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Germany in West Central Africa.

of some 3 m., was left in the British sphere, and the German boundary followed the circle eastwards from the point of intersection as it neared Yola until it met the Benue river. From that point it crossed the river to the intersection of the 13th degree of longitude with the 10th degree of north latitude, and then made direct for a point on the southern shore of Lake Chad ``situated 35 minutes east of the meridian of Kuka.'' By this agreement the British government withdrew from a considerable section of the upper waters of the Benue with which the Royal Niger Company had entered into relations. The limit of Germany's possible extension eastwards was fixed at the basin of the river Shari, and Darfur, Kordofan and the Bahr-el-Ghazal were to be excluded from her sphere of influence. The object of Great Britain in making the sacrifice she did was two-fold. By satisfying Germany's desire for a part of Lake Chad a check was put on French designs on the Benue region, while by recognizing the central Sudan (Wadai, &c.) in the German sphere, a barrier was interposed to the advance of France from the Congo to the Nile. This last object was not attained, inasmuch as Germany in coming to terms with France as to the southern and eastern limits of Cameroon abandoned her claims to the central Sudan. She had already, on the 24th of December 1885, signed a protocol with France fixing her southern frontier, where it was coterminous with the French Congo colony. But to the east German explorers were crossing the track of French explorers from the northern bank of the Ubangi, and the need for an agreement was obvious. Accordingly, on the 4th of February 1894, a protocol—which, some weeks later, was confirmed by a convention— was signed at Berlin, by which France accepted the presence of Germany on Lake Chad as a fait accompli and effected the best bargain she could by making the left bank of the Shari river, from its outlet into Lake Chad to the 10th parallel of north latitude, the eastern limit of German extension. From this point the boundary line went due west some 230 m., then turned south, and with various indentations joined the south-eastern frontier, which had been slightly extended so as to give Germany access to the Sanga river— a tributary of the Congo. Thus, early in 1894, the German Cameroon colony had reached fairly definite limits. In 1908 another convention, modifying the frontier, gave Germany a larger share of the Sanga, while France, among other advantages, gained the left bank of the Shari to 10 deg. 40' N.

The German Togoland settlements occupy a narrow strip of the Guinea coast, some 35 m. only in length, wedged in between the British Gold Coast and French Dahomey. At first France was inclined to dispute Germany's claims to Little Popo and Porto Seguro; but in December 1885 the French government acknowledged the German protectorate over these

Exclusion of Germany from the Niger.

places, and the boundary between French and German territory, which runs north from the coast to the 11th decree of latitude, was laid down by the Franco-German convention of the 12th of July 1897. The fixing of the 11th parallel as the northern boundary of German expansion towards the interior was not accomplished without some sacrifice of German ambitions. Having secured an opening on Lake Chad for her Cameroon colony, Germany was anxious to obtain a footing on the middle Niger for Togoland. German expeditions reached Gando, one of the tributary states of the Sokoto empire on the middle Niger, and, notwithstanding the existence of prior treaties with Great Britain, sought to conclude agreements with the sultan of that country. But this German ambition conflicted both with the British and the French designs in West Africa, and eventually Germany had to be content with the 11th parallel as her northern frontier. On the west the Togoland frontier on the coast was fixed in July 1886 by British and German commissioners at 1 deg. 10' E. longitude, and its extension towards the interior laid down for a short distance. A curious feature in the history of its prolongation was the establishment in 1888 of a neutral zone wherein neither power was to seek to acquire protectorates nor exclusive influence. It was not until November 1899 that, as part of the Samoa settlement, this neutral zone was partitioned between the two powers and the frontier extended to the 11th parallel.

The story of the struggle between France and Great Britain in West Africa may roughly be divided into two sections, the

Anglo-French rivalry in West Africa.

first dealing with the Coast colonies, the second dealing with the struggle for the middle Niger and Lake Chad. As regards the Coast colonies, France was wholly successful in her design of isolating all Great Britain's separate possessions in that region, and of securing for herself undisputed possession of the upper Niger and of the countries lying within the great bend of that river. When the British government awoke to the consciousness of what was at stake France had obtained too great a start. French governors of the Senegal had succeeded, before the Berlin Conference, in establishing forts on the upper Niger, and the advantage thus gained was steadily pursued. Every winter season French posts were pushed farther and farther along the river, or in the vast regions watered by the southern tributaries of the Senegal and Niger rivers. This ceaseless activity met with its reward. Great Britain found herself compelled to acknowledge accomplished facts and to conclude agreements with France, which left her colonies mere coast patches, with a very limited extension towards the interior. On the 10th of August 1889 an agreement was signed by which the Gambia colony and protectorate was confined to a narrow strip of territory on both banks of the river for about 200 m. from the sea. In June 1882 and in August 1889 provisional agreements were made with France fixing the western and northern limits of Sierra Leone, and commissioners were appointed to trace the line of demarcation agreed upon by the two governments. But the commissioners failed to agree, and on the 21st of January 1895 a fresh agreement was made, the boundary being subsequently traced by a mixed commission. Sierra Leone, as now definitely constituted, has a coast-line of about 180 m. and a maximum extension towards the interior of some 200 m.

At the date of the Berlin conference the present colonies of Southern Nigeria and the Gold Coast constituted a single colony under the title of the Gold Coast colony, but on the 13th of January 1886 the territory comprised under that title was erected into two separate colonies—Lagos and the Gold Coast (the name of the former being changed in February 1906 to the colony of Southern Nigeria). The coast limits of the new Gold Coast colony were declared to extend from 5 deg. W. to 2 deg. E., but these limits were subsequently curtailed by agreements with France and Germany. The arrangements that fixed the eastern frontier of the Gold Coast colony and its hinterland have already been stated in connexion with German Togoland. On the western frontier it marches with the French colony of the Ivory Coast, and in July 1893, after an unsuccessful attempt to achieve the same end by an agreement concluded in 1889, the frontier was defined from the neighbourhood of the Tano lagoon and river of the same name, to the 9th degree of north latitude. In August 1896, following the destruction of the Ashanti power and the deportation of King Prempeh, as a result of the second Ashanti campaign, a British protectorate was declared over the whole of the Ashanti territories and a resident was installed at Kumasi. But no northern limit had been fixed by the 1893 agreement beyond the 9th parallel, and the countries to the north—Gurunsi (Grusi), Mossi and Gurma—-were entered from all sides by rival British, French and German expeditions. The conflicting claims established by these rival expeditions may, however, best be considered in connexion with the struggle for supremacy on the middle Niger and in the Chad region, to which it is now necessary to turn.

A few days before the meeting of the Berlin conference Sir George Goldie had succeeded in buying up all the French interests on the lower Niger. The British company's influence had at that date been extended by treaties with the native chiefs up the main Niger stream to its junction with the Benue, and some distance along this latter river But the great Fula states of the central Sudan were still outside European influence, and this fact did not escape attention in Germany. German merchants had been settled for some years on the coast, and one of them, E. R. Flegel, had displayed great interest in, and activity on, the river. He recognized that in the densely populated states of the middle Niger, Sokoto and Gando, and in Bornu to the west of Lake Chad, there was a magnificent field for Germany's new-born colonizing zeal. The German African Company14 and the German Colonial Society listened eagerly to Flegel's proposals, and in April 1885 he left Berlin on a mission to the Fula states of Sokoto and Gando. But it was impossible to keep his intentions entirely secret, and the (British) National African Company had no desire to see the French rivals, whom they had with so much difficulty dislodged from the river, replaced by the even more troublesome German. Accordingly Joseph Thomson, the young Scottish explorer, was sent out to the Niger, and had the satisfaction of concluding on the 1st of June 1885 a treaty with ``Umoru, King of the Mussulmans of the Sudan and Sultan of Sokoto,'' which practically secured the whole of the trading rights and the control of the sultan's foreign relations to the British company. Thomson concluded a similar treaty with the sultan of Gando, so as to provide against the possibility of its being alleged that Gando was an independent state and not subject to the suzerainty of the sultan of Sokoto. As Thomson descended the river with his treaties, he met Flegel going up the river, with bundles of German flags and presents for the chiefs. The German government continued its efforts to secure a footing on the lower Niger until the fall of Prince Bismarck from power in March 1890, when opposition ceased, and on the failure of the half-hearted attempt made later to establish relations with Gando from Togoland, Germany dropped out of the competition for the

The Niger Company granted a charter.

western Sudan and left the field to France and Great Britain. After its first great success the National African Company renewed its efforts to obtain a charter from the British government, and on the 10th of July 1886 the charter was granted, and the company became ``The Royal Niger Company, chartered and limited.'' In June of the previous year a British protectorate had been proclaimed Over the whole of the coast from the Rio del Rey to the Lagos frontier, and as already stated, on the 13th of January 1886 the Lagos settlements had been separated from the Gold Coast and erected into a separate colony. It may be convenient to state here that the western boundary of Lagos with French territory (Dahomey) was determined in the Anglo-French agreement of the 10th of August 1889, ``as far as the 9th degree of north latitude, where it shall stop.'' Thus both in the Gold Coast hinterland and in the Lagos hinterland a door was left wide open to the north of the 9th parallel.

Notwithstanding her strenuous efforts, France, in her advance down the Niger from Senegal, did not succeed in reaching Sego on the upper Niger, a considerable distance above Timbuktu, until the winter of 1890-1891, and the rapid advance of British influence up the river raised serious fears lest the Royal Niger Company should reach Timbuktu before France could forestall her. It was, no doubt, this consideration that induced the French government to consent to the insertion in the agreement of the 5th of August 1890, by which Great Britain recognized France's protectorate over Madagascar, of the following article:

The Government of Her Britannic Majesty recognizes the sphere of influence of France to the south of her Mediterranean possessions up to a line from Say on the Niger to Barrua on Lake Chad, drawn m such a manner as to comprise in the sphere of action of the Niger Company all that fairly belongs to the kingdom of Sokoto; the line to be determined by the commissioners to be appointed.

The commissioners never were in fact appointed, and the proper meaning to be attached to this article subsequently became a subject of bitter controversy between the two countries. An examination of the map of West Africa will show what possibilities of trouble were left open at the end of 1890 by the various agreements concluded up to that date. From Say on the Niger to where the Lagos frontier came to an abrupt stop in 9 deg. N. there was no boundary line between the French and British spheres of influence. To the north of the Gold Coast and of the French Ivory Coast colony the way was equally open to Great Britain and to France, while the vagueness of the Say-Barrua line left an opening of which France was quick to avail herself. Captain P. L. Monteil, who was despatched by the French government to West Africa in 1890, immediately after the conclusion of the August agreement, did not hesitate to pass well to the south of the Say-Barrua line, and to attempt to conclude treaties with chiefs who were, beyond all question, within the British sphere. Still farther south, on the Benue river, the two expeditions of Lieutenant Mizon—in 1890 and 1892—failed to do any real harm to British interests. In 1892 an event happened which had an important bearing on the future course of the dispute.

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