southern by the first parallel of north latitude to its point of intersection
with the Muni river.
Apart from this small block of Spanish territory south of Cameroon, the stretch of coast between Cape Blanco and the mouth of the Congo is partitioned among four European powers—Great Britain, France, Germany and Portugal—and the negro republic of Liberia. Following theDivision of the Guinea coast. coast southwards from Cape Blanco is first the French colony of Senegal, which is indented, along the Gambia river, by the small British colony of that name, and then the comparatively small territory of Portuguese Guinea, all that remains on this coast to represent Portugal’s share in the scramble in a region where she once played so conspicuous a part. To the south of Portuguese Guinea is the French Guinea colony, and still going south and east are the British colony of Sierra Leone, the republic of Liberia, the French colony of the Ivory coast, the British Gold Coast, German Togoland, French Dahomey, the British colony (formerly known as the Lagos colony) and protectorate of Southern Nigeria, the German colony of Cameroon, the Spanish settlements on the Muni river, the French Congo colony, and the small Portuguese enclave north of the Congo to which reference has already been made, which is administratively part of the Angola colony. When the General Act of the Berlin conference was signed the whole of this coast-line had not been formally claimed; but no time was lost by the powers interested in notifying claims to the unappropriated sections, and the conflicting claims put forward necessitated frequent adjustments by international agreements. By a Franco-Portuguese agreement of the 12th of May 1886 the limits of Portuguese Guinea—surrounded landwards by French territory—were defined, and by agreements with Great Britain in 1885 and France in 1892 and 1907 the Liberian republic was confined to an area of about 43,000 sq. m.
The real struggle in West Africa was between France and Great Britain, and France played the dominant part, the exhaustion of Portugal, the apathy of the British government and the late appearance of Germany in the field being all elements that favoured the success of French policy. Before tracing the steps in the historic contest between France and Great Britain it is necessary, however, to deal briefly with the part played by Germany. She naturally could not be disposed of by the chief rivals as easily as were Portugal and Liberia. It will be remembered that Dr Nachtigal, while the proposals for the Berlin conference were under discussion, had planted the German flag on the coast of Togo and in Cameroon in the month of July 1884. In Cameroon Germany found herself with Great Britain for a neighbour to the north, and with France as her southern neighbour on the Gabun river. The utmost activity was displayed in making treaties with native chiefs, and in securing as wide a range of coast for German enterprise as was possible. After various provisional agreements had been concluded between Great Britain and Germany, a “provisional line of demarcation” was adopted in the famous agreement of the 1st of July 1890, starting from the head of the Rio del Rey creek and going to the point, about 9° 8′ E., marked “rapids” on the British Admiralty chart. By a further agreement of the 14th of April 1893, the right bank of the Rio del Rey was made the boundary between the Oil Rivers Protectorate (now Southern Nigeria) and Cameroon. In the following November (1893) the boundary was continued from the “rapids” before mentioned, on the Calabar or Cross river, in a straight line towards the centre of the town of Yola, on the Benue river. Yola itself, with a radiusGermany 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° 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 degree 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° 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 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 Anglo-French rivalry in West Africa. 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.
