The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  The traffic in black slaves from the Bilad as-Sudan to Egypt had been a mainstay of regional trade for centuries. At the end of the eighteenth century, Egypt’s main supplier of slaves was the Sudanese kingdom of Dar Fur, which regularly launched cavalry raids on black tribes to the south. The slaves were taken along the dar al-‘arbain – the Forty Days Road – that ran from El-Fasher in Dar Fur north to the Nile at Asyut. In 1796, an English traveller, William Browne, accompanied a caravan from Dar Fur to Egypt that included 5,000 slaves. French officials in Cairo reported in 1798: ‘Each year, two caravans come from Dar Fur, each made up of four to five thousand camels . . . the number of slaves brought to Egypt in an average year is five to six thousand, of whom three-quarters are young girls or women. The slaves are from six or seven to thirty to forty years old. They are sold in various cities where the caravan stops but nearly exclusively in Cairo.’ When the sultan of Dar Fur sent a telegram of congratulations to Bonaparte in Cairo in 1799, the general replied: ‘I request that you send me two thousand strong and vigorous black male slaves over the age of sixteen by the next caravan: I will buy them all.’ The French subsequently purchased slaves from a Dar Fur caravan to replenish their own ranks. Another source of slaves sent to Egypt was provided by the increasingly decrepit kingdom of Sennar.

  Muhammad Ali’s expeditionary force set out for Nubia in 1820 with specific orders. ‘You are aware that the end of all our efforts and expense is to procure Negroes,’ he told his commanders. ‘Please show zeal in carrying out our wishes in this capital matter.’ Armed with modern weapons, his army rampaged along the valley of the Middle Nile, reaching Halfaya, near the junction of the Blue and White Nile, in May 1821. Sennar surrendered without resistance shortly afterwards. As many as 30,000 slaves were sent down the river to Egypt but only about half that number survived, the rest dying along the way of disease, fatigue and ill-treatment.

  The Nilotic Sudan, henceforth, became a part of Egypt’s new empire. In 1824, Muhammad Ali’s commanders set up headquarters on a promontory of land formed by the confluence of the two Niles, an area known to local Arabs as El Khartoum from its supposed resemblance to an elephant’s trunk. Each year, military expeditions conducted regular slave raids, attacking the Shilluk and Dinka in the Nile floodplains to the south, seizing Kordofan in the west and descending on the Nuba mountains to the south of Kordofan. In the 1830s, Muhammad Ali increased the number of regiments from one to three, both to consolidate Egyptian rule and to expand slave-raiding operations. By 1838, an estimated 10,000 slaves were being sent down the Nile to Egypt each year.

  Slave numbers, however, were not sufficient to meet Muhammad Ali’s imperial ambitions, so he began conscripting Egyptian peasants. Since the Arab conquest, most soldiers in Egypt had been foreigners. Now Egyptians formed an increasing proportion of the rank and file. With the assistance of European advisers, the army set up artillery, engineering and medical schools and gradually expanded its numbers to 130,000 men. Military expeditions were sent to the Ottoman lands of Palestine and Syria.

  To support his military ambitions, Muhammad Ali began to construct the framework of a modern state. Needing to raise taxation levels, he abolished the old tax-farming system which enabled Mamluk landlords to live off the work of peasants and imposed state control over most of Egypt’s agricultural land, collecting taxes directly from peasant villages. He established a system of state monopolies for most agricultural products, empowering them to buy commodities such as wheat, barley, cotton and sugar at low prices and sell them at high prices to Egyptian consumers and foreign traders, garnering another large increase in government funds. He ordered the introduction of new crops, compelling peasants to grow long-staple cotton which became a lucrative export crop, further enhancing government revenues. Using forced labour, he expanded the Nile’s irrigation network, improved existing canals and built new ones, increasing the area of cultivable land by more than a third. Agricultural output soared. Instead of depending on annual floods, peasants were able to grow two or three crops a year. A new canal from the Nile to Alexandria, completed in 1820, revived the port, bringing it commercial traffic and fresh water supplies.

  Muhammad Ali also attempted to provide Egypt with an industrial base, importing machinery, managers and technicians from Europe. Most projects were started to meet military needs. Dockyards were built in the Bulaq district of Cairo and in Alexandria; munition factories in the Citadel and at sites in the Delta; textile factories manufactured uniforms and fezzes. In the 1830s, the industrial labour force reached 40,000. But Egypt lacked coal and wood to power steam engines, so factories were dependent on animal and man power, limiting their output; many enterprises collapsed as a result of mechanical failure and a shortage of qualified technicians.

  Other programmes had a more lasting effect. Sweeping changes were introduced in the field of education. Hitherto, the educational system had been based on village Koranic schools. Higher levels of study had been provided by Muslim clerics to train students for religious and judicial posts. Instead of trying to reform the system, Muhammad Ali installed a new category of secular state schools modelled on those of Italy and France, staffed initially by Europeans. Groups of students were sent to Europe for training in Western sciences and administration, to prepare them for roles in government services. On their return, they became the nucleus of an educated middle class that was to have a profound influence on the shape of Egypt later in the nineteenth century. A school of translation and a state printing press were established to ensure that modern works in European languages were available in Arabic and Turkish.

  There were advances too in the field of medicine. A French surgeon, Antoine Clot, was recruited to found a modern medical school. He went on to set up the first modern Egyptian hospital and introduced new methods of vaccination against smallpox. He was also responsible for hiring other medical specialists, including Theodor Bilharz, a German physician, who identified the cause of the endemic waterborne disease schistosomiasis, more commonly known as bilharzia, that afflicts much of Africa’s population.

  A tide of European influence began to wash over Egypt. Increasing numbers of Europeans, as well as Turks and other Ottomans, found their way to Egypt to take up posts in Muhammad Ali’s burgeoning army and bureaucracy. In the 1840s, European merchants started to play a prominent role there, after restrictions on the activities of foreign merchants were lifted. European governments too looked on Egypt with new interest. Britain saw the benefit of using Egypt as a shorter and quicker means of communication with India. British investment helped to finance railway construction connecting Alexandria to Cairo and the Red Sea port of Suez. But while Muhammad Ali was open to most European approaches, he was adamant in opposing European plans to construct a canal through the isthmus of Suez, fearing it would give European states too much power over the economic life of Egypt.

  In the final years before his death in 1848, Muhammad Ali lost much of his reforming zeal. In Mamluk fashion, he doled out state land to members of his family and other powerful individuals, Egyptians as well as Turks, creating a new class of landowners. His military ambitions in the Levant were curbed by European powers which wanted to keep the ramshackle Ottoman empire there intact and required him to limit the size of his army to 18,000 men. In return, the Ottoman sultan conferred on Muhammad Ali lifetime rule over Egypt and the Sudan, recognised Egypt as a pashalic of the Ottoman empire, and agreed to allow Muhammad Ali’s family to become hereditary rulers of Egypt, nominally under Ottoman suzerainty. The dynasty that he founded lasted for more than a hundred years.

  Yet even though Muhammad Ali succeeded in establishing Egypt as a regional power virtually independent of Ottoman interference, he left it exposed to the rising might of Europe.

  20

  PIEDS NOIRS

  In a repeat performance of Bonaparte’s invasion of Africa in 1798, a French fleet consisting of one hundred warships and nearly 600 supply vessels set sail from Toulon in May 1830, crossing the M
editerranean to the half-moon bay at Sidi Ferruch, a sheltered beach some twenty miles west of Algiers. On board were 31,000 infantry, 2,300 artillery gunners, 500 cavalrymen, 40 translators, hundreds of dogs needed for testing water, and food and forage supplies for four months. France’s minister of war, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, was blunt about the purpose of the expedition: ‘There are many ports along Algeria’s coast whose possession would be of great utility to France and give us control of the Mediterranean. In the interior, there are immense fertile plains. Algeria is a veritable El Dorado that would compensate for the loss of our colonies in America.’

  Algiers at the time was an orderly city of 30,000 inhabitants, nominally a part of the Ottoman empire, but ruled independently as a Turkish military republic under the control of a dey chosen by senior officers. Its population was a hotchpotch of different communities – Turks, Berbers, Jews, Arabs, slaves from the Sudan and mixed-race Maghrebi-Turkish residents known as kouloughlis. Each community abided by its own customary laws and was responsible for the conduct of its own members. There were 159 mosques, four synagogues and one church for Christians. The American consul, William Shaler, described residents as ‘civil, courteous and humane’. The police were vigilant, he said; persons and property were secure; and municipal cleanliness was strictly enforced. The days when Algiers was a troublesome nest of corsairs had long since passed.

  The French had harboured designs on Algeria’s coastal ports for many years. French merchants had gained a profitable niche there. But trade with France had led to a festering dispute. During the 1790s, when Europe’s monarchies were trying to stifle France’s revolutionary government, the French authorities had turned to a Jewish firm of international grain merchants in Algiers, Bushnach and Bacri, to supply wheat for Napoleon’s armies. Bonaparte subsequently claimed the purchase price was too high and refused to pay. Thirty years later, the matter of the debt – 24 million gold francs – had still not been resolved. When the Turkish dey, Hussein, wrote to the French king, Charles X, complaining about it, he received no reply. Annoyed by the lack of response, Hussein raised the issue with the French consul, Pierre Deval, at a reception held in April 1827, in the dey’s palace in the Casbah of Algiers. In a private conversation, Hussein lost his temper and struck Deval with a fly whisk, calling him ‘an insolent infidel’. The affair rapidly escalated. The French demanded reparations for the insult and tried to impose a naval blockade on the port of Algiers. After two years of stalemate, the French sought a face-saving solution and dispatched a diplomat to negotiate with Hussein. But the Algerians fired cannon at his flagship, preventing him from even landing.

  Unpopular at home, seeking to distract public anger over domestic problems, Charles X used the fly-whisk incident as a pretext for staging a display of military might abroad. Claiming he intended to rid the Mediterranean of Algerian corsairs, he ordered a full-scale invasion – ‘to wipe away the insult’.

  In the face of French cannon fire, Hussein’s forces were soon overwhelmed. After a three-week campaign, France’s ‘Army of Africa’ entered Algiers, putting an end to 313 years of Ottoman rule. As Hussein fled into exile, French commanders seized control of his treasury – consisting of gold, silver, jewels and merchandise valued officially at 48 million gold francs – and swiftly transferred it to the coffers of the French government. But military glory abroad failed to keep Charles X on his throne. One month later he was ousted in favour of his cousin Louis Philippe.

  France had no coherent plan for its occupation of Algiers and other ports that it went on to capture – Oran, Bône, Arzew and Mostaganem. The French expelled the Turks from Algiers, leaving the city without any experienced administrators. They had little understanding of the people, customs and even the geography of the land they had invaded. The initiative lay with French generals, but they themselves were divided over what course to follow. Some wanted to limit the area of territory they controlled; others advocated ‘total occupation’. Meanwhile, French colonists were encouraged to settle on rich farmland around Algiers expropriated from Turkish settlers.

  Beyond the coastal strip, however, the French army faced determined resistance. To the east of Algiers, a kouloughli bey, Ahmad ibn Muhammad, held his grip over Constantine. To the west, a local religious leader, Muhi al-Din, head of the Qadiriyya brotherhood, organised attacks on French forts around Oran. In 1832, he passed command to his 24-year-old son, Abd el-Kader, who declared jihad against the French, taking the title of amir al-muminin – commander of the faithful. El-Kader’s objective was not so much to drive the French from the coastal plains they controlled as to prevent their incursion further inland. After months of skirmishes, the French agreed in 1834 to a peace treaty which recognised Abd el-Kader’s autonomy over the Oran hinterland.

  El-Kader used the respite to try to construct a unitary state among the quarrelsome tribes of the Oran hinterland, founded on Islamic principles. He built regular forces of cavalry and infantry and put in place the framework of a permanent administration, appointing a network of officials – khalifa, agha, caids and cadis – to enforce law and collect taxes. He rapidly became the dominant authority in Oran province.

  All this provoked the ire of French commanders in Oran who were determined to make el-Kader submit to French authority. In June 1835, General Camille Trézel marched on el-Kader’s headquarters at Mascara, but suffered a humiliating defeat along the way. A new hardline governor-general, General Bertrand Clauzel, was sent to Algiers with orders to crush all ‘rebel’ activity. In November, he advanced on Mascara with an army of 11,000 and sacked it. But the following year, after a disastrous attempt to capture Constantine, he was recalled to Paris.

  Reluctant to incur further military expenditure, the French government decided to try negotiations once more and dispatched another general from Paris, Thomas Bugeaud, a gruff, seasoned officer with battle experience in Algeria, to discuss terms. Bugeaud at the time was hostile to the whole idea of French Algeria. He described it as ‘a millstone round the nation’s neck’. With the help of Jewish intermediaries, an agreement known as the Tafna Treaty was reached on 30 May 1837, acknowledging el-Kader’s autonomy, and two days later, Bugeaud set out for a rendezvous with el-Kader in the rolling green hills of the Trara Mountains to affirm his commitment to peace.

  Many French generals had previously sought a meeting with the emir but he had always remained elusive. The encounter between Bugeaud and el-Kader was all the more significant because of the role they subsequently played in shaping the fate of Algeria. Accompanied by a huge military escort, Bugeaud arrived at the appointed location, but was kept waiting for hours with no sign of el-Kader. Late in the afternoon, a messenger arrived from the emir, urging the general to advance further. Riding ahead with a small group of officers, Bugeaud passed through a narrow gorge to find the emir with an entourage of 150 chiefs and thousands of cavalrymen lining the crest of the hills around them.

  ‘His clothes were no different than the most common Arab,’ Bugeaud reported. ‘He is pale and resembles portraits one sees of Jesus Christ. His eyes are dark, his forehead prominent, and he has a large mouth with crooked white teeth. His entire physiognomy is that of a monk. Except at first greeting, he keeps his eyes lowered. His clothes are dirty and worn. It is clear he affects a rigorous simplicity.’

  The two men discussed details of the treaty and departed with expressions of friendship.

  The Tafna Treaty gave el-Kader authority over two-thirds of Algeria north of the desert. But disputes over territorial boundaries soon erupted. Determined to restore French prestige after their failure to capture Constantine, French generals launched a renewed assault on the city in 1837, gaining possession only after fierce resistance. In 1839, they opened a direct military route between Algiers and Constantine, passing through el-Kader’s territory in violation of the treaty. In response, el-Kader declared a jihad once more and instructed his commanders to launch guerrilla attacks on French targets, warning the French governor-gene
ral in advance of his intentions.

  We were at peace, and the limits between your country and ours were clearly determined . . . [Now] you have published [the claim] that all the lands between Algiers and Constantine should no longer receive orders from me. The rupture comes from you. However, so that you do not accuse me of betrayal, I warn you that I will resume the war. Prepare yourselves, warn your travellers, all who live in isolated places, in a word take every precaution as you see fit.

  What followed was a war of outright conquest, fought by the French with methods that they admitted were barbaric. General Bugeaud was appointed governor-general and given carte blanche to prosecute what he called ‘unlimited war’. The objective, he said on arrival in Algiers in 1841, was to create a lasting peace that would enable French colonists to prosper.

  Our country is committed . . . The Arabs must be conquered and the flag of France the only one on African soil. But war is not the goal. The conquest will be sterile without colonisation. I will be an ardent coloniser and you must understand that I attach less prestige to military victory than I do to doing something useful and lasting for France.

  With 80,000 troops at his disposal, including units of the newly formed Foreign Legion and local auxiliaries, Bugeaud embarked on a scorched-earth offensive to destroy the food supplies of tribes supporting el-Kader. French forces chopped down orchards, seized livestock, set fire to crops and wrecked granaries. ‘We lay waste, we plunder, we destroy crops and trees,’ wrote Achille de Saint-Arnaud, one of Bugeaud’s senior officers. ‘The enemy flees before us, taking his flocks. We have burnt everything, destroyed everything.’ At the forefront of the campaign were mobile columns – ‘columns from hell’ – capable of enduring forced marches of 120 miles in thirty-six hours. They were relentless in their razzias, using torture to extract information about hidden silos, leaving villagers to starve to death, executing men, women and children at will. Bugeaud’s campaign included several notorious atrocities. ‘We have surpassed in barbarism the barbarians we came to civilise,’ a member of a French investigating commission remarked.