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° W. to 2° 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 Company[1] 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 theThe 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 in 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° 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
- ↑ This association, formed in 1878 by a union of associations primarily intended for the exploration of Africa, ceased to exist in 1891.
