THE EUROPEAN POSITION IN AFRICA.
IT is quite possible that the remarkable popular instinct which has suddenly turned the eyes of the English people towards Africa is well justified, and that Europe, including England, and even Belgium, may find itself faced there by unexpected obstacles. There is reason to believe that what is called " Malidism "—that is, the re- vival of aggressive Mahommedanism among the bolf-coste Arabs of Africa—is spreading far and wide throughout the continent, and that excited Mahommedans may ven- ture, at a great many different points, to resist Europe by force of arms. Throughout the vast territory stretching southward from Wady Haifa to the Zambesi, through regions which would hold a dozen- European kingdoms, we find signs that the more convinced Ma,hommedans are awake to an imminent danger from Europe, are keenly jealous at once of European settlement and of the spread of Christianity, and are trying, by banishing, arresting, or slaying Europeans, to expel them from the continent. There is a fancy prevalent among us that they exempt Englishmen from their hostility ; but this exemption is confined to a comparatively small region, and is even there probably only politic and temporary. There is nothing in Englishmen that Mahommedans should not hate them. They are openly warring against us in the Soudan ; they are at least trying to efface us in the Equatorial Provinces ; they have expelled our missionaries and mur- dered their converts in Uganda, the great kingdom on the Victoria Nyanza ; and in spite of Mr. Mackenzie's caution and conciliatory payments for released slaves, we may yet hear of a savage outbreak within the new settlement of British East Africa itself. Everywhere they intercept or murder our messengers, and everywhere they impede the collection of the Negro porters without whom we cannot advance a mile into the interior. Far to the South-West, their intrigues are perceptible on the Congo ; while to the West of Khartoum, they are marching through Wadai in a direct line. Experienced explorers say that the dervishes will not stop until they reach the Atlantic, and that within twelve months the Niger Company may feel the impact of the great wave of Mahommedanism, and find itself fighting with both hands for its very exist- ence. The leaders of a hundred thousand fighting men, backed by the sympathies of all Negro Mussul- mans who fall under zealots' influence, are claiming all Africa north of the Zambesi as territory which ought to be Mahommedan. The immense movement is not wholly, or even principally, in defence of slavery. The slave-dealers, who are the capitalists of all East Africa, undoubtedly help to supply money, weapons, and half- trained men, besides favouring the dervishes everywhere. But they rather utilise the movement than originate it, appealing everywhere—as in Uganda, where there are no dervishes—to the revived Mahommedan sentiment and to the deep dislike of all true Moslems for Christian converts. They can bear white men to be Christians, because they have always been so ; but black converts even from Paganism seem to them renegades who have given themselves up to service under the invaders, and are aiding in a revolution which will change all Africa. Mahommedans, who have for centuries past been trying to convert the Negroes, and who have lately begun to believe that the continent would be theirs, are naturally open to fanatic incitements, and rise under them to a fury which bodes no good for either the official or the moral invasion of Africa by Europe. They mean to try force everywhere before they give way, and though they hesitate to attack England, who rules in India and the Persian Gulf, and whose strength, therefore, they comprehend more perfectly than that of any European Power, they will, we feel convinced, include us in the end, as they have done everywhere outside the dominion of the Sultan of Zanzibar, in the general anathema. They know that the English rule lightly and desecrate no mosques, but they know also that they rule. Our missionaries will be driven away like the rest, our traders, chiefly Indians, stripped of all they have, and our settlements attacked one by one, wherever they are not protected by shells from armed steamers. If we are just and lenient, we are also enemies of the slave-trade ; we occupy Egypt, which is almost sacred land ; and we intercept the free communication with Arabia which all these zealots feel to be essential to their success.
The outlook is a melancholy one for the moment, and all the more because no remedy is perceptible that can be applied at once. There is no precaution visible, except the impossible one of an alliance with the dervishes or the slave-traders, which would prevent the spread of this aggressive Mahom- medanism. The country-declines the effort which the sub- jugation of the dervishes would involve, and, indeed, it may be doubted if it possesses the necessary strength. How are we to reconquer Wadai, now held by seventy thousand fanatics, at a distance of two thousand miles from the sea, or restore the half-Christian King of -Uganda, or protect the scattered missionary settlements on the lakes, or defend the Equatorial Provinces, or even arrest the movement as it descends the Niger or the Congo ? Ten miles from the coast or the great rivers, we are but units in Africa, we have as yet organised no acclimatised force, we have cut no roads that can be traversed ; and if we appeal to our usual resources, and send either white soldiers or Sikhs, we are baffled at every step by difficulties of transport which seem insuperable, and which the experts tell us can be conquered only by years of persevering effort and expenditure. The work of opening communication is possible, and labour is plentiful and cheap ; but with all Negro Mussulinans in open hostility, who is to protect the labourers ? We cannot be sending out half-a-dozen Ashantee expeditions all at once ; and if we could, the country is not willing to make so considerable an effort. All that we can do at once is to rely on our one advantage, our ability to move in safety over sea, or river, or lake ; to gather our settlements by the water-side, and to strengthen as fast as we can every means of protection available from the water. Every steamer is the equivalent of a fortress, and wherever there is deep water, the enemy can be stopped. There should be no massacres if we remember this rule, and if, wherever danger threatens, we withdraw our people for the moment from the interior to points at which they can be defended, even imperfectly, from the water. For the rest, we can but go on soberly doing our duty, strengthening centres like Mombassa, organising a native armed force, cultivating every friendly tribe, cutting rough roads wherever practicable, forming settlements of released slaves, and prohibiting absolutely and steadily all recognition either of slavery or the slave-trade. Prince Bismarck's notion of tolerating the internal slave-trade, and recognising slavery by law, is, we are convinced, a false one ; for not only will it alienate all the tribes which are exposed to raids, and which we might encourage to resist their oppressors, but it will place ourselves on the same plane as the Arabs, who can protect slavery and foster the internal slave-trade a great deal more perfectly than we can. It is wise as well as right to persist in our own policy, which is raising up friends we do not see, and is at least thus far successful, that it excites our enemies to fury. We can beat back actual attack, and with patience our means will grow, till at last we are able with native troops to carry the struggle slowly forward into the interior. If we desire to do more than this, to enforce order quickly, and stop slave- raiding once for all, then we must use force, lend the East African Company a small army of sepoys, and agree to the necessary expenditure on considerable and burdensome expeditions. We have not the slightest- objection to the rapid method, and would, as far as the East African dominion is concerned, gladly see it adopted; but we warn our readers that it is useless to think the work will be light, or finished with dramatic completeness. We shall find allies by degrees, we doubt not, if it is only through the operation of the desire of gain and that spread of Christian ideas which so nearly triumphed in Uganda, and we shall gradually obtain experience ; but the area to be pacified is frightfully large, a Europe covered with matted forest, and dotted with swamps as large as provinces ; and to enforce order within it is an enormous task. It is all the bigger if, as we begin to fear, we are, in performing it, to be resisted with the whole strength of a Mussulman revival which may not spend its force for a generation, and which everywhere and at all times teaches that the only excuse for obeying Christians is the existence on their side of a force majeure sufficient to show that the Creator for the hour wills them to be obeyed. Millions of Mussulmans live in peace under the British Government ; but then, they are able to plead that it is a government, and not only just but irresistible.
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