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.

to 10 deg. S., the great bulk of the export comes from the coast districts

at the head of the Gulf of Guinea. A larger supply, equal to any market

demand, could easily be obtained. A third valuable product is the timber

supplied by the forest regions, principally in West Africa. It includes

African teak or oak (Oldfieldia africana), excellent for shipbuilding; the

durable odum of the Gold Coast (Chlorophora excelsa); African mahogany

(Khaya senegalensis); ebony (Diospyros ebenum); camwood (Baphia nitida);

and many other ornamental and dye woods. The timber industry on the west

coast was long neglected, but since 1898 there have been large exports to

Europe. In parts of East Africa the Podocarpus milanjianus, a conifer, is

economically important. Valuable timber grows too in South Africa,

including the yellow wood (Podocarpus), stinkwood (Ocotea), sneezewood or

Cape ebony (Euclea) and ironwood.

Other vegetable products of importance are: Gum arabic, obtained from

various species of acacia (especially A. senegal), the chief supplies of

which are obtained from Senegambia and the steppe regions of North Africa

(Kordofan, &c.); gum copal, a valuable resin produced by trees of the

leguminous order, the best, known as Zanzibar or Mozambique copal, coming

from the East African Trachylobium hornemannianum, and also found in a

fossil state under the soil; kola nuts, produced chiefly in the coast-lands

of Upper Guinea by a tree of the order Sterculiaceae (Kola acuminata);

archil or orchilla, a dye-yielding lichen (Rocella tinctoria and

triciformis) growing on trees and rocks in East Africa, the Congo basin,

&c.; cork, the bark of the cork oak, which flourishes in Algeria; and alfa,

a grass used in paper manufacture (Machrochloa tenacissima), growing in

great abundance on the dry steppes of Algeria, Tripoli, &c. A product to

which attention has been paid in Angola is the Almeidina gum or resin,

derived from the juice of Euphorbia tirucalli.

The cultivated products include those of the tropical and warm temperate

zones. Of the former, coffee is perhaps the most valuable indigenous plant.

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