The manner in which the African
continent was carved up sums up pretty well I think the moral vacuum that lay at
the heart of European civilisation circa late 19th century. This
"civilisation"'s eventual implosion in World War One - where the European powers
fought one another like ravenous dogs over imperial predominance - is a chapter
of human tragedy that leaves me strangely untouched despite all the bitter-sweet
wailings of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. We may have expected higher
standards from a civilization whose discourse may be found written and preserved
in systems of jurisprudence, academic journals, daily broadsheet columns,
literary works and in constitutions which invoke the principle of natural
rights.
Given this accumulation of 'ethical knowledge' it is proper to speak of a moral vacuum. The era of colonization was replete with references to a civilizing mission, of bringing free trade, of ending slavery and of Christianisation - hence we may also speak of hypocrisy. My sympathies instead lie with the best intentions implicit in Wilsonian idealism and the anti-imperialist philosophy of the Bolshevik revolution. So Germany lost East Africa, Cameroon (divided between the British and French) and South West Africa after the war - too late for Namibia's Herero who had half their population eliminated in massacres and forced labour camps.
Togoland was one of the few profitable German colonies. The infrastructure was developed to reach into the mountainous regions inland where cocoa, coffee and cotton could be grown and to where labourers where increasingly transported. The administration was not free of scandal however. Valdemar Horn, Togoland Governor in 1905 had an African boy whipped for stealing a cash box. He had him bound to a post were he was denied food and water for twenty hours wherein he subsequently died. The surprising thing is that the Governor was hauled before the High Court of Togoland and Cameroon and summarily scapegoated. There had been an outcry in Berlin from the liberal media and the Social Democrats in the Reichstag were eager to denounce any signs of a brutal imperialism which echoed the tales that were by then emerging from Leopold's Congo.
There was another case in Togoland of a district officer called Schmidt who had kidnapped and raped a 13 thirteen year old African girl whilst keeping her locked up in his personal harem. An outcry from Catholic missionaries led to their being kept under house arrest for three weeks by the District Officer's soldiers. Schmidt was acquitted as no-one dared give evidence and the governor was discharged with a third of his pension deducted. Conditions in the colonies for natives was largely determined by the personalities of the Governors and officers in charge. Some were apparently enlightened, as in German Somoa, contributing to proper development and providing facilities for education but the temptation too often was to turn the place into your own personal fiefdom.
Puttkamer, the Governor of Cameroon was particularly notorious. In 1902 King Acqua of Cameroon set sail for Berlin to protest at the 'excessively bad' treatment of his people. When he returned, himself and thirty other chiefs were put in jail and received long sentences which were eventually annulled due to a separate scandal that engulfed Puttkammer. The genocide of the Herero in South West Africa has been mentioned but even more had died as a result of the tactics adopted to quell the 1905 Maji-Maji uprising in German East Africa. Here, dozens of separate tribes simultaneously rose up in a well co-ordinated rebellion that was a response to the forced labour in the cotton fields and excessive use of the whip. A scorched earth policy was adopted burning crops everywhere in a hundred mile radius and leading to the deaths through starvation of an estimated 100,000 Africans.
Every page you turn in African history; from 1870 up to the wave of forced decolonisations in the early 60's, or from the moment Stanley set his grubby little mind on sourcing the Congo for his vampire master leech in Brussels, each chapter is a chronicle of European greed and hypocrisy. Where are the Africans in this story? Adam Hochschild asked himself the same question, wishing he could fill out his tale of Leopold's depravations with more authentic accounts from members of the 200 odd Congolese tribal groups who benefited "first hand" from the magnanimous services of his 'International Humanitarian Organisation'. This is in contrast to Martin Meredith's recent opus 'The State of Africa' who, despite his early profession of his respect for 'the ordinary decent hardworking African' proceeds to paint a relentlessly monochrome picture of post-independence corruption.
Given this accumulation of 'ethical knowledge' it is proper to speak of a moral vacuum. The era of colonization was replete with references to a civilizing mission, of bringing free trade, of ending slavery and of Christianisation - hence we may also speak of hypocrisy. My sympathies instead lie with the best intentions implicit in Wilsonian idealism and the anti-imperialist philosophy of the Bolshevik revolution. So Germany lost East Africa, Cameroon (divided between the British and French) and South West Africa after the war - too late for Namibia's Herero who had half their population eliminated in massacres and forced labour camps.
Togoland was one of the few profitable German colonies. The infrastructure was developed to reach into the mountainous regions inland where cocoa, coffee and cotton could be grown and to where labourers where increasingly transported. The administration was not free of scandal however. Valdemar Horn, Togoland Governor in 1905 had an African boy whipped for stealing a cash box. He had him bound to a post were he was denied food and water for twenty hours wherein he subsequently died. The surprising thing is that the Governor was hauled before the High Court of Togoland and Cameroon and summarily scapegoated. There had been an outcry in Berlin from the liberal media and the Social Democrats in the Reichstag were eager to denounce any signs of a brutal imperialism which echoed the tales that were by then emerging from Leopold's Congo.
There was another case in Togoland of a district officer called Schmidt who had kidnapped and raped a 13 thirteen year old African girl whilst keeping her locked up in his personal harem. An outcry from Catholic missionaries led to their being kept under house arrest for three weeks by the District Officer's soldiers. Schmidt was acquitted as no-one dared give evidence and the governor was discharged with a third of his pension deducted. Conditions in the colonies for natives was largely determined by the personalities of the Governors and officers in charge. Some were apparently enlightened, as in German Somoa, contributing to proper development and providing facilities for education but the temptation too often was to turn the place into your own personal fiefdom.
Puttkamer, the Governor of Cameroon was particularly notorious. In 1902 King Acqua of Cameroon set sail for Berlin to protest at the 'excessively bad' treatment of his people. When he returned, himself and thirty other chiefs were put in jail and received long sentences which were eventually annulled due to a separate scandal that engulfed Puttkammer. The genocide of the Herero in South West Africa has been mentioned but even more had died as a result of the tactics adopted to quell the 1905 Maji-Maji uprising in German East Africa. Here, dozens of separate tribes simultaneously rose up in a well co-ordinated rebellion that was a response to the forced labour in the cotton fields and excessive use of the whip. A scorched earth policy was adopted burning crops everywhere in a hundred mile radius and leading to the deaths through starvation of an estimated 100,000 Africans.
Every page you turn in African history; from 1870 up to the wave of forced decolonisations in the early 60's, or from the moment Stanley set his grubby little mind on sourcing the Congo for his vampire master leech in Brussels, each chapter is a chronicle of European greed and hypocrisy. Where are the Africans in this story? Adam Hochschild asked himself the same question, wishing he could fill out his tale of Leopold's depravations with more authentic accounts from members of the 200 odd Congolese tribal groups who benefited "first hand" from the magnanimous services of his 'International Humanitarian Organisation'. This is in contrast to Martin Meredith's recent opus 'The State of Africa' who, despite his early profession of his respect for 'the ordinary decent hardworking African' proceeds to paint a relentlessly monochrome picture of post-independence corruption.
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