3

tineau, and its apologist in Mr. Bosworth-Smith, while its detractors are legion.

I have digressed, and my excuse must be that without some conception of the conditions affecting West Africa it is impossible to clearly discriminate between the peoples with whom we have to deal in our attempt to develop the resources of the continent. The Mohammedan populations of West Africa include those situated far in the interior in the territories of the Royal Niger Company. These people are enthusiastic traders, the commercial resources of the country are illimitable, and the climate, though wholly unsuited for permanent residence or colonisation by Europeans, is by no means hostile to traders and settlers of the white races for limited periods. Nearer the coast, and inclusive of the Crown colonies of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Lagos, and the Niger Protectorate, the Mohammedan influence gives place to paganism, and the conditions of development are entirely dissimilar. This coast belt is extremely rich; gold abounds in the hinterland towards Ashanti; but the present wealth of the whole of the maritime zone consists in its export of oil (from the Guinea palm) and other vegetable products. Hitherto, with the notable exception of the Niger Company, our mode of developing this most valuable trade has been by importing millions of gallons of noxious spirits, to the demoralisation of the native races under our protection. Apart from the moral turpitude attached to such a system of trade, apart from the fact that some of the races thus demoralised are exceptionally fine, and are capable of reaching a much higher plane of civilisation, instead of being debased to a lower one-apart, in brief, from the moral or philanthropic aspect of the question, it is obvious that this system of trade is short-sighted and rotten. Industry, which it should be our object to stimulate, is limited to the production of just so much produce as will purchase the requisite amount of spirit, and is further enfeebled by the very article of purchase. The requirements of the natives, instead of increasing with their progress in civilisation and comfort, remain stationary. Legitimate trade is strangled and progress arrested. Moreover, instead of exporting to these great markets the produce of Manchester, and Sheffield, and Birmingham, and stimulating thereby our home industries, we are content to ship the spirits made in Hamburg, while crying out that trade is depressed at home. Nor is the native even given a choice, as it would seem, in some cases, for an African bishop reports that at Ilaro' there was nothing else in the factories to exchange for all this produce but rum and gin.' These markets are old-old as the days when the export consisted of slaves shipped by Liverpool traders to Americabut if once this suicidal import of cheap continental gin is abolished 3 Vide Westminster Gazette, April 20, 1895.

Mahomet and Mahomedanism, p. 30-48 et passim.

and these countries are thrown open to the produce of our manufacturing towns, they will be new markets to Great Britain.

Let us turn from West to East Africa. Here on the coast zone we have very many marketable products. The islands of the Zanzibar sultanate have practically a monopoly of the clove produce of the world. These islands and the littoral of the mainland are mainly peopled by an alien population of Arabs from Muscat and Arabia, and British Indians-all born traders. The various products of the cocoanut palm, gum-copal, chillies, and many other exports have already reached a certain point of development, but these and many other products are capable of very great expansion. The bar to progress in the sultanate is, in my opinion, the continuance of the recognition of slavery by the law courts. Just as I have urged that the liquor traffic is incompatible with legitimate trade, so, I think, is slave labour incompatible with a free labour market. The two cannot exist side by side, for free labourers will not enter where a legal status of slavery exists, lest they too become slaves; nor will European or enlightened British-Indian enterprise adventure itself where the conditions of free labour are so precarious, to compete against the produce of Arab estates cultivated by forced labour.

Once more I will crave permission to digress very briefly on a subject which intimately concerns the question of the coast and island markets. It is urged continually that the abolition of slavery must produce a dead-lock in the labour market, involving the ruin of plantations and estates for lack of labour. I have already endeavoured to prove," on the authority of Mr. Sturge, Lord Brassey, and others, that in the oft-quoted instance of the West Indies the abolition of slavery had nothing to do with the collapse of the sugar industries, whose decline dated from 1824, and was directly caused by the sugar bounties. Lord Brassey, after personal investigation, declares that ' at the present day labour is not more costly than when slaves were employed.' A few days ago, in conversation with the head of one of the largest firms in the City dealing in foreign produce, I accidentally learnt the effect of the total emancipation decreed in Brazil in 1888. So much had the disturbing effect of this decree upon the labour market been dreaded, and so confident was every one that the output of Northern Brazil (where negro slave labour was solely employed) would seriously decrease, and that all trade would be transferred to the south, where white labour is possible, that a Manchester merchant, whose business was chiefly with North Brazil, opened a branch house in the south, at Rio, with the intention of anticipating the transfer of trade from the north. There was, of course, a very temporary dislocation of the labour market, but at the present moment (only seven years after the abolition) not only is there

Our East African Empire, vol. i. p. 179.

6

no lack of free negro labour in North Brazil, but the market has distinctly improved, and the anticipations of the Manchester merchant have not been fulfilled. I do not, however, advocate wholesale emancipation, as in these instances, but only the abolition of the recognition of slavery by law. One other comment and I will pass from this question. The British consul-general in Zanzibar, in his report on the subject, states that the plantations worked by slave labour are almost invariably heavily mortgaged to British-Indian traders, the nominal Arab owner being, in fact, only a manager of the estate. The trader being a British subject would be liable to criminal process for owning and employing slaves, and accordingly this subterfuge is adopted with the knowledge of our consul-general. If the system necessitates such evasions of the law, in this as in some other ways, surely it is time that it were abolished.

Immediately behind the coast line of East Africa lie those vast regions (now included under a British protectorate) known as British East Africa, comprising about three-quarter million square miles. Throughout this vast area there are many indigenous products suitable for export, and it is beyond doubt that when its resources are more fully tested, and samples of its various products have been as carefully examined by scientists as have those of the Niger region, many more-as yet unknown-will be discovered. For the country is extremely fertile; its flora and fauna are very diversified, and as a virgin field for exploitation it compares most favourably with any other region in the world which has been opened up to commercial enterprise. But it has an exceptional value, over and above any natural products which are awaiting export to Western markets. Almost alone among the countries of Africa or Asia situated between the tropics it offers such advantages of climate and rainfall as would appear to render it suitable as a home for the white, races, where introduced products under the permanent supervision of white men may be cultivated for the supply of European markets. Such at least is the opinion expressed by Sir John Kirk recently at the Geographical Congress, after a careful examination of such statistics as are at present available. Malarial fever is of a mild type, and, as has been abundantly proved in tropical America, in India, and in Burma, may be expected to yield to proper sanitary conditions and a means of rapid access from the coast. A new country—when first the virgin soil is turned-whatever its latitude appears to breed malaria; agriculture, sanitation, and proper tenements and comforts, decrease if they do not entirely expel it. In any case, mild malaria is no bad exchange for the cholera and enteric fever of Asia and the influenza and typhoid of temperate zones.

Neither in British East Africa nor in Nyasaland, nor in Matabeleland, have we to deal with vast populations, such as form the

Blue-Book, Africa, Nc. 6, 1895, p. 15.

markets of China and the East. Certain areas are, indeed, densely populated, but other areas, large in themselves and offering every advantage of a fertile soil, good climate and rainfall, are practically depopulated and available for the plantations or farms of alien settlers. Putting aside the question of colonisation proper, as one which refers to a future date, we can at least affirm that these uplands in East Africa offer every possibility of development by European settlers and pioneers. Many products that they may export when so developed may be suggested. Let me instance coffee. At present Brazil produces about one-half of the coffee consumed by the world, viz. about 300,000 tons a year. This coffee is not of a high class and is valued at about 658. per cwt. The coffee introduced into the Shiré highlands (British Central Africa) commands a much higher price and ranks among the highest class coffees in the market, reaching a maximum price of 110s. There is no reason why it should not be produced at the same initial cost as Brazil coffee, in which case it has a future before it to the full extent of the present Brazilian output, viz. 300,000 tons a year. With a railway to the coast and an excellent harbour at Mombasa, coffee (if it does as well in East Africa as it has done in Nyasaland) may alone furnish a commercial staple. Cotton is another product which it would be of great importance to our industries to obtain from within the bounds of our own empire, instead of being dependent for the raw material on which the chiefest of our manufactures depends upon a foreign country and a commercial rival. Both coffee and cotton are indigenous in East Africa, and even the unimproved variety of the latter has been well reported upon by experts.

It is not my intention to weary my readers by enumerating a long list of products, natural or introduced, and giving statistics of their chances. In 1889, having then recently returned from Nyasaland, I was requested to read a paper at the British Association on the commercial geography of that country. It was not at that time a British protectorate. On reading lately the blue-book describing the present condition and development of the country I was struck by the literal way in which most of my forecasts had been fulfilled. Consul Sharpe concludes his last trade report (for 1894) with the words,' Trade is increasing with such rapidity that there is every prospect of British Central Africa being before long a market well worth consideration on the part of our merchants at home.' I may mention in brief the following as being indigenous in East Africa, and for the most part affording scope for the introduction and cultivation of improved and more paying varieties: coffee, cotton, fibres of many kinds, copra, gum-copal, rubber and caoutchouc, tobacco, oil-bearing seeds

7 F. O. Annual Series, No. 1515 of 1895.

and nuts of many kinds, ivory, gums (various), drugs, hides, timber, grain (various), &c., besides a host of less important articles, and a few not at present indigenous but very likely to prove capable of introduction (ex. cocoa, indigo, opium, tea, &c.).

I have touched on the question of products, indigenous and introduced, but in my opinion this is a secondary and a premature matter. Given a country with a good climate and rainfall, well watered, and with a fertile soil, and an atmosphere that does not contain so much moisture as to make it unhealthy for Europeans; granted that this country is about to be connected by a railway with a first-class harbour on the sea coast at one end and a vast inland sea at the other—and all these advantages East Africa possesses by a verdict independent of my own-and if British enterprise cannot make it pay we shall belie the whole history of our colonial expansion. I have named British East Africa perhaps somewhat too persistently, for the set of conditions which I have described apply almost equally, mutatis mutandis,, to British Central Africa (more especially to the vast plateau under the British South Africa Company extending to the west of Lake Nyasa) and to Matabeleland. The questions of practical utility at the present moment are-How are these potential markets to be secured and developed, and what return can we look forward to for our outlay? How can that initial outlay be expended to the best advantage?

Let us admit that commercial enterprise in Africa is undertaken for our own benefit, as much as and more than for the benefit of the African. We have spoken already of the vital necessity of new markets for the Old World. It is, therefore, to our very obvious advantage to teach the millions of Africa the wants of civilisation, so that whilst supplying them we may receive in return the products of their country and the labour of their hands. It is assuredly a noble and praiseworthy result that we should introduce decency and sanitation, even though it be by the medium of Manchester cottons and Pears' soap, but there is (as Count Pfeil has pointed out in his most admirable paper at the Geographical Congress) an even more substantial benefit which we can confer upon the African in return for his produce and his labour. That benefit consists of effective administration, by which security to life and property is assured to the humblest native, and the carnage of the raiding tribes and the onslaught of the slaver become things of the past; by which the small-pox and the pestilence, which to-day decimate the population, and the cattle disease, and possibly the locust pest, which deprive him of his food and leave him to die of starvation, yield to scientific methods and to sanitation. It is to our commercial advantage to teach the native that our presence is for his good, and to educate him to desire those amenities of civilisation which are more broadly expressed in bales of cottons and boxes of hardware. It matters not to discuss the