Dr Livingstone, another highly competent judge, put the actual number of slaves taken away from their homes every twelve months (regardless of those who died because they were left behind without any protection) at 350,000, of whom only 70,000 ever reached the other side of the ocean.
Between 1700 and 1786 not less than 600,000 slaves were brought to Jamaica alive, and during the same period more than 2,000,000 slaves were carried from Africa to the West Indies by two of the smaller English slave companies. By the end of the eighteenth century Liverpool, London, and Bristol maintained a fleet of 200 vessels with a total capacity of 47,000 Negroes, which plied regularly between the Gulf of Guinea and the New World. In 1791 when the Quakers and the enemies of slavery in general began their agitation against this outrage, a survey of the slave stations along the Bight of Benin showed 14 English, 15 Dutch, 4 Portuguese, 4 Danish, and 3 French. But the British were better equipped and handled one-half of the whole trade, the rest being divided among the other four nations.
Of the horrible things that happened on the mainland we learned very little until much later, when the British, in order to stamp this business out by the roots, went on shore in search of further violators. It then appeared that native chieftains had been among the chief offenders, selling their own subjects as unceremoniously as those German rulers of the eighteenth century sold their regiments of recruits to the English for the purpose of quelling the rebellion in Virginia and Massachusetts. But the general organization of the business had always been in the hands of the Arabs. This is rather curious. The Koran highly disapproves of such pursuits, and Mohammedan law in general is much more lenient towards the slaves than the Christian edicts used to be. According to the laws of the white man, the child of a slave by her master was in turn held to be a slave, whereas according to the Koran, such a child must follow the status of the father, and must therefore be considered as free.
THE WATER-HOLE
The opening up of the Congo by the unspeakable Leopold II of Belgium and the demand for cheap labour to work his Majesty’s concessions started a temporary revival of the slave trade between the Portuguese colony of Angola and the interior of the Congo basin. But fortunately when that miserable old man (a medieval scoundrel on a constitutional throne in a modern democratic country—as strange a contradiction in terms as had been seen for a long time) died, the Congo Free State had already been taken over by the Belgian State, and that meant the end of large-scale attempts to make money out of buying and selling human beings. But even now watch has to be kept against revivals of the nefarious trade in remote parts.
The beginning of the relation between the white man and the black was therefore as unfortunate as it possibly could be. But what followed was just as bad. The reasons for this unfortunate state of affairs I will describe in as few words as possible.
In Asia the white man came face to face with races that were either as civilized as he was himself or more so. Which meant that they were able to fight back, and that the white man must mind his p’s and q’s or suffer the consequences.
The great Sepoy rebellion in India of the fifties of the last century, the terrible insurrection of Diepo Negoro, which twenty years before had almost deprived Holland of Java, the expulsion of all foreigners from Japan, the Boxer Rebellion of only a few years ago in China, the present unrest in India, and the open defiance of Europe’s and America’s notes in regard to Manchukuo by Japan are lessons which the white man cannot afford to ignore.
In Australia the white man came in contact with the poor, savage remnants of the early Stone Age, whom he killed at will and with as few pangs of conscience as he destroyed the wild dingoes that ate up his sheep.
The greater part of America was practically uninhabited when the white man arrived. The high and healthy plateaux of Central America and the north-western part of the Andes (Mexico and Peru) had a dense population, but the rest was almost empty. The few wandering nomads could be easily pushed aside and disease and degeneration then did the rest.
But in Africa conditions were different, for in Africa, regardless of slavery, regardless of sickness, regardless of bad gin, regardless of bad treatment, the population refused to die out. What the white man destroyed in the morning was replaced overnight. Yet the white man insisted upon taking the black man’s property. The result has been a holocaust of blood, the like of which the world has rarely seen; and the end is not yet. It is a struggle between the white man’s gunpowder and the black man’s tropical fertility.
Let us look at the map and give you a general outline of where things stand at the present moment.
Roughly speaking, Africa can be divided into seven parts, and these I shall now take up, one by one. We begin in the left upper corner, in the north-west, the infamous coast of Barbary which made our ancestors tremble with fear whenever they had to sad past it on their way from northern Europe to the ports of Italy and the Levant. For it was the land of the terrible Barbary pirates, and capture by them meant years of slavery until the family at home had borrowed enough money to set their poor cousin free.
This whole territory consists of mountains, and quite high mountains, too. And these mountains explain why that country had to develop as it did and why even to-day it has not yet actually been conquered by the white man. They are very treacherous mountains, full of ambushes and deep ravines, allowing a marauding party to make their attack and disappear without giving their victims a chance.
Aeroplanes and long-distance guns are of comparatively little value here. It was only a few years ago that the Spaniards met with a number of terrible defeats at the hands of the Riff people. Our ancestors preferred to pay an annual tribute to the different Sultans ruling this part of the African coast rather than risk their navies and their reputations on dangerous expeditions against harbours which no white man had been allowed to visit. They maintained special consuls in Algiers and Tunis whose business it was to arrange for the ransom of their captured subjects, and they supported religious organizations which had no other purpose than to look after the fate of the sailors who had been unfortunate enough to fell into the hands of the Moors.
Politically speaking, this north-western corner of the African continent is now divided into four separate parts, all of which, however, take their orders from Paris. This process of infiltration and occupation began in 1830. A common, ordinary fly-swatter was the immediate cause of the outbreak of hostilities, but the real reason was that old public scandal of the north-western Mediterranean, piracy.
At the Congress of Vienna the European powers had decided that ‘something must be done’ to suppress piracy in the Mediterranean. But of course the different powers could not decide who was to undertake the job, for the hero might keep some territory for himself and that would be unfair to the others the usual story of all diplomatic conferences.
Now there were two Algerian Jews (all business in northern Africa had been in the hands of Jews for centuries) who had a claim against the French for grain delivered to the French Government in the days before Napoleon—one of those old claims that are for ever cropping up in the chancellories of the Old and New World, and that have been the cause of so many misunderstandings during the last two centuries. If nations, like individuals, would only pay their bills as they go along, we surely should all be much happier and certainly much safer.
In the course of the negotiations about this little grain bill the Dey of Algiers one day lost his temper and hit the French consul with his fly-swatter. Then there was a blockade and a shot was fired (probably by accident, but such things are always happening when there are warships about), and an expeditionary force sailed across the Mediterranean, and on the fifth of July 1830 the French marched into Algiers and the Dey was taken prisoner and sent into exile, and the war was on in all seriousness.
The mountain people founded a leader, a certain Abd-el-Kader, a pious Mohammedan and a man of great intelligence and courage, who held out against the invaders for fifteen years and who did
not surrender until 1847. He had previously received the promise that he would be allowed to remain in his own country, but this promise was broken and he was taken to France. Napoleon III, however, set him free on condition that he would never again disturb the peace of his fatherland, and Abd-el-Kader retired to Damascus, where he spent the rest of his days in philosophic meditations and pious deeds, and where he died in 1883.
Long before his demise the last revolt in Algeria had been suppressed. To-day Algeria is merely a Department of France. Its people have the right to choose their own representatives and protect their interests in the French Parliament in Paris. Its young men have the honour to serve as conscripts in the French army, but that is not entirely a matter of choice. But from an economic point of view, the French have done a great deal of excellent work to improve the living conditions of their new subjects.
Grain is cultivated on the plain between the Adas Mountains and the sea called the Tell. The Shott plateau, so called after many small salt lakes, is a grazing country, and the mountain slopes are more and more being used for wine-growing, while large irrigation works are under construction to allow the raising of tropical fruit for the European market. Iron and copper deposits have been discovered, and railways connect them with Algiers (the capital) and with Oran and Bizerta, the three main harbours on the Mediterranean.
Tunis, immediately to the east of the Department of Algiers, is still nominally an independent state with a king of its own, but since 1881 it has been practically a French protectorate. But as France has no surplus population, most of the immigrants are Italians. The latter have a hard time competing with the Jews who moved to this part of the world centuries ago when it was still a Turkish possession, where they had a better chance to survive than under Christian rule.
Next to Tunis, the capital, the city of Sfax is the most important town. Two thousand years ago the land of Tunis was of more importance than it is to-day, for then it formed part of the territory of Kart-hadshat, which the Romans called Carthage. The harbour, which had room for 220 vessels, may still be seen. Otherwise very little remains, for when the Romans really wanted to do a job they did it thoroughly, and their hatred of Carthage (inspired of course by fear and jealousy) was such that they did not leave a single house standing when they finally took the city in 146 b.c. They burned it to the ground, and the charred ruins, lying sixteen feet below the level of the present soil, are all that remains of a city that once upon a time had almost a million inhabitants.
THE NILE
The north-western corner of Africa is officially known as the independent sultanate of Morocco. There is still a sultan, but since 1912 he too is merely a puppet of France. Not that he ever amounted to much. The Kabyles, the mountain folk of the Anti-Atlas, were too strongly entrenched to bother much about this distant majesty who for safety’s sake varied constantly between his two capitals, Morocco in the south and the holy city of Fez in the north. These handy mountains were such a menace that the valley people never troubled to cultivate their fields. Their harvests would be stolen if they did!
One can say a great deal against French rule in these parts of Africa, but when it comes to the safety of the public highroads, the French have performed wonders. They moved the centre of government to Rabat, a city on the Atlantic, where the French navy can lend a helping hand in case of need. Rabat is several hundred miles north of Agadir, another Atlantic port which unexpectedly got into the limelight four years before the outbreak of the Great War when the Germans sent a gunboat there to remind France that Morocco must not become another Algiers, an incident which helped a great deal to bring about the final disastrous conflict of 1914–18.
A small corner of Morocco just opposite Gibraltar is a Spanish colony. It was given to Spain as a peace-offering when France took possession of Morocco. The two cities of Ceuta and Mellila came into the limelight a few years ago in connexion with the defeats which the Spanish troops suffered at the hands of the natives, the so-called Riff-Kabyles.
At the northern end of the Riff Mountains lies Tangier, the internationalist city where during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the European ambassadors accredited to the Court of the Sultan of Morocco used to reside. The Sultan did not want them too near his own Court, and Tangier was therefore chosen as their place of residence.
The future of this entire mountainous triangle is no longer a matter of doubt. In another fifty years that whole region will be French, together with the second natural division of Africa which we shall discuss now—that of the great brown desert, the As-Sahru of the Arabs, the Sahara of our modern maps.
AFRICA
The Sahara, which is almost as large as the continent of Europe, runs all the way from the Atlantic to the Nile Valley. In the north, except for the Atlas triangle of Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis, the Sahara is bordered by the Mediterranean and in the south by the Sudan. The Sahara is a plateau, but not a very high one, for most of it lies at an altitude of only 1200 feet. Here and there are the remnants of old mountain ridges, worn away by wind and sand. There are a fair number of oases where the subterranean water allows a few thrifty Arabs to lead a not over-opulent existence. The density of population is 0.04 per square mile, which means that the Sahara is practically uninhabited. The best known among the wandering desert tribes are the Tuaregs, excellent fighters. The other Saharians are a mixture of Semite (or Arab) and Hamite (or Egyptian) and Sudanese Negro.
The French Foreign Legion looks after the safety of travellers, and does this exceedingly well. These French Legionnaires (who, by the way, are never allowed on French soil) may be a bit rough at times, but they have a tough problem on their hands. To police a region as large as Europe with a mere handful of men is no job for saints. Therefore, if we can believe common rumour, very few saints have been encouraged to enlist The old caravan roads are beginning to lose their importance. The tractor-wheeled motor lorry has taken the place of the smelly camel. It is much less costly and infinitely more dependable for very long distances. The days when tens of thousands of camels would forgather in Timbuktu to bring salt to the people of the western Sahara are gone for ever.
Until 1911 that part of the Sahara which borders on the Mediterranean was ruled by a Pasha of Its own who recognized the Sultan of Turkey as his overlord. In that year the Italians, knowing that the French were going to take Morocco as soon as they could do so without provoking a war with Germany, suddenly remembered that Libya (the Latin name for Tripoli) had once upon a time been a very prosperous Roman colony. They crossed the Mediterranean and took 400,000 square miles of African territory and hoisted the Italian flag over it and asked the world politely what it was going to do about it. As nobody was particularly interested in Tripoli (sand without iron or oil) the descendants of Caesar were allowed to keep their new colony, and they are now busy building roads and trying to cultivate a little cotton for the textile factories of Lombardy.
On the east, this Italian experiment in the difficult art of colonizing is bordered by Egypt. This country owed most of its prosperity to the fact that it was really a sort of island cut oil from the west by the Libyan desert and protected against the south by the Nubian desert, while the Red Sea and the Mediterranean took care of the boundaries in the north and in the east. The actual Egypt, the Egypt of history, the ancient land of the Pharaohs, which was the great storehouse of art and learning and science of the ancient world, consisted of a very narrow strip situated along the shore of a river almost as long as the Mississippi. The real Egypt, not counting the desert, is smaller than the kingdom of the Netherlands. But whereas Holland can feed only 7,000,000 people, the Nile valley is so fertile that it is able to support double that number. When the great irrigation works, begun by the English, shall have been finished, there will be room for many more. But the Fellahin (the tillers of the soil, who are almost without exception Mohammedans) will have to stick to their farms, for industrial activities are not easy in a country which has neither coal nor water-power.
In the seventh century Egypt was invaded and conquered by the armies of that doughty follower of the Prophet, the Caliph Omar I. All through the Middle Ages—which includes the period of the Crusades—these Saracens ruled the ancient realm of the Pharaohs. Within ten years of the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks a great struggle began between Turkey and Egypt, which ended in the subjugation of Egypt. The country then became a Pashalik, and fell gradually into decay, as the provinces of the Turkish Empire were always wont to fall. But early in the nineteenth century a progressive Pasha, Mohammed Ali, opened Egypt to up-to-date European ideas. His sons and grandsons and great-grandsons squandered the wealth he had piled up (it was one of them who sold the Suez Canal shares to Disraeli), and presently Egyptian finances got into such a mess that England and France stepped in and assumed what was called the ‘Dual Control’ of the administration. England took over the undivided responsibility in 1884 and managed Egyptian affairs to the great advantage of the Egyptians for something like thirty years. But the cry: “Egypt for the Egyptians” became so insistent after the Great War that the English renounced their claims and Egypt was once more recognized as an independent kingdom with the right to conclude treaties with other foreign powers, except commercial treaties, which must first be submitted to England. The British troops were withdrawn from all Egyptian cities except Port Said, but Alexandria, which had become the main commercial port on the Mediterranean since Damietta and Rosetta on the delta had lost their importance, remained an English naval base.
It was a generous agreement and a perfectly safe one, for meanwhile England had definitely occupied that eastern part of the Sudan through which the Nile happens to flow. By retaining control over the water of this river, upon which 12,000,000 little brown Egyptians depend for their living, England is certain that she can always make her wants more or less understood in distant Cairo.
The Home of Mankind Page 36