Le Congo français

The French Congo

Félicien Challaye

To the memory of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza

Our hopes and our thoughts accompanied Challaye on a mission that was to reintroduce a little justice, a little intelligence, much humanity, a little kindness even into a French territory, into one of the lands under French domination.

One of the innumerable reasons why French territories must remain French territories, why lands under French domination must remain lands under French domination, is indeed that in French territory, in a land under French domination, we can introduce justice, intelligence, humanity, and kindness through a direct effort exercised upon our people, among our people, and upon the government of our country. Whatever the vices of the parliamentary system, whatever the abuses of politics, the government of our country is still somewhat within our grasp. And the foreign imperial government they would give us as master is virtually beyond our grasp at all.

No one foresaw then how this mission would end, in what mourning it would conclude, and in what sadness; in what sleight of hand they would try to make its results forgotten. Let us at least salvage what we can of it.

Challaye has brought back from this mission the cahier you are about to read. We place this cahier under the invocation of the memory we have kept of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, some of us, like the very author of this cahier, personally and through direct acquaintance, others, all the others, through a knowledge that had become general, through the reflection of his glory and through the spreading, from person to person, of a respect that for everyone had itself become almost a personal respect.

Charles Peguy

THE FRENCH CONGO

“The French Congo must not become a new Mongalla.”

PIERRE SAVORGNAN DE BRAZZA — The Last Days of M. de Brazza

On the morning of September 17, arriving at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Brazza Mission learned, through a telegram from Dakar, of the death of its leader. This brutal message moved us without surprising us. The lugbrious presentiment had imposed itself upon us three days earlier, when we had seen M. de Brazza leave the ship at Dakar, exhausted by illness, weariness, and sadness; at that tragic moment we had felt in advance all the grief of this future death.

M. de Brazza succumbed to dysentery from which he had been suffering for more than a month. The illness might not have had fatal consequences had he not been weakened by a grueling journey, also crushed with sorrow by the distressing vision he had had of the present-day Congo.

Anxious to fulfill with the most scrupulous conscience the inspection mission that the government had entrusted to him, he wanted to see, with his own eyes, the entire colony. In four months, he managed to traverse it all: Gabon, Ogooue, Congo, Ubangi, territory of the Upper Chari all the way to the very border of the territory of Chad.

A veritable tour de force, in this immense country poorly furnished with means of communication. The crossing of the Upper Chari, especially, was grueling — more grueling, M. de Brazza said one day, than many explorations. To cover more than five hundred kilometers on horseback, sometimes under heavy heat, sometimes under continuous rain; to sleep under a tent or in damp earthen huts; to live on preserves, generally without fresh meat, almost always without fresh vegetables, without eggs, without milk; to drink the dubious water of streams and marshes — this is enough to exhaust the youngest and most robust man. Now, M. de Brazza had led so harsh a life during his first explorations that he was, at fifty-three, prematurely aged.

Forgetting or mastering his fatigue, he devoted to his inquiry all the forces of his body and mind. Conversations with his collaborators and the Europeans of the country, lengthy interrogations of blacks, visits to remote villages: he worked from morning to night. I never saw him rest except when illness or fever absolutely forced him to. Even when he was silent, one could sense that his mind was seeking to deepen his habitual thoughts. At the common table, where Madame de Brazza and he took their meals with all the members of the mission, he rarely let the conversation stray far from the Congo. By a sudden question, by an unexpected remark, he always directed the discussion toward the sole object of his reflections and his anxieties. A truly extraordinary concentration of mind, leaving no respite to that overtaxed intelligence.

An immense sadness came to weigh down still further the burden of all this physical and intellectual fatigue. M. de Brazza loved passionately this Congo that he had explored and won for France, then governed and organized; he suffered to find it in a truly alarming situation. He saw a despotic and greedy administration establish poorly calculated or vexatious taxes, demand their collection by often brutal methods, frighten the natives and drive them away from the posts instead of drawing them closer through effective protection. He saw the concessionary companies, rapacious and cynical, trying to reconstitute a new slavery, trying to impose upon the blacks, by threat or violence, poorly remunerated labor, instead of seeking to attract them through free and fair trade. He learned of the frequent brutalities of Europeans fallen to the level of the most barbarous negroes. He learned in all its details the odious history of the Upper Chari: obligatory porterage, hostage camps, raids and massacres. From these sinister discoveries, M. de Brazza suffered in the most intimate depths of his heart. This heroic sorrow, this sublime sadness wore out his strength, hastened his end.

Before parting from his collaborators — foreseeing that he was leaving them forever — M. de Brazza concerned himself with securing some compensation for them for the troubles, fatigues, and perils of the distant voyage. He had letters written to the Minister of Colonies expressing his opinion of each of them; he requested some rewards for them, some crosses of the Legion of Honor. Touching solicitude: though already unable to write, he wanted to sign these letters himself, as if to give this testament a more sacred character. Three times he tried to take up the pen; three times his hand, too weak, refused the effort.

At Dakar, it was on an afternoon of bright sunshine, of ardent joyous light, that they transported to the hospital M. de Brazza, dying. Four sailors brought a stretcher on board. M. de Brazza appeared, supported, or rather carried. Lugubrious apparition: his long rigid body was of skeletal thinness; his face was livid; his eyes were fixed and glassy; his beard had grown, unkempt and whitish. The great man was no more than a corpse still slightly alive… Stretched upon the stretcher, M. de Brazza responded with a vague gesture to the farewell salute of the members of the mission. In passing, I was able to clasp, for the last time, his thin and moist hand. A painful emotion made hearts tremble. There were tears in some eyes. This departure, this separation, this march toward approaching death, was sadder than a funeral.

I shall not recall here the history of the great man who left us. I shall only say what regret he leaves in those who spent near him the last six months of his life. Admiring the bold, patient, and skillful explorer, we loved the man for his beautiful and rare qualities, for the elegant nobility of his proud heart, for his chivalrous idealism, for his secret kindness and spontaneous generosity, for his love of the voluntarily chosen homeland, for his passion for liberty and justice. His name will symbolize, in the history of the world, a new native policy, made of psychological intelligence, of sympathy and of equity: the only colonial method that can suit a democracy like ours, civilizing and liberating.

THE FRENCH CONGO — The Natives of the French Congo: Some Psychological and Sociological Remarks

The eight, nine, or ten million natives who inhabit the French Congo are divided among more than twenty-five peoples, isolated from one another and distinctly different, despite the mixing of blood that slavery necessarily entails. These peoples differ from the physical point of view as well as from the moral; from one to another vary the dwellings, the clothing, the hairstyles, the tattoos, the ornaments, the dances; the customs are not identical; finally the languages present such particularities that none of these peoples understand their neighbors well.

It is impossible to confuse the Gabonese, a refined, voluptuous, and soft race; the Fang, wild and proud, warlike and commercial; the Loango, a people of superficially Europeanized domestics; the Bateke, great lazy aristocrats; the Ballali and the Bakongo, refined, vigorous, and active; the Bondjo, brutal and bloodthirsty.

However, one may provisionally neglect these differences: there are between all the blacks of the Congo enough resemblances that one can characterize in general terms their psychological life and their social life.

The blacks of the Congo belong to the most primitive races in the world. The influence of environment and of heredity explain that their sensitivity and their intelligence have remained rudimentary. Living in small groups, in the bosom of an exuberant and fecund nature, the inhabitants of equatorial Africa find around them, without difficulty, the food they need to avoid dying of hunger: fruits, roots, products of hunting and fishing. The mildness of the climate allows them to live practically naked and to have as dwelling only extremely simple huts.

Thus the exclusive present sensation and the tyrannical desire for immediate enjoyment chase from these small souls the memory of the past and the expectation of the future. One understands then that the blacks of the Congo have neither deep sentimentality, nor art, nor science, nor true religion.

They have only a superficial and petty sentimental life. They show themselves naively selfish and vain with candor. Altruistic feelings do not extend beyond a narrow circle. Romantic passion is rare, and filial gratitude rare as well. Only maternal love is tenacious and deep. The other sentiments are much more fragile: friendship is but a momentary camaraderie, hatred a passing fear.

To summarize in a word the psychology of the three great human races, one might propose this formula: The yellows live in the past, the blacks in the present, the whites in the future.

From the social point of view, all relationships between the natives of the Congo are evidently and ostensibly relationships of force: the strong have no scruples about dominating the weak; their tyranny cloaks itself in neither pretext nor hypocrisy.

Hence three characteristic phenomena of Congolese societies: polygamy, slavery, and anthropophagy.

Domestic slavery as practiced between blacks in equatorial Africa should not be confused with the slavery formerly practiced by whites in America and fed by the odious raids of slave traders. Until the arrival of Europeans, the condition of house slaves was rather mild in the Congo: they were generally well treated, rarely brutalized; in exchange for easy labor, they received the same food, led the same life, participated in the same festivities as all the members of the family. There was much less difference between the life of the slave and that of his master than there is between the life of the European worker and that of his employer.

As for anthropophagy: one should not picture the cannibal as a ferocious brute thirsting for murder; he is quite simply a man, sometimes rather gentle, who prefers human flesh to animal flesh, a “choice game.” All travelers who have crossed central Africa have had the opportunity to visit cannibal villages without running the slightest danger.

This brief study shows to what degree the natives of the French Congo are primitive, whether one analyzes their psychological life or their social life. This is not at all a reason to despise or mistreat them; it is, on the contrary, a reason to judge them with indulgence and not demand too much of them. It is impossible to suddenly compel intensive labor from races accustomed for centuries to doing nothing; it would be absurd to claim to immediately impose upon savages the same social burdens as upon civilized people.

COMMERCE AND AGRICULTURE IN THE FRENCH CONGO — The Concessionary Companies and the Situation of the Natives

The French Congo possesses considerable natural riches. It is a hot country — situated exactly on the equator — and very humid. This heat, this humidity, favor vegetation. Equatorial Africa is covered with great forests and tall brush. In the forests rubber vines abound. In the brush roam herds of elephants. Rubber and ivory are the precious riches that attracted greedy and bold whites to the center of Africa.

In 1904, rubber represented 50 percent and ivory 41 percent of the exports of the Middle Congo. For the colony as a whole, the total exports were 11,236,000 francs. The three principal exports were rubber (5,374,000 francs), ivory (3,703,000 francs), and wood (1,250,000 francs). The comparison of export figures over the last ten years shows that the exploitation of these natural riches is developing gradually. Commerce has doubled in ten years.

There are, in the most important towns of the colony, some free merchants, French or foreign, selling European products to the natives. The competition that necessarily establishes itself between these commercial houses leads them to take into account, as much as possible, the tastes of the black consumers; it also obliges them to sell at relatively moderate prices. Free commerce has free labor as its consequence.

In the rare parts of the Congo not allotted to some great Company, there are small agricultural concessions. They belong to settlers who live and work in the country itself. They occupy themselves with establishing plantations of cacao trees, vanilla, and rubber trees. This creation of new riches increases the value of the colony. The settler, who needs faithful labor, is obliged to attract and retain his black workers by treating them well, feeding them well, paying them well. Well paid, these natives can better satisfy their habitual needs; they can begin to satisfy the new needs that awaken in them through contact with a more refined civilization.

The creation of the concessionary Companies, decided in 1898, put an obstacle to these efforts and oriented the economic life of the French Congo in an entirely different direction.

The history of the formation of the concessionary Companies is extremely interesting. Beyond the precise facts, often scandalous, one senses shady financial and political intrigues, all sorts of bargains, betrayals, cowardice, and corruption: one can smell here all the shameful diseases from which our bourgeois Republic is dying.

It was around 1890 that a certain number of capitalists and parliamentarians began to demand the formation of privileged Companies, destined to exploit the natural riches of the colonies in general, and of the Congo in particular.

In 1899, a new Minister of Colonies, M. Guillain, granted by decree, after consultation of an administrative Commission, forty concessions in the French Congo. The concession holder was authorized to establish himself in a designated territory for a period of thirty years. All land developed by the concessionary Company became its full and complete property. In exchange for these advantages, the Company was required to pay an annual fixed royalty and fifteen percent of its profits. If we add to these concessions the two previously granted, we find that nineteen-twentieths of the colony had been conceded.

It was above all Belgian capital that fed the concessionary Companies of the French Congo. The creation of these Companies gave rise to unbridled speculation. Some of these Companies cancelled, complaining of insufficient natural resources. Those that survived were of very unequal value. Some lived poorly, badly directed and administered, spending too great a portion of their resources on general expenses in Paris, in fees allocated to boards of directors. Others began to succeed, and their current success foreshadowed large profits for the future.

What should we think of the experiment made in the Congo? What are the advantages, what are the dangers of the system of great concessions decided in 1898 and realized in 1900?

To the credit of the concessionary Companies, it is first said that they have powerfully contributed to the commercial development of the country. If total commerce has doubled in ten years, it is above all to them that this is owed. On the other hand, at the international level, the system of great concessions has already been the occasion of serious difficulties. Two English commercial houses that had long possessed trading posts in the coastal regions complained that the establishment of the monopoly violated the Berlin Act guaranteeing freedom of commerce in the conventional basin of the Congo.

The most serious grievance against the Companies is the harm done to the natives. The concessionary Company claims for itself the monopoly of all the natural products of the soil, and particularly of rubber. But the natives who used to gather these products and sell them freely now find themselves deprived of their traditional livelihood. Too often, the Companies compel the natives to gather rubber for derisory compensation, employing violence through their agents or through the complicity of the administration. Too often, the collecting of rubber involves abuses that recall the worst excesses of the Belgian Congo.

The system of great concessions stifles free commerce, discourages individual initiative, and reduces the natives to a condition approaching slavery. It would have been infinitely preferable to leave the exploitation of the country to free commerce and small concessions, which develop gradually, with method and wisdom, respecting both the rights of the natives and the long-term interests of the colony. This was the solution advocated by M. de Brazza. As early as 1886, he warned against too-rapid exploitation: “Let the high administration, let high commerce beware of wanting to put too quickly under systematic exploitation a possession that, in truth, we still know insufficiently, and whose natives are not yet initiated into what we want of them… Our action, until further notice, must tend above all to prepare the transformation of the natives into agents of labor, of production, and of consumption… What we must fear above all is to overturn in a day the work of ten years, for the intervention of force in a work prepared by patience and gentleness can ruin everything at a single blow.”