When King Leopold II of Belgium created his Congo Free State, following the West Africa Conference in Berlin in 1884-85, he claimed to operate in the interests of philanthropy. Bismarck himself asserted that the European powers had much careful solicitude for the moral and physical welfare of the native races, and he hoped Leopolds private fiefdom would bring to the people of Congo the advantages of civilization.
Leopold employed Stanley to promote his interests, which he painted in the colours of altruism. When the fortune which Leopold anticipated from the investment of his own money failed to materialize, methods of extracting wealth became more severe. Whole villages were forced to provide ivory and wild rubber for agents and representatives of the King. An account of atrocities against the indigenous peoples was published in 1903 by Roger Casement, British Consul in the Congo. Forced labour, brutality and depopulation of villages had indeed produced the wealth but Leopolds philanthropy was shown to be fictitious. The Belgian Government formally took over the territory as the Belgian Congo in 1906.
This was not the first time what had begun as a private commercial venture had been nationalized. In the early imperial age, Britain was celebrated for its informal empire. It readily subcontracted colonial excursions to private companies, since it had no wish to incur the expenses of official administration of overseas territories. The earliest of these, the East India Company, was granted a royal charter in 1600. For two and a half centuries its servants made fortunes, while the company effectively came to govern large parts of the sub-continent. Only after the first war of independence in 1857 was direct imperial rule established in India.
This experience did not prevent British governments from granting other companies the right to trade in Africa. Entrepreneurs and adventurers set out with blank treaties with which they would wring concessions from local rulers. As inducements they took supplies of glass beads, brass rods and coarse calico, but also of arms and alcohol commodities which subsequently played such a fateful role in the history of Africa.
The struggle for spheres of influence between the European powers led to what was known as the Scramble for Africa: McKinnons East Africa Association, Rhodes British South Africa Company, Goldies Niger Company were chartered to run territories, many of them covering hundreds of miles behind a commercial front based on river or coastal trade. They lacked the means of administering them, but were creative in devising coercive methods of producing valuable commodities. The work of these private interests on behalf of European nation states led to intense competition for territory. The imperial powers took over extensive tracts of land, naming them protectorates and colonies, which they ruled directly until the movement towards decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s.
The humanitarian intention of King Leopold II was reflected in the other states of Europe, moved by a desire to raise up the hapless inhabitants of the continent. Commerce, Christianity and civilization were their benign alliterative goals. They had one supreme example of the backwardness of Africa: since Britain had abolished slavery in 1833, many missionaries travelled, with the zeal of converts, to quell slavery and the slave trade all over the continent. That such barbaric phenomena continued overseas after Britain had forsworn them was reason enough to mix the stern business of extracting wealth with the pleasure of stamping out this abominable practice, and of bringing religious conversion to those who, in their folly, still worshipped rivers, forests and hills. Humanitarians were supported by the generosity of sympathizers at home, the missionary societies and the hosts of Mrs Jellybys as portrayed by Charles Dickens in Bleak House with their tenderness for the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.
The mission to rescue Africa in our time rouses eerie echoes of that earlier age; although different actors have assumed the familiar roles, and the three Cs have become the three Ds development, democracy and deregulation.
No doubt the likes of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are animated by the same high-minded desire that drove Leopold II; although they have an even more difficult task. For they must ensure that the wealth of the world (including that of Africa) continues to sustain their own people at the levels to which they have become accustomed, while simultaneously lifting up the poor of Africa. Bob Geldof, Bono and pressure-groups urging the G-8 to increase aid, step up debt relief and make trade more fair, are governed by the same commitment which roused the charitable societies and benevolent institutions of Victorian Britain. They do not, of course, urge their supporters to renounce their own advantages: the exaltations of singing and raising awareness will, it seems, suffice to make people less poor; although whenever humanitarianism has struck against economic reason, it is rarely philanthropy that prevails.
When the European powers were compelled by liberation and independence movements to abandon control over their overseas possessions, they declared imperialism at an end; and resumed subcontracting their foreign adventures to private enterprise once more.
There is, today, as in the 19th century, a division of moral, as well as material, labour among the privileged people of the Western world: those who clamour for the relief of poverty and injustice are not the same people who are busy extracting the riches of the continent. In 2005 it was revealed that in Angola, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea, British banks and transnational companies had been engaged in clandestine deals to gain control of the trade in diamonds, oil and natural gas production.
Equatorial Guinea represents, perhaps, the most exuberant replay of history, as tragic now as it was first time around. Since oil and natural gas were discovered in the early 1990s, the country of half a million people has become the third largest exporter of oil in sub-Saharan Africa, with economic growth faster than anywhere in the world: in 1997 it reached 70 per cent. Exxon now exports more than 300,000 barrels of oil a day to the US, and per-capita income is about $6,000. While the family of President Teodoro Obango Nguema is fabulously rich, the majority remains in extreme want. The country has regressed in the UN Development Index since oil was discovered, even though between 1995 and 2000 US oil firms invested $5 billion. A US Senate report into Washington-based Riggs Bank in 2004 found it had helped government officials of Equatorial Guinea steal hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenues. Equatorial Guinea, it will be remembered, was the object of a failed coup, with the participation, among others, of Sir Mark Thatcher. It seems scarcely conceivable that this seedy bunch of fantasists was acting in the interests of good governance, social justice or human rights.
Who, it might be asked, is doing the real work of the West in Africa? Is it the unconvicted conviction politicians? Is it the emotional hyper-ventilation of conscience-stricken celebrities? Or is it the solid, unremitting dedication to the retention of privilege by transnational entities and their agents and emissaries in Africa? Who are the real beneficiaries of this noble enterprise, and what are the consequences of our complicity?
Imperialism is not static. It dances through time, mobile, adaptable, protean. In one epoch, nation states outsource the imperial task to private entities; in another they assume governance of the territories. After conceding independence at the end of World War Two, the rich countries once more contracted out colonialism to transnational entities which operate worldwide, above and beyond mere geography. The shape of imperialism varies; only the outcomes remain the same. The Leopolds vanish; the likes of Brown and Blair appear; Mrs Jellyby yields to the hectorings of the pop star.
The most significant actors remain, however, the adventurers and explorers of the Niger Company or the East African Association in the 19th century and of Exxon in Equatorial Guinea or Elf in Congo-Brazzaville in the 21st. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Conrads heart of darkness remains, secure as ever within its decorative humanitarian shell.
When King Leopold II of Belgium created his Congo Free State, following the West Africa Conference in Berlin in 1884-85, he claimed to operate in the interests of philanthropy. Bismarck himself asserted that the European powers had much careful solicitude for the moral and physical welfare of the native races, and he hoped Leopolds private fiefdom would bring to the people of Congo the advantages of civilization.
Leopold employed Stanley to promote his interests, which he painted in the colours of altruism. When the fortune which Leopold anticipated from the investment of his own money failed to materialize, methods of extracting wealth became more severe. Whole villages were forced to provide ivory and wild rubber for agents and representatives of the King. An account of atrocities against the indigenous peoples was published in 1903 by Roger Casement, British Consul in the Congo. Forced labour, brutality and depopulation of villages had indeed produced the wealth but Leopolds philanthropy was shown to be fictitious. The Belgian Government formally took over the territory as the Belgian Congo in 1906.
This was not the first time what had begun as a private commercial venture had been nationalized. In the early imperial age, Britain was celebrated for its informal empire. It readily subcontracted colonial excursions to private companies, since it had no wish to incur the expenses of official administration of overseas territories. The earliest of these, the East India Company, was granted a royal charter in 1600. For two and a half centuries its servants made fortunes, while the company effectively came to govern large parts of the sub-continent. Only after the first war of independence in 1857 was direct imperial rule established in India.
This experience did not prevent British governments from granting other companies the right to trade in Africa. Entrepreneurs and adventurers set out with blank treaties with which they would wring concessions from local rulers. As inducements they took supplies of glass beads, brass rods and coarse calico, but also of arms and alcohol commodities which subsequently played such a fateful role in the history of Africa.
The struggle for spheres of influence between the European powers led to what was known as the Scramble for Africa: McKinnons East Africa Association, Rhodes British South Africa Company, Goldies Niger Company were chartered to run territories, many of them covering hundreds of miles behind a commercial front based on river or coastal trade. They lacked the means of administering them, but were creative in devising coercive methods of producing valuable commodities. The work of these private interests on behalf of European nation states led to intense competition for territory. The imperial powers took over extensive tracts of land, naming them protectorates and colonies, which they ruled directly until the movement towards decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s.
The humanitarian intention of King Leopold II was reflected in the other states of Europe, moved by a desire to raise up the hapless inhabitants of the continent. Commerce, Christianity and civilization were their benign alliterative goals. They had one supreme example of the backwardness of Africa: since Britain had abolished slavery in 1833, many missionaries travelled, with the zeal of converts, to quell slavery and the slave trade all over the continent. That such barbaric phenomena continued overseas after Britain had forsworn them was reason enough to mix the stern business of extracting wealth with the pleasure of stamping out this abominable practice, and of bringing religious conversion to those who, in their folly, still worshipped rivers, forests and hills. Humanitarians were supported by the generosity of sympathizers at home, the missionary societies and the hosts of Mrs Jellybys as portrayed by Charles Dickens in Bleak House with their tenderness for the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.
The mission to rescue Africa in our time rouses eerie echoes of that earlier age; although different actors have assumed the familiar roles, and the three Cs have become the three Ds development, democracy and deregulation.
No doubt the likes of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are animated by the same high-minded desire that drove Leopold II; although they have an even more difficult task. For they must ensure that the wealth of the world (including that of Africa) continues to sustain their own people at the levels to which they have become accustomed, while simultaneously lifting up the poor of Africa. Bob Geldof, Bono and pressure-groups urging the G-8 to increase aid, step up debt relief and make trade more fair, are governed by the same commitment which roused the charitable societies and benevolent institutions of Victorian Britain. They do not, of course, urge their supporters to renounce their own advantages: the exaltations of singing and raising awareness will, it seems, suffice to make people less poor; although whenever humanitarianism has struck against economic reason, it is rarely philanthropy that prevails.
When the European powers were compelled by liberation and independence movements to abandon control over their overseas possessions, they declared imperialism at an end; and resumed subcontracting their foreign adventures to private enterprise once more.
There is, today, as in the 19th century, a division of moral, as well as material, labour among the privileged people of the Western world: those who clamour for the relief of poverty and injustice are not the same people who are busy extracting the riches of the continent. In 2005 it was revealed that in Angola, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea, British banks and transnational companies had been engaged in clandestine deals to gain control of the trade in diamonds, oil and natural gas production.
Equatorial Guinea represents, perhaps, the most exuberant replay of history, as tragic now as it was first time around. Since oil and natural gas were discovered in the early 1990s, the country of half a million people has become the third largest exporter of oil in sub-Saharan Africa, with economic growth faster than anywhere in the world: in 1997 it reached 70 per cent. Exxon now exports more than 300,000 barrels of oil a day to the US, and per-capita income is about $6,000. While the family of President Teodoro Obango Nguema is fabulously rich, the majority remains in extreme want. The country has regressed in the UN Development Index since oil was discovered, even though between 1995 and 2000 US oil firms invested $5 billion. A US Senate report into Washington-based Riggs Bank in 2004 found it had helped government officials of Equatorial Guinea steal hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenues. Equatorial Guinea, it will be remembered, was the object of a failed coup, with the participation, among others, of Sir Mark Thatcher. It seems scarcely conceivable that this seedy bunch of fantasists was acting in the interests of good governance, social justice or human rights.
Who, it might be asked, is doing the real work of the West in Africa? Is it the unconvicted conviction politicians? Is it the emotional hyper-ventilation of conscience-stricken celebrities? Or is it the solid, unremitting dedication to the retention of privilege by transnational entities and their agents and emissaries in Africa? Who are the real beneficiaries of this noble enterprise, and what are the consequences of our complicity?
Imperialism is not static. It dances through time, mobile, adaptable, protean. In one epoch, nation states outsource the imperial task to private entities; in another they assume governance of the territories. After conceding independence at the end of World War Two, the rich countries once more contracted out colonialism to transnational entities which operate worldwide, above and beyond mere geography. The shape of imperialism varies; only the outcomes remain the same. The Leopolds vanish; the likes of Brown and Blair appear; Mrs Jellyby yields to the hectorings of the pop star.
The most significant actors remain, however, the adventurers and explorers of the Niger Company or the East African Association in the 19th century and of Exxon in Equatorial Guinea or Elf in Congo-Brazzaville in the 21st. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Conrads heart of darkness remains, secure as ever within its decorative humanitarian shell.