LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE NATIVE POPULATIONS OF AFRICA.
[To TER EDITOR or TEl " SPECTATOR."] Sla,—A series of articles have appeared during the last few months in the Spectator on Africa, and they have been of great interest to all of us who are personally interested in that continent, mainly because they show that there is in England an authority really interested in Africa apart from either her value as a mission-field or a cockpit for the ambitions of European Powers, or for those of the Stock Exchange. I am saying nothing against these in- terests, for they all tend to the development of Africa, and would under good guidance, " if well managed," as Mr. Morley says, all of them do good. But, Sir, the great charm of the Spectator articles, to me at any rate, is their spirit of dissatisfaction with the present state of affairs in Africa as regards the native population, and although the Spectator is, from my point of view, too liable to get vexed with the African and call him all sorts of hard names, of coarse in restrained and perfect English, and now and then to descend on me with an equally fierce disapproval, yet it is a great comfort to find an English authority who is not self-satisfied and smug, and that evidently sees things are not going well there, and is trying to find out why.
May I suggest, that you have stated the true reasons in your article in the Spectator of April 10th, on "Mr. Morley on British Africa" when you say anent the Russian, " he has a sympathy with his dark subjects and a comprehension of their instincts which make his rule more acceptable to them than our own, and in certain directions equally beneficial " ? Now, I know it will seem ridiculous to say we English have not had sympathy with the Africans, and I know I shall not make myself understood. You will say, 'Have we not given thousands of our noblest lives, hundreds of thousands of our hard-earned money, to benefit the African ?' I can only say it does not seem to me that we have done so. We have laid down these things, but we have laid them down in the cause of goodness, not for the benefit of the African. We have built a temple to virtue, not to ourselves or our own aggrandisement; but that temple is to the African a prison. I do not say it is right or wrong for us to have done this. I am only a brick- maker to science, and must stick to my business; and as part of my business is the study of the social insti- tutions of Africa, I beg you will allow me to say a few words regarding slavery, as my former observations on it have been misunderstood, thanks to the bad way I expressed them, coupled with the want of detail knowledge on the subject in my critics, and the looseness with which important terms are used in these hurried days. There are in Africa at least three distinct things called in Europe by the one term,—slavery. There is the vile slave trade of East and East Central Africa which feeds the domestic slave institution of Egypt, and there is the enforced labour system feeding the mining industry of South Africa. These, so far as I can judge from printed reports, are abominable institutions, utterly destructive and leading to no good thing, and far and away worse than the export of Africans to the Americas which we suppressed. Then there is that form of feudalism existent among the true negroes. The form, I say, " is essential to the well-being of Africa." This institution I hope some day to explain, with all its restrictions and rights and laws, fully to you authori- ties. I need not say there is not space to do so here, but I assure you it does not fall under your statement in the article of April 10th, "that greed is the source of all oppression in Africa," because it is not oppression, but a system whereby the poor man and the weak are protected from physical want, and from the attacks of the predatory. This system, wrongly called slavery, should be divided into three sections. Firstly, under it there are the people who place themselves under the protection of a big and powerful house, rendering in return for the protection it affords them service on demand. Secondly, there are the trade-boys. These are in traders who are employed in trading for the house. They are requisitioned to provide so much trade stuff a trade season for the head of the house. If they pro- vide more their excess on the requisition is their private property, and any one conversant with the state of affairs in the Oil Rivers will tell you it is a common thing to see a trade-boy richer than his chief, and that these trade-boys will employ their wealth not in buying themselves free, but in buying slaves to work under them, and in making themselves sufficiently powerful to attract to their house poor free men. Then there is the slave section under these. This section is composed of two sub-sections firstly, the children born in the house, of slave mothers and fathers,—these, accord- ing to their abilities, may remain plantation, or canoe, or house slaves, or may become trade-boys. The other sub. section is the equivalent to our convicts, and I doubt whether there is so much cruelty in this method of dealing with a criminal class as in our own method of dismal incarceration in prison walls. Some of these slaves are purchased from neighbouring tribes, others are the criminals of the tribe. It is customary, I may remark, for all the European Govern- ments on the Coast to have a chain-gang formed of criminals, and this chain-gang is set to do Governmental odd jobs. There is no difference between this chain-gang and the lower. most grade of the so-called native slave save that on the one hand a man is sent to work in farms, or in the canoes, by a chief who knows all about the affair the man is tried for ; on the other hand, he is sent to the chain-gang by a white magistrate who depends entirely on evidence passed through an inter- preter,—an interpreter who is far more likely to be terrorised or bribed by that man's enemies than a powerful chief would be.
I will not detain you longer, but I should like to make an appeal to you to advocate the careful study of the "true instincts" of the African by those who are dealing with him. What would you say of a man who started a series of dangerous chemical experiments without any knowledge of the properties of the materials he was dealing with ? Would you write him down anything else than an ass ? Would you expect him to succeed in his intentions, be they the most excellent ? We white races, differently constituted as we are physically and mentally, cannot gain a tree sympathy with the African without careful and laborious study. I know you deem my sympathy with the African excessive. I can assure you I did not go out to Africa with any of it. My opinion was that Africans were interesting because they were a rudimentary form of human beings, and that missionaries were a foolish folk for sacrificing their lives for them. Experience and very hard work has taught me that African institutions are not rudimentary, that the African is not a flighty. minded fiend or a fool, and that missionaries are fully justified in their intentions, though the result of their methods is bad; and I have gained from hard work that comprehension that gives sympathy, and without that sympathy the white races will do no good permanent work to the African. I see in the last issue of the anti-slavery Reporter that I am held up as a hard-hearted wretch by means of your observations on my statements regarding the advisability of slavery, and I also notice that most of the information that publication has is East and East Central. Therefore I presume that its criticism on me has arisen from my own foolishness in not explaining, and its ignorance of the so-called slavery of West Africa; but I also see that the Royal Niger Company has abolished slavery in its dominions, which will be held a crushing blow to me as I am a profound admirer of the Royal Niger Company. But the local circumstances are so varied in West Africa; one tribe will be slave-holding, the next tribe non-slave-holding, and so on, though I think I may say the above-mentioned feudal system will be found among all the true negro tribes, and I merely hope that what is good in African institutions will not be destroyed by the European's "just for Dandy."—
Previous page
