The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa

Lord Frederick J.D. Lugard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136250828
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

A survey of the historical and international aspects of colonial rule in Africa.

PART I.

EUROPE AND TROPICAL AFRICA.

_______

CHAPTER I.

THE ACQUISITION OF THE BRITISH AFRICAN TROPICS.

Reason for acquisition—Restraint of Britain—British policy of Free Trade—The Berlin Conference and effective occupation—The Hinterland theory—Spheres of influence—The Government’s dilemma—Creation of Chartered Companies—Treaties as valid titles—Method of obtaining treaties-The real sanction for intervention in Africa—Status of Chartered Companies—The Royal Niger Company’s Charter—The Imperial British East African Company—The British South African Company—Advantages of the Agency of Chartered Companies—Liabilities of Government on revocation—Lessons from Chartered Company rule—Separation of administration and commerce—Disposal of lands and minerals—Contrast with the older Charters—Other methods of acquisition—British Consuls in Africa—India Office control—Foreign Office control.

THE desire of France and Germany to acquire tropical possessions was due primarily to the idea that they were colonisable—an idea, as we shall presently see, not yet exploded in Germany, and at one time shared by Great Britain, who, however, having already acquired great tracts in the temperate zone, had no need to seek a tropical outlet for her emigrants.

The African possessions of Great Britain were not therefore acquired, as in the case of the Continental Powers, in pursuance of a definite policy, for which they were willing to risk war. The older “settlements” on the West Coast were originally maintained to assist in putting an end to the overseas slave trade, and so little were they valued that a Royal Commission in 1865 recommended their abandonment as soon as convenient. Missionaries—as in Uganda and Nyasaland—were often the pioneers, and it was in defence of their interests that the Government was forced to intervene. The desire to extend protection and to introduce justice and peace have from time to time led to the enlargement of frontiers, for law and order cannot exist side by side with barbarism. In the west traders such as the Niger Company took the lead as pioneers, but it was not till the close of the nineteenth century that the value of the produce of the tropics began to be realised in England.

When, however, the “scramble for Africa” followed the Berlin Act of 1885, the popular demand that Britain, as the foremost colonising Power, should not be backward in claiming her share was irresistible, and it was due to this popular demand to “peg out claims for futurity”—however little their value was understood at the time—that we owe our African Empire of to-day. It was, moreover, felt that whatever value our existing tropical possessions might have, would be lost if other nations with exclusive tariffs appropriated their hinterlands. Their value as coaling stations in the scheme of Empire was indeed recognised, but the great importance of these bases for attack and defence by submarines, and for wireless installations, was a lesson for the future to teach. The instinct of the nation recognised with Dr Pearson that “the permanency of Empire consists in its extension.” The vital importance of the control of the tropics for their economic value had, however, already begun to be realised by the nations of Europe, and France, Germany, and Italy, laying aside their ambitions in Europe, emerged as claimants for large “colonies” in Africa.

When Great Britain took part in the scramble, she willingly recognised the claims of Germany—a Power newly consolidated, and with an increasing and industrial population. She stood aside in the Cameruns, where the chiefs had more than once formally asked for British protection. She renounced the territorial claims which she might have asserted in the Congo region in virtue of Cameron’s treaties, and in East Africa she was contented with a fraction of the territory which the Sultan of Zanzibar offered. In South-West Africa, bordering the tropics, her delay and indifference made it easy for Germany to forestall her.

To the no less energetic action of France no opposition was offered, until her encroachments affected the interests of our existing possessions so closely that national prestige and honour were involved.

In one very notable particular the policy of Great Britain differed from that of her rivals. The great territories which she controlled were entirely free to the trade and commerce of all nations. Not merely were there no discriminating tariff’s, but the French and German merchants who established themselves in British territory were treated with precisely the same cordiality, and were afforded the same facilities for travel in the interior, and for acquiring land, as our own nationals. “Our rise,” says the German writer, Emil Zimmermann, “depended essentially on the English policy of the open door.”¹

The Berlin Conference of 1885 limited the necessity for “effective occupation”—by which the validity of a claim to territorial acquisition should be tested—to coast lands, and defined it as “the necessity of securing the existence of a sufficient authority, in the territories occupied, to ensure respect for acquired rights, and if necessary for freedom of commerce and transit in the conditions in which it may have been stipulated.” ² The British delegate (Sir E. Mallet) had proposed that this rule should be made applicable to interior lands,³ but the proposal was negatived, largely at the instance of the French delegate (Baron de Courcel). The Conference therefore laid down no definite rule as to the basis upon which the validity of claims to sovereignty in the interior should be recognised.

The principle of the “voluntary consent of the natives whose country is taken possession of in all cases where they have not provoked the aggression” was put forward by the American delegate (Mr Kasaon),⁴ and it may be assumed that it was tacitly accepted. For on 23rd February 1885 the president of the International Association of the Congo submitted to the Conference the various declarations and conventions concluded with each of the Powers represented there, under which they recognised “the formation of this new State,” and the declarations with Great Britain, the United States, and Belgium set out that it was by virtue of treaties with the legitimate sovereigns in the Congo basin that vast territories had been ceded to the State with all the rights of sovereignty.¹

Since the Conference had refused to deal explicitly with the acquisition of territory other than coast lands, “the hinterland theory”—made in Germany—which had not the sanction of the Berlin Act or any precise definition, gradually received acceptance, in so far as the “rights” of the European Powers and their relations towards each other in the partition were concerned. By this dictum a Power in occupation of coast lands was entitled to claim the exclusive right to exercise political influence for an indefinite distance inland. Obviously in a very irregularly-shaped continent no method could be more calculated to create difficulties, and the climax seemed to have been reached when France claimed to restrict the frontiers of Nigeria, on the ground that they formed the hinterland of Algeria on the Mediterranean.

The Powers, in their haste to declare the “spheres of influence” which they claimed, had not in some cases time to go through the formality of making treaties with the natives, and considered it sufficient to notify that they claimed them as hinterlands, or because they had some special interest in them. They were vaguely demarcated by lines of longitude and latitude regardless of tribal limits, or by reference to physical features which later exploration sometimes proved to be scores of miles from their supposed position, or even non-existent.

The conception of a “sphere of influence” was a new departure in the vocabulary of diplomacy—already fore-shadowed by Article 6 of the Act, in which the exercise of “sovereign rights or influence” is alluded to. It was, I think, invented by our Foreign Office, for Great Britain alone appeared to have scruples as to the legality or justice of assuming dominion based neither on conquest nor on the assent of the inhabitants. She would have preferred that effective occupation should be a matter of gradual and peaceful penetration. The term “sphere of influence” was thus used to designate those regions over which the right to exercise exclusive political influence was claimed, but in which no rights over the natives could be logically exercised, and no properly accredited representative of the suzerain Power could be appointed until some legal claim had been established.

The success of the expedient was short-lived. Setting aside her former opposition to Sir E. Malet’s proposal, France now insisted that effective occupation could alone confer title, and in 1887 this was fully admitted by the British Government. Lord Salisbury, in a despatch of 1887 to the Minister at Lisbon, writes : “It has now been admitted on principle by all parties to the Act of Berlin, that a claim of sovereignty in Africa can only be maintained by real occupation of the territory claimed. You will make a formal protest against any claims not founded on occupation, and you will say that H.M.’s Government cannot recognise Portuguese sovereignty in territories not occupied by her in sufficient strength to maintain order, protect foreigners, and control the natives.” This passage is interesting, not only as stating the formal acquiescence of the British Government in the theory of effective occupation, but as containing a definition of what constituted it, and a frank admission that territorial acquisition, whether under the name of Protectorate or otherwise, meant nothing less than sovereignty and the control of the natives.

The rulers of Great Britain were strongly opposed to extension of our territory in Africa, but the popular demand left the Foreign Office no alternative.¹ The Government viewed with alarm the great cost of effective occupation, as that phrase was translated in England. But the British public never considers the cost of its demands, though it holds the Government to strict account for any disaster due to an inadequate staff and insufficient force to protect its officers. We had not yet learned to think in hundreds of millions. The staff, the troops, and the money were lacking, and neither the Colonial nor the Foreign Office had any knowledge or experience of administration in the interior of tropical Africa, or of raising and commanding troops. Above all, the statesmen of Britain had not grasped the incalculable value of the claims which the instinct of the nation urged them to peg out. But something had to be done to prevent European rivalries developing into a war. The comfortable—albeit statesmanlike—expedient of a sphere of influence in which rival diplomacy would cease from troubling, and development might await the millenium, was repudiated by the Continental Powers, and found no favour at home. Our rivals were constantly encroaching on our shadowy boundaries.

The modern “Merchant Adventurer” was ready to employ his capital in the development of these regions, and to accept the responsibility which the Government shunned, provided that he was allowed to monopolise the trade, to exercise rights of taxation direct and indirect, and to acquire rights in lands and minerals, which would not only afford a revenue for administration and defence, but also a prospect of profit. The Government of the day, ignoring the dictum of Adam Smith that “the government of an exclusive company of merchants is perhaps the worst of all forms of government,” ¹ found an escape from its dilemma. Royal Charters on the Elizabethan model were granted to three companies—the Royal Niger Company in the west, the Imperial British East African Company in the east, and the British South African in the south, with Mr (now Sir G.) Goldie, Sir W. Mackinnon, and Mr Cecil Rhodes as their founders. They were overwhelmed with volunteers eager for adventure. To protect them from foreign encroachments, the British Government Soon found itself compelled to declare the greater part of its spheres of influence to be Protectorates, and the other nations did the same. In many of these Protectorates, no treaties had been made with outlying tribes, and regions as yet unexplored were included.

The Foreign Office had at first hesitated to declare Protectorates, because it had acquired no legal right to do so. How then could it grant charters which conferred powers of taxation and rights to lands and minerals ? The difficulty was solved by a subterfuge unworthy of the high line hitherto taken by Great Britain. The precedent set by King Leopold of Belgium was, as we have seen, acclaimed by all the Powers, and more specifically by Britain, the United States, and Belgium, that “treaties” with the natives, by which they were supposed at short notice to have voluntarily ceded all their sovereign rights, were to be accepted as valid titles to the acquisition of the African tropics by the European nations. Alternatively by conquest, provided the natives were the aggressors—and this would not be difficult to demonstrate. It was easy to stipulate that the charter powers were based on the production of such treaties. The sensitive official conscience was salved by this expedient, the real significance of which it no doubt failed to appreciate.¹

The civilised nations entered for the competition with avidity. Treaties were produced by the cartload in all the approved forms of legal verbiage—impossible of translation by ill-educated interpreters.² It mattered not that tribal chiefs had no power to dispose of communal rights, or that those few powerful potentates who might perhaps claim such authority looked on the white man’s ambassador with contempt, and could hardly be expected to hand over their sovereignty and lands or other assets had they understood what was asked of them. The Sultan of Sokoto, for instance, regarded the subsidy promised to him by the chartered company as tribute from a vassal.

The treaties were duly attested by a cross, purporting to convey the assent of the African chief, and this was sufficient. In some cases, it is said, the assent had been obtained by the gift of a pair of boots, or a few bottles of gin—the Kaiser had sent a parcel of opera-hats working with a spring. Elsewhere, by a show of force, or by vague promises, which were unrecorded and later ignored. Each nation pursued the course it preferred, or which its representative found most convenient.

No sooner was “occupation” effected by virtue of these treaties, than the controlling Power usually found itself involved in hostilities with the people with whom these treaties of amity and friendship had been made. If, however, the treaty-maker were too honest, or the native chief too shrewd or too rapacious, it sufficed that the treaty should vest in the European all jurisdiction over aliens. Here is the description by Commandant Toutée, one of the most successful of French treaty-makers :—

“Quand un état ou une tribu nègre, peu importe, a commis l’imprudence grande de donner I’hospitalité à un voyageur blanc, ce dernier n’a rien de plus pressé que de sortir de sa poche un traité d’alliance tout imprimé, et de ses cantines un petit drapeau national. Le voyageur signe ce traité pour son propre compte et prie le roitelet, plus ou moins coloré, d’ajouter sa signature à la sienne.

“Si le potentat nègre ne sait pas signer, comme ce dernier cas se présente neuf fois sur dix, la haute partie contractante et civilisée signe pour la deuxiéme supposée sauvage et le tour est joué.

“Il est arrivé même quelquefois que le voyageur blanc, s’il est anglais surtout, a oublié de demander son nom au nègre signataire, mais ce vice de forme n’a jamais été consideré comme une cause sérieuse de nullité du contrat.”

The ‘Temps’ (March 1903) thus summarises the process : “One can see what it means : it is moral annexation. The evolution of colonial empires of this kind follows a wellknown processus of which the stages are in a measure inevitable : first, travellers, missionaries, and traders ; then treaties of commerce and friendship ; then a kind of protectorate half concealed under the form of an unequal alliance ; afterwards the delimitation of spheres of influence and the declaration of a kind of right of priority ; then a protectorate properly so called, the establishment of tutelage, the appointment of Residents and all that follows in their train ; and finally, annex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction to the Fifth Edition
• Introduction.
• Part I. Europe and Tropical Africa.
• Part II. Special Problems.
• Index