Afrikagf (652220), страница 19
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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. It grows wild in many parts, the home of one species being in Kaffa and other Galla countries south of Abyssinia, and of another in Liberia. The Abyssinian coffee is equal to the best produced in any other part of the world. Cultivation is, however, necessary to ensure the best results, and attention has been given to this in various European colonies. Plantations have been established in Angola, Nyasaland, German East Africa, Cameroon, the Congo Free State, &c.
Copra, the produce of the cocoa-nut palm, is supplied chiefly by Zanzibar and neighbouring parts of the east coast. Groundnuts, produced by the leguminous plant, Arachis hypogaea, are grown chiefly in West Africa, and the largest export is from Senegal and the Gambia; while Bambarra ground-nuts (Voandzeia subterranea) are very generally cultivated from Guinea to Natal. Cloves are extensively grown on Zanzibar and Pemba islands, Pemba being the chief source of the world's supply of cloves. The chief drawbacks to the industry are the fluctuations of the yield of the trees, and the risk of over-production in good seasons.
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