by Tim Jeal
Having returned to the Congo itself, Stanley heard on zz November that there were Arab slave traders in the region of Stanley Falls.33 Three days later he came across two large villages, which he remembered from 11877 as bustling with life, but which were now burned and deserted, with palms cut down, bananas scorched, and many acres levelled to the ground. At a third village, Stanley met dull-eyed people who regarded his men `with stupid indifference as though they were beyond further harm'. Over half the women and children had been enslaved and two-thirds of the men.34 By the 27th Stanley was all but certain that the murderers were the Arabs of Nyangwe, who had been emboldened by his epic journey to come thus far on the mighty Lualaba. In the morning, Stanley's flotilla came across the bodies of two women who had been roped together back to back and thrown into the river. A few miles further upstream, Stanley's three steamers came level with a large Arab stockade. He now wished that he had brought a Krupp gun with him. `I could have annihilated the camp was my first thought.' Yet the Arabs had fifty-four canoes and numbered about z,ooo men - far too many to take on, even supposing that his own eighty Wangwana would fight against their own kith and kin, and in such overwhelming numbers. As his blood cooled, it also dawned on Stanley that he `represented no government' and therefore had no right to claim `control over the territory devastated by the Arabs'.35
When Stanley went ashore, he found that the Arab-Swahili and their armed slaves from Manyema were commanded by Abed bin Salim, one the founders of Nyangwe, whom he had met in that town in October 11876 and had disliked even then. For eleven months this gang had been ravaging an area somewhat larger than the whole of Ireland for slaves and ivory, killing and enslaving thousands of people. In 118811 and 1188z there had also been raids near here, netting z,8oo slaves. In their present camp they had 2,300 captives, including children, chained together and looking so wretched and despairing that Stanley could hardly believe that `such awful wickedness was possible'. He guessed that in order to obtain so many slaves the Arabs would have shot the same number of people to prevent resistance. `They had also cut heads off by the score.'36 Imagining a peaceful village suddenly visited by these cruel men, Henry felt as if `in a kind of evil dream'. `Would to God I could see my way to set them all free, & massacre the fiends who have been the guilty authors of the indescribable inhumanity I have seen today.'37
For the first time he was faced with the practical realities with which Leopold had long been grappling. Unless the king could claim that the Congo was a state, bound together by a confederation of chiefs, he would have no legal right to expel the Arabs, the French, or anyone else, and these raiders would soon reach Stanley Pool. If that happened, there would be no chance of bringing trade and Christianity up the Congo. And he himself would earn an infamous role in history as the man who opened the river, not as a Livingstonian `highway' for civilization, but as an immense conduit for the East African slave trade, which would thenceforth span the continent. If only to stop this happening, it would be essential for a recognized state to stem the Arabs' advance and finally drive them back eastwards. Stanley would never again argue against the idea of a confederacy of chiefs, or even against taking sovereignty. The situation had changed dramatically, and these things might yet be needed to protect the population.
Stanley hoped that by building a station at Stanley Falls he would set a limit to the Arab advances - though since he could only leave behind a diminutive Scottish engineer, Adrian Binnie, with twenty Haussas and ten Wangwana - his hopes of it being a real barrier in the near future were remote. Nor did it reassure him to hear the Arabs express the hope that Binnie would sell goods to them more cheaply than if they were to send for them to Ujiji. Before leaving the area Stanley ransomed eighteen children, intending to give two as linguists to the missionaries of the Livingstone Inland Mission."
Back at Leopoldville - soon to be commanded by an Englishman, Captain Seymour Saulez, of whom Stanley had high hopes - he was delighted to see how many improvements had been made. At nearby Kinshasa, Swinburne had done even better. `Consistent, patient conduct, and steady forbearance had performed wonders, and the most intractable community on the Upper Congo had been converted to have a perfect faith in our honesty and in the purity of our motives.'39 Yet at the same time, three Belgian officers on other stations had been responsible for twelve African deaths.4° Such failures were very painful to Henry, who had just devoted twelve days at Bolobo to making a bloodless peace after the murder of two Wangwana.41
Chaos still reigned at Vivi when he returned there, underlining the fact that unless a capable deputy was soon sent out to run the Lower Congo while Stanley himself was upriver, the situation below the Pool would never improve. Horrified by the behaviour of the young officers, which had included assaults on each other as well as brutality to local Africans, Henry told the king that controlling the mayhem might demand `hanging any person guilty of committing violence upon the body of any of our associates'.4z Because of the immense distance between the extremities of the Upper and the Lower Congo, Stanley had begged Leopold many times for a suitable second in command, and in February he had received a letter from Strauch, dated 7 January, telling him that General Gordon had entered the service of the International Association. It shocked Stanley when Gordon wrote to him showing no understanding of the realities on the ground, and saying that he looked forward to an all-out war against the slave traders.43
Just as decisions regarding treaties had been taken out of Stanley's hands, now he would not, he realized, be consulted about the role Gordon would play on arrival in February. Instead, the man himself was talking about taking on the Arabs as if he had two or three thousand European troops under his command. `Either the king is mad,' wrote Stanley in his diary, `or Gordon is about [to enter] on an impossible task through a false conception of affairs.'44 Because Stanley thought Gordon `erratic & unstable', he was not sorry when the general dropped Leopold without warning, days before he was due to leave for the Congo. Instead, he returned to the Sudan. `I expect there will be a big tragedy out at Khartoum,' predicted Henry with remarkable prescience.45 It was a relief when Leopold chose a down-to-earth general, Sir Francis de Winton - even though de Winton was to be Henry's replacement rather than his deputy.46
Sir Francis arrived on r r May, and Stanley liked him from the beginning. He felt that he needed a break from the Congo and was glad to be leaving. Just two months after Henry had sailed for home, de Winton's position was no better than his had been. He had only six officers upon whom he could rely: Swinburne and three other British officers recommended by Stanley - Saulez, Pollok and Vetch - and the Belgians Valcke and Hannsens. Other Belgians lacked control, he told the king, especially in their dealings with Africans.47
In May, a month before Stanley's departure on I o June 1884, de Brazza made an all-out attempt to acquire the whole of the Congo for France. In doing so he tested to the limits the self-control and courage of Anthony Swinburne, whose patience with the Congolese was legendary, and who was now the only person able to prevent a major disaster for Leopold's whole project. The Pool connected the Lower to the Upper Congo and lay at the head of any future railway, and was therefore indispensable to a future state. Henry had established a chain of stations from Vivi to Stanley Falls, yet if the Frenchman walked into Leopoldville or Kinshasa and gained the local chief's sanction to stay, everything would be lost, regardless of the king's brilliant diplomacy in Europe. Before departing, Stanley explained the situation to Strauch:
Despite the comparatively strong position of the Assn on the Congo, any energetic officers of Portugal or France with 5o men is stronger than we are with a thousand. Why? Because we do not understand whether we have a right to resist any aggressive act of Portugal or France by force of arms. Should we do so what power will uphold us or sympathise with us? ... So long as our status and character are not recognized by European governments, de Brazza with his walking stick and a French flag ... is really stronger than Stanley with his Krupps ...48
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br /> Just one French gunboat steaming up to Vivi and demanding its surrender could end the whole game.
Several weeks after Stanley wrote the above letter, de Brazza sent presents to the Kinshasa chiefs and persuaded them to visit him - his intention being to tempt them to break their treaties with the Association. However, to determine whether the south side should be French, as well as the north, de Brazza had no choice but to cross to the southern shore in person. And so in late May, recorded Stanley, the Frenchman `crossed the Pool to our side with 4 canoes and landed on Kinshasa territory, the famous Malamine being with him'. Just outside the settlement, Hassani, one of Swinburne's Wangwana, barred the way. On hearing Malamine say that `de Brazza was Swinburne's master', Hassani raised his rifle threatening the French party with sudden death, according to Charles de Chavannes, de Brazza's secretary. Stanley claimed Hassani merely `stoutly resisted the astonishing declaration' (that de Brazza was Swinburne's master).
Swinburne, meanwhile, ran to Chief Nchuvila's compound and persuaded him not to meet de Brazza without him (Swinburne) being present. The young Englishman also armed his Wangwana and ordered them to hide, only showing themselves if the French fired shots. Swinburne then received the three Frenchmen and politely offered them brandy. An argument ensued about who had the right to occupy Kinshasa, with neither side yielding an inch. A palaver with the chief followed, and rapidly became ugly when two of the chief's sons assaulted de Brazza, only being restrained with great difficulty by Swinburne. When asked to punish the duo, Swinburne refused, adding: `I beg to tell you once for all that we do not recognize any flag but our own, nor do the chiefs ... I have nothing more to say to you, so wish you good morning.' Chavannes claimed that, under his breath, Swinburne had called the French flag a rag.49
Believing Swinburne's version, de Winton wrote to him, praising his combination of tact and resolution. De Brazza had been driven off without a shot being fired, with the only aggressive acts coming from the chief's sons. It was the best possible outcome. For saving the king's entire operation, the twenty-six-year-old former apprentice tea broker, who had first come to West Africa with Stanley as a boy of sixteen, was given a 25 per cent increase in salary.'° Since Swinburne would keep de Brazza out until the Berlin Conference, a Belgian title and a pension would have been more appropriate. But being British, his days in Leopold's employment were already numbered, although he himself had no idea of it.
Because the king had editorial control over Stanley's next book, Swinburne's low-key heroics would be omitted from Henry's The Congo and the Founding of its Free State. King Leopold's greatest fear was that if they caused offence to the French, the latter would be goaded into aggressive acts against the AIC. Had not the French ratified the Makoko Treaties precisely because Stanley had insulted de Brazza in Paris? So no reference to any of the confrontations at Kinshasa would ever be made public, on the king's insistence." To compensate his protege Swinburne for being denied the place in history he deserved, Stanley decided that, apart from King Leopold, Mr A. B. Swinburne would be the only man to merit a full-page picture in his new book.5' The fact that he thereby caused the king great annoyance is a token of Stanley's capacity for loyalty to his humblest friends.
Before leaving the Congo, Henry begged the king to end `a disgrace to the Association'. Seven European graves at Vivi were still unmarked. Slate or marble headstones, he insisted, should be shipped without delay: `I plead for their memories.' Henry's last act as Chief Agent on the Congo was to put up wooden crosses as a temporary measure. This lack of respect for its dead pioneers by those formerly in charge of Vivi Station was not an encouraging augury for the value the Association and its successor state would place upon human life in years to come.53
NINETEEN
Who Stole the Congo?
After a brief return to London, Stanley travelled to Ostend, where he arrived on z August 1884 for a series of meetings with the king at the Chalet Royal, his seaside summer residence. Although he had laboured hard for five years and checkmated de Brazza and the French on the Pool and Upper Congo, Stanley felt anxious about his reception. In November 1883 his letter to Harry Johnston had been published in The Times,, and two months later the king had written rebuking him for having told Johnston that a British protectorate at the mouth of the Congo was needed to curb the brutality of the Portuguese. `You lessen your own work by inciting the English to proclaim an English protectorate,' Leopold told Stanley. `I earnestly beg you to desist writing in this manner ... it can only produce much harm.'2
But in early August, Leopold was no longer worried that Stanley's pro-British indiscretions might upset the Germans and the French enough to stop them recognizing the AIC as an independent state. Stanley had no idea that in April, three months earlier, Leopold had dreamed up a brilliant diplomatic ruse to stop the French seizing the Congo by force. He had offered France first option (the droit de preference) on the AIC's territories - exercisable in the event of his financial collapse. At a stroke this had ended France's fear that the Congo might, as Stanley seemed to wish, one day end up in Britain's portfolio of colonies. Knowing herself heir apparent to the Congo, France no longer wished to do anything to threaten the existence of the AIC. Leopold meant to keep Stanley in the dark about his French agreement for as long as possible, to stop him raising a storm in Britain against the protectionist French.
To retain `first option' on 11.5 million square miles of central Africa, the French had promised Leopold that they would recognize the AIC as a state the moment they were asked to do so.' But Leopold had been obliged to pay a price for his new deal. France's principal demand was that Stanley should never return to the Congo. Six years earlier, the king had assured Stanley that if his work on the Congo was crowned with success, he would be sent back there as Governor-General. But three months ago Leopold had promised Jules Ferry, the French prime minister, that Stanley (the man who had made his future colony possible) would never return to the Congo.4 It was a betrayal on the grand scale. The French prime minister had also insisted that the king appoint no more Anglo-Saxon personnel, and this too had been conceded without argument. Leopold had decided to keep Stanley sweet by deliberately deceiving him and continuing to hint that he would soon be sent back to Africa.5
The king had an immediate reason for wishing to keep his former Chief Agent in a cooperative mood. Leopold knew that an international conference of the great powers would soon determine the Congo's future, and he therefore needed Stanley - as the man who had pioneered the new colony - to mark out its boundaries on a map, so that European governments could approve them at this conference. Knowing nothing of Leopold's cynical intention of one day pillaging the Congo, Stanley (while still at Ostend) obligingly drew a generous outline for the future Congo Free State, extending far to the north and south of the equator, and stretching all the way from the Atlantic to Lake Tanganyika.' If he had had the slightest inkling of the horror to come during the 118gos, he would not have picked up his pencil.
It has been suggested by biographers and historians that Stanley was Leopold's eager collaborator in the theft of the Congo from the indigenous chiefs,7 and since such behaviour - if Stanley were guilty of it - carries an implication of partial responsibility for the atrocities that followed in the Congo in the 1189os, a review of the facts is essential in assessing Stanley's moral character. In the first place, how had Henry reacted in mid-11879 when Leopold had first put to him, via his spokesman, Colonel Strauch, the basic idea that the king believed might one day enable him to own the Congo as his personal possession? Strauch wrote on behalf of Leopold:
It is not a question of Belgian colonies ... It is a question of creating a new state, as large as possible, and of running it ... there is no question of granting the slightest political power to negroes. That would be absurd. The white men, heads of stations, retain all the powers ... [and would be] responsible to the Director-General of Stations, who in turn would be responsible to the President of the Confederation [Leopold].
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Then he posed a rhetorical question: `Should we not try to extend the influence of the stations over the neighbouring chiefs, and then from these stations and their dependencies into a republican confederation ...?'9 Stanley wrote back describing this idea of a confederation and creating a state as `madness'. It would be utterly unrealistic to do anything but `leave the petty tribes as we found them'.
Stanley was unaware that Leopold's interest in `confederation' was less about creating a new set of tribal relationships on the ground than about being able to produce paper `evidence' suggesting `political' linkage between AIC stations and hundreds of tribes, so that Leopold would later be able to claim that the whole Congo basin was a single territory `justified in claiming the title of nation'. Stanley argued against trying to create a state in which whites became local rulers. `On the contrary,' wrote Stanley, `they [the Congolese] will retain their own tribal chiefs ... be as jealous as ever of every tribal right, and resent every foreign interference in their own customs or modes of life ... All that we can hope at present is to win sufferance to live and move about without fear of violence, by patience, good nature and honourable traffic ....'1O This would remain Stanley's position, although Strauch nagged at him to make `treaties of alliance' with chiefs that would allow them `the management of all external affairs and the right to represent them'." But - as indicated in Chapters Sixteen and Eighteen above - Stanley did not try to alienate land from chiefs or claim to exercise jurisdiction on their behalf.
