Stanley in Africa. Boyd James Penny
stipulated.
The Powers signatory to the present general Act reserve to themselves the right of eventually, by mutual agreement, introducing therein modifications or improvements, the utility of which has been shown by experience.
The Powers who may not have signed the present Act shall accept its provisions by a separate Act.
The adhesion of each Power shall be notified in the usual diplomatic manner to the Government of the German Empire, and by it to those of all the signatory and adherent States.
The adhesion shall imply the full right of acceptance of all the obligations, and admission to all the advantages stipulated for in the present general Act.
The present general Act shall be ratified with as short a delay as possible, and in no case shall that delay exceed a year.
It shall come into force for each Power on the date of its ratification by that Power.
Meanwhile the Powers signatory to the present Act bind themselves to adopt no measure that shall be contrary to the provisions of the said Act.
Each Power shall send its ratification to the Government of the German Empire, which undertakes to ratify the same to all the signatory Powers of the present general Act.
The ratifications of all the Powers shall remain deposited in the archives of the Government of the German Empire. When all the ratifications shall have been produced, a deed of deposit shall be drawn up in a protocol, which shall be signed by the Representatives of all the Powers that have taken part in the Berlin Conference, and a certified copy of it shall be sent to each of those Powers.
In consideration of which, the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed the present general Act, and hereto affix their seals.
Done at Berlin, February 26th, 1885.
Inasmuch as the Congo Free State starts with the sanction of all the leading powers of civilization, it assumes a dignity, at its very inception, which attaches to no other African dynasty. It is, or ought to be, beyond those jealousies which have torn, and are tearing, other possessions in Africa to pieces, and retarding their colonization and development. Further, the terms of its creation ought to assure it the united sympathy and combined energy of its patrons and founders, and these ought to be invincible within its magnificent boundaries for overcoming every obstacle to permanent sovereignty and commercial, industrial and moral development.
But the spirit of comity, which has made a Congo Free State possible, might as well have rescued Equatorial Africa, from ocean to ocean, from the rapacious grasp of the jealous and contending powers of Europe. True, something like a free belt has been recognized, extending to within a few miles of the Eastern coast, and intended to secure an outlet for products which can be more advantageously marketed in that direction; yet this is of no avail against projects designed to appropriate and control, politically and commercially, the immense sweep of country between the Congo Free State and Indian Ocean; it is rather an incentive to these powers to make haste in their work of appropriation and reduction, and they are at it with an earnestness which savors of the days when two Americas furnished the flesh for picking, and the bone for angry contention. Great Britain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, are in clash about East African areas, protectorates, sovereignties, commercial interests, with the likelihood of further trouble, and such deep complications as arms only can simplify and relieve.
Looking but a little into the future, one can catch a glimpse of the fate in store for East Africa. It is to be the grand political offset to the Congo Free State. This has been resolved upon by Great Britain, and its outlines are already mapped in her foreign policy. As matters stand, there is nothing to prevent the consummation of her designs. She has virtual possession of the Eastern coast from Cape Colony to the mouth of the Zambezi. She has Egypt in her grasp, which means the Nile valley from Alexandria to the head lakes, Victoria, Albert and Edward Nyanza, with their drainage systems.
On the ocean side the power of the Sultan has been already limited to Zanzibar and adjacent islands, and it is now like the last flicker of a wasted candle. On the Zambezi, and north of it, up the Shire to Lake Nyassa, come the claims of Portugal. Portugal is weak, and a poor colonizer at that. She can be ousted by diplomacy or sat down upon by force. The German and Italian interests will eventually blend with those of Great Britain, or shape themselves into well-defined states, pledged to peace and anxious to be let alone.
England is well equipped for this gigantic undertaking. She has an extensive South African and Egyptian experience. She has her experience in India, which she need but repeat in Africa to realize her dreams, or at least achieve more than would be possible with any other power. And then India is over-populated. It might be that thousands, perhaps millions, of her people would swarm to African shores, where they would find a climate not unlike their own, and resources which they could turn to ready account. At any rate, England could enlist in India an army for the occupation of East Africa. Her Indian contingent in Egypt answered an excellent purpose, and redeemed the otherwise fatal campaign toward Khartoum.
The business of establishing an internal economy in this new empire is easier for Great Britain than any other country. Her prestige means as much with native tribes as with the petty sovereignties of Europe, or the islands of the Pacific. Her shows of force are impressive, her methods of discipline effective. In the midst of opposition her hand is hard and heavy. A string of fortifications from the Zambezi to Cairo, with native garrisons, under control of English army officers, would inspire the natives with fear and assure their allegiance. The tact of her traders and the perseverance of her missionaries would bring about all else that might be necessary to create a thrifty and semi-Christian State.
Our posterity will watch with interest the development of Africa through the agency of its Congo Free State on the west, and its Imperial State on the east; the one contributing to the glory of all civilized nations, the other to that of a single nation; the one an enlargement of sovereignty, the other a concentration of it. One has for its inspiration the genius of freedom, the other the genius of force. One is a dedication to civilizing influences, the other is a seizure and appropriation in the name of civilization. We can conceive of the latter, under the impetus of patronage and of concentrated energy, supplemented by arbitrary power, taking the lead for a time, and maintaining it till its viceroyalties become centers of corruption and its subjects helpless peons. But in the end, the former will bound to the front, lifted by internal forces, which are free and virile, buoyed by a spirit of self-helpfulness and independence, sustained from without by universal sympathy and admiration, and from within by beings who have voluntarily consented and contributed to their progress and enlightenment, and are proud participants in their own institutions.
The historian of a century hence will confirm or deny the above observations. If he confirms them, he will add that long experience proved the inutility of forcing our governments, usages and peoples on those of Africa without modification, and to the utter subordination of those which were native; but that, on the contrary, the best civilizing results were obtained by recognition of native elements, their gradual endowment with sovereignty, their elevation to the trusts which commerce and industry impose. It is time that our boasted civilization should show a conquest which is not based on the inferiority, wreck and extermination of the races it meets with in its course. It has careered around the globe in temperate belts, stopping for nothing that came in its way, justifying everything by its superiority. Nature calls a halt in mid-Africa, and practically says: “The agents of civilization are already here. Use them, but do not abuse. You can substitute no other that will prove either permanent or profitable.”
THE RESCUE OF EMIN
In the fall of 1886, Stanley was summoned from the United States by the King of Belgium to come and pay him a visit. That monarch seems to have remembered what others had forgotten, that a European adventurer and a European project lay buried somewhere beneath the Equator and in the very heart of the “Dark Continent.” Stanley responded to the King’s invitation, and out of the interview which followed sprang a reason for his late and most memorable journey across equatorial Africa. But it was deemed wise to interest other agencies, and so the British Geographical Society was consulted and induced