by Tim Jeal
But in Strauch's very next letter, the king's monopolistic ambitions were blatantly expressed. He suggested that all Europeans using Stanley's road to the Upper Congo should pay a hefty toll. In order to be able to implement this, Stanley was told to gain from all chiefs `a right of controlling the jurisdiction and a deliberative voice in all questions affecting the country'." Henry rejected the protectionist tolls proposal angrily, as deserving `universal condemnation and odium. You cannot fight Europeans by such a manner ... success is worthless without honour ... Our influence is steadily progressing in the country. No war has taken place since our arrival owing to my efforts.' The only guarantee of safe passage for `our caravans' between Manyanga and the Pool was by being `on good terms with the chiefs along the route'.
Stanley did not bother to respond to talk of chiefs granting to him `a right of controlling their jurisdiction'.59 Nevertheless, under all this pressure, and fearing that the French really might steal more territory around the Pool, Stanley formulated a new type of treaty giving `Henry M. Stanley or his representative [not it, should be noted, the Comite or AIC] for an indefinite period ... the sole privilege of occupying, improving, or building upon any part of the river frontage extending along the River Congo' between two stated points. The only surviving example of this form of treaty was signed at Kintamba (Kintamo) on 3 r December 118811 and secured a crucial half-mile stretch of the bank between the lower entrance of Stanley Pool and `the first great cataract'. No claim to sovereignty was made, nor did it need to be, since what he wanted was a site for a trading station and an agreement denying the French the right to build at this strategically vital location. Stanley undertook `not to disturb or molest any occupant of any portion of this land who may be residing on it at the date of this paper'.6o
To exclude the French from building posts higher upriver, Henry knew he would have to do as Leopold wished and create new stations ,on the Upper Congo ... to prevent a repetition of the Stanley Pool affair'. Nor was he averse to Leopold's request to have the AIA's flag of gold star on a blue background float above all his stations. He believed that `old Africa would benefit by this international competition, & civilization will come all the sooner through this rivalry'.61 But though Leopold wrote to him at the end of r88r, asking him to `place successively under the suzerainty of the Comite, as soon as possible, and without losing one minute, all the chiefs from the mouth of the Congo to the Stanley Falls', Stanley did not make suzerainty any part of the treaties he subsequently agreed on the Upper Congo.6z
The reality Stanley faced on the ground was that if he failed to reach agreement with the chiefs south of the Pool - and above all with Ngaliema, the most important ivory middleman on the river - the Upper Congo would be lost to him, even before he started to build stations upriver. Thanks to the diplomatic skills of de Brazza's remarkable Sergeant Malamine, the French presence on the Pool's northern shores had been accepted not only by the paramount chief, Makoko of Mbe, but also by his many sub-chiefs. And Malamine had spread scare stories about Stanley and his men that led to rejection of all his overtures of friendship. Malamine had put it about everywhere that Stanley and his men were evil, and that unless a European arriving at the Jue river - the gateway to the northern shores of the Pool - was carrying a small tricolour, or a cockade of cock's feathers, he was not a friend and should be sent away. Henry met the fine-featured Malamine at this time and was impressed by how `tactfully and subtly he acted on his master's instructions' when dealing with Africans. With two Gabonese sailors in French uniform following him everywhere, carrying the French flag, he seemed `a host in himself'. But admiration did not stop Stanley deploring the lies Malamine had told local Africans about the intentions of 'Bula Matari', which had included killing and eating them."
When Henry opened what he believed would be the most important negotiations of his life, he was relieved that Ngaliema remembered him from 1877 and still called him `Tandley'. Despite possessing a fortune of £3,000 in ivory, Ngaliema, with his dandified coloured silks and polished brass arm-rings, demanded Lieutenant Branconnier's black Newfoundland dog, Flora, as well as Stanley's two best riding donkeys. In exchange, Stanley received a wand of office bound with brass wire. Henry hurried to give the chief jewellery, fancy clasps, brass neck chains, a crimson table cloth, fifteen patterned cloths and a japanned tin trunk. Most reluctantly, he allowed Dualla, at the chief's request, `to go with him to see the town'. `Dualla was loath to go, but we had no option ... Unless we smothered him with our gifts ... we could never get a foothold at Stanley Pool.' So Henry accepted the chief's promise that he would return with Dualla in three days.64
In early August, Stanley lavished more and more gifts on Ngaliema, but by mid-month he was still not sure of him, and so decided to send Lieutenant Valcke to Loanda to purchase £50o worth of high-quality goods." In the meantime, Henry returned to the essential job of completing the road between Manyanga and the Pool, postponing his final attempt to overwhelm Ngaliema until after the Belgian officer returned with his purchases. But early in November, before Valcke could get back, Ngaliema expelled Susi and the small party of Wangwana, who, in Stanley's absence, had been living in his town at the chief's invitation. Susi was also ordered to take away `Tandley's' gifts, since no white man was to be permitted to live in the town after all.
It might be supposed that the man who had chastised the islanders of Bumbireh would have lacked the patience to fathom the labyrinthine politics of Stanley Pool. But the circumstances were entirely different. Stanley did not feel that the lives of his followers were threatened, and therefore had no intention of shedding blood in a place that he hoped would one day be a peaceful centre for international trade. Within days he made a very significant discovery, which was that the Bazombo and Bakongo ivory traders - who came up the Congo from the coast to buy Ngaliema's ivory for resale to European trading houses at the mouth - had threatened to fight Ngaliema if he allowed the white man to build at his town. Stanley also learned that these traders had allies among Ngaliema's sub-chiefs. The great fear of all these people was that if white men came to live permanently at the Pool, they would promptly buy up all the ivory amassed by big mid dlemen such as Ngaliema, cutting out the poorer African traders like themselves.66 So Ngaliema had turned against Stanley because he feared these adversaries. 17
On 7 November, Stanley was lucky enough to meet Ngaliema's father-in-law, Chief Makoko of Lema (not to be confused with Makoko of Mbe, with whom de Brazza had signed his treaty), a diminutive and modest man, who nevertheless turned out to be the senior chief of the whole region. Makoko of Lema amazed Stanley with the news that Ngaliema was not a chief by birth, being a member of the Teke tribe from far upriver, whence he had fled as a youth after his family had been killed in a tribal war. Though he had made a great fortune as an ivory trader through cunning and determination, he had only built at Kintamo having gained the consent of the land's three owners - chiefs Makoko of Lema, Ngamberengy and Kimpallam- bala.68 After telling Henry this very surprising history, Makoko declared that he and his fellow chiefs - who, it now appeared, owned the very river frontage Stanley was so desperate to occupy - would be happy for him to live with them. Overjoyed, Stanley asked Makoko ,to beat his iwanda or drum to announce to every man around that he had made friends with the white man and no man was to molest him'.69 A few weeks later, Stanley leased from Makoko and the two other chiefs the vital stretch of waterfront, which had been his objective all along. It stretched for almost two miles along the southern shores of the Pool, from close to Kinshasa at its eastern limit to the first cataract at its western end. It also extended a couple of miles inland. Stanley negotiated the right to build and to occupy the ground for as long as he wished. The town of Leopoldville (modern Kinshasa) would one day spread around the trading station that he now began to construct.7°
When news of Stanley's friendship with Makoko of Lema reached Ngaliema, he was horrified. If Stanley came to live with Makoko and was friendly with other local chiefs,
Ngaliema realized, he himself would be isolated and would therefore gain nothing from the white man's presence. Henry described what happened next for Colonel Strauch - and it must be admitted that this amusing story sounds almost too good to be true.
`Next morning, prompt as tinder, Ngaliema mustered a hundred men and armed them and came towards me in hot haste, trying every chief by rewards and persuasions to assist him in driving the white man back that very day.' When Makoko refused to help him, all others followed suit, so Ngaliema arrived the following morning at Stanley's camp with only his own men. Luckily for Stanley, he heard in advance that Ngaliema's party was armed and `ordered all his men to buckle on accoutrements, put guns in their huts under their beds - but all to spring into rank at the sound of the gong with guns in their hands'. Having explained the charade they were expected to act out, Stanley sat down in a chair with the collected plays of Shakespeare in his hands and the aforementioned gong beside him. His only visible attendants were Dualla and Mabruki Ndogo, who feigned great surprise when Ngaliema arrived with a sword in his hand. Ignoring this weapon and the guns of his followers, Henry welcomed his blood brother with broad smiles. Taken aback by Stanley's friendliness, Ngaliema hesitated, and then spotted the gong. Could Stanley beat the thing, asked the great ivory trader. He wished to hear its sound. Stanley refused, explaining that `the sound of this gong will bring trouble; it is a bad thing'. But Ngaliema insisted, so Henry beat it, with the result that Wangwana leapt up from behind bushes and burst from their tents with guns in their hands, as if magically created by the sound. Ngaliema was scared out of his wits, and his men scurried away in terror.'' Later, this story would be taken as proof that Stanley had forced treaties on chiefs by using pseudo-magical tricks.
It had taken Henry almost six months to gain his essential foothold on the Pool. The Baptist missionary T. J. Comber wrote that `by dint of constant, daily exercise of his tact & influence over the people ... Mr Stanley has succeeded in planting his station at Stanley Pool without a fight', despite provocations from `warlike savages who are very fond of fighting and can muster 3,000 guns 1.71 Yet in England stories were appearing in the press about Stanley's brutality to the Wangwana, based on canards published in the Portuguese Journal of Loanda, whose editor was forever looking for stories to discredit the expedition.73 Ironically, at that very time, Henry wrote this tribute to the beauty of the Congolese:
Every age has a beauty of its own; infancy excites the parental interest ... youth is still more attractive for its elastic & easy motions ... The adults call up ideas of fleetness, vigour, strength ... The skin may be more velvety than velvet, smoother than satin, or coarse as canvas ... but its warm brown colour seems to suit the African atmosphere - the contour of the body is always graceful.
He was endlessly reproving the latest young Belgian military arrivals for their failure to appreciate the merits of either the locals or the Wangwana, all of whom Stanley thought `superior in proportion to his wages to ten Europeans'.74 Lieutenants Harou and Orban exasperated him for being unable to communicate with Africans and for their failure to appreciate `the extraordinary gifts for commerce which these natives possess '.71 But his greatest anger was reserved for Lieutenant Branconnier, who beat Mabruki Ndogo, and later `punished him again unmercifully', obliging Stanley `to notify him [Branconnier] that cruelty was not permissible'. Stanley would eventually get rid of Branconnier for his racism. Anthony Swinburne, on the other hand, kept Stanley's favour, despite occasional laziness, largely because, as chief of Kinshasa Station, he was loved by the local Africans.71
With Wadi Rehani and Susi in charge of building, Leopoldville Station was completed by early March, freeing Henry to build new stations on the Upper Congo before the French could do the same. On r9 April r 88z, he headed upriver from Leopoldville in the En Avant paddle steamer with his favourites, Dualla and Albert Christophersen, and a recently arrived Belgian, Eugene Janssens. He also had fortyeight Wangwana with him - eighteen in the En Avant, and the rest being towed by the paddle steamer in a whaleboat and two canoes. As never before, Stanley was aware of the beauty of `the great brown flood ... and dark green foliage, contrasting with the silver grey stems ... amid the verdure'. He loved `the crimson glories of the travellers' tree', and found something haunting about `the steady bright sunshine on the lonely untenanted woods', which stretched for scores of miles along both banks of the Congo. After a week of steady steaming they reached Mswata, sixty miles upstream from the Pool. Here Stanley negotiated with the local chief for a site that would be the expedition's fifth station." In late May Henry was exploring the left, or Mfini, branch of the Kwa, a tributary of the Congo, when he knew from the `deathly languor' oppressing him that he was about to suffer another attack of fever.71
By z June 188z he was enduring the agonies of his third attack of haematuric fever. Realizing he would be lucky to survive without a period of recuperation in Europe, he ordered an immediate return to Vivi, where he arrived five weeks later, still dangerously ill. His passage downstream was incredibly rapid. On r9 July he was on the west coast at Loanda, from where, accompanied by Dualla, he sailed for Lisbon in mid-August, and by the end of the month he was in Brussels.
Dualla, the Somali youth who was Stanley's special envoy to chiefs and his most indispensable colleague
Thinking back over the building of a zoo-mile road and the establishment of five stations without blood being shed, he knew that he had accomplished much more than had ever been asked of him. Yet though he had got the better of de Brazza, Stanley did not expect to be praised when next he passed under the austere classical portico of Laeken Palace. In his old life as an explorer, success or failure had been clear, regardless of the level of public applause, but in opening up a vast new country, who could tell what might be permanent and deserving of royal approval?
SEVENTEEN
A Banquet in Paris
When Stanley's carriage brought him from the railway station along the Boulevard de Waterloo towards the king's palace in the centre of Brussels, the coachman did not take him to the regal front gates, but before reaching them swung left into rue Brederode, a narrow and nondescript side street at the back. Here, in a terraced house, the returning expedition leader had an appointment with the dapper Colonel Maximilien Strauch, with his gold pince-nez and neatly combed moustache. Strauch's orders were to pump Stanley politely before he left the city for his royal audience at Laeken the following day.'
For the sake of his health, Stanley knew he should delay returning to the Congo for many months. Indeed, he told Strauch that a `a medical man of great authority' had said he was `acting a suicide's part in leading this rackety, exciting life'. Yet Henry was keenly aware that this was a critical time for Leopold's entire African operation. De Brazza had been in Paris since June, doing his utmost to persuade the press and public to put pressure on the French government to ratify the Makoko Treaty and claim the whole area north of the Congo between the Gabon coast and Stanley Pool. It also galled Stanley personally to learn in Brussels that his French rival, who had killed Africans in self-defence, was encouraging friends to leak to the press outrageously misleading passages from his private letters: typically, `Mr Stanley has adopted the practice of making himself respected by dint of gunfire.'Z Given how hard Stanley had worked to soothe away the anger that de Brazza's Machiavellian Sergeant Malamine had stirred up among the tribes to the south of the Pool, he was all the more distressed to have been betrayed by a man he had welcomed as a friend. Clearly, if de Brazza's personalized campaign brought French ratification, then everything Stanley had achieved on the Congo, and especially at the Pool, would be in danger. In that kind of emergency, who else but he himself would have the knowledge and clout to combat French acquisitiveness in the Congo itself? And he had another important reason for returning: he did not trust the king's plans for the Congo's future and felt he could only counter them on the spot.
Six months earlier Strauch had sent Stanley a deeply disturbing letter marking
a seismic shift in the king's ambitions, away from a monopolistic company controlling all the Congo's ivory, minerals, palm oil and rubber - which had been bad enough - towards something Stanley thought even less desirable. Henry had received this letter when too ill to reply to it, but since his recovery its contents had not stopped worrying him. The trouble had started when the king had read an article in the London Times - a newspaper delivered to him each day, by steam ferry to Ostend and then by the Brussels express. The piece the king had found so enlightening was about an Englishman, Alfred Dent, who as `a private individual' had been granted a valuable concession by the sultans of Brunei and Sulu `in consideration of a certain annual charge'. This concession conferred virtual ownership `over a vast tract of territory: larger than the half of France, with all the privileges of sovereignty, such as the rights of life and death, to coin money, raise an army, organize a public force etc., etc.'. One senses Leopold's excitement bubbling beneath the surface of Strauch's turgid prose. Although the North Borneo Company `had obtained from the Queen of England a charter of incorporation', this, claimed Strauch, had `added nothing to the legal character of the concession itself'. Apparently, Lord Granville and Mr Gladstone (now British foreign secretary and prime minister respectively) had pronounced Dent's legal title `already perfect before the grant of the charter'.
