Africa

Africa

bank, where the frontier had still to be fixed by international agreement.

In the neighbourhood of Bussa there is a long stretch of the river so

impeded by rapids that navigation is practically impossible, except in

small boats and at considerable risk. Below these rapids France had no

foothold on the river, both banks from Bussa to the sea being within the

British sphere. In 1890 the Royal Niger Company had concluded a treaty with

the emir and chiefs of Bussa (or Borgu); but the French declared that the

real paramount chief of Borgu was not the king of Bussa, but the king of

Nikki, and three expeditions were despatched in hot haste to Nikki to take

the king under French protection. Sir George Goldie, however, was not to be

baffled. While maintaining the validity of the earlier treaty with Bussa,

he despatched Captain (afterwards General Sir) F.D. Lugard to Nikki, and

Lugard was successful in distancing all his French competitors by several

days, reaching Nikki on the 5th of November 1894 and concluding a treaty

with the king and chiefs. The French expeditions, which were in great

strength, did not hesitate on their arrival to compel the king to execute

fresh treaties with France, and with these in their possession they

returned to Dahomey. Shortly afterwards a fresh act of aggression was

committed. On the 13th of February 1895 a French officer, Commandant

Toutee, arrived on the right bank of the Niger opposite Bajibo and built a

fort. His presence there was notified to the Royal Niger Company, who

protested to the British government against this invasion of their

territory. Lord Rosebery, who was then foreign minister, at once made

inquiries in Paris, and received the assurance that Commandant Toutee was

``a private traveller.'' Eventually Commandant Toutee was ordered to

withdraw, and the fort was occupied by the Royal Niger Company's troops.

Commandant Toutee subsequently published the official instructions from the

French government under which he had acted. It was thought that the

recognition of the British claims, involved in the withdrawal of Commandant

Toutee, had marked the final abandonment by France of the attempt to

establish herself on the navigable portions of the Niger below Bussa, but

in 1897 the attempt was renewed in the most determined manner. In February

of that year a French force suddenly occupied Bussa, and this act was

quickly followed by the occupation of Gomba and Illo higher up the river.

In November 1897 Nikki was occupied. The situation on the Niger had so

obviously been outgrowing the capacity of a chartered company that for some

time before these occurrences the assumption of responsibility for the

whole of the Niger region

The Franco-British settlement of 1898.

by the imperial authorities had been practically decided on; and early in

1898 Lugard was sent out to the Niger with a number of imperial officers to

raise a local force in preparation for the contemplated change. The advance

of the French forces from the south and west was the signal for an advance

of British troops from the Niger, from Lagos and from the Gold Coast

protectorate. The situation thus created was extremely serious. The British

and French flags were flying in close proximity, in some cases in the same

village. Meanwhile the diplomatists were busy in London and in Paris, and

in the latter capital a commission sat for many months to adjust the

conflicting claims. Fortunately, by the tact and forbearance of the

officers on both sides, no local incident occurred to precipitate a

collision, and on the 14th of June 1898 a convention was signed by Sir

Edmund Monson and M. G. Hanotaux which practically completed the partition

of this part of the continent.

The settlement effected was in the nature of a compromise. France

withdrew from Bussa, Gomba and Illo, the frontier line west of the Niger

being drawn from the 9th parallel to a point ten miles, as the crow flies,

above Giri, the port of Illo. France was thus shut out from the navigable

portion of the middle and lower Niger; but for purely commercial purposes

Great Britain agreed to lease to France two small plots of land on the

river-the one on the right bank between Leaba and the mouth of the Moshi

river, the other at one of the mouths of the Niger. By accepting this line

Great Britain abandoned Nikki and a great part of Borgu as well as some

part of Gando to France. East of the Niger the Say-Barrua line was modified

in favour of France, which gained parts of both Sokoto and Bornu where they

meet the southern edge of the Sahara. In the Gold Coast hinterland the

French withdrew from Wa, and Great Britain abandoned all claim to Mossi,

though the capital of the latter country, together with a further extensive

area in the territory assigned to both powers, was declared to be equally

free, so far as trade and navigation were concerned, to the subjects and

protected persons of both nationalities. The western boundary of the Gold

Coast was prolonged along the Black Volta as far as latitude 11 deg. N.,

and this parallel was followed with slight deflexions to the Togoland

frontier. In consequence of the acute crisis which shortly afterwards

occurred between France and Great Britain on the upper Nile, the

ratification of this agreement was delayed until after the conclusion of

the Fashoda agreement of March 1899 already referred to. In 1900 the two

patches on the Niger leased to France were selected by commissioners

representing the two countries, and in the same year the Anglo-French

frontier from Lagos to the west bank of the Niger was delimited.

East of the Niger the frontier, even as modified in 1898, failed to

satisfy the French need for a practicable route to Lake Chad, and in the

convention of the 8th of April 1904, to which reference has been made under

Egypt and Morocco, it was

Further concessions to France.

agreed, as part of the settlement of the French shore question in

Newfoundland, to deflect the frontier line more to the south. The new

boundary was described at some length, but provision was made for its

modification in points of detail on the return of the commissioners engaged

in surveying the frontier region. In 1906 an agreement was reached on all

points, and the frontier at last definitely settled, sixteen years after

the Say-Barrua line had been fixed. This revision of the Niger-Chad

frontier did not, however, represent the only territorial compensation

received by France in West Africa in connexion with the settlement of the

Newfoundland question. By the same convention of April 1904 the British

government consented to modify the frontier between Senegal and the Gambia

colony ``so as to give to France Yarbutenda and the lands and landing-

places belonging to that locality,'' and further agreed to cede to France

the tiny group of islands off the coast of French Guinea known as the Los

Islands.

Meantime the conclusion of the 1898 convention had left both the British

and the French governments free to devote increased attention to the

subdivision and control of their West African possessions. On the 1st of

January 1900 the imperial authorities assumed direct responsibility for the

whole of the territories of the Royal Niger Company, which became

henceforth a purely commercial undertaking. The Lagos protectorate was

extended northwards; the Niger Coast protectorate, likewise with extended

frontiers, became Southern Nigeria; while the greater part of the

territories formerly administered by the company were constituted into the

protectorate of Northern Nigeria—all three administrations being directly

under the Colonial Office In February 1906 the administration of the

Southern Nigerian protectorate was placed under that of Lagos at the same

time as the name of the latter was changed to the Colony of Southern

Nigeria, this being a step towards the eventual

Organization of the British and French protectorates.

amalgamation of all three dependencies under one governor or governor-

general. In French West Africa changes in the internal frontiers have been

numerous and important. The coast colonies have all been increased in size

at the expense of the French Sudan, which has vanished from the maps as an

administrative entity. There are carved out of the territories comprised in

what is officially known as French West Africa five colonies—Senegal,

French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey and the Upper Senegal and Niger,

this last being entirely cut off from the sea—and the civil territory of

Mauritania. To the colony of the Upper Senegal and Niger is attached the

military territory of the Niger, embracing the French Sahara up to the

limit of the Algerian sphere of influence. Not only are all these divisions

of French West Africa connected territorially, but administratively they

are united under a governor-general. Similarly the French Congo territories

have been divided into three colonies—the Gabun, the Middle Congo and the

Ubangi-Shari-Chad—all united administratively under a commissioner-general.

There are, around the coast, numerous islands or groups of islands, which

are regarded by geographers as outliers of the

Ownership of the African Islands.

African mainland. The majority of these African islands were occupied by

one or other of the European powers long before the period of continental

partition. The Madeira Islands to the west of Morocco, the Bissagos

Islands, off the Guinea coast, and Prince's Island and St Thomas' Island,

in the Gulf of Guinea, are Portuguese possessions of old standing; while in

the Canary Islands and Fernando Po Spain possesses remnants of her ancient

colonial empire which are a more valuable asset than any she has acquired

in recent times on the mainland. St Helena in the Atlantic, Mauritius and

some small groups north of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, are British

possessions acquired long before the opening of the last quarter of the

19th century. Zanzibar, Pemba and some smaller islands which the sultan was

allowed to retain were, as has already been stated, placed under British

protection in 1890, and the island of Sokotra was placed under the

``gracious favour and protection'' of Great Britain on the 23rd of April

1886. France's ownership of Reunion dates back to the 17th century, but the

Comoro archipelago was not placed under French protection until April 1886.

None of these islands, with the exception of the Zanzibar group, have,

however, materially affected the partition of the continent, and they need

not be enumerated in the table which follows. But the important island of

Madagascar stands in a different category, both on account of its size and

because it was during the period under review that it passed through the

various stages which led to its becoming a French colony. The first step

was the placing of the foreign relations of the island under French

control, which was effected by the treaty of the 17th of December 1885,

after the Franco-Malagasy war that had broken out in 1883. In 1890 Great

Britain and Germany recognized a French protectorate over the island, but

the Hova government declined to acquiesce in this view, and in May 1895

France sent an expedition to enforce her claims. The capital was occupied

on the 30th of September in the same year, and on the day following Queen

Ranavalona signed a convention recognizing the French protectorate. In

January 1896 the island was declared a French possession, and on the 6th of

August was declared to be a French colony. In February 1897 the last

vestige of ancient rule was swept away by the deportation of the queen.

Thus in its broad outlines the partition of Africa was begun and ended in

the short space of a quarter of a century. There are still many finishing

touches to be put to the structure. The southern frontiers of Morocco and

Tripoli remain undefined, while the mathematical lines by which the spheres

of influence of the powers were separated one from the other are being

variously modified on the do ut des principle as they come to be surveyed

and as the effective occupation of the continent progresses. Much labour is

necessary before the actual area of Africa and its subdivisions can be

accurately determined, but in the following table the figures are at least

approximately correct. Large areas of the spheres assigned to different

European powers have still to be brought under European control; but this

work is advancing by rapid strides.

BRITISH— Sq. m.

Cape Colony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276,995

Natal and Zululand . . . . . . . . . . . 35,371

Basutoland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,293

Bechuanaland Protectorate . . . . . . . 225,000

Transvaal and Swaziland . . . . . . . . 117,732

Orange River Colony . . . . . . . . . . 50,392

Rhodesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450,000

Nyasaland Protectorate . . . . . . . . . 43,608

British East Africa Protectorate . . . . 240,000

Uganda Protectorate . . . . . . . . . . 125,000

Zanzibar Protectorate . . . . . . . . . 1,020

Somaliland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68,000

Northern Nigeria . . . . . . . . . . . 258,000

Southern Nigeria (colony and protectorate) 80,000

Gold Coast and hinterland . . . . . 82,000

Sierre Leone (colony and protectorate) . 34,000

Gambia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000

Total British Africa . . . . . . . 2,101,411

Egypt and Libyan Desert . . . . . . . . 650,000

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan . . . . . . . . . . 950,000

1,600,000

FRENCH—

Algeria and Algerian Sahara . . . . . . 945,000

Tunisia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51,000

French West Africa—

Senegal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74,000

French Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . 107,000

Ivory Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129,000

Dahomey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40,000

Upper Senegal and Niger, and

Mauritania (including French West

African Sahara) . . . . 1,581,000 1,931,000

French Congo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700,000

French Somaliland . . . . . . . . . . . 12,000

Madagascar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227,950

Total French Africa . . . . . . . 3,866,950

GERMAN—

East Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364,000

South.West Africa . . . . . . . . . . . 322,450

Cameroon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190,000

Togoland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33,700

Total German Africa . . . . . . . . 910,150

ITALIAN—

Eritrea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60,000

Somaliland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140,000

Total Italian Africa . . . . . . . . 200,000

PORTUGUESE—

Guinea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14,000

West Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480,000

East Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293,500

Total Portuguese Africa . . . . . . 787,500

SPANISH—

Rio de Oro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70,000

Muni River Settlements . . . . . . . . . . 9,800

Total Spanish Africa . . . . . . . . 79,800

BELGIAN—

Congo State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 900,000

TURKISH—

Tripoli and Benghazi . . . . . . . . . . 400,000

SEPARATE STATES—

Liberia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43,000

Morocco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220,000

Abyssinia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350,000

Total Independent Africa . . . . . . 613,000

Thus, collecting the totals, the result of the ``scramble'' has been to

divide Africa among the powers as follows:—

Sq. m.

British Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,101,411

Egyptian Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600,000

French Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,866,950

German Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 910,150

Italian Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000

Portuguese Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . 787,500

Spanish Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79,800

Belgian Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 900,000

Turkish Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000

Independent Africa . . . . . . . . . . . 613,000

11,458,811

(J. S. K.)

1. Commercial treaties between Carthage and Rome were made in the 6th and

5th centuries B.C.. The first armed conflict between the rival powers,

begun in 264 B.C., was a contest for the possession of Sicily.

2. This river was called by the Portuguese the Zaire. They appear to have

made no attempt to trace its course beyond the rapids which stop

navigation from the sea.

3. France acquired, as stations for her ships on the voyage to and from

India, settlements in Madagascar and the neighbouring islands. The first

settlement was made in 1642.

4. The Association, in 1831, was merged in the Royal Geographical Society.

5. The Mamelukes, whom the Turks had overthrown in the 16th century, had

regained practically independent power.

6. In imitation of the British example, an American society founded in 1822

the negro colony (now republic) of Liberia.

7. The first territorial acquisition made by Great Britain in this region

was in 1851, when Lagos Island was annexed.

8. As early as 1848 an Arab from Zanzibar journeying across the continent

had arrived at Benguella.

9. Another great traveller of this stamp was Wilhelm Junker, who spent the

greater part of the period 1875-1886 in the east central Sudan.

10. Specially appointed to consider West African affairs.

11. See the tables in Behm and Wagner's Bevolkerung der Erde (Gotha, 1872).

12. in 1887 this society united with the German Colonial Society, an

organization founded in 1882. The united society took the title of the

German Colonial Company.

13. At this period negotiations between Great Britain and Italy had begun

but were not concluded.

14. This association, formed in 1878 by a union of associations primarily

intended for the exploration of Africa, ceased to exist in 1891.

VI. EXPLORATION AND SURVEY SINCE 1875

In giving the history of the partition of the continent, the later work

of exploration, except where, as in the case of de Brazza's expeditions, it

had direct political consequences, has of necessity not been told. The

results achieved during and after the period of partition may now be

indicated. Stanley's great journey down the Congo in 1875-1876 initiated a

new era in African exploration. The numbers of travellers soon became so

great that the once marvellous feat of crossing the continent from sea to

sea became common. With increased knowledge and much ampler means of

communication trans-African travel now presents few difficulties. While

d'Anville and other cartographers of the 18th century, by omitting all that

was uncertain, had left a great blank on the map, the work accomplished

since 1875 has filled it with authentic topographical details. Moreover

surveys of high accuracy have been made at several points. As the work of

exploration and survey progressed journeys of startling novelty became

impossible—save in the eastern Sahara, where the absence of water and

boundless wastes of sand render exploration more difficult, perhaps, than

in any other region of the globe. Within their respective spheres of

influence each power undertook detailed surveys, and the most solid of the

latest accessions to knowledge have resulted from the labours of hard-

working colonial officials toiling individually in obscurity. Their work it

is impossible here to recognize adequately; the following lines record only

the more obvious achievements. The relation of the Congo basin to the

neighbouring river systems was brought out by the journeys of many

travellers. In 1877 an important expedition was sent out by the Portuguese

government under Serpa Pinto, Brito Capello and Roberto

Work in the Congo.

Ivens for the exploration of the interior of Angola. The first named made

his way by the head-streams of the Kubango to the upper Zambezi, which he

descended to the Victoria Falls, proceeding thence to Pretoria and Durban.

Capello and Ivens confined their attention to the south-west Congo basin,

where they disproved the existence of Lake Aquilunda, which had figured on

the maps of that region since the 16th century. In a later journey (1884-

1885) Capello and Ivens crossed the continent from Mossamedes to the mouth

of the Zambezi, adding considerably to the knowledge of the borderlands

between the upper Congo and the upper Zambezi. More important results were

obtained by the German travellers Paul Pogge and Hermann von Wissmann, who

(1880-1882) passed through previously unknown regions beyond Muata Yanvo's

kingdom, and reached the upper Congo at Nyangwe, whence Wissmann made his

way to the east coast. In 1884-1885 a German expedition under Wissmann

solved the most important geographical problem relating to the southern

Congo basin by descending the Kasai, the largest southern tributary, which,

contrary to expectation, proved to unite with the Kwango and other streams

before joining the main river. Further additions to the knowledge of the

Congo tributaries were made at the same time by the Rev. George Grenfell, a

Baptist missionary, who (accompanied in 1885 by K. von Francois) made

several voyages in the steamer ``Peace,'' especially up the great Ubangi,

ultimately proved to be the lower course of the Welle, discovered in 1870

by Schweinfurth.

In East as in West Africa operations were started by agents of the

Belgian committee, but with less success than on the Congo.

Opening up East Africa.

The first new journey of importance on this side was made (1878-1880) on

behalf of the British African Exploration Committee by Joseph Thomson, who

after the death of his leader, Keith Johnston, made his way from the coast

to the north end of Nyasa, thence to Tanganyika, on both sides of which he

broke new ground, sighting the north end of Lake Rukwa on the east. In 1882-

1884 the French naval lieutenant Victor Giraud proceeded by the north of

Nyasa to Lake Bangweulu, of which he made the first fairly correct map.

North of the Zanzibar-Tanganyika route a large area of new ground was

opened in 1883-1884 by Joseph Thomson, who traversed the whole length of

the Masai country to Lake Baringo and Victoria Nyanza, shedding the first

clear light on the great East African rift-valley and neighbouring

highlands, including Mounts Kenya and Elgon. A great advance in the region

between Victoria Nyanza and Abyssinia was made in 1887-1889 by the

Austrians, Count Samuel Teleki and Lieut. Ludwig von Hohnel, who discovered

the large Basso Norok, now known as Lake Rudolf, till then only vaguely

indicated on the map as Samburu. At this time Somaliland was being opened

up by English and Italian travellers. In 1883 the brothers F. L. and W. D.

James penetrated from Berbera to the Webi Shebeli; in 1892 Vittorio Bottego

(afterwards murdered in the Abyssinian highlands) started from Berbera and

reached the upper Juba, which he explored to its source. The first person,

however, to cross from the Gulf of Aden to the Indian Ocean was an

American, A. Donaldson Smith, who in 1894-1895 explored the headstreams of

the Webi Shebeli and also explored the Omo, the feeder of Lake Rudolf.

In the region north-west of Victoria Nyanza the greatest additions to

geographical knowledge were made by H. M. Stanley in his last expedition,

undertaken for the relief of Emin Pasha. The expedition set out in 1887 by

way of the Congo to carry supplies to the governor of the old Egyptian

Equatorial province. The route lay up the Aruwimi, the principal tributary

of the Congo from the north-east, by which the expedition made its way,

encountering immense difficulties, through the great equatorial forest, the

character and extent of which were thus for the first time brought to

light. The return was made to the east coast, and resulted in the discovery

of the great snowy range of Ruwenzori or Runsoro, and the confirmation of

the existence of a third Nile lake discharging its waters into the Albert

Nyanza by the Semliki river. A further discovery was that of a large bay,

hitherto unsuspected, forming the south-west corner of the Victoria Nyanza.

Great activity was also displayed in completing the work of earlier

explorers in North and West Africa. Morocco was in

Expeditions in North and West Africa.

1883-1884 the scene of important explorations by de Foucauld, a Frenchman

who, disguised as a Jew, crossed and re-crossed the Atlas and supplied the

first trustworthy information as to the orography of many parts of the

chain. In 1887-1889 Louis Gustave Binger, a French officer, made a great

journey through the countries enclosed in the Niger bend, and in 1890-1892

Col. P. F. Monteil went from St Louis to Say, on the Niger, thence through

Sokoto to Bornu and Lake Chad, whence he crossed the Sahara to Tripoli.

Meantime explorers had been busy in the region between Lake Chad, the Gulf

of Guinea and the Congo. The Sanga, one of the principal northern

tributaries of the Congo, was reached from the north by Lieut. Louis Mizon,

a French naval officer, who drew the first line of communication between

the Benue and the Congo (1890-1892). In 1890 Paul Crampel, who in the

previous year had explored north of the Ogowe, undertook a great expedition

from the Ubangi to the Shari, but was attacked and killed, with several of

his companions, on the borders of the Bagirmi. Several other expeditions

followed, and in 1806 Emile Gentil reached the Shari, launched a steamer on

its waters and pushed on to Lake Chad. Early in 1900 Lake Chad was also

reached by F. Foureau, a French traveller, who had already devoted twelve

years to the exploration of the Sahara and who on this occasion had crossed

the desert from Algeria and had reached the lake via Air and Zinder.

The last ten years of the 19th century also witnessed many interesting

expeditions in east Central Africa. In 1891 Emin

Lakes and mountains of Equatorial Africa.

Pasha, accompanied by Dr F. Stuhlmann, made his way south of Victoria

Nyanza to the western Nile lakes, visiting for the first time the southern

and western shores of Albert Edward. Stuhlmann also ascended the Ruwenzori

range to a height of over 13,000 ft. In the same year Dr O. Baumann, who

had already done good work in Usambara, near the coast, started on a more

extended journey through the region of steppes between Kilimanjaro and

Victoria Nyanza, afterwards exploring the headstreams of the Kagera, the

ultimate sources of the Nile. In the steppe region referred to he

discovered two new lakes, Manyara and Eiassi, occupying parts of the East

African valley system. This region was again traversed in 1893-1894 by

Count von Gotzen, who continued his route westwards to Lake Kivu, north of

Tanganyika, which, though heard of by Speke over thirty years before, had

never yet been visited. He also reached for the first time the line of

volcanic peaks north of Kivu, one of which he ascended, afterwards crossing

the great equatorial forest by a new route to the Congo and the west coast.

Valuable scientific work was done in 1893 by Dr J.W. Gregory, who ascended

Mount Kenya to a height of 16,000 ft. In 1893-1894 Scott Elliot reached

Ruwenzori by way of Uganda, returning by Tanganyika and Nyasa, and in 1896

C. W. Hobley made the circuit of the great mountain Elgon, north-east of

Victoria Nyanza. In 1899 Mount Kenya was ascended to its summit by a party

under H. J. Mackinder. The exploration of Mount Kilimanjaro has been the

special work of Dr Hans Meyer, who first directed his attention to it in

1887.

The region south of Abyssinia proper and north of Lake Rudolf, being

largely the basin of the Sobat tributary of the Nile, was traversed by

several explorers, among whom may be mentioned Capt. M. S. Wellby, who in

1898-1899 explored the chain of small lakes in south-east Abyssinia, pushed

on to Lake Rudolf, and thence traversed hitherto unknown country to the

lower Sobat. Donaldson Smith crossed from Berbera to the Nile by Lake

Rudolf in 1899-1900, and Major H. H. Austin commanded two survey parties

between the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Lake Rudolf during 1899-1901. Meantime

in south Central Africa the Barotse country had been partly made known by

the missionary F. Coillard, who settled there in 1884, while the middle and

upper Zambezi basin were scientifically explored and mapped by Major A. St

H. Gibbons and his assistants in 1895-1896 and 1898-1900. In the same

period the Congo-Zambezi watershed was traced by a Belgian officer, Capt.

C. Lemaire, who had ascended one of the upper tributaries of the Kasai.

In the early years of the 19th century the first recorded crossing of

Africa took place. That crossing and all subsequent crossings had been made

either from west to east or east to west. The first journey through the

whole length of the continent was accomplished in the two last years of the

century when a young Englishman, E. S. Grogan, starting from Cape Town

reached the Mediterranean by way of the Zambezi, the central line of lakes

and the Nile. Other travellers followed in Grogan's footsteps, among the

first, Major Gibbons.

Additions to topographical knowledge were made from about 1890 onwards by

the international commissions which traced

Work of international commissions and surveying parties.

the frontiers of the protectorates of the European powers. On several

occasions the labours of the commissions disclosed errors of importance in

the maps upon which international agreements had been based. Among those

which yielded valuable results were the Anglo-French commission which in

1903 traced the Nigerian frontier from the Niger to Lake Chad, and the

Anglo-German commission which in 1903-1904 fixed the Cameroon boundary

between Yola, on the Benue, and Lake Chad. These expeditions and French

surveys in the same region during 1902-1903 resulted in the discovery that

Lake Chad had greatly decreased in area since the middle of the 19th

century. In 1903 a French officer, Capt. E. Lenfant, succeeded in

establishing the fact of a connexion between the Niger and Chad basins.

Subsequently Lenfant explored the western basin of the Shari, determining

(1907) the true upper branch of that river.

In East Africa a German-Congolese commission surveyed (1901-1902) Lake

Kivu and the volcanic region north of the lake, R. Kandt making a special

study of Kivu and the Kagera sources, while the Anglo-German boundary

commission of 1902-1904 surveyed the valley of the lower Kagera, and fixed

the exact position of Albert Edward Nyanza. Much new information concerning

the border-lands of British East Africa and Abyssinia between Lake Rudolf

and the lower Juba was obtained by the survey executed in 1902-1903 by a

British officer, Captain P. Maud.

While political requirements led to the exact determination of frontiers,

administrative needs forced the governments concerned to take in hand the

survey of the countries under their protection. Before the close of the

first decade of the 20th century tolerably accurate maps had been made of

the German colonies, of a considerable part of West Africa, the Algerian

Sahara and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, mainly by military officers. A British

naval officer, Commander B. Whitehouse, mapped the entire coastdine of

Victoria Nyanza. Government and railway surveys apart, the chief points of

interest for explorers during 1904-1906 were the Ruwenzori range and the

connexion of the basin of Lake Chad with the Niger and Congo systems.

Lieut. Boyd Alexander was the leader of a party which during the years

named surveyed Lake Chad and a considerable part of eastern Nigeria,

returning to England via the Shari, the Ubangi and the Nile. Two members of

the party, Capt. Claud Alexander and Capt. G. B. Gosling, died during the

expedition. The Ruwenzori Mountains proved a great source of attraction.

Sir H. H. Johnston had in 1900 ascended beyond the snow-line to 14,800 ft.;

in 1903 Dr J. J. David had reached from the west to a height he believed to

exceed 16,000 ft.; and in the same year Capt. T. T. Behrens, of the Anglo-

German Uganda boundary commission, fixed the highest summit at 16,619 ft.

During 1904-1906 some half-dozen expeditions were at work in the region.

That of the duke of the Abruzzi was the most successful. In the summer of

1906 the duke or members of his party climbed all the highest peaks, none

of which reaches 17,000 ft., and determined the main lines of the

watershed. Major Powell-Cotton, a British officer who had previously done

good work in Abyssinia and British East Africa, spent 1905-1906 in a

detailed examination of the Lado enclave and the country west of Ruwenzori

and Albert and Albert Edward lakes. This expedition was specially fruitful

in additions to zoological knowledge.

Archaeological research, stimulated by the reports of Thomas Shaw,

British consular chaplain at Algiers in 1719- 1731, by James Bruce's

exploration, 1765-1767, of the ruins in Barbary, and by the French conquest

of Egypt in 1798, has been systematically carried out in North Africa since

the middle of the 19th century (see EGYPT and AFRICA, ROMAN.) In South

Africa the first thorough examination of the ruins in Rhodesia was made in

1905, when Randall-MacIver demonstrated that the great Zimbabwe and similar

buildings were of medieval or post-medieval origin. (F. R. C.)

VII. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS

The eagerness with which the nations of western Europe partitioned Africa

between them was due, as has been seen, more to the necessities of commerce

than to mere land hunger. Yet, except in the north and south temperate

regions, the commercial intercourse of the continent with the rest of the

world had been until the closing years of the 19th century of insignificant

proportions. In addition to slaves, furnished by the continent from the

earliest times, a certain amount of gold and ivory was exported from the

tropical regions, but no other product supplied the material for a

flourishing trade with those parts. To their Asiatic and European invaders

the Africans indeed owed many creature comforts—the introduction of maize,

rice, the sugar cane, the orange, the lemon and the lime, cloves, tobacco

and many other vegetable products, the camel, the horse and other

animals—but invaluable to Africa as were these gifts they led to little

development of commerce. The continent continued in virtual isolation from

the great trade movements of the

Causes of isolation.

world, an isolation due not so much to its poverty in natural resources, as

to the special circumstances which likewise caused so large a part of the

continent to remain so long a terra incognita. The principal drawbacks may

be summarized as: (1) the absence of means of communication with the

interior; (2) the unhealthiness of the coast-lands; (3) the small

productive activity of the natives; (4) the effects of the slave trade in

discouraging legitimate commerce. None of these causes is necessarily

permanent, that most difficult to remove being the third; the negro races

finding the means of existence easy have little incentive to toil. The

first drawback has almost disappeared, and the building of railways and the

placing of steamers on the rivers and lakes—a work continually progressing

—renders it year by year easier for producer and consumer to come together.

As to the second drawback, while the coast-lands in the tropics will

always remain comparatively unhealthy, improved sanitation and the

destruction of the malarial mosquito have rendered tolerable to Europeans

regions formerly notorious for their deadly climate.

At various periods since the partition of the continent began, united

action has been taken by the powers of Europe in the interests of African

trade. The Berlin conference of 1884-1885 decreed freedom of navigation and

trade on the Congo and the Niger, and the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1891

secured like privileges for the Zambezi. The Berlin conference likewise

enacted that over a wide area of Central Africa—the conventional basin of

the Congo—there should be complete freedom of trade, a freedom which later

on was held to be infringed in the Congo State and French Congo by the

granting to various companies proprietary rights in the disposal of the

product of the soil. More important in their effect on the economic

condition of the continent than the steps taken to ensure freedom of trade

were the measures concerted by the powers for the suppression of the slave

trade. The British government had for long borne the greater part of the

burden of combating the slave trade on the east coast of Africa and in the

Indian Ocean, but the changed conditions which resulted from the appearance

of other European powers in Africa induced Lord Salisbury, then foreign

secretary, to address, in the autumn of 1888, an invitation to the king of

the Belgians to take the initiative in inviting a conference of the powers

at Brussels to concert measures for ``the gradual suppression of the

Suppression of the slave trade.

slave trade on the continent of Africa, and the immediate closing of all

the external markets which it still supplies.'' The conference assembled in

November 1889, and on the 2nd of July 1890 a general act was signed subject

to the ratification of the various governments represented, ratification

taking place subsequently at different dates, and in the case of France

with certain reservations. The general act began with a declaration of the

means which the powers were of opinion might be most effectually adopted

for ``putting an end to the crimes and devastations engendered by the

traffic in African slaves, protecting effectively the aboriginal

populations of Africa, and ensuring for that vast continent the benefits of

peace and civilization.'' It proceeded to lay down certain rules and

regulations of a practical character on the lines suggested. The act covers

a wide field, and includes no fewer than a hundred separate articles. It

established a zone ``between the 20th parallel of north latitude, and the

22nd parallel of south latitude, and extending westward to the Atlantic and

eastward to the Indian Ocean and its dependencies, comprising the islands

adjacent to the coast as far as 100 nautical miles from the shore,'' within

which the importation of firearms and ammunition was forbidden except in

certain specified cases, and within which also the powers undertook either

to prohibit altogether the importation and manufacture of spirituous

liquors, or to impose duties not below an agreed-on minimum.1 An elaborate

series of rules was framed for the prevention of the transit of slaves by

sea, the conditions on which European powers were to grant to natives the

right to fly the flag of the protecting power, and regulating the procedure

connected with the right of search on vessels flying a foreign flag. The

Brussels Act was in effect a joint declaration by the signatory powers of

their joint and several responsibility towards the African native, and

notwithstanding the fact that many of its articles have proved difficult,

if not impossible, of enforcement, the solemn engagement taken by Europe in

the face of the world has undoubtedly exercised a material influence on the

action of several of the powers. Moreover, with the increase of means of

communication and the extension of effective European control, slave-

raiding in the interior was largely checked and inter-tribal wars

prevented, the natives being thus given security in the pursuit of trade

and agriculture.

Other important factors in the economic as well as the social conditions

of Africa are the advance in civilization made by the natives in several

regions and the increase of the areas found suitable for white

colonization. The advance in civilization among the natives, exemplified by

the granting to them of political rights in such countries as Algeria and

Cape Colony, leads directly to increased commercial activity; and commerce

increases in a much greater degree when new countries— e.g. Rhodesia and

British East Africa—become the homes of Europeans. Finally, in reviewing

the chief factors which govern the commercial development of the continent,

note must be taken of the sparsity of the population over the greater part

of Africa, and the efforts made to supplement the insufficient and often

ineffective native labour by the introduction of Asiatic labourers in

various districts—of Indian coolies in Natal and elsewhere, and of Chinese

for the gold mines of the Transvaal.

The resources of Africa may be considered under the head of: (1) jungle

products; (2) cultivated products; (3) animal

Chief economic resources.

products; (4) minerals. Of the first named the most important are india-

rubber and palm-oil. which in tropical Africa supply by far the largest

items in the export list. The rubber-producing plants are found throughout

the whole tropical belt, and the most important are creepers of the order

Apocynaceae, especially various species of Landolphia (with which genus

Vahea is now united). In East Africa Landolphia kirkii (Dyer) supplies the

largest amount, though various other species are known Forms of apparently

wider distribution are L. hendelotii, which is found in the Bahr-el-Ghazal,

and extends right across the continent to Senegambia; and L. (formerly

Vahea) comorensis, which, including its variety L. florida, has the widest

distribution of all the species, occurring in Upper and Lower Guinea, the

whole of Central Africa, the east coast, the Comoro Islands and Madagascar.

In parts of East Africa Clitandra orienitalis is a valuable rubber vine. In

Lagos and elsewhere rubber is produced by the apocynaceous tree, Funtumia

elastica, and in West Africa generally by various species of Ficus, some

species of which are also found in East Africa. The rubber produced is

somewhat inferior to that of South America, but this is largely due to

careless methods of preparation. The great destruction of vines brought

about by native methods of collection much reduced the supply in some

districts, and rendered it necessary to take steps to preserve and

cultivate the rubber-yielding plants. This has been done in many districts

with usually encouraging results. Experiments have been made in the

introduction of South American rubber plants, but opinions differ as to the

prospects of success, as the plants in question seem to demand very

definite conditions of soil and climate. The second product, palm-oil, is

derived from a much more limited area than rubber, for although the oil

palm is found throughout the greater part of West Africa, from 10 deg. N.

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