, although the air was full
of unpleasant rumours. A bombshell had been dropped into the Concessionaire
camp by the remarks of the reporter of the Colonial Budget for 1904. The
Colonial Budget in France is presented every year to the Chamber in an
elaborate report drawn up by a deputy who is appointed for the purpose. M.
Dubief, the reporter for that year, vigorously condemned the new "System,"
declaring that "slavery" was its "indispensable corollary." He was smothered
in an avalanche of abuse in the French and Belgian Press, and his indictment
was not discussed in the Chamber.
But murder will out. In this case the murders were numbered by tens of
thousands.
Early in 1905 an "indiscretion" was committed, and a whole batch of
suppressed official reports were precipitated into the light of day. The
French public was edified to learn that crimes and atrocities similar to
those with which the world was becoming familiar in the Congo Free State
were of every-day occurrence in the French Congo, and apparently, although
as yet the connection was only vaguely understood, from the same causes.
They learned of floggings and burning of villages, of rape and mutilation,
of natives being used as targets for revolver practice, and as human
experiments to test the efficacy of dynamite cartridges; of "hostage-houses"
in which men, women and children perished -- and all this in connection with
the procuring of india-rubber. The sensation was considerable.
"Interpellations" in the Chamber were threatened. The Government of the day
was struck with panic. In its extremity, it turned to the man who had been
neglected and put on one aide, and whose warnings had been disregarded -- De
Brazza. He was asked to take charge of a Commission of investigation which
should proceed at once to the French Congo. He accepted. The decision struck
the Boards of the Concessionaire companies with consternation. Immense
pressure was at once brought to bear upon the Government, and, repenting of
their action almost ere the ink was dry on the letters of appointment,
Ministers strove by every means to thwart their own nominee. Only by natural
pertinacity and the considerable influence he wielded in certain quarters
did De Brazza succeed in securing an official staff and in defeating an
attempt to send out another Commission, independent of his own, to spy upon
his movements. As it was, he was forced to leave without having been
furnished by the Colonial Office with a single one of the dozens of reports
from its officials in the French Congo, which had been accumulating in its
bureaux for the past four years!
For four months De Brazza and his staff pursued their investigations. De
Brazza did not spare himself. His activity was prodigious: his increasing
grief pitiful to behold. "Ruin and terror," he wrote home, "have been
imported into this unfortunate colony." The river banks were deserted where
formerly a numerous population fished and traded. From the Ogowe and its
affluents whole tribes had disappeared. Floggings, armed raids,
"hostage-houses," had everywhere replaced the peaceful relationship of
commercial intercourse. All over the country the wretched natives, goaded
into rebellion, were struggling against their oppressors: fleeing to the
forests, they subsisted -- or starved -- on roots and berries. Great numbers
had perished. The following specific instances are selected from the mass of
evidence. In the Upper Ubanghi the agent of a Concessionaire company had
summoned the Chiefs of a number of neighbouring villages, which had been
slow in gathering rubber, to "talk over matters." They were then seized,
tied to trees, and flogged until the blood ran down their backs.
Correspondence found in the offices of another company included letters from
the Board in Paris containing such sentiments as these: "Do not forget that
our agents must play the part of miniature pirates" (pirates au petit pied);
and, in connection with troubles that had arisen with a particular Chief,
stress was laid upon the utility of "that plaything which is called a
Maxim." In the Lobaye region, the scene of repeated uprisings and bloody
reprisals, the agent of the local Concessionaire company was an ex-agent of
the infamous and notorious Abir company of the Congo State. In the N'Gunié
region no fewer than five military expeditions had been sent against the
natives in as many months at the request of the local Concessionaire
company. In the Shari, the Chief of an important tribe had been arrested
because his people did not bring in enough rubber, and had died in prison.
In the neigbbourbood of Bangui an official had caused fifty-eight women and
ten children to be taken as hostages to compel their male relatives to bring
in rubber: in three weeks forty-five of these women and two of the children
had died of starvation and want of air, packed tightly in a small dwelling
place. At Fort Sibut one hundred and nineteen women and little girls had
been similarly arrested, and many had died. An official circular had
prescribed that these "hostages-houses" should be erected in the bush and
out of sight of possible travellers. In one of the concessions of the Lower
Congo the natives had been forbidden to make salt in order to compel them to
buy it from the company, which would only sell it against large quantities
of rubber; widespread sickness ensuing, salt being an indispensable article
of native diet in tropical Africa. The judicial machinery had become
hopelessly corrupted, and the gravest abominations were left unpunished.
This was hardly surprising in view of a circular from the Governor-General
of the dependency to his officials complaining of the small yield from the
rubber taxes and stating: "I do not conceal from you that I shall base
myself, in recommending your promotion, especially upon the yield of the
native taxes, which should be the object of your constant attention." In the
interior "terrifying depopulation," a "universal exodus." "In the
Ubanghi-Shari," wrote De Brazza, "I have found an impossible situation, the
continuous destruction of the population -- purely and simply."
Another Frenchman of note, Auguste Chevalier, whose reputation as an expert
in tropical forestry is world-wide, has since recorded in a bulky volume the
state of the French Congo, whither he was sent on an official scientific
expedition. His descriptions are pen pictures not of the more revolting
atrocities, but of the daily, deadly, permanent effects of the "System" upon
native life. They help, too, to bring home to us, all that there was of
promise in these primitive peoples, before they were handed over body and
soul to the cynical vileness of modern capitalistic finance. Commenting upon
the ruined and abandoned villages on the river banks, as he proceeds on his
northward journey, he writes:
It is impossible to describe the lamentable impression made upon one in the
contemplation of these huts torn asunder by the storms. The neglected fruit
trees and fields of manioc,(1) where monkeys and hippopotami now find
nourishment. And yet how considerable was the effort involved on the part of
these so-called lazy people. They had to conquer the forest and carve out of
it their few acres of cultivated lands, fight the forest continuously to
prevent it from winning back its ascendancy. And now, once again, the forest
invades the site. The seeds of forest trees have germinated in the fields,
and the high grasses grow upon the desolate pathways.
He goes on:
The majority of the inhabitants, terrified by the military oppressions, have
fled.... One gathers a very favourable impression from those that remain....
Their thatch-roofed houses are spacious and clean.... They have goats, hens,
cats and dogs. Their plantations are most excellently kept. (He enumerates
seven different cultivated vegetables, besides bananas and plantains.)
No doubt remains in my mind as to the cause of all these disturbances....
The Concessionaires and the Senegalese soldiers treat the natives in the
cruellest fashion, impose all kinds of forced labour upon them, often
pillage without restraint. The agents of the Companies call the native a
brute who will not gather rubber for them, talk of suppressing them and
importing labour from other countries. It is odious and absurd. But some of
the officers who are travelling on this steamer, especially the higher grade
officers, agree with these views. The natives fly at the approach of the
steamer. (He then narrates several specific cases of burning of villages and
slaughter of natives, and continues): It is this sort of policy which
explains why the native is abandoning these rich and admirable valleys.
These are typical observations selected from a great number, and common to
all the regions Chevalier traversed. Every phase of the system in the Congo
Free State, reported by innumerable witnesses, is seen by Chevalier's
narrative to be reproduced in the French Congo. Thus Chevalier notes
everywhere famine resulting from requisitions in rubber and in foodstuffs,
which leaves the inhabitants no time to attend to the cultivation of
foodstuffs for their own sustenance; utter exhaustion among the men leading
to ual incapacity; tribal women forced to feed great numbers of idle
female camp followers attached to the administrative centres, themselves
dying of hunger, seeing their children perishing for lack of nourishment,
compelled to thrust water into their babies' mouths through narrow-necked
gourds to stop their cries as they suck vainly at withered teats; children
so reduced that they appear like walking skeletons; one or two powerful
so-called Arab chiefs in the far interior raiding right and left for slaves,
whom they sell to cattle-raising communities further north in order to
procure bullocks demanded of them by the Administration as tribute, or
employed as agents to collect rubber and ivory for Concessionaires, who give
them guns in exchange, which facilitate their raiding operations. He sums up
the whole position as he then found it thus:
Soon, if this policy is persisted in, if the incendiarism and devastation of
villages does not stop ... if the concessionaires are always to enjoy the
right of imposing such and such a "corvée" upon the inhabitants, and to
place an embargo upon all the latter possess, the banks of the Congo, the
Ubanghi, and the Sangha will be completely deserted.... If this policy be
not changed, in half a century from now these hardworking races will have
completely disappeared, and the desert will enter into possession of French
Central Africa.
1. The tropical plant, "Janipha-maniot" from which tapioca, and cassava --
one of the staple food supplies of the Congo peoples -- are prepared.
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