persed." Of 40,000 natives living in one particular region, 20,000 had been "destroyed" in two years. Many quotations were given of typical extracts from officials in the course of punishing native villages which had not furnished a sufficient quantity of rubber to the Concessionaires, or which refused to pay the rubber tax. Here are some of them:
Action against Kolewan village. The Fans of the Upper Cuno river had declined to pay the tribute. The village was burned and the plantations destroyed… Expedition against the Bekanis: The village was again burned and 3,000 banana trees (staple food supply) destroyed. The village of Kua was also burnt, and the plantations razed to the ground… Action against Abiemafal village: All the houses were set fire to and the plantations razed to the ground… Action against Alcun: The villages were bombarded, and afterwards destroyed, with the plantations… Action against the Essamfami: Villages destroyed. The country on the Borne river has been put to fire and sword.
The following passage was quoted from the report of one of the inspectors appointed by De Brazza:
What villages burned down, what plantations destroyed, what hatreds engendered against us in order to get in a few thousands of francs! Are not such deeds unworthy of France?
With terrible force the accusers in the Chamber drove home again and again the official circulars of the Governor-General to his officials, notifying them that their promotion would depend upon the measure of their success in increasing the yield of the rubber taxes. They commented upon the close connection between the Concessionaire Companies of the French Congo and the Belgian Congo Free State Companies. They emphasised the sinister influence of the Concessionaire Companies upon successive French Colonial Ministers, illustrating it with such facts as, for instance, that the chef de cabinet of one such Minister had subsequently become the director of six Concessionaire Companies. They asked what conceivable advantage could accrue to France from the prosecution of so atrocious a policy; what was the mysterious influence which permitted a number of financial corporations to impose their will upon a French Colony, making the Administration of it their active accomplices, massacring its inhabitants, ruining the country? They cited more official documents, in which specific
